Episode 3. My Healing Journey

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Healing Entrepreneur podcast. I’m your host, Rowana Abbensetts-Dobson. I’m an author, a writer, and someone who is passionate about mental health and healing. I’ve been doing this work for a couple of years now and it has been an up and down journey. That’s kind of what I want to get into today, my journey as an entrepreneur and specifically an entrepreneur with depression and anxiety. 

Let's get into it!

I never knew that I would eventually become an entrepreneur but it makes perfect sense given the things that I wanted from life since I was a kid. I always wanted to travel, I wanted to be creative as a living, I wanted to have a family and I always wanted to have a more flexible schedule so I could be available for my family. Growing up both of my parents worked outside of the house a lot so I always wanted to do things differently when I became an adult. I did not anticipate being diagnosed with depression and generalized anxiety at 17 and I had no idea how that would impact my future career path. 

In college, I was fortunate enough to work with a therapist at the wellness center. Although I still had to bridge the cultural gap of being a Black woman living in America for her to understand my experience, she imparted knowledge on the importance of self-care, challenging me to journal and try meditation for my anxiety. That time away also showed me what it looked like to have mental health and wellness resources available, something my predominantly Black neighborhood back home did not have.

So after I graduated from college, I started working in the publishing and nonprofit world and realized that most of these offices were no less hostile than my predominantly white undergraduate experience. I tried every job from being a salesperson at Brooklyn Industries to a camp counselor to an assistant at a literary scouting firm, I worked in a real estate office, and a few different internships or admin jobs at nonprofit organizations. I was trying my best to find my footing in the professional world but I just wasn't finding what I needed. A lot of the time I would feel anxiety in the office, crying in the bathroom after being severely scolded for small offenses, dreading coming to work the next day, leaving work drained of energy. I would always say, “It’s just this place.” or it was the type of job or it was the people. It was always something but the fact was that I was dealing with depression and anxiety and finding it hard to maintain adequate self-care in these environments.

When I decided to be a full-time writer and entrepreneur, I thought my problems were solved. I could now make my own schedule and set my own terms. But the first thing entrepreneurship taught me was that I had no boundaries! Even though I have been working on this in therapy, I found that it was the worst habit that I carried from the office into entrepreneurship. A lack of boundaries can leave you depleted no matter what kind of work or settings you have. In the 9-5 working world it’s kind of normal to compromise your boundaries, especially as a Black woman. You want to be perceived as nice so you make endless small talk, take on tasks that are not in your job description, go to happy hours even though you just want to go home, and say yes as often as you can not to be perceived as difficult. That is a straight path to burnout. 

Now imagine going into entrepreneurship with the same people-pleasing attitude. I found myself feeling so deeply about representation, especially with the magazine. I wanted to put everyone on. I wanted to help everyone in my growing community of Black women Writers get published. It was coming to the point where I felt like I was spending less time writing and creating for myself and more time trying to make other people’s dreams come true, frustrated because I hadn’t set myself up in a way that would nourish me equally to the output I was demanding of myself for others. 

I can be hard on myself, and that mixed with depression can be very destructive because I would be picking myself apart for not being a superwoman while still trying to be a superwoman. It wasn’t serving me. 

And I knew that I had to have my cup full before I could do the endless collaborations that started to feel like heavy obligations, weighing like stones on my chest.

Being an entrepreneur with depression often looks like wearing so many hats, playing so many roles, and needing to rest, but not wanting to let other people down. It's also a challenge because you have to constantly be learning about your business and what your capacity is, what you can handle for the size of your company because you’re not a machine you're a person. Not just a person, but a person with a history of anxiety and depression who needs to make mental health a priority. Period. It’s a matter of life or death for me. No one sees the fallout or feels it the way I will if I don’t take care of myself. Most people are concerned with their own lives and putting themselves first. I had to learn not to be overly empathetic and make my business work for me, not just for other people, which is what I had been doing way too frequently.

Sometimes it hurts to think about how I might have progressed faster or grown more as a brand faster if I didn’t experience periods of depression. The world very much values the extravert and that has never been me, especially when I’m feeling depressed and anxious. In a world where “visibility” is everything, I often feel like I'm falling short of my potential when I need to withdraw for my mental health. 

I’ve learned to honor the ebbs and flows of my life, seek ease, and follow my intuition. It’s been an ongoing process of learning to love myself mind, body, and soul, but also doing a ton of unlearning. I’m on a spiritual journey to connect with my true authentic self and see how my gifts can help others, but I can’t help anyone if I’m hard on myself, having self-sabotaging thoughts, or letting fear dictate my life.

That’s part of why I started this podcast. I want to share my unique journey while also holding space for the journeys of others. The other day, a fellow author described an event for Spoken Black Girl as holding sacred space and the ability to hold sacred space as a gift. I admit, I had not thought about it like that before, but it’s true. My prayer is that this podcast will be a new sacred space for conversations that will make our lives more vivid and meaningful. Thank you for joining me on this journey.