Through to THRIVE Growing Pains

I'm gonna be real with y'all. I was going to write this post about new exciting stuff happening, but the reality is that it's just been hard. It's hard to balance my passion for supporting folks through my clinical work as a therapist (which is also how I make my living) and building all of the online course offerings and bigger vision I have for making good quality support accessible. As I was writing the "what I'm supposed to say" blog post, I just kept getting the icks - like I wasn't being real or honest, which is kind of my brand. So, here's the truth: I deeply love my clinical work and I love doing therapy and I think I'm pretty good at it. And it's also true that I deeply want to build out this other part of my business, but it's a steeeep learning curve (spoiler alert: they teach you nothing about business in therapy school). I have no investors. I have no administrative team or assistants. I have no web designers and social media experts. I'm doing it all alone with the love and support of a very small community of friends and family. 

So here's where we're at: I got drained and tapped. So I decided 2024-2025 was going to be the year I either make the course/community side of Through to THRIVE into something, or I would shift to just focus full time on my clinical work. So my initial post was all, "something exciting coming soon", but there isn't anything exciting coming - I'm just going to actually try to do something with the work I've already done. I've poured a truly epic number of hours into trying to learn how to market and sell my course and build a community of care and support for parents. And it IS new and it IS exciting, but no one but my spouse knows what this is really practically looking like behind the scenes. Folks already connected to us won't notice anything different, even though there is A LOT generating. 

And now I'm coming up to the start line and I'm feeling all the things: excited and terrified mostly (weirdly similar physical sensation #ifykyk). I feel very ambivalent about what this change will mean for me. I feel afraid to fail. And literally as I write this, I'm realizing that this situation - being on the precipice of big change - is reminding me of other times I have been on the precipice of big change. If you aren't picking up what I'm putting down yet, it's reminding me of what it felt like to get close to my due date. Being filled with excitement and a TON of anxiety. Feeling ambivalent about what having kids would mean for my life, my partnership, my energy. I felt afraid to fail. 

And what I tell folks all the time is: breathe, control what you can where you can, and reach out for support. Reach out to your networks. Ask for what you need. The very worst case scenario is that no one will help (unlikely) and you'll be in no worse a position than you are now. So here I am. I'll be asking for help and support to grow and build this community and this side of my business. Because I believe in it and I cannot for the life of me find anything like it. And I want people to have what I didn't have. And I know I can't do it alone. 

So what does helping look like?

• Follow our new or existing social accounts as we post them (or better yet, see if you can find them because if you can't I have a problem!)
• Like and share our posts
• Spread the word about what we're trying to build here - pump our prenatal mental health class!
• Join our affiliate program
• Partner with us! Are you good at something? Want to offer support somehow? Email [email protected] with ideas, pitches or even just words of encouragement. Go to our About page to learn about our vision and mission and if there is something you can do in there to help us get there, reach out! 
• Give me feedback! Did you find something that looks bad or doesn't make sense? Let me know so I can fix it! 
• Think of something or a way to support that I haven't thought of - let me know! There is very little that we love more than being in community with likeminded people and professionals. We need to have each others backs, especially now. 

I guess that's it for now.