When the Business You Love Breaks You

No one tells you what it really takes to follow your dreams. Or what you’ll be forced to leave behind along the way.

Dandy has cost me everything. Every ounce of energy. Every plan I’d made. Every material possession I had. Everything I’d worked so hard for. My savings. My sense of safety. My sense of self.

It was an ego death in every sense of the word. Anything I’d clung to that no longer served me - gone. And in the process, I became unrecognisable to even myself.

But I didn’t stop. I didn’t ask for help - because that didn’t come naturally to me. I pushed through, convinced I could fix it all if I just worked harder. I covered up the pain. I kept going. Burned out. Kept going again. A pattern I’d repeated all my life.

And eventually, I let people down - something that, as a chronic people-pleaser, felt unbearable. Some were kind. Others weren’t. And I internalised every bit of it. I carried shame that was never mine to carry.

When I couldn’t keep going anymore, I left London. I moved back in with family. I went quiet. I didn’t know how to talk about what had happened - how to explain the slow heartbreak of watching the thing you’d poured your whole self into begin to unravel.

It’s the kind of grief no one prepares you for. And yet, somehow, I kept breathing through it.

The Myth of Failure

Entrepreneurship is often romanticised. But the truth is brutal. Especially when you’re building something from scratch - with no blueprint, no safety net, just gut instinct and belief.

I’ve been on a rollercoaster for three years. The highs have been euphoric. The lows have been shattering. I once read that if you don’t want to quit at least five times a day, you’re not working hard enough. That resonated more than I care to admit.

But even in my darkest moments - even when I felt completely broken - Dandy never really left me. She lingered. Quietly. She waited for me to come back to myself.

And eventually, I did.