Standing with women entrepreneurs navigating tough times so their businesses can continue.
In 2020, in the middle of the global pandemic, a doctor looked at me across a sterile room and said the words that split my life into before and after.
Stage 3 cervical cancer. I was 37 years old.
What followed was a kind of brutality I thought I understood from stories I'd heard. I understood nothing.
Chemotherapy that made my veins ache like they were splintering from the inside. Brachytherapy (radioactive rods inserted into my body while I lay perfectly still) strapped down so I couldn’t move, willing it to work. Radiation that burned me from the inside out, leaving scars no one can see but that I feel every single day.
Months of treatment that felt like years. Years of recovery that still haven't ended.
I made a list. 10 names. The ten people I wanted at my funeral, because in 2020, that was as many as we were allowed. I wrote it on my phone at 3am, awake thanks to yet another round of Cisplatine (and Dexamethasone), and saved it in a folder I labeled "When I'm Gone."
Cancer nearly killed me. But surviving it has been easier than watching what's happening to my best friend.
When I was sick, something wonderful, yet not surprising, happened.
Everyone who loved me showed up. Not in person, COVID19 made that impossible, but they rallied in ways that still make me sob silently when I think about it.
Care packages appeared on my doorstep. Text messages flooded my phone. "Thinking of you." "You've got this." "I'm here." Friends organised meal trains and helped to look after my son. My closest friends and my extended family reached out every single day.
But it wasn't just them.
The entire system wrapped around me like a protective cocoon. Doctors who knew my name, actually listened and answered all of my questions. Nurses who held my hand and wiped my tears during the worst procedures.
Psychologists who helped me process the trauma of it all. Pharmacists who explained every medication. Nutritionists who helped me figure out how to eat when food tasted like metal and my body couldn't absorb it anyway.
Massage therapists who worked to restore some sense of normalcy to my ravaged body. Insurers who paid for what I needed, promptly.
Highly qualified strangers dedicated their days – their expertise, their energy, their compassion. To keeping me alive. To keeping me safe. To keeping me well.
I experienced a level of kindness and love I'd never known before.
Even in my darkest moments, I was never alone. Never doubted. Never questioned about whether I was "really" as sick as I said I was.
My life was under threat. And the system responded as though it mattered.
As though I mattered.
Not from disease, but from something just as deadly: domestic violence in the form of coercive control.
If you don't know what coercive control is, let me paint you a picture. It's not always bruises you can photograph for evidence. It's the systematic erosion of a person's autonomy, dignity, and sense of self. It's constant surveillance. Isolation from friends and family. Threats veiled as concern. It's being made to feel cray for noticing what's happening. It's having your reality questioned until you start to question it yourself.
It's insidious. It's devastating. And it's often invisible to everyone on the outside.
My best friend has been living this nightmare for decades. And she has not been afforded the same care I received. The same kindness. The same benefit of the doubt. The same belief that her life matters.
She's been questioned at every turn. Are you sure it's that bad? Why don’t you just get divorced? What did you do to provoke him? It’s your fault for travelling for work, you should be grateful he cooks!
She's been disbelieved by people I thought would always have her back. Relatives who said, "But he seems so nice." Family members who suggested she was overreacting, being too sensitive, selfish for not trying hard enough to make it work.
She's had to hide what's happening just to survive the practicalities of daily life. She couldn't mention it when applying for rental properties, following her escape. Landlords don't want "complicated" tenants and people don’t want to do business with complicated humans. She’s learning to smile and deflect when people ask why she left, because telling the truth makes them uncomfortable, and uncomfortable people disappear.
She's had to plead for support from institutions that exist specifically to help people like her. Each time having to relive her trauma and go into the painful details she wanted to keep hidden. Each time she’s being asked to prove it was "bad enough." Each time she does, it’s more traumatic than the last. I know this because I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve watched her tremble. I’ve watched her fight back tears and her eyes close as her body disassociates from the ugly reality.
People in her family (and mine for that matter) have largely turned away. They don't want the mess. The complexity. The discomfort of choosing sides. The fear they’ll be caught-up in it. The risk that it brings bad things to their lives too.
And it's been painful to watch.
I've watched my brilliant, capable, loving best friend be reduced to asking for help that should have been freely given. I'm watching her try to rebuild her life while still being systematically ignored. I've watched her lose weight, lose sleep, lose the spark in her eyes. Cry each and every day.
And I've thought, again and again: If this were cancer, no one would question her. No one would tell her to try harder to make peace with the tumor. No one would suggest she'd brought this on herself.
The system that saved my life has failed hers. Spectacularly.
Here's what we have in common: we're both small business owners.
We don't have sick leave we can fall back on when life implodes. We don't have HR departments to navigate crises for us or EAP programs that connect us to counseling. When we can't work, we don't get paid. When we're drowning, there's no safety net.
We exist in this impossible middle ground: we earn too much for government assistance but not enough to fund legal battles that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Not enough to take months off to heal. Not enough to hire the help we desperately need.
We're the women who fall through every crack in the system. Too successful for charity. Not successful enough to survive without it.
And that's not fair.
That's not right.
And we're done accepting it.
That's why we created Held+Free.
This community is for women with ABNs who need to keep their businesses running while moving through life's hardest seasons.
The women who are holding it together on the outside while everything is falling apart on the inside.
Women surviving cancer while still showing up for client calls. Women escaping domestic violence while trying to maintain the professional reputation that's keeping them financially afloat. Women who have lost so much already. Women caring for sick children while delivering projects on deadline. Women grieving parents while sending invoices. Women navigating business break-ups that feel as painful as divorces.
The women who are told they're "so strong" when what they really need is to feel supported.
The women who smile and say "I'm fine" because admitting they're not feels like professional suicide.
The women who lie awake at night doing mental math: Can I afford a lawyer? Can I afford therapy? Can I afford to stop working? Can I afford not to?
We see you. Because we are you.