My BFF and I both huge Glennon Doyle fans. In her book Untamed, she writes:

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"A whole family is one in which each member can bring her full self to the table knowing that she will always be both held and free."

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I must have read that passage fifty times during my cancer treatment. It became a kind of mantra. This is what I want for my life. To be safe. To be safe to make mistakes. To be vulnerable. To live large. 

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Because that's exactly what I experienced in my illness. I was held. I was held by the medical system, by my community, by structures that worked. And because I was held, I was free to focus on healing. Free to be vulnerable. Free to fall apart when I needed to. Free to survive.

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My best friend deserves that too. Every woman facing a crisis deserves that, especially business owners. 

That's the heart of what we're building.

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We want women like us to feel held. So they can be free.

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Free of trauma. Free of stigma. Free of the shame that keeps us silent and struggling. Free of abuse. Free of the impossible choice between our businesses and our wellbeing. Free of the isolation that comes from suffering alone. Free to make an impact without fear of the consequences on the home-front. 

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For us, being held means real, practical support. It means education that empowers rather than patronises.

 

It means access to financial resources because trauma costs money, and pretending it doesn't is absurd. It means sharing stories so others can move through their pain faster and with less harm than we did.

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It means low and interest-free loans for legal fees, so leaving an abusive relationship doesn't mean losing everything you've worked so hard to build.

It means funding for extra team members so you can keep your business running while you're in crisis. It means connecting women who are going through it with women who've been through it so you can have real and raw conversations without fear of legal repercussions. 

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It means building the system that should have existed all along.

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That's what Held+Free is here for.

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We're here because the world showed me that when a woman's life is threatened, massive support is possible. And we're here because that same world showed my best friend that some threats are taken seriously, and some aren't.

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We're here to change that.

One woman. One business. One story at a time.