When Building a Business Pulls You Away from Yourself

Reflections on burnout, rediscovery, and choosing a different way to work

What does it really cost to build something from nothing?

Not in money. Not in hours logged. But in you.

I’ve been sitting with that question lately. A post by Carrie Green, founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association, cracked something open. She wrote about losing herself while building a successful business—how easy it was to become polished and public-facing, while quietly feeling drained and disconnected.

I knew that feeling.

For the last couple of years, I was a community leader, a nonprofit executive, a board member, a wife, and a daughter, trying to fix everyone else's problems. I was deep in mission work, leading teams, trying my best to secure new funding, and showing up hard for the people we served.

But I had stopped hearing myself. Somewhere between meetings, grant deadlines, and expectations, I disappeared. Burnout didn’t show up as collapse. It arrived quietly. As numbness. As a version of me that was always on, always responsible, and rarely at home in her own body.

Reading Carrie’s words brought me right back there.

And now, as I get ready to launch Saint Impact Ventures—my first venture built on my own terms—I’m holding that memory close.

Because here’s what I’ve learned:
Growth isn’t worth it if it hollows you out.
Success isn’t sustainable if it costs you your joy.
And burnout is not the badge we have to earn to be taken seriously.

When Carrie stepped back, she didn’t hustle her way back to clarity. She rested. She journaled. She walked in nature. She let herself play. She stopped performing and started listening again. That’s what brought her back to life.

Photo by Ahmet Kurt on Unsplash

Me? I took midday pilates classes. Logged off in the middle of the day. Let myself be unproductive, on purpose. I talked to people who remembered the me behind the mission.

That slowing down wasn’t a failure. It was healing.
It was the actual path forward.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

So if you’re building something—anything—and you’re feeling off? Maybe a little numb, a little foggy, a little tired of the grind? You’re not broken. You’re just being asked to return to yourself.

You don’t have to break down to justify a break.
You don’t have to lose your spark to remember how to protect it.

Saint Impact Ventures is my answer to all of this. I’m building it for women—especially women of color—who want to lead, create, and grow without losing themselves in the process, who want work that supports life, not the other way around.

So here’s your permission slip.

Step away.
Go pet a puppy (or a kitten or a rabbit).
Go scribble in a notebook.
Go remember who you were before you had something to prove.

That’s where your clarity lives.
That’s where your next idea is waiting.
That’s where you’ll meet yourself again.