Einbeck, January 3rd, 2025
Please be aware the audio and video files contain an expanded version of this as I spoke freely for parts of the recording
There’s an ache in my chest that words barely contain—a weight that has grown unbearable. Today, my colleague told me what I had long feared but hoped might never come: the company, which my partner built in 2001, has no choice but to declare bankruptcy.
This is not just any company—it was her dream, more than mine. After her death at 64, when her family and husband rejected her estate, my colleague, my brother, and I stepped in. We took over the business from the insolvency of her estate, believing we could preserve what she had built and keep her legacy alive.
Since 2001, I had poured everything into the company: most of my inheritance, countless hours—sometimes working 150-hour weeks—just to keep costs down. The bank, in its conservative stance, stopped believing in women entrepreneurs and refused to finance expansion or modernization. I compensated by working harder, renouncing parts of my salary while simultaneously investing my own money into a company I didn’t even have shares in. I did it because I had been socialized to sacrifice for others, and because I didn’t even remember having needs of my own.
Just four months before her death, we took out a €110,000 loan (about $120,000) to secure the company’s future. It felt like a necessary step, but after she passed, the responsibility fell squarely on me. Over the years, the loan has been paid down to about €70,000 (approximately $75,000), but now, as the company collapses, that debt is mine alone to bear.
Looking back now, with everything I’ve endured and learned, I see the painful truth: I had no dreams, no goals, no aspirations of my own. I wasn’t living my life. I was living the un-lived life of my parents, her unlived life, and the expectations of everyone around me. And somehow, I didn’t even realize it. Everything I thought I was building wasn’t truly mine. I worked tirelessly for others, guided by beliefs and values that weren’t my own.
And now, in my efforts to save everyone else, I’ve most likely given the shirt off my back. The money I’ve invested, the home I live in, the car I drive, and even the fragile thread of financial stability I clung to—all of it hangs in the balance.
When healing comes with the likelihood of losing everything—absolutely everything—it’s a reckoning. Most likely, even my home will be gone. It’s the house my parents bought, too big for me alone in more ways than one. It was meant for a family, yet here I am, living in two-thirds of it with Monty, while my brother lives next door in an apartment within the other house our mother owned. And here I am—57 years old—watching my life crumble in ways I’ve probably feared for a long time.
When I stepped down and went on sick leave a year ago, things weren’t rosy then either. Without my constant pushing, functioning, and reinventing—finding tweaks and turns—my colleague simply couldn’t steer the ship onto another course. To be honest, I tried to change course for years, but I was met with so much resistance, so much unwillingness to rethink, to change, to see the cracks in the foundation.
It wasn’t just my colleague or my late partner who resisted the shift. It was also me. My trauma kept me tethered to a loyalty that wasn’t truly mine—a loyalty to everyone else, but never to myself. My exiled self walled off any intuition I might have had, leaving me to work tirelessly, not for myself, but for the beliefs and values of my parents, the ideals of my partner, and the security of “my” employees.
I gave everything I had. And now, it seems, the life I built will take everything else as it collapses.
In the midst of this, my offline life is not just quiet—it’s non-existent. It’s an empty room. There’s no one to turn to, no voices to share this with, no presence to help carry even a sliver of this burden. For a long time, I thought this isolation was inevitable, something I had to endure quietly.
But over the past four months, I’ve found a sanctuary in this community—a space that has offered me solace, understanding, and moral support unlike anything I’ve ever experienced offline. The perspectives and shared humanity here have been a lifeline. This is the only place where I’ve felt truly seen.
So, I’m sharing this now—not because I expect solutions or sympathy, but because I need to put these words somewhere. The weight of my circumstances feels lighter when I write to you, even knowing there’s no magic fix. There’s something profound in saying, “This is my reality,” and trusting that someone out there will read these words and, for a moment, hold them with care.
To anyone reading this, thank you for being here. In the midst of losing everything, I’ve found a kind of belonging I didn’t know I needed. And that, right now, is worth holding on to.
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