Ease: The Word I Wrote for Everyone but Myself

A few months ago, I started something of my own.

Not because I stopped loving work. I love it — the kind I choose, anyway. I just wanted to give myself one honest shot at something, at a point in my life where it felt like now or never.

Three months in now. And if I'm being honest? It's been quiet. Quieter than I let myself imagine. Some days I open the numbers and there's almost nothing there, and the quiet gets loud, and the questions start.

Should I have started at all. Maybe I'm doing the whole thing wrong. Maybe I just want it too badly, too fast.

That last one stung the most.

Because here's what I actually wanted — for the words to reach her. Whoever she is. For more women to catch sight of their own light and just... hold it. That was the whole point. And somewhere in the middle of building and posting and refreshing, I lost it. I started proving instead. Proving it was working. Proving I wasn't a fool for trying. Proving it to no one but myself, over and over.

Everyone says you have to pay to be seen now. No ad spend, no audience. Maybe a brand without it is just talking to itself.

Maybe that's true. But that voice — it wasn't mine. It was the world's. This made-up rush that says if it's not working now, it never will. I never agreed to that pace. I just got swept into it.

And then one of my own words stopped me. Of all things.

Ease.

I was making something for that word — for this letter, actually — and I looked back at these three months and it hit me: I've done a lot. I built the idea from nothing. I built the whole thing, my way, into something I'm quietly proud of. Three months isn't a failure. It's a foundation. I wasn't wasting time. I never was.

I just hadn't learned the word I'd already written down for everyone else.

I can move at my own pace. Do the things I should, the things I want, without the sprint. What's coming will come. And honestly, the whole way here, I've gathered more than I've lost.

You don't have to earn your rest. It was already yours.

— Written by the woman behind HERRITE, on a quiet night that needed writing.