So much has changed since we launched selfmade at the height of the pandemic in 2020.

I’m sure not just for us, but you too.

selfmade was born in New York City.

Today, I’m writing from a beach jungle in Costa Rica’s Blue Zone.

Instead of the ten-person team we once grew to, we’re now a team of four humans.

No more outsourced 3PL handling logistics and fulfillment.

You get my mom and dad, hand-packing every order and dropping it at the post office in North Carolina.

This was once a startup I poured every ounce of myself into with unrelenting urgency.

Worrying (even in my dreams) about everything from product development, to a less-than-five-star review, to whether you, our community, would be happy with what we were building.

Fast-forward six years, and I’m experimenting with something very different: burnout recovery, after ignoring the mental, emotional, and physical signs since 2023.

selfmade was never a corporation.

It was built with friends, community, and a group of angel investors who believed deeply in what we were trying to build.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m an ambitious Leo at heart. This is not where I thought we would be six years later.

I thought selfmade would be bigger: more people, more physical and digital products, more growth, more of all the things “girl boss” founders are taught to chase.

Instead, we’ve had to downsize, rethink what success looks like, and let go of some versions of the company I once imagined.

That was way hard.

Even in this stripped-back stage, our ambition is more resolute than ever: to make emotional wellbeing part of everyday life through evidence-backed, body-based practices that strengthen our relationship with ourselves.

So caring for our emotional wellbeing feels less like a privilege and more like something we can actually access and use.

Today, we’re something much closer to what we’ve always been: a family business with a very big mission.