I Thought I Lost Myself to My Startup—Getting Dressed Brought Me Back
One founder spent a year hiding in sweatpants—until a new wardrobe became the first step toward reclaiming herself.
Before I launched my business, I still thought of myself as a “hot mom”—a phrase I used less as a statement of appearance than as a reminder that I was still a person with taste, humor, desire, and a life outside my children. I became a mom in 2016, and now I have two sons, Rye and Lennon, but even in those early years, I held tightly to the parts of myself that existed beyond them. I loved getting dressed for the small, daily rhythms of my life—walking my kids to school, meeting a friend for a drink, heading out for date night. My style was simple but playful, mixing colors and patterns with a tomboy edge. In those clothes, I felt confident, strong, and fully like myself.
In 2023, I launched Welcome Home, a meal delivery service for new parents rooted in the idea that food is medicine—that the postpartum period is one of the most physically and emotionally demanding transitions in a person’s life, and that nourishment should be treated as essential care. The idea came from my own experience: after my first son, I felt terrible because I wasn’t eating well. During my second pregnancy, I became focused on postpartum nutrition because I wanted to feel strong and energized. I was surprised a business offering this kind of support didn’t already exist, so I started building it.
Before: getting dressed as part of daily life—small moments that grounded a sense of self.
For the first year, Welcome Home was my night job, something I worked on after long days at my corporate role. I was ride-or-die for that company and had built a huge part of my identity around it, even if it meant putting my own happiness on the back burner. So when I was unexpectedly let go, it felt like the ground disappeared beneath me. At the exact moment I lost that structure, Welcome Home began to take off. What should have felt like an opportunity instead felt like being thrown into something I wasn’t ready for.
Article continues belowI went full-time on the business in 2024, but instead of feeling empowered, I sank into a depression. My life became very small, very quickly. It was just Welcome Home or my family—nothing else existed. Before this, I had a big, active life. I saw friends constantly, went out to eat—my favorite thing in the world—and felt connected to something beyond my day-to-day responsibilities.
I wasn’t trying to disappear from other people. I was hiding from myself.
My days swung between bursts of energy—emailing potential partners, developing recipes, talking to doulas—and total paralysis. Some days, I couldn’t get off the couch. I would just lie there, terrified that orders wouldn’t come in, that I had made a mistake, that everything would fall apart.
Somewhere in that stretch, I stopped getting dressed.
It wasn’t a decision at first. But soon, I was wearing sweatpants every day. There’s a certain kind of tired you can feel in your clothes, and mine felt heavy, permanent. I wasn’t trying to disappear from other people.
I was hiding from myself.
In the thick of building Welcome Home, when my days were full, my world felt small, and getting dressed was mostly about getting through it.
The uniform of a year when I felt more like I was getting through the day than living in it.
That phase lasted for a year.
The breaking point came on a night when I had plans to meet my friends—my “Clean Plate Club,” a group bonded by our love of food. I stood in my closet and just… couldn’t do it. It was winter, and nothing I tried worked. Everything felt wrong. I looked exhausted, and worse, I didn’t recognize myself.
I sat there and cried. I almost canceled. But I went anyway, because I needed those women.
At dinner, I told them the truth: I didn’t feel like myself anymore. I didn’t even have basics that made me feel good. They didn’t try to fix me. They just listened. Then they said something simple: dressing basic is fine—you just need the right pieces. One of them suggested I try renting clothes, just to experiment again without the pressure of buying a whole new identity.
When that first box arrived, it wasn’t a fix. It was frustrating. My body had changed, and the clothes didn’t fit the way I expected. But it forced me to try—to actually look at myself again. Over the next couple of months, something shifted.
I stopped trying to go back to who I used to be and started learning how to dress the person I was now.
The moment things shifted.
I gravitated toward statement pieces—patterned pants, interesting textures—paired with simple basics. It felt like a version of my old style, but looser, more forgiving. And then there was the dress: a high-neck, seamed midi in a perfect, vibrant red. I wore it to a wedding welcome party in Portugal, and when I looked in the mirror, something clicked.
The color made me pop. The fit honored my body instead of fighting it.
I stopped trying to go back to who I used to be.
Getting out of my sweats didn’t fix everything, but it changed how I moved through the world. I started seeing friends again. I left the house without a reason. I felt less stuck inside the narrow version of my life I had built around work and survival.
It also changed how I showed up as a founder. For a long time, I felt like I was just a woman in sweatpants trying to run a company. Getting dressed didn’t make me more qualified, but it made me feel visible again—and that changed how I carried myself.
Experimenting again, finding pieces that felt like me, and remembering that getting dressed could still be fun.
I still love my sweats. They’re part of my life as a mom and a business owner. But now I know the difference between dressing for comfort and dressing to disappear. I’m not trying to get back to who I was before. I’m dressing for the woman I am now: still healing, still building, and finally willing to be seen.
For a long time, I thought I had lost myself. Now I think I was just waiting for a version of me I recognized to come back. She didn’t. Someone stronger did.
