Losing Her Changed Everything

Part 1 of the “After the Fire” Series

In August 2024, my best friend died.

She went into the hospital with what she thought was a head cold. A few hours later, she was gone. Pneumonia. The same thing that almost killed me a few years ago. The same thing she helped me survive.

She literally saved my life when I was sick. I couldn’t save hers.

And just like that, everything changed. Not just emotionally, but structurally. That kind of grief doesn’t just break your heart—it breaks your life open. It forces you to reconfigure everything around the absence.

I’ve experienced loss before. My mother died when I was six—cancer, at thirty-two. My grandmother passed when I was in high school. I lost my godmother a few years ago. And now, her.

Each of them played a central role in my survival. Each was part of what I think of as my soul team. So many of my inner circle of women who taught me how to live, how to hold myself together, how to keep going.

Gone now.

Among the pieces that remain: my goddaughter. The daughter of my best friend.

I was always her godparent—this isn’t new. But now the weight of that role feels entirely different. I’m not a parent, and I probably won’t be in the traditional sense, but I take that responsibility seriously. I want to show up for her. Across borders, over time, through every version of both our lives. And showing up requires structure. It requires resources. It requires a life that is strong enough to hold someone else.

I need to build a life that can carry the weight of love.

What changed after she died wasn’t just that I was sad. I’ve known sadness. I’ve lived in it. I’ve worked through it, with it, despite it. What changed was my clarity.

There is no time to waste. Not for me. Not for anyone.

I had already built a life I was proud of. I live abroad. I’ve built a business. I’ve helped organizations grow. I’ve survived and thrived in ways no one predicted for me. But I realized: I was still waiting.

Still waiting to be more visible. Still waiting to get serious about my voice. Still hesitating to fully own the role I’m here to play.

And for what?

I was never going to be ready in the way I thought I needed to be. I was never going to be able to plan this part into perfection. I had to start. I had to show up. I had to stop hiding behind my own brilliance and start building the version of my life that matched what I’m actually here to do.

That’s what these past six months have been. A hard pivot. Not just in business, but in being. A decision to stop operating in the shadows, and to let the light hit me—awkwardly, imperfectly, but fully.

I’ve worked remotely since 2014. I’ve run a business for a decade. I’ve been excellent behind the scenes—building strategy, systems, content, and operations for founders, nonprofits, and startups. I’ve ghostwritten for people whose names you know. I’ve helped clients find clarity in chaos. I’ve been the person people come to when things fall apart.

But I’ve also been invisible.

And that was never the dream.

What I want now is to live in full. To be seen. To lead—not from a pedestal, but from proximity. I want to write. To speak. To teach. To help people build sustainable, remote, intentional lives that work with their brains, their bodies, and their capacity. I want to help people escape systems that are crushing them—not just in theory, but logistically.

I want to help people go remote. Leave the U.S. if they need to. Recover from hustle culture. Build businesses that don’t burn them out. Create homes that actually feel safe. Understand how to live, not just survive.

I want to help them because I’ve done it. I’ve lived it. And I’ve built real, working systems to support that kind of life.

But I haven’t shared that publicly. Not in the way that matters. Not consistently. Not in a way that reflects the power and depth of what I’ve learned.

Because I’ve been scared. Of being perceived. Of being picked apart. Of being seen as “too much” or not enough.

Because I’m a Black woman. A lesbian. Neurodivergent. Chronically ill. And the internet (world?) has not been kind to people like me.

But hiding hasn’t helped either. If anything, it’s cost me time I’ll never get back.

And if this life is really all I get, I’m not spending another year pretending I don’t know who I am.

So I’m making a promise to myself—and to the people I serve:

No more playing small. No more content that doesn’t reflect my voice. No more waiting to be “polished” before I tell the truth.

I am building a body of work that is grounded in grief and joy and survival and strategy. A body of work that reflects not just what I’ve lived through, but what I’ve built out of it.

This blog is where that story begins.

This is the first part of a three-part series I’m calling “After the Fire.”Because that’s what it feels like. Like the flames have taken what they came to take, and now I’m here, standing in the smoke, deciding what kind of life I want to build out of the ashes.

This first part is about the grief. About what changed. About why I’m done waiting.

Next week, I’ll share Part 2: “Six Months in the Mess”—a real, unfiltered look at what I’ve been doing since October to rebuild in public. I’ll talk about what I’ve tried, what worked, what didn’t, what I’m keeping, and what I’m letting go of as I move forward into this next chapter of my life and business.

If you’re new here, welcome. If you’ve been watching me evolve, thank you.

I don’t have a polished brand story. I have a life. And I’m finally ready to live it out loud.

For my Zami. For me. For the ones I’ve lost. And for everyone who’s still here—building anyway.