HANNAH VASICEK

Dear Friend,

My gosh, life is such a wild journey.

So many stories. So many moments we wish we could relive, and others we would never choose to walk through again. And yet, when I look back, some of the hardest moments of my life have taught me the most.

Life as a young entrepreneur was wild. In my twenties, there was almost no separation between me and my business. My identity was wrapped up in what I could achieve, what I could build and how much I could carry.

And I carried a lot.

I felt responsible for everyone around me. My team. My family. The business. The outcomes.
Until eventually, my body said no.

In 2019, during a personal development workshop, I had a confronting realisation: I was my own enemy. I was creating a life that was harder than it needed to be.
Not long after, I ended up in hospital with sepsis for five days.
Five days where I couldn’t work harder, fix anything or achieve my way out of it. Some days I could barely open my eyes.

My body had forced me to stop.

When I finally came home, I opened a blank journal and wrote words I still come back to today:

The goal is to never get here again. Be present over perfect.

I wish I could tell you I’ve mastered that.

I haven’t.

I’ve skated close to that hole in the years since, but I hope I never reach the bottom again. And perhaps even more than that, I hope my children never believe their worth is measured by how much they can carry or achieve.

Four weeks after leaving hospital, much to my surprise, I conceived my first child.
I remember seeing that positive test and feeling this enormous rush of excitement, followed almost immediately by a sinking feeling in my stomach.

How am I going to make this work?

I’d previously been told I ran my business like a dictatorship. Suddenly I was asking myself whether I could become the leader I wanted to be while becoming the mother I wanted to be too.
So I went searching for women who were doing both.

Back then, they felt surprisingly hard to find. Today, I look around and see this incredible community of women leading businesses, families, teams and movements, while openly acknowledging the beautiful tension that exists between all of those things.
But my journey into motherhood wasn’t straightforward either.

My pregnancy was complicated, and I lived with the uncertainty of whether it would continue until the day she was born. Not only this, but I discovered our daughter would be born with a disability.
Suddenly, I understood worry in an entirely new way.

Would she be accepted?
Would people stare?
Would people ask what I had done wrong?

The hardest part was that quietly, deep down, I was asking myself the same questions.

At the same time, I was racing against a clock to systemise a business I had made far too dependent on me before she arrived.
I wanted control in a season determined to teach me that control was an illusion.

And then she arrived.

And I knew.

This tiny human was going to teach me far more than I could ever teach her.

She taught me that different can be breathtakingly beautiful. That perfection is a terrible goal in life. That the things we fear most sometimes become the things we are most grateful for.
And that your worst day can, somehow, become the beginning of your best.
I think that’s what I’m still learning.

Life will hand us things we wouldn’t choose. There will be seasons we don’t understand while we’re standing in them. There will be challenges that ask more of us than we think we have to give.
But there is so much beauty in becoming.

I’m still learning. Still getting it wrong. Still catching myself trying to control things that were never mine to control.

But I’m learning to embrace the challenges alongside the rewards.
Because perhaps a beautiful life isn’t one where everything goes to plan.
Perhaps it’s one where we allow every unexpected turn to shape us, soften us and teach us what really matters.

Lots of love,

Hannah x