From Michele: In my life, there’s one thing I’ve realized… some of the strongest individuals come from the hardest past. Some individuals had to fall down more than once to get where they are today. While I bet they look back at their pasts wondering what they could have done better, fact is, oftentimes you have no control over what happens… only your reaction.
I was at the height of my corporate career when I experienced domestic violence for the first time with my long-term boyfriend.
At first, I didn’t even know what it was. I didn’t connect the dots until the morning I let my bathrobe slip off to get into the shower for work and saw the bruises from hours before in the mirror’s reflection.
I finally connected the phrase to the marks – I was in a domestic violence situation.
Statistically, it takes approximately 7 attempts to leave a domestic violence relationship before the person can get out for good. I well exceeded that.
I went from scribbling my will in the back of a notebook and hiding it in my apartment for the police to find if I died, to living in a hotel room in another state and commuting back and forth, to finally, packing everything I owned into the back of my car and driving across multiple state lines to seek help from a domestic violence women’s shelter.
It was humbling but led to a huge epiphany.
In the first few months of living on couches, I realized that if I didn’t survive, I wouldn’t even know what would be written in my obituary. My life was filled with great career accomplishments, but I felt like I hadn’t truly lived outside of that.
It snapped me out of it and into a new reality.
An entrepreneur since the age of 19, I decided to re-brand my old marketing consulting business and take back control of my future. I became a digital nomad, traveling to 10 countries and locations all over the United States in that first year alone. I built a business where I started seeing 4-figure sales months, then days, and epic visibility like 30,000 people reached organically in an hour.
As I began to heal, I started to share my story and passions. I began speaking about finding purpose after pain, hosting international awareness campaigns to increase education on domestic violence, and started teaching others how to start businesses with a deeper goal of changing the world.
I now work with cause and advocacy-based entrepreneurs, often fellow survivors, to help them find their voice, build businesses that create society impact, and change lives with their marketing message.
The biggest thing I learned is that once you change your mindset, anything is possible. No goal is too big, no dream is too unreachable, and no society rule should stop you from believing otherwise.
Jenny
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Instagram: www.instagram.com/resultsinamonth