👋 Hi my name is Roslyn, I’m a 2x founder and executive coach. I help founders fall in love with building their companies again. Learn about working 1:1 here.

Hi there,

A year ago, I wrote a newsletter about my year of healing from founder burnout — the different phases I went through (like grief, honesty, self-discovery, reconnecting with my body), the different modalities I explored, how I felt at the end.

And the healing work didn’t stop after that (turns out, it never does). My second year of healing has been even more powerful than my first. So today I want to share what it looked like, and what it resulted in.

I’ll be taking next week off so I’ll see you back in your inbox in January. Hope you have a beautiful and nourishing holiday and new year!

Two Years of Healing

I feel like a different person today than I did on the first day of 2025.

The me of December 2025 is exponentially more self-connected, more trusting, and more alive than the version of me who walked into this year. It makes me emotional writing about it — the gratitude I feel for the opportunity to unfold the way I have this past year.

And you better believe it’s changing the way I show up in my business:

• More grounded in my impact

• Less scared of being rejected, judged, or seen

• More trusting that if I remain deeply in integrity with myself and follow my intuition about how I’m meant to serve, aligned opportunities, people, and abundance will flow

• Less feeling like I have something to prove

• More deeply loving and accepting of myself — and, consequently, others

• More able to hold the vision for where I want to go alongside the perfection of where I am now, even if it’s messy

• Less triggered by the day-to-day

• More able to zoom out and see the big picture

Obviously, I don’t feel this way 100% of the time (far from it). But I do inhabit these states more frequently than I ever have before. I’m so deeply grateful to feel this way and to be on this path.

But I didn’t walk into the year feeling this way.

THE TENSION

I walked into 2025 a year and half after burning out from my company, having processed the lesson that my old way of building companies and going about my life wasn’t working:

• Organizing and trying to control my outer world (accomplishment, getting everyone to like me, trying to be perfect in every respect) was NOT resulting in any semblance of inner joy, peace, love or wellbeing (what many of us are actually after deep down).

• Overriding my body’s signals, rhythms, in order to “push through” even when it meant acting out of alignment or integrity.

• Using productivity as a means to prove my value.

• Ignoring my emotions, suppressing them, pretending I was cool, calm and in control when under the surface I was stuffing down resentment, overwhelm, and shame.

• Living and working in a state of chronic nervous system activation (aka the fast track to burnout).

• Ignoring what felt energizing and aligned in favor of how I thought I was supposed to bring value.

• Subsisting on external validation while not truly believing I was good enough or deserving.

After burning out to the point of collapse and having to move on from my company, I knew this didn’t work for me at all anymore.

And yet… even with all the books I’d read and insights I’d gained, I still found myself slipping into old stories and patterns:

• Even though my new business felt deeply aligned, I still needed it to be “successful” to prove I wasn’t a failure after burning out from my own company

• I’d allow myself to rest, but then deep down still felt guilty when I did

• I fell into the healing self-improvement trap: If I just do enough healing, read enough books, work with enough healers, then maybe I’ll finally be healed enough.

• I entered my first year of business with a business plan, borrowed playbooks, and projections that realistically set me up to “underperform”.

• I “needed” potential clients to say yes so my business would hit its numbers.

• I held myself back from aligned opportunities out of fear of rejection, judgment, or failure.

Thankfully, in the early months of getting Within off the ground, I was working with a wonderful coach who helped me identify the stories and patterns underlying these misaligned behaviors.

So much of it traced back to a core belief: that I was not enough. Not worthy. Not lovable as I am.

It wasn’t a conscious thought. I wasn’t walking around saying “I’m not enough.” But it lived quietly in my nervous system, shaping my thoughts and actions from underneath.

I left that coaching container with a clear intention: I need to go deeper. I want to go to the source and heal this.

Here’s what I worked with to do that.

EMDR

My first stop was EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). My coach connected me with a wonderful EMDR therapist. EMDR helps the brain reprocess distressing memories through guided bilateral stimulation (like eye movements or tapping), allowing them to lose their emotional charge and feel resolved rather than re-lived.

After an intake session, we identified a core rejection wound and a foundational memory tied to it. That memory branched into many others — moments throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood where I felt rejected, ashamed, or not good enough.

In sessions, we’d start with the core memory, noticing visuals, emotions, and body sensations. As I followed my therapist’s guided eye movements, my memories naturally shifted from one to another. Over time, patterns emerged. 

Across ~10 sessions, I began to reprocess these memories differently — standing up for myself where I’d once felt powerless, or showing up as a loving adult for a younger version of me who needed reassurance.

I was deeply moved by how powerful this process was. It allowed me to embody new emotional learnings — not just understand them intellectually. And with greater self-acceptance came less attachment to needing to prove myself in the present.

PARTS WORK & ALETHEIA COACHING

Early in the year, I picked up No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz while looking for a way to heal my inner child. Parts work immediately resonated, and I was surprised by how accessible and effective it felt.. And so I became determined to learn how to coach others with Parts work. 

Around that time, a coach I deeply respected recommended Aletheia coaching (the 3rd coach that had mentioned it to me!). When I learned that Parts work was central to the methodology, it felt like a clear yes — so I enrolled in the 10-month training.

From the very first reading and class, it was a full-body yes. The methodology, created by Steve March, weaves together psychology, spirituality, somatics, neuroscience and more in a way that feels incredibly integrated and alive. I don’t know how to fully convey its impact other than to say it changed my life — and I now witness its healing power in my clients too.

The methodology coaches across four levels of presence: Parts (the different subpersonalities we develop when we experience trauma), Process (accessing wisdom stored in the body via body sensations and felt images), Presence & Absence (feeling your innate wholeness and completeness) and Non-Dual presence (a more profound sense of wholeness and completeness). If you’re like WTF does that mean, that’s to compeltey fine. It honestly is not really possible to describe, it more so needs to be experienced (I’m personally at the beginning stages of fully comprehending too!).

Through this work, I came to understand and soften Protector parts (control, perfectionism, people-pleasing, overplanning) and heal the Hurt parts they were protecting (ashamed, rejected, unworthy). I accessed a deeper Presence within myself — a knowing that beneath everything, I am here and I am deeply okay, held.

As these experiences integrated into my outer life, I felt calmer, safer, and less compulsive. It became easier to claim what was in integrity for me, set boundaries, and stay open in situations that once triggered shutdown or reactivity.

DAILY PRACTICES

At one point in the year I got DEAD SERIOUS about my morning routine. I realized that if I started my day feeling anything less than safe, connected and inspired, everything downstream suffered. 

So I devoted myself to developing a toolbox of grounding practices, including:

• Qi Gong or dance

• Breathwork or chanting 

• Journaling 

• Parts Work 

• Meditation 

• To Be Magnetic meditations / workshops

• Reading something inspiring

• Listening to music

It changes day to day. Sometimes it’s 15 minutes, sometimes two hours. What’s made the biggest difference for me has been somatic practices — especially as someone who’s very intellectual and had been disconnected from her body. If you want to learn more about how to build your own daily practice, I wrote about it here.

NERVOUS SYSTEM MAPPING

Another key part of my healing this year has been nervous system mapping. I’ve been working with a nervous system coach to map my nervous system and gently teach it how to return to more parasympathetic patterns. Over time, this has taught my nervous system how to return to homeostasis, and I’ve felt noticeably more calm and grounded as a result.

One practice we worked with this year that’s been especially effective for me is called “decoupling.” In a few instances, I had public speaking opportunities or other events coming up that brought up anxiety in my body. We’d move between imagining an associated memory (for example, a shameful public speaking experience) and noticing the nervous system response, and then return to the mapping path of the day. Over time, this helped decouple the activated nervous system response from the triggering memory. I really believe this, alongside Parts work and EMDR, has played a big role in me feeling significantly more grounded in previously anxiety-inducing situations.

PLANT MEDICINE

Undoubtedly, one experience that really amplified all of the inner work I’d been doing this year was a plant medicine journey. That experience opened up levels of trust in the universe, deep love and acceptance of myself and an ease in my life I had never before felt. I wrote in detail about the experience itself and the significant impact it had on me here.

What I’ll say is this: it felt like the inner work I’d been doing all year and this particular experience were deeply complementary. Much of where I was already heading with my healing felt accelerated by the plant medicine. And at the same time, I don’t think that acceleration would have been possible in the same way without the foundation I’d already built — the intentionality, self-awareness, and integration that came from the other modalities and practices I’d learned to trust.

I share this to reinforce that plant medicine is not a silver bullet and shouldn’t be treated as such. Instead, I see it as a powerful avenue for self-development, best used thoughtfully and in conjunction with other healing work.

RECONNECTING WITH VISION, SERVICE & INTUITION

One of the most interesting things about healing work is that as protective parts begin to soften, purpose and vision start to emerge from somewhere deeper. Not in the way where you sit down for a strategy session and make a plan, but in moments of stillness. For me, it often happened after Parts work, after breathwork, or in quiet space. I’d get small intuitive nudges — about how I wanted to show up, how I could be of service, or what would feel genuinely energizing that day.

As I began to listen to that inner guidance, aligned opportunities started to unfold.

One example: one morning I woke up feeling called to design an invitation for my inaugural female founder group coaching cohort. Logically, it didn’t make much sense. It wasn’t efficient. But creating a visual slide deck helped me feel into the space I wanted to create. Even though I felt nervous and didn’t feel fully ready, I followed my intuition and discovered that I genuinely loved teaching, group coaching, and cultivating community.

That cohort eventually led to at least one new 1:1 client, it gave me the confidence to apply for an aligned post-exit founder facilitation opportunity — which I was offered and am genuinely excited about, and it led me to lean even more into cultivating community for female founders.

Later in the year, as I deepened a relationship with an Aletheia peer, he recommended a book to me. I’d made an intention to read every book recommended to me this year, so one winter morning I picked it up. As I read the first chapter, a longer-term vision for Within began to emerge — a vision beyond supporting founders 1:1, and into how I want to contribute to conscious business building more broadly. It felt like a gift to receive that vision and have something meaningful to align to. 

IN CONCLUSION

Looking back on the year now, I can see that this was a seed-planting year.

There was a part of me that needed this year to be “successful,” as defined by hitting certain metrics I set at the beginning of the year — metrics that would look successful from the outside.

But the work wasn’t in organizing my business to achieve those things.

The work was in healing the parts of me that needed that success, and the hurt parts they were protecting. It was in deeply knowing my inherent worth, regardless of external accomplishment or how my life looks. It was in reconnecting with my gifts and my deeper mission. It was in learning to listen to intuition, and in trusting something bigger than me.

And honestly, I do think next year will bring some of the things that part of me once wanted to see. But it won’t happen through force or control. It will happen through trust. Through alignment. Through being anchored in a different frequency.

This year, I needed to plant the seeds — to heal the parts of me that were suffering, to learn how to coach at the depth I wanted to, to start listening to my heart and my gut in addition to my brain, to let the right people and experiences enter my life, and to read the books that sparked the vision that’s now beginning to take shape.

No matter how next year unfolds, I’m deeply grateful for who I became this year.

If this reflection mirrors anything in your own journey, here are a few questions you might sit with as you head into the new year.

• Where are you still trying to prove your worth — and what would change if you didn’t have to?
  

• What patterns that once helped you succeed may no longer be serving you?
  

• When do you feel most grounded and safe in your body — and how often do you allow that?
  

• How is your sense of purpose shifting as you listen more deeply to yourself?
  

• If this year was about planting seeds, what do you sense you’ve been planting?

WITHIN WALKS

We’re hosting our first Within Walk for female founders of 2026 on January 9th.

This Within Walk is in partnership with AskPetal, an AI Health Agent helping women understand how hormonal rhythms impact daily energy, rest, fitness, nutrition, and mental focus.

So naturally we'll be talking about all things cycle syncing for founders (aka how we can harness the power of our monthly rhythms in how we build our companies).

We’ll be discussing:

•⁠ ⁠When do you feel most energized and clear in your monthly rhythm — and how do you align your work with that (if at all)?

•⁠ ⁠​How does your body tell you it needs rest, and how do you usually respond?

•⁠ ⁠Have you felt physical or emotional consequences from ignoring your body’s natural rhythms and signals?

•⁠ ⁠​What’s one change you could make this month to harness the power of your monthly rhythms?

PS, if it’s freezing, we’ll stay inside the cafe and I’ll lead a discussion around our theme instead of walking outside!

• 1:1 Coaching: Want to go into 2026 with my support? Book a free coaching consultation to learn how we can work together.

• Walk with us: Join for our next Within Walk.

• Let’s be friends: on LinkedIn and Instagram. I share more startup content and what’s going on behind the scenes there.

• Finally, tell me how you liked this newsletter. I read every piece of feedback.

I hope you have a joyful and nourishing holiday season and start to the new year!

With love,
Roslyn 💚