Not Your (neuro)Typical Female Founder.
Though starting over was not part of the plan, it is a privilege. Of that, I am certain.
When I joined the ranks of Female Founders instead of Lawyer-Moms in 2015, I was the Industry Outsider Executive Director of a successful Beverly Hills PHP/IOP with a reputation for structure, strict adherence to Regulation, and a baseline standard of excellence.
Not long after I married my husband, Mark, Mother’s Day Weekend, I recognized that I’d become uniquely positioned to take direct action to counter a phenomenon I clumsily referred to as “self-institutionalization” in 2014, and was better-termed “the relapse system” by the OC Register’s 2018 Pulitzer-Winning investigative series The Rehab Riviera— so I did.
And in 2015, I hit pause on my writing career to focus the first five years on Life Uncommon/8616 Group’s development, with plans to resume work on my Young Adult Memoir “Most Likely to Self-Destruct” in year six, or 2021, but that didn’t happen.
Unfortunately, my life plans were sidetracked on November 6, 2018, when an assault over an unsigned 8616 OA triggered my out-of-context recognition of danger in a CoManaging Membership that entrusted partners Aplomb LLC, to hold 51% of Life Uncommon on April 17, 2018, just six-months-twenty-seven-days earlier.
I told my husband, Mark, that I was so sorry and even more ashamed, but after I broke the cycle of violence commonly referred to as “invisible” and typically experienced by Women in their personal lives, I somehow found an abusive business partnership, and it was time to go.
My exit began what I can only describe as the battle with abusive male power, control, and dominance that I trained my entire life to survive, and it’s time to build a new life that gives it purpose.
Since The Court Rescinded Life Uncommon’s OA “dated effective January 15, 2018,” for Fraud in the Inducement of Consent, and Awarded 50K damages for the fact, on August 10, 2020, I’ve experienced dependence on a man without economic, psychological, or physical violence for the first time in my life.
Like millions of American Women, I know my enemy well; I just don’t always recognize him right away.
In January 2019, “Slohouse” suddenly became a single-income household, which remains true, though today I’m not well enough to take a job.
I’m still recovering from the vortex of Second Class Citizenship I fell into when impairments caused me to retain Plaintiffs Counsel who believed my Consent entrusting Aplomb, LLC, to hold 51% of Life Uncommon was irrevocable, once obtained, and refused any role but Devil’s Advocate until the end.
I still spent year six of my foray into the female foundersphere writing, but not “Most Likely to Self-Destruct.
Instead, after The Court restored 100% of Life Uncommon’s ashes and liabilities to my personal holding, I began by writing to restore my capacity to organize thought to speech.
Once Time to Appeal expired, I shifted gears to reconciling the dissonance between my lived experience and the record of my first five years in the ranks of Female Founders.
Along the way, I’ve been writing and reorienting my perspective to a reality in which women aren’t just worth Equal Protection; we have a right to it.
I was a Life Uncommon Employee who personally held 100% of shares when its former OA was executed, and I believe further recovery will come by attending to the shameful wreckage of unpaid Employees, vendors, personal debts, and creating good from what showed me new depths of hell.
From here, I intend to give hell good purpose for the workers, patients, and families for whom I designed Life Uncommon, the Team with whom I built it, and the Professional Women harmed in the production of a Truman-Show-style charade that was systematically produced by individual abuses of specific power and access within Life Uncommon’s vendor ecosystem and Employee ranks from 2016-2020, but for which I was targeted before LU opened its doors.
Since getting sober in 2005, I’ve lived by giving purpose to the moments life has brought me to my knees and broken me, and I believe that if I were supposed to be or do any different from here, this would’ve been someone else’s journey.
The way I see it, I’m down one company, a successful career, the opportunity to have a child of our own, and a few million dollars that wouldn’t have been mine anyway.
I’ve got a big mess to clean up and a lot of recovery to do, but the most important thing is raising awareness to the fact that despite its unfamiliar frame, my story’s not unique; most women in my circumstances arrive here by husbands and protected by Lawyers if anyone protects them at all.
Me?
I was the entertainment; a blip on the radar in a perfect storm I call tortnado that roared through my life on the Duty of Lawyers and Life Uncommon Vendors. Some of whose actions during litigation demonstrated their belief I couldn’t obtain this position, while others demonstrated their hopes I wouldn’t have to cherry-picking facts, and making specific disclosures expecting PC would end it, but he never did.
When my exit from an abusive partnership required Counsel, I accidentally retained Plaintiffs Counsel who believed I was asking for it, and mediated my walk-away. PC later backed into a bystander position on lacking healthcare experience when Trial Dates were set and I refused to walk away from Defendant Life Uncommon, then in serious crisis.
It was another nine months until my ordeal was over, but Mark stayed behind me all the way to prove-up, where we stood for the Rights of women, workers, and patients while I faced a reckoning with my own lifelong battle with abusive male power, control, and dominance, and starting over has never made more sense.
“No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.”
— from “The Promises,” Alcoholics Anonymous