From Silence to Strength

There are parts of my story I hadn't told—not because I was hiding, but because I wasn’t ready.

For over 20 years, I carried something that never felt like it fully belonged to me: a violent moment, in a foreign country, that took something I couldn’t get back. I was sexually assaulted  while traveling in Ecuador. I was young, full of life, and thought I was untouchable. And then—just like that—my power was ripped from me. Not only by what happened, but by what followed: the silence. The self-blame. The pretending I was fine because I didn’t know how to not be.

Healing didn’t come in a straight line. It wasn’t dramatic or Instagram-worthy. It was slow. Messy. It looked like therapy, journaling, yelling in the car, and finally—speaking it out loud for the first time… then the second time… then sharing it in the pages of my book Real Vibes Only without needing to explain or justify it.

The wound didn’t vanish, but it stopped running the show.

And as I was reclaiming that piece of myself, life handed me another storm: a lawsuit. Someone came after me for millions of dollars—my company, my livelihood, everything I had spent years building. It shook me to my core. I’ve built my construction business from the ground up in a male-dominated industry where I’ve had to fight for my place, prove my worth,—and sometimes in heels, because power doesn’t always look like steel-toed boots.  So, being hit with a legal battle that big? It felt personal. It felt like a threat not just to my business, but to the version of me that believed I could rise.

But here’s the truth: I did rise.

Not because I wasn’t scared—I was. But because I’ve learned that resilience doesn’t mean having no fear. It means not letting fear make your decisions. I fought hard, I cried hard, I showed up anyway. I protected my business, my team, my name. And I won.

What I’ve learned through all of it—both the trauma I didn’t choose and the trials I walked through anyway—is this:

There’s no blueprint for being a woman who keeps going. There’s no guidebook for how to carry deep pain and still show up to the meeting, the podcast, the kid's football game, the dream.

But we do it.

We do it in quiet ways and loud ways. We do it even when the voice in our head says we can’t. We do it for the women we were and the women we’re becoming.

And maybe most importantly—we don’t have to do it alone.

I’m still healing. I’m still learning to feel safe in my own skin and my own success. But I’m not hiding anymore. If you’ve been through something hard—assault, betrayal, fear, burnout, loss—just know this: I see you. I am you. And you are not broken. You are becoming.

We all need each other.

-Chelsea H