My co-founder and I met by God’s divine providence less than a year ago. Since our meeting, it has been a continuous journey requiring us to lean on Him. Since joining Goldenwood’s Dream Forum, the last five months have been a pivotal time of our journey with God and with this dream. We were so grateful to be selected to participate in the Dream Forum right when we were starting to consolidate our findings from over 70 interviews with professional women about the adversities they navigated, aiming to form a strong hypothesis about what they felt was missing. We studied the research on peer support, trauma-informed care, and clinical care for women and reached out to experts in these areas to validate our approach and where it fits into the broader ecosystem of care for women. We tested our approach with women who had been journeying through work trauma and domestic violence.
We turn to Him when we see the evil that exists, when we are both distraught, experiencing 2nd degree trauma hearing the stories of our journeyers.
The Dream Forum funding was really helpful in enabling us to take the initial risks of buying licenses, domains, and tools to build our website, given that we were not yet taking any income nor yet dedicating all of our time to this project. There have been so many ups and downs over these last 6 months where we have needed to lean consistently upon God. We turn to Him when we see the evil that exists, when we are both distraught, experiencing 2nd degree trauma hearing the stories of our journeyers. We are constantly humbled by what we are trying to do and must rely on Him for strength and support, trusting Him to open doors so we might continue taking steps forward.
With the learning we’ve acquired from listening to the people we desire to truly serve, we decided to begin Her Life Ally focusing on work trauma and adversity. We launched our website and recruited our first batch of “peer allies”–senior women in technology who have navigated adversity and are willing to be equipped to support other women. We are now enrolling twenty women in a pilot cohort to further test our hypotheses in preparation for scaling up in 2024. After receiving validation from our initial journeyers and experts alike about our approach, we decided to form a 501(c)(3) non-profit and engaged with law firms to support its formation.
We, like our journeyers, have been trying to discern how and where to ask for help. Our prayer is that God continues to send us Allies, resources, validation, wisdom, and strength for this startup, leading us forward according to His purposes.
C.C. is one of twelve Dream Pod Members in Goldenwood’s 2023 Dream Forum. This reflection is part of Goldenwood’s #InsidetheDreamPod series.
About C.C.’s dream, Her Life Ally: Our dream is to help women overcome traumas and major transitions which knock them out of living in full purpose and flourishing. We dream of creating (i) a new paradigm for allying women that takes into account trauma and healing and (ii) technology to help them unlock community resources and hyper-local expertise.