If you’ve been following along with this series, you know Part 7 left off at the end of 2020, a year that knocked the wind out of all of us in one way or another. I wish I could tell you 2021 was the year things got easier. It wasn’t. There were some really hard times. It was definitely a valley and mountain kind of year. In alot of ways most of life is like that. Right?
Business-wise, 2021 was actually one of our better years. Chris and I were still building the jewelry business together, it was supporting our family, and honestly, the design process was still something I genuinely loved. Or at least I thought I did. I liked what I was making, and loved some of it. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how much my designs and textile choices were dictated by the marketplace we sold on. Every design had to be “approved.” Now I’m designing and curating to LOVE ALL of my pieces.
We had good sales. Some of our pieces even got featured in ad campaigns for the third-party platform we were selling on at the time. Peep those earrings in that ad!
(that platform has its own complicated story I’ll save for a future post, it eventually went through bankruptcy, got sold at auction, and is back in business under someone else now, so I’m leaving it unnamed for the time being, but if your know, you know).
One of my favorite things we did that year had nothing to do with growing the business and everything to do with why I love what I do. I got to design my sister’s wedding jewelry. She was the bride, obviously. I also have three other sisters, and all of us got to work on their pieces for the wedding together too. That’s the kind of thing that reminds me why I started this in the first place.
We also tried something completely different that year. Chris has always loved starting businesses, and in 2021 we started a paddleboard rental business we called Roam Rio. We live near rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, so it made sense on paper, it was a genuinely fun summer. We rented out paddleboards all season, then sold most of them off at the end, figuring we’d order more for next year. Except by then shipping and import costs had gone completely bananas, that was the era global shipping got upended by the pandemic, and we simply couldn’t afford to import the next batch. So Roam Rio fizzled after one summer. Not a failure, exactly. Just a fun idea that ran into terrible timing.
Here’s where I have to be honest with you, because I don’t hide my mental health struggles, and I don’t think I should. In January 2021, I had a miscarriage. At the time we had a two-year-old, a four-year-old, a six-year-old, and an eight-year-old, so life was already full, and grief doesn’t wait for a quiet season to show up. That loss, more than anything else, was the start of what became one of the hardest stretches of my life.
The rest of the year kept piling on. That summer, while we were camping, I got caught in a microburst and a tree nearly fell on me. Not an exaggeration. It was a moment that could have ended very differently. I lost a dear friend to cancer, which hit me especially hard because I’d already lost my own mom to cancer, and grieving her again through someone else’s loss was more triggering than I expected. Then at the end of the year, our whole family got COVID. And I personally experienced some of the wild symptoms.
By December 2021, I was in a doctor’s office. I was eventually diagnosed with anxiety and started medication I stayed on for several years. I’m not ashamed of that. It’s part of what makes me who I am, and I’ve learned that talking about it openly is more likely to help another mom feel less alone than it is to hurt me.
What’s strange, looking back, is how two completely true things existed in the same year. The business was genuinely doing well. And I had, for all intents and purposes, checked out of it by the end of December. I did the bare minimum to keep a little momentum. New designs, some Instagram marketing, because Chris was running it full-time and we had a couple of really dependable employees who kept fulfillment and shipping going without me. That’s the only reason the business survived a year I wasn’t fully present for.
I didn’t know, at the end of 2021, if I’d come back to myself the way I needed to. That’s not a cliffhanger for effect. That’s genuinely where the year left me. What 2022 looked like from there is its own story, and I’ll tell you that one next.
If any part of this feels familiar, that gap between how things look from the outside and what’s actually going on inside, I’d love to hear from you. Come say hi on Instagram @stephriosblog. And if you’re curious about the pieces I make, you can find Iviana & Co. here.
