That Time I Almost Lost Everything...

...what I learned in the shedding season

Jun 30, 2025

Lately, I’ve been feeling something heavy stirring in the air.

Maybe you’ve felt it too. This quiet, collective unraveling.

Comfort has left the building. Around me, friends and family members are losing jobs they once thought they'd retire in. Some are walking away from businesses they built from the ground up. Others are standing at the edge of endings they didn’t choose, squinting to make out what might come next.

There’s something sacred and terrifying about this kind of in-between space, when the old life no longer fits, but the new one hasn’t fully arrived.

And I know that space all too well.

In 2016, I was interviewing Devi Brown for the xoNecole series Living My Dream when she said something that would stay with me for years:

“A snake that cannot shed its skin will perish.”

At the time, I nodded, not realizing just how deeply that truth would show up in my own life. But as the years unfolded, and especially during one of the most uncomfortable transitions I’ve ever walked through, I came to understand exactly what she meant.

If we hold on too tightly to old versions of ourselves: old identities, titles, routines, relationships, or material things, we suffocate our own growth. What once protected us becomes too tight. What once fit no longer allows us to breathe. And if we don’t release it… we risk spiritually withering in a life that no longer aligns.

Shedding is scary. It requires discomfort, surrender, and faith. But it’s also necessary.

Because to become who you're called to be, you have to be willing to let go of who you were.

Me packing up my belongings in 2017 to move to New York and face the unknown

I don’t talk about this story a lot because there’s still a lot of shame I carry around that period of my life.

But in 2017, just two years after I walked away from my famous celebrity gossip blog, I sold and donated almost everything and showed up in NYC with a few suitcases and a little bit of cash left to my name. Cash I received after turning the car that once was a staple on my vision board over to Carmax.

At the time, it had been two years since I launched a new media platform, and though I had taken the leap with purpose and good intentions, the reality of what followed was heavy.

I had poured everything I had, emotionally, spiritually, and financially, into building xoNecole and although it was making it’s mark online, the truth is, the site wasn’t making money yet. It was taking us quite some time to put together a sales team who would go out and secure partnership deals, and we were also having a hard time convincing advertisers that our audience of mostly African-American women actually mattered. Over a series of months, I saw my savings deplete as I covered operational expenses out of pocket: paying writers, hosting fees, marketing… all while trying to keep up appearances and keep the dream afloat. And, I was completely drowning.

Although I loved my brand, I started to resent my brand.

There were nights I would lie awake wondering if I had made a mistake. Wondering if the people who said I was crazy for walking away from a successful blog to start a new brand were right. I thought about the articles that began to surface online “Necole Bitchie: From Boss to Broke.” The gofundme’s that people asked me if they could set up in my name. The humiliation of publicly transitioning while the world was watching.

I also thought about the years I was sacrificing. The years that could have gone to finding my purposemate and building a family. The nice home with the white picket fence. Coming home to smiling, toothless faces and toddler giggles, family dinners and presents under the Christmas tree.

But instead, I chose a life of family-less holidays spent trying to figure out how to scale a media platform, and wondering how I was going to meet the next payroll cycle.

It was lonely. It was exhausting. And for a while, I questioned everything.

Was the dream worth the detour?
Was purpose supposed to feel this painful?

I was living in Arizona at the time, a place I had moved to intentionally for peace and healing after the noise of my former life. And for a while, it delivered just that: long walks, stillness, and the space to feel what I hadn’t made time to feel before.

But God? Whew.
God was like, “You ain’t about to get too comfortable here, sis.”

Not when He had something greater for me. Not when I was still clinging to pieces of the woman He’d already asked me to outgrow.

The truth was: Arizona had been a cocoon. But I wasn’t meant to live there, I was meant to transform there.

And so I made the decision that it was time to make a move. To shed.
To go where the dream could stretch its legs, even if it meant starting from scratch.

Y’all, let me tell you something: That three-week period leading up to the move when I was selling my furniture, and all of the expensive bags, shoes, and clothes I had accumulated during a time when life was grand and money was no issue?

The most humbling experience of my life.

I remember walking through my place, picking through pieces of my former life, tagging things to sell, give away, or let go of. The designer heels I once wore front row at fashion shows? Gone. The custom furniture that once filled a “boss babe” spacious loft meant to impress guests? Had to go.

But the moment that really hit me was driving the SUV that once sat pretty on my vision board straight to Carmax… and watching them write me a small check as I handed over the keys and the car.

I won’t lie to you. That drive felt like a funeral.

Because it wasn’t just about the car, it was about the version of me that car represented. The girl who thought material things meant she had made it. The woman who once measured success by what she drove, what she wore, and who knew her name.

I wasn’t just selling things, I was shedding ego, identity, and a life that no longer served me.

And even though I knew it was necessary, it still hurt.
Growth always does.

So I show up in New York.

I had found a $600 room for rent in Harlem that was just a few square feet bigger than a walk-in closet. No exaggeration. I could stretch my arms out and almost touch both walls.

The apartment was shared with a rotating cast: three roommates at a time, give or take, all of them chasing dreams of their own. Aspiring actors. Cruise ship performers. Models fresh off the Greyhound from somewhere in the Midwest. We all shared one bathroom.

That summer of 2017 was wild.

I had laid off all of the writers for xoNecole by then and we were surviving on recycled evergreen content, trying to make it look fresh while I prayed no one noticed the lights were dimming behind the scenes.

The site looked alive, but I was barely holding on.

My only glimmer of hope was that I was deep in negotiations with a big Hollywood producer. He had taken interest in acquiring xoNecole and adding it to his portfolio of media properties, which included blockbuster films like “Girls Trip” and “Think Like A Man.”

It felt surreal. Like, how am I over here splitting a bathroom with strangers… and also negotiating a potential acquisition with one of the biggest names in Black Hollywood?

That was the duality of my life at the time:
Public progress. Private purgatory.

The thing about it is: No one really knew about this time in my life.
Not even my close friends.

I was too embarrassed. Too proud. Too afraid to admit how hard it had gotten.

During that time, one of my friends also got engaged. I was happy for her and truly meant it.

But later that night, I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the walls of that Harlem apartment, and quietly mourned the life I thought I’d have by now.

It was a reminder of everything I had given up: love, stability, security, for a dream I wasn’t even sure would ever work.

And when you’re in the middle of that kind of sacrifice, with no accolades, no applause, and no proof that it’s going to pay off, it’s hard not to feel like maybe you chose wrong.

Meanwhile, a few months later, our negotiations hit a roadblock and I decided to call everything off. My attorney who knew I was holding on by a thread, riddled with debt with a dwindling bank account said to me in the most serious tone I’d ever heard from him “What are you going to do from here?”

I paused. And then I said: “I don’t know. But what I do know is, this can’t fail.
Young girls are watching. And if it fails, then it would mean the transition wasn’t worth it. My story will be a cautionary tale instead of someone’s survival guide.”

That was my truth. I didn’t need it to be perfect, but I needed it to matter. And I needed it to succeed. Because I wasn’t just building a business. I was trying to build a bridge for every woman like me who had ever left behind the known in search of something deeper, truer, and more aligned. xoNecole was launched to give women a voice and platform to share their personal stories. With little capital, we built something great, and I wanted to ensure that if I was going to hand over my brand to someone else, they would only make it greater.

He said, “What do we need to do to make this comfortable for you,” and I paused for a second while I thought about it and then listed them off one by one. I hung up not knowing what my fate would be, but he called back a few hours later and said, “Congratulations, they agreed to everything, we’ll send over the paperwork for you to sign.”

And I finally exhaled.
The congratulations felt good… but the real win?

The real win was finally being able to take a shower in peace. (I laugh as I write this but damnit life humbled the f*ck out of me in that season OKAY?)

Having my own space again. Walking into a quiet apartment where everything inside belonged to me. And knowing I survived a season that was designed to strip me, but it did not destroy me.

Everyone else just saw the congratulations on the other side:

The press release. The headlines. The “black girl magic” moment.

And don’t get me wrong, it was magical. But the real magic wasn’t in the deal.

The real magic was in the survival. The decision to keep going. The refusal to give up, even when everything in me wanted to tap out. The silent nights in that rented room where I reminded myself that shedding doesn’t mean failure, it means faith.

Because what I now know is this:

Growth won’t always come with a standing ovation. Sometimes it comes in the form of a Craigslist mattress, and a prayer you whisper at 2am. Sometimes it comes in choosing to believe in something before there’s any proof it will ever bloom.

That’s what that season taught me.

It taught me how to let go.
It taught me how to start over.
It taught me how to find peace with not having all the answers.
It taught me how to hold space for a dream even when I had nothing else left in my hands.

And most of all, it taught me that even when you’re shedding, you are still worthy.
Still becoming.

The irony is, I don’t miss any of the things I had to give up during that season.

So if you’re reading this and you’re in your own uncomfortable in-between…
If you’re shedding silently…
If your life doesn’t look like what you imagined right now…

Just know:
You’re not a failure.
You’re in the stretch.
And what feels like falling apart might actually be the sacred unfolding of a new life that is slowly coming together.

And this season, just like mine, won’t break you.
It will build you.

My hope in sharing my truth is that it makes space for yours. That you feel seen. And that you remember your transition isn’t the end of you, it’s the making of you.

Hello Necole

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