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I remember standing in my bathroom one morning getting ready. I looked up at the mirror and asked out loud …

"Who the f*** are you?"

Not with anger. Not with hatred. With grief. Because somewhere between being a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother, and a good employee, I had let her disappear.

She was never lost. I want to be clear about that. She was always right there. Watching. Waiting. Quietly beautiful. Quietly strong.

But I had spent so many years being what everyone else needed me to be — the people pleaser, the one who kept it all together, the one who never asked for anything. That I never once stopped to ask her what SHE needed. I never let her speak. I never let her dream. I never let her just… be.

And standing in that bathroom looking at my own reflection I realized the most heartbreaking truth I had ever faced: I didn't lose myself. I never got to find out who I was.

So I did the only thing I knew to do. I walked away from everything. All of it. Because I knew that if I stayed — if I kept choosing everyone else over her — I would spend the rest of my life as a stranger to myself. SHE deserved better than that.

So today I want to say something I should have said to her a long time ago: I am sorry it took me so long to find you. I am sorry I let them stifle you. I am sorry I let them dim you. I am sorry I spent so many years making myself smaller so other people could feel more comfortable.

You were never too much. You were never too soft. You were never too sensitive. You were always exactly, perfectly, beautifully enough.

If you are standing in your own bathroom asking your own reflection the same question I asked mine. This is your sign.

I built Sip, Savor & Nourish for her. For you. For every woman who has been quietly waiting for permission to finally come alive.

If something in these words just made your chest tight — that is not an accident. That is HER. Knocking.

Open the door.

About Krystal

Buckle up. This one has plot twists.

I grew up an only child in a sheltered, Southern Baptist military family. Which is a lot of adjectives for "I was very, very good at doing what I was told." I wanted to be a social worker. I was told I was too soft-hearted for it. So I did what most women of my generation did instead: got married six months after high school and went straight into the working world. Nothing says "independent young woman" like a wedding dress at eighteen.

I spent the next 25 years climbing a marketing and advertising ladder that was built by men, for men, who kept telling me I just needed a degree to move up. My ideas got used. My advancement didn't. For a long time, I believed that was just how it was.

Then my kids grew up, and I had my mirror moment. I didn't blow up my life, I changed it. At 56, an age when most women are picking out grout for their forever kitchen, I quit the job I'd had for 15 years, separated from a 22-year marriage, sold the house we'd lived in for 18 years, and moved into my first apartment, alone, for the first time in my life. I also went back to college with all those eighteen-year-olds, which was honestly really fun, and finally finished my BA.

Out of that, I started a digital marketing agency, Krystal Media Innovations, because it's what I'd always done. It was the obvious next step, not a spark, just muscle memory. I liked my clients. I believed in the work. I just never once jumped out of bed for it. Again, I was doing what I was "supposed" to do.

So I closed it. And I started the thing I couldn't stop thinking about instead: helping women walk through what I walked through, so they don't have to do it alone with a glass of wine and a prayer. My story was never just going to be mine. It's for every woman standing in her own bathroom, looking at that same mirror.

Today I'm a certified transitional coach, the founder of this whole beautiful mess, and a woman who finally lives at the beach she always dreamed about, usually with a camera in hand (another thing I found out about myself while going back to school on this journey: I love photography). Nothing gets me refreshed and at peace quite like sand between my toes. I'm also a firm believer that self care starts with a glass of something good.

Ready to pour yourself first?

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