Chapter 2: The 3:00 AM Negotiator, Selling Peace in a War Zone

In the summer of 2020, I didn’t feel tired. I felt like a god.

I thought I’d discovered a secret cheat code, a physiological “hack” that let me outrun sleep and outmaneuver a global pandemic. I was a passenger in a body that had the pedal floored, doing 110 in a 60. Fuck a ticket. In my mind, I was winning. I was a business owner who didn’t need rest, the mom who could do it all, the woman who had finally cracked the code to infinite productivity.

In a world that rewards “the grind,” nobody was there to pull me out. No one was able to recognize just how much I worked, how little I ate, and even less how much I slept. Everyone just saw a “boss.” Nobody saw that the system was headed for complete failure. I was on a high-speed road to self-destruction.

9:00 PM | The Masking

The door to my son’s room clicks shut. For most moms, this is the decompression, the moment you finally sit on the couch (mine was on its side still, and a sorry sight) and just be. But for me, that click was a starting gun, the green flag. The “Mom-ish” mask came off the second I stepped into my kitchen-turned-factory. The second my hands touched a pot of wax, I checked out. It’s hard to describe the sensation of being physically and creatively present but mentally and sometimes spiritually gone. I didn’t feel the floor under my feet or the dull, throbbing ache in my back. Hunger pains were becoming nonexistent. I lived in a 24/7 out-of-body experience. I was a ghost operating a machine, moving with a precision that didn’t feel human. I was efficient, I was fast, and I was completely numb.

11:00 PM | The Pre-Order Gamble

By 11:00 PM, the Shopify notifications were rhythmic. Cha-ching. Every sound was a hit of dopamine, but it came with a side of pure anxiety. I didn’t qualify for a PPP loan. I didn’t have investors. I had my creativity and my hustle. To grow, I lived on pre-orders. I was selling products before I even had the materials to make them. I was essentially gambling on my own ability to survive. Every dollar that hit my account was a promise I hadn’t kept yet. I’d sit there staring at the numbers, the weight of hundreds of orders pressing against my chest. What if the supplier runs out of wicks? (It happened.) What if the glass jars don’t ship? (This happened too.) What if I disappoint everyone? (I did disappoint a few.) I was birthing a business on a foundation of “what ifs,” and the only way to keep it breathing was to never, EVER stop moving.

1:00 AM | The fWEEDom of Seattle

While I was pouring wax, the world outside my window was screaming. The news was a constant loop of trauma. George Floyd had been senselessly murdered, and it felt like the entire planet was shaking. In Seattle, CHOP (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest) was happening just a few miles away. The media broadcasted it as a war zone, but for those of us close to it, once the tear gas settled, it became one of the most beautiful displays of people actually showing up for one another.

I watched the news out of the corner of my eye as I stirred pitchers of fWEEDom, a scent that will always be ingrained in my soul. I can still smell it: the Hemp and Vetiver, the smoke, the earthy scent that helped calm and ground me. I was pouring fWEEDom into jars while our blood was being poured into the streets. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Sandra Bland. The list of names was a heavy rhythm I couldn’t escape. I felt a crushing sense of uselessness. I’m just pouring candles while people are fighting for their lives, I thought. But then the Negotiator in my head (who I would later identify as my ego) would whisper, maybe your job isn’t to be on the front lines. Maybe your job is to create the peace they can’t find when they finally come home. I used that logic to keep me going and justify that I didn’t need to sleep.

Then, the comment hit my screen. It tasted like hot shit: “You’re only successful because you’re Black. Everyone is only supporting you because it’s a trend.”

I didn’t just read it; I felt it in my gut. I fought back with my credentials, my marketing degree, my growth data, and my sweat. I used them like a shield. But in the quiet hours of the night, those words became my shadow. What if this asshole is right? What if the “trend” fades and I disappear? What about all these pre-orders? That fear fueled a fire that didn’t need any more oxygen. I am competitive by nature, and I live for proving people wrong. I wasn’t just building a brand anymore, I was trying to outrun a world that told me my success had an expiration date. My throat tightens even now as I write this. I didn’t think two chapters in I’d uncover unhealed emotions that still need dealing with. I was fighting to prove my worth to a society that didn’t deserve it. I release that hold now. My worth isn’t a “trend.”

3:00 AM | The Glitch

This is the hour of the Negotiator (Ego). By 3:00 AM, any normal human should be hallucinating from exhaustion, but I was “magical,” remember? I didn’t need food. I didn’t need sleep. I just needed to finish “one more” batch, one more Canva creation for an Instagram post, one more website update. But the glitches were starting to show. My mind moved faster than I could speak. Labels, shipping, captions, and bills, it was a kaleidoscope that never stopped spinning. I’d accidentally touch a hot pitcher or spill wax on my fingers, and I’d just wipe it off. No flinch. No pain. I was a machine.

Some nights I’d stand there staring at the wall, just stirring the wax, way past the two-minute mark, totally blank. My brain was redlining, trying to load a life I wasn’t meant to carry alone. I was so busy creating Peace for everyone else that I had declared a silent war on my own soul.

The Truth in the Fog

Looking back now, after years of healing, therapy, and deep spiritual journeys, I realize the truth was much darker. I wasn’t a superhero. I was in the middle of a massive, months-long manic episode. Because I felt “magical,” I ignored every textbook sign that my mind was redlining. If you’re reading this and you recognize yourself, please listen to me. This is what it looks like when it’s disguised as “hustle.” It’s the decreased need for sleep where you think 3 hours makes you elite instead of deranged. It’s taking on tasks that are borderline impossible because you think you’re invincible. It’s the God Complex where you believe you are the only one who can do it, and you can do it forever.

I gave all of me until there was absolutely nothing left. I didn’t realize I was heading for a cliff.

Recalling these details is a challenge I didn’t expect. My brain tried to protect me by locking away the beginnings of Blk Sunflower. Writing this is a manual override. I’m digging them up because I know someone else is currently standing in their kitchen at 3:00 AM, feeling “magic,” and heading for the same cliff I hit. If you’re in that fire right now, please stop. Take the breath I didn’t know how to take back then.

Next Week | Chapter 3: Creativity vs Perception

Success wasn’t just about the hustle, it was fueled by a level of creativity that felt like a lightning strike I couldn’t turn off. Next week, I’m taking you inside the Creativity vs Perception phase of the high. I’ll share the real stories behind the names you know. What I shared in public vs what the truth was were completely different because I wanted to control the perception people had of me.