Sometimes the Bravest Thing You Can Do Is, Pause

It’s the end of the year. Time for wins, highlights, year-in-review posts.

I don’t have those.

What I have is three months of silence. A burnout I didn’t see coming. A break I was terrified to take.

And lessons I’m still learning.

We always hear about founders raising money. Hitting milestones. Celebrating wins. We rarely hear about the breaking points. The mess in between. Usually those stories come later, after everything is fixed and polished.

I want to talk about mine now. While I’m still figuring it out.

2025 has been the hardest year of my life.

I left my “dream” job at Microsoft. Got my visa rejected. I have to move from the USA to India after 10 years. Moved back in parents house after 20 years. I stood up against harassment and fought the brutal legal battle. I started building Darzy.

I thought I could handle it all. I’m ambitious. I’ve survived hard things before.

I didn’t realize I was breaking until I was already broken.

We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.

I didn’t just put in time. I put in everything. I thought that’s what it meant to build something that mattered.

Coming back to my parents’ house after 20 years wasn’t what I expected. I had changed. The place hadn’t. People kept asking what’s next, why would she leave the every Indian’s American dream. I was the gossip of the town with tag of ex-Microsoft & Kellogg. Impossible expectations from everyone, including myself.

I got caught in a race I didn’t understand I was running.

Build fast. Hire fast. Raise money fast. Ship the product yesterday.

VCs looked at my background, Kellogg, Microsoft, and pushed me toward bigger opportunities. Things that would make more money, faster. My mission kept blurring. I built for the US market first, then moved to India and realized these are two completely different worlds.

I rushed everything.

I hired people quickly. Gave them first chances, the way someone once gave me a first chance. Fresh graduates. Students. People who said they could handle startup pressure. Who promised they’d stay till the end.

Right before launch, when the pressure came, everyone left. All at once. Some destroyed the code on their way out. Some wanted to come back later like nothing happened.

Steve Jobs said, “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

I had the intuition. I just didn’t have the courage to listen.

My gut told me things about each person. Who would stay. Who would leave. Who meant what they said. I ignored every warning because I wanted to believe their words more than I trusted my own knowing.

Except one person. My designer. The hire I didn’t expect much from. She stayed. She believed. She’s still here.

Someone once told me in my dating life: “The right people will find you when you stop chasing the wrong ones.” apparently that’s true in every case.

I wasn’t sleeping. Maybe one or two hours a night. I was sick all the time. Crying for no reason. Arguing with my parents. Snapping at friends.

I left everything, my job, the US, 10 years of life, to build something that would bring me joy and help others grow.

But I wasn’t enjoying any of it.

I recognized the pattern. I’d been here before, seven years ago. Divorce. Job changes. Moving. Burnout that became something darker. That time, COVID forced me to stop. Forced me to slow down.

I was too busy. My body knew what my mind refused to accept.

This time, a small accident put me on bed rest. My body made the decision my mind couldn’t.

I needed to take a break.

The guilt was heavy. What will people think? My customers? Is this failure?

The founder guilt whispered a thousand “what ifs” in my ear.

But my friends, especially other founders, gave me permission. They told me to stop. That everything would still be there when I came back.

I paused everything. Cancelled meetings. Sent the scary emails. I was terrified pressing send on each one.

Every single person supported me. Told me to take care of myself first.

Brené Brown writes, “Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.”

My friends did that for me when I couldn’t do it for myself. They gave me the kindness I’d forgotten I deserved.

That gave me permission to breathe.

One night, when I couldn’t sleep due to migraine, I thought, may be I should do Yoga. I signed up what first came in Goa, near the water. I thought I was just going to do some yoga.

I’d never done yoga in my life.

Turned out it was a two-week yoga teacher training.

Yes, I stepped into Ashtanga YTTC without ever doing Yoga before.

Those two weeks taught me what no MBA, MS or anyone ever taught me.

Yoga isn’t just about poses. It’s about being present. Stillness. Breathing. Living now. It’s philosophy that’s thousands of years old but feels more relevant than ever.

I learnt that as per Bhagavad Gita: “You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions.”

I was so focused on the outcome : the product, the funding, the launch, the pressure of results of everyone around me, that I forgot the work itself was supposed to mean something. That I was supposed to mean something while doing it.

One thing i observed there was that, 20 of us there from all over the world. Every person was there because they’d burned out. Toxic work relationships. Exhaustion. Jobs that drained them not from the work, but from the people.

A teacher said something I’ll never forget: “We’re not here because we failed. We’re here because we finally succeeded at listening to ourselves.”

Maybe burnout isn’t failure. Maybe it’s your body succeeding at getting your attention.

That gave me permission to stop living on society’s timeline. To build slowly. To bring the right people in, even if it takes time. To travel the world while building a sustainable fashion company, because fashion and creativity are everywhere, and I want to learn from all of it.

If I want to build Darzy for the long term, for the mission, I need to take care of myself first. I need those principles in me before I can bring them into my product, my team, my company.

To my advisers, partners. To the people I cancelled meetings with. To everyone on the wait list. To everyone who spent time talking with me about Darzy, sharing ideas, trusting the vision.

I’m sorry I went quiet.

We’re rebuilding Darzy, but this time, it won’t be just me taking the burnout and making all the decisions alone. This time, we’re coming out in the public. Bringing our customers in. Bringing everyone who trusted us into the process.

We are slow. We have paused. But we’ll be back stronger.

I would be so happy to talk to you again. To build with you. You’ll get all the updates in the future. But until then, we’re continuing our pause through 2025.

Some of you stayed on the wait list for months. Some of you had one conversation with me and believed in something that didn’t exist yet. That means more than I know how to say.

You didn’t get what I promised. But you’re getting my honesty. I hope that counts for something.

I was scared when I asked my friend: What if I come back and it just feels like I’m starting from scratch?

He said: “You never start from scratch now. You always start from experience.”

I understand that now. Yes, we’re rebuilding Darzy. But not from scratch. From a full year of experience. From my own research. From knowing what matters and what doesn’t. From understanding my intuition. From choosing the right people, not the fast people.

But also..

There are so many stories I haven’t told yet. About moving countries. About being a woman in tech. About building something when you’re not sure what you’re building anymore. About unlearning everything society taught you about what success is supposed to look like.

I’ll be writing more. Sharing more. Being more honest about all of it.

N23 Studio — it’s a small space I’m creating for my journey beyond just Darzy. If you want to learn more about my life, my travels, how I’m figuring this all out, subscribe here. It’s where I’ll be most raw. Most real.

The holidays are here. The year is ending. If you’re exhausted, burned out, running on empty, this is your sign.

It’s okay to pause. Even for the most ambitious among us. Especially for us.

In a world where AI is accelerating everything, where we might work four hours a day soon because machines do the rest, we need to remember how to be human. How to connect. How to live.

I spent months running toward a future I thought I had to create. I forgot I was already here. Already whole. Already enough.

The answers aren’t in the latest tech. They’re in ancient philosophies we’ve forgotten.

Take a pause. Be in nature. Learn stillness. You’re allowed to take a break. You’re allowed to be with yourself.

If this resonates with you, let me know. I’m here. And I’m learning to be here, NOW.

To everyone reading this, it’s holiday time. I encourage you to spend more time with your family. Pause. Put everything aside. The AI. The news. The notifications. The endless scroll.

That break will give you clarity. It will help you come back stronger.

I know because I’m living proof that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stop.

Very happy holidays to everyone.

I’ll see you in 2026.

— Neha