A few days before this weekend's Renegade Craft fair, my back started acting up. A constant, throbbing ache that would not let up no matter how much I stretched or massaged it. I chalked it up to constantly lifting my thirty-pound two-year-old onto the toilet. Potty training is a full contact sport.
Friday, my husband had the day off, so I spent the whole day at the office catching up on work and prepping for the pop-up. Spring break meant kids a home, and I had barely touched my to-do list all week. And doing a pop-up is more physical than people realize. Getting on chairs to pull bags down from shelves. Packing everything up. Dragging display props out of the closet. By the time I got home, my back, which felt like could be trending up, felt terrible again.
I started telling my husband about it and suddenly remembered something. I asked: where is that back pain book?
Let me rewind.
Last spring, I was at Field + Supply while my husband was home with our kids, freshly having pulled a muscle in his back. I felt awful leaving him. During the pop-up, I got talking to a customer and we somehow landed on the topic of back pain. I mentioned my husband and how it had started to become a recurring, almost chronic issue. Without hesitation, the customer said: get the book Healing Back Pain by John Sarno. Trust me. It got rid of my chronic back pain overnight. The root cause was my anger.
Intrigued, I ordered it on one-day delivery and shipped it straight to my husband.
And he has not had back pain since. Honestly, I had not even thought about it until Friday, when I asked where the book was. It hit me that an entire year had passed without it being a problem.
The book was on loan to a friend, but my husband gave me the gist. Back pain, according to Sarno, is often the brain's way of distracting you from emotional issues you have not dealt with. My husband, who is genuinely the best person to talk to when you are struggling, started peppering me with questions to get to the bottom of things.
I'm definitely the type who is all head-y and not always best at navigating my emotions.
So I began to dig... Last year's Renegade was one of the most significant weekends in KAEIU's history. That single pop-up saved me from going under. It raised the bar for what I thought was possible to make in a single weekend, and the confidence I walked away with carried me through markets for months afterward. But since then, Renegade itself has started to feel different for me. I have been showing up with the same inventory, not a whole lot of newness, and a belief that everyone who would come to my booth had already bought a bag. That there was nothing more to offer.
And here I am again, at another junction where I really need this weekend to go well, walking in with that limiting belief sitting heavy on my shoulders. Especially since I had designed a whole lot of new styles earlier this year, but they would not arrive on time.
My husband kept asking: when you get to a dark place, what is the thing you tell yourself to climb out? What is the why behind what you are doing?
And I could not answer him.
Why am I doing this? I knew my why when I started five years ago. But so much has changed since then. I love doing this, I know that. But I think the question deserves a deeper answer than that, and I am not sure I have found it yet. I am going to sit with it and come back to you next week. I need to find my why and digest some uncomfortable truths and limiting beliefs that I have. Because this back pain has got to go!
In the meantime, I will ask you the same thing my husband asked me. Do you know your why? The reason you wake up and do the thing you do every day? If you have any thoughts, or if you have been here yourself, please shoot me an email or hit me on insta. I would love to hear it. Or more like, I need to hear it.
With love,
Maria
Me at Renegade this weekend. The kids made a rare appearance :)