Holding Pain, Building Purpose: A Journey Toward Healing and Care

In my final year of college, I lost my father. The grief was quiet but all-consuming. There were no dramatic breakdowns, no outward signs that something in my world had shifted irreversibly. Instead, I kept going — to lectures, research sessions, club meetings, student activities — believing that if I just kept moving, I wouldn’t fall apart. I filled every hour with productivity, subconsciously telling myself that momentum was the only thing keeping me together.

But eventually, the emotional backlog caught up with me. Pushing through wasn’t the same as healing. I learned, slowly and with difficulty, that care isn’t just something we offer to others — it’s something we have to learn to extend to ourselves. That realization was not sudden. It came in quiet moments, in the loneliness of my dorm room, in the weight that wouldn’t lift no matter how many things I achieved. It came in the silence after the day's obligations were complete and I was left alone with my sorrow.

Eventually, I went to see a therapist. I also joined a grief support group offered through my college’s counseling center. These spaces became lifelines. In them, I met others who had experienced similar losses — students who were grieving parents, siblings, friends — and I realized I wasn’t alone. We cried together, sat in silence together, sometimes even laughed through our tears. What surprised me most was how healing it felt just to be seen. We didn’t have to explain everything. Our pain spoke a language we all intuitively understood.

Self-care, I learned, is not just a personal act. It’s also relational. It’s about building spaces where healing can happen in community where we can show up not just as achievers or performers, but as whole, hurting, healing people. That experience became a turning point for me, both personally and professionally.

Somewhere in that same period — between holding everything together and beginning to let go — I began conceiving the idea for HealCycle, a women’s menstrual and mental wellness app. At first, it was simply a way to stay afloat, to channel my energy into something meaningful and forward-looking. But the more I worked on it, the more I realized that this wasn’t just a distraction or side project — it was deeply connected to my healing process.

HealCycle began as a response to the needs I saw in myself and in the women around me. I’d long struggled with the emotional and physical toll of hormonal imbalances and premenstrual disorders, especially when it overlapped with grief, stress, and the pressure to perform. I also saw how often women, especially married women and mothers, put their own health last — how often we minimize our pain, delay our rest, and carry on silently.

The more I talked to other women — friends, classmates, and strangers — the more I realized how widespread this pattern was. So many of us were suffering quietly, adjusting our lives around symptoms like PMDD, PCOS, chronic fatigue, and mental health struggles, without ever feeling like we had the language or support to fully address them. We were functioning, but not flourishing.

HealCycle became my way of imagining what care could look like for women like us — for people trying to balance pain with purpose, for those who don’t always have the words to ask for help, but still desperately need support. The platform is built on a simple but radical idea: that women’s health deserves to be taken seriously. That our cycles — hormonal, emotional, energetic — are not inconveniences to be suppressed, but vital rhythms that can guide us toward deeper well-being if we’re willing to listen.

We’ve designed HealCycle to be cycle-aware, shame-free, and accessible — a space where women can track not just periods, but patterns of energy, mood, sleep, and stress. Where they can find resources, stories, and support tailored to the lived realities of menstrual and mental wellness. Where self-care is not a luxury, but a daily, doable practice.

Over time, building HealCycle has helped me heal in ways I didn’t expect. It’s reminded me that care is not a one-time intervention, but a practice. A discipline. An orientation toward ourselves and others that says: you matter. Your needs matter. Your pain is valid, and you don’t have to go through it alone.

I’m still learning how to pause. To rest. To let care in, not just give it. Sometimes that means saying no to new projects or stepping away from my screen. Sometimes it means naming what I feel without trying to fix it right away. It’s not always easy, especially as a young woman founder trying to build a startup in the wellness space. But I try to bring that same mindset of honesty, slowness, and self-compassion to my work with HealCycle.

Ultimately, both my personal and professional journeys have taught me that caring for our bodies and minds shouldn’t be an afterthought. That rest and resilience aren’t opposing forces — they’re deeply intertwined. And that healing, real healing, happens when we come together and hold space for one another.

With this in mind, I want to continue building tools and communities like HealCycle, places where wellness isn’t performative, but real. Where women don’t have to be superhuman to be seen. Where care is not just something we give or receive, but something we cultivate together — one cycle, one breath, one honest conversation at a time.