Whales are Big (and other revelations)
The Third Installment of Birthday Articles and Leaving My Teens
By Valkyrie Holmes
A couple days ago, I turned 20 years old.
This is the third time I’ve written a birthday article, with the first being on my 18th birthday on a plane ride over to New York — the first time I was moving out (or as my dad likes to say, just “moving” since I left a ton of my stuff back home). The second time I wrote a birthday article, I was sitting in the garage of my family home reflecting on the year after getting back from a trip to Maine with my boyfriend and spending what I didn’t know would be the last Christmas with my mom. Today, I’m writing this in my newly half-furnished apartment in New York City sitting on a ten-dollar foldable chair from IKEA as I wait for all of our other furniture to get in. From the first time I lived in New York to sitting in my own space for the next year, so much has changed.
There’s a lot to break down and I feel like writing will give me a sense of peace and kickstart my twenties — a lot is weighing on this so let’s get into it.
MANIFEST
I have manifested everything I said I wanted back in 2023. At the end of 2022, I created a vision board with things I wanted to accomplish, a vibe I wanted to embody. I also set written goals and two guiding words for the year: INTREPID and TIMELESS, two words that I wanted to lead me in the right direction and hopefully get me to where I needed to go.
I believe they did.
INTREPID — bold and brave; I wanted to embody a word that urged me to go out and explore. You hear about the intrepid explorers and adventurers and much less about the intrepid businessman or woman. But I think it perfectly embodies what one needs to be to run a startup. You are constantly trying to better understand your company, constantly pivoting and trying new things, consistently learning and talking to people and carving out your own roadmap. It feels so insane to write: I’m running a company. I’m running a company.
But it’s true and it’s absolutely wild.
I’ve become so much more in tune with myself and how I operate. Before 2023, I would have classified myself as a multitasker and you couldn’t tell me otherwise. “I can handle more than a couple things at once and still have time for everything,” I would tell myself. But in reality, I’ve only ever worked my hardest and been my most productive when the sole focus was on one thing — that’s really what I came to terms with this year; I can’t do everything because then nothing will happen or it will happen ever so shoddily. You will think you’re the exception, but you’re not and that’s okay — just make sure the one thing you are doing makes a difference.
I also set this word up to be a challenge for myself in everyday interactions, which I need to start getting back into as I feel like I’m losing some of it. But I started to notice that I could do the big things like speaking in front of an audience and pitching, but struggled in smaller things like saying hi to a friend when I recognize them at the mall or going out of my way to comment on someone’s nails when I like their design. It made me extremely anxious and that really bothered me.
I thought long and hard about it one day, just feeling so dejected and out of balance. So I set it as a goal, that whenever I could, I would speak out or do something that maybe in the past, I would’ve lingered on a little too long. That way, I could slowly chip away at the anxious feeling of personal connection I would get in social settings. And now, I honestly believe I’m a kinder and more appreciative person of those little moments. I take immense joy in finding those things I like about people and letting them know and I’ve had to work on the courage to do so. That’s also largely thanks to my cofounder Amanda and my boyfriend Som, and we’ll get to those two in a minute. Let’s touch on the other word.
TIMELESS —classic, ageless, lasting; this was a purely physical manifestation goal. In the past, I’ve set words that are more mindset-oriented, but this year, I wanted to become the best version of myself not just mentally but physically as well. I’ve had this vision of myself, a timeless version of myself, that I don’t think I was achieving before. Whether it was because I wasn’t truly happy or because I wasn’t taking care of myself, I wasn’t living up to that potential.
This year, I took on 75-Hard with my boyfriend and lost 10 pounds that I’ve been consistently keeping off, I ran three half marathons and can squat my body weight, and I’ve fallen back in love with working out and how I feel when I’m going to the gym. I’ve truly noticed such a change in my energy and mood when I take time off from the gym; I find myself more irritable and stressed and can’t regulate my emotions as easily. And then I remember I haven’t been to the gym in a week and go for two days and feel better. Just goes to show what a powerful release of endorphins it gives me.
I’ve become really interested in this idea of taking control of the system, and it ties really nicely in with this idea of being “timeless”. We live in a patriarchal society that values women more for their looks than their brains. I’m lucky to live in a time where women can be in high positions of power, but we still see all the time how being more conventionally attractive gets you to those places faster. Now, we can say that it’s a sad reality that so much of our worth to the world comes at quite literally “face” value, but we can also rejoice! We understand the inner workings; now let’s take advantage of it; if I look more put-together, people pay more attention to what I say. If I can take control of the system designed to subjugate me, I consider that a win; I’m just lucky I’m in the position to be able to do that. Don’t get mad, get paid.
So I have and I feel so much better in my skin and in my body. It’s been a while since I’ve had eating disorder tendencies and while they do creep up here and there, the immediate next thought of, “We’re not like that anymore” is enough to jog my memory and enjoy life while feeling my best. I’ve learned to control things and I’m not only looking my best, but feeling my best. Woohoo twenties!
EXISTENTIALISM
Do you understand how massive whales are? Like really think about it. I know that’s probably not something you’ve thought about for a while but just picture a whale in your head. Now think about the size of it compared to you. No, you still don’t get it.
Whales are fucking HUGE.
Like MASSIVE.
Like you look at a diagram like this right:
And you think, yeah that’s big but that’s not crazy. Or maybe you think it is crazy but you don’t truly get HOW crazy that is. Like, I don’t quite know how to tell you this but…whales are big.
I went to the Natural History Museum here in NYC on my birthday and they have an aquatic life exhibit with a ginormous life-size whale hanging from the ceiling. And you look at it and you think, huh that thing is big. And then you look at it and you look at it again and you start to realize, “Holy shit, that’s living in the ocean.”
“That thing exists and it’s that big and there are things twice it’s size living here and there are hundreds of thousands of them we can’t even see and there were once things that lived on Earth that were even larger than that and they all existed on this weird rock and we are blessed to live in the divine presence of one of these majestic beings.”
I have a lot of thoughts like this, and a lot of them started off just by looking at The Strip in Vegas. The thought of, “Holy shit, people built this.” “People built this to scam money off of other people and have fun.” “All of this was created by someone and it’s HUMONGOUS.” And then that becomes a thought you have often for a while, looking at buildings and saying, “Man this was built before my grandparents were born, people existed before then.”
And the majority of you have probably had your existentialist phases here and there so me talking about mine probably isn’t going to be particularly insightful, and it also won’t be insightful for the people who haven’t had theirs yet because I feel like it’s only something you can experience for yourself. But I encourage you to look around every once and a while and force yourself into an existentialist frenzy; I find that it truly makes you appreciate what you have and what we’ve created.
Results may vary. Terms and conditions apply.
EXTROVERT
I’ve long known that I derive a lot of my energy from people: talking to people, interacting with people, those little conversations you have while you’re waiting for your Starbucks order to the long into the night conversations you have with friends about the reality of time and space. Those are what give me more motivation to wake up in the morning, and I’m lucky to have friends who want to have those conversations.
But recently, I was having a conversation with my boyfriend and he was talking about how he went to an amusement park with his friends and after taking a call, just walked around for 45 minutes on his own, enjoying his own company. He remarked, “I just really enjoy being alone and with myself,” and my immediate response was to kind of make it a competition and say, “Yeah, I can do that too.” His response:
“Yeah you could, but you wouldn’t like it.”
And I didn’t really get it at first but all of a sudden it became very clear to me that he was absolutely right. I spend a lot of time alone and you have to when you’re trying to create and figure things out, not just with the company but with yourself. My retort to the statement immediately was, “Well I took walks every day for hours at a time just to talk to myself and understand who I was.” But when I think about that, I could only do that because something inside of me was fundamentally broken.
I hadn’t gotten to know me, and now that I do, I can definitively say that I am an extrovert through and through.
I think that helps in a few cases, the first being that I understand where I get my energy from and can better prepare for that. Right now, I’m alone in my apartment and haven’t seen people in a couple days and I’m already getting antsy. I went to the gym less to get a workout in and more just to be in another room with human beings. But that helps me better prepare for the week and plan more hangouts with people after hours or budget more time to hang out with Som.
I’ve known I loved hanging out with people and just talking for hours before, but never have I shifted it in true extrovert sense and said it out loud.
I am an extrovert.
THE UNKNOWN
I thought a lot about what I wanted to say in this article and a lot of it revolves around the unknown. We got into an accelerator program and now I’ve moved to NYC and we’ve raised our preseed round and gotten our first bit of revenue and it’s all so new it’s kind of hard to think about it for too long. If I sit with it too long it starts to feel like the ground is falling out from under me and I’m spiraling into an abyss.
So I choose not to and just keep chugging until moments like these come around, where I can look back and just…breathe.
.
.
.
I am stepping into my twenties without my mom.
I think about the beginning of this year, when she was still smiling and walking around. I can hear her laugh echo through the house, a sound I learned to cherish all too late. You create this future in your head when you’re younger, a future that includes your parents, a future you get to share. And as slowly as it builds in your head, it seems to dissipate even slower as you break down the walls of the castle you built together.
I remember last year writing about my mom having cancer in my birthday article and talking about how I’m actually “extremely optimistic” about the situation, how the cancer hadn’t been moving and how she was doing alright. The cancer was moving, we just couldn’t see it. But the deal I made with my mom still stood, “The minute I stop being optimistic, you can stop being optimistic. And I’m not going to stop.” And so I didn’t, and I traveled and spoke at a few conferences, texting and calling my mom when she went into the ER or had chemo and trying to check in as much as I could. But in my blind optimism, I was failing to see what was right in front of me.
On a trip to SF, my mom and I had a call about an operation she was having done or had just done, and she was telling me about how bad it looked. We were talking and I kept saying, “Mom, it’s okay. It’s okay, it’ll all be alright,” and her response was, “Oh Valkyrie, I’m so sorry.” That will forever echo in my brain as the first moment I witnessed her giving up. It was out of my control, she was hurting too much, too many hospitals, too many sticks and pokes and prods just to find out more and more wrong with her. The doctor even said, “There comes a point where you have to just stop doing tests.” And so they sent her home, home to us. I was going to write out a detailed recollection, but I’m already snot-bubbling sobbing just thinking about it so I’ll spare you.
I’ve had a lot of independent thoughts about this already, and it’s been around nine months since she passed. The first Mother’s Day we had without her, I ordered everyone who meant something to me or my family flowers — my boyfriend’s mom, my sister’s boyfriends mom, other friends and family’s moms. And it didn’t make me feel good, it made me feel awful, because the only pictures and people I wanted to see with the flowers was my own mother. In fact, it might have made me feel resentful, hating the fact that everyone else got their mothers and I no longer had mine, and for what?
This Christmas was also weird. We got a ton of presents and it was my sisters, brother and his girlfriend, and my dad all together, and it felt like the amount of presents we were getting was trying to make up for the fact that we were missing someone. There was a gap, a gap in the noise. Near the end, we all grew silent and we were just opening presents, and we could all feel the tension. Just get this over with already. Say thank you and let’s move on with this day. All the dissonance collapsing in on itself; we created a black hole in our living room.
I look at these pictures of her and just think, “Wow, she is so beautiful.” And there’s so much I have left to learn as a human, as a daughter, that she won’t see. I say this in every post I write about her, but she loved being a mom. She absolutely loved it. And that’s what made her such a great one. I didn’t get to see her get old, but she would have been just as beautiful.
And now I’m moving and the family is finding other things to focus on. My sisters are getting jobs which is crazy cool, my middle sister is going to be the first one of my siblings (number three out of four) to go to college, which she makes sure to remind me of daily. My dad is thinking of taking trips and has friends that come see him often. And if I don’t stop to think about it, it almost feels normal. And that makes me even sadder.
WHEN IT FELT IMPOSSIBLE…
This next section I wanted to dedicate to two of my favorite people: my boyfriend and my cofounder. I really wanted to highlight them this year, not just for helping me through the toughest year of my life, but for being intelligent, kind, and patient people that deserve everything they’ve ever wanted and more.
I met Amanda this year on a wildfires subreddit when I was asking the world for a cofounder. We hopped on a call and as soon as the call ended, I frantically called my boyfriend screaming, “She’s the one!!! I need to get her on the team!!!” I’ll speak from a practical business standpoint and then the rest will be less corporate, but she’s a freaking powerhouse. Technically immaculate, has vision and brass and balances me out in the detail and scale of her craft. She had a personal connection to the wildfire issue, which was a great sign that I knew she cared as much as I did. And with climate change, you really want someone who cares. And last thing I’ll say on this front was that she’s quirky and I love it. I think that word carries some stigma with media taking ahold of it, but she knows how to have fun and bring spice to our work, has impeccable references and makes me laugh, and can articulate her work and now Faura’s to literally any audience because she’s so in tune with them.
And now on to why I love her.
I met Amanda when my mom was on hospice care. She tells me how she can’t believe I was still working even after the fact, but honestly, it was just because a) I love working with her and b) she made it so much easier to feel and be honest and then distract myself with something that made me feel good again. Amanda has her own story I won’t air here, but because of it, she’s been able to really understand what I’m going through and give me time to breathe. She was more helpful than she will ever know.
We went through pivot hell this summer, the buildspace program, fundraising twists and turns, product development, and all of those things and when it felt impossible, Amanda made it possible. And it’s so cool that I get to spend the next year building something that’s going to change the world with my best friend.
Now, on to the man of the hour — the love of my life.
I met Som three months before I knew my mom had cancer and he’s only ever met her when she’s been through a round of chemo. He met my family before we were even sure we loved each other and on that very trip, as we sat by the fireplace, I knew that I loved him. All I can think is that I’m glad she got to meet him.
We’re coming up on the two year mark, and honestly I thought it was serious when we hit the one year mark, but the two-year mark feels even crazier. Two years of our lives, we will have been together. That’s going to be insane. But for now, I want to focus on the last year and eight months.
Som is my second brain. He knows me so well and even teaches me things about myself that I couldn’t even put a finger on (that whole extrovert realization, largely his doing). He’s patient with me when I’m having a rough time and I know that being the person one comes to when they’re grieving is not an easy feat. But he listens and communicates and we never leave any stones unturned, which lately, he’s been better at than I am.
And it’s all because he loves me. We know we’re going to be building together forever, and we’ve known that since we hit our three-month mark. And that’s so so cool. So to my forever person, thank you and I love you. (How’s that for sappy?)
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
And now we come to the end of the article, and I’m going to make this a bit more lively. I’ve wiped by tears, chugged some water, am serenaded by the construction noise outside, and it’s time to close ‘er up.
I’m entering my twenties with some newfound understanding and appreciation for people and myself. I am a resilient young woman who managed to raise a round in tough market conditions, move by myself in New York, get in the best shape of my life, and still have time for friends and family and the love of my life. I’m also entering with a softness I didn’t know I had, a new touch on my feminine side that I’ve learned to cherish and nurture. I don’t need to be like every tech bro in Silicon Valley to be successful, because the women that are successful aren’t like tech bros. They’re like strong women who understand themselves and their space inside and out.
That’s me.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing this article. I put off writing it for some time but I think today was the perfect day to just sit down and force myself to reflect. Three years in a row! That’s a good streak, and it’s awesome to be able to look back at my previous writing and see how I’ve grown. To me, I’ll always be a little baby with little baby writing hands, but hopefully, others can see the progress.
And I wanted to end off by saying that I still talk to my mom. I’ve touched on this in previous pieces before, but I’ve slowly shifted the talking to myself to talking to her, and I think that’s actually really beautiful. The thing that defined me for so long, the avenue I chose to discover who I was and what I believed in, will now be an avenue with which I talk to her. It will be a road I go down every so often to stay connected to her.
I like talking to her, just like I like talking to myself, but before, I was harsh. I was mean to myself and broke down everything I had to rebuild it. Now, I look at it a different way. It forces me to be kinder, to talk slower, to cherish those moments where I feel like I’m melting away. I’m still hard on myself, but nicer to her and it softens me, holds me accountable but gives me room to breathe.
I love it; as an extrovert, sometimes she’s all I have to energize myself and I’d gladly take her over anyone else.
Until next time, maybe next year when I write a medium article for the first time again or maybe it won’t be too far away. But this year has been pure insanity, and I’m glad it’s over. Make way for new light!
