Kelsey SmithIn the beginning of my entrepreneurship journey, I was constantly looking for resources to build my company. I stumbled upon a marketer with thousands of followers and high-profile interviews with the likes of Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty. He offered free advice on a 2,000-person Zoom call, and I was stoked to be picked for some one-on-one time.
I came in enthusiastically, excited to dive into what I had been doing and where I struggled. After hearing the name of my business, The CanSurvivor, he and his colleague agreed it was a bad name. Then came the interrogation about breast cancer statistics, followed by the mansplaining about how people don’t want to hear about surviving; they want to hear about thriving.
I was mortified. And pissed. After the call, someone even emailed me to imply he was right by sending me the following email. What a slap in the face. And what even is TAB? Yikes.
The Unwritten Rule: Your Trauma Must Be a Performance
That Zoom call was more than just bad advice. It was my formal introduction to an ugly, unwritten rule of our digital age: Your story isn’t valid unless it’s marketable. Your pain isn’t acceptable unless it’s packaged neatly with a triumphant bow and a book deal with Simon & Schuster.
That marketer wasn’t just critiquing a brand name; He was telling me to join the cast of Performative Survivorship: The Musical.
We see this everywhere. The perfect “inspirational” story, the curated highlight reel of overcoming adversity. It’s the real-life version of “performative reading”—People more interested in the aesthetic of being a reader than the messy, wonderful act of reading.
They want the noun—”Survivor,” a badge you wear at a 5K—But they are deeply uncomfortable with the verb—”Surviving,” the ongoing, exhausting, unglamorous work of putting one foot in front of the other. I was trying to talk about the verb, and I was told the audience only had an appetite for the noun. I lost friends over choosing the verb in my own life. There was no way the noun was my path.
It was the beginning of the end for The CanSurvivor. The nail in the coffin was a stage-four patient, of all things. She attempted to take over my podcast in 2019 to promote anti-science quackery when ironically enough, advanced medical science had extended her life by way of a nine-hour spine surgery. She has also taken me to a marketing firm in Detroit that advised me to make my story “sexy.” Her spending on things we didn’t need and weren’t ready for led me to ending our working relationship and friendship. I had to protect the integrity of what I’d built, so I put it all to rest. In addition to receiving the news I had five more years of treatment, that’s what kicked off my “personal winter,” a long period of grief and recalibration that was a long time coming.
A Declaration of Sovereignty
Just when I thought bullying was for the schoolyard, I learned that it transcends into workplaces and relationships. Some people never age out of it, and often, the ones getting the most applause on social media are the masters of the performance. They build their empires on a curated image while leaving a trail of private wreckage. I’ve had the privilege of seeing four of my bullies go “viral,” in fact.
My personal winter was a retreat from all of it. Between my own health problems and feeling like a glutton for punishment, I had to step away from the very community I so badly wanted to seek solace in. It became a time to grieve, not just for the brand, but for the naïve belief that everyone in a support community is there to be supportive. Luckily for me, the real pink sisters stayed by my side.
Winter doesn’t last forever. The ground thaws. Something new begins to grow.
After that extended break, I’ve returned with a realization: As long as I am just me, the folks who are meant to find me and stay by my side will. The pressure to be palatable to the masses isn’t my jam. The need to be a “beacon of light” for everyone is a burden I don’t want to carry.
That is why I created Sey Your Vision.
It’s the difference between looking in the rearview mirror and looking at the road ahead. For a long time, my identity was shaped by the wreckage behind me. Now, my hands are on the wheel, my eyes are on the horizon, and my work is about the beautiful, sovereign act of choosing the destination and having the guts to go there.
For the Deep Listeners
I am not trying to market Sey Your Vision as a Top 40 hit.
In fact, I’d rather it be a deep track—The one you have to listen for, the one that makes you feel like it was recorded just for your palate.
This is a Soulful Sanctuary for the people who are tired of mediocre performances. It’s for the ones who know that life is like a cassette mixtape, messy when tangled, but somehow reveals that every random song was in the perfect order all along. It’s for those of us who want to cut through the static of the world and march to the beat of our own drum.
And it’s in that truth where we finally find our song.
Stay Noble.
