A Not-so-Warm Welcome to Vulnerability
Hey there! I’m Mette. I’m sort of scared to meet you.
My carefully written, thoughtfully reviewed biography would let you know that I am the founder and CEO of Mymee, a digital care program helping to eliminate autoimmune symptoms by identifying triggers through the use of personalized health coaching and individual data analytics.
And while that’s easy to put forward, it’s what’s behind the glossy, professional description — what’s in my unwritten biography — that has kept me from fully stepping into full view as the leader and face of Mymee.
For many years, my identity could have been summarized as a very, very sick person — wholly focused on being anything but. I wanted to leave this version of myself behind, but I recently realized that I haven’t. Not really.
Today, I am a serial entrepreneur giving life to new, meaningful companies. I seamlessly shift from conference calls with investors to pilates to celebrations with friends and family. I am well. I feel good.
This description is far from that of the woman whose body I inhabited for years, who navigated the world through bouts of blindness, limbs without feeling, and multiple autoimmune diagnoses. Still, that body, and that person, got me here.
As a formerly chronically ill person, there is something that I cannot seem to shake: a fierce — and fearful — clinging to self-preservation as a mode of existence. And I recognize now that this underlying chain of self-preservation has led me to avoid vulnerability.
Being so sick for so long has forever impacted how I navigate the world. In my conversations with others struggling through symptoms for years, I know that I am not alone in feeling this way. My thought processes operated on separate tracks. For every task at hand, there was a track for the task itself, and a track for how I must compensate for what I cannot do.
Compensation for physical shortcomings is a means of survival and a means of fitting in. It’s developing ways to fool your friends, your family, and especially your workplace into thinking that you are fine when you are so desperately not.
As a stark example, in my twenties, I excitedly took on a job in a beautiful building — only to find out that the showroom I was to work in was atop a massive staircase that I could not climb. My mental track assigned to compensation took over: I returned alone, on the weekend, to devise a plan to break the ascent into three parts so that it would be possible while appearing “normal.”
In addition to the regular focus on everything that a new career step encapsulates — making a positive first impression, learning the ropes, and more — so much unseen energy was put into doing it all well despite illness and limitations.
With friends and family, survival looked more like extremely delayed (or unanswered) RSVPs, avoiding events, or showing up at the last minute. By being noncommittal, I thought I was being considerate. In reality, by never explaining that my ability to be present reflected my unpredictable physical state, I might have accidentally become the flaky friend.
After twenty years of fighting for solutions to my symptoms, I had been left heavily medicated, foggy-brained, fatigued, and an owner of too many disease labels. Self-preservation needed to mean something different than maintaining appearances. It needed to include fighting for myself on my own terms.
Following my last emergency trip to the hospital, I filled pages of a notebook, and then a spreadsheet, logging symptoms, meals, sleep — everything I could track. Patterns began to emerge from analyzing what had become thorough data points. From there, my path to wellness began. By understanding my triggers, I have been symptom and medication-free for ten years.
In hacking my own health, a tool to help others struggling through autoimmunity was born. An economist by trade, I turned into a diagnostician and continued to embrace the data. Mymee, now with clinically proven success, has empowered not just me but countless others. It can be seen in the numbers and in the personal stories of those now symptom-free.
I am proud of the moments that our members experience, thanks to our program. Whether their success is as seemingly simple as opening a bottle of water on their own again, or running in a 5K, or being on time (and confident!) with their RSVPs — these stories make me glow.
I am proud of Mymee.
So why, then, have I avoided fully stepping up as the recognized representative on behalf of my company? The answer was not readily apparent to me. I feel healthy, and that healthiness is an accomplishment. But still, when approached by my (very savvy) team with ideas to develop my presence on social media and other channels, I delayed — and then delayed some more.
Through some difficult conversations and uncomfortable self-assessment, I see now: the sick version of Mette is still hanging around in the form of adamant self-preservation.
To take the spotlight as a leader is to accept vulnerability, and vulnerability does not come naturally to anyone who has spent decades in survival mode.
Being fully in touch with Mymee and the needs of its members requires revisiting a place mentally that I avoid. Mymee has become a powerful, helpful community for so many, but it evolved out of my personal desperation amid illness and a deep need to feel better and to live better. True representation of the company, then, is to very outwardly own this trauma.
Even writing this is difficult, and it just barely scratches the surface of confronting the sick version of myself. But, it’s time. Time to break the chain to self-preservation and time to feel a bit unsafe — and hopefully, liberated. After all, I built upon those spreadsheets and my personal data to create Mymee for a reason: to help the many others suffering and looking for answers like I once was. And I still very much want to help.
So, hi. I’m Mette. I’m still sort of scared to meet you. But I think I’ll be okay.
