A thriving career. A great love life. Financial security. A toned body. Deep friendships. Nice things. The full package, performed beautifully, hashtagged appropriately.

I argued back then that we needed to redefine “all” on our own terms. That having it all was a moving goalpost designed to exhaust us. I still believe that. But reading my own words almost a decade later, I realize I was writing about something I hadn’t actually lived through yet. I was theorizing. The real lesson was still coming for me.

When the cash cow disappeared overnight

From 2010 to 2020, my event planning company was thriving. It was my cash cow. Corporate events, weddings, big productions. The kind of business where you can see the money coming in months ahead on the calendar.

And then the pandemic happened, and just like that, it was gone.

Every event canceled. Every deposit returned or rolled over indefinitely. I had a team that depended on me, and I had to make decisions in days, not quarters. I didn’t want to fire anyone, so I went all in on my online business, my outsourcing company. Not because I had a grand vision. Because I had a payroll.

That was the moment my old definition of “all” cracked open. Before the pandemic, “all” still looked something like the version I’d been raised to want, even if I had dressed it up in a more empowered language. A successful business you could point to. A lifestyle you could photograph. A version of yourself that performed well in person and online.

After the pandemic, “all” became something quieter. And scarier. 

Can I keep my team employed? Can I sleep through the night? Can I build something that doesn’t depend on me being in a specific city on a specific day? Can I actually live the life this business was supposed to be funding?

The thing nobody tells you about rebuilding

When you’re forced to rebuild, you find out what was actually load-bearing in your life and what was just decoration.

Decoration, for me, was a lot of what I used to think mattered. The networking events I attended out of obligation. The “look how busy I am” energy I performed. The constant low-grade comparison to other women my age and where they were in their careers, their marriages, their motherhood timelines.

Load-bearing, it turned out, was much smaller and much more boring. My health. My energy. The hours of the day when my brain actually works well. The people I want to be available to. The kind of work I can do for ten more years without burning out.

I noticed something the longer I leaned into remote work and was living the Rich and Remote ethos alongside my community. The women who seemed to be genuinely thriving, not just performing thriving, all had one thing in common. They had stopped optimizing for the wrong audience.

Some of them were Filipino women navigating family expectations from afar. Some were digital nomads moving every few months. Some were in their forties, finally building the business they should have started in their twenties. Different lives, same posture. They had quietly opted out of the scoreboard.

What’s on my “all” list now

If you’d asked me in 2017 what “having it all” meant, I would have given you a thoughtful, slightly defiant answer that still secretly included most of the standard checklist. I just wanted to choose the checklist for myself.

Today, the list is different.

My personal happiness and health come first. Not as a wellness slogan. As an operating principle. When I feel better and move better, I perform better. I make sharper decisions. I’m kinder to my team. I take on the right kind of work and decline the wrong kind faster.

This sounds simple. It is simple. But it took losing a business and rebuilding a new one to actually believe it. The shift made a huge difference in my personal happiness and, almost as a side effect, in my income.

The things I added to my “all” since 2017: time freedom, energy management, location independence, work I can do on my own terms, a small circle of people I trust deeply.

The things that fell off: the timeline, the comparison, the need to be visible to be valid, the assumption that more is the answer to anything.

Redefine your “all” before life redefines it for you

Here’s what I’d say to my 2017 self, and to every woman reading this who is quietly exhausted from keeping up:

You don’t need a pandemic to give you permission to rebuild your definition of a good life. You can do it on a regular Tuesday. You can do it the next time you catch yourself scrolling and feeling that familiar pinch of “I should be doing more.”

Ask yourself what’s load-bearing and what’s decoration. Ask who you’re optimizing for. Ask whether the version of “all” you’re chasing is actually yours, or whether you inherited it from a feed, a family, a culture, a season of your life you’ve already grown out of.

Then make your own list. A short one. One you can actually live, not just post about.

The best part of building a rich and remote life isn’t the laptop on the beach or the flexible hours, even though those are nice. It’s that the lifestyle forces you to answer the question for yourself, because nobody else’s template fits. There’s no office to perform in. No corner to climb to. Just you, your work, your health, your people, and the time you have.

That’s the real “all.” And you don’t need anyone’s feed to confirm it.

What’s on your list?

P.S. Check out that 2017 article about “Having It All”. 🙂 #throwba