Nancy Hua

After Amit proposed to me in January, the marriage visioning process has led me to rejoin the sisterhood of women. How did I leave the sisterhood in the first place? What did it mean to rejoin the sisterhood? Read on…

It all started with me wondering about my wedding gown. After 6+ years of RTR (get 40% off), I’ve long since normalized wearing bizarre outfits in my daily life, so I wanted my wedding gown to be next level “what is she wearing” crazy. I described the look as “futuristic sculptural,” wanted it to be something breathtakingly beautiful and strange that no one had ever seen before while also costing as little as possible, etc. I texted my middle school friends who I barely talk to anymore and learned that they know a LOT about style theory. I inhaled books based on the concepts they alluded to on color theory, bone structure, style essence…

My friend Kat coached and challenged me to talk with my vagina and I channeled a new persona: Nancy Hua Kardashian. Here’s what she had to say to my conscious leadership forum through my vag: 

Elated by my vision, I wrote in a chat group:

i want to have a bridal shower where a pro stylist, makeup artist, and colorist come to analyze us so we can take our learnings into the future. i love experimenting on myself and self diagnosing from articles and youtube but i've never had a pro. i think it'd be fun to learn together so we can compare how to make someone else's look work for us and why it needs adjustment, etc… nancy kardashian's purpose is to inspire and teach people how to be more beautiful than they could've imagined, and she's a real ally to me when i thnk about the purpose of my wedding celebrations. how can i bring learning about love and beauty into my events so all my loved ones can connect and grow together??

I wasn’t sure what to call this event because my experience of the normal sequence of events is that we set a wedding date, I anoint a maid of honor who plans a bachelorette party (and maybe also a bridal shower?), then we fly somewhere and get drunk. I don’t drink, we hadn’t set the wedding date (and due to all the scope creep, we still haven’t set a date. Amit is the one with the big, unique wedding vision— none of the boring parts, so much love and togetherness and fun, totally on brand for our (especially Amit’s) love of delighting people with innovative, new experiences— so while we were forming our wedding vision, I pushed forward with bachelorette weekend planning), choosing a maid of honor stressed me out (and indeed, choosing who to invite to this bachelorette weekend was also stressful and caused women to sob, including of course myself), and submitting to someone else’s plans also stressed me out because I had my own unique vision of what I wanted to do, which was not something I could hand off because, like many of my innovative notions, the idea was still forming as I was conceiving and planning it— you can’t outsource the MVP. 

In deciding who to invite, I felt fear. A middle school friend who had seemed so into the idea didn’t want to come. Why? Did she actually hate me? I was offering this irresistible invitation that I was so sure she’d like but she’s saying she doesn’t have a free weekend for months? What’d I expect— I barely talked with or saw her anymore. Since I’d entered the workforce, all my friends were guys because HFT and startup founding are male dominated— I didn’t have enough female friends. I cried and hated her, and cried and slowly let go of all my blame, and cried and told her how I felt. I cry a lot now that I’m more in touch with my feelings and liberating my feminine energy, etc. 

I had so many women I wanted to invite but didn’t for various reasons that caused sobbing. I was scared to invite women I liked “too much” (ie. more than I think was warranted based on our hang out time, or more than I thought they liked me) because I didn’t want them to think I was a friendless loser. I was scared to invite friends who I thought would say no because I was scared of rejection. I was scared to invite friends who wouldn’t dote on me as much as I wanted.

It’s weird how this was the event that finally made me see how much I’m scared of rejection. I’m not scared of rejection at all in business. Who cares? It’s just business. You pitch a bunch of VC’s/ buyers and the right ones say yes and the right ones say no. But with my friends, rejection hurts. I saw how I do this dance where I make sure I like the person at most as much as they like me, because I don’t want to feel the pain if they reject me. 

This is the video I sent to the women coming to my bachelorette weekend:

I spent hours choosing the vendors and shed many tears. Amit kept crowing, “I love how stressed you are about this!” I think he actually trusted me more in planning our wedding after seeing me plan this weekend, because previously I’d poo-pooed the difficulty in planning the wedding events he wanted and hadn’t empathized with his stress over it. I learned that minimizing/ arguing about someone else’s stress (ie. “Who cares? They’ll figure out how to get there”) might make them more stressed; people need empathy and acceptance first (ie. “You’re right, we do need to think about that”). 

I messaged a friend:

in organizing this wkd, i see how i was getting really serious bc i wanted everyone to have an amazing time and this was ironically making it really un-fun for me

When the weekend finally came, Scarlet surprised me with amazing decorations and custom bags, schedules, and decorations that she designed herself. Everyone was really nice to me and seemed happy. 

In contrast, I was scared it was going to be bad. People flew in for this! My fears of rejection/ abandonment were harder to ignore than usual. Part of me was scared that, even though no one in this group had rejected me yet, if the weekend didn’t go well, then they’d reject me. Part of me was always looking for rejection from people I loved. 

During the ceremony with Diana, a middle school friend brought up my parents and how my mom had left me, and Diana sagely nodded. My themes of abandonment kept coming up again and again. Was it so obvious to everyone? I bet most people would be surprised I felt this much fear when I seem so bold and outgoing. But I’m only fearless when I don’t care about the person yet. Rejection only hurts when I need you, that’s why needing someone is scary. 

Driving to the styling session at Danielle’s boutique with Erin Mathis, Lynn was talking about her daughter realizing that in some ways being a boy was “better.” This is how I felt from age ~15 to ~35. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve gone through the final arc of this supercycle of my heroine’s journey, going from judging, fearing, and denying my feminine side (enshrining my Steve Jobs persona and having contempt for my Snow White) to embracing her unique gifts.

The heroine’s journey is what my movie and other creative projects show. I learned I needed to grow both my masculine and feminine sides to trust myself fully and feel more alive.

I left the sisterhood of women when I entered the work world because the fields I was in were very masculine (I was the only woman in some of my MIT math classes, I was the only woman trader in the office for years, I was the CEO of a mobile SDK B2B SaaS startup and only met 1 other woman founder in any of those categories for years). The universally accepted approach to my work rewarded my Steve Jobs and other male personas, whereas my feminine personas like Snow White were more of a liability, especially because they weren’t mature yet, and I hadn’t known this or made any effort in helping Snow White grow up from a girl to a queen. In contrast, I’d put in a lot of effort in growing up my Steve Jobs, making him more and more formidable, smart, and ruthless. I loved my masculine side for his strength and only saw my feminine side’s weakness, so I pushed her aside. Until wedding planning invited her out, and I was learning about all her gifts. 

I saw how the masculine side longed for and needed my feminine side, but I needed to help her grow up before I could trust her. I saw how I’d never fully trust myself if I never trusted my feminine side, regardless of how strong my masculine side was. No matter how rich and smart and hot I was, or how many martial arts I did, I needed to invest in the side of me that was sensitive, delicate, and loving to live a life that was meaningful to me. My feminine energy had always been there, but I didn’t appreciate her and I ignored her desires (she’s so unproductive and needy). Now I saw how she was a powerful part of me, how impossible and painful it was to deny her, and how she got everything she wanted so easily. My masculine side thinks it needs to grind away and toil and suffer because that’s how he thinks he’s gotten everything we have, but my feminine side sees how the best things we got were effortless, just us being ourselves and trusting the universe. My feminine side charmed and enraptured Amit, my friends, and everyone who’s believed in me, all through unlikely circumstances that my masculine side couldn’t have conceived. 

Anyway, the style session was awesome. I’d never been to Danielle’s boutique before and it was amazing. I loved getting styled and changed my outfit plan for the photo shoot. I finally understood what stylists even do and why women packed so many things. This trip was the first in a 6+ week travel sequence for me that spanned many time and weather zones and my masculine side had packed minimally, but I saw how my feminine side needed variety due to the shapes and colors in my face (assuming I wanted my clothes to draw the viewer’s eyes to my face). Afterwards, Sonali said it was a relief that the style session was good because otherwise I would’ve been upset all weekend. Sonali’s smart. 

We had a makeup class with Soyi Makeup and everyone collectively gasped when Kelly showed how to do eyebrows properly and transformed my face. Apparently everyone had been applying blush wrong, except Lisa who always knows everything. 

Deena found a book Amit wrote at the Airbnb we were staying at and it turned out the host had a fine art tableau vivant photograph featuring Amit in her house! How lucky am I, marrying someone so famous!

Then Anna-Alexia came to do photography. I chose Anna because the women in the group are used to being photographed for Forbes and the NYT and stuff, and we know how to be cute/ hot for instagram, but Anna is another level: her portraits pushed our edges beyond professional/ pretty to: what if we’re works of art? 

The unedited outtakes:

The fine art portrait:

Anyway, this is just the start of my amazing events, some related to our wedding, others mostly not. I’m leveling up as a host and reviews have been effusive. I’m holding more events as Diana’s manifestation ceremony revealed that I want to go out into my community and have a unique opportunity to craft it to my vision. Here’s a hint of what we’re planning for our wedding, from Nancy Hua Kardashian speaking from my V, to my conscious leadership forum:

I was not always a herniated disc. When we were born, I started as a wholesomely plump, perfectly placed, healthy disc. I showed up well in scans and gave nearby nerves a respectful berth. So how did we get here: 3 months of our year disrupted and bedridden?

When we turned 18, Amit started a company, went on trips, started working out. These things hurt— curled in airplanes, bent over devices, hunched at desks— but I was always there to curl, bend, and hunch harder. 

When we turned 19, Amit started a running habit. It’s like Nancy says: being taken for granted is the gift you give the ones you love. Thus was my reward for doing my job perfectly for decades: being taken for granted. Amit barely knew I existed. He often thought of business, Apple products, new technology, but never of me. At 19, he started to run for miles. I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t take it. When it got tough, I gritted my teeth and leaned on everyone around me to suffer through it. I thought about how lots of spines had it way worse (at least Amit didn’t play football), how all the other valiant body parts (the noble brain, the gritty stomach, my old buddy the steady heart) were all counting on me.

After mile 2 of each run, I’d say, “Ahem. Perhaps you should stop? Or get cushier shoes? Or stretch?” But he would speed up, thinking, “I’m tired of being pudgy. If I could have a robot body, I would. But for now I’m stuck with this. No pain, no gain!”

To hear Amit call us pudgy, to hear he’d prefer to discard me for a robot spine— that hurt! Those words hurt more than all the hours of lifting with me versus with our legs. I let out a few tears in the form of stress fractures (that’s how vertebrae cry). But he couldn’t hear me cry. How could I speak so he could hear?

Finally, I threw myself into my neighbors. The nerves and muscles screamed, “Mosh pit time!” The back muscles jumped up and down and spasmed in violent dance at all hours of the night. 

Amit went to the doctor who diagnosed us with a herniated disc. We were bedridden for weeks, then diligently took posture classes, learned the Alexander method. It seemed we’d reached an understanding. Amit was now aware of me. Even if he couldn’t hear me, he was trying to learn how to listen. 

Years passed, then decades. Amit founded new companies, traveled to new countries. When he said, “Sit,” I said, “How many hours?” When he said, “Walk,” I said, “How many miles?” When he said, “Shoulder my luggage,” I said, “How many useless objects can you stuff into how many bags?” I saw that I was an object to him, to be enslaved, maintained, a deficit in the bank account, an obligation on the task list, ideally neither seen nor heard. Our relationship was purely transactional.  

Amit’s friends would compliment him, “You’re so fit. Look at your arms… And you don’t have any fat.” We did have nice arms, but their view struck me as biased. Internals like me, the elegant nerves, the humble gut, etc never got compliments. 

When we were 42, Amit went surfing even though the waves were high. He ignored my niggle of doubt. Nancy had already driven us all the way to the break. We paddled out.

“It’s all up to me,” I groaned as I kept us afloat. But who can win against the ocean? A huge wave pounded against me, and I tumbled in the surf. Battered and bruised, I succumbed to the bashing of the waves. I bowed to the ocean’s power. 

After being struck, scraped, and bruised by the surfboard, we crawled out of the water, and Nancy drove us home. Nancy inspected the skin of our back and said, “When anything weird happens to me at all, like I land weird when bouldering or feel a twinge when fencing, I stop and don’t do anything else that day.” 

Amit did not share this philosophy. Instead, he decided to go on a hike! Up and down the mountain we went. When we were walking home, Nancy was driving home with some guests when she saw us and picked us up. We could barely get into the car, but we stifled our groans of pain so as not to startle our guests. We can’t blame the hike, or the ocean. It was the years of accumulated neglect. I may be a bone fragment, but I was dying of a broken heart.

The next day, we couldn’t get out of bed. But we had to pee. Maybe the urge would miraculously fade… Maybe the pain would ease… Maybe we could wait until after Nancy returned with the muscle relaxers… We waited and waited until finally we got up and lurched to the bathroom. Things were really hurting. One moment we were standing over the toilet, and the next moment, we were on the floor and Nancy was leaning over us. 

One friend who was visiting us was a doctor and took our pulse. “You’re pale and sweaty.” 

Amit wondered, “How can I be pale when I’m brown?”

Nancy explained what she’d witnessed, “I called to you before leaving and you sounded weird, so I barged into the bathroom just in time to see you faint. You fell into my arms and I lowered you to the ground.”

Our friend said, “You should’ve heard Nancy’s chilling screams for help!”

We couldn’t walk, but Amit kept saying, “Don’t call an ambulance.” Nancy called our dad, a retired surgeon. Our dad convinced us, “Go to the hospital.” Amit said, “Let’s ask our neighbor where to go because he works in healthcare.” Our neighbor said, “Go to this ER; it’s good with back issues.” 

Nancy and her friends got us up the stairs and into the car. The doctor friend said, “Maybe you should crawl,” but Amit wouldn’t stoop to this indignity. We slowly thumped up the stairs and heaved ourselves into the car with our arms. 

At the ER, we waited for 6 hours. We finally got an upper back scan and painkillers that didn’t do much, even though they were supposedly the most potent drugs. Nancy got us our favorite snacks, reminded the staff of our existence, and scolded them for bringing over wheelchairs when our main symptom was that we couldn’t sit up without excruciating pain. We finally went home. I don’t know how we got out of the car and down the stairs into the house.

The next day, Amit was worried we couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom again but refused to use a bedpan and forced us to walk to the bathroom again. We didn’t faint this time, but the agony was intense. Every night, we started to cramp despite all the painkillers, heating pads, and ice packs. We’d try to suffer through it as long as possible, kneading our muscles ourselves, fruitlessly, until finally we’d wake Nancy for help. Amit doesn’t like to accept help, but we needed it. Nancy got us supplies and bathed us with hot and cold towels. She nursed us night and day. After hours of back spasms we’d shout, “How are you asleep!” Nancy would wake to massage us, apply heating pads, pull our legs. Amit decided to move to another bedroom so we wouldn’t disturb her as much, but then he convinced her to switch into the other bedroom too. 

We started going to physical therapy and Amit started pushing himself to do the exercises for hours a day. Everyone said to walk but we barely could. Nancy brought us food and every time she walked by us she’d take the opportunity to pull our legs and massage our muscles to help relax and relieve the pressure on our nerves that shot pain down our leg. Amit felt ashamed we couldn’t help with any chores or packing. 

Nancy packed up the house so we could go on our planned next excursion. She was worried about us flying part of the journey alone because we couldn’t walk or carry anything. “You look strong so people won’t know you’re injured without a cane,” so she got us three different foldable canes, one of which Amit deemed acceptable because it was well-designed.

At the airport, we got to board earlier because of the wheelchair. Despite all the physical therapy and Amit’s diligent exercising for a month, we weren’t improving. Amit paid for the lay flat first class seat so that we wouldn’t be in as much pain during the first leg of the flight. At first Nancy also got first class but then couldn’t sit with us because they wouldn’t allow her cat to be in first. She said she’d come visit us during the flight but only came once.

We made a stop in SF to get a full body MRI that Amit’s investor had a deal for. Then it was onto the second leg of the flight. Sitting for hours was agony. We tried taking many walks during the flight and holding ourselves hovering off the seat with our arms, but it was the worst pain we’d had yet. When our parents received us at the airport, they were shocked seeing us wheeled out in such a state. At least we had the cane. 

Our dad called his doctor friends to get us seen right away. Amit marveled, “What would we do without my dad? Without him the MRI would’ve taken an extra 3 months. The ER only did the upper back and not the lower back. Then the SF MRI wasn’t full resolution. All the appointments are backed up for months.”

A month after the accident, we could barely walk or sit. Each morning, we stumbled to the bathroom and collapsed on the ground to meditate, play with the cat, and check our phone. We brushed our teeth on our knees because it hurt to stand.

Amit finally admitted he had to cancel his writing workshop which he’d been waiting to do for years. He couldn’t wait for Nancy to join us and she canceled her plans too.

With our dad calling in favors, we got 2 epidurals over a period of 3 weeks. Each shot did help the pain. We started being able to hobble down the driveway before having to turn back. 

Our original summer plans were canceled, so we were continuing to work on our startup. Every day, we lay on our back for hours, holding our laptop over us in the air. It was hard to take calls or type. 

Nancy said, “You should rearrange your desk setup assuming this is going to be the new normal.’ 

Amit said, “No, I’ll be back in no time!”

“It’s been more than a month so I’d assume it’ll be at least another month.”

Amit’s family rearranged the monitor and desk so that we could lie more comfortably. Amit designed the setup so that he lay under a table on a mattress, and he ordered a platform that swiveled his computer in front of his face for calls.

The pain was improving, but we still couldn’t walk. Worse, Amit started to feel a tingling down our leg and in our foot, even when lying down. “What if I’m like this forever?”

Our dad said, “Now that we’ve done 2 epidurals, the next step we can try is surgery.” It seemed like a safe, minor surgery that would only take an hour. Amit read a paper on it and learned that people in their 50s didn’t get herniated discs anymore because their disc juice dried up by then. 

As we signed up for the surgery, Amit said, “I’m scared I waited too long to get the surgery, that it’s too late.” Luckily, once again our dad was able to call in favors to get us seen in time. All the doctors were Indian and our dad went in to see if he also knew the anesthesiologist. The surgeon made a small incision in our back and used tiny cameras and knives to remove the pieces of me that had come out of the tear. 

Afterwards, we ate cookies, fluffernutter sandwiches, Indian treats, and rested at home. It hurt to lay on our back where the stitches were, but we were walking the same day. Thank goodness for minimally invasive surgery! The hospital scheduled an x-ray but relented when our dad asked why. They also charged us extra bills and then told us not to pay those because they were supposed to bounce back to insurance. Now we know not to be overeager with bill payments. After the fact, Amit also learned that sleeping in the recovery room after surgery cost $12 per minute, but luckily insurance had kicked in by then. 

Amit learned that, to protect me, there were basic exercises he had to avoid from now on. Want to guess what they are? 

They are deadlifts, crunches, and situps, which we often used to do. Nancy was to do all the lifting for the next few months. Gone were the days when we singlehandedly packed up the car for our trips! Amit felt a bit low so Nancy asked, “What’s your positive vision for the future with your back?”

We sent an atheist prayer into the universe, “Dear god, please let Amit have a healthy body, and find exercises like swimming that are good for strengthening his back, and build a relationship with a physical therapy expert that’ll teach him the right things to do so that he can nurture and care for himself and live a long, full life where he adores his spine…”

Although Amit still felt guilt and shame for not being able to lift things and Nancy having to do the lifting and trash removal, he allowed part of himself to enjoy not having to lift things too. 

Amit found a pool. When we got in, he was worried we’d be too slow. We hadn’t been in the water since this all started months ago. We got into the slow lane and found that we were doing ok. We did a few laps. A pool attendant waved us over, “You’re swimming so fast that you have to get into the faster lane.”

Amit smiled. “No, I’m injured so I should go slower.”

Personal news: Amit and I got engaged earlier this year! Amit said the hardest things about proposing to me were 1) keeping it a secret from me, 2) waiting to match the exact time of our anniversary, and 3) finding the ring. 

Amit says that every time we’d talk about what I wanted in a ring, I’d add on more requirements— I wanted it to be a unique, beautiful, comfortable, expensive work of art that represented our love, and so on. Stressed, Amit looked at hundreds of rings. Luckily, when Amit saw it, he knew this ring was the one. His friend went to 3 jewelers in Germany but they didn’t have it, so he imported it to NYC and got a friend to check it out there. This designer is known for making comfortable pieces fitted to how you wear them. Amit had me trying on ring sizers of different thicknesses and materials at different times of day for weeks to make sure it was the perfect fit. 

Amit put in so much work into the proposal and coordinated with a bunch of friends to pull it off and keep it a secret. He used apple watch data to get the time down to the minute that we reached the peak of the hike that we went on for our first date exactly 2 years prior. He reminded me how, on our first date, he wanted to give me a high five and I was like, “No touching, don’t overstep,” but now we’re in love! 

A week prior to the proposal, Amit’s friend hiked to the top and scouted out the location. Amit schemed with friends to perpetuate the lie that it was just a big surf trip. He even pretended to pack his wetsuit to throw me off the scent. Even though I knew a proposal was coming, I didn’t think it was happening on the hike because there were so many people. He had many backup plans in case it rained or if I didn’t want to go to the top. Friends hid in the bushes to record the proposal and took videos and a ton of legit, fancy photos. Other friends made sure no one was around. Friends texted each other throughout the hike to make sure the timing was right. Another friend put together a beautiful basket of our favorite exotic fruits. Afterwards, a private vegan chef cooked us dinner in her house using local ingredients. Amit also surprised me with a visit to an alpaca farm because I love alpacas. Amit had tried to recreate another part of our first date set in a burning man-esque kombucha shop but gave up after many calls trying to revive the defunct shop. I felt so moved and grateful to be with someone so caring, thoughtful, and logistically competent. He’s so great at community and designing a surprising, delightful experience unique to me. He knows me so well. I’m so lucky he wants to be with me. 

During the proposal, I felt how I muted my emotions. I didn’t know how to celebrate this much joy. I’ve never let myself love this much before. I used to think I would die alone. I never wanted to need anyone, not even my parents, but now I let myself need Amit. It feels great.