I Was Featured in Forbes. I Thought I’d Be Happier.

I thought I knew exactly how I’d feel seeing my name in Forbes.

Excited. Proud. Grateful. One of those moments where you stop and think, wow, this is actually happening.

And I did.

Just not in the way I expected.

I was happy. I was grateful. But I wasn’t as happy as I thought this would make me.

Even writing that makes me feel guilty, because I know what this means. I know how hard I’ve worked building my brand, and I’m still working hard at it. There have been so many days of figuring things out as I go, getting something wrong, starting over, wondering if anyone outside of my own little world is even noticing.

And then there I was, reading the article.

My name was there. Set Forth NY, my brand, was there. And that’s what gets me. With so many bigger, more established brands the editor could have turned to, some of the insights she chose to include were mine.

It’s Forbes.

Wow.

Yeah, wow.

People who read the Forbes article will see my name. They’ll see Set Forth NY, and some of them will be seeing this small brand for the first time.

That should feel exciting.

Or maybe I hope to feel excited about it.

Because deep down, the person I wanted to see it most was my mom, and she’s no longer here.

And that makes all of this complicated in a way I don’t really know how to explain without sounding ungrateful. I’m not ungrateful. That’s the strange part. I can be completely grateful for something and still feel something missing from it.

If she were still here, none of this would exist.

Not Set Forth NY. Not the features. Not me sitting here writing this.

The irony isn’t lost on me.

Before any of this, she was just my mom.

Actually, I take the “just” back.

She was my mom, the best kind of mom anyone could ask for, and I say that proudly.

I know everyone loves their mom in their own way, but mine really was something else. Sometimes I wish everyone could have had a mom like her.

She went through hardships growing up, some of them caused by the very people who were supposed to make life easier for her. And yet she never became bitter because of it. She never wanted her children, or anyone around her, to go through what she had gone through.

She wasn’t perfect. No one is. But I feel incredibly lucky that I got to be one of her children.

And as I sit here thinking about her and writing this, I realize something I didn’t expect.

I feel more joy writing about my mom than I did reading the Forbes article.

And maybe that’s what I miss most. Not only having my mom here for the big things, but having her for everything in between. I miss her voice, her laugh, even how loud she was. She had this naturally loud voice that could make you think she was mad when she wasn’t at all. That was simply how she spoke, and now even that is something I wish I could hear again.

I miss seeing her happy, but I also miss seeing her sad, which probably sounds strange. I don’t mean that I ever wanted her to be sad. It was just that when something hurt her, especially when she saw other people struggling, I could see how deeply she cared. Someone not having enough for their basic needs could genuinely upset her, even if that person had nothing to do with her. She carried other people’s hardship with her in a way I don’t see very often.

And she didn’t stop at feeling bad for someone. If she could help, she would. That’s what I remember most about her care. It was genuine enough to become action, and she never seemed to need anything back for it.

I think that’s why I still find myself looking for a love like hers. A love that isn’t selfish, that doesn’t keep score, that gives because it wants to give. I know how lucky I was to receive that kind of love from my mom.

I hope I find that kind of love again somewhere in my life.

And I know how lucky I was that I got to be one of her children.

This brand began because I lost her. The first candle I lit for her, the first time I decided I wanted to make those candles myself, everything that came after that. If she hadn’t died, there would have been no reason for any of it to begin.

And I’d choose that version of my life every time.

I’d choose her.

I’d choose no brand, no features, no Forbes, none of this, if it meant she was still here.

I always wonder if she sees any of it.

The work, the milestones, the setbacks, the things that went right and the things that almost broke me.

The opportunities I never thought would come. The things I’ve had to learn because there was no one else who was going to build this for me.

I wonder if she knows that she is where all of it began.

I built Set Forth NY for her.
I built it because of her.

Maybe that’s why I feel guilty that I’m not happier about Forbes. Then I feel guilty for feeling guilty, because I know I’m allowed to be proud of something I worked for.

And I am proud.

I’m grateful.

I just wish I could show her.

Out of everyone who might read that article, everyone who might see my name or discover Set Forth NY for the first time, she is still the person I want to turn to and say:

Look.

Look what happened.