The Business She Built Around the Life She Wanted

Jess Freeman spent years being pretty sure she wasn’t going to have kids.

Not in a dramatic, announcement-to-the-world way. More like a quiet, steady conclusion she carried after losing her mom in a car accident at 24, two months into running her business full time, two weeks before Christmas.

Her brain did what a lot of our brains would do. No mom. Can’t be a mom. Not happening.

And for a long time, that felt like the answer.

The Workbook That Changed Everything

Years later, after a fostering experience that was equal parts meaningful and traumatic, after watching close friends have babies, after sitting in the tension of “I genuinely don’t know if I’m supposed to do this,” Jess did what any type-A woman would do.

She found a workbook on Amazon.

Somewhere around chapter eight, there was a prompt: Write a letter to the child you’re choosing not to have. (yes, we all got chills.)

And she couldn’t do it.

That was the answer.

“You Could Just Have One”

Jess brought this realization to a mentor, a friend about ten years older who knew she’d been wrestling with this. Jess told her she thought she was supposed to have kids, and that it was terrifying.