Unpopular Opinion: Losing My Business Was Like Losing A Family Member

A study compared brain scans of entrepreneurs who’d lost a business to those of parents who’d lost a child. They found the same kind of footprint in both.

Hi lovelies!

I am writing this from paradise. Otherwise known as my best friend Courteney Cox’s Malibu place (I am tempted to call it a compound, but she is humble so let’s just say place). So if I seem a little soft today, it’s because I am. Bitchiness and sarcasm will return as soon as I land back in New York, no doubt, so not to worry - or just skip my posts from here if you really can’t stand this mellowed out version. Being around Court is the best part of everything here and then on top of that, we are in the most gorgeous and delicious environment anyone could conjure up. Ocean, butterflies, everything you could dream of really. This is my heaven.

I hope you spent at least part of this long weekend in your own heavens. (Mine are not all this pristine or glamorous. I have also found heaven as the only audience member in a gritty little San Francisco movie theatre watching a low-budget experimental documentary that no one else I know has seen.) Tell me yours, if you like, as well as whether you experienced it this weekend, in that no-judgment zone that is the AJPT comments below!

Last night here was especially fun because I invited my other best friend, Michael Stipe, over and he brought an old friend and coworker I introduced to Michael way back and haven’t seen in maybe a decade, Spike Jonze. Spike made me laugh so hard by out of the blue (over the best pizza) blurting the name “Dale Lang,” which would only be funny to a handful of people who were around for Spike’s days editing Dirt magazine (son of Sassy). It had me doubled over. I love him.

Another thing you can do in the comments is hate me for the name-dropping. (I’m sure it’s especially tiring when I drop the same damn names over and over again. And especially obnoxious when I refer to someone famous on a barfy one-syllable basis. But remember that most of them weren’t names when I started dropping them.) Or talk about anything you want to there. I will be hanging out comment-ready and especially chatty because it’s been days since I’ve seen you and we have a lot to catch up on.

I still love you!

Mellower Jane

PS Jianna, who wrote today’s featured story about losing her business, is the most patient writer we have had here to date. (Either that or she has been torturing a voodoo doll of me for months.) I won’t even look back at when this story was accepted, but as you all know, I am hiring some help here soon (maybe you! I hope so!). So if you submit your stories - Unpopular Opinions and It Happened To Me pieces are always needed - to me at Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com, it won’t take nearly as long for me to publish yours. Thanks Jianna and I’m happy to publish this while we are both still alive! You’re welcome!

PPS Trendsetters that you glorious larger-size readers are, the red T-shirts I made specifically for you in 4XXL and 5XXL were instantly coveted by people outside that size range. So I’m now making them available for all sizes. BUT I still have one left to give away for free to anyone who wants to claim it in one of the larger sizes, either 4XXL or 5XXL. It’s not that it’s already made and just sitting there. It’s that I made a promise to give two away and I want to honor what I said, so I would love to make it for you if you want it. If you do, say so in the comments please and we will exchange info. Yay!! Free clothes!

PPPS If you haven’t already voted for all of the controversial books you’re interested in reading (and there are prizes involved!), you can still vote now before we close out the ballots and announce the winners next week. So do so if you please, please!

February 1, 2020, Jason and me on opening day. We didn’t know what was coming.

By Jianna Heuer

People never start something thinking about the ending. Marriage, parenting, careers, friendships, anything we build, is all embarked on with hope and an almost delusional sense of capability. We begin with the sense that we can’t fail, which allows us to put in all the grueling hard work to make it something amazing. Which is why when it all falls apart or leaves us or dies, the grief of the loss feels like it could just fucking kill you.

***

Have you fulfilled THE dream? You know the one. Maybe you have never told anyone about it because it is just so dear to you. Perhaps everyone in your life knows that if you could do anything, THIS would be it. Most of us have one, something we would do if we had all the money, time, and energy. Mine was opening a bookstore cafe, and when my husband, Jason, and I moved to Rockaway Beach in Queens, I found the perfect place to do it, and on February 1, 2020, at 10am, the dream became a reality. As Circles by Post Malone played and the sunlight hit Jason’s gold hand-painted lettering that displayed our shop name on the fifteen-foot picture window at the front of the store, I flipped the sign on the door from closed to open for the first time.

The first six weeks of Avoid The Day Bookstore and Cafe’s life were brilliant. The shop was always packed. Families, writers, readers, coffee addicts, and little old ladies drinking chai tea and eating a scone from one of our two local bakeries filled our store with laughter and conversation. We hit every financial benchmark we set. We had put everything into the store, three months of manual labor to get it up and running. We didn’t touch the electric or plumbing for fear of shock or flood, but every other part of the build out was all us. We tore down three drop ceilings, ripped old tile from the walls, painted the floor and walls, installed all the cabinetry and bookshelves, and finally did the most fun part, ordering and organizing all the books. We also did all this while maintaining our careers, me as a psychotherapist and he as a book designer and typography teacher. Those months of creating the store, we knew we were tired but couldn’t feel it; the excitement and anticipation were overpowering.

“We had opened the store using all our savings and credit cards and now we weren’t bringing in much.”

In those first weeks, we didn’t just succeed financially; it felt like every part of the vision we had for the shop exceeded our expectations. Couples would lie on the window seat and read each other Pablo Neruda’s love poems. As I prepped someone’s coffee behind the bar, I could hear people walking by singing the songs to themselves that were playing from our store’s Spotify mix we painstakingly curated, little snippets of The Violent Femmes, Pink Floyd, and Lizzo softly crooned as they explored the shelves. We got as many compliments about our playlist as our book selection. Kids played in the children’s area in the tent we set up with fairy lights and thick shag rugs, magnetic toys, and books strewn about and they chatted to each other about what happened at school or parents read to them from Goodnight Moon or Madeleine. We imagined them growing up and falling in love at our tables or remembering fondly the safe space we provided them when they were young.

“We were working seven days a week and investing our own money to the tune of $1,500 a month, just to keep the place afloat.”

Jason and I embraced our strengths at the store as so many parents do while raising their kids. He is a fantastic host and loves interacting with all sorts of people. I am great at scheduling, setting up events, and organizing. We both love book ordering and chatting with people about music, literature, and art. Somewhere in the process of hosting pop-up bookstore for the two years before we decided to open the storefront, Jason had started to dream with me, realizing many of his skills as a graphic designer and ex-open mic poetry host actually made this an ideal lifestyle for him as well.

L: One month before lockdown. Private party for friends and family.R: Our first and last sold-out book reading.

A government mandate forced our first unexpected closure on March 22, 2020. COVID-19 had arrived, ending the fantasy we had worked so hard to bring to life. Following the stories about the virus we had already canceled events a few days earlier and started wiping down door knobs, counters, and tables with a sanitizing solution we googled how to make. We thought it would pass in two weeks, like everyone said. We couldn’t even begin to conceive what actually unfolded.

“Jason broke first.

‘I can’t do it anymore’, he said. ‘It’s too depressing.’”

For the first year, we pivoted every which way. Put all 2,056 books online, sold merch, held Instagram author events and puppet shows, re-opened on the street outside of the store, installed a pickup window in our door, bought air purifiers, and spent money we didn’t have on advertising and building a sidewalk cafe.

We had opened the store using all our savings and credit cards, a $50,000 budget we some how managed to stay under, but didn’t have extra, and we weren’t bringing in much. In 2021, once people were vaccinated, things got a bit better, but it never returned to the thriving community space it had been when we began. By 2022, we were working seven days a week between our two jobs and the bookstore, investing our own money to the tune of $1,500 a month just to keep the place afloat. Despite hosting numerous events, such as happy hours and game nights, people weren’t showing up.

L: Summer 2021, desperately pivoting into a sidewalk cafe right in front of the Q22 bus stop. R: Book delivery by owner.

At the beginning of May 2022, Jason broke first. “I can’t do it anymore. Sitting in our beautiful empty store day after day is too depressing.”

As Harry Styles’ “As It Was” played on the radio, he wept silently as he spoke. I hadn’t realized how much until I looked at our kitchen table and saw two perfectly round pools of his tears—the size of silver dollars, glistening in the sunlight.

“We said if it ever got miserable, we would stop. Is it time?”

He nodded, “Yes, do you hate me?”

“No, of course not. I love you! I’m burnt out on this, too. I don’t think it will go back to how it was. Let’s figure out how to shut it down.”

I had meant what I said. But it hurt, my knees ached, an affliction I’d had since I was five whenever I was deeply anxious or sad. A big part of me didn’t really want to close. I wanted to give it the five years everyone says it takes to build something like this. I also saw what he did; it wasn’t working, and we couldn’t financially float the store forever. Most of all, I understood that if Jason was calling it, he truly couldn’t do it anymore. We both have this tendency to push ourselves way past our breaking points, which we call being a “work pig.” He must have been feeling this desperation for a long time if he was saying it now.

“People still say, “You can open another one, it will be even better.” But we had put so much care and work into this small business; we conceived it together and could never recreate it.”

A perfect mirror of the beginning, the last 6 weeks we spent breaking down what we had built. We sold the convection oven, coffee maker, and blue velvet sofa. Piece by piece, we took apart the custom wood bar we had built ourselves. We were lethargic, weepy, and depressed, crushed beneath the weight of thousands of books we still had to offload and feeling lost about what would come next and how we could recover from such a huge loss. A week before we closed, Jason sent me an article with a startling quote: “Entrepreneurs can feel about their business the same way parents feel about their children. In fact, a team of researchers in Finland took brain scans of entrepreneurs who’d lost a business and compared them to those of parents who’d lost a child. They found the same kind of footprint in both groups. So, when a business fails, the intensity of the grief can be quite full.” This study doesn’t equate the loss of a business with the loss of a child but it does shed light on the pain of grieving something you pour all of your love into in hopes of it growing and thriving and what happens in our brains when it does not. We had put so much care and work into this small business; we conceived it together and could never recreate it.

This was not the first loss we had been through as a couple. In the first year of dating, I attended three funerals with Jason, more than I had been to in my lifetime. My father and I stopped speaking 3 months before our wedding. The year before we opened, his aunt Lynette was hit by a car and killed. The year we started building out Avoid The Day, my 14-year-old niece died. We had mourned together, but this was different, all encompassing, a shroud that covered us in rage and bitterness. People in our lives didn’t understand our grief; it wasn’t like we had lost a person; to them, it was just a business. They still say, “You can open another one, it will be even better.” Instead of telling them it would be too painful to lose something like this again, the disappointment to gutting, we just nod along. Maybe they aren’t wrong. I had only this one dream, now that it is gone. What will I do with myself for the rest of my life if I have nothing to look forward to? The future is bleak when you don’t have something that obsesses you, that you want to put time and energy into building.

“It’s impossible to forget these messages that came in: A local woman who used to buy a bag of chips for a dollar for the privilege of talking our ears off about her local business wrote, ‘I’m not surprised.’ A guy who had never set foot in the shop DM’d, ‘Your politics sank you.’”

It’s been almost four years, and we are still grieving. Sometimes I just get a shooting pain in my head and chest, both at the same time, and double over with the realization that we made this thing that no longer exists. I tear up when I pay another monthly installment on one of the credit cards we maxed out and haven’t paid off yet. I am so proud of us for doing it and trying, not many people do, but it has marred our feelings about our neighborhood. It feels like a betrayal. All those people who had told us for years, “It’s so vital that Rockaway has a bookstore,” didn’t appear as patrons. Going to our old favorite haunts, those we frequented before we dared to follow a dream, without feeling bitter and angry, is hard. They succeeded where we couldn’t.

It’s impossible to forget the messages from people when we announced the closing. A local woman who used to buy a bag of chips for a dollar for the privilege of talking our ears off about her local business wrote, “I’m not surprised.” A guy who had never set foot in the shop DM’d, “Your politics sank you.” His politics had probably contributed to our demise. Still, if opposing Trump and supporting Black Lives Matter does not afford us a space in this community, we probably don’t belong here anyway.

Community crafting night. If only free events paid the rent.

Inside our little bungalow, we still listen to the playlist from the store. It was initially named Avoid The Day Bookstore Mix, but we had to change that, as the pain was too visceral to look at. We still read, Jason makes art, I write, but everything is tinged with hopelessness. When you thought you would grow old doing something with someone, creating community, a center for the arts in a place with nothing like it, how do you manifest a new dream?

With what is happening now, Trump defunding the NEA, all arts organizations under attack, the world burning once again, just like how it was in 2020 when Covid began, perhaps my grief seems nominal or silly. Who cares about a lost dream while people lose their careers, lives, and bodily autonomy?

I care, and I want you to care. Grief, whether for a home, a child, a partner, a friend, or the life you thought you were building, has the same dismal effect on your mental health. The pain is real, and it is lonely. Given the moment society is in now, I fear many more people are about to lose their dreams and experience the suffering Jason and I have been through.

A fellow business owner was one of the few people who sent a message we needed to hear as we closed: “I am sending you love today. I know how it feels. I have done it a few times already :-( Small businesses are an endangered species, and people on the other side, the customers, the ones that rave and tell you how much you mean to them, how cool your spot is, etc, mean well, but they just don’t understand that their ongoing support is needed to make it work. I have been in biz for almost 20 years and the human behavior around mom & pops have changed a lot. I am thankful for your beautiful store and Camilo is your number 1 fan. Sending you guys hugs!” When she would stop by the store we would talk about how none of us can pay the rent with likes. She just got it, and we have never forgotten her kindness in telling us what we had done mattered and how hard it is to let something like this go. It still brings tears to my eyes, both the attunement of her words and the loss itself. For the both of us, for all of us. There were better businesses with more fans and a more extended history of success that threw in the towel before we did. We almost thought we were too small to fail.

Closing night. Our escape bike is at the ready.

Grief changes how you live. You can learn to cope with it, but it’s always there. When we hear about a thriving bookstore or someone comments on the boardwalk about a new business opening, it still feels like a vein being opened with a dull pocket knife.

The people who refused to see my pain and downplayed the death of my business are no longer in my life. Without understanding such a monumental heartbreak, how could I possibly move forward in an authentic and meaningful relationship with them? The ones who remain let me talk about the sadness and anger. We reminisce and celebrate the good bits of once having something incredible. Most of them have lost something precious, too, and we have a shorthand of lamentation between us that allows for a deep understanding of what once enlivened us and what we no longer have. Maybe that’s all one can hope for, a few people who get it and choose to buoy us even in the choppiest times.