Failure at Rock Bottom: What Falling Apart Taught Me About Resilience, Wealth, and Rebuilding

By Marla Osner

My life has been a series of setbacks. By all accounts I should not be standing on stages, writing books, owning a women’s financial coaching business, owning a hormone and regenerative medicine clinic, or having a Master’s degree in nursing. Who the hell am I, and what business do I have showing up like this?

I struggled in primary school, classes that others breezed through, rereading material for hours with minimal retention.

I went to college for small animal science and failed miserably, sending dreams of veterinary school and tons of money down the drain. Let’s just say a desire and love for a topic or field do not equate to passing chemistry.

After totally bombing chemistry and my animal science major, I had to do a hard reset. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough? I set out for community college and worked full time. One class at a time I realized I learn very differently than most. I needed lots of talking, lots of drawing, lots of colors, and background music. All the things they tell you NOT to do. I finally started making headway and decided to get my Associate’s degree in nursing. That was HARD AS HELL. The medicine and the nursing was “easy”, the pattern recognition- easy, the organic chem- life shatteringly hard AGAIN. My brain hears rainbows, sees sounds, and needs movement, color, and noise to learn. Once I stopped forcing it into someone else’s learning style and honored how it actually works, things finally started clicking.

Life has a way of kicking you just when you think you are ahead. Fast forward many years, I was married, working as a nurse, and very pregnant. I stopped feeling movement and found out that my daughter had passed away. I lost my baby. There are no words that can describe a pain like that. I was surviving a single breath at a time. In and out. Just keep breathing. When you live through the worst day of your life, you realize that if you can get through that, you can get through anything.

Then joy appeared one day, my son James was born, and through loss, came life. Just as life looks like she is going to move in a forward direction, I found myself a single mother with a six month-old. Financially, emotionally, and mentally I was ripped in multiple directions working full time, school full time, and raising a toddler. My home got repossessed and I moved home with my parents and younger siblings.

It was mortifying. A grown ass woman with a baby and a dog. I was embarrassed, defeated, this was not what I envisioned for my life. However, this season forced me to lean into the resilience I had already been slowly building. It forced me to rethink, rebuild, and reassess what is important in my life. As if I wasn’t busy enough in school full time, I started learning all I could about debt management, budgeting, building emergency funds, and ultimately building wealth.

As I shared my path with co-workers, I quickly found myself with their financial messes lined up on my parents’ dining room table, sifting through and teaching them how to do the same thing I had done. Crawl my way out of debt, learn to manage my money, and start building wealth. It was far from glamorous, but it was POWERFUL. I realized there was a gap that needed to be filled. Financial literacy for women was lacking, this led to the creation of Wealthy Women Coaching. A business built from rock bottom, that now helps women across the country reclaim control of their finances and build wealth.

My own failure became the foundation of financial empowerment for women.

I continued on studying for that coveted Master’s Degree in Nursing, which would allow me to apply for my Nurse Practitioner License. There were long nights, moments of dread, classes online with a toddler on my knee. Tears, lots and lots of tears. Resilience isn’t about being motivated, or always running into positive sunshiney days after a storm. It's doing all the hard shit despite the suck, knowing it's a means to an end.

Eventually, I graduated and worked in Emergency Medicine. However, I got remarried and rebuilt stability and decided the long nights and missing my son's sports just wasn’t what I wanted anymore. After years I moved to palliative medicine and urgent care so there would be no more missing kid events.

Then I started noticing pain, fatigue, I was cranky. A cranky I had never experienced before. Things were foggy, I was anxious, and just didn’t feel like myself. I KNEW something was wrong, but my providers were saying “you’re fine”, “It’s just normal aging”.

I researched, I pushed, I advocated, I hunted down providers who would LISTEN to me. I did my own labs, and finally I was diagnosed with ADHD and Perimenopause. I wasn’t broken, my body wasn’t revolting against me, it was asking me for support, grace, and help.

This injustice and fight ignited a new fire under my arse. If I as a provider had to battle for answers, how were other women faring? Were they being dismissed too? Were they suffering in silence? No answers, no work up, just “this is normal”? This led me to create Eclipse Total Health with my partner who does Regenerative Medicine. We focus, we listen, we see you as the patient. Eclipse represents the way providers should be able to see patients, with extended visits, full focus, in depth, coordinated care.

Along the way, I realized my struggles became a solution. My failures pushed me to create pathways and frameworks to help myself and subsequently others too. This has been to the extent that I struggled hardcore understanding youth football. Cheering when I shouldn’t, booing when I shouldn’t, and being completely lost on the ride home when my son and husband talked about the day's game. So, I did what I always do…broke it down, researched it, and came up with “Youth Football 101 For Moms”. I self published this sassy, snarky, book through Amazon. This has all taught me, pain needs to become purpose, convert my confusion to clarity, make failure my bitch and turn it into success.

My life has not gone according to my plan. However, every detour prepared me for more. Grief taught me resilience and strength. Loss and Financial Hardship gave me new meaning for what it means to be wealthy. When in a season of failure, rewrite your script. You aren’t behind, you are learning to build differently. Setbacks are not final and pain is the struggle before growth. One day when you look back you will realize failure wasn’t a definition, it was designing the new you. Resilience will allow you to continue learning, failing, and rebuilding carrying you to the life you are meant to lead.

Connect With Marla

www.eclipsetotalhealth.com

www.wealthywomencoaching.com