30/12/2025
It was 2011.
The year I turned 40.
I was in Sapa, Vietnam, on a three-month journey with my two boys — they were 12 and 7 at the time — when everything changed.
My entire career had been spent as a social worker. I worked with the young people everyone else had given up on. The families no one knew how to help. I volunteered in programs that changed teenagers’ lives. I was strong. Capable. The one who held it all together.
And yet there I was — sitting on the floor of a tiny bathroom in Sapa, the shower running, my children arguing outside the door — tears streaming down my face.
In that moment, I knew something had to change.
Life as I knew it changed.
When I came home, I could feel it in my body — I was standing at the very beginning of a new life. My head was clear in a way it had never been before. I knew I didn’t need a man. I didn’t need to keep pushing forward on the same path just because it was familiar. I needed space to live differently.
I had always run retreats in some form — on holidays, on weekends, in the margins of my life. But this time, something was different. I hadn’t imagined my life could shift so completely.
Three years later, I walked away from the only career I’d ever known and stepped fully into running retreats.
And honestly? I had no idea what I was doing as a business owner.
I entered the business world blind — finding my way mostly alone at first — until I found my people. Conversations with Michelle Fragias changed everything. Long, honest conversations about business, lifestyle, and what it actually meant to build a life that felt expansive.
I wanted it all — meaningful work, freedom, presence, and growth. I didn’t know that kind of integration was possible… until it was.
BUILT BY HER was born from those conversations. From what we wished someone had told us at the beginning. From the advice we needed but couldn’t find.
So we created it ourselves.
This is business guidance built from lived experience.
From courage. From reinvention. From choosing a different way.
The way forward is here.
Here are all the amazing details https://www.michellefragias.com/built-by-her-retreat
