ME, ME, ME: Female businessman gets emotional, leaves town, stops paying workers, and sinks two-thirds of a million dollars of investor capital. But it’s okay because she found herself, and that’s what truly matters. Here’s a selection of passages from her letter to her investors:

One day, a few weeks ago, an event happened (I’ll save the details of that for some other time.) Suddenly a torrent of emotions poured in. I was overwhelmed. I stayed home from work one day–my best friend Erica sent me some poetry, and I just cried. I wept. It felt like my soul was pouring out of me, one tear at a time.

I reeled from the onslaught of emotions for days . . .

That was Friday, April 25. Saturday morning, I woke up and bought a plane ticket to Boulder, CO for six days. It was there that I would kill my company. But at that point, I didn’t know that. All I knew was that I had to leave. I had to get away. Something was so profoundly broken in my life–something I knew I couldn’t see without the perspective that leaving my home in Austin, TX would show me. . . .

Today is my fourth day in Boulder, and I have not stopped crying. Yesterday, our largest customer, representing 22% of our revenue for Whoosh Traffic, cancelled. Because of their cancellation, we could no longer make payroll next week. . . .

Today I write this, still in Boulder, still reeling emotionally from the large volume of changes in my life in the past week. I write this humbly, with a complete lack of ego. My business failed and it took my savings, and $640,000 of investor capital on top of that, with it.

But at least she learned her lesson, right? Wrong:

Am I upset that I lost my investors’ money? Only in the sense that many of our investors were my friends and I didn’t want to disappoint them. But the me coming out from this hurricane of chaos is a much stronger me, able to acknowledge the mistakes I’ve made, able to open up and be emotionally raw with my friends and my team–qualities that every great leader must possess.

This is what puts one on the path to success–true, authentic success with deep happiness and fulfillment.

And the punchline:

As more women enter our workforce, and we as female leaders struggle to find our voices and our innate leadership qualities, we must not forget that the feminine side of ourselves is not a weakness. It is, in fact, our greatest strength as the leaders of this world. We are vulnerable, and we are beautiful, and that’s not just okay–it’s needed in our society.

UPDATE: Perhaps this was to be expected.