"From CEO to civilian: The strange return to self" by Elena Popovici
After two years of building, leading, constantly solving, my body had adapted to something I didn’t fully recognize at the time: a quiet, sustained state of war.
Not the dramatic kind, but the slow, invisible sort. The kind that looks like productivity on the outside, but feels like tension you’ve learned to ignore.
And then, it stopped.
No applause. No customers. No headlines. Just... stillness.
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The company closed. The mission disappeared. And somewhere in that sudden absence of noise, my body gave out. Not symbolically. Literally.
There’s a particular kind of silence that follows the end of something you once lived for: a silence that no exit guide, no tearful farewell post, no founder podcast quite knows how to describe.
Because what happens next is not business strategy.It’s biology. And identity.
The primitive system we’ve overclocked
Some context, before the collapse.
Thousands of years ago, when humans began walking upright and hunting, we developed a rather efficient internal mechanism: the sympathetic nervous system — better known as our fight-or-flight response. It activates in moments of threat: racing heart, tensed muscles, laser-sharp focus. Hunger? Irrelevant. Sleep? Optional. The only goal? Survive.
Founders, it seems, have managed to stretch this evolutionary response well beyond its intended purpose.
What was designed for moments, we now sustain for quarters — even years. We live in continuous tension, fuelled by pitch decks, deadlines, and the illusion that if we just push a little harder, we’ll finally "make it."
Until we stop. And our nervous system, no longer ignored, sends the invoice.
The day after
I used to imagine that if my company ever came to an end, I’d feel something definitive. Maybe grief, or shame. Maybe, secretly, some relief.
What I didn’t expect was pneumonia.
Not metaphorical collapse, but an actual, physical shutdown. My body, after two intense years of constant motion, simply gave in. The mission was over, and with it, the adrenaline that had been quietly keeping me upright. I got sick. The kind of sick that makes you wonder if your body has simply had enough. For a brief moment, I truly thought: this might break me.
And in some ways, it did. Because once the fever lifted, a different kind of discomfort set in.
The silence.
Not restful, restorative silence. But the kind that echoes. The kind that follows you from room to room. I had been in forward motion for so long that stillness didn’t feel like peace, it felt like disorientation. I wasn’t working, I wasn’t building, I wasn’t needed.
And without all of that, I wasn’t sure what was left.
There was a kind of weightlessness I hadn’t anticipated. A hollow space where my company used to be and, if I’m honest, where I used to be.
It took me a while to see it clearly: I hadn’t just shut down a company. I had let go of the identity that had carried me through those two years. The version of myself built on resilience, urgency, and output.
And now that she was gone, I had no idea who I was becoming.
When identity is built on output
It’s not uncommon. Founders don’t simply run startups — they become them. The company stops being just a project and starts functioning as a mirror. A source of purpose. A well-rehearsed answer to the question, "And what do you do?"
So when the startup disappears, the identity you built around it can vanish too.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: if your sense of self has been anchored to the existence of your company, then its closure — no matter how necessary or well-reasoned — will almost always feel like failure.
Unless you decide to give it a different meaning. Unless you choose to redefine what it all stood for, and what it left behind.
Reframing the end (without sugarcoating it)
Closing a company is not the end of the world. But it is an end. And endings deserve honesty, and care. They also offer an invitation: to examine not just what went wrong, but what the experience gave you.
In my case, it gave me the chance to wake up, and to rebuild, this time from a place that wasn’t purely urgency-driven.
So, what can you do when the company ends and the identity fog rolls in?
A few practical (and slightly uncomfortable) suggestions:
- Do absolutely nothing, and do it on purpose. Your nervous system has been running a marathon in combat boots. Let it downshift. Slowly. Don’t confuse stillness with stagnation.
- Resist the urge to "spin" it especially online. You don’t need a polished rebrand or a 10-point "lessons learned" post. Not yet. Let silence do its job. It’s not failure, it’s space.
- Redefine what success meant to you. Was it traction? Recognition? Or simply keeping the lights on? Be honest. Not performative. There’s clarity in the unfiltered answer.
- Treat the ending as data, not a verdict. You built. You risked. You learned. That’s not failure. That’s research, the kind you can’t Google.
- Stop romanticizing burnout. Exhaustion isn’t noble. It’s expensive. Take time to recalibrate. And when you’re ready to build again, do it without sacrificing yourself at the altar of momentum.
The ending is yours to name
The company closed. That’s a fact. Whether you frame it as a failure, a transition, or a strategic redirection, that’s entirely up to you.
Personally, I’ve decided not to mark the day the company ended as a loss, but rather as the moment I woke up.
It was the first time in two years that I allowed myself to stop. To feel. To listen to what my body, and the silence, had been trying to say all along.
And no, I didn’t "bounce back" with a new idea the following week. I allowed the pause. Because not all growth looks like scale. Sometimes it looks like rest. Like stillness. Like reclaiming your sense of self without needing a calendar full of meetings to prove your worth.
You are not your company. You are the person who had the courage to build it, and the wisdom to know when to stop.
That’s not failure. That’s evolution.
