Every time I was asked to retouch a photo of a woman beyond human capacity, something inside me fractured. I blurred out scars that tell stories, smoothed skin that didn’t get society’s permission to age, cinched waists, erased bellies, polished people into fiction. At a certain point I stopped seeing the work as creative and started seeing it as complicit.

I told myself it was just a job, that I’m a designer, not a decision-maker. Other people told me how lucky I was to do what I love, but deep down I knew better. My talent had been hijacked to sell a version of the world I didn’t believe in — and that’s when my soul started to crumble. It didn’t happen overnight. There was no dramatic event, just a quiet ache that built. I dreaded Mondays. I woke up exhausted from a job that was supposed to look glamorous. I was burning out not from the hours but from the pit in my stomach.

So I walked away. Not because I had a plan but because I finally had the guts to set a boundary. That’s when I decided to reclaim my creative power, to start building the world I actually wanted to work and live in.

I founded Creative Chi as an act of rebellion and restoration. I was done building brands that broke people. I wanted to build brands that set people free. I built Creative Chi on the belief that business can be done on purpose, and creativity should be used to create the world we want to live in.

I didn’t want to create more noise in the market. I wanted to help people tune in to their truth. So we flipped the process: purpose before positioning, soul before strategy, identity before design.

We asked our clients to go deeper, to get clear on who they were before they ever touched a color palette, to stop outsourcing their voice, to own what they stood for loudly and unapologetically.

It wasn’t always easy. Some clients pushed back. Others walked away. Because this kind of branding isn’t cosmetic, it’s catalytic. It asks hard questions. It exposes the fluff. It forces the real stuff to come forward. But the ones who stayed? They built brands that didn’t just convert, they connected; they didn’t just grow, they aligned; and they didn’t just look good, they felt like truth.

Creative Chi earned certified B Corp status and became a 1% for the Planet partner. We’ve helped sustainable startups, mission-driven CEOs, and community-rooted businesses not just look good, but be aligned. 

We’ve said no to misaligned projects, walked away from big budgets, and never once regretted it — because I know what it feels like to be the talent behind the curtain silencing your values, editing the truth, and designing for a world you wouldn’t want your kid to grow up in. I know what it feels like to come home to your work again, to harness your real power.

If you’re dreading Monday, this is your sign: You don’t have to leave your soul at the door to build something meaningful, but you might have to burn some things down first.