For years, Racquel St Germain became exceptionally good at making things happen. She built a successful creative business, worked with major brands, produced high-level experiences, earned six figures, led teams, raised and homeschooled her son, and became the person clients trusted when something needed to get done. But behind the success was a woman trying to survive an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship that lasted 15 years.

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Her greatest professional highs were unfolding alongside some of her deepest personal lows. She could solve a client's problem, lead a team, close a major project, and then go home terrified about what her own future would look like.

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Eventually, Racquel realized she had spent enough of her life proving she could survive hard things. Now, as the founder of St Germain Creative and the woman behind a new AI-powered edtech venture called AfterClass, she is asking herself a different question: What can I create when survival is no longer the assignment?

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Tell us your story. What have you overcome, rebuilt, created, survived, or stepped into?

Racquel St Germain: I think the simplest way to tell my story is this: I learned how to make a way when I could not even see the way.

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For 15 years, I survived an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship and marriage. I know what it feels like to cry yourself to sleep, wake up with a severe amount of anxiety, and still get up and keep going because life does not stop just because you are overwhelmed, afraid, grieving, or unsure of what comes next.

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There were so many mornings when I pushed through tears and fear because I had a child to raise, a business to run, clients to serve, and responsibilities that still needed me. What makes my story complicated is that some of my greatest highs were happening at the exact same time as some of my lowest moments.

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While privately trying to survive, I was also building a successful business. I worked on amazing projects with major brands, produced high-level experiences, made six figures, built teams, and found myself in rooms I once could not have imagined having access to. I became the person people trusted to solve problems, manage moving pieces, and make things happen—even during seasons when I was privately wondering how I was going to make things happen for myself.

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I have constantly found ways to reinvent my business and myself. I expanded beyond experiential production into agency support, brand strategy sessions, consulting, fractional work, writing, and building my personal brand. I learned how to create new avenues when old ones no longer made sense.

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And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I have also been homeschooling my son, because apparently I like doing life on hard mode.  There have been moments when I have looked around and thought, Damn, I really did this.

And I have.

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I am incredibly proud of what I have built. But success did not magically erase what I was experiencing privately. Sometimes rebuilding looked like crying and answering a client email five minutes later. Sometimes it looked like closing a major project and still being terrified about my future. Sometimes it looked like making six figures and still experiencing financial fear.

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I learned firsthand that you can be successful in one part of your life while another part of you is completely falling apart. There were seasons when I genuinely could not see the way forward. I did not have a perfect plan or a beautifully mapped-out exit strategy. Sometimes I could not see five steps ahead. Sometimes I could barely see one. But I kept taking the next step anyway.

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When I look back at everything I have accomplished, that may be the thing I am most proud of. I made a way out of no way when I did not even have the capacity to see the way. I have had to rebuild emotionally, financially, professionally, personally, and spiritually while raising and homeschooling a child, running a business, serving clients, and figuring out who I am outside of survival.

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And rebuilding is ghetto.  There is no polished version of it.

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Sometimes you are terrified and moving anyway. Sometimes you are grieving and creating anyway. Sometimes you have no idea whether the seed you are planting is going to grow, but you plant it because standing still is no longer an option.

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Somewhere in all of that, I started coming back to myself. I started writing again, sharing my ideas, building my personal brand, exploring fractional work, and expanding my understanding of what I am capable of. I stopped believing I had to fit into one box.

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I can be a producer and a strategist. A founder and a consultant. A creative and an operator. A mother and an entrepreneur. A woman rebuilding her life and a woman still capable of creating incredible things.

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That same season led me to start building AfterClass, an AI-powered edtech startup inspired by something I understand deeply: having the motivation to move forward but not always having the clarity or capacity to figure out how.

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As a producer, I have watched people leave conferences, workshops, and courses inspired and full of information, only to become overwhelmed by implementation. Sometimes people do not need more information. They need help answering one simple question: “What do I do next?”​ 

 

In many ways, that has been the question of my own life. What do I do next? Then I do the next thing. Then the next.

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Eventually, you turn around and realize you have built a road where there was not one before. The truth is, I still do not have everything figured out. I cannot wrap my story in a perfect bow and tell you exactly what my life looks like on the other side because I am still in the middle of becoming.

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I am still rebuilding. I am still creating. I am still learning who I am when survival is no longer the only thing driving me. But I feel the change in my soul. I know I am not the woman I was, and I know I cannot go back.

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I survived, but I do not want survival to be the most interesting thing about me. I want my story to also be about what I built, the rooms I created, the businesses I grew, the ideas I brought to life, the child I raised, and the woman I became in the process. I have spent a lot of my life proving that I can survive hard things.

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Now I want to see what I can create when survival is no longer the assignment.

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At your lowest point, what did life feel like for you emotionally and mentally? When did you decide to make a change?

Racquel St Germain: At my lowest point, I was depleted. Exhausted. Empty. And honestly, I was terrified as f*ck. I was terrified of how I was going to live. How was I going to support myself? How was I going to take care of my son? How was I going to pay my bills?

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What happens when you leave a life you have known for more than a decade and suddenly have to figure out how to build another one while you are already emotionally and mentally worn all the way down?

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I had experienced a bit of financial abuse, so money was not just money to me. It was tied to fear, control, survival, and this constant question of whether I would actually be okay on my own.

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There were mornings I woke up with severe anxiety, sometimes already crying, and I still had to get up and function. I still had to homeschool my son. I still had clients calling me, deadlines to meet, and a business to run.​ That was probably one of the strangest parts. I could be completely broken down internally and still perform at a high level.

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I could produce an amazing event, solve somebody else's problem, send the email, lead the team, take care of my child, and then get in bed at night and cry because I had no idea what the hell I was going to do with my own life. I wasn't sitting around dreaming about my next chapter.​ I was trying to survive the chapter I was in.

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My thoughts were very real: How am I going to make it? What if I can't do this? What if I leave and everything falls apart? What if I can't maintain the life my son needs? What if I never recover financially? What if I made the wrong decision? What's the purpose of any of this?

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I was scared of staying and scared of leaving. I just knew I was empty, and I couldn't keep living like that.

I don't think I decided to change in one big, brave moment. I think I reached a point where I realized there was almost nothing left of me to keep sacrificing.

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So I surrendered to life and let it play out. I stopped trying to control everything. My old identity had to die, and I let it. I started taking radical accountability for my life. I made changes while terrified. I started figuring things out while still crying. I took steps when I could barely see where they were leading. 

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Even now, I don't have some perfect ending to give you. I'm still rebuilding. I'm still figuring out what my life looks like. There are still moments of uncertainty. But what I know now is that I would rather face the uncertainty of building a life that is mine than go back to a life where I was slowly disappearing.

I was terrified of how I was going to live. Now I'm finally getting the chance to find out.​

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What did rebuilding your life actually look like day to day? What was the hardest part of starting over?

Racquel St Germain: Rebuilding my life day to day was really about taking things one small step at a time because I honestly didn't have the mental capacity for some huge, drastic change. The hardest part was releasing the fear, letting go of an old identity, and changing the way I talked to myself. I started with my house.

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When you're in survival mode, you neglect things. Sometimes your space, sometimes yourself, sometimes both. I called someone to deep clean my house, and that helped my mental state so much more than I expected. After that, I decided I was going to keep it clean.

 

Then I started making my bed every day. Then I started making sure there were no dishes in my sink. Then I wanted my floors clean. I started working out again with just three exercises and three reps. Eventually, that progressed to five exercises with five reps each. I started taking better care of my skin, waking up more intentionally, journaling, and doing more spiritual work.

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It was really habit stacking. One small thing led to another. Working out became a big part of that because it gave me somewhere to put the anxiety and reminded me that I was taking care of myself, not just everybody else.

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None of it was about becoming a whole new person overnight. I was just trying to create some sense of order, peace, and stability in the things I could control.​ The deeper work was changing my thoughts.

 

I had to start paying attention to how I talked to myself and how often fear was making decisions for me. I had to question whether something was actually true or whether I was just scared. I had to stop believing I needed to know exactly how everything was going to work out before I could move forward.

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I'm still working through that now. I still have fear. I still have moments when I don't know what's next. But I've learned that I don't need to have the whole plan. I just need to handle what's in front of me and keep going from there.

 

That's really what rebuilding has looked like for me. Nothing huge or glamorous. Just a lot of small decisions that slowly started making me feel like myself again.

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What is one life lesson you learned that other women need to hear?

Racquel St Germain: You CAN do it. Your brain will tell you all the ways it's not possible, but you can. You are God-coded. Your spirit is made in God's image. Of course you can do it. And you will.

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What quote, mantra, or scripture do you live by?

Racquel St Germain: “At any given moment, everything is working out for my greater good.”

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What advice would you give to a woman who feels stuck right now?

Racquel St Germain: You don't need to have a plan or have it all figured out, but you do need to have the will to show up and face the day. And love yourself the way you love others. Start putting you first—yes, even before the kids and the relationship. Over-nurture the hell out of you.

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What is one tip you would give to women building a business or career?

Racquel St Germain: Get really clear on your goals and then build avenues around them. I think we get so caught up in the how, who, and where that we make things harder than they need to be. Who is going to help me? How am I going to get there? Where is the opportunity going to come from? You may not know any of that yet. Focus on the what.

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What do you actually want? What kind of life are you trying to build? What kind of work do you want to be doing? Once you're clear on that, stay open to the different ways it can happen. There is rarely only one door. Sometimes the opportunity comes through a client, a job, a partnership, a completely new offer, or something you hadn't even considered yet. Know what you want, but loosen your grip on how you think it has to happen.

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There is something particularly powerful about Racquel's story because it does not arrive with a perfectly packaged ending.

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She is still rebuilding.

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And perhaps that is exactly why her story matters.​ So many stories about women are told only after the struggle is over—after the business succeeds, the healing happens, the money returns, the new life is established, and everything difficult can be transformed into a lesson. Racquel is telling hers from somewhere in the middle.

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She knows what it means to achieve while hurting. To make six figures while fearing money. To create beautiful experiences for other people while wondering what her own future would look like. To mother, homeschool, lead, build, produce, strategize, and keep showing up while parts of her life were quietly coming undone.​ But she also knows what it means to begin coming home to herself.

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Not through one dramatic transformation, but through a clean house. A made bed. An empty sink. Three exercises. A journal. A prayer. A new idea. Another morning of getting up and choosing herself again.

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Today, Racquel isn't interested in making survival the headline of the rest of her life. She has already proven she can survive.

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This chapter is about discovering what happens when all of that strength is finally allowed to build something for her.