Semieka Bowden

By Mieka Bowden

I was eight years old when life began teaching me how to survive.

I didn't know then how many times I would have to start over, how many versions of myself I would eventually have to rebuild, or how important those experiences would become to the woman I am today.

My life has included childhood trauma, battles with my health and weight, devastating relationships, betrayal, instability, homelessness, and periods when simply making it through the day was an accomplishment.

There were times when I had very little.

But somehow, I always still had me.

It took years for me to understand the significance of that.

Today, I know something with absolute certainty: I will never give up on myself.

I've learned that I can very seriously do anything I set my mind to. More importantly, I've learned how to love myself fully and without condition.

And once I learned how to give that kind of love to myself, something unexpected happened.

I wanted to spread it outward.

That desire ultimately became Welp.

There Had to Be a Better Way

Welp didn't begin in a boardroom.

It began because I was hurting.

After experiencing a relationship that caused an extraordinary amount of emotional pain, I found myself desperately wanting to do something that might save another person from experiencing what I had experienced.

I wanted someone to hear me.

I wanted someone to care.

So I went looking for a place where I could share what had happened in a way that might actually help somebody else.

What I found disturbed me.

There were places filled with anger. Places filled with attacks. Places where pain seemed to turn into more pain.

I understood the anger. Believe me, I understood it.

But that wasn't what I wanted to contribute to the world.

I didn't want another place built around hate.

I wanted something constructive.

Something fair.

Something that could protect people while still recognizing that human beings make mistakes, learn, apologize, forgive, change and grow.

And I remember thinking:

There has to be a better way.

Then another thought hit me that I couldn't let go.

We protect virtually every important part of our lives.

We insure our homes.

We insure our vehicles.

We insure our health.

We protect our money, our identities, our businesses and our belongings.

We install alarms, passwords, cameras and security systems.

Yet one of the most valuable things a human being will ever entrust to another person-their heart-has virtually no protection at all.

I couldn't believe it.

We willingly hand another human being something capable of affecting our mental health, our families, our confidence, our futures and sometimes the entire direction of our lives, and essentially we are told:

Good luck.

I thought we could do better.

So I started building it.

Welp: Dating With Integrity

Welp is not about telling people whom they should or shouldn't love.

And it certainly isn't about revenge.

It is a dating tool built around something I believe has been missing from modern relationships: accountability with humanity.

People deserve information.

They deserve the opportunity to make informed decisions about whom they allow into their lives.

But people also deserve the opportunity to grow.

That's why Welp isn't designed around the idea that one mistake should define a human being forever.

Integrity doesn't mean perfection.

Accountability doesn't mean humiliation.

And protecting people doesn't require destroying someone else.

There should be room for truth and forgiveness. Accountability and second chances. Protection and compassion.

Those things can exist together.

In fact, I believe they have to if we genuinely want to make things better.

Welp was created from my pain, but I refused to build it from my anger.

That distinction means everything to me.

I Had to Become the Woman Who Could Build It

Creating Welp has challenged me in ways I never anticipated.

There have been obstacles, financial struggles, technical problems, setbacks and moments when I had absolutely no idea how I was going to make the next piece work.

But somewhere during all of this, I realized that I had spent most of my life training for something without knowing it.

Every time life knocked me down and I got back up, I learned something.

Every time I had to begin again, I became less afraid of starting over.

Every time someone underestimated me, I learned that their assessment of me didn't have to become my assessment of myself.

And every time I survived something I once thought I couldn't survive, the boundaries around what I believed I was capable of became a little wider.

Eventually, I stopped asking myself, Can I do this?

Now I ask:

How am I going to do this?

Those are very different questions.

One looks for permission.

The other looks for a solution.

The Most Important Relationship I Ever Built

For much of my life, love was something I thought I needed to receive from somewhere outside of myself.

Eventually, I learned differently.

The greatest relationship I have ever built is the one I have with myself.

I have learned to love myself fully-not because I am flawless, not because I've made every correct decision and not because every chapter of my story is beautiful.

I love myself without those conditions.

That changed me.

When you stop abandoning yourself, failure becomes much less frightening.

Rejection becomes survivable.

Starting over becomes possible.

Other people's inability to recognize your value stops determining whether you recognize it yourself.

And when I finally understood that kind of love, I didn't want to keep it to myself.

I wanted to create with it.

I wanted to help with it.

I wanted to build things that might make somebody else's road a little less painful than mine had been.

Welp Is the Beginning

I am incredibly proud of Welp, but my dream is larger than one platform.

I want to dedicate my life to creating solid, positive change.

I want to look at the places where we've accepted that's just how things are and ask why.

I want to challenge systems and ideas that aren't serving people.

I want to create solutions where solutions don't exist.

And I want people-especially women who are standing in the middle of circumstances that make their dreams look impossible-to understand something I had to learn for myself:

Do not give up on you.

Your current circumstances are not proof of your limitations.

Your past is not a ceiling.

Being knocked down does not mean you belong on the ground.

And having absolutely no idea how you're going to accomplish something does not mean you can't accomplish it.

Sometimes the thing that nearly destroys you becomes the reason you build something that helps someone else.

I couldn't find what I needed when my heart was broken.

I wanted someone to hear me.

I wanted someone to care.

I wanted there to be a better way.

There wasn't.

So I decided to create one.