Jessica Alba leads the 190 employees of the Honest Company—the nontoxic beauty and home goods brand she founded—from a desk smack-dab in the middle of Honest’s light-filled, open-concept Los Angeles headquarters. That is, when she isn’t on the road, expanding into new markets (Europe) or speaking at a female-entrepreneurship conference on the other side of the world (China). Oh, but that was all pre-pandemic.

These days, she clocks in from a closet at home.

“This is where I take my meetings,” she says during a video chat on a recent Monday. “Total privacy. I don’t need to hear my kids, and they don’t need to hear me.”

To be fair, it’s a pretty sweet closet. She’s curled up in a cushy beige armchair next to large glass doors, wearing violet leggings and a lavender sweatshirt. Doing business, for Jessica, previously meant putting on her game face and, as she puts it, “grinding, grinding, grinding” through nearly every waking moment—even some nonwaking ones.

“I often would wake up in the middle of the night with that heart-beating-fast, drenched-in-sweat, three-in-the-morning panic,” she says. “That was something I just accepted. I like to execute with excellence. I remember every small, dumb detail. It all stays in this brain, and it’s really hard to shut off. I think that’s common, especially for women. And it’s just not okay.”

Indeed, the changes we’ve all gone through in the past year made Jessica realize that she, too, can embrace new ways of being and perhaps do something to address that nightly freak-out or finally put it to rest. Spoiler: It’s been a process, but she’s come to understand that sometimes wellness means breathing and crystals; other times, it means tacos and tequila. And while those things may sound contradictory, if 2020 taught her anything, it’s that it’s okay if all of your needs don’t fit into a tidy box.

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Source: Women’s Health