Building Something That Doesn't Exist Yet

How I finally found the thread connecting everything I've built

“I don’t know what I’m building.”

I smiled when I said that.
The kind of smile that carries a little fear, a little guilt and a little shyness.
Not because I genuinely don’t know. But because I don’t know how to explain it.

It isn’t an idea I can neatly package into an elevator pitch. It’s more like a feeling. A massive feeling! It feels as though my whole body is vibrating with it, surrounding me, and… yes, if I’m honost… there is a quiet certainty that I am moving towards something, in the right direction, even if I cannot find the words for it.

If you’ve followed my journey for a while, you’ll know it probably hasn’t looked very linear.

I work in food factories wearing white coats and mop caps.
I co-founded a women’s entrepreneurship community.
I started a company with my husband growing mushrooms.
I’m building Gaia Explore in the Namibian desert.
I write here on Substack.
I’m developing health programmes.
And lately, I’ve even been spending countless hours building AI systems with an almost obsessive level of care and intention.

From the outside, it probably looks as though I’ve changed direction more times than I can remember. And over the past few months, I found myself asking one question over and over again:

What am I actually building?

The answer was never “a business.”
It was never “a newsletter.”
It was never “a retreat.”

Those are simply the containers.

I’ve always wanted people to leave feeling more worthy than when they arrived.

Not because I’d convinced them of anything.
Not because I’d solved their problems.
Simply because, for a little while, they felt fully seen.

Looking back, I realise that’s what Future Females was always about.
People came for the workshops, the networking and the practical support. But what they often left with was something much harder to describe.
They felt less alone.
They found people who believed in them.
They realised someone else understood the dream they’d been quietly carrying.

The business was the vehicle.
The real work was belonging.

And then, something dawned on me recently.

I was looking at everything I’m building now - Cerina Life, FungGAIA and Gaia Explore.

Different names.
Different businesses.
Different audiences.

Except... they aren’t really.

They all carry the same values.
They all use the same visual language.
Even the colours are remarkably similar.

Not because I deliberately set out to create a family of brands.
But because they all grew from the same place.

I wasn’t building different things.
I was expressing the same philosophy in different ways.

When I imagine Gaia Explore, I don’t think first about accommodation.
I think about someone sleeping deeply.
Walking barefoot.
Watching the sun set and the moon rise from the rooftop.
Learning how food grows.
Understanding why organic farming is both beautiful and difficult.
Joining in if they feel curious, or simply resting if that’s what they need.
Leaving with a deeper appreciation for nature, for simplicity and perhaps even for themselves.

When I think about FungGAIA, I don’t just think about mushrooms.
I think about wonder.
About helping people look at the natural world with fresh eyes.
About remembering that some of life’s most extraordinary things spend most of their existence growing beneath the surface, unseen.

Writing has become another version of that.
A quiet place where someone I’ve never met might read a sentence and think,
”I thought I was the only one.”

And then I realised something that completely changed how I see my own path.

For years I thought I needed to know exactly what I was building before I could build it. However, now I think the opposite is true.

Sometimes you build faithfully before you can name it.
You follow a feeling long before you have a strategy.
You recognise the thread only after enough years have passed to look back.

There were days after burnout when all I could do was pull weeds in the garden and cry.
And there are still days when I wonder whether I’m on the right path.
There are still periods where everything feels uncertain.

But I’ve learned that not knowing isn’t the same as being lost. Sometimes it simply means you’re creating something that doesn’t exist yet.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing all along.
Not building companies.
Not building products.
Not even building a personal brand.

But building places.

Places where people can rest.
Places where they can restore.
Places where they can explore.
And hopefully, in the process, remember something about themselves that life made them forget.

Perhaps, that's all I've ever wanted to make.

If you’re in a season where your own life feels scattered…
If your interests don’t seem to fit neatly together…
If you’re worried everyone else has a plan while you’re simply following what feels meaningful…

I invite you - instead of asking yourself: “What am I building?”
Try asking a different question.

“What’s the thread that’s been there all along?”

You might discover you’ve known the answer for much longer than you realised.

xoxo
Cerina