Why we're closing our Studio.
I have made the difficult decision to move out of The Bitters Lab Studio / Workshop Space, as a result we will also be pausing our in person workshops for an undetermined amount of time. Our last class will be June 10th. Virtual classes will continue, though, yay!
So why are we making this change?
For many years, I have struggled with seasons of experiencing severe anxiety and panic attacks. This began long before I started Bitters Lab (but starting a small business certainly hasn’t improved things). I have gone through periods of managing this in various ways over the years, but as of late, these occurrences have been increasing, and more difficult for me to manage.
As we’re about to begin the busiest season of our year, I’ve simply made the decision to scale back on our workload for my mental health, and the mental health of our team. I am also looking forward to “some” resemblance of a work-life balance. To put it plainly, we’ve stretched ourselves too thin over the last 3 years and I’m realizing it’s just not possible for our small team to juggle this much.
Planning an in person workshop requires a lot of effort not just physically, but mentally as well. For the last year and a half (since we opened the studio) we’ve been waiting patiently for things to “get back to normal”, and although we were hopeful for some resemblance of that, we’re accepting that things are just super different in this new world. So, it was the most obvious and natural choice for us to eliminate this aspect of our offerings, for now.
I want to be clear that am not looking for sympathy in sharing this information - I truly believe that if we talk about our mental health struggles it “normalizes” it and can be less scary for people to share what they’re going through. It makes us human.
I am grateful everyday that I get to do something I love. I know it’s impossible for us to be where we are without all of you. So THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for your support.
Andrea
Bitters Lab Founder