Why I Started Zel & Harlow Creative

The version I don’t always tell.

I was fired twice. Both times in Dallas. Both times while I was pregnant. Both times, I was told there was nothing I could legally do about it. I have shared this story as a footnote in longer conversations for a while now. But it deserves more than a footnote. So here it is — the whole thing.

The first time.

I had been at a Christian non-profit in Dallas for almost five years. Five years of showing up, of believing in the mission, of building something I thought I’d be part of for a long time. They had hired me as a never-married single mother. They knew exactly who I was when they brought me on, and I was grateful to them for it.

When my daughter was seven, I met an amazing man and I fell in love, got engaged, and two months before our wedding we found out I was pregnant.

They fired me because of it.

I was in my first trimester, newly engaged, and suddenly without a job I had given five years of my life to. A Christian organization. One whose whole mission was to share people’s redemption stories. One who employed people who were divorced, men who were open about their struggles with pornography and alcohol — all of whom kept their jobs, kept their desks, kept their dignity. But an unmarried pregnant woman? That was apparently where grace had its limits.

I said all that when I left too. I pointed out the double standard directly. It didn’t change anything.

And then, a few weeks later, I miscarried.

The organization sent me a condolence card in the mail.

I remember holding it and not knowing whether to cry or laugh or throw it across the room. The same people who had decided I was too much of a liability to employ were now sending condolences for the baby I lost during one of the most stressful and painful seasons of my life.

Because of the organization’s nonprofit status, I was told I wasn’t eligible for unemployment. Legally, they had done nothing wrong. That’s the part that still sits heavy — not just what happened, but that it was allowed to happen.

The second time.

You would think once would be enough. That God would say — okay, she’s learned this lesson, let’s give her a break.

I was 38 weeks pregnant with my second daughter when my employer called me over Zoom on a Monday morning and told me they were going in a different direction.

38 weeks.

I knew exactly what it was. They didn’t want to deal with maternity leave. They didn’t want the inconvenience of a woman about to give birth. I knew this because I had already fought tooth and nail for more than one week of paid leave.

One week. It was all they would give me to begin with.

For a baby I was about to deliver.

I have never forgotten how it felt to have to fight that hard for something so basic and still walk away with so little.

And because they had fewer than 15 employees, the federal pregnancy discrimination protections I thought would protect me didn’t apply. I had no meaningful recourse and almost no time before my daughter arrived. 

The moment everything changed.

My husband had been laid off from his job about a month before I was fired. He was working a temp job at Trader Joe’s to keep us afloat. We had a newborn, a 9 year old daughter, and two people who had just had the rug pulled out from under them in the span of a few weeks.

And somewhere in the fog of those early postpartum days — exhausted, a little broken, and honestly very angry — I made a decision.

I was done letting other people hold my family’s future so lightly.

So two months postpartum, I started Zel & Harlow Creative.

Now, three years later, I’m on the other side.

I am grateful it happened. I mean that. Without those two moments I’m not sure I ever would have taken the leap. Fear is a powerful thing, and sometimes it takes losing something to realize you were capable of building something better all along.

But I also want to be honest — it still stings. The injustice of it still makes me very sad. The miscarriage, the double standard, the 38 weeks, the one week of leave I had to fight tooth and nail for — those things were not okay. Being grateful for where I ended up doesn’t mean what happened to me was acceptable.

Both things can be true.

If you are a woman who has been pushed out, passed over, or made to feel like your motherhood was an inconvenience, I hope this business reminds you that what someone else failed to see in you does not determine what you are capable of building.

I named Zel & Harlow Creative after my daughters because they are the reason I refused to settle. Every day I show up for this business, I am showing them that motherhood and ambition are not mutually exclusive. That becoming a mother does not make you less creative, less capable, or less worthy of meaningful work.

And maybe that is the real reason I started Zel & Harlow Creative: to build brands rooted in real stories while building a life in which my family would never be treated like an inconvenience.

What happened to me will always be part of my story. But it doesn’t get to be the end of it.

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About Zel & Harlow Creative

Zel & Harlow Creative is a brand and website studio helping playful, purpose-driven brands become unmistakably themselves through intentional, story-led design—so they can show up boldly and bring more magic into the everyday.

Ready for a brand that feels unmistakably like you? Let’s chat!