[Self-Introduction] Nice to meet you, I'm Mari Nakagawa

Whether you are meeting me for the first time or saying, 'Oh, it's Nakagawa-san,' I would like to introduce myself, Mari Nakagawa, so that you can enjoy getting to know me.
First, let me start with a little bit about my work.

Job: Perhaps the only one in Japan? A person who helps business owners think through their [personal mission] together.

I work with business owners who have been in business for over 10 years to help them create their [personal mission].
(Started in 2024)

Specifically, for business owners who suddenly feel a sense of emptiness, thinking,
'My days are just spent chasing after management duties... Is this really all there is?'

This is the proposal I offer.

What is the significance of a business owner in their 50s thinking about their second-half-of-life mission?

[For business owners in their 50s: Life's second-half mission consultant] - Why I do what I do

That is basically what my work entails.

Below, I will summarize my life story, starting from my upbringing and going through various events to how I arrived at who I am today, in a narrative style.

To make it easy to read, I will introduce myself by roughly looking back on my life in bullet points, supplemented by text.

From birth to employment

I was born and raised as the middle child of three, with an older sister and a younger brother.
Both of my parents were insensitive people, and they often told me when I was young, 'We wanted a boy, and after repeated miscarriages, you were the second child born as a girl. That's why we had another one (and then my younger brother was born).'
My rebellion against such parents was immense (?), and from around the age of 4, I would always make a huge fuss about running away from home, only to be locked in the storage room...

Because of that environment, I had a tendency to unconsciously think, 'If I don't work hard, my parents won't acknowledge my existence!' (So, after elementary school, I worked hard at 'helping out' and 'studying' = I wanted to be acknowledged).

Dark history: 20 years of wandering in the dark

This period was the darkest history of my life...
From my university days (even before deciding which university to apply to), I didn't know 'what I wanted to do,' and I dragged that with me for a long time.

Starting with changing my department at university, I continued to change jobs even after I started working.
It was really tough.
My self-esteem kept dropping because I 'couldn't keep a job.'
I blamed myself, thinking, 'I'm someone who fails at everything.'
As a result, I suffered from depression for a long time, had self-destructive addictions, and got cancer... It was painful both mentally and physically.

To get back to the story, I kept asking myself for over 20 years, 'What do I want to do!?' but on the other hand, people would say to me, 'You have vitality to change jobs so many times,' or 'You're energetic' (thank you to everyone who comforted me by saying that).

Taking those comments in a positive light, I suddenly realized that my 'obsession with finding what I want to do' was extraordinary, and I decided, 'I will use that energy to help others! I will become a career counselor!'
My work as a career counselor went reasonably well.

The death of my husband and the three years I couldn't crawl out of

I married and had a late-in-life child through fate.
My first pregnancy and raising a child at 41 were tough, but my child is still my treasure.

Our happy life as a family of three was short-lived; my husband collapsed with stomach cancer.
It was stage 3C when discovered.
It was one step away from stage 4.

However, the surgery was a success. After a regular lifestyle, my husband gradually recovered!
He returned to work, and later was able to change jobs and go on trips. I was happy that he was doing well, but...

The cancer recurred, and he passed away in the blink of an eye...
And then, various troubles attacked me.
I was burdened with multiple lawsuits and legal issues related to my husband's death and his family, and my sense of what was right and wrong gradually became paralyzed.
Furthermore, my chronic illness worsened, and I became bedridden...

During this time, I had many thoughts.
Why did my husband die?
Why couldn't I save him?
Why did my husband keep his cancer recurrence a secret?
Such unanswerable questions swirled endlessly within me.

But what I felt most strongly was that "you never know when someone will die."

And "what it means to live life to the fullest."
I felt that my husband must have passed away with regrets about this life.

My husband's death kept confronting me with this question.

I was revived in 2023

I no longer remember how I overcame the many troubles after my husband's death. (It felt as if a different OS than my daily one had activated and taken care of things.)

However, as the saying goes, "time is a healer," and I was gradually able to make the sense of loss from losing my husband a "part of myself" (it is not that I "got over" my husband's death, but rather the feeling that I "made that experience a part of myself").
And I became proactive in treating my own illness, and now I am able to lead a daily life.

Actually, I hadn't told almost anyone about my husband's death, including my best friend from university. It was too painful to even look back on what had happened, and I was scared.

But around three years after my husband passed away, I began to confide in people around me little by little.

In the midst of this, I learned that my best friend, whom I had reunited with after three years, had acquired a certain "profiling qualification." It was a profiling test I had taken before, so thinking it might be useful in the future, I decided to acquire the qualification without thinking too much about the consequences (which is rare for me) (a qualification called Wealth Dynamics).

From there, as if guided again, I joined an entrepreneur community and decided to challenge myself to dig deep into my values through a program within the community.
I worked seriously on digging into those values.

After trial and error, this is what was created↓

Values, Mission, Vision

With this mission in hand, I felt a single, large line running through my life, including the 20 years of dark history where I was lost and lost again (this story is long, so I will write it in a separate article).
And then,

When that clicked for me, tears started to fall.
That was the moment I was truly satisfied with my life.
I wanted to praise myself. I wanted to say, 'You've lived well up to this point, you've done your best.'

Based on these values and mission, I decided to take on the work I mentioned at the beginning: [Consulting for an entrepreneur's personal life mission].

Many business owners have high energy.
If they can clearly articulate their values and mission, even more incredible energy and drive will emerge! If that mission is properly conveyed to employees and customers, it will definitely have a positive impact on company management and increase sales! Then, Japan will be filled with products and services infused with that mission, and Japan will surely become a better place! That is the kind of thing I thought.

My own modest experience served as proof of this.
Ever since I found my own mission, I have been able to move forward naturally and effortlessly, to the point where I don't even recognize myself as the same person who was depressed for so long after my husband's death. And many people have started to help me (I will leave this for another post).

Furthermore, I was able to complete "novel writing," something I had always wanted to do but kept giving up on.
(I am now submitting to various awards)

It was in December of '23 that I began to uphold these values and this mission. I am now spending my days feeling fulfilled, as if I have been reborn.

The following is a bonus♪

Personality, etc.

Hobbies, etc.

Qualifications, etc.

Thank you for reading this far m(__)m
I would be happy if I could connect with people on note whom I wouldn't be able to meet in my daily life.
And I would be very happy if you could leave a comment!