Can you be grateful through darkness?
This time of year, I always find myself reflecting on different aspects of my life...not so much the polished version of things, but at the raw truth of what's happening around me and why life feels the way it does. Today we are supposed to express gratitude, but sometimes it's difficult to see any type of light, when we are in a place that's completely dark...I want to take a few minutes to share some words of encouragement with you.
( this is a decently long rant, so if you're not feeling up to reading right now, disregard this email )
Let me take you back to 2014. By then, I'd already spent five years designing shirts nearly every single day, 10 to 12 hours a day. Then, we weren't a brand...Damascus was a service. We'd create designs for organizations, wait for approval, send invoices, coordinate with local printers, and ship everything out. After making a ton of mistakes and after a few years, we were invoicing $100k a month. But in reality? We had nothing saved. No security. and truthfully, no real understanding of what it meant to build something meaningful.
It was exhausting in ways I didn't even have language for back then.
One day, something in me just broke open and I said, "Enough." I couldn't keep doing this. We were going to become a brand. That decision marked the birth of Damascus and the death of Damascus Apparel as a service company. We started reaching out to DJs, and rejection after rejection piled up until finally, Downlink said yes. That single yes changed the entire trajectory of my life. Suddenly, alot of major bass artists wanted to work with us. Doors opened that I didn't even know existed. We traveled the world, collaborated with our heroes, labels, festivals, brands. I was living the dream I'd worked years to manifest.
Everything seemed amazing.
Then 2018 came.
Despite strong revenue, an incredible community, and momentum coming off a powerful winter season, everything started crumbling. My business partner and I grew so far apart that conversations turned hostile. Every decision became a battle. Every discussion ended in gridlock. It became toxic. We could no longer be in the same room with eachother and we definitely couldn't run a business together. Instead of fighting, I decided to give him everything and walk away.
There's this feeling, this visceral, sickening feeling when something you built with your entire soul, something you believed was permanent, something you sacrificed everything for, suddenly feels like it's being torn from your hands. It feels like grief. Like failure. Like the ground disappearing beneath you.
You lose people that you thought were you friends, you lose a lifestyle that you thought was meant for you, you lose who you think you were.
Losing everything back then hollowed me out completely. It forced me to sit in the wreckage and face myself, the parts I'd been running from and look at the truths I didn't want to see.
But slowly, painfully, something started to shift. In that emptiness, in that isolation, in that forced stillness, I began to see things I couldn't see when I was partying. I had time to think about who I actually was, I had time to re-connect with my family, I had time to connect with friends that I had walked away from and this was all separate from what I'd built. I started to realize that maybe the collapse wasn't the end of my story, but the clearing of space for something truer.
And if I'm being honest with you, I'm grateful now. It took time to get here where I'm sitting tonight. 6 years to be exact from the time of Damascus falling, But without that collapse, I never would've found the courage or clarity to step into what came next.
Neo4ic was born from the ashes of something I thought would define me forever.
But I don't want to make this just about me. I want to shift this to you.
If you're reading this and you're in a hard season right now, I need you to hear me:
Life can be brutal. Confusing. Unfair in ways that leave you breathless. And when you're standing in the middle of it, it feels endless. Like it's never going to lift. Like you're never going to feel whole again.
( maybe you've never felt whole )
But heed my words...you will get through this.
You are built for more than what's in front of you right now. There is a purpose resting on your life, even if you can't see the shape of it yet. There is a strength inside you that hasn't even been called forward. The fact that you're still here, still showing up, still trying, says everything about the kind of person you are.
You are meant for something meaningful. You are worthy of love. You are worthy of peace. You are worthy of the life you've been quietly dreaming about when no one's watching.
And if you keep going, if you refuse to let this season write the ending of your story, you will see why you had to walk through this fire. The strength that's forming in you right now is real. The clarity that's coming is real. The future waiting for you is so much bigger than you can imagine from where you're standing.
Please, hold on. Don't give up on yourself. Don't give up on people. You are not finished. You are not broken beyond healing. You are not too far gone to come back from this.
Your story isn't ending. It's transforming. It's preparing you for something you can't see yet but will one day recognize as exactly what you needed.
And one day soon, I promise you, you're going to look back at this exact moment and finally understand why it had to unfold the way it did.
I started this message by reflecting on what I've lived through, the collapse that almost ended me.
But the truth is, this is what I'm grateful for. Not the pain itself, but what it revealed. Not the loss, but what it made space for. I'm grateful for the hard seasons that forced me to become someone capable of carrying what comes next. And if you're in one of those seasons right now, know that it's doing the same for you.
...and finally, I'm grateful for you, as a customer and as a member of the Neo4ic community. Thank you for your support this past year ( and longer than that if you've been here for a while ) None of this matters without you.
With all my heart,
Nate Khouli - Founder / Neo4ic
