​Every founder knows the rollercoaster. You name it casually with other founders saying, "yeah, it's insane" then laugh and get back on. What almost nobody does is step off long enough to address how devastating that last loop actually was.

​That's the nature of the job. People depend on you, the grind doesn't pause, and there's rarely a moment to sit with what a loss actually costs. The venture that failed, the pivot that ended a dream, the layoff where you let good people go, the co-founder split, the mission that wore you down... Left unaddressed, each one doesn't disappear. It turns into grief you're carrying without realizing it, because you never had time to set it down.

​Unwitnessed, that grief quietly becomes burnout, numbness, and the inability to move forward. It shows up as being snappy with the people you love. Feeling numb where you used to feel fire. Staying busy because you know that if you stop, you'll break.

​If any of this sounds familiar, this afternoon is for you.

​A puʻuhonua is a place of refuge. In the Hawaiian tradition, a person who reached a puʻuhonua wasn't just spared, they were restored and returned to their community whole. Its closing arc is "E puka aku me kāu mau makana," emerge with your gifts: you don't just set something down here, you get back the love and energy the loss was holding.

​What To Expect

​🕊️ Create the space. We open gently and work on your relationship with grief– not as a punishment to get rid of, but as the part of you trying to reconnect you to the love you lost.

​🤝 Process together. Small-group work, entering through love rather than pain. This is not a panel, there's no pitch, and it's not open-mic trauma dumping. These are curated exercises, individual and in small groups, and you process whatever feels right for you.

​🌱 Integrate and emerge. We close by naming your next step, and with "E puka aku me kāu mau makana."

​Here's why this room is more hopeful than heavy: sadness and love arrive together, in the same measure. When you feel the sadness, the love is already present, because sadness is love with nowhere to go. A room of witnessed grief is really a room of love, finally moving again.

​💡Know this before you register:

​You will never be required to share. Everyone is always in choice, and being witnessed can even be received in silence.

​---

​One afternoon won't resolve a lifetime of losses, and we won't pretend otherwise. In business you can't manage what you can't measure. The inner life works differently: you can't work with what you've never named, and this isn't about managing anyway. This is about healing, expressing, witnessing, and love.

​If the only way out is through, what better way to travel than together?

​Your facilitator

​Evan Leong has lived both sides of this room. He's an entrepreneur who has started international businesses, coaches founders, business owners, and executives through Brain Gain Hawaiʻi, leads the STAP mentorship program for elite undergraduates at UH's Shidler College of Business, and has interviewed hundreds of Hawaiʻi leaders as host of the Greater Good Radio podcast. He is also the only Certified IFS Level 3 practitioner in Hawaiʻi, a program assistant for IFS trainings, and certified in Brainspotting and Imago relationship therapy. He knows the weight because he has carried it, and he has spent years training to help others set it down.

​The venue

​The workshop gathers at Kalaulanilawapuni in Kapālama, on land long held by the Queen Liliʻuokalani Trust and now stewarded by Parents And Children Together.

​The Trust called this estate Muʻolaulani, after the Queen's beloved Kapālama home that stood less than a mile away. The song the Queen wrote for her Muʻolaulani opens "He mea nui ke aloha": love is a great thing. This building was home to the Queen Liliʻuokalani Children's Center, whose culture committee's seven years of weekly meetings produced Nānā I Ke Kumu, the foundational text on Hawaiian approaches to grief, ʻohana, and hoʻoponopono.

​Liliʻuokalani herself knew grief few of us will ever carry: she lost her husband months into her reign, then her kingdom, then her freedom. She turned it into music, and into a trust that has cared for Hawai'i's children for more than a century. She emerged with her gifts. We gather on ground dedicated to that example and to carrying on her mission to care for the children of Hawai‘i.

​---

​About Brain Gain Hawaiʻi

​Brain Gain Hawaiʻi is a Hawaiʻi coaching practice working with founders, business owners, and executives (one-on-one and in groups) through the inner-game work of building and leading: the pivot, the exit, the loss, the season where the old life ends before the new one is ready.

​About ThriveHI

​ThriveHI is a Hawaiʻi nonprofit building the state's startup and tech economy, so local people have access to jobs that help them thrive. It runs monthly events, a newsletter, research, and partnerships that support techies and entrepreneurs across the islands, with a focus on bringing kamaʻāina home and creating high-paying, modern jobs for Hawaiʻi's workforce. ThriveHI is fiscally sponsored by the Pacific American Foundation.

​About Builders VC

​Builders VC is a San Francisco-based venture fund backing founders who take on complex, mission-critical problems using technology to modernize legacy systems and reshape essential industries. The firm is run by seasoned operators and investors who go deep in sectors where complexity is the norm.