Ace’s Story
In mid to late August of 2025, I took the huge step of going to college 5 hours away from home. Not only was this daunting to me because of the fact I was still 17 and being not only so far away from family, while also doing it in another state from them entirely, my mom and dad were moving from the house I had lived 10 years of my life in into a new home — one I had only seen once when touring through places. This new home was in a little city just outside of Front Royal. The first time I saw it was during my very short weekend of fall break ; I was having a rough time at school just a few months in and was ready for at least some sense of normalcy, my parents (my sister had different timings for break than me as the schools ran on different calendars)! My mom went to show me around the house and had planned for me to look around Front Royal with her the next day after I somewhat settled in. This is what happened the next day, although there was a little bit of a roadblock as I had gotten really sick with a bad headache :(. Even so, I had really enjoyed driving through and seeing all the store fronts, and how lively Main Street was and fell in love with the area, it had reminded me of the “old town” nearby where I used to live — Another sense of normalcy, even if it looked slightly different.
A lot happened between that and getting here today working on this company with my mom, I made a few close friends, but ultimately decided it was best for me to take a step back from school for the time being, and so, when I went home for Christmas break I wasn’t going back after. I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to be doing anymore ; I had applied for jobs with hearing nothing back, and I definitely wasn’t ready to start school back up again. My mom told me I was joining her for an event because she signed us both up without telling me and then a few days later we were diving into D.C.. There I’m sure you’ve read how she formed and started planning this LLC, but I wasn’t apart of the equation yet.
Once again she brought me to another event, I was excited for this one though because she had thought up this big plan and was excited to share it with people and hear their feedback. There as she was walking around someone asked about social media and I had offhandedly joked about most likely being the one to do it for her, and I suppose she took that and ran with it. A few days go by and my mom is once again working on getting stuff set up, without break, and says something along the lines of “Hey why don’t you be the Creative Director as well as the social media person” to me, and just like that I agreed and was now a part of Headwaters.
From then on I had a hands on part of this aside being her cheerleader at events I wasn’t even sure I felt I was allowed to be at. I helped find and talk to vendors, I created the website (and am still working to improve it to this day…), took pictures and more. I had a purpose other than sitting around waiting to hear back from people and feeling like I was lost. Now I really believe in this company and am excited to be working on it as well as helping create it along side my mom. Sometimes I get frustrated, working with family does that to you haha, but also because of how others have perceived me working on this ; not everyone has, but a lot of the people we talk to think I’m there because I was being “dragged along” to these places, or just there to be there as I look pretty young, but I know that I’m an important part of what we have growing here.
I’m happy to be a part of this even with those assumptions, not only because I believe in Headwaters, but because I get to do it with my mom, even if we disagree on certain things, I know she’ll have my back through it all ; or she wouldn’t have asked me to be a part of this.
