Paris, 2022 — working abroad while battling severe clinical depression.
I spent my whole childhood getting good at performing. I never stopped to figure out who I was underneath it.
I was an A+ student my whole life. I believed that if I worked hard and got good marks, everything else would follow. For a while, it did.
In 2018, I got into ESSEC Business School and moved to Singapore. But for the first time, marks didn't matter. What mattered was who you are, what you think, what you stand for. I had no idea how to answer any of that.
Clinical depression followed me through Singapore, France and Germany until I quit my job and came back to India. Not with a plan. Just with the need to stop.
That's when I understood what had happened. I had never built an identity outside of achievement. And when achievement stopped being enough, I had nothing left to hold on to.
Why I'm Building This
While I was back in Bangalore, I ran a workshop for children. A 5th standard girl had an anxiety attack in front of me. Terrified of disappointing her parents over her exam marks.
I recognised her immediately. She was me, twenty years ago.
Most parents I've spoken to care deeply about their children. But in the moments that matter most — when a child fails, goes quiet, or acts out — it's hard to know what to say. Not because parents are doing it wrong. But because most of us grew up in homes where those conversations never happened either.
I see where that leads. In friends who are accomplished and successful and still unsure of who they are when you take the achievements away.
The Connect Lab exists to give parents better tools for those moments. Whether it's a bad report card, a power struggle over chores, or a child who has stopped talking — there is a better way to show up. And it can be learned.
Before I build anything, I'm listening. Talking to real parents about what's actually happening at home. Because that's where the real answers are.
— Meghana · Founder · Bangalore