Meet Libbi Wu

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Libbi Wu. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Libbi below.

Libbi, we are so appreciative of you taking the time to open up about the extremely important, albeit personal, topic of mental health. Can you talk to us about your journey and how you were able to overcome the challenges related to mental issues? For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.

I spent a significant part of my journey working through mental health challenges. Without discovering God’s extraordinary love for me, I would not be where I am today. I hope this encourages those with similar struggles that a way out of the darkness is in reach.

It occurred to me at some point in my young adulthood that I’d been depressed most of my existence. At times, my everyday life felt like a dream. I watched others live and enjoy their day to day while I somehow remained detached from the same experience. The void made its way to the forefront of my mind after high school when I realized that I would soon graduate college, get a job, work a few plus decades, hopefully retire, and then kick the bucket like the rest of humanity. I remember thinking how terrible it was that I had so many years left to live. When I found myself launching my company BleedZone during COVID, building a business from the ground up gave me something to lose myself in for a time. I felt the depression following me like a shadow, but I was momentarily consumed by a vision of what this idea could be. I blinked and a year flew by. Almost without me realizing it, that vision had become a developed product and small business, flourishing in a niche market and needing minimal management.

A few months later, I moved to another state, and for the next two years, I truly did the bare minimum. People would gush over the success I’d achieved and my ingenuity as an entrepreneur. “It’s so amazing to have found your passion so young!” And yet I didn’t understand what was left in life now that I had “made it.” It felt like I’d won the lottery by accident only to have this money making machine spring me into a sort of retirement, eliminating all obligation to continue and exposing that I had no motivation to live outside of survival. The emptiness that followed me all those years caught up to me. Despite having an office space, I told people I mainly worked from home because I preferred it. In actuality, I was simply unable to get out of bed. I carried so much shame that I couldn’t function like everyone else or live happily with the good I did have in my life as if imprisoned by myopic lenses that couldn’t see beyond the bleakness in my soul.

The time freed up from owning a business brought me face to face with unpleasant experiences I’d much rather forget. Every way I turned, I couldn’t seem to escape my troubled childhood, as if I’d fallen into a frozen lake of the past only to have the ice close over behind me. With feeling tempted more and more to end my life, I began therapy just before I moved out of state. My sleep had taken a nosedive with the memories looping in my mind on repeat, yet even in the few hours I could sleep at night, I couldn’t elude the recollections in my dreams. I received a cPTSD diagnosis, which felt like an unasked for injustice when I was so desperately trying to move on.

Last fall, some unexpected deaths hit closer to home than I would have liked, and I felt increasingly fractured with a burning desire to leave it all behind again. I was desperate to escape the pain and disappointment that haunted me as much as the depression had. The same intense grief that propelled me to move to another state did not want to give way, and it felt like what I really desired in life would never come to be. As insecurities continued to intensify in the few close relationships I had, I wondered if I should cut ties with everyone, begin life with a clean slate, and move away yet again where no one knew me.

Through it all, God kept pursuing me. He had become my friend at a young age, but as much as my other relationships were fraught with anxiety and insecurities, my relationship with God was similarly chaotic. In a way, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and dreading when he would reject me too, and yet, his kindness didn’t stop. It was completely perplexing to me.

Some friends who worked in tech for close to a decade chose to quit their jobs and travel for a year due to the burnout. In my desire to get away, I decided to join them for a portion of their travels in Southeast Asia. While I was out of the country trying to run unsuccessfully from the darkness yet again, God in his kindness kept showing me this vision. I’m struggling to keep swimming in the ocean while he patiently waits in a boat beside me. Every so often, I reach out for help, and he saves me, lifting me above the waves. Although he invites me to join him, it doesn’t feel safe to stay as if his boat is a ticking bomb that I know will blow. These leaky boats surround me, and on occasion, I accept their invitations too, only to end up back in the water trying to stay afloat on my own after they inevitably sink. The old life I lived was reflected in that vision: a terrible cycle of desperately trying to make it on the ocean through my own self effort, periodically getting onto God’s boat but feeling this awful dread that it couldn’t last, and consequently running after lesser loves, entering leaky boats, and getting let down. I was attracted to anything that offered to save me by taking my mind off my own life.

In the midst of the grief last fall, a friend prayed over me and saw me entering a season of deeply knowing the Father’s love. So I started to look into the love of God until I was up to my head in study plans, even ones written for fathers on how to love their children, and it still made no sense to me. All I could see was that these writers saw something that I kept missing.

Eventually, I did make my way back to the states but somehow in a worse mental state than when I had left. I had come close to taking my life multiple times in the few years since I began my business. Every time, God intervened, and I felt like I was in limbo, trapped in life even though I wanted it to end.

Last December, as I listened to some teachings a close friend recommended, what Jesus did for me on the cross to free me from the curse of darkness so I could enter the light of God’s love finally traveled the journey from my head to my heart. It’s difficult to explain how my entire perspective so ingrained from past experiences changed profoundly in that moment. It wasn’t like a mathematical proof I had reasoned through and arrived at the conclusion of. Although I knew about God’s love from reading the Bible, even experienced it many times throughout my life, it never seemed to stick as if God’s love was color that the blackness in my soul kept swallowing up. I’m convinced that in that moment, the Holy Spirit supernaturally gave me a glimpse into God’s selfless love for me in the way that only a person’s spirit knows their heart. I believe God wrote his name of love on my heart that day, and I discovered the good news that his boat is dependable. It’s safe, solid, and secure, and I could accept his invitation to receive his love instead of depending on my self effort to carry me through the waves. I finally accepted God’s adoption papers for me and accepted the invitation to enter his boat, his kingdom, and his family.

It’s vastly different from the way I lived before, as if I were sleepwalking but now awake to a whole new world of light and color. Activities used for coping, distraction, and avoidance transformed into activities I could freely enjoy. I thought I was productive under stress and with deadlines, but I didn’t realize that I could run at full speed because of love taking the place of fears and doubts that once held me back. It’s hard to run at full speed when you’re uncertain of the outcome. Will all the effort I put into this produce results? Or will my effort be wasted? Understanding the selfless and steadfast nature of God’s love set me free from the insecurities that weighed me down. I know the storms will come again as they do for us all, but after experiencing this rebirth into someone no longer bound by fear, I have hope that others will find that same anchor of safety in the security of God’s love.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Currently, I run my business part-time and serve in two Christian nonprofits – the Healing Rooms ministries, rooms open for healing prayer, and The Well, a community-focused young adult ministry. I have a heart for those held captive by the darkness that used to consume me, and I’m honored to share the light that came into my life with others.

I first dipped my toes into e-commerce in 2016 when I was reading through the Bible for the first time. A parable I came across inspired me to grow what I had, so I started selling various items around the house before venturing out to import products to sell. After a year in community college, someone prayed and saw me going into business, so after some prayer myself, I decided to take that leap of faith and pivot from the biotech major I had focused on my first year. At the start of 2020, I signed up for business classes, COVID started, and then a few months later, I woke up from a dream knowing inexplicably that God was directing me to turn the product I dreamt of into BleedZone. In high school, I had raced in cross-country mountain biking, and in my journey of finding products to sell, I eventually began selling a few bleed kits for bicycle hydraulic brakes. With the direction from this dream, feedback I’d received in selling this product already, and some technical advice from my dad, I researched and worked to source quality parts to build better bleed kits, launching my own brand and product line. It felt like God, in his perfect timing, planted this seed in me right when many bicycle shops closed their doors due to the pandemic, and the business for DIY brake bleeding kits shot out of the dirt. At BleedZone, our mission is to build the best kits for cyclists to bleed with ease, and our hope is to break the cycle of expensive trips to the bike shop for what can be a straightforward bleed job.

Outside of business and ministry, I bounce around between an assortment of hobbies that are ever changing. My enjoyment of the outdoors paired with my adrenaline junkie nature find their happy place in activities like hiking, rollerblading, and rock climbing. When I get a chance to travel, I love to scuba dive. Skills in recreational nature photography and filming were able to roll into product photography and tutorial videos for my business. It’s been fun picking up the piano and guitar for worship in the last year as well. Ultimately, I love the process of learning, improving, and growing, and I look forward to the adventure I will fall into next.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

An openness for growth, belief in God’s faithfulness, along with generosity have been especially impactful in my journey, and my advice for someone early in their journey is not to be so quick to disqualify yourself.

Once my business started to take off, it was hard for me to accept people calling me an entrepreneur. I never imagined I would go into business. I didn’t consider myself especially creative or financially savvy, and I certainly didn’t have the personality of a salesperson. What I did have was a willingness to learn and grow. I had enough flexibility to incorporate creative ideas even if they didn’t come from me but an employee or a friend, and eventually I did improve in many areas I was weak in before. Skills are qualities you can pick up along the journey, so not having the right skills doesn’t have to cause you to turn away from the vision you have.

Faith was pivotal as well in bringing my business to where it is. A few months into the success of barely being able to meet demand for my product, most of my listings were taken down from Amazon. After freaking out for a hot second, I told God that since this was the business that he led me into, he would have to help. It took two months of wrestling with Amazon before I got a clear answer for why my products were taken down and could then resolve the issue to have my listings reinstated. Rather than accepting defeat, I chose to keep going, and I think that in essence, faith is believing when it’s hard and calling on God’s faithfulness rather than believing in failure.

In a similar vein, I see how having great expectations and preparing for God’s faithfulness plays into generosity. It’s something that I don’t think is emphasized enough. Of course, on a product level, generosity can give you an edge, but I had to have a heart of generosity to give so that God could give the increase. When I started my business in 2020, I poured all four years of profit from selling online into starting it. I invested it all, and without that willingness to give, I’m certain I would not have gotten the same return.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

Writing has been a sanctuary for my soul for many years now. Whether through laments, poetry, or journaling to God, words have kept me company along my difficult journey to wholeness. They have offered an outlet for deep pain and grief and a way for me to capture aspects of complex, overwhelming feelings and experiences.

In 2021, I came across Mark Vroegop’s book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, which gave me a structure to pour out my heart in a series of psalm-like laments during an especially difficult time. The first step is simply reaching out to God in prayer, and then the steps that followed were helpful when before, I had struggled to bring God the deeper feelings.

Poetry has been another avenue that has helped when I’ve felt overwhelmed. At the end of 2020, I started to know God in a way I hadn’t before. To my surprise, he could speak to me clearly and directly, and he challenged me to write him into both my poetry and my story. I wrestled with this poem, writing parts and pieces of it over the course of a month. It started with waking up with images and emotions from the tail end of a dream, then I grappled with a torrent of rage and despair in my soul, and it eventually progressed to God whispering to me that I’m whole in his love. It took another three years before that whisper of wholeness would reach my heart in a path that was far from linear, but God’s belief in me and his kindness were light posts for me in the journey of finding his love. I know that journey only continues, but I get to wake up every morning to the privilege of walking hand in hand with the God who loves me for the rest of my days.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bleedzone.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/liberty2livelikelove
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bleedzonekits
• Other: https://tinyurl.com/inaturalistfavs

Image Credits

Izabel Wu