Komby in 14 Steps: Step 3: I Left My Fears Behind, the fresh start after the pain

After divorce, pain settles in, then silence, then a question that won't let go: do you stay frozen in what broke, or do you actually move towards something else?

The breakup, forced freedom, the solo ring, that's Higher. I Left My Fears Behind, here, carries the fresh start: the moment when you leave the suitcase of fear far enough behind to move on, and when you refuse to let the NO of separation be the last line of your life. I left my fears behind the way you leave a chapter, not because they'd vanished, but because the fighter chose to stop letting them steer.

The trial: starting over when everything just broke

Around 2016, after twelve years and two children, the blade of divorce cut everything: procedures, travel ban, hearings, until the day when "we" no longer existed and you had to invent a "me" worth standing on. I told that breakup elsewhere, and Higher will carry all its weight. What I keep here is what comes after, pain still hot, and the decision to stand up and move.

Fear had concrete faces. That of no longer being a father as before. That, above all, of restarting a trade, an identity, an entire life with the taste of NO still in your mouth. And a very professional fear: if I move geographically, I lose my French Digital CHR clients.

That last one, I didn't let it pin me to the spot. I went to London, I kept my French clients, and I didn't lose: I won my bet. The fear of losing them by changing territory was real; so is the result, they stayed. The fighter was right to move. I even won clients in London.

On France Je Te Quitte, I documented this shift, travel as a remedy, the blog as resignation addressed to a frame too narrow, Pourquoi Francejetequitte.com ?. I Left My Fears Behind is the inner soundtrack of that choice: leave fear to open the door, and prove that geographic departure wasn't betrayal of clients, but a bet won.

When I chose to start over

In 2019, I started leaving French territory to anchor the agency as a British company (before March 2020, when Covid began to change our lives; order matters: I opened in the UK first). The British company already existed one month before creating the French SAS, not the other way round. The agency was a move towards the United Kingdom, with a UK structure already there, then a SAS on the France side, and settling in London, not a French company trying London. Other waves of NO followed (banks, Brexit, COVID) but the root of the departure came earlier: it was in the pain of divorce, and in refusing to give up after.

The question kept coming back before every first step: do I dare move, and will my French clients hold if I'm no longer on the territory? First client alone, first journal post, first plane ticket, first morning serving a client in France from London, restaurant, shop or service sector. Fear makes you re-read the same decision fourteen times. You re-read it fourteen times, then you move forward anyway.

Meanwhile, you have to stay on your feet, because clients count on you, because your children need a father who moves forward, and because the ring doesn't wait. So you set fear behind you, not to lie, but to move forward. And you win the bet: French clients stay, the agency becomes British, territory changed, the fight didn't.

Why this title

I Left My Fears Behind was born on a night when the fresh start was already underway and fear was still trying to pull me back.

I opened my laptop out of a need to express myself through music: translate the lived experience so I could carry on. The track came on its own, without thinking it through, because the emotions had been there for so long, a tempo that pushes forward anyway, a melody that refuses to stay stuck at the bottom of the throat. You don't leave your fears once and for all; you leave them far enough behind to take the first step, then the next.

Composing was putting into words what I couldn't say clearly to anyone: I'm leaving, after this, we'll see. Sharing was extending this fight to the world and affirming that a fresh start takes endurance. Not to mention the haters who lecture you: "You dared leave French territory, you traitor…" Yes, they're still around, those ones. And those internet haters can also be your ex in-laws, your ex-friends who turned on you in no time, the righteous types who think you're a liar in a separation story and that your ex-wife is the victim. Yes, justice is a woman, no doubt about it, anyone who's been through divorce will understand what I mean. Feminism versus masculinism: women file complaints and get heard; men, never mind, they'll manage, it's their role to carry the burden of being a man in modern global society. I refuse that inequality, and one day it will have to change.

Letting it land

The Komby album is a musical journal. I Left My Fears Behind is its third page, the fresh start after pain.

On the journal, I documented other fears: courts, betrayals, exiles. Here, fear is that of starting over after divorce, closing the broken chapter, building without guarantee, and the professional fear of losing French clients by going to London. That last one, I beat it: bet won.

Next on the album (Higher) digs into the breakup itself: freedom to act without a partner's judgement, Komby beginning without knowing it and without naming it. I Left My Fears Behind is the step just after, or just beside: leaving fear far enough behind to open the door.

If you're going through a separation (a home, a life, an identity), know that a fresh start doesn't erase pain. It refuses to let pain have the last word. Enough fears left behind to start over. Enough to keep fighting.

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Alexandre Auger, CEO of Komby

*Step 3/14. Previous: Make It Easy (02) · Next: Higher (04)*