Why I stopped waiting

I had a plan, and it was a sensible one.

I co-founded an ecommerce startup called Cartreel. The plan was to build it properly, grow it, and one day exit for enough money to do this the way it deserves to be done. Because I know what it will actually take to change the story of endometriosis in this country. Research programmes cost millions. Shortening surgical waitlists means sustained pressure over years. Finding a cure is the kind of goal you fund seriously or not at all.

So wander was going to wait. It would launch the day I could write the first big cheque myself. That was the responsible version, and I believed in it.

Then, recently, I felt God tell me something simple: don’t wait.

I sat with that for a while, because the plan made sense and this didn’t, at least not on paper. We have no funding. No office. No staff. Starting a charity with nothing, while raising a young family and building a business, is not what a sensible person does.

But the more I sat with it, the more I realised the waiting was its own kind of arrogance. The plan assumed that nothing worthwhile could happen until the money arrived. And that’s just not true.

Awareness is free. Education is free. Handing the microphone to women who have spent a decade being told their pain is normal, that costs nothing but the willingness to listen. One in ten New Zealanders born with a uterus live with this disease. The average wait for a diagnosis here is 9.7 years. Most of those years are spent being disbelieved. You don’t need millions to start changing that. You need a platform, a community, and the stubbornness to keep showing up.

So that’s what wander is, from today.

We’re named for the “wandering womb”, the two-thousand-year-old myth that ancient medicine used to dismiss women’s pain, the root of the word hysteria. Endometriosis is, literally, womb tissue that wanders. We took the name back.

Right now, with what we have, we will:

• Build awareness

  Plain, honest, sourced content about what this disease actually does. No softening, no euphemisms.

• Educate

  The facts most people, and too many professionals, still don’t know.

• Let the stories be told

  Our interview series, On Record, will share women’s experiences whole. Firsthand, unedited, in their own words, and approved by them before anything ships.

And when the funding comes, whether through Cartreel, through this community, or through doors I can’t see yet, everything we’ve built will already be standing: the audience, the trust, the evidence, the momentum. The mission doesn’t change. Awareness first. Then funding. Then research at scale, until this disease is done.

This blog, and our socials, are the journey from day one. No funding, no office, a name, a mission, and 1 in 10 reasons. We’re keeping the receipts, and you’re invited to watch us build it.

If you live with endo, or love someone who does: we believe you, and you’re welcome here.