Connie Worrell-Druliner built a business from scratch, raised five children, survived the moment three professionals told her to quit — and kept going anyway. This is her story. And stories like hers, from women everywhere who built something real.
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"I started with a desk, a phone, a prayer, and a 'me.' I was told it couldn't be done. I was told women didn't get loans. I was told to close my doors. Every single time, I suited up and showed up anyway.
Forty-three years later, when I walked into a room and they asked everyone I'd helped to stand up — most of the room rose."
— Connie Worrell-Druliner
She had a three-month-old baby, a failed business, and $500. She started again anyway — from her spare bedroom, selling door-to-door.
She hid in a bathroom the size of a closet while soldiers hunted for her outside. She emerged 91 days later — 26 pounds lighter, and with a decision that would change her life forever.
Pink Pen started with a habit. A note. A color that felt like a choice.
The banker, the CPA, and my attorney all said the same thing. I said goodbye, got in my car, and drove up Mount Bachelor alone.
It was a Tuesday. The numbers weren't catastrophic. They were just enough to make me wonder if I'd been wrong about all of it.
The first banker I approached told me plainly: 'We do not loan to women-owned businesses.' My private reaction was more complicated than anger.
Bill sat me down near the end and said something I didn't want to hear. I remembered it on a New Year's evening, years later, when someone asked me to dinner.
A woman introducing me at a nonprofit event said she wasn't going to read my resume. She was going to ask the room a question instead.
Esther Hatch lived behind a gate with two ponds and a garden full of color. She gave me encyclopedias, research assignments, and the most unusual birthday gift I ever received.
Doing Business with a Pink Pen — Connie's full story, from Petticoat Lane to 43 years in business, told the way she always told it: with warmth, faith, humor, and a pink pen.
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"The banker told me he didn't loan to women-owned businesses. I thanked him, stood up, pushed in my chair, and left. Then I drove west toward Mount Bachelor — literally looking for divine intervention — and found it in a parking lot."
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