I was mortified to learn who was.

I reached out to her agent in a burst of premature enthusiasm after reading about her in a biography of Helen Gurley Brown — another woman remarkably ahead of her time.

But Letty kept pulling focus.

Promoted to director of publicity at a major publishing house in 1960 — a time when few women held positions of power, let alone at the age of 21 — Letty was the brains behind campaigns that turned books like Helen’s into bestsellers.

As a publicist myself, I wanted to connect with this ambitious woman, whose marketing genius puts today’s unimaginative PR kits and press rollouts to shame.

Then I kept reading.

Turns out Letty’s brilliance as a young publicist was only the beginning. A few more pages into Helen’s bio revealed that Letty went on to be the co-founding editor of Ms. magazine and a trailblazing feminist whose list of accolades would cannibalize this intro.

You can imagine my embarrassment when I realized she is part of the reason why I am able to own a credit card, sign a lease, and sit here writing to you, dear reader, without a man co-signing.

Lucky for me, Letty said yes to my under-informed interview request. We spoke about being Queens girls, how “having a pissed off approach to life” can turn anger into action, and finding unexpected liberation in losing our mothers young.

Molly O’Connor: First of all, I’m still laughing at the fact that I first discovered you while reading a book about Helen Gurley Brown. I don’t know how much Susie [Letty’s agent] told you, but you completely pulled focus from that book. I kept thinking, Who is this spunky PR girl?! I make my living as a publicist, so your story was particularly resonant before I later learned more about your real legacy. Other Wise is my creative outlet.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin: That’s really quite wonderful, Molly. I read the Cat Pierce interview this morning — really well done.

Molly: Oh, I’m happy to hear that! You inspired me from the jump because—you were, what, 22 when you were promoted to publicity director at Bernard Geis Associates publishing house?

Letty: Actually, I was 21. And then I was director of four departments throughout my twenties, and I was made a vice president of the company at the end of my twenties.

Molly: I want to start there because that was a time when not many women held positions of influence. Did you know you were exceptional?

Letty: I was always a go-getter. I was the kind of kid who sat in the first row and put up my hand — it didn’t matter how many boys had their hands up, or if I was the only girl in the room. And I was valued as a child mostly intellectually, not for my looks. I mean, I looked fine — perfectly passable — but I wasn’t the “Oh my God, what a pretty little girl” type of girl.

So I was very comfortable being out front. And representing my company was so much fun in the ’60s because all of our authors were celebrities. I mean, I had President Harry Truman and King Hussein of Jordan and Jacqueline Susann, who wrote Valley of the Dolls, which was a humongous bestseller. And of course, Helen’s books.

I didn’t think of myself in any special way, except that I was told I was unusual because people kept saying things like, “Oh, I didn’t expect a woman to…”

I was also negotiating contracts for foreign rights and movie rights — that was one of the four departments under my purview — and people would say, “You think very well for a woman,” you know, compliments that were major insults when you come right down to it.

Molly: Very backhanded.

Letty: Exactly.

Molly: I want to press on that because you were clearly recognized for your smarts, but it sounds like there were also people putting you down, giving you the opposite signal that you had to override.

Letty: I was getting sexually harassed on a pretty regular basis. So yes, there was definitely the message of: you’re just a woman, and we’re going to treat you as such — not as an executive, not in the capacity in which we’re now dealing with one another.

I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that there weren’t very many women at my level in publishing, and very often at business meetings I would be the only woman in the room but after a while, once you prove yourself able to do the job, people forget that you’re a unicorn. Know what I mean?

Molly: I do.

Letty: What I was oblivious to in the 1960s was sexism, which today is such a shocking thing for me to hear myself say, because when I first became a feminist — which is an interesting story in itself — I was sort of like, “Wait a second! You mean not all women had the privileges I took for granted? You mean not all women were lucky enough to be given the same opportunities that I was?”

Of course, when I was in my 20s, most women weren’t as lucky. I knew girls whose parents couldn’t afford to send them to college. Or whose parents could afford to send only one child, and that child was their brother.

And I’m 87 now. The world was so different when I was in my twenties:

I couldn’t open The New York Times and just apply for any job I felt qualified for. The classified ads were divided into columns headlined, “Help Wanted Male” and “Help Wanted Female.” A woman would be laughed at or thrown out of the personnel director’s office if she showed up for a job advertised in the men’s column.

When I was single I needed my father to co-sign my lease for an apartment, even though I was earning a good salary. And when I was married, I had to get my husband’s signature on my credit card application. When I was having problems in the delivery room during the birth of my twins, my OB-GYN sent a nurse out to the waiting room to get my husband’s written permission for the doctor to perform a C-Section. My body belonged to my husband — and before that, to my father. Women weren’t persons; we were infantilized.

So things have come a long, long way since I was in my twenties. But what we’ve all discovered over the last eight, twelve years is that not all of our hard-won gains are rock solid. Some can be eroded, some taken away altogether. For instance, Roe v. Wade. We fought so long and hard to control our own bodies and once the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was our right we believed it was settled law. Turns out that wasn’t true. The Court’s ruling was federal law, and laws can be overturned. Which is why it’s so important for the Equal Rights Amendment to be added to the U.S. Constitution. To make our rights permanent. These days, I’m of two minds. I’m cognizant of how far we’ve come, but also of how much ground we’ve lost and how far we still have to go.

Molly: I was hoping we’d get to touch on this. A lot of what I write about with Other Wise is how my subjects come to terms with who they are, even if society expects something else. I’m a Jewish woman, and I have my own feelings of being different or “othered” because of that — and also because of what’s happening in the feminist landscape. So I really wanted to hear what you think, and what you just said is so comforting because it’s true: we’ve regressed.

Letty: I’m Jewish, too, and I think it’s important for us to own both identities with equal force and fealty. In other words, to be an advocate and activist as a feminist in the Jewish world and as a Jew in the feminist world.

Molly: I devoured Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy, by the way. There’s a moment in it where you say: “I’m deathly afraid of losing my mind and having anyone see me as anything less than smart…I ridicule people who care about how they’re viewed by others, but I’m one of those people, indentured to the same fear of imperfection, humiliation, and shame that afflicted my parents.”

It struck me because I think that’s something so many of us grapple with. Do you think that drive helped you accomplish so much because of that fear?

Letty: I think being “Othered” by the majority culture — in our case, as American Jewish women in a predominantly white Christian male-dominated society — absolutely shapes us as human beings, women, and Jews. W.E.B. Du Bois, the great African American historian, philosopher, and abolitionist, coined the phrase “double consciousness,” to describe the challenge facing marginalized people who have to navigate the majority culture while simultaneously viewing themselves through the lens of those who are prejudiced against them or dehumanize them.

As a woman and as a Jew, I was conscious of moving through the world with that dual perception. I was proud of being Jewish but also aware of the stereotypes about Jews that might infect how Christians perceived me. Likewise, in the Jewish world, I was aware of the female stereotypes that might prejudice men and how they perceived me or my capabilities and I worked hard to defy those stereotypes. But I did that as one individual. I never saw the fundamental problem, which was patriarchal Judaism itself. The reality of male supremacy just went right over my head because – as Gloria Steinem said with regard to sexual harassment, “Women didn’t have a name for it because it was just called life.” Or, as the old metaphor would have it, “Fish don’t know they’re in water because they’ve never experienced anything else.

It would take the feminism movement of the 1970s, and the solidarity of sisterhood, the marches, sit-ins, and demonstrations, the consciousness-raising groups, litigation, and lawsuits, to wake me up to systemic discrimination both in mainstream society and in the Jewish community. Before the “women’s liberation movement” spread across America, what women in my generation did know was not to get stuck in the photocopy room with Sam because he’d try to stick his hand down your blouse. Or not to get into the elevator if Jim was the only one in it when the door opened because he’d grab your ass when the door closed. Or not to walk in front of a line construction workers sitting against the wall of an office building on their lunch break unless you were ready to get an earful of comments on your size of your butt or the shape of your legs, or a stream of vulgar suggestions about how you could fulfill their sexual fantasies.

Being harassed, diminished, or discriminated against can beat you down or it can make you a rebel. With the help of my feminist sisters, I finally saw sexism writ large in plain sight and it made me a rebel. With all the progress we’ve made, women are still in a double bind. As a woman, too, the better you are at something, the more threatening you are. But if you’re not good enough, they can say, “See? You can’t trust this job to a woman.”

So what do you do?

You’re between a rock and a hard place on every level, and it either gives you a carapace — you know, a shell to deflect the darts — or it makes you pissed-off enough to convert your anger into action and the will to repair the broken parts of our world.

Molly: You were a founding editor of Ms. magazine and helped redefine what was possible for women. What did feminism make possible for you — for Letty Cottin Pogrebin the person, not the public figure?

Letty: I came to feminism because my first book, How to Make It in a Man’s World—which was written when it truly was a man’s world—was a combination memoir of my career as a woman executive in the book publishing business, with lots of spicy stories about my celebrity authors, as a well as a “you can do it, too” guide to help women succeed without typing – meaning without being limited to secretarial jobs and the like.

When I was going over the galleys with my editor in 1969—my book came out in 1970—she said, “You’re probably going to be attacked by Women’s Lib.”

I said, “What’s Women’s Lib?”

At that point, I was vice president of my publishing company,making a good salary “for a woman,” and I also had a great husband and three small children, and our combined incomes made child care affordable which our lives workable so I was completely oblivious to this new social phenomenon called “The Women’s Liberation Movement,” that was spreading around the country without my having noticed.

Molly: Right. And there was no social media. It’s not like information was accessible on your phone.

Letty: Exactly. And my editor knew all about the movement and wanted to be ready to debate feminist radicals who might attack me for writing a book that ignored the lives of millions of women who didn’t have my opportunities, privilege, or good fortune. They were right but I didn’t know that then. Anyway, so I told my husband what she’d said and that Doubleday was going to send me on this book tour to twenty-two cities and I’m probably going to be pitted against Women’s Libbers, so I have to understand what they stand for, so she’d sent me a lot of reading material about what these radicals want and how they want to change the culture. And I told him I wanted him to read this stuff, and then we could discuss it, and he could attack me and I could practice rebutting their arguments. By the way, my husband was a Harvard trained lawyer so he knew how to argue.

So together we plowed through these radical feminist manifestos and position papers —some of them mimeographed on yellow foolscap paper that must have been cranked out in women’s garages, others printed in “little magazines,” and movement periodicals like, “Off Our Backs,” and they had titles like The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” “The Politics of Housework,” “Welfare Is a Woman’s Issue.” And suddenly I was reading things that absolutely blew my mind.

And my husband, the Harvard trained litigator, said he couldn’t argue with any of it. They had justice on their side.

Letty: Right. So my husband and I were reading all those papers together. He was a trained thinker—a logical thinker, a critical thinker. He finally said, “I can’t argue with any of these position papers.”

And I said, “Neither can I.”

Then I sat quietly for a moment. “By the way,” I said, “how come we both come home from work, you read the newspaper, and I start dinner?”

That began our informal negotiations to equalize our marriage.

So yes, feminism illuminated many things for me and its principles became a deeply personal commitment for me. And my darling husband understood that and he was with me on the journal to equality every step of the way. He was an amazing man with the most wonderful disposition. He was a happy man. And he wanted me to be happy. He adjusted in so many ways. There were things he was willing to do that he frankly did terribly, so I didn’t insist we divide every task in our lives equally. We just settled into doing what each of us did well. And the things neither of us did well or liked to do —we shared.So you can imagine what a seismic effect feminism had on our relationship and the way we raised our children..

It profoundly affected our marriage. We embarked on our intense study of feminist reading matters in the early months of 1970. We’d only been married for seven years. He died in March 2024, three months after we celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary.

Molly: I’m going to keep it to two more questions. One is something I ask every Other Wise guest, so I’ll save that for last.

The other is a bit more personal—and selfish.

I know you lost your mother when you were 15. Granted, I wasn’t as young as you were, I was 28. I felt like a version of my identity—who I knew myself to be when my mother was still here—died with her.

I’m curious whether you experienced a similar shift. Did losing your mother change who you thought you were going to become?

Letty: Her death affected me like an earthquake. It absolutely unmoored me.

Suddenly, I was the only person among my friends who didn’t have a mother.

And not only that, people treated me weirdly. They don’t know what to say to a child who’s lost a mother. They don’t know how to treat you. They avoid you as if your tragedy might be contagious.

My father loved me but he didn’t know how to parent me. A relative who knew my father well – and was a professional high school educator –decided I would probably do better if I went to college rather than live with my dad and have to depend on his unattentive attention and inexperience caring for a teenage girl. This relative figured out a way for me to double up my course work in junior year, take two courses in summer school, and graduate in August and go straight to college. I applied to Brandeis University and entered freshman year at age 16. That sounds young but when you lose your mother, you mature pretty fast. The answer to your question is that if my mother had lived, I would have gone to Queens College.

Since you’re a Queens girl, you know what that means.

Molly: Ha! Yeah.

Letty: Queens College has wonderful professors and I had friends who got a terrific education there, but Brandeis was the right place for me.

I was deeply curious about the world. I wanted to get out of Queens and start fresh in a new place. My mom would never have let me go away to college. She was very attached to me and I to her. She was an immigrant woman from a shtetl in Hungary. She was afraid of antisemitism and fascism, and anything that presented a physical threat. The year after my bat mitzvah, I asked my parents if we could go to Europe on vacation?”

My mother said, “Why would you want to go there? They killed us.”

Instead of wanting to start a new life, I would have stayed in Queens and followed my mother’s path to domesticity and timidity. Because I loved her very much, and she loved me very much. We were deeply entwined.

Quite frankly, I’m a physical wimp because my mother was always warning me about danger, all the things that could hurt me.

Molly: I had a very similar realization. My mother’s anxieties—and her mother’s anxieties—were passed down to me. It’s a horrible thing to admit, but part of me is grateful—or maybe I should say I can see the silver lining—in that after she was gone, I was finally able to confront anxieties that weren’t really my own. They might have kept me playing small.

Letty: I agree. It’s a tragic irony but at some point in my twenties, I realized that losing my mother freed me to live a much larger life than she did or I seemed destined to.

It was horrible for her to die at 54 years old, but in hindsight I see that her death was liberating for me at 15.

Molly: Last question. At 87 years old, what feels most important to tell the next generation of women who are still trying to figure out who they are?

Letty: Don’t wait until you’re 80 to realize that you’re the star of your own movie and only a supporting player in everyone else’s.

To spend your life caring about, comparing yourself to, trying to measure up to, or thinking, Oh my God, that person wasn’t nice to me—to give a shit about so many people’s opinions—most of those people were hardly ever thinking about you.

You waste a lot of your life that way.

I think I figured that out when I was around 60. But a lot of my friends have said they didn’t really figure it out until they were 80.

Because suddenly they thought, What was that all for? Why did I waste so much energy on any of that?

Other people might think about you once a day—or once a week —and meanwhile, you’re running your life as if you’re being watched by them and judged by them and they might think you’re not good enough.

Molly: It’s exhausting.

Letty: It is so exhausting. It’s insane.

That’s what I would tell people.

I know it’s hard for girls especially,to buck the crowd and be true to themselves. But conformists don’t make history and obedient women don’t change the world. A rebel, ideally one with a cause to fight for, may not make history but she’s sure to make a life of authenticity and free up her energy to love well and be of use in the world.

Subscribe to Letty’s Newsletty Substack here.

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Sprinkle in a pandemic and the wreckage of a breakup, I wasn’t sure I could be found.

Luckily, mushrooms found me. Psychedelics. Psilocybin. You know, the kind endorsed by reformed corporate types and for their ability to change your mind, strip away the ego, and reveal the unadulterated self.

After some Googling and stealth Signal texts, I was connected with a woman who could help, deep in the woods of Woodstock.

I met her at her home, a cavernous place perched on a remote hill where she generously hosted others like me for group and solo retreats, so I was surprised to see other people – a handsome couple – when I arrived for my one-on-one.

We exchanged pleasantries, and I remember admiring their grounded energy, hoping I would emerge from my trip a little more rooted in my own.

They made themselves scarce when it was time for my medicine…

It felt like hours had passed while I waited for the sludgy, lemon-tekked concoction to kick in, roaming through each room of the house until my roaming devolved into pacing, then panic, when nothing happened after what I deemed waiting long enough.

I asked for more and ignored the flicker of hesitance that flashed across my guide’s face, gulping back what I’m quite certain amounted to a hero’s dose—how fitting for a woman looking to retrieve her cape.

Time soon melted into the fireplace I’d sprawled out in front of, but I knew we were (finally) getting somewhere when the flames started speaking to me; hissing and crackling with secrets of the Universe!

Now, I love a good tea sesh — especially ones as piping hot and free from the limits of words as this one was. But I had shit to sort out with my dead mom. Questions I had to ask.

Where did she go when she left me?

When she left us, her three kids?

Who am I without her?

Here’s what the fire told me:

1. God – universe, spirit, whatever you call it – is the divine feminine, and we are all inherently feminine. Men too, though they're taught to reject that part of themselves. The divine becomes accessible only when it's embraced, cherished, respected, and revered.

2. The singular experience of our mothers is a mirage. The mother that I knew in her earthly, corporeal form — whose flesh I did not touch, hold enough — was but one expression of the greater Mother Source we are all born from. Her hair, her laugh, her very name existed to meet the limits of my human perception so that I could recognize, and honor, the divine among us.

   All of our mothers are an incarnation of some sort of cosmic collective: generations of mothers and women who came before us, including ancient evolutions of Mother Earth.

3. *Mothering is not exclusive to those who give birth. We give birth to kindness, laughter, connection, and courage simply by sharing our light, our art, our God-connect. To create is, by definition, to bring something into existence; to give life.

*This was apparently a deep-rooted anxiety I carried as a woman with no intention of having children, trying to reconcile her worth in a world that expects the female body to procreate.

Trippy as fuck, I know but, I was fucking tripping.

That night I finally understood what they mean by “we’re all connected,” because we are all but fleshy shards of some spectacular splintering of whatever “Source” is.

(Although she’s unmistakably feminine.)

But the thought of my mother being reduced to mere hallucination was too much to bear, and tore through my already tattered heart as if she died all over again.

I cry-heaved so hard my body was covered in mucus; mounds of snot and spit that gave way to a bizarre birthing scene I could only interpret as something in me being born because my mother died.

I’m still not sure what to make of my mushroom revelations because, though I do not doubt the truth of my psychedelic download, I also do not doubt the truth of my mother’s – of our mother’s – stunning singularity.

She was real.

There was no one like her.

And there never will be again.

I know because I heard it straight from the Source. The Mother Source.

One time in college, a professor knew her PowerPoint had been scrambled because of my face: “Your face tells me these slides are out of sync,” she announced to the class, her back to the screen said slides were projecting onto.

I’ve come to embrace my animated face, with brows that still furrow despite regular Botox.

So while the world is enamored with the Gen Z pout — four years after coined "dissociative pout" to describe the blank, detached stare that's since been pegged to an entire generation — I set out to capture the emotions that captivated me as a woman who grew up with glossy mags and models who grimaced to tell a story.

Here's what five Gen Zers' anti-pouts (and one thumb) had to say about life as the internet’s generation — without any words.

How do you feel about AI in the classroom?

About starting a family?

About student loans?

About being called the “sexless generation”?

About meeting people IRL?

About dating, on and off the apps?

About AI replacing jobs?

The following were too good not to share.

I can’t remember what questions these expressions were in response to, but I love the range of emotion. Funnily enough, the only time I got a blank stare was when I asked if they knew about the Gen Z pout.

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What made 1998’s Practical Magic so good was the absence of bad Tinder jokes and big-budget special effects: no floating objects, glowing body parts, or Marvel-style fight scenes that force the viewer into alternate realities.

The old world of Sally and Gillian was animated by nature (roses that grew in the garden overnight), the invisible bond between women and sisters (belladonna, anyone?), and the innate inner knowing every woman possesses. “There’s a little witch in all of us,” Aunt Jet coos to the ragtag coven assembled in her kitchen toward the film’s end.

“Throw spilled salt over your left shoulder, keep rosemary by your garden gate, plant lavender for luck…”

These were the spellbinding words Sally says right before the credits roll. Though ordinary at first blush, what made them feel charged with power was their existence in our world: their tangibility, their accessibility, and the way they made the possibility of magic in women’s own lives feel real.

In PM 2, the teaser shows books ablaze with Harry Potter–like special effects and the scars from our beloved sisters’ blood oath illuminated when activated — an insult to the viewer’s imagination, which needed no visual enhancement to understand the life force pulsing between Sally and Gillian.

It was the invisible moments of energy exchanged – between lovers, between sisters, between women in a circle with their Dustbusters and kitchen brooms – that made this movie magic.

We saw ourselves in these women through the things we cannot see but intuitively know.

Yes, Sally may breathe candles to life and Gillian’s body may be a vessel for dead former lovers in round one, but it was just the right amount of movie magic that felt more parlor trick than CGI spectacle, more wink than cinematic flex.

I won’t even get into the disappointment of the casting.

Well, maybe I will a little.

The decision not to cast the original daughters feels like a betrayal of the very sisterhood the story is propped up on — a sentiment subtly echoed by actor Evan Rachel Wood, who commented, “...I would have happily rejoined my sisters,” in response to the outcry from fans.

So what if they’ve grown up in the last 30 years? Are we supposed to believe Nicky and Sandy stayed as frozen as their faces? (No shade. I can’t wait for my first facelift!)

With Sandra Bullock’s hard launch on Instagram seemingly for the sole purpose of promoting this movie (her debut post teased midnight margaritas), it’s hard not to suspect Joey King was a metrics hire, with 17 million followers to Wood’s fewer than 900,000 on her private account.

In under four minutes between the two trailers combined, the world that felt familiar and possible collapsed into something foreign and pandering. Sure, there are midnight margaritas and sweeping shots of the Owens sisters’ house, but the real magic of Practical Magic was the faith in women to believe in the things we cannot see.

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That relationship died along with any neutral notions about having a child.

But I’ve never heard the tick of my biological clock, dreamt up baby names, or pictured a partner plus little one in my future.

At 37, though, I question whether this supposed reproductive wiring has been rationalized away by circumstance and the general state of life in America growing inhospitable to anything other than data centers.

That there’s no man in my life doesn’t even factor into the equation.

Over pints of ice cream, my sister and I regularly wonder aloud how anyone could have a kid with everything that’s happening: AI replacing people, climate change killing the planet, a pedophilic fascist who’s regularly described as 50 shades of orange.

Speaking of our Cheeto-coated president, I can’t help but notice that for me and a certain cohort of millennial women, the window of our reproductive years all but slams shut around the time he is forced out leaves office.

Will I want a baby if the world were to resume spinning at a manageable pace? Would it even be physically possible?

And then it hit me.

Maybe I didn’t rationalize away my now-muted maternal instincts.

Maybe I was robbed.

I guess I’ll never know for sure, but a part of me suspects I’d do the baby thing if pumpkins weren’t in power and the matriarchy resumed its rightful order.

For now, I’m happy to ponder over pints with my sister — and that I know I’ll always want.

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Like so many of my best subjects, Michael Klokouzas came to me by way of my sister. “Bangs are controlled drama” declared the video she shared — a missive I revisit whenever I question my commitment to a fringe.

Michael posts daily “hair truths” dressed in getups even New Yorkers pause to appreciate, rain or shine, and with or without hair. (He regularly rotates through wigs of every length, cut and color, and once documented shaving his head.)

What drew me to Michael, beyond his wry humor and addictive musings, is the maximalist confidence oozing from this soft-spoken man.

I witnessed this ease of self-possession when I met up with him in his adopted New York City, watching him waltz through Bergdorf Goodman in a long blond wig and bright blue dress on our way to Café Ginori.

Heads turned – some confused, some amused – but all entranced by Michael’s undeniable star presence.

Over bubbly drinks, I learned that Michael grew in the mountains of Greece, where he was expected to take over his father’s farm and, in his words, “cried every day” wondering what would become of him.

If you really listen, Michael’s message is not about hair truths at all. It’s about the courage to find your own truth and live it without apology.

Molly: So, Michael — you’re from Greece. Tell us how you ended up in New York.

Michael: I worked for years at a salon in Athens, and over time we expanded into multiple locations. Eventually, we opened a salon in New York, and I was given the opportunity to come here with my boss, who I had worked with for nearly 20 years. He returned to Greece after about a year, but I stayed.

Molly: Did you grow up in Athens?

Michael: No, I grew up in the mountains.

Molly: You grew up in the mountains?! What was that like?

Michael: The mountains are beautiful. Where I’m from is a very famous area because it’s close to Athens. I grew up there in a very traditional household. I only expressed the part of myself you see now in my bedroom.

Molly: Was it not encouraged to be expressive in the way you wanted to be?

Michael: Definitely not. To this day, my parents and I have an okay relationship, but growing up was hard. My father worked on farms and lived a very traditional life, and because I was the only boy — I have two sisters — there was this expectation that I would follow that path and eventually take everything over.

Molly: Was it hard growing up and knowing you didn’t want to take over your father’s farm life?

Michael: I would cry every day. I didn’t know what would happen to me.

Molly: When did you feel brave enough to be more the Michael you wanted to be?

Michael: Before I finished school, in a very small town, my parents told me, “Michael, you have to move to Athens.” Because all the neighbors start talking, like, “What is this?” questioning what I was up to.

My parents kept saying, “You have to go.”

Molly: They were looking out for you.

Michael: Looking back, yes, I understand they were trying to protect me. I’ve forgiven them. We didn’t always have the best relationship, but now if I call them, we’re good with each other. We talk, we check in, we ask, ‘How are you?’ and little by little I try to share more details about my life and what I’m up to.

I also started meditating seriously three years ago, connecting to my energy and tending to my inner child. That’s why I’ve been able to become what I love.

For many years in Athens I wouldn’t dare dress like this.

Molly: Were you afraid?

Michael: Yeah. If you looked different in Athens — especially when I was younger — it felt dangerous. Not everywhere in Greece, but there was still a lot of judgment, and you felt it walking through the streets. It’s much better now than it was back then. The internet helped. Seeing influencers and other people expressing themselves publicly helped.

But for many years, I completely locked my true self away.

I don’t feel that way anymore. I am what I am. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t.

Molly: When did you discover hair as a calling?

Michael: From the time I was a little boy.

Molly: Did you do your sisters’ hair?

Michael: Not really. My mother didn’t encourage it. My parents didn’t want me to be a hairstylist. So I learned hairstyling by myself. I never said anything to them.

But with my cousins? I did their hair all the time!

Molly: And you call yourself a hair artist, which I love. What does that mean to you?

Michael: I love hair because it can completely transform a person. If you saw me without hair, I’d look like a totally different version of myself. Hair gives people freedom of identity; freedom to express who they are in that moment.

Maybe today you see me in this dress with this hair, and tomorrow I’ll look completely different. Even if I take everything away, I’ll still add some little detail, some small expression of myself. That’s what I love about hair: it’s always changing, just like fashion.

One day you’re wearing a skirt, one day you’re wearing pants. Hair is the same. One day long, one day dark, one day dramatic. And now wigs have become such amazing tools for self-expression because the quality is so much better than it used to be. Anybody can wear wigs now and make them look real. They’ve become accessories — another way to play with identity and creativity.

Molly: You and Elena Sendona [Michael’s best friend] were telling me about #BorrowedFromTheGirls. Talk to me about that.

Michael: So #BorrowedFromTheGirls means boys can wear whatever they want. Girls can wear whatever they want.

Just because a man wears a dress or borrows something traditionally feminine doesn’t mean he has to fit into some label people put on him. You can still be a man and express yourself however you want.

That’s why I get frustrated when major fashion brands still separate everything into men’s departments and women’s departments. Why does it have to be divided like that? Clothing should just be clothing. I made a video about this—and we’re excited to be taking #BorrowedFromTheGirls in new directions soon.

Molly: How did coming to New York help unlock the part of you you locked away all those years ago?

Michael: Ten years ago I was a totally different person.

But when I came here, I felt a shift.

I remember going to a bank one day and noticing how different people looked compared to Greece. Back home, especially in more traditional spaces, everyone felt very conservative. But here, one person had incredible fashion and long nails, another guy had long hair and lipstick. Everyone just seemed free to be themselves.

And little by little, it gave me permission to do the same.

Molly: You saw yourself in New Yorkers.

Michael: Yes. People wear whatever they want and nobody says a thing.

Molly: When did you get the idea to start your account?

Michael: My best friend Elena was always telling me, ‘Michael, you need to start posting. Start an Instagram. Show people who you are.’

But I was hesitant. I would open an account, post a few things, then delete everything and disappear again. I probably started and stopped four different times.

Molly: Were you nervous?

Michael: Very nervous. I kept thinking, ‘What am I even supposed to say? What kind of content do I want to make?’ I didn’t connect to the typical hairstylist content — the before-and-afters, the tutorials, the perfect waves. It’s beautiful, of course, but it didn’t feel like me.

I wanted to show my real world. My personality. My humor. Fashion. The way I move through the city. Something more personal and expressive.

But at the same time, I was scared people would stop taking me seriously as a hairstylist. Especially men. I worried they’d look at my account and think, ‘Oh, he’s not really a hairstylist anymore. Now he’s just doing fashion or performance.’

Molly: You have haters?

Michael: Oh yeah. Especially from Greece, and mainly because people like to put you in a box. If I start talking about fashion or showing more of myself, suddenly people think I can’t also be a serious hairstylist.

But now? I’m here. This is my way. This is who I am.

Molly: When you’re with clients, are you also dressed like this? Wearing wigs and fabulous outfits?

Michael: Not every day. If I have a long day, I can’t wear my wigs.

I love big wigs, but they’re not comfortable — you have to shampoo them, take care of them, and I do everything by myself.

Maybe in the future I can be like this every day. That’s my dream.

Molly: If you had advice to give either to a younger Michael or to anyone struggling to be their most authentic self, what would you say?

Michael: We need mentors. We need people to tell us that we’re safe to be who we are every day.

That’s one of the reasons New York changed my life. I feel safe here.

I’m going back to Greece soon and I want to dress like this every day, but it’s not always easy walking through Athens looking this way. I will probably need to take a taxi or Uber instead of public transportation.

But in New York, I don’t feel that fear.

Of course some people look at me and say, “Oh my God,” or whatever. But I’ve been here for 10 years and am more confident than ever. I buy clothes from the women’s section. I’m doing my videos in the street.

Even at nighttime.

You don’t need to love it. I do.

Connect with Michael here 🖤

I couldn’t not look at him. At 6’3’’ with golden red hair and a physique that seems impervious to self-doubt, Matt Westbrook all but demands to be seen.

Yet in getting to know the man I was both drawn to and intimidated by, I learned that he was once afraid of being perceived.

He grew up in a small town in rural Illinois—a population of 500—where it wasn’t uncommon to see Confederate flags rigged to the backs of neighbors’ pickup trucks.

It was not safe to stand out, let alone as a gay man. So Matt learned how to hide.

Taught that “academic success equaled life success,” he earned his master’s in biology before becoming disillusioned with a job that meant helping the state maximize pollution within EPA guidelines, for a salary insulting to anyone living in the 21st century.

Cut to a stint in corporate sales, Matt outperformed his peers and quickly rose through the ranks, but still felt misaligned.

Read on for my conversation with the multifaceted scientist-turned-software salesman-turned coach for LGBTQIA+ executive leaders, who had to confront his own reflection to hear his calling: reflecting others back to their true selves.

MOLLY: Okay, Matt – how do you describe your job, your role, and what you do? I like to anchor it where we are now, and then we can walk back.

MATT: I was just on a call this morning with a group of coaches. We’re all in a program around “how do we love the world.” It’s led by a woman who’s been a coach and coach trainer for a long time.

There are five of us in the cohort, and today we each shared our projects; what we’re creating as a result of that question. I thought I was building a coaching product, but what I realized while talking was that it’s more of a coaching ethos.

The way I like to describe what I do is: it’s a metacognitive conversation — thinking about thinking.

Someone (my client) is sharing something with me, and my job is to reflect it back in a way that they actually hear it. So they generate awareness about their own thought processes. That shows up in things like mindset:

What are your beliefs about money? About relationships? About anything, really.

So what do I do? I support people in their thinking.

MOLLY: It almost feels like you’re supporting people in how they perceive themselves and show up in the world. Whether that’s at work, in relationships…

And check me if I’m wrong, but in the session we did together, you were such a strong mirror. Like, “this is how I see you seeing yourself.” Does that feel accurate?

MATT: Yeah, absolutely. In my training, my mentor Jodi Larson says our job is to be a reflective surface. A mirror.

And that requires making sure we have our own stuff handled before we show up for a client.

MOLLY: I find this so fascinating, especially because you’ve shared that it took you a long time to feel comfortable being perceived. And now you’ve created a space where you’re seeing other people.

I want to go back to that earlier version of you, where you described being hyper-aware of micro-movements, expressions, how people were being perceived as much as perceiving you… almost studying them to figure out how to fit in.

Tell me about where you grew up, and maybe why that was hard.

MATT: I grew up in Illinois. When I first moved to New York, I told people I was from Chicago—it just felt easier. Like, I’m a city person, I know how things work.

But really, I’m from Oglesby, Illinois. About 500 people. Cornfields. Soybeans. Kids driving pickup trucks with Confederate flags.

Illinois gets perceived as blue because of Chicago, but where I grew up was very conservative.

MOLLY: What was that like?

MATT: It was… good, in a lot of ways. Very Americana. Root beer stands, canoeing down the Illinois River, small-town life.

But once I hit puberty, everything changed. I’m a gay man who didn’t feel safe being myself in that environment. It was existentially threatening to be myself.

MOLLY: When did you first realize it wasn’t safe?

MATT: I wish there was one clear moment.

One memory that comes to mind is painting my nails with a friend when I was maybe 10. It was fun—but when I got home, I knew something wasn’t okay. I was frantically trying to find nail polish remover.

Both of my parents are very conservative. Fox News was always on, and kids are sponges, so I was absorbing all of it. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly…

So there wasn’t one defining moment. It was more that, over time, as I realized I was different, I also realized it didn’t feel safe to be that way.

MOLLY: I imagine that builds and eventually leads to, I need to get out of here. Did you always have your eye on New York?

MATT: Not consciously. But I did internalize this belief: academic success equals life success. My parents didn’t go to college, but that value was deeply instilled in me.

I think some part of me knew academics could be my way out.

I ended up in Kentucky first—grad school at the University of Cincinnati—and then moved to Lexington with my first long-term boyfriend.

MOLLY: Let’s talk about your academic path. Your background is in science, right?

MATT: Yeah, I have a master’s in biology. I was a big nerd — won my high school science award. The prize was a Carl Sagan book.

I studied climate change in the Canadian Rockies, looking at butterfly populations and how temperature and extreme weather affect them. It was science for the sake of science.

And then two things happened:

First, I realized I was in academics to prove something, not because I loved it enough to dedicate my life to it. I didn’t want a PhD. I didn’t want to write grants forever.

Second, I got a job as an environmental scientist in Kentucky. I was making $35,000 with a master’s degree—and my job was basically figuring out how the state could pollute as much as possible without breaking EPA guidelines.

I went to school to have purposeful, mission-driven work, and that wasn’t really available to me in the industry.

MOLLY: I relate so much to that performance loop—getting gold stars, validation. Was there a part of you – separate from your sexuality – that you kind of… put on ice? Like something more instinctive or creative that didn’t fit the “this is how you succeed” path?

MATT: I think so. Creativity, especially.

I played piano growing up. Not well anymore, but I was good at it then. And I think I stopped because it started to feel like that same pressure loop.

And yeah, I think there was creativity there that I just didn’t explore. Because it wasn’t how you got financial success. It wasn’t how you got academic success. Being in the arts just… wasn’t a viable path.

So it’s not even that I said no to it. I don’t think I ever gave myself permission to fully go there.

I did musicals in high school — Evita, South Pacific, Grease. Ensemble, but still!

Now I’m like, I’d love to take an acting class.

MOLLY: Isn’t that wild?

I feel like something clicks in your 30s where you’re like, wait… I want to go back to that earlier version of me—before everything got filtered through “what’s practical” or “what makes money.”

I clocked you as creative, by the way. I was like—there’s something there he didn’t fully follow.

So how did you get from biology to coaching?

MATT: After realizing purpose-driven work wasn’t paying the bills, I swung the other way: corporate America. Software sales.

I got really good at it—top of the pack, making multiple six figures, working less than 40 hours a week. Golden handcuffs.

But something was missing.

Then the post-COVID layoffs hit, and I was part of them. And honestly—thank God. I didn’t want my boss’s job. I didn’t want that life.

I went to Mexico for a month. Did a lot of soul searching. And realized I wanted both: meaningful work and financial security. Before that, I thought it had to be one or the other.

MOLLY: What does purpose look like for you now?

MATT: Supporting people in authentic self-expression.

We all build armor growing up to fit in. But that armor creates belonging without true belonging, because it’s not actually us.

So the work is: how do you choose outside of those automatic patterns? How do you become self-authored?

MOLLY: I want to touch on something you said before—that this path might have surprised your past self. Was there resistance to this kind of work?

MATT: Absolutely. I had a strong skepticism.

I grew up Roman Catholic and rejected all of it. I like to say I threw the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater.

So I leaned hard into science—what’s measurable, provable. Coaching felt… questionable at first. Even like a punchline.

But I’ve done a lot of work to make sure what I do is grounded, ethical, and responsible. That was important to me.

MOLLY: It sounds like you’re also carving out a niche, working with LGBTQ leaders?

MATT: Yeah. Growing up gay in the ’80s and ’90s, that identity itself was a punchline.

It didn’t feel safe to be that way. So you develop coping strategies—ways of existing in a world that isn’t built for you.

And yeah, the systems we’re in still largely center straight, white men. So of course that experience shapes the work I do now—supporting people, especially minority leaders, who’ve had to build their own strategies to navigate environments like that.

MOLLY: I have to ask this—you almost demand being seen: 6’3”, red hair, carry yourself beautifully.

When I first saw you, I was a little intimidated.

And now, getting to know you, I feel like I understand it more. There’s maybe a bit of armor there, even if you’ve worked to soften it.

How do you think people perceive you?

MATT: All I wanted growing up was to blend in—to not have attention on me.

But I’ve got bright red hair. People notice it, comment on it. And as a shy kid, that was hard. So my instinct was always: fade into the background, don’t be perceived.

But I can’t really not be perceived.

There’s a bit of irony in that.

Because now I know I do have an effect when I walk into a room—my height, my presence, my energy. People notice. I’ve been told I’m charismatic, which I’ve had a complicated relationship with—especially coming from sales, where it can read as performative.

But I think about it differently now. Charisma, to me, is just warmth plus competence.

And yeah—I’ve learned not to hold that back. If I’m dimming my presence, that has an impact too.

So I try to put down the fear of how I’m being perceived, and just show up fully.

MOLLY: Have you embraced that now?

MATT: Yeah. I’ve realized if I’m holding back my warmth, my curiosity, my presence—what impact does that have?

So I choose not to throttle it.

MOLLY: My final question: what advice would you give to someone who feels “other” or different?

MATT: It’s about showing yourself that you can be fully self-expressed in those environments—and that’s a practice.

I think of it like yoga or meditation. It’s a being practice. The automatic responses—the survival patterns, the coping strategies—they’re still going to come up.

But the more you practice putting them down, the more access you get to who you actually are.

Connect with Matt here 🪐

A woman with a whip (or “crop,” I later learned), clad in leather and chains, may not conjure cozy, cuddly feelings.

But that was unmistakably what I felt upon meeting Kim Pham, or Kim of the Internet, as she goes by on social media.

The BDSM educator, writer, and co-founder of the “proud and loud” Asian food brand Omsom — now lining the shelves of Target and Whole Foods — welcomed me into her Brooklyn apartment with a warmth I’ve returned to repeatedly as an antidote to the rainy days that have followed since we spoke.

Cutting through the perceived coldness of black leather, which she wore as comfortably as one might shuffle around their home in slippers, Kim made me feel safe and at ease.

We curled up on her couch as if I wasn’t a complete stranger, where we talked about the burden and blessing of being different, radical self-love as her unwavering north star, and how welcoming friction into her personal and professional life is a price worth paying if it means living authentically.

As I looked at Kim — listening to her speak with a voice like butter — I was bemused by her distinctly adult way of reminding us what we were taught as children: don’t judge a book by its cover.

Read on for my deliciously candid conversation with Kim of the Internet on food as reclamation of cultural narrative, BDSM as a framework for living, and why the most important relationship you have is with yourself.

MOLLY: You’re so warm and personable, and I imagine people wouldn’t necessarily expect that just by looking at you. There must be a lot of assumptions. I want to go back to your VC era, when you were in that startup grind so many millennials got swallowed by.

Before you merged your full, authentic self into building something bold and loud—what did success look like to you then?

KIM: I might even go a little further back, because I think it’ll give you better context.

MOLLY: Please.

KIM: So—Vietnamese American, daughter of refugees. But I was always kind of a weirdo. My parents were weirdos, but I was especially a weirdo.

I grew up in a town that was 98% white, outside of Boston. First in my family to go through the American school system. So in a lot of ways, I was an outsider—and the internet became this refuge for me.

At the time, startups and tech weren’t what they are now. It still felt like this frontier of connection and innovation. So I was just chronically online. And that led me to joining startups at 16, where I was like, Oh, I can take a company from zero to one using the internet, versus taking a large business from one to 100.

After graduating from NYU, I knew I wanted to start a business someday. I didn’t know what it would look like, but I felt like I had something to say. I just wasn’t ready yet.

So I thought: Where can I go learn as much as possible about startups? That’s how venture came into the fold. I never wanted to be an investor. I never enjoyed finance—frankly, I’m not very good at math.

MOLLY: Same.

KIM: But VC felt like this “easy” path to basically get an MBA without getting one. That’s how I thought about it.

MOLLY: What year is this?

KIM: I graduated in 2014.

MOLLY: Okay.

KIM: Then I got a great job with an early-stage venture fund in Dublin, so I moved there for two years, then to London for two years. I really enjoyed it. But by year three, I was like, Oh… I see how this whole class of millennials fell into this.

Because it’s a fucking cushy job. Like—yes, it’s intellectually rigorous, sure. But it’s also pretty chill.

And I found myself at 24, 25 thinking, I’ve become too complacent. Not in a glorifying-the-grind way, but I got into VC to learn so I could build something—not to coast.

When the fund was like, “Let’s talk about partner track,” I was like, Oh. We’re losing the plot, Kim.

So I quit. I went backpacking through Latin America for a year. I kind of have a habit of doing this—every time I achieve “the thing” I set out to do, I burn it all down and go traveling.

MOLLY: I love that.

KIM: I actually just did it again after selling a business—but we can get into that later.

But during one of these trips, I met my younger sister, Vanessa, in Bolivia. She was two years into Bain—very much the opposite of me. She’s always been the “good immigrant daughter.” Nationally ranked athlete, Harvard, management consultant—check, check, check.

But she meets me in Bolivia and she’s like, “Dude, I want to die.”

MOLLY: Wow.

KIM: Not literally, but she was like, “This is so hard. And I’m looking at the leadership here [at Bain]—and there’s not a single Southeast Asian woman.”

And I think something shifted for her. She was like, I’m ready to do something outside the machine.

And I had been waiting my whole life for that moment—because she’s brilliant in a way that’s really different from me. So I was like, Okay. Let’s do it.

I came back to the U.S., bounced between San Francisco and L.A., then landed in New York. We started working on the business in earnest around late 2018, early 2019.

At that point, we didn’t know what it was. We didn’t even know it would be called Omsom. We just had this North Star—what you said earlier—proud and loud Asian Americana.

Post-2016, after Trump’s election, we were like: How do we create change, even in a small way, in our lane? For us, that was reclaiming and celebrating Asian American identity.

Because it’s been so flattened—reduced to this “model minority” myth. Quiet, submissive, docile.

We had no idea it would be sauces or noodles or Whole Foods or Target. We just knew the mission was worth chasing. We’d figure out the rest along the way.

MOLLY: I want to go back to what you said about being aware of your difference growing up. Especially the idea of the internet as refuge.

Because I think, at that age, so many of us are doing everything we can to assimilate—to hide what makes us stand out.

So what was your “otherness”? Your weirdness? It sounds like you embraced it—but what did that actually look like?

KIM: I think hindsight is 20/20, because at the time, it was hard.

The otherness existed on multiple levels. The most obvious was racial and class. My parents are refugees—we didn’t have much money. I grew up in a town that was 98% white, very blue-collar, pretty conservative.

So there were all these glaring differences. I didn’t go to Sunday school. I didn’t have the same community structures as other kids. My parents didn’t know what prom was. I remember asking to go to homecoming and they were like, “What is this? A party?”

They didn’t push extracurriculars because they didn’t even know what that was. So I was figuring everything out in real time, without a model—no older siblings, no extended family guiding me. It was just me learning as I went.

And then there was the other layer—I’ve always been kind of alt. I was a punk, goth kid. Which, honestly, hasn’tchanged that much.

I didn’t have the language yet for things like “queer” or “kink,” but I knew I was different. I wasn’t thinking about relationships the way other people were. I wasn’t dressing the same—partly because my parents wouldn’t let me shop at Abercrombie & Fitch.

So yeah, it was racial, class, cultural… and just who I was, inherently.

From a young age, I just knew—I was going to have to forge my own path.

What I’m really grateful for—and maybe what you’re picking up on—is that my parents were incredibly supportive, if not actively encouraging, of my otherness.

I actually have a post going weirdly viral right now. I wasn’t expecting it at all, but—my parents are fucking weirdos, too. Especially for Vietnamese immigrants. My dad is 5’4”, jacked, a total short king, tattooed, rides motorcycles. My mom is 5’10”, platinum blonde, double-D implants. They modeled radical self-expression for me from a young age.

I remember getting in trouble for wearing pajama pants to school, and the teachers were like, What are you trying to imply by wearing sleepwear? They called my parents in, and my dad was like, What the fuck? This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

So I was lucky in that sense—they really let my freak flag fly. I don’t think they were like, Our kid is queer, or our kid is kinky. It was more just, Kim’s doing her own thing. Let her do her thing.

Now, looking back, I’m like—damn, I’m really grateful for my younger self. I’m grateful she tried. I’m grateful she ran after what she wanted.

But at the time, it was deeply painful. It was really othering.

I keep coming back to this idea of friction. How much friction I’ve introduced into my life by being different.

There’s this “normal” path people are given—it’s downhill. The stones are smooth, worn down. People just slide.

And I’m on my hands and knees, scrabbling through thorns and bramble.

I’m grateful for it now. But as a kid, it was exhausting. Especially when I didn’t have the language or the tools to understand what I was feeling. I just… felt weird.

MOLLY: I totally get that. And I know exactly the post you’re talking about—is it the “the baddie apple doesn’t fall far from the baddie tree”?

KIM: Yes.

MOLLY: I love that. And so much of it resonates with me. I had a mom who was so unapologetically herself, and I couldn’t appreciate it at the time. I was embarrassed. I rebelled in the opposite direction—I became ultra goody-goody.

I equated art and creativity—everything she was—with instability, with being poor. I was like, I’m not doing that. So I got on this path of, I’m going to climb the career ladder. I also had that entrepreneurial itch, but still—it was about fitting into something more traditional.

But pausing there—I’m curious: did you ever feel like you had to put a lid on your otherness to move through more mainstream spaces?

Because it sounds like you were very clear—I’m smart, I’m getting a seat at the table. Did you ever feel like you had to compartmentalize or tone yourself down to get into those rooms?

KIM: To be honest—no.

MOLLY: Wow.

KIM: I’m very lucky. And there’s privilege in that, right? I went to a “respected” school, NYU. I got to a place where I wasn’t financially reliant on my parents or institutions. I was an RA in college, which gave me financial breathing room.

But I remember—after I got my first VC job, I met up with a friend who was a few years older, also in venture. And he was like, You were really on Twitter in college just talking about getting drunk and partying.

And I was like, Yeah.

But I think that’s when I realized—there’s this expectation that you’re supposed to present a polished, compartmentalized version of yourself.

And for better or worse, I was raised by a father who was like, Never.

MOLLY: Incredible.

KIM: It’s kind of metal. Kind of annoying. But I internalized that.

So I was like—if someone doesn’t give me a job or an opportunity because of who I am, then it’s not meant for me.

MOLLY: Did you feel people reacting to you, though? Like trying to place you, make sense of you?

Because I’ve had that experience. I work with a lot of tech companies—VC-backed, very “tech bro” environments—and when I started expressing myself differently, I’d get this kind of… head tilt. Like, I don’t know where to put you.

And at times, I tried to contour myself to fit their expectations. So I’m curious—did you feel that? And how did you navigate it?

KIM: I definitely felt it. I’ve always known when people are like, What’s going on there? It’s the double take.

But again—I’m my father’s daughter. When I feel that, I almost want to double down.

Like—Okay. You don’t get it? Great. Let me lean in further.

I’m okay with being “too early” for my time in some ways. That sounds delusional, but it’s true.

But yeah I feel the friction in my personal and professional life all the time.

Like, I know now—if I tried to get a “normal” job, two seconds on Google and most employers would be like, Oh… no. She’s on the internet talking about BDSM, she dresses like that, she has tattoos—whatever it is.

And even in my personal life—it’s hard to date “normally.” I’m so open about sex positivity and kink and all of that. So we come back to this idea of friction. I know it exists. I feel it every day.

But I’m too grown now. The contorting thing—I’m like, it’s too late for me to squeeze into those boxes. And they’re aggressive, too. They’re regressive. They’re just not true to me.

I had a boss early in my career who said, Being true to your mission and values is both a magnet and a filter. It filters out what’s not for you, and it attracts what is.

I hear that in my head all the time—magnet and filter, magnet and filter.

MOLLY: I love that.

KIM: But it requires abundance, right? Because we live in a society rooted in scarcity (thank you, capitalism) where the goal is to optimize, to have optionality. To be for everyone.

So it’s like: Be likable. Be palatable. Be neutral.

And I just… don’t want to live that way. It’s not who I am. It’s not who my parents are.

So—here we are.

MOLLY: I really do subscribe to that idea—that being who you are is both a magnet and a filter.

Because the more authentically you live—and it’s hard, stripping away societal expectations, especially as a woman navigating all these intersections—that’s when you actually find your people. That’s when connection happens.

And you also shed the people who can’t hold space for you.

Which brings me to Omsom. Because I remember reading a story you told that felt so universally relatable—about being a kid and bringing lunch to school. Your parents cooked for you, and your food was… different.

And as a kid, anything that’s different is brutal.

But it really feels like you took that pain and turned it into purpose. You transmuted it into something that became this incredible brand—an extension of your ethos, your identity.

And I love what your sister said about wanting to do something outside the machine. It really does feel like breaking out of the matrix.

So I guess I’m curious—looking back, how did Omsom start to take shape? How did you land on this as the vehicle for your voice and your culture?

KIM: I think food was always there—but it wasn’t always obvious that it would be the thing.

Like you said, my parents cooked for us all the time. And I definitely had those moments as a kid where I was embarrassed. Opening my lunchbox and being like, Oh no, this smells different. This looks different. And kids can be ruthless.

So for a long time, I internalized that. I was like, Different is bad. Different is something to hide.

But then, as I got older—and especially after leaving home—I started to realize: Oh wait. This is actually really special.

And not just special—it’s powerful.

Food is culture. Food is history. Food is identity. It’s how stories get passed down.

So when Vanessa and I were thinking about what we wanted to build, we kept coming back to this idea of Asian American identity—and how flattened it is in the U.S.

And food felt like this really tangible, accessible way to engage people. Everyone eats. Everyone has some relationship to food.

But at the same time, Asian cuisines in America have been so diluted. So misrepresented.

We were like—What would it look like to be loud and proud in this space? To not water anything down. To not explain ourselves in a way that makes other people comfortable.

To say, No—this is who we are. This is the flavor. This is the story.

And I think that’s where Omsom really started to click. It wasn’t just about making products. It was about reclaiming narratives.

So we asked—how do we pull that thread through everything? Not just branding, but product, partnerships, team. Proud and loud Asian Americana, all the way through.

With that as our North Star, it didn’t make things easy—building a business is fucking brutal—but it made things clear. We knew what we stood for and why we were doing it. That gave us really strong guardrails.

MOLLY: And cut to—what year did you exit?

KIM: 2024.

MOLLY: Damn. And was the launch pre-pandemic or during?

KIM: Literally May 2020.

MOLLY: [speechless face]

KIM: I know. And in a weird way, it was kind of divine—people were stuck at home, craving restaurant flavors.

What’s wild is that all our investors told us not to launch. They were like, We don’t know what’s going to happen. The American wallet is shrinking. No one’s in a place to receive a new consumer brand—especially one as loud as yours.

This was also around Black Lives Matter, George Floyd—huge cultural conversations around race and identity. And they were like, Maybe this isn’t the time for something so unapologetic.

And Vanessa and I were like… we actually think it’s the perfect time.

MOLLY: Were these all men?

KIM: It was a bunch of dudes, yeah.

So we launched anyway. May 2020. We sold out in 72 hours. We were on the Today Show a week later.

MOLLY: Oh my god.

KIM: It was bonkers.

But it really reinforced this idea—there’s the “right” way to do things, and then there’s trusting your gut. And we just chose the latter.

MOLLY: I love the way you describe friction, too—the image of not taking the worn-down path everyone slides along. I always say you have to stray from the path of prescribed happiness. It might be harder, but that one-size-fits-all model hurts everyone.

And what you did—trusting your instinct, especially in the face of so many men telling you otherwise—it’s like you were carving the stone for the next person.

I just love that level of conviction.

But I also want to pivot a bit more personal—because you’re also a BDSM educator, and I’m curious about that path.

You’re so open and bold in how you talk about it. And I remember you sharing something recently—basically, just because you’re sexually open doesn’t mean you’re always available.

So I’d love to hear—what led you there? When did that start to feel like something you wanted to explore and eventually share?

KIM: Yeah. I’ve always been a pretty sexual person. Even early on, my experiences were kinky—but without any real intentionality or understanding.

Then I was in a long-term, very “vanilla” relationship for four years. He was wonderful—we met when I was living in London, we traveled together, backpacked through Latin America.

And on paper, it was everything. He was kind, smart, handsome, loyal—wanted marriage, kids, the whole thing. My friends were like, You have the thing. This is what everyone wants.

And I was like… why don’t I feel happy?

So that relationship ended—for many reasons, but mostly because I felt out of alignment with myself.

And then everything shifted. Within six months, I started my business, moved back to New York, came out as bisexual, and began exploring BDSM in earnest.

It wasn’t something we explored in that relationship, but I had always known—this is something I’m curious about.

So I started learning. Taking classes, going to meetups, reading, shadowing dommes. Just immersing myself.

And I realized—this is a huge part of who I am.

Not just sexually, but philosophically. BDSM has completely changed my life outside the bedroom. It shaped my beliefs around radical agency, radical communication.

It’s influenced how I live, how I love. It even led me to non-monogamy.

I was like—oh, this isn’t just whips and chains. This is a framework for living.

So I started sharing about it. At first just with friends—this is Brooklyn, you know—and even in progressive circles, people were like, Wait… isn’t BDSM abusive? Isn’t that harmful?

And I realized there was so much misinformation.

So I started making content on TikTok, just for fun, and it started taking off.

MOLLY: And with your friends—was there judgment?

KIM: Oh, a thousand percent. There still is. And that’s okay. I used to really resent it—I used to resent how different I am and resent people for not understanding me. Now I’m like, hey man, you’re really radical (to myself).

Even the most thoughtful, progressive person might still feel a little uncomfortable around me, and I’m okay with that. I used to be bitter about it, tell them, just do better, you know? But now I’m like—when I first heard about BDSM, I was like, this is crazy. And it took me years—literally years—and thousands of dollars in books, courses, knowledge to get where I am.

Of course my best friend, who’s vanilla, might be like, huh? what? Or use the wrong language. That’s okay. My job—as a portal, which is what I believe I’m here to be—is to welcome people in, even when their understanding is imperfect.

So yeah, I face judgment. And there are friends who are like, damn, okay, this is challenging, but they meet me there. They ask questions, they stay curious. Those people—I keep.

And then there are people who are like, nope, this is weird, you’re weird. And it’s okay— I tell myself that for this season of our friendship, we’re no longer in close connection.

But of course, I face it every day. Dating apps, everything. It’s part of the process. I’ve just come to terms with the fact that I’m radical—and maybe ahead of my time. Not in a gassing-myself-up way, just like—hey, you’re kind of a weirdo, and that’s okay.

MOLLY: What I hear is radical self-love. Radical acceptance. Meeting people where they are and recognizing their limitations without making them villains.

I keep thinking—how do we replicate you?

But truly, I’m thinking about this in the context of how divisive everything feels right now. There are people I want to unfollow immediately because they say one thing I don’t agree with. And then I’m like… but there are other things they say that I do agree with.

And I wonder if there’s this shift happening—where we pause before severing ties. At least I hope so. Because otherwise it’s just, you’re not on my team, and that’s it.

And it sounds like you’ve navigated that so thoughtfully—even with your friends. Like, I understand I’m confronting. I get it.

Most humans are sexual, and when something triggers you—sexual or otherwise—it’s usually worth examining. Like, is this something in the shadows? Something tied to shame?

Because sexuality is so universal, and yet in our culture it’s still so needlessly taboo. I imagine what you’re doing—whether you like the word or not—can feel really triggering for a lot of people.

KIM: Oh, for sure. People project a lot onto me. And again, I think—we’re just early, Kim. It’s okay.

But yeah—I get a lot of hate. I’m still learning how to process it. Mean DMs, angry messages.

MOLLY: Is it mostly men?

KIM: It’s a mix. A lot of faceless trolls. Some right-wing types—why is a woman talking about kink, or she must hate men because she’s a domme.

Sometimes it’s women who tell me, this is too much. You should be more coy.

Sometimes it’s men saying it’s “feminist bullshit.”

And then there’s just straight-up trolling—saying fatphobic, mean, racist shit. The whole spectrum.

It’s a wild place to exist. But I’m like—okay, who else is going to do this?

I have a lot of privilege. I’m not reliant on a traditional job. I have economic mobility now in a way I dreamed of as a kid. So if not me, then who?

MOLLY: I’m usually asking people about moments of resistance, and how they transformed them. But what’s been so interesting about your story is that it feels like you’ve consistently shown up as yourself—and seen the benefits of that.

So I guess my question is: can you point to a moment—or a pattern—where you felt like, this is proof that being fully myself is working? Like, this is where it all clicks?

KIM: Yes. Okay. Oh my god, there are a couple I could share. If I can, I might share two?

MOLLY: Please.

KIM: One is from childhood—something that, looking back, I’m like, oh my god, that changed my life. So when I was maybe 10 or 12, my parents—again, I’m telling you, they’re weirdos—came back from a weekend in Toronto. They partied, they lived their lives. And I really admire that about them—they never sacrificed themselves just because they had kids. They were like, we have kids, great, we’re still going to travel and do our thing.

So they come back and they’re like, Honey, we got tattoos.

And I’m like, okay, show me. My mom turns around—she has a tramp stamp. It’s a rose with butterfly wings, very death metal vibes. Sick.

Then my dad rips off his shirt, and on his left pec is a scorpion with a topless redhead woman.

Child me is very confused.

And he tells me this story—the Aesop fable of the scorpion and the toad. Basically, the scorpion asks the toad to carry him across the river. The toad hesitates—you’ll sting me. The scorpion says, if I sting you, we both die. So the toad agrees. Halfway across, the scorpion stings him anyway. The toad asks, why would you do that? Now we both die. And the scorpion says, it’s in my nature.

And my dad looks at me and goes, Honey, you and I are the scorpion.

And I was like, what the fuck?

Because that fable is usually told as a warning—”bad people are bad no matter what, so don’t trust them.” But my dad was like, I don’t see it that way. He was like, that scorpion is true to itself, even to its own death.

And I remember that so vividly. It was this idea that—if you have nothing else on this earth, you have your authenticity. You have your principles. Even if it costs you everything, that’s why you’re here.

MOLLY: How old were you?

KIM: 10 or 12.

And for my 30th birthday, I got his version of that tattoo on my body.

And I was like, wait—why the topless redhead woman? And he was like, I don’t know, I just like busty women.

And I was like… Dad, I do too.

MOLLY: Your parents…

KIM: I know.

So yeah—that story planted something really early. And the wild thing is, they actually lived it. My parents came from a war-torn country, didn’t speak English, came here with nothing—and still lived with that level of freedom and self-expression.

So I’m like—I’m second place in radical, always. If they can do that, I can be on the internet talking about cock and ball torture.

So that was one defining story of my life.

And then the other is with Omsom—when Vanessa and I were raising our seed round.

At that point, I was already deep into my BDSM TikTok presence. And my sister sat me down and was like, Hey, I love you, I support you no matter what—but we need to talk about your online presence.

She was like, We’re raising from institutional VCs. They’re going to find this. You use your real name, your real face—it’s all out there.

Would you be okay if this impacted our ability to raise? Would you be okay if we couldn’t fund the business—or pay our employees?

And that was a really scary moment. Because suddenly I thought—wait, could I be the reason our employees can’t pay their mortgages?

So her and I had this real conversation—, should I pull back? Delete things? Tone it down?

And ultimately, we landed on this: you can’t build and fund a proud and loud Asian business without understanding that it comes from proud and loud Asian people.

This isn’t a marketing strategy. It’s a lived experience.

And I will forever thank Vanessa for this—she had the abundance to say, No. If you want to do this, I’m behind you.

MOLLY: What a sister.

KIM: I’m so lucky. She doesn’t fully understand my world, but she will always fight for me to be who I am.

So we made no changes. We said, if it comes up, it comes up.

And it did.

But Vanessa—she’s so strategic. She didn’t hide it. She reframed it. She was like, Kim has 120,000 followers on TikTok. She knows how to find niche audiences and get them to champion her. She can do that for Omsom.

She turned it into an asset.

And that, to me, was such a moment of—oh, being fully myself isn’t just okay. It’s powerful.

MOLLY: That is epic.

KIM: Yeah. It was wild.

MOLLY: Okay, last question—something I always ask.

If someone is struggling to show up authentically—if they’re feeling that friction, that fear—what would you tell them? Or honestly… what would your parents tell them?

KIM: Oh my god, that’s such a good reframe.

I was just on the phone with my dad. He wouldn’t give you the Kim version—he’d be way more blunt.

But I think for me… a lot of this hasn’t been super intellectual. It’s been intuitive.

So maybe the advice is: the most important relationship you will ever have is the one you have with yourself and your truth.

The better you get at listening to your body and your heart, the more aligned your life becomes.

It’s actually less about doing something externally, and more about asking—can you sit with yourself and listen?

Because so many people don’t. They listen to their parents, their church, their partner, society, politicians.

But—what does your voice say?

The more you can tune into that, the more aligned everything else becomes.

Connect with Kim of the Internet here.

It was the way she stood her ground when challenged on her life’s work.

Erin Claire Jones, founder of the wildly popular Human Design Blueprint, was giving a talk on her book How Do You Choose? when an audience member pressed her on human design’s unscientific origins: “That is exactly the reaction you should have to a man hearing a voice in the late ’80s telling him to get to work.”

Her resolve — underpinned by a calm confidence in answering a question that could discredit the very foundation of her book and business — is the type of steely self-trust, in both oneself and one’s purpose (however unpalatable to some), that marks a person deeply in touch with their calling.

I later learned in my conversation with Erin that this grounded awareness was not always the case. Years ago, when a man asked a similar question challenging the scientific credence of Human Design, she “got pulled into trying to explain neutrinos and birth times.”

The man walked out.

What’s so captivating about Erin’s composure is that it gives others permission to recognize this same inner knowing in themselves.

Like the Zodiac, also rebuked by science, Human Design uses your birth date and time to identify your energetic blueprint: how you show up in the world and navigate life’s one-size-does-not-fit-all constructs.

It is a tool that gently guides us toward that inner voice; the one that may not always chime with society’s chorus but always knows what’s best for the song of our soul.

This is why Erin is here: to share what she’s learned by listening to her own voice, made all the more clear by honoring the Human Design her work has revealed her to be (a Projector, like me!).

Read on for my conversation with Erin on the power of seeing yourself first — and seeing the gifts in others.

MOLLY: My goal with these interviews is to understand what made you tune into your calling. What was it — Human Design, or something else — that helped you carve out a path there was no blueprint for?

Because ultimately, I want these conversations to help people lean into their thing — their weirdness, the parts of themselves that don’t quite square with who they’ve been told to be.

So let’s go back: you were 25 when Human Design found you. You were in FinTech. What felt misaligned?

ERIN: It was 2015. I’d been working in FinTech at a startup that was incredibly fun in many ways, but also deeply dysfunctional. I eventually left and started consulting for a bunch of startups in business development roles. I was having a lot of fun. I was working really hard. But none of it felt like, This is it. I didn’t have that sense of, This is the thing I’m meant to be building.

At the same time, I was exploring a lot of different modalities on the side — mostly just out of curiosity. I did my yoga teacher training. I studied Shamanic Reiki. I kept following whatever I felt drawn to.

Then one night, I was at a friend’s gathering and ended up sitting next to this guy who asked me for my Human Design chart. He gave me a short reading — maybe 15 minutes — but it felt incredibly validating. The first thing he said was, “You’re not really designed to be this hustler and doer.”

And that hit. Because I’d been so immersed in that energy — especially living in New York — and I thought it was the only way. He described me as someone with a lot of wisdom around people, someone who’s good at systems. It all resonated, but I had never imagined building a career around those gifts.

At the end of the conversation, he said, “I think you’re meant to do this. I think you’re meant to study Human Design and bring it to the world.” It was such a strange invitation — especially because Human Design was incredibly fringe at the time. He sent me a bunch of PDFs afterward. That was basically all that existed about Human Design at the time.

But once I started digging in, I was blown away. What made immediate sense to me about Human Design was its application within teams. I’d come from so many startup environments where it felt like people didn’t understand each other. And I kept thinking, If people actually understood how one another worked at a deeper level, working together would be so much easier. Maybe Human Design was the key to that.

That’s how it all began. And the question that it inspired within me was simple: how much easier would it be if we actually understood each other?

MOLLY: I remember you once describing that period as a bit of a quarter-life crisis. The startup world sounded fun, but did you feel like you were following a trajectory that was encouraged?

ERIN: It’s interesting — I never felt pressure from my parents to follow their paths. My mom’s a doctor. My dad’s a lawyer. My sister’s in law school. They all pursued very traditional careers. But I never once considered medical school or law school.

I was pretty weird from early on. And my parents were always like, “Go do your thing.” I feel so lucky in that way. They really supported me in being as strange as I wanted to be.

MOLLY: What did “strange” look like?

ERIN: I mean, I was just so curious. I remember searching for a Shambhala Center in Seattle because I was desperate to learn meditation. My parents were like, “What is meditation? What is Shambhala?” And I was like, “I don’t know, but I have to find it.”

My freshman year of college, I found a meditation retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh (it ended up being his last U.S. retreat). I told my parents, “I have to go to Colorado.” And they said, “Okay.”

They just kept saying yes to the things that lit me up, even when they didn’t fully understand them. And I had zero exposure growing up to people building lives around spirituality or alternative practices. No one in my world was doing that.

The pressure I did feel came later, in New York. I found myself in this incredibly entrepreneurial community. It was exciting. It made me feel like anything was possible. But it also subtly told me that I needed to start a company. I needed to hustle. I needed to build something big and visible.

And I didn’t slow down enough to ask, Wait — is that actually my thing?

Maybe the way I make people feel. Maybe the way I see them so clearly. Maybe the way I understand systems. Maybe that’s the thing.

But at the time, I thought success had to look like building a company in the traditional sense. It didn’t occur to me that what came most naturally to me could be the foundation of a career.

MOLLY: I’m curious about the man you met — the one who told you you were meant to study and teach this. Did he open the aperture for you? Did he help you see that the way you see people — the way you translate things — was gift enough?

ERIN: Absolutely. I’d had little glimmers before — offering Reiki sessions, teaching yoga. Moments where I thought, Oh, there’s something here. I’m really good at this. But I think I needed a modality, a framework that allowed me to work with people and make them feel seen.

It’s funny to say that, because while Human Design has been incredible for me, it probably could have been many things. I just needed some vehicle to sit with people, ask good questions, and make them feel seen.

Human Design became that vehicle for me. And I imagine it will be one of many mediums over the course of my life. For me, the throughline isn’t necessarily the system itself — it’s making people feel seen. It’s having the space to ask good questions. It’s translating something complex in a way that makes it land.

And yes, my first teacher saw that. He had studied Human Design for ten years. He knew the system deeply. But he told me, “I need someone like you.” He said, “I might understand all of this, but I don’t know how to translate it in a way that makes sense for people. That’s what you can do”

MOLLY: I imagine part of what gratifies you most is seeing how people react when you reflect them back to themselves. That’s not a small skill. It’s often dismissed as soft or secondary — but it’s huge. To hold space. To see someone without judgment. To celebrate what’s already there.

Until I found your work, I didn’t even think that was a design. I thought it was just… something I did.

ERIN: Totally. And I think that’s true for so many people. The thing that feels the most natural to us often feels the least legitimate.

MOLLY: Have you ever faced resistance because of this work? It is fringe. I imagine there have been moments where people are like, Okay…

ERIN: In the beginning, maybe a little. But honestly, my New York community was very entrepreneurial and very experimental. They were like, “This is weird. Tell me more.” They were such champions of whatever anyone was building. So I didn’t feel much judgment there.

I’ve felt it more subtly. Like at a wedding last year with people I went to school with. Everyone was a doctor, a lawyer, pursuing a PhD. I remember thinking, Wow, I’m such an outlier in this room. No one said anything outright. But there’s an isolating feeling when you’re doing something very different.

One of my biggest lessons as a Projector has been: I’m not here to force anyone to understand. If they’re curious, I’m here. If they’re not, that’s okay. Me needing them to get it doesn’t feel good for anyone.

MOLLY: I keep thinking about your How Do You Choose? book talk. Someone asked about the origin story, and you calmly said, “A man in the late ’80s heard a voice that told him it was time to get to work.” And the questioner kind of scoffed.

You didn’t flinch. You almost encouraged the reaction. It felt… grounded. Like, I get how this sounds. And I’m still standing here.

ERIN: Totally. I mean, the origin story is wild. There’s no way around that.

But for me, the proof is in the application. It’s in how useful it is. It’s in what shifts for people. I don’t need everyone to buy into the mythology. I care about whether it works.

If I’ve learned anything from this work, it’s that my job isn’t to convince anyone. It’s to focus on whether it’s useful, not whether it’s true. And to trust that the right people will recognize themselves in it.

MOLLY: When people react that way to the work — they don’t get it — and you just stick to what feels right in your body. That’s what I sensed in that moment.

ERIN: Yeah. And honestly, the further I’ve gone down this rabbit hole, the less dogmatic I’ve become. That’s taken practice.

I gave a talk in Miami once where a man asked, “Can you explain the science behind this?” Some people call Human Design science — it’s not. And I got pulled into trying to explain neutrinos and birth times and all of it. He ended up walking out.

The talk itself was great. But I got hooked by his skepticism. I felt like I had to make it make sense. And the truth is, there are still parts of this system I can’t fully wrap my head around. The idea that we can know this much based on a birth time — it’s wild.

So now, the lesson is: people can respond however they want. I’ll present it in the least dogmatic way possible and let them come to it — or not — on their own. I’ve had so many experiences where someone is deeply skeptical, and then the information resonates so deeply that they’re suddenly asking about their partner and their kids, even though they don’t want to believe in it

You just have to let people arrive on their own time.

MOLLY: I love that.

Okay — I’ve asked this in different ways, but Human Design distinguishes between who we are and who we’ve been conditioned to be. What did you personally have to unlearn? As a Projector — or just as Erin — what had to fall away?

ERIN: A lot.

I was conditioned with a pretty intense work ethic. I ran track competitively growing up. That mentality of push harder, do more, go faster — it’s baked into me. I’d go on family vacations at high altitude and treat them like training camps. While the rest of my family was resting, my dad and I would be at the local track. That was just how I operated.

So one of the biggest pieces of deconditioning has been around the idea that more equals better. That success always requires doing more. It doesn’t. And I’m still tempted by that narrative all the time.

Becoming a mother has only amplified that lesson. My time now feels scarce and incredibly valuable. Every hour I work is an hour away from my kids. So I have to be strategic. I have to ask: Where does my energy actually matter? I no longer have space or time to do more just because.

Another big one is not forcing things. Projectors are meant to wait for recognition and invitation — and it’s still so tempting to chase. Whether it’s a friendship, an opportunity, something big or small. To make it happen.

Sitting back and trusting the timing — being proactive but not aggressive — that’s hard.

And decision-making. My design calls for spacious, non-spontaneous decisions. I want to move fast. I get excited and want to act. But when I rush, it almost never leads to the right outcome.

So a lot of my design runs counter to how I was taught to operate. And I want to be clear, I’ve been studying and sharing this for a decade, but that doesn’t mean I’ve mastered it. Human Design is more of an awareness system. It helps you catch yourself when you’re slipping back into old patterns.

But yes, creating more space. Not chasing. Trusting timing. Being patient. Those are the ongoing lessons.

MOLLY: When people come to you, are they usually looking to become more themselves? To feel more comfortable operating the way they naturally do? Or is it more practical — like, I’m struggling at work, I’m not communicating well?

I’m curious how often this is about authenticity versus something more tactical.

ERIN: People usually come when something feels off. It doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can be subtle.

I think of a man I sat with recently — a partner at an accounting firm in Australia. His wife bought him the session. He’s been at the same firm for 30 years. He’s about to turn 50. And the question was simple: Is it time to do something else?

That’s pretty typical. It’s not always a crisis. It’s more like a restlessness. A sense that something isn’t quite aligned.

They usually already know the answers. Human Design just helps confirm it.

I’ve always said the system can be either deeply affirming or deeply confronting. For some people, it validates choices they’ve already made. It’s like, Yes, this is why I’ve always done it this way.

For others — which was true for me — it’s confronting. It reveals that the way you’ve been operating runs counter to how you’re actually designed. And changing that takes practice. It takes courage.

MOLLY: In the spirit of this series — the gift of helping people feel seen — do you notice a pattern? Are people battling themselves in a similar way?

ERIN: What comes up often is self-trust.

I think people come to me because they’re having a hard time trusting themselves. They need an outside perspective to remind them that they already know.

Human Design is powerful because it shows you how you’re wired to make decisions — whether that’s trusting your gut response, taking your time, talking things through. But knowing that and actually following it are two very different things. Following it requires courage.

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve sat with who say, “I need to leave this relationship.” And I’ll ask, “When did you know it wasn’t right?” And they’ll say, “From the minute I entered it.”

Or someone who hates their job. “When did you know?” “Ten years ago.”

That’s the thread I see again and again. People need permission to trust themselves. To hear themselves and to act on what they hear. And it’s hard.

When I think back to my own path, every part of my body pointed me toward Human Design. There was no external evidence that it was the right move. It took years to make money. It was not smooth. There wasn’t immediate recognition.

And yet, internally, I knew.

I think that’s what people are craving — the ability to connect to that inner knowing and let it move them forward, even when there’s no external validation. Even when there’s no proof.

MOLLY: There’s a paradox there. On one hand, you don’t want to rely on external validation. But sometimes you just want someone to say, Yes — you’re on the right track.

I’m curious about that early period for you. Because it wasn’t smooth. It took time before you became the Erin Claire Jones people know today. You trusted that something felt right — but what were the obstacles?

ERIN: Definitely.

When I started my first business in 2015 with my former business partner — who was also my teacher — we focused exclusively on Human Design for business. In hindsight, that was a pretty risky move in a world that knew absolutely nothing about Human Design. Companies were probably not going to be the first to buy into it.

But the bigger issue was that neither of us knew how to build a business. And as much as we loved Human Design, we also needed to make money.

And we just weren’t making enough to support ourselves. I was living in Bali at the time and basically surviving on the money I made renting out my apartment on Airbnb in NYC. When I moved back to New York, I was bouncing between friends’ apartments.

I loved the work. It was so fun. But we just didn’t know how to market it or who the right audience was. I could feel that something wasn’t quite clicking yet.

Then I hosted a retreat upstate with a friend. One of the people who came was a guy I had previously done a Human Design session for. After the retreat he said, “I want to hire you to help us open a co-working space in New York City.”

Did you ever go to The Assemblage?MOLLY: There’s a paradox there. On one hand, you don’t want to rely on external validation. But sometimes you just want someone to say, Yes — you’re on the right track.

I’m curious about that early period for you. Because it wasn’t smooth. It took time before you became the Erin Claire Jones people know today. You trusted that something felt right — but what were the obstacles?

ERIN: Definitely.

When I started my first business in 2015 with my former business partner — who was also my teacher — we focused exclusively on Human Design for business. In hindsight, that was a pretty risky move in a world that knew absolutely nothing about Human Design. Companies were probably not going to be the first to buy into it.

But the bigger issue was that neither of us knew how to build a business. And as much as we loved Human Design, we also needed to make money.

And we just weren’t making enough to support ourselves. I was living in Bali at the time and basically surviving on the money I made renting out my apartment on Airbnb in NYC. When I moved back to New York, I was bouncing between friends’ apartments.

I loved the work. It was so fun. But we just didn’t know how to market it or who the right audience was. I could feel that something wasn’t quite clicking yet.

Then I hosted a retreat upstate with a friend. One of the people who came was a guy I had previously done a Human Design session for. After the retreat he said, “I want to hire you to help us open a co-working space in New York City.”

Did you ever go to The Assemblage?

MOLLY: I don’t think so.

ERIN: It was amazing. And he said, “I like how you make people feel. I want you around. I don’t need your résumé — I just think you’re meant to do this.”

He also fortunately loved Human Design.

But it was a confusing moment, because I loved Human Design and I didn’t want to walk away… but I wasn’t making money from it. I had to be honest with myself about that.

So because of that invitation and because of the reality of my finances, I left my business partner and took the job.

At the time it felt devastating — like I was walking away from the thing I loved most. What I didn’t realize was that choice would actually launch my second business. And this time, it would work.

The first few months at the new job were really hard. This was July 2017. I was still studying Human Design every day, but I wasn’t offering readings anymore. I had always done them with my business partner, so I didn’t yet feel like I could do it on my own.

At one point I organized a Human Design talk at the co-working space. I brought together three Human Design readers and facilitated the conversation. And someone said, “Why aren’t you on the panel?”

I said, “No, no. I’m not ready. I’ll just bring the people together.”

They said, “But you know so much.”

And I still felt like, I can’t. I just didn’t trust myself enough to step into it.

And then, I remember this so clearly — it was New Year’s Eve. Jared, my husband, and I were in California having dinner, and he said, “You can’t give up on Human Design. It’s so obvious this is still your thing. So you failed with your first business — that’s normal. You have to try again.” That was my invitation to begin again.

One week later, I decided I would begin offering sessions again. I renegotiated my job so I worked from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., and used the mornings to focus on Human Design.

And because I was the director of programming at this co-working space, I put myself on the events calendar for an Introduction to Human Design talk

And four hundred people came to the first event.

MOLLY: Oh my God.

ERIN: I know. It was wild. And for about a year and a half after that talk, almost all of my clients came through that space that I had helped open.

It was such a funny thing. I took that job thinking it was pulling me away from Human Design, but it actually accelerated everything.

And one of the biggest lessons from that time is that there’s so much pressure when you find something you love to immediately quit your job and go all in. But that’s just not realistic for most people — especially if they’re responsible for others, like kids.

For me, there was a lot of pressure to make money from Human Design right away, and it didn’t feel good. Being able to build the business slowly, alongside a reliable salary, felt so much better.

By the time I eventually left The Assemblage, I was making more from Human Design than I was from the job. It just happened naturally.

MOLLY: The last question I always ask people is this: what advice would you give to someone who’s struggling to listen to that inner voice and trust it? I loved something you said earlier — that most people know. They always know. So how would you encourage someone to act on that knowing?

ERIN: Well, first, use Human Design. It can be incredibly helpful in connecting to what that inner knowing looks like for you. We all access it differently. For some people it shows up through very clear yes-or-no responses. For others, it’s about riding an emotional wave and sleeping on a decision before acting.

But beyond that, I’d say: start with the small decisions. Build the muscle of self-trust.

As powerful as our minds are, the right decisions for us usually aren’t born from a pro-and-con list. Our minds can rationalize us into — or out of — almost anything. But the work is to trust that deeper knowing.

In sessions with clients, I often listen carefully to how they’re speaking. Sometimes someone will say, “I think I should do this because if I do, then this might happen…” And immediately I can hear that they’ve disconnected from their deeper knowing — because they’re explaining and justifying.

So a big part of the practice is noticing when you’re rationalizing your way into or out of something versus speaking from a deeper place of certainty.

And once you start listening for it, you’ll hear that distinction everywhere — in yourself and in other people.

Then, the work is to trust it.

Connect with Erin here.

Find your own HD here 👉 How Do You Choose? A Human Design Guide to What’s Best for You at Work, in Love, and in Life

I tried not to tend to the wounds of January’s walloping. It was a month where Murphy’s Law took no days off and seemed to intensify with each passing week, so I too took no days off, powering through what I wanted to believe was an extra dose of winter blues.

February followed suit with equal sadistic fervor: I’ve heard the sentence “they’re eating babies” more times than should be countable, across social circles with otherwise no commonality.

The difference is, these last two weeks have forced me to confront what I’ve long been trying to deny: I am deeply, utterly, uncomfortably sad.

“You can look but don’t stare” – but what if there’s nowhere else to look?

One of my favorite quotes from RuPaul is, “You can look but don’t stare” — a brilliant axiom encouraging us to acknowledge life’s darkness without being subsumed by it.

But where are we to rest our eyes when there is nowhere else to look? Darkness is all around us: Criminals leading by bleeding my country. Mind-shattering pacifism in the face of pedophilia. Wars on every corner of the map.

And that’s not even the personal shit.

There is little reprieve, yet still I self-flagellate when I fail to be OK, as if it’s my fault I can’t summon a cheery disposition in this fresh fiery hell.

My sadness has morphed into depression, my depression into despondence, all flirting with a nihilism I’ve worked hard to keep at bay: eating clean, working out, daily journaling, vulnerably voicing my saddened state to friends and family willing to listen.

But what once worked is no longer working, because the world is no longer what it used to be.

The Parking Lot Incident

I reached my breaking point during what I now refer to as The Parking Lot Incident.

It was the last day of Ass-Kicking January when a woman in a TJ Maxx parking lot scooped the spot I was waiting for, and then calmly mocked me when I frantically honk-gestured that I’d been there first. I debated getting out of my car to confront her, but the pent-up emotions of the preceding days had gotten to me first.

I went home. And I could. Not. Stop. Crying.

Here’s part of what I wrote in my journal that day: “I sobbed. Sobbed and stuttered my way through all the grief and angst and fucking sadness that’s clearly been coursing through my body. I guess this was the universe’s way of forcing some relief.”

Everything is not ok.

I am exhausted from pretending nothing is wrong, and I flinch at the question “How are you?” knowing full well it’s a perfunctory, performative ask with no expectation of a sincere response. “I’d be lying if I said I was OK” is some version of the answer I give — a minor rebellion against the lie that everything is fine.

I am deeply, sometimes painfully sad, and have every right to be.

When I finally stopped resisting what is, in fact, a perfectly rational response to what’s happening, I not only felt relief, I started to feel like myself.

Because it all comes back to what I’m constantly exploring with Other Wise: honoring your truth — however uncomfortable or socially awkward at times — is an expression of authenticity.

In surrendering to the sadness that had seeped into my blood and bones, I was surrendering to self.

And the self, I’ve learned repeatedly, will never let you down.

I fantasized about cutting all my hair off for years. Mostly for practicality purposes over appearance. I was always at a loss on how to style it and developed what my mom called a hair tic: nonstop twisting, twirling and touching bunched up strands while trying to coax that one weird cowlick to lie flat.

No matter what I did, it never quite looked right, and usually ended up as a carefully placed “messy” bun atop my head.

The truth is that I never thought I looked right—at least not when I tried to style it the way women of my generation were told it should be: long, Victoria’s-Secret-voluminous, and effortlessly face-framing, as if my part knew exactly how to fall.

I wanted my long, frazzled locks gone, off my head, but I was also fearful of how I’d be perceived if I actually did it. Would I look less femme (whatever that means)? Older than my thirty-something years? Or God forbid, less attractive to men?

What I realized in taking to my blunted kitchen scissors the night I finally chopped it off—spurred by an episode of shedding that usually precedes a woman switching up her do—was that acting on the urge to hack it off wasn’t succumbing to a hair tic. It was a higher, more knowing self guiding me closer to who I really am.

With each chop the night of January 10, 2023 (a date I only remember because I journaled enthusiastically about the results), I watched my smile widen in the mirror as I saw a version of myself I hadn’t yet met, but who looked more familiar than any I’d seen before. It was a homecoming. A hair homecoming.

But also so much more.

I imagine this was the feeling Gwen Stefani described when she bleached her hair and painted on a bold red lip when she was first starting out in No Doubt:

“It was like I’d unlocked the key. I remember feeling like, ‘I have arrived. This is me. Finally.’” The red lip came when her grandmother gave her a crimson lipstick when she was in high school. “I remember sitting in my ghetto, beat-up Honda Prelude and putting on that lipstick in the rearview mirror and being like, ‘Uh-huh, I like that. That’s the shit right there.’ I never stopped after that.” – Gwen for Harper’s Bazaar, 2012

Or Dolly Parton, when she discovered the power of wigs:

“It was more important that I be comfortable inside of myself... I just felt better in me to look that way. It just gave me a little extra confidence.” – Dolly for Entertainment Tonight, 2023

Elvis, too — dying his naturally light hair jet-black using shoe polish, sideburns grown out like the truckers he admired in his youth.

On the surface, these markers of outward appearance may seem shallow or superficial. But these signature looks—often not of their time and frequently mocked—are how we came to know and love these icons. They are proof that embracing the things that make us different, especially the ones that aren’t widely accepted, is what makes us undeniably, unforgettably who we are.

In the three years since I finally listened to the fidgety, hair-pulling voice that told me to “cut it all off,” despite what every societal construct reinforced, I have changed my hair countless times.

I’m now in a phase where it’s settled into its natural brown curls, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it mirrors the style I wore as a little girl—not yet shaped or sheared by the worldview of what a woman should look like.

What I have found—and more importantly, felt—is that doing the thing that made me wince at the thought of being outed as Not Like All The Other Girls is exactly what made me feel more like myself than ever before in my adult life.

My confidence soared.

I grew bolder in my self-expression.

And I couldn’t help but appreciate the compliments from strangers who’d stop me in grocery store aisles just to say, “I love your hair!”

Hair is just a stand-in for the thread I’ve been tugging at with Other Wise. What people are responding to when they see me is whatever magnetism I emit because I’m finally caring less about perception, and pursuing curiosities that may fall outside the norm.

Lean into whatever it is that scares you for fear of being Othered. It’s usually the answer to who you are.

I don’t remember if it was the leopard pants, frosted pink lipstick, or two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew I noticed first, but together they made up the indelible Lori Toscani.

“I bring my own Mountain Dew wherever I go,” she stated as matter-of-factly as one might state the sky is blue.

Then she introduced herself — same name and spelling as my godmother, which I took to be a good sign.

The next best sign was that we both darted to the dance floor at the sound of the first familiar song. We met at a disco-themed dance night at a Hudson Valley apple orchard, under a star-studded sky sparklier than all the mirror balls combined.

Yet I couldn’t help but notice Lori outshined them all. What made this tiny lady — packed with more magnetism and Mountain Dew than anyone I know — so entrancing?

In befriending the mother, grandmother, business owner, and fierce matriarch of a family as delicious as their Sunday Supps, I learned that Lori has been through devastating heartbreak, soul-crushing betrayal, and injuries that would render most people incapable of getting out of bed, let alone taking to the dance floor.

But it is because Lori chooses to dance, to dress loud and celebrate life in spite of the pain, that I couldn’t look away.

Read on for my interview with the enchantingly strange stranger I met on a dance floor, whom I’m now proud to call my friend.

Lori: I wanted a tattoo on my neck that said, “Uniquely made.” And my kids were like, “Are you crazy? You’re going to call yourself ‘Uniquely’? No. Don’t do that.”

So I never did—but…

Molly: Okay, this is perfect, because you get it. You recognize and embrace the unique part of yourself, and that’s what I like to highlight. I think when you lean into the thing that makes you feel othered or different, that’s usually your superpower. But a lot of people try to keep that in the shadows so they can fit in.

You and I met at the Big Hudson event, and I’ll never forget you walking up with two liters of Mountain Dew, just like, “Yeah, I bring my Mountain Dew. What are you gonna do?” I knew immediately I had to know who you were.

So let’s start there: what makes you not give a fuck?

Lori: I was always very different growing up. I was “the spoiled one”—that’s what my friends thought. I had everything. It was the 80s and I had Jordache jeans. Nobody else had them.

So yeah, I was “the spoiled brat” as a teenager. But nobody ever tells the other side of the story.

Every day after school, at three o’clock, I had to be at the deli working. If I wasn’t there, my parents would come looking for me. Every weekend, while everyone else was cheerleading or doing whatever, I was at the deli at seven in the morning, working Saturdays and Sundays.

I didn’t get paid. But it worked for my family, and they took care of me.

So no—I never thought I was better than anybody. But I knew I was different. I strut my shit. I don’t care what people think because I don’t need to impress anyone but myself.

Molly: That’s so hard to own when you’re young. It sounds like you knew that early. Did your parents recognize that and support it?

Lori: A little. I was the fourth child—the baby. There was my brother Dino, my sister Claire, and my brother John.

Dino looked exactly like Danny DeVito when he was young. And he was dyslexic, but back then nobody really understood dyslexia. He played football and wrestled, went to states—he could’ve gone NFL.

He got through high school because of me. I did all his homework. To play football or wrestle, your grades had to be perfect. He couldn’t do it on his own.

Molly: Wow.

Lori: Yeah. So I did everything for him.

Dino and I were like glue. I didn’t give a shit what people thought. I said what I wanted. I wore what I wanted. I was daddy’s little girl, my sister was closer to my mom. My brother John did his own thing.

Growing up, I felt like I didn’t look like anyone else either. I was 11 and had boobs when everyone else was flat-chested. I was embarrassed.

Molly: How did you deal with that?

Lori: I wore big shirts. That’s why I have a hunch—I’d walk hunched over so you couldn’t see them.

My brother was on the football and wrestling teams. One day, the football team grabbed me, took me into a janitor’s closet, and duct-taped me to a broom so that I would stand up straight.

Molly: Umm..what?!

Lori: Yeah. They made me walk around school with it all day. The principal did nothing. Nobody said anything because Dino could do no wrong and they thought it was hilarious.

After that, whenever the wrestling or football team saw me slouching, they’d punch me in the back. So I had to stand up straight or I’d get hit!

Molly: How did you deal with that?

Lori: I got over it. But people were afraid of me.

Molly: How so?

Lori: Boys were afraid of me because I used to wrestle with my brother. He’d beat the shit out of me, but I had to wrestle, I had to do everything with him.

So boys were afraid of me because I was strong, and women were jealous.

Molly: It’s like two sides of the same coin — you’re either afraid of the thing that’s different, or you love it. It sounds like you straddled that. And I marvel at people who were tapped into that at a young age and never let anybody shake it out of them. You clearly never let anybody fuck with that.

Lori: No, I really didn’t.

Molly: I also have this theory that daddy’s girls just have this extra set of — pardon me — balls.

Lori: Oh yeah.

Molly: Did you find your otherness difficult when it came to finding work?

Lori: I worked at my parents’ deli until I was about 16 or 17. Then I worked briefly at a box company as a secretary. I was pregnant with the twins. I only stayed a year.

After that, I worked with Lou. We had construction and excavating companies. I handled all the books. We built a subdivision together.

Molly: You were entrepreneurial. You chose your own path.

Lori: Yeah. And I never hid being different.

Molly: You embraced it.

Lori: Completely. Don’t like me? That’s your problem.

Molly: Did people ever try to use that against you?

Lori: Women do. We’re the worst. The more someone tries to knock me down, though, the more I shine. I won’t say anything—but I’ll flaunt my shit just to piss them off.

Molly: So, you don’t hide. You do the opposite.

Lori: Exactly. The more pressure to tone it down, the more I turn it up.

Molly: What’s the upside of never hiding? What showed up in your life because of that?

Lori: I have a beautiful family.

I started dating Lou when I was 15. My parents didn’t know. When I turned 18, I planned to move out—but my sister started spying on me. He was married. He had two kids. She’d sit outside his trailer window in New Paltz and then run home and tell my dad.

When my father found out, he forbade it. They sent me away—first to Oklahoma, then to Italy. They told me I wasn’t welcome home. My grandparents had a house there.

A story for another time…

Molly: What advice would you give to people struggling to be themselves?

Lori: Know yourself. Before you can portray something that you want people to see, you have to know who you are.

If you don’t, people can tell. Fake is obvious. I don’t like fake people. I don’t like liars.

That’s why my circle is so small.

Molly: Same. I could count my real people on one hand.

Lori: Exactly. Tracy—who you met—she’s one of them.

Molly: You know what I’m also realizing? How good you are with animals. I think women who’ve been burned by people often have this deep connection with animals — because animals offer real, unconditional love in a way people sometimes can’t.

Like Brigitte Bardot — she just passed — but she was a huge animal rights activist, and she was so over how men treated her. And it sounds like you have a very similar relationship with animals.

Lori: It’s true. I mean — now I joke that I just use men for abuse back, which is a terrible thing to say. But it’s like: sex, and then get out. Don’t ask to come over. Absolutely not. I don’t let anyone into my apartment. I don’t let anybody near my house.

And honestly? I love it.

Video of me, Lori and her always-close Mountain Dew.

There are countless quotes and mystified commentary about Marilyn Monroe’s “childlike innocence.” From Elizabeth Taylor to John Strasberg, all remark on this uncanny quality, as if incongruous with her womanly physique.

It was the phrase I found myself returning to after meeting Jasmine Lobe. The 5 ‘9 model, actress, former sex columnist and prolific writer (you can read her vast works in The Observer and on Substack), exudes that same ingénue aura in the form of a blonde-haired blue-eyed beauty.

And not unlike Marilyn, Jasmine’s looks have shaped how most of the world sees her — barely noticing (or choosing to ignore) the brains and depth behind them.

She has written about her encounters with men from her days as a working actress in the “wild west” of Hollywood, and spoken publicly about being assaulted by Harvey Weinstein.

She writes about the good men, too, like the man who whisked her away from an afterparty and held her, kissed her under the stars on one of those perfect New York City nights.

Jasmine’s work explores what it’s like to be a woman through reflections on relationships with men. Raw, unfiltered and often sexually charged, I asked her where she got such confidence to be so soul-baring: “Because part of the problem with the patriarchy is that when these dynamics stay hidden in shame or silence, they become insidious; they shape how people relate to each other.”

Her directness and unflinching understanding of why she’s here feel as salient as I imagine Marilyn’s must have been when she broke the trance of her own childlike innocence.

Jasmine is here to share her story — her many stories, from the many lives all women live in a lifetime — and to help rewrite the stories for the women of the future.

Read Jasmine’s story on where she is now, below.

Molly: You’ve written so vulnerably about love — about letting it in, letting it go, and holding the men who’ve abused or mishandled it accountable. How did you get to that place of being brave enough to write about it?

Jasmine: I majored in English, with a focus on creative writing — but shortly after graduation I went to Hollywood to act. I was there for about six years — or, as I like to joke, two, three-year car leases.

Toward the end of that time, I showed a friend of mine, the writer Melanie Berliet something I’d written. It was about Harvey Weinstein. I didn’t name him then — it was more like I just needed to get the experience out of my body. One of the things he said to me was, “Promise me you’ll never write about me.” Which, of course, is the worst thing you can say to a writer — it’s like handing her a pen and setting a timer.

Still, I didn’t write about him for years. Then one day I sat down and it all just poured out.

It was around 2011 or 2012 — before #MeToo — and I couldn’t imagine sharing any of this publicly. It felt too raw, too exposing. Hollywood had boxed me in. I was going out for roles that were all some version of blonde girl, push-up bra. I’d go on dates with producers and feel myself slipping into that role — the blonde on the producer’s arm. Part of me almost wished I could accept it, because society rewards you for that. It seemed easier to just go with it — to stop fighting.

But my soul kept saying, Don’t let them bite you. Don’t become a zombie. Keep your soul.

Molly: That’s exactly what Other Wise is about — brushing up against the tide of what you’re supposed to do. Society says, you’re the blonde on the producer’s arm. But something in you resists it. What was your heart telling you you were meant to do?

Jasmine: Acting was my love — if writing was my backbone, acting was my arms and my voice. I studied with an incredible teacher, Marjorie Ballentine, who brought a kind of raw magic to the work that always reignited me when I doubted myself. But at a certain point, she said, “They just don’t get you. They’re trying to put you in a box.”

And she was right. The auditions dried up. I was determined not to fail. I’d been a competitive figure skater growing up — I had to quit after injuries — and I never forgave myself. Instead of thinking, I made it so far, I thought, I failed because my body gave out. So when things got hard in Hollywood, I told myself, I’m not going to let this be another skating scenario. I was fighting for that fifteen-year-old girl whose world fell apart.

Molly: So it was about survival — but also redemption.

Jasmine: Exactly. I started to feel a deep split between how I was seen and how I felt inside. I’d gone from Vassar — where intellect and voice were celebrated — to Hollywood, which said, Forget all that. You’re a blonde. Play the part.

Eventually, everything started to collapse — my agent dropped me, my neighbor died, another was spying on me — it was like the universe was screaming, You’re not listening.

And then, in the rubble, came an opportunity. Melanie showed my writing to someone at New York Natives magazine, and they loved it. They gave me a column called Starf*cked, about being a New Yorker in Hollywood. I’d never been published before. It was terrifying. But the words started pouring out.

Molly: What did you write about?

Jasmine: Everything I’d lived — the contradictions of being a woman in that world. The shame around beauty, money, youth, power. The transactional undercurrent that no one talks about. I wrote about going on a few dates with a billionaire — almost like a journalist observing the dynamic. He once took me into a store that sold thousand-dollar sheets and bragged, “My Italian designer will be furious that I cheated on her with Frette.” Meanwhile, I was wondering if I could pay rent.

I wasn’t looking for him to save me; I just wanted to feel, for a moment, that everything was okay. But it wasn’t. I recently wrote something along the lines of “proximity to power doesn’t strengthen you — it weakens you.” You can’t tap into someone else’s roots and make them your own. You have to grow your own.

Writing about it — naming what’s usually hidden — was how I took my power back.

Because patriarchy thrives in the dark. These dynamics — around sex, money, shame — are everywhere, but no one talks about them. And when you finally bring them to light, that’s when you get your power back. That’s when you’re free.

Molly: You said something earlier that really struck me — that you were fighting for an identity. I imagine that identity was fractured when you got injured as a figure skater. I relate — I was a soccer player, and those identities can feel inseparable, like I’m Molly, I play soccer.

When that part of you was suddenly gone, how did you cope with that loss? And how did that experience shape the path that led you toward storytelling — through acting, modeling, and now writing?

Jasmine: It was devastating. It wasn’t just one injury — it was chronic. And I was also struggling with an eating disorder. By the time I quit, I was sixteen. One summer my body just stopped recovering. I used to pull my hip flexors and be back on the ice a week later, but this time, the pain never went away. I wasn’t eating enough, I was still growing, my nervous system was out of whack — it was the perfect storm.

And you know, in figure skating, prepubescent bodies are celebrated. I didn’t want boobs. I didn’t want to be sexualized on the ice. I wanted to stay a little girl forever because that’s where the freedom was. Once you’re sexualized, it becomes invasive.

So I kept fighting for it. My dad would take me to the rink, and I’d go through the motions — marking jumps, pretending I’d get better. But I was just holding on. I went to physical therapists, no one could figure it out. Spiritually, emotionally, physically — I was breaking down.

Molly: What led you to acting?

Jasmine: I always loved performing. I was a storyteller, even on the ice — I told stories with my body. There’s nothing like figure skating. Flying across the ice at sunrise, the wind against your face, the sound of the blades, that sense of power — it’s otherworldly. When I lost that, I didn’t know what to do.

Acting became the closest thing. It wasn’t the same, but sometimes, doing a monologue, my heart would expand in that same way: I could still feel. I could still tell stories.

At the time, I was also modeling, but that stopped making me happy (I was in pain from previous hip flexor injuries that would often flare up on shoots). Eventually, I told my agency I’d sprained my foot and just… never called back. Meanwhile, a lot of the girls my age went to Paris and were assaulted by their agents. So in a way, I was being protected.

I remember thinking, I want to go to Paris, I want to have a life, and instead I was in my bedroom icing my groin and studying for the SATs. My world fell apart. I was extremely depressed. But when you fall apart like that, you have to put yourself back together.

Ever since skating, my life has been that process — putting myself back together. Not as the ten-year-old I once was, but as the woman I am now. Understanding my body, my nervous system, my hypervigilance. Strengthening my muscles. Learning to love myself.

Molly: So much of what inspires Other Wise is the idea that we hold multitudes — but we’re often encouraged to show only the acceptable parts. It sounds like you’ve reached a place where you’ve integrated all of it — the skater, the storyteller, the actress, the writer.

When we first connected, you mentioned stepping back from public writing because people were projecting their ideas onto you; people even describing you as “the It girl”. You kept writing privately but stopped sharing. What did that time of retreat teach you? And when did you realize that writing wasn’t just armor — it was your power?

Jasmine: You mean when did I stop resisting it?

Molly: Yeah — when did you just follow it and think, this is what I’m here to do?

Jasmine: Honestly, I still resist it. I’m in constant resistance. There’s a part of me that just wants to be safe — to watch Netflix, to fit in, to not be projected onto. That part says, Why would you share that? Why would you tell people something you’re ashamed of? Why would you hand them your soft spot and say, “Here, shoot right here — I have no armor”?

But that’s what being a writer is. It’s a calling. A soul calling. And once you release the words, the shame loses its power. Yes, people might judge or misunderstand you — and that’s hard — but the sense of purpose, the knowing that this is what I’m meant to do, always outweighs the fear.

Molly: Go deeper with that — what does that feeling of purpose actually feel like for you?

Jasmine: Even during that break from public personal writing, I was at war with myself — part of me wanted to share everything, and another part said, no, not yet. That struggle became its own birthing process, that creative tension before something new arrives. Eventually, you just get tired of wrestling with yourself and surrender. You know who you are, what you’re here to do, and at some point, you just say, fuck it — and leap. But even then, there are always more leaps ahead.

Right now, I’m working on two very sexual stories, and it’s confronting. During my old column days, I often wrote about sex, but sometimes it felt performative — like I was trying to be pretty, pleasing, perfect. My audience was mostly men, which surprised me. I realized I was still performing, still making others comfortable — something women are taught to do.

This time, with my Substack, I want it to be embodied. Integrated. For so much of my life, I disassociated — especially during the #MeToo era. When you’re on TV talking about an assault, you can’t be in your body; you’d fall apart. So you intellectualize it — talk about the pain instead of from it.

Now, I want to write from the body. And when I write about sex, I want people to understand — this isn’t for titillation. It’s about reclaiming my power. I’m not performing; I’m exploring my own sexuality and womanhood through writing.

There’s so much vulnerability in that. Writing about sex is really writing about longing — the human attempt to connect, to reach another person and often miss, but try again anyway. We’re all searching for oneness, and sex and relationships are just microcosms of that search.

Molly: Yes. And I think in today’s world, vulnerability itself is judged — not just sex or love, but the act of being seen. Especially for Gen X and millennials, there’s this tension between being authentic and being exposed.

And you said something earlier that I keep hearing from other people I interview: this moment when they realize, what I’m doing is for no one else but me. It sounds like you’ve reached that place — where you’ve stopped worrying about performing or pandering. You’re doing what lights up your own soul.

Jasmine: Yes. There’s…a purity to that. And if it touches someone else — if it resonates — that’s beautiful.

But it starts with me. It’s like the oxygen mask rule on airplanes: you have to put on your own first before helping anyone else. You have to nourish yourself first.

Molly: It’s true. So many of the creatives I talk to — no matter their medium — end up saying something similar. They find happiness and success when they finally stop trying to please others and just do what makes them come alive.

And it sounds like you’re there.

Jasmine: I don’t know if I’m all the way there. But I’m close.

Molly: I was surprised to learn you have so many male readers because I’d imagine women would be drawn to your voice, the honesty in how you write about love and desire. Did you ever get signals from women that encouraged you to keep going — messages that said, “Yes, this is it. You’re on the right path”?

Jasmine: Yes, definitely. A lot of women — and people in general — reached out, often asking for advice about dating or love. Sometimes I’d think, Have you read my columns? I don’t have it all together! But I also received beautiful messages from readers saying, “Thank you. I feel this way too.”

That, to me, is the power of writing — making someone feel less alone, more seen. When we’re isolated with feelings of shame or sadness, it’s heavy. But connection lightens it. One man recently wrote that my Substack helped him understand his daughter better. That moved me deeply.

Those moments — being told my work touched someone — they still mean so much. I’m not sure it’s about validation so much as recognition. It’s being seen for what you’re doing.

Molly: Yes! It all comes back to connection — having a witness and being one in return.

You have this incredible duality — a fierce, uncompromising voice on the page, and such a grounded tenderness in person. Do you see those as separate parts of yourself, or are they one and the same?

Jasmine: I think my writing voice is sometimes ahead of me — like I’m still catching up to it. There’s a fierceness in the way I write, but a softness underneath. I’ve been exploring that balance more — writing about love in gentler, more expansive ways alongside the darker, more lovesick pieces. We’re all moving between those poles — openness and isolation — trying to find where we feel most ourselves.

Molly: And when you reach that place of comfort or peace, do you find you care less about how others perceive you?

Jasmine: I think so. It’s something I’m always striving for — to be fully myself, whoever that is in each moment.

And I have to say, there was one moment that really crystallized that for me. Before speaking publicly about my experiences with Harvey Weinstein and James Toback, I remember sitting in a back room, terrified. It felt surreal — I’d been on television as an actress, but never like this. Then I took a sip of Coca-Cola — of all things — and suddenly felt this surge of purpose run through me.

It was like, this isn’t just about me. It’s about something bigger — about women, about truth, about change. And that realization grounded me completely. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.

Molly: All I can think, hearing that story, is how moments like that often happen when we’re pushed out of our heads — when something bigger than us moves through. It’s like you’re suddenly a channel for something — call it spirit, intuition, whatever. It’s almost divine.

And your story reminds me of a line I recently heard — I think it was on Jay Shetty’s podcast with Madonna. She said, “You manage the light; you don’t own it.” That’s what you did in that moment. You honored the light, you didn’t try to control it — you just let it move through you.

Jasmine: Exactly. I went from being totally in my head to feeling grounded, embodied, almost zen. Completely focused. Who knew it only took one Coca-cola? (Laughs.)

Molly: I usually end with some version of this question — though I have about a hundred more I could ask you. What would you say to people — and specifically to women, maybe younger women — who are struggling with who they’re told to be versus who they actually are?

JASMINE: I think awareness is key. Even though social media can be toxic, there’s also beauty in it — it allows women to connect and share that awareness. To hear other women say, You don’t have to act this way. You don’t have to fit into that box.

That’s why it’s so important for older, wiser women to reach back and speak to younger ones who might be struggling. To say, “You’re allowed to be complex. You’re allowed to be soft and strong and strange all at once.”

Molly: Who are some of those women for you — the ones you look up to?

JASMINE: Jane Goodall comes to mind first. She has such a kind, generous spirit — her passion and gentleness have guided her through the world, and I really admire that. And Gloria Steinem — what she’s done for women is extraordinary.

Nina Simone, too. She lived a difficult life, but her music holds so much truth. There’s one song, Stars — it’s raw, full of grief and beauty all at once. That duality moves me.

And I’ll say this — politically, it’s such a frightening, uncertain time. But no matter what happens, no one can take away your awareness or your consciousness. Once you’ve seen, you can’t unsee. Once you know, you can’t unknow.

And finally, to young women especially, don’t be afraid to say no. We’re so conditioned to be nice at the cost of ourselves. Always trust your intuition.

Connect with Jasmine here.

He was my first Poughkeepsie friend. A post-breakup, mid-Pandemic move had brought me to The Hudson Valley – a part of the world I was always pulled toward – and Ovid Forest was there to greet me.

We met at his now-shuttered art gallery, Cryptic; vibrant and inviting with art, photography, and paint-splattered walls that testified to the parties Ovid threw for creatives from the Valley to Vienna.

I felt welcome, despite what I thought was my obvious outsider posturing, and Ovid was the reason why.

He does not register the ill-conceived notion of “outsider,” and connects people through art and music and community; holding both spaces and visions for ways to bring us all together.

He now owns and operates Reason & Ruckus, a popular bar-meets-lounge-meets-performance space dubbed “the people’s bar” – and with good, well, Reason: it has become a community hub for the people Ovid’s connected by pursuing his curiosities over the conventional 9-to-5.

I met up with my first Poughkeepsie friend at his beloved bar, its walls awash with the same eye-popping murals that once covered Cryptic.

We talked about the trials and tribulations of “what the fuck am I doing with my life?” that comes with your mid-thirties, and rebuking the “supposed tos” in honor of the “meant tos.”

Read on for Ovid’s wisdom in finding reason—and joy—in life’s inevitable ruckus.

Molly: You’re my first Poughkeepsie friend, and I knew you originally as the owner of Cryptic Gallery. Take me through how you started Cryptic, how you got there, and then we’ll get to where you are now.

I had just moved back from Florida, where I’d been in school, and was living with my parents in Hyde Park, working at a bank. A year and a half later my dad passed away, and after staying with my mom for another year, I needed to get out. My then friend Denis and I found an apartment on Main Street, above a gallery run by Ty Johnson.

Denis was a painter, I was doing photography, and Ty pulled us into a group show. When he planned to close the space, I partnered with him to keep it alive. That became 385 Gallery. Soon I was throwing “art parties”—live art battles, DJs, spray-paint walls. Messy, but electric.

When Ty stepped away, I bought him out and Cryptic was born. We hosted monthly shows, parties, and eventually full mural festivals. It started with a collapsed building on Academy Street, its bare walls covered in tags. I proposed murals instead, and it grew to 12 walls with artists coming from all over—even Vienna, Austria.

Molly: I went to one of those! I remember how much fun it was.

Ovid: Yeah, it blew up. We ran about six of them, even through COVID.

Molly: Did you see yourself as an artist, a photographer, or more like the community connector?

Ovid: I never really knew what to call myself. One person once described me as a “cultural curator,” and that stuck. I like that because I wasn’t just putting on art shows—I was pulling together people, ideas, and energy, threading them into something bigger.

Molly: Yeah, you recognize possibility in people and spaces, and then you execute smartly.

Ovid: To me it doesn’t feel like that. I just… do stuff. But yeah, execution is my strength. I hate bureaucracy, I hate taxes, I hate paperwork—but I can make things happen.

Molly: Eventually, Cryptic tapered off. When did you close?

It wasn’t one big moment—it just shifted. During COVID, Ty got an opportunity at 305–307 Main Street, with free rent for a few months if he could launch a concept. He asked me in, and I had savings from COVID, so I invested. We kept doing shows, but one space had more potential and the gallery was winding down. Running both was too much, and when my business partner and I split, I closed Cryptic.

Molly: Got it. And growing up, did you ever have a sense of what you wanted to do?

Ovid: No idea. Still grappling with it, honestly.

Molly: (laughs) Same. Okay, so cut to Reason & Ruckus. You curate the space, which feels like such a hub—not just for artists but really for people from all walks of life. It’s culturally diverse, vibrant, and safe. Was that your vision from the start?

Ovid: Honestly, yeah—but not in a strategic way. Reason & Ruckus came from me wanting a space in between. At the time, if you wanted to party, you went to Mahoney’s—too chaotic. If you wanted something refined, there were spots, but they felt too uptight. I wanted a place where you could have a good drink, enjoy art, hear live music—but still have fun. Basically, the kind of bar people from the gallery would want to go to. That’s what we built.

And from there, it’s just grown.

Molly: Art is clearly a core pillar for you. Growing up, were you encouraged to pursue it?

Ovid: I think my parents were always really supportive. For grade school, I went to Poughkeepsie Day School—it was super hippie. You called teachers by their first names, there were tons of art classes, creativity was encouraged.

Molly: Were your parents artists?

Ovid: Not exactly. My mom’s an interior designer, so yeah, that’s creative. My dad was a contractor. They weren’t “typical artists,” but they encouraged me to pursue creative stuff. In my formative years, the people around me were very much encouraging that, too. That definitely had a huge impact.

But then in high school I switched to a Catholic school, and that was a really difficult transition.

Molly: I want to hear about that—difficult because you were discouraged from art?

Ovid: It was a culture shock. Funny thing is, both schools were on the same street. A quarter mile apart—Poughkeepsie Day School on one end, the Catholic school down the road. Totally different worlds. At the Catholic school, we wore uniforms, said Hail Marys every morning, pledged allegiance. It was very discouraging to art.

I think that actually pushed me more toward rebellion. You know how in high school, whatever you’re told to do, you do the opposite? That was me. I was getting high all the time, tagging the bathrooms, getting in trouble.

Molly: We—so you had a crew?

Ovid: Yeah. That was where I met Denis—who I later ran the gallery with. That’s where we met. My crew was really creative. That was my safety net coming out of such a creative elementary school. I didn’t fit in with the tennis team even though I played. I didn’t vibe with the jocks or the popular kids. We were the kids taking acid and mushrooms, ending up in the nurse’s office tripping. The nurse knew us.

Molly: (laughs) Wow. Okay, but in high school, those are usually the years teachers are pushing you to think about the future—college, careers. Were you struggling with that, or were you just living day by day?

Ovid: Definitely day by day. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just wanted to enjoy life.

Molly: You’re clearly a visionary—the person who sees what could be. I think what’s powerful is that you not only recognize potential in people or places, you actually execute. If you had the right people to outsource to, so you could keep moving on to the next project, that would be ideal.

Ovid: Exactly. That’s my vibe. You need to surround yourself with people who like maintaining things. You have to have your generals.

And if you’re honest in what you’re doing—if it comes from real inspiration—people gravitate toward it. I’ve been blessed with that. People see the vision, they want to be part of it, they offer to help.

The trick is, you have to be willing to relinquish control. Your vision can be a catalyst for someone else’s inspiration, and their vision is just as important as yours.

Molly: I love that.

Ovid: You can’t quash it. You have to nurture it. That’s the only way it all lasts.

Molly: Yeah, that’s what makes a great leader—letting people have their freedom.

When in your life have you felt most other or outside the norm—maybe in a way that you bristled against or even tried to change? Because you strike me as someone who maybe never tried to change that, but… have you felt other?

Ovid: Yeah, I felt different. I still feel different. Sometimes I really embrace that—I’m like, yeah, I feel different, this is great. And sometimes I’m like, damn, I wish I wasn’t so different. You know what I mean?

Molly: Totally. Talk to me about that.

Ovid: The path I’ve taken is not the usual one. Not a lot of people do it because it’s high risk. I wasn’t picking the things that made sense. That in itself is other—not going to college for something safe, then following that straight path.

I feel other all the time. And honestly, when I try to fit in, that’s when I fuck up. I do way better when I just stay other and embrace it.

Molly: You were top of mind when I started this project—I instantly recognized you as someone brave enough to pursue your own path. Your authenticity is inspiring, and it shows in the community and projects you build.

How have you turned that sense of otherness into direction, purpose, or fuel?

Ovid: It flows, you know? Just like all emotions do. Sometimes I feel so blessed to be who I am. And other times I’m like, fuck, why did I choose this? Like, I wish I could just be on a beach vacation right now, or have some steady job and not have to think about all this shit.

But leaning into it—leaning into whatever weird thing I’m into at the time—has always led to good projects. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. I still struggle with it. But leaning into the different has always been the way forward for me.

Molly: I feel that. I’m telling you, the people I reach out to who are in their mid-30s are like, “I’m going through it.” Like, I don’t always see the bright side right now.

Ovid: Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with being able to let go. I’ve been learning a lot about letting go.

Molly: Me too. Tell me more.

Ovid: Like, even with this space [Reason & Ruckus]. It’s me and my business partner Meg’s space, but I’ve been letting go more. Doing side gigs. I don’t intend to do them forever, but it’s been nice to let go a bit, remove myself, re-inspire myself.

Molly: You had to step away to see the whole picture.

Ovid: Yeah. You can’t see a piece of art when your face is pressed up against it. You have to walk away for a minute, see it from a distance. I had my face pressed up against this thing for so long I started losing interest and passion.

I’m slowly rekindling that fire—my passion for myself, my desire to be a better person, a better version of me—by stepping away a little bit.

Molly: Okay, I want to know: which “supposed tos” have you resisted, and how has that opened new doors?

Ovid: I’m always being told what I’m supposed to do. Fuck that. I tell myself what I’m supposed to do.

You have your moments of clarity. They’re not coming from bullshit. You’re sitting at home and you’re like, I get it. I need to do this. Or you’re judging yourself. And sometimes you ignore it.

Molly: Yeah…

Ovid: And that’s the most dangerous thing you can do. We talk about the universe sending signs, but we are the universe as well. We’re part of it—cosmically connected to everything.

We know right from wrong. Not always in a moral sense, but no one knows you better than you. And we walk around perpetually deluding ourselves from reality to avoid things we’re supposed to do—to avoid the harsh realities of living, paying bills.

And it’s really important to get it down somehow. Journal it. Write it. Voice note it. So you can come back to it and think about it.

Molly: Are you a journaler?

Ovid: I try to write stuff down, but I need to be better at it.

Molly: Ironically, I’ve had moments of clarity stoned out of my skull. I’ve had them sober too, but sometimes when I don’t have the mind shackles of who I’m supposed to be day-to-day, my “Molly voice” comes through more clearly. That can be a slippery slope because then I chase that—chase that freedom from whatever I feel contained by.

For you, does that happen totally sober?

Ovid: I mean, it’s both, I think. But yeah—I think getting high can remove a lot of those layers. Humans are naturally pack animals. Whether we admit it or not, we’re very influenced by the groups around us—our clan, whatever that clan might be. You get a new job, and all of a sudden you catch yourself catering to this group of people.

Molly: Totally.

Ovid: It’s both. But inside all that, there’s still you, and sometimes you’ve got to strip the layers off. Sometimes that’s just sitting on the couch, getting high, and remembering who you are.

We’re all products of our environment. You can try not to be a follower—and sometimes you should—but we naturally absorb things from the people around us. Hang with certain people and you start shifting without realizing it.

It’s subtle, it’s energy. We’re vessels, constantly tugged and pushed by those we encounter. I feel a different energy talking to you than when I’m talking to other people.

Molly: Right, like code-switching. Context switching.

Ovid: Exactly. But the conversations you have with yourself—those are really you.

Molly: Yes. One hundred percent.

Ovid: There’s one voice that really matters. And you’ve got to have those honest conversations with yourself to figure out what matters to you.

Molly: What advice would you give someone who’s struggling to reconcile what they’re “supposed” to do with what they’re meant to do?

Ovid: That’s a question I try to figure out myself. But honestly—it’s this: don’t be so fucking hard on yourself. Life is hard. No way around it. Remind yourself of the eases you do have compared to other situations, whether in the world or even in your own circle.

But don’t fall into that trap of, “Well, at least I have food and water, so my problems don’t count.” That invalidates your anxieties. Just because people have it worse doesn’t mean your shit isn’t real. You can still be sad, anxious, lost. We all feel that.

Believe that life has purpose. Believe the bad things are leading to good things. And when good things come—embrace them, because they won’t always be there forever.

Connect with Ovid here.

Like most longtime Kate Bush fans, convinced we “found” this weird, witchy creature who’s notoriously press-averse despite her adoring fanbase, we felt she was ours to possess (IYKateYKate).

So when Bright Light Bright Light played The Red Shoes at a little club in Brooklyn six summers ago, my sister and I rushed the stage clearly reserved for the beloved DJ, believing it was our Kate-given right.

And our recently deceased mother’s, who had raised us on the haunting sounds of Babooshka, Wuthering Heights, and of course, The Red Shoes.

Bright Light Bright Light (real name Rod Thomas)—songwriter, producer, and composer who’s toured with Elton John, Ellie Goulding, and Cher—was spinning Kate’s songs in honor of her birthday, for a roomful of strangers who presumably had their own intense, deeply personal connection to the elusive icon.

No matter the Kate Connect, we were all there because of her, and Bright Light brought us together. This is what he does: creates spaces for people from all walks of life to mix, mingle and move to music.

I have watched the Welsh-born artist do this many times since that magical night at C’mon Everybody in BK, weaving together music, art, culture and people who may not otherwise cross paths.

Yet this master of melding, curation, and connection has operated as an independent artist; shunning fame to “build community more than personal stardom,” even with a UK top-10 album and collaborations with megastars like Elton John, Erasure’s Andy Bell and Justin Vivian Bond.

Read on for Bright Light Bright Light’s wisdom on why the brightest lights are often those who make space for others to shine.

Molly: You are my favorite DJ, and I found you because of the Kate Bush birthday party, where we danced all night to her music. Did you always know you wanted to be in music? Take us through your journey of where you are today.

Rod: I always wrote songs and made songs when I was a teenager, and I just thought that would be a hobby. Where I’m from, I grew up very rurally, where people have jobs that are very defined—teacher, doctor, lawyer, whatever. So making music was really just something you did as a passion.

After college, I worked for a record label for about two years, but I realized I’d kind of reached the end of the road there. So I quit and started singing on the subway, doing that alongside bar work to pay my rent for three years.

Molly: Was that in Wales?

Rod: In London. I was writing songs, they just kind of got slowly better, and then I ended up doing hundreds of shows. Eventually, I got a bit of support from specialist radio, then national radio, and it moved from there. So I’ve been doing music full-time since 2006.

As an offshoot of making pop music, I started DJing with some friends in London who set up a little queer club night called Sink the Pink. That has now evolved into the biggest pop festival in the UK. So it’s been a wild journey, but I never thought it would be a career. I thought it would just be something I enjoyed on the side.

Molly: I want to go back to what you said about where you come from—those very defined jobs. Did you face pushback pursuing music, or were people supportive?

Rod: My parents were supportive, but none of us thought music would be my career. I didn’t study music; I studied English and Creative Writing. They were understandably nervous when I quit my job at the label.

Molly: What were you doing there?

Rod: I started as a receptionist, then PA to the managing director, then a marketing assistant. The pay was dreadful, but the perks—like free tickets to shows—were great when you’re 21. Leaving was reckless. I don’t recommend it, but it worked out because I’m not someone who likes waiting for things to happen. I like to make them happen. That’s really the fun and magic of life.

Molly: That really ties into what Other Wise is about—people betting on themselves. When did it start to crystallize for you, like, “Oh, this is really happening”?

Rod: It was with songwriting. My third single got significant radio play in the UK—on the main station for nine weeks. That made me think maybe there was a future. I also wrote a jingle for a music house that ended up being used on around 2,000 commercials. That was their biggest usage piece at the time, and it allowed me to survive after those years singing on the Underground.

Molly: So for three years you were singing in subways and doing bar jobs?

Rod: Yeah. And when that jingle money came in, I finally had a bit to invest in equipment—synths, keyboards—so I could start making electronic music, which was always my love. Before that, it was very hand-to-mouth. I’m not from poverty, but I didn’t have a pot of cash to buy gear. So being able to make my ideas tangible was huge.

Molly: Who were your musical influences?

Rod: People with strong identities who could still fluctuate—Kate Bush, Grace Jones, Elton John, David Bowie, Pet Shop Boys. Also Chet Baker and Billie Holiday—their storytelling made you believe the songs were their own. I was really into ’80s and ’90s dance music too. Tori Amos was a big one—From the Choirgirl Hotel showed me you could be a singer-songwriter and use electronic production without losing yourself. That was a turning point for me.

Molly: I love the way you weave together old school, new school, and electronica—and you also have such a knack for reading the room in a way a lot of DJs don’t.

Rod: For me, it’s always about collective experience—whether DJing or playing live. I want people to feel connected to each other as much as to me.

Molly: Talk to me about the name Bright Light Bright Light. I read it came from the movie Gremlins?

Rod: Yeah, there’s a line where the creature says “bright light, bright light.” It popped into my head when I needed a moniker, and it stuck. I’ve always loved ’80s and ’90s pop culture, horror movies, and animatronics. The name felt shiny, dancefloor-based, playful.

Before that, when I was just Rod Thomas, I was doing more acoustic, singer-songwriter stuff. But I didn’t feel like my authentic self. That world was a bit snobby, and I didn’t meet anyone gay while touring—it was very isolating. Creating a moniker gave me freedom to be playful, to wear my influences—like Mannequin, Nightmare on Elm Street, Gremlins—on my sleeve. It was liberating.

Molly: That’s so interesting—that being “Rod Thomas” felt less authentic than stepping into “Bright Light Bright Light.”

Rod: Exactly. People assumed “Rod Thomas” meant earnest singer-songwriter. With a chosen name, the possibilities opened. It removed those misperceptions.

Molly: Did things shift once you changed the name?

Rod: A bit—it ignited interest quicker than my earlier stuff. But the UK industry never really bought in. I’ve never been signed to a label. I’ve done everything independently—even after working with Elton John, Justin Vivian Bond, Scissor Sisters, Erasure, and having a UK top 10 album.

Molly: Which is wild. But also makes you so approachable—you’ve collaborated with icons but still show up at local queer gatherings.

Rod: Honestly, I wonder what life would be like if I were more famous. I probably wouldn’t have had half the experiences I’ve had here. New York is my favorite city. If you can’t interact with your city, what’s the point? In a way, I’m glad the industry never fully embraced me—it’s allowed me to live fully.

Molly: What brought you to New York?

Rod: I loved it. From my first visit, it felt like home. I’d lived in lots of places, but here I felt alive. My life pre-New York feels like a different person’s life.

Molly: Was that because you didn’t feel seen before?

Rod: I think so. I wasn’t bullied, but I wasn’t confident. I was the quieter one among very creative friends. I think they were a bit shocked I was the one who made a career of it given being the quieter one. But for me, it wasn’t about the spotlight—it was about making things happen. I care about building community more than personal stardom.

Molly: That’s been a throughline in so many of my conversations—people focused on the work, not the recognition.

Rod: Exactly. Recognition is ego. I’ve found so much joy meeting people here, having real conversations—about race, class, immigration, queer issues. The way communities form in New York is unlike anywhere else.

Molly: Yeah, I would agree. I'm from New York, and I always worried I was one of those “New York or nowhere” people. Can you conjure a moment in your life where that confidence clicked? Where you started to feel that and embody that?

Rod: Moving to New York. It was my first week in New York that I think I let my shoulders relax and breathe.

Molly: This is clicking for me—community, feeling seen, the people you’re surrounded by—that’s what shaped you. And that’s also the thread in your art: you bring people together. Music does that, but you do it in a unique way. And what I love is that you’re accessible. You haven’t made yourself hard to reach, even though you’ve toured the world with some of the biggest artists.

Rod: I think that you're able to give gifts to other people and the people who have the most money in the world are the people that give the least gifts. But none of them are happy. And happiness is worth so much more than a fucking handbag or a private jet. I mean, what's the point? You know, there are so many people who are very much like—Elton John is the most generous person I know. He's so fucking funny and so kind and so cool. And like, Scissor Sisters are great and Erasure are fabulous. They're all such good people.

Molly: Yeah.

Rod: And then you see the flip side of like the billionaires, you just—they’re not having a moment of fun and they don't pay anything forward. And I just really don't understand how you have that much and you are so unwilling to give anything to anyone.

Molly: How did the Elton collab come about?

Rod: A very long time ago, my booking agent was approached by his management company to be their in-house booking agent for some of the new emerging artists. So I was kind of by proxy taken into their company and I met them and got on really well with them and they weren't really sure what I was doing.

Molly: I'm noticing a theme…

Rod: He really liked me and we hung out a bit — he was very kind. Around that time, an overseeing manager hated my songs and trashed two of them in a meeting, so I left the company. I then got one of those songs signed for a one single deal to a new pop label; it became my first single and reached number one on Amazon within a few months. Two years later my debut album as Bright Light Bright Light came out with no label, independently, it got strong reviews, and Elton phoned to say he loved it and invited me to lunch. We became good friends, recorded a duet and I toured with him for about a year and a half. That taught me how important community and lifting people up can be — I now work with hundreds of collaborators and often just ask people, “Do you want to sing on a song?”

Molly: Yeah. You're generous. You're not a gatekeeper.

Rod: No, but I'm also not indiscriminate. I'm not going to give some random person a feature in a song if I don't think that their work is great.

So you do have to be a little bit discriminating about certain things and unfortunately, there are some people I'm like, you're not there yet. And maybe you will be in two years and I'll happily work with you then.

Molly: Did you visualize this kind of collaborative success at any point? When you were younger, did you see yourself surrounded by the Eltons of the world?

Rod: No. I don't think I ever even dreamed of it, because I didn't think that it was remotely possible.

Molly: The last thing I usually ask is: what would you say to someone trying to reconcile what they’re told they’re supposed to do with what they’re really passionate about—something they can’t ignore? And it feels like what you just said, about helping people feel seen, is the perfect segue. So what would your advice be?

Rod: I’d say make a mood board of your life—figure out where you want to be, who you want to be, and what you want to be doing. But be realistic about your strengths and weaknesses, because not every career or opportunity is for everyone. I’m not the best singer, guitarist, keyboard player, or saxophonist—but I’m very good at recognizing my strengths and pulling them together. I’m an excellent curator, and I think curation is such an underrated skill.

Molly: Talk more about curation. I actually have one more question after that, too.

Rod: Madonna, I think, is an amazing example, where she's not the best at anything, but she's the best at doing what she does. That really inspired me. I thought, okay, I’m not the best dancer, but I want to make an album called Choreography about dance, work with a choreographer, and push myself. I did it, and it became my breakthrough record.

For me, it’s about asking: how can I have the most fun? What can I do that makes every moment on stage or in rehearsal exciting? It’s possible to fill your workdays with joy if you keep pushing yourself in good ways. Honestly, the times I’ve felt worst in my life were when I wasn’t challenging myself enough. Right now, with everything feeling so overwhelming, that’s harder—but I still try

If you're trying to marry what people are telling you to do and what you want to do in your brain, remember that no one else can hear your inside thoughts, and the fact that everyone who's telling you to do stuff comes from a different place from you.

Molly: How would you describe your DJ style? And if someone asked what you do, how would you answer?

Rod: That’s hard, because I don’t really think of myself as a DJ first and foremost—it’s more of a sideline. I’d say I work in music, or maybe call myself a music curator. Pre-COVID I was almost always touring, but now I DJ more, so people often just see me as that. And it frustrates me sometimes, because there’s so much more to it than just playing songs. There’s storytelling, curation, processing.

I actually get booked to DJ because of my career as a recording artist, not the other way around. Once, someone I’d worked with for years assumed I was DJing for Cher—I had to explain I was opening for her on tour. People don’t always clock what I do, even when I’m posting about my music constantly.

But I don’t spend my time screaming about my talent. If people only want to see me as a DJ, that’s fine—they’ll only get that side of me. The people who engage deeper get more. It’s like friendship: the more effort someone puts in, the more I give back.

Molly: That’s such a great analogy. Whatever people project onto you, you can’t control that anyway.

Rod: Exactly. And honestly, if you really want to know what someone does, you can Google them.

Molly: I have to admit, I was one of those people who saw you as a DJ first and foremost. That Kate Bush night was so personal for me and my sister—we’d just lost our mother, and Kate was a strong connection to her. But then I followed you and saw you’re so much more than that.

Rod: I’m all of it. We’re all multitudes.

Connect with Bright Light Bright Light here.

Mia DeFabio is intimidatingly cool. Born with a preternatural edge as sharp as her razor, it took me years to muster up the courage to book her.

The third-generation hairstylist has made a name for herself throughout the Hudson Valley for her inimitably cool razor cuts.

Hair is in her blood, which she inherited from both parents – and their parents, too.

When I met up with Mia at her salon, tucked inside an old Victorian house in Highland, NY, I learned her late grandfather had also built a reputation in the Valley, coiffing clients near and far for decades.

What makes Mia so exceptional, beyond her mastery of a tool that can double as a weapon, is her singular drive and unflappable faith in herself.

She has known since the age of 12 that hair was her calling, and—much like her grandfather before her, who was known to sing while tending to his craft—she had an eye for the musicality of hands (the way they “dance around the hair,” she explained, is what separates the goods from the greats).

After years of training and apprenticeship with industry bigwigs like Nick Arrojo, Mia now runs her own shop, Blurred Lines.

But there is nothing blurred about Mia’s focus.

Read on for Mia’s take on why confidence often precludes skill, the power of trusting your curiosity, and choosing self-belief over detractors.

Molly: Mia, you are a third-generation hairstylist here in the Hudson Valley. And you’re a renowned razor cutter. Talk to me about who in your family did hair and how that inspired you.

Mia: So, my grandfather did hair — my dad’s dad. He was in the Navy when he was 18, and when he came back he went into hair. Which is really crazy, because he was this really big, handsome man — you probably wouldn’t expect that, especially after being in the Navy.

Molly: What era was this?

Mia: I don’t really know the exact timing, but if he were alive now he’d be about 98. Probably World War II era?

He had a bunch of different shops in the area. Quick side note: I went to get these curtains hemmed [points to the curtains in her salon] down at Broadway Tailor, and as soon as I told my dad, he said, “Oh my God, your grandfather had one of his shops back there.” I walked in and I was like, What the fuck? This is so crazy. Here I am, bringing my curtains in for my salon, and this was once my grandfather’s space. I was really taken with emotion.

It felt so surreal.

Molly: You didn’t know about that connection until that day?

Mia: No! My dad told me right before I went. He was like, “Oh yeah, your grandfather had one of his first shops there.” I thought that was so wild. He had other shops in Newburgh too. He was very well-known in the area, especially because he was witty. The ladies loved him.

And then on my mom’s side — her mom also did hair. She was also in Newburgh. I don’t know too much about her experience. With my grandfather, I knew more, because even as an adult he’d always ask me, “What are they charging for color now?” and I’d say a couple hundred dollars. He’d say, “In my day, it was 25 cents!” He’d joke that he would’ve made a killing.

Molly: That’s fascinating to me, that both sides did hair. Did you ever witness your grandfather doing his craft?

Mia: Yes. My grandfather always did our hair when he watched us. He’d put curls in, and he’d let us paint his nails. He’d just sit there and be like, “Oh well, I guess I don’t have any plans tonight.” He was theatrical — always whistling, always singing. I never saw him in a salon setting, but there are a couple photos of him doing my mom’s hair.

Molly: And what about your mom’s mom and her relationship with hair?

Mia: She was always perming her own hair. Which is crazy, because that’s not easy to do. She’d try to save the perm solution bottle and reuse it, and I’d be like, “Nanny, you can’t perm your hair again with that.”

She’d also always do her sister’s hair — her sister lived next door. I even have some photos from a couple years ago of her in the kitchen, perming her hair at her sister’s house. That’s the side of her I knew, I didn’t see the professional side as much.

Molly: So clearly, from an early age you were seeing people express themselves through hair. And I love that your grandfather was theatrical, because he sounds like such a true artist — ahead of his time, letting his granddaughters paint his nails, expressing himself without caring what people thought. That must have made you fearless too.

Mia: Yeah.

Molly: And when we’ve talked while I’ve been in your chair, you’ve shared that your sisters don’t do hair. You’re the one who caught the bug. When did you connect to it and realize this was your path?

Mia: Pretty young. My mom did hair too, so I guess I was the next in line. She worked in New York City in the ’80s and ’90s, at really nice salons. When she had us she stopped, but I always envisioned her in those high-end salons in the city.

When I was younger, though, I struggled in school. I’m dyslexic, and things were always really hard for me academically. But I was outgoing, and socially I could figure things out. In high school I even did two years at BOCES for cosmetology, and I thought, you know what, I can get my license and start doing this.

Molly: It sounds like you saw the people in your life experience hair as a passion as much as a profession. Is that fair to say?

Mia: Yeah, I think so.

Molly: I think that’s so critical, because I think of my parents — and so many people — where what they do for money is just a job. It’s “this is how I pay the bills.” But it sounds like you were exposed to people who were really able to live by the thing that made them happy.

Mia: Yeah. I lived through my grandfather and my mom, especially my grandfather because I had more conversations with him. Even now, if you look him up on Facebook, there are still little things out there. Older women remembering him. When he passed away, I was reading all the cards people sent.

One card said, “Nick, you gave my daughter her first haircut and you were our hairdresser for the rest of our lives. We love you and thank you.” I was like, oh my God. That was huge for me to read.

So I think I always knew I wanted to do hair. I never wanted to go to school — I was really bad at school, I struggled a lot. But I knew I was good at hair. It was always this fire inside me. Even as a young kid, like 12, my sisters would ask me, “Can you do my hair for the dance?”

Molly: Wow — at 12?!

Mia: Yes, literally in middle school. I wasn’t a professional, but I could do it. It kind of just came out of me. People around me knew I could do it.

Molly: I love how you phrased that — “it came out of me.” Because I think self-expression can’t help but come out of us, even if we try to stifle it. And 12 is such an age where you become aware of people judging you. But you still honored the creative impulse.

Mia: Yeah.

Molly: So what were you actually able to do at 12?

Mia: Curl hair, blow dry. Maybe the blow dry wasn’t great, but I was going off confidence more than skill.

Fast forward to high school — it was hard for me. My parents wanted me to go to college, and I started having to think about that. I was distraught because I knew college would be really bad for me. Schoolwork, tests — I wouldn’t be successful.

I really pushed against it.

Molly: I’m sure it was coming from a good place.

Mia: Yes, always. And that’s continued throughout my career. Like, Do you really think you could open a salon or studio? Do you have the clientele? Those kinds of questions. It always came from a good place, but it was difficult.

Molly: I think most people experience that — if not from family, then from peers or society. There are always voices trying to dim your light, especially for women. So how did you ultimately stick to your guns?

Mia: I think there was a lot of feeling not seen. My brain works differently. Ultimately, you just want to be seen by the people who love you. And I think it was hard for them to understand me. But I was always really confident in myself. I’ve always believed in myself, and that’s worked for me.

Molly: Where do you think you got that confidence?

Mia: I don’t know. I mean, my parents were encouraging and gave me a lot of tools to be confident. But I’m very different from my sisters. There are three of us, and we all have such different personalities. I’m the youngest.

Molly: I ask because so much of what I try to bring out in these interviews is: there are always people who try to shake your core truth from you — your purpose, your gift. Usually it’s the thing that makes you feel different, “other.” And I’m hearing that from you, like, maybe you were the black sheep in your family, or at least different. And yet you tapped into this preternatural confidence.

Were there times, experiences, or people who made you doubt it? Times you thought, I can’t do this? Because it sounds like mostly you were very tapped into, Nope, this is it. I’m going to do it.

Mia: Now that I think about it, I’ve had different experiences in each phase of my life where I wasn’t really brought down — I was almost built up. And I think that helped me.

Sometimes, honestly, it’s almost worse if people are constantly telling you you’re doing great. It can feed your ego in a way that’s not healthy. And one thing I work hard on now is not letting my ego run the show. Like on Instagram, I try to stay true to myself, not my ego.

But yeah — in cosmetology school, my teachers really encouraged me. They saw my potential and really wanted to help me. Later I did a specific training in New York City, and one of the top stylists there pulled me aside and said, “You are fucking amazing. You’re going to be incredible. Just keep being you.”

I was only 18 at the time, but that stuck with me. Experiences like that really added to my development, my growth, my confidence. They stood out so much that the little negative comments didn’t matter.

Molly: This feels like such a different kind of interview because you’re saying, I was bolstered. You metabolized encouragement in a way that worked for you. And those moments kind of rose above the noise of any negativity.

Mia: Exactly.

Molly: Okay — I want to talk to you about razor cutting specifically. Because though I’m not in this world, it feels like such a cool, different way of approaching hair. And it’s such a part of your brand — “razor cutter” is almost synonymous with Mia DeFabio around here.

What led you to that?

Mia: I studied in New York City for a little while. I went to that training in SoHo, and then I came back to Poughkeepsie. At that point I still didn’t know exactly what I was doing.

The salon I was working at wanted me to start taking clients, but I didn’t feel confident yet.

Molly: How old were you?

Mia: So, I’m like 20. I thought I was getting a job in New York City, but it didn’t come through. Then I went to this salon in Nyack, New York that specialized in razor cutting. I actually came across it through Nick Arrojo — do you know him from What Not to Wear?

Molly: Oh, yeah!

Mia: Yes, so it was his salon I studied at. Then I worked at a salon that had an apprenticeship where you cut hair, train a couple times a week, work under stylists, and just learn by being in it. For me, that was like the holy grail.

Molly: Was it a razor-cutting salon?

Mia: Yes. That was his thing, though he also had a background at Vidal Sassoon, which is all precision scissor cutting. He combined the two approaches and built his own brand. Once I saw that, it lit a fire in me. I thought, This is it. I’m going to do whatever it takes to learn how to cut with a razor. I want to cut hair like these people.

People who know great stylists can tell just by the way they move their hands. From a young age I was fascinated by that — by hands. The way someone could move through hair, place it, almost dance around it, and make it fall in such a beautiful way.

With the razor, it’s very much like that — almost like etching. It’s about reading the hand that’s moving the hair, placing it with intention.

It felt like a kind of choreography. That’s what drew me in, and I think that’s still why I love it.

Molly: I love the poetry of how hands “dance around hair.” And I think there’s a through-line here: your grandfather had this musicality, and I see that in you too. Even the way you gesture as you talk about it — there’s a rhythm, a musicality.

You’re the first razor cutter in your family. Third-generation stylist, but pushing the craft in a new direction, bringing your own depth and expertise. That’s amazing. So you’re in your early twenties when you realize, That’s it, this is what I want to do.

Mia: Yeah. I can still feel that fire of being like, I need to do this and I’m going to be really fucking good at it. I always knew I’d be good at what I did.

I didn’t know exactly how I’d get there, but I knew. And I also knew that for the things I was really good at, there were other things I was really bad at — and I’ve made peace with that. Like, I can’t even read an analog clock. But I don’t care, because I know I’m exceptional at this.

Molly: That’s such a healthy perspective — to look at weaknesses through the mirror of your strengths. It’s like, yeah, you can’t do some things, but no one else can cut hair like you. It’s such a good way to check yourself, to pause and remember what you are good at.

So — you have your own salon now. And is Blurred Lines the name of your salon. Tell me about it.

Mia: Blurred Lines started when I was about 22. I had all these ideas I wanted to put out into the world — I was working for another company but I needed something that was mine. It began as razor education. I launched a series of classes, from fundamentals to more advanced haircutting.

I ran the classes in other people’s studios too, and they did pretty well. But between that and my day job, it became too much.

So Blurred Lines evolved into something more collective — a way of naming how I cut hair, my education, and eventually, the studio I wanted to build. When I opened my own salon, I debated whether to keep the name. In the end, I did — the salon is Blurred Lines — though on the door it just says “Hair Studio.” To me, Blurred Lines is the collective of me.

Molly: At the end of every interview, I ask: what advice would you give to someone who’s trying to find their thing — maybe outside the normal lines, maybe their lines are blurred — and they’re trying to figure out how to express it?

Mia: Personal development, first and foremost. However you need to get there, you have to believe in yourself. If you believe in yourself and put the work in, anything is possible.

And when you’re young, find the right people to guide you. Ask a lot of questions. I was always in the front row, raising my hand. I didn’t care what people thought — I needed to learn. Confidence comes over time, but curiosity is key.

Connect with Mia here.

I found Ariella Steinhorn through her Substack, Nonlinear, where she writes with scroll-stopping vulnerability about power dynamics, work culture, relationships, and love.

So it’s fitting that I fell in love with her writing the way one might fall in love with a person. Her words spoke to me: poignant, poetic and peppered with common ground language tantamount to wordless chemistry between two people.

Beyond our shared interest in those “who don’t fit the usual mold or boxes,” our common ground was comms.

Like me, Ariella was paid to wield her pen, crafting media-friendly narratives and ghostwriting for the employers that hired her.

Unlike me, her brief but life-altering time at behemoths including Uber and a subsidiary of WeWork exposed her to the dark underbelly of tech overlords, who insisted on sanitized versions of truth for the sake of profit over people.

Her words were her livelihood, but also her power.

So when Ariella’s words were taken from her, twisted and defiled by high-ranking men and the systems designed to protect them, she was effectively stripped of that power.

She has since reclaimed it by amplifying voices that have been silenced – from whistleblowers at Palantir to Boeing – which she brilliantly illuminates alongside journalist Eli Rosenberg in her second Substack, Hard Reset.

It is this fearlessness in holding power accountable that struck me about Ariella when I first met her, whose petite frame and pixie-like face seem at odds with her outsized boldness.

But I quickly learned in my conversation with the fellow logophile that the real gift of giving voice to others was that she found her own.

Read on for Ariella’s wisdom on why living truthfully is non-negotiable, and trusting the world will catch you.

Molly: So Ariella, you’ve made a name for yourself speaking truth to power. Can you take us back to when you started to feel that maybe this was your calling—that telling these stories and helping others do the same was something you had to do?

Ariella: I think it was always in my DNA. My dad’s a civil rights historian, and I grew up on his stories—entertaining, but always with a moral.

When I entered the working world in comms, I realized a lot wasn’t as it seemed. I was helping create “better” versions of stories without knowing the whole truth. And because I’m so curious, I wanted to know every facet—probably to the annoyance of colleagues who’d say, “Why do you care?”

I also went through a series of tough workplace experiences where I felt cornered, boxed in, stripped of agency. I kept asking: Is this really what the world is demanding of me?

I saw this obsession with winning, and I didn’t even know what we were winning. Yes, money matters, but I felt claustrophobic and stuck. Now I’m more committed to civil and human rights, but my path is also more complicated than that.

Molly: Are you comfortable sharing a little bit more about the companies you worked at in this corporate comms environment? I think it's an important context around what that “box” felt like and what you were starting to notice.

Ariella: Totally. Uber was the first big one where I worked—I was 22, so young.

My very first manager was wonderful and is still like a big sister to me. But there were constant reorganizations, and I was doing the work of people ten years older. I felt like my colleagues didn’t want me there because my presence might threaten their jobs. It was competitive, and I’m just not a competitive person. Only with myself.

I’ve always been more of an observer.

Molly: You mentioned being pushed into certain boxes in these jobs. What were some of those boxes?

Ariella: In comms, you’re boxed into telling one specific story. I was envious of journalists, who got to go deeper.

Then there was the box of being a young woman working closely with tech CEOs—usually men in their late 20s to 40s with immense power and money. They were often treated like “boy geniuses.” I got to know some of them well, and they confided things that honestly scared me because I realized how unstable things actually were.

Externally, people assumed I was dating them—even before anything happened. At a happy hour, a colleague told me, “He’s into you, I can tell.” At another company, rumors spread that I had slept with the CEO after a work trip, which wasn’t true at the time. But eventually, I did. It became this self-fulfilling prophecy: people projected that narrative, and I felt boxed into either fulfilling it or constantly trying to defy it.

And when you’re young and told hundreds of times what your “value” is, you start to believe it.

Molly: Right—and I notice the way you said, “I was so young and had so much work to do on myself.” It feels like you’re partially taking responsibility when really, these were men in power knowing what they were doing.

Ariella: Looking back, I don’t regret any of it—it was formative—but at the time I internalized a lot of blame.

Molly: So post-Uber, you went on to WeWork, right?

Ariella: Sort of—I joined a startup called Managed by Q, which was later acquired by WeWork. Before that, right after Uber, I joined a small transportation startup. What I didn’t realize was they were about to freeze hiring—they were running out of money. The CEO had misrepresented their fundraising by over $100 million.

I realized the emperor had no clothes. It was sad, too, because I actually liked my colleagues and the idea. But when it turned out to be a fraud, I felt like, Am I a fraud too? I was only 23.

Molly: So young—and already realizing maybe there was no safety net, no real stability.

Ariella: Exactly. But even then, I wasn’t ready to let go of the idea of a safety net. In my personal life, I was chaotic—dating a ton, escaping. Professionally, I went back into the Matrix. An old Uber boss connected me with another startup CEO looking for a comms person. I knew it could be risky, but I said yes because it felt like a good career move.

Molly: I love that you call it the Matrix. So what happened at this next startup?

Ariella: Rumors started almost immediately. Later, the CEO admitted that the first time he interviewed me, he knew he was going to sleep with me. At the time, I rationalized everything—told myself maybe it was meant to be, maybe this was some tortured, passionate connection. He gave me affirmation professionally and romantically, so I justified his words and behavior.

It became a love-hate dynamic that lasted a little over a year. Eventually I realized I had to leave. He would never have fired me, but I knew I had to get out for my own health.

Molly: Wow.

Ariella: Now I follow my gut. But I think it takes a long time for a person to really do that when there are so many external forces telling you not to. If you’ve been sitting in a feeling that’s deeply uncomfortable for a long time—your nervous system is dysregulated—get out. The world will catch you.

Molly: I want to fast forward a little bit, but also not skip over anything important that gets us to where you are today. Within this ten-year span—from starting out in the tech startup world to where you are now—when did you finally break out? You now help people break NDAs now. How did that come about?

Ariella: So the last job I really had in tech was after that startup we just talked about. And it was after that experience that I thought, I need to get out of this. That was the turning point.

Molly: That last job in tech—was there something that happened there that lit the fuse for what you’re doing now?

Ariella: Oh my God, yeah, this was a blockchain company. I very quickly realized it wasn’t actually about any of the things they said it was about. It was about the price of the coin they were pumping. But they had this wrapper of “innovation” on it.

And when I started asking questions, I realized it was all a scheme to pump the token. Then they just…isolated me. I was told I was terrible at my job. The HR person put me in a room and goes, Everyone thinks you’re terrible at your job. No one wants to work with you.

Mind you, the previous week my entire body had broken out in hives. I literally lost my voice. I had laryngitis.

Molly: I mean, the symbolism—your body is screaming, Get the fuck out of here. You’re being silenced.

Ariella: Totally. And so I’m told this, and I remember just running out of the conference room, almost gasping for air. I was like, I will prove you wrong. And I ran out of the room crying, collapsed in a bathroom stall, and was like, I’m done. I can never come back here.

After that, I was like, I can’t do this anymore. A friend connected me to an employment lawyer, and I negotiated two months of extra severance.

That was another inflection point: realizing I cannot be around unsafe people or unhealed people.

Molly: What a generous way to frame it, to say unhealed people. To recognize this isn’t me is such a mature lens to see it through. But there’s something about gaslighting—gaslighting a woman—that is so egregious to me. I mean, they lied to you. They made you think you were doing a bad job. That mind-fuckery is just so not okay.

Ariella: I don’t think then I had the framework or the terminology to know. I knew they were not good people, but I don’t think I understood why. And I think I still felt like—Where do I belong? I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere, and I was so good at that—at internalizing. It was a really hard time for me.

Molly: I relate to that feeling of Where do I belong? When you’re not seeing people like you do it differently, it’s so hard to visualize another way.

So I’m curious. This blockchain chain of events—was that the tipping point?

Ariella: Well, I was like, Oh my God. Two months of pay? I can actually breathe for a second. I hadn’t had that ability, because I always had to pay rent.

The blockchain situation was so severe, and I was like, I am tired. I need a break. Initially they offered me just a couple weeks, but I asked for more.

Molly: So you have two months off, which is hardly enough to reset your nervous system after everything you’d been through. What were you doing to heal, to figure things out?

Ariella: I don’t know if I was really healing at that point. I was transitioning into another romantic relationship, so that took up a lot of my time. And then I also started working for myself. That was the moment I started consulting.

I was making a lot of money, actually, because I had a good network and journalist connections. Probably the most I’ve ever made. So I thought, This is great. But I wasn’t doing the deep work to heal. I was like, I’ll prove everyone wrong. I’ll build my own consulting business.

And then I started the first iteration of my NDA whistleblower work, called Simone. It was a database that connected people to employment lawyers and therapists.

It was this idea that those are two professionals who really helped me outside of the workplace. Everyone should have access to them, if they can afford it—which is its own issue. But those two people can actually help you move out of a bad situation.

Molly: Can you locate us in time?

Ariella: This is mid to the end of 2018. I was 25. I started Simone with the woman who ended up becoming the wife of the guy who connected me to the employment lawyer.

That was a whole other adventure. Because we were both unhealed. She had just gone through a bad workplace experience, and I learned this twice the hard way: it is never a good idea to start something with someone out of an angry experience you’ve had.

Molly: Was there significance to the name Simone?

Ariella: The idea was like Simone de Beauvoir, or Simone Weil, all these famous Simones who were writers and thinkers. And also the name Simone means “to hear”—to listen. I liked that. And then yeah—that became Lioness.

Molly: Tell me about that. Because to me, this is where the work is so extraordinary—where the capital-T “truth to power” journey starts.

Ariella: After Simone wound down, I was really interested in marrying the worker’s rights work Simone did with the storytelling background I had. The idea was to be a bridge between sources and journalists. Like, tech workers who had tea to spill about their companies but didn’t know how to contact a reporter.

Molly: Right.

Ariella: Even simple things like “on the record” versus “off the record”—people didn’t understand. Or they didn’t know how to shape their story so it would resonate outside of their internal worlds. The idea was to be that bridge.

Molly: I’ve asked you this in previous conversations, but have you ever been trepidatious about taking someone on—or getting involved with very powerful people, like Palantir, or other big companies you’ve helped expose wrongdoing at?

Ariella: There was a moment like that, but unrelated to fear. And I can explain.

Molly: Please!

Ariella: So long as I believed something was true, I wasn’t afraid. Partly because of strong defamation laws and free speech protections—but also because I’d already been through worse. My mental health had bottomed out, I’d dealt with awful relationships, and I knew I was resilient. What was Boeing or Palantir really going to do—kill me?

For me, living truthfully is non-negotiable. And it’s not just about exposing wrongdoing. Yes, that’s part of it, but it’s also about surfacing suppressed truths, giving people a voice, and creating space for expression.

People sometimes reduce my work to “exposing bad men.” But that’s simplistic. I don’t get a thrill from gotcha exposés. My passion is about making space for expression—in journalism, music, art, comedy. Creating is why we’re here; we’re not here to increase shareholder value.

Molly: You’re unlocking a memory for me—back in college I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, because it felt so important to help people make their case clearly.

People who are drawn to writing, speaking, conversation—we recognize the power of words, of getting as close to the truth as possible.

Sure, you could TL;DR it as Ariella helps expose bad people, but really you’re giving people a voice. It’s so much more than a valiant effort at “justice.” It’s expression. It’s art. That’s really what it is.

Ariella: Exactly. The beauty of connecting with people over stories—and then finding new stories with them—that’s why we’re here.

Molly: It seems like the more you honor your need to write and express, the more things fall into place. Would you say that’s fair?

Ariella: It is. It totally is. There were some tough moments where I doubted myself.

Because I freelance now, to support, to subsidize my writing career. There are definitely ebbs and flows, victories and losses. But I do finally feel that things are really coming into place. And that I’m also just doing what I feel like I have to do.

Drowning out the noise is a very important part of that. There are always going to be people who doubt. I remember at a friend’s wedding the other month—her family, I guess, said to one of our mutual friends: Ariella’s a writer? How does she make money?

I don’t care anymore. I just don’t. I’m going to focus on the things I can control.

But it’s always been [how I make money], when you really think about it. Writing as the comms lead, ghostwriting. Going back to childhood—I was a creative writer. I won short story awards when I was five, six, seven years old. So this is very much returning to that.

Molly: That’s been a common theme in these interviews too. There’s this return to your inner child. I mean, that’s what we’re all working on right now, right?

Ariella: Right.

Molly: Because as a kid, you’re just in that state. You are what you are. When you’re born, you’re kind of fully formed. And then you go through whatever shit, but your essence remains the same. Did you always see yourself as a writer in some way?

Ariella: I think I did. Yeah. I think I was just too afraid earlier on to actually take that path. Maybe I still had life to live and experience before I could even become the writer I am today.

When I went into the corporate world, my writing actually got so much worse. It got good for what those frameworks were, but much worse in other ways. And I had to deprogram away from that formulaic style.

Since then, I’ve been working on honing—not just sentence structure and free flow—but also not being afraid. And that’s a big piece of it: relinquishing the fear, going into these hard places, stitching together the words, but also asking, What am I trying to say?

Molly: What would you tell someone who is trying to tune into their voice, and who might be struggling to reconcile expectations with their soul’s desire?

Ariella: Oh, it’s such a good question. And I feel like that is the eternal question of being human: how you balance your survival needs for the body with what your heart or soul might need.

I think it’s so rare to find that balance. I think the first step is to not be afraid of your desires, and not think they’re silly, childish, or out of reach.

Also—to not get set back. Because there will be so many obstacles. So many. But what I’ve found is that if you pour everything you can, earnestly, into your work, and you keep trying in a good faith way—I do believe the universe rewards you.

I’m still exploring that spiritual side of myself. I never thought I was spiritual. I grew up in a very atheist, intellectual household, and I leaned that way. But over time I’ve become more spiritual, because I don’t think everything is some big strategy to be solved by academics. There are a lot of unknowns.

People have to have faith in themselves. They don’t need to have faith in God—but if it helps, they can. I do believe there is an energy out there. But the most important thing is faith in yourself.

Connect with Ariella here.

Amy Lovell is a reader—of more books than anyone I know but also of people, places and the spaces in between. It’s the white space; a fear-inducing void for some that Amy seizes as an opportunity to paint with colors not yet visible to most.

Her gift is to see things for what they are and what they can be, gently coaxing out the best version of people lucky enough to cross her path and trust in the power of her vision.

She does this for a living, coaching creators and creatives with followers in the millions to reach their highest potential. She reads them, and expertly discerns how best to make their shine brighter with the business and marketing savvy she’s accumulated in the last decade-plus building startups now valued in the billions.

She was Emily Weiss’s right-hand woman at Glossier in the mid-2010s during the company’s meteoric rise.

To be seen by Amy is no small privilege.

But to see Amy is to be expanded, cracked and cleaved open to life’s possibilities beyond the antiquated markers of success (all of which Amy had and graciously walked away from).

I was invited to visit her in Begur, Spain, where she lives with her husband, two dogs, and books that line the floor-to-ceiling shelves of her 1700s home – the dream home she wrote about as a little girl who had “no interest in being a kid” (did I mention Amy is an equally gifted writer, too?).

Read on for my conversation with the reader on knowing when it’s time to leave, how books put things into perspective when the going gets rough, and protecting the clarity and conviction that anything is possible.

Molly: We’re in Catalonia. You’ve built such an amazing life for yourself here, and I want to hear where you were in your life when you started to visualize this. Take us back: when did this start to become a real possibility?

Amy: I think there are two points: when I became obsessed with Europe, and when it became an actual possibility.

I was always fascinated with Europe, probably because of its history. I remember reading in history textbooks and realizing how much older it was compared to America. I loved the idea that you could walk into a church in Venice (as I did when I was 15) and see paintings that were hundreds of years old. That blew my mind.

Now it comes full circle. This house I live in was built in the 1700s, and people here will say, “Oh, it’s not that old—just the 1700s.” That’s such a different frame of reference from the U.S.

Toward the end of my time at Glossier, I booked a trip to the Swedish Arctic Circle in the summer. I stayed in a cabin suspended in the trees and was reading The Overstory by Richard Powers. Being in that kind of environment, so far outside my normal routine, I just had this moment of clarity: I have to change everything. I need to quit my job. I need to leave New York. I can’t keep living like this. I’ve become one-dimensional and I don’t want to be.

Molly: How old were you when that hit?

Amy: Twenty-eight or twenty-nine. And I remember sitting in that cabin literally Googling “easiest European countries to get a visa to.” The Netherlands wasn’t high on my list, but it was possible—so I decided that’s where I’d go. That was in July, and by August I already had an apartment lined up in Amsterdam. In September, I moved.

Molly: That’s incredible. But I want to go back to something you said—you described yourself then as one-dimensional. I can’t imagine you that way. What exactly felt so misaligned?

Amy: At that time, if someone had asked me what my hobbies were, what I did for fun, I wouldn’t have had an answer.

It was during the height of Glossier, and my whole life revolved around the company. My job was demanding, so I was thinking about it from 7 a.m. to late at night. Socially it was the same. My fiancé was in business school, and Glossier was a case study everywhere, so men would ask me about it. Women too—friends, acquaintances, even strangers—it was always, “What’s it like? What’s Emily like? Give me the inside scoop.”

So everyone in my life wanted to talk to me about this one company, and all my closest friends were coworkers. I couldn’t remember the last time I read a book for fun, tried something new, or even paid attention to the news.

Molly: One of the things I’ve always admired about you is that you know when it’s time to move on. You don’t overstay. What are the signals you notice that tell you it’s time for a change?

Amy: It wasn’t always that way. I used to be impulsive and had a high risk tolerance—I’d just leap. But at Glossier, when I was also breaking off an engagement, I started seeing a therapist for the first time.

She gave me an exercise: twice a day, write down what I want, what I need, and what I feel. When she asked me those questions in a session, I broke down. I realized I had no idea. I knew how everyone else in my life felt—Emily, my ex, my parents, my friends—but not me.

That exercise sharpened my intuition. Now I can recognize the signs. For me, it looks like escapism—shopping, restlessness, unease. Or I’ll start dreaming really big. That’s when I know change is coming.

Molly: And when you did listen to that intuition—when you moved to Europe—you not only built a new life but also met your husband, Adam. Fast-forward to today: what does your work life look like now?

Amy: It’s evolved a lot. When I first moved to Portugal, three years ago, I was starting a publishing company—my first entrepreneurial venture. I was also doing some consulting and coaching on the side. Coaching has always been part of my life since leaving Glossier.

But by January this year, everything felt misaligned again. Being the CEO of a publishing company wasn’t right for me or my team. Coaching, on the other hand, was the most fulfilling part of my day, but I’d never believed I could do it full-time.

So I committed. I built my coaching practice.

Molly: Do you feel like this is what you always envisioned? Was this the life your younger self pictured?

Amy: In some ways, yes. From a very young age, I wanted to be an adult. I had no interest in being a kid. I carried around this Coca-Cola notebook with a polar bear on the front, sketching houses I’d live in, writing short stories, mapping out my future.

If you’d asked me then, I’d probably have said I wanted to be an architect or a writer—maybe an interior designer. And in a way, I’ve done that. I write for work, I build brands, I design things, just not houses.

Molly: I mean, so much of what you just rattled off about what you wrote down as a little girl came to be—it totally materialized. It feels like something bigger, maybe your own higher self, has been guiding you all along.

And I’ve told you this so many times, but you’ve been an expander for me over the decade-plus I’ve known you.

I want to hear more about that fearlessness. You’re not afraid of risk, but these are big, unconventional career moves. Did you ever feel fear? Or doubt that it might not work out?

Amy: I don’t want to be one of those people who’s like, “No, I never thought about it,” because I must have. But…I’ve never worried that something wasn’t going to work out. I just always knew—and I still know—that there’s a high likelihood that many of the things I pursue won’t end up being the thing I do for thirty years of my life. And I look back on that and I’m okay with it.

In fact, that’s great.

I think the only time recently that made me nervous was this feeling of: okay, I’m not in the U.S. anymore, it’s harder for me to network and build a group of people, and community, or whatever else. And I have so many boundaries—people I won’t work for, companies I don’t want to support, a lifestyle I don’t want to compromise on.

So it did feel like, I’ll never find a full-time job again if I wanted that kind of security. Who would hire me in these circumstances?

And the second I had that thought, I was proved wrong. So, you know, even if I hadn’t been, I’d have figured something else out. I just believe that.

Molly: Yeah. And you’ve obviously just—you just try it. Like, okay, if it doesn’t work, I’ll figure something out.

Amy: Yeah! Just try. And if it doesn’t work, do something else until you don’t want to do it anymore, and then do something else.

Molly: I want to talk about your reading. I’m trying to get clear on what I want to ask, but—when I think of Amy, I think of a line Jia Tolentino used to describe herself: “an industrial Hoover of a reader.” What does reading mean to you? It feels like such a central tenet in your life.

Amy: Reading is just…the ultimate way of living in a place you’ll never live, in a time you’ll never live, as a person you aren’t. It’s the ultimate way to experience other realities than your own.

Molly: Has reading played a role in envisioning what you now have? Like—was it because you’d read about life in Europe or certain stories, or certain people where you thought, I can do that. I see myself in that person?

Amy: No—but the opposite has been true. I use reading to remind myself everything’s going to be fine. Like, here’s a character who went through much more hardship than I ever will, and they’re fine.

When you read about people in all these different circumstances, it puts things in perspective. Your life doesn’t feel so serious. So it’s never been aspirational, it’s more: when I’m discouraged or insecure or scared, I read and I think, oh, it’s not that bad. Everything’s going to be fine. Worst case, it’s fodder for a great memoir or novel later.

Molly: I want to stay on this reading thing. Because when I think about you, yes—you read books. But I also think of you as a reader of people, of places, of subtext, in between the lines.

My idea of you has always been someone who’s an observer.

You silently connect dots, connect people, put them on their path. Where does that come from?

Amy: Well, funnily enough, there’s a story my parents tell. When I was young, maybe three or four, in preschool, my teacher told them: Amy’s interesting. All the kids will be playing on the playground, and she’ll be in the back, watching. She studies them, learns about them, and only when she feels like she knows how to approach them does she join in.

So, I guess I’ve always been like that.

As for who I learned it from—I don’t know. But I’ve come to believe everything in life is won or lost by relationships. People get you, give you, inspire you. That’s been the case in every part of my life.

It also makes my career difficult, because that’s not a skill you can easily describe or monetize. But it is what enables me to support my coaching clients so well: I can quickly pick up on what motivates someone, how they need to hear something to put it into action.

If someone says one thing, but actually means another, I can help them say it. That comes from observing, listening, trying to understand perspectives different from mine—and reading about how other people think.

Maybe it’s a coping mechanism, like with reading: there’s always another way of looking at a situation. But I’ve just always been curious about people.

Molly: Something you’ve said a lot on this trip, I want my world to be getting bigger and bigger. And I love that mindset—that there’s so much out there, and I can keep growing.

Did you ever feel, when you were back in a more traditional corporate role, like my world is getting smaller and smaller?

Amy: Well, I would say I was in the “corporate world” in that I was in startup land—but that wasn’t even that corporate.

My first job was at a pharmaceutical company where I did a rotational program: a year in marketing, a year in market research, and a year in supply chain. That’s where I was like: I hate this. Because I felt like I could go on vacation for three months, come back, and not a single thing would have changed. I was like, I am literally meaningless.

And I remember—this was a program where they recruited from my university, one to three people per year. There were three of us my year. And you get paid the same amount, for all three years, no matter what. I was like: How is it that I can bust my ass and work twice as hard, and the other person is working half as much, but we’re paid the same?

I understand that’s how corporate structures work. It benefits a lot of people. But I hated that. For me it was: get out of this world.

It didn’t make me feel like the world was small—it made me feel like I had no ability to change my own circumstances. Like, I could work harder and it wouldn’t matter. I could not show up to work and it wouldn’t matter. Nothing I did mattered.

I needed to be in an environment where what I did mattered. To me, that’s world-expanding—like, I can move myself to Spain, I can move myself out of Spain. I’m not here because a company hired me. I’m not here on a visa bound to whatever someone else wants. I’m here because I chose to be here. And if I don’t want to be here, I can leave. I have to have that ability to impact my own life.

Molly: Yeah. I feel like you were remarkably young to have that awareness. So many of us—I mean, this must’ve been 2013 or 2014 at that first truly corporate pharma job?

Amy: Yeah.

Molly: A lot of us were quick to be like: This is what we’re told to do. Get a job, make money. Especially as millennials. I feel like so many of us—maybe I’m projecting—were just grateful to even have a job after graduating.

So to pause and be like, the math ain’t mathing—even if you didn’t say it that way—was exceptional. You pulled yourself out of that.

Amy: I have this belief that a lot of people criticize me for, because it sounds ridiculous. I’ve tempered it in my older years, but—I literally believe that anything is possible.

I remember arguing with my boyfriend at the time. I was like, If I wanted to be a professional women’s basketball player, I could be in the WNBA if I decided today. And he was like, No you couldn’t. You’re 5’4”. You’re already aged out.

And I said, Imagine the PR story. Imagine the front page of the sports section: “Shortest, oldest woman ever makes basketball team.” People would eat that up. That would be a great story. I could do it.

I believe if you work hard enough, want something badly enough, and have the tenacity, you can do it. You don’t need to hate your life.

I realize this comes from a privileged place. I know people have circumstances that preclude them from certain things. But for myself—I really believed it. If I wanted to, I could do it.

Molly: Did you ever have a time in your life where you got swept up in that? Like, I’m supposed to act this way, be this way?

Amy: Totally. To a certain extent, that was Glossier.

The girls there were super trendy. They were influencers themselves. I was not. They were creative, and they owned it. I wouldn’t have called myself a creative person—not in that way.

I struggled for years to come to terms with the idea that I could be creative without being like them. It really messed with my self-esteem.

I felt like: if I’m going to be part of this company—especially early on, when it was a media darling, and I was Emily’s head of communications and chief of staff—I had to look a certain way, dress the part, be in the scene, be in the know.

So, to a certain extent, I chased things I wouldn’t have wanted on my own. I didn’t lose myself, but I did chase them.

Molly: Right.

Amy: That was the only time I’d say I lost myself a bit. But I also think when you get older, you learn who you are.

Some people know from a young age—like Adam, for example. He’s never been anyone but himself. He doesn’t know how to be anything else.

Whereas I’m more of a shapeshifter. If you need me to be corporate, I can be corporate. You need me to be a surfer girl, I can do that. I can do whatever you need me to do.

Finding your identity when you’re a shapeshifter is harder.

Molly: I wonder too—maybe marginally related—but is there a part of you that you’ve ever felt shame around? Something that couldn’t show up, whether in a work environment, relationships, or elsewhere? Where you thought, I just can’t let this be seen.

Amy: I think the creativity thing was a big one for me for a long time. I would never tell somebody I was in a creative field. I always felt more comfortable saying I was operational or strategic or whatever else, when all I ever wanted to be was creative.

That was one thing. And then the other thing I only came to terms with recently is that my life philosophy is in pursuit of more. I want more. And I don’t think women are necessarily allowed to ask for more. There’s a lot of shame in general in asking for more because the culture is: you should be happy with what you have, other people have it worse, you should focus on helping them. Or, the world’s falling apart—how dare you want more?

But now I just put it out there: I want more out of life. And I won’t stop until I get it. I was definitely not brought up in an environment where that was rewarded.

Molly: I want to go back to the creativity thing because that deeply resonates.

Amy: Really?

Molly: Yeah. What I’m exploring with Other Wise, this whole series, is that when you lean into the thing that feels uncomfortable, that’s probably what you’re supposed to be leaning into.

And I think of you as such a talented creative. I worked with you in PR—I saw how you approached pitches, the way you quietly observed and then materialized that into a PR plan or whatever we were working on. So I’m curious: once you finally owned that and thought, I want to do this—what did it feel like in your body? Did opportunities start presenting themselves?

Amy: What I would say now, that I never let myself say before, is: I want to do this. I never gave myself permission to want to do the creative thing or to put myself out there in the first place.

But when I accepted that I wanted to do it, what was so rewarding was realizing everybody else wanted to support me.

And I’m sure you feel the same way with Other Wise. When you put yourself out there—“I’m starting this project”—people say, Thank God, we’ve been waiting for this. This is brilliant. How can we help? And you think, Damn, I’ve been sleeping on this for so long.

Molly: Oh my God, yes. And beyond that—people probably saw this in you before you saw it in yourself. Like, duh, Amy, we love reading what you write, we want more. And you’re like, Really? You saw that in me?

Amy: Yeah. Because there’s always a little bit of a shadow around it. And when you want to be something, you look at the people who’ve already succeeded. Like if you want to be a photographer, you look at the Vogue photographers and think, That’s what good looks like. I’m so far from that—how could I call myself a photographer?

But my core memory around this was a book I told you about—Anatomy of the Spirit. My friend and I were traveling through Asia, doing the reflection questions every day. We were in Singapore, sitting at breakfast, and the questions were around creativity.

My friend Catherine—she’s a corporate lawyer, so totally different world—asked me about it. I said, I’m just not creative, but I wish I was. And she pushed me. She said, What do you think creativity is?

I said, I think it’s creating something from nothing, or from something that existed in a different form. And she said, Right. So when you come up with a campaign idea, that story wasn’t told before you came up with it. That’s creative. If you create code as an engineer, that’s creative. These things are creative. You are creative.

And I thought, that’s fascinating—because she’s a lawyer. To her, I look super creative, but I was comparing myself to “successful creatives” and thinking, That’s not me at all.

Instead of only looking at the people who’ve already “made it,” think about the real world. You’re more talented than 99% of people—whether it’s photography, writing, interviewing, being creative. But you look at the 1% who are famous and think, Well, I’m not them, so I’m not creative.

Molly: Yes, yes, yes. We undercut our own stuff—there’s got to be some self-protection in that, some coping mechanism.

Okay, last question. What advice would you give to someone struggling to get clear on their purpose or brushing up against that thing they can’t quite claim yet—that feeling of, “This is what I want to do,” but not being able to fully own it?

Amy: Oh, man. I have a lot.

Molly: Lay it on me.

Amy: This is a very tactical thing, but if I have a coaching client feeling stuck, the first thing I’ll have them do is an “energy audit.” For a week, reflect on everything you did each day—the moments that gave you energy and the ones that drained you. Also note the time of day.

What I usually find is people don’t always know what they want. Sometimes it’s not that they don’t want something—it’s just how it’s currently showing up. Looking at the week in aggregate, you might realize, wow, I felt most energized when I was talking one-on-one, hosting friends, or bringing groups together. That’s a clue. Versus, “I think I want to be a writer”—when in reality, being a writer means being alone most of the time, writing daily whether you feel inspired or not. We often romanticize certain lifestyles without realizing what they actually demand.

So, if you’re not clear, start with the energy audit. Then, try envisioning your “dream day”—not a lottery fantasy, but something realistic. Maybe you want three free hours every morning. If that’s true, a traditional 9-to-5 probably isn’t for you.

Once you map out the life you actually want—not what you’re supposed to want—you can start designing around it. And in this era, you can truly do anything. You could decide tomorrow to be the best terracotta pot maker in Barcelona. People have the most random, wonderful jobs.

The key is: design your life not around a title or identity, but around how you want to live. That’s the real difference.

Connect with Amy here.

You can say I’ve been influenced by Emily Saltzberg since we met at Boston University over a decade ago, before influencing was even a thing.

“Basic” was first entering the mainstream lexicon as a knock on unoriginality, and Emily was anything but.

She stood out to me for reasons beyond her blonde hair dyed jet black and piercing blue eyes. She thrifted her clothes before thrifting was cool (Poshmark would launch the year we graduated), turned me onto bloggers who are now relics of their time, and regaled our friends with sagas from her dating life that I think about to this day. One of her morning after stories remains the funniest interaction with a man I’ve ever heard, and I all but beg her to retell it whenever I see her.

Fast-forward to 2025 and Emily is a full-time content creator, sharing deep-cut, deeply Emily recs on what to see, do, eat and thrift in her beloved Austin, Texas, with her tens of thousands of followers.

When I caught up with Emily in the city she never intended to call home, I was reminded of the mindset that drew me to her in the first place: unwavering belief in abundance and that life conspires for you, even when shit hits the fan.

Like the time her RV blew up in flames during a cross-country road trip she never completed, because Austin happened to be the city she and her now-husband Josh were when the camper combusted – “a sign”, she reflects, to have stayed.

Read on for my conversation with the girl who chose adventure over the millennial rat race, and became the woman whose bet on herself paid off in Texas-sized dividends.

Molly: Okay, so you are a full-time content creator in Austin, Texas, and I love the origin story of how you ended up here. Take me through that. You were reading blogs back in 2010, and one in particular inspired a cross-country camper trip, right?

Emily: Oh my gosh, yes. I used to read this blog called Delightfully Tacky. This was around 2010. The blogger bought an old Winnebago and did this incredible cross-country trip, visiting all the friends she’d made on the internet. I think she started in Alaska, went all the way to the East Coast, and then came back to settle in Washington.

She did the trip with her dog — just her and the dog — and I thought, Wow, that’s so cool. A young woman doing something like that. It was so outside my comfort zone, something I never imagined doing myself. But I decided I wanted to do something like it someday.

Years later, I was still in Boston. It was the winter of 2013 and we had this huge snowstorm. I looked out my window and saw my car completely buried — couldn’t see it at all — and a person cross-country skiing down the street. I thought, Why do I live somewhere where people ski down the street? That’s when I decided to leave Boston.

My now-husband, then-boyfriend, knew about my RV dream and suggested we combine it with moving to California. We saved for a year, bought the cheapest RV we could find, spent a few thousand fixing it up, and hit the road for four months. We planned to settle in Santa Barbara but never made it because in Austin, four months in, the RV catastrophically broke down — smoke, screaming brakes, the works.

We spent the rest of our trip and repair budget — about $2,500 — fixing it. With no money left to continue, we called the manager at Pecan Grove RV Park, where we’d stayed earlier. He made room for us again, and what was supposed to be a one- or two-month stop turned into four years living there with Josh and our dog, Gomez.

Molly: You and I graduated during the Great Recession, when finding work was hard and people were determined to land something. How did you decide, “That can wait — this speaks to my soul”?

Emily: I didn’t like my job at the time, so I felt like I had nothing to lose. I was working for a building supply company — I liked my coworkers but it wasn’t my dream. I figured I could find something equally good or better anywhere. My parents were nervous, because in 2014 buying an RV and traveling cross-country in your early 20s wasn’t the norm. But they respected my boundaries and didn’t try to stop me. Later, they decided it was the coolest thing I’ve ever done — though that was definitely hindsight.

Molly: So 2014, you land in Austin. What made you stay instead of resuming the trip?

Emily: The RV breakdown was the big sign. But we also started putting down roots. Austin in 2014 was still kind of sleepy — limited food and events. In 2015, the city started booming and transforming into somewhere I could see a future. I loved the outdoor spaces, and I met people who didn’t care what I did for work — so different from D.C., Boston, or New York, where your job is your identity. I really appreciated that mindset.

Molly: Where were you in your life at that point?

Emily: Between ages 24 and 28, I didn’t have a lot of direction. I bounced between retail, nannying, and then executive assistant/marketing roles for small businesses. That’s where I developed an appreciation for local entrepreneurs and wanted more ways to interact with and uplift them.

Molly: Enter Austin Aesthetic.

Emily: Right. In late 2018, I started it as an accountability tool. I’d been saying for years I wanted to explore more — restaurants, events, meeting people — but wasn’t doing it. I figured if I created the account publicly, I’d have to follow through. I thought maybe 500 people would care, but within a year it had 10,000 followers — big growth for 2019.

Molly: When did you realize it could be more than a hobby?

Emily: End of 2021. My husband, in grad school and working full-time, asked if I could support us with my influencer income for his final semester if he quit his job. At first I doubted it, but when I crunched the numbers, I realized it was possible if we cut back. Around the same time, my nanny kids were starting school full-time, so I had to either find another nanny job or focus on Austin Aesthetic full-time. I gave myself six months to try — and it worked.

Molly: Did you face pushback or deal with any doubters?

Emily: My parents didn’t initially see it as a career. My dad wanted me to get an agency job to learn the industry, but I didn’t want a boss. Once they saw my determination and potential, they became very supportive.

Molly: Many people I talk to realized they didn’t fit the mold. Did you grapple with that?

Emily: I’ve always known I wanted to do something different. In college, I felt lost — surrounded by people who knew their career paths early. I didn’t know mine until my late 20s, and content creation wasn’t even an option when I graduated.

My dream job didn’t exist yet.

Molly: Were there people who gave you permission to do things differently?

Emily: Yes, but mostly online. Bloggers like Keiko Lynn inspired me. Even though my niche is different, watching them grow, take sponsorships, and use affiliate links planted seeds of what was possible.

Molly: How do you handle haters?

Emily: I’m lucky — because my content is more about Austin than me personally, I don’t attract a ton. I get the occasional comment — about my voice, hair color, or “ruining the city” — but no long-term trolls. I keep boundaries: no family on my main account, very little about my husband. I share personal stuff only on a private second account.

Molly: You shared something with me about reframing jealousy and feelings of envy that I love. Can you talk about that and share how that practice has changed the way you move through your work and relationships?

Emily: My mindset completely shifted once I realized I could use my jealousy as motivation to do bigger and better things. If I noticed people in my industry getting opportunities I wanted, I chose to start seeing that as confirmation that the same was possible for me. If they could do it, why couldn’t I?

Molly: Final question. What advice would you give to someone figuring out who they are, even if it’s not obviously monetizable or widely accepted?

Emily: Nobody has it all figured out. As unsure as you feel, the people you look up to feel the same way about themselves.

Connect with Emily here.

Joe Westmoreland is a survivor of many things: unspeakable childhood abuse, AIDS, and multiple near-death experiences where “shadow figures” told him it was not yet his time.

The critically acclaimed author’s part-memoir, part-fiction Tramps Like Us is experiencing a resurgence in the cultural zeitgeist, with its republication nearly two decades after its initial release.

I am lucky enough to know Joe through a mutual connection of such cosmic proportions it would be insulting to the divine to try and explain here (another post, another day).

And it is because I know Joe as more than some faceless author that made turning certain pages of Tramps too painful, particularly where he describes the trauma he and his sisters endured at the hands of their father.

But once I got through to the parts where the boy branded “weird” from Kansas City, Missouri, breaks free, I could not turn the pages fast enough.

Joe writes with exquisite detail about his cross-country travels through pre-AIDS America, transporting readers to a time of art, music, dance, and play—as well as copious amounts of drugs, sex, and encounters with strangers unshielded by screens and swipes.

When we met up in his NYC apartment, I told Joe how these stories made me yearn for a time I didn’t exist; lamenting the sense of human connection that eludes my generation.

We also talked about how he came to tell these stories in the first place.

Read on for Joe’s reflections on writing through fear, how the “pink bubble” helped him manifest the life he now leads, and why—despite the near-constant presence of death and temptation to “go to sleep and never wake up”—he chose to live.

Molly: I’m so excited, Joe. As you know, Other Wise is really about celebrating your otherness—the thing that makes you feel different. And something that stood out to me in your book: you said multiple times that people would call you weird. I want to know, you ran with such an eclectic crew… so for them to mark you as weird, what do you think that was about?

Joe: Well, with my friends, we all felt normal with each other. But—like I wrote about in the book—when I was in high school, kids always told me I was weird. Between my junior and senior year, I cut off all my hair. Kids were smoking pot and growing their hair long, and I thought, they don’t know the true meaning of long hair.

So I cut it all off. People thought I was really weird for doing that.

Molly: And this was when—the ’70s?

Joe: Yeah, like 1973. Post-hippie, but rock and roll was still going strong.

Molly: So, in other words, long hair was in, but it was still kind of radical to have it.

Joe: Right. But then the jocks started growing their hair long. And that’s when I thought, Oh no. I’m not doing it. They don’t get it.

I’d walk down the main street in my suburb, just heading home, and people would drive by, yell at me that I was weird, or tell me to get off the street.

Molly: How did that make you feel? Because it sounds like you were almost intentional about differentiating yourself.

Joe: At that time, I was just being myself. Just trying to get through high school in the suburbs. Later on, though—I talk about this in the book—the “clone look” was huge in San Francisco. Looking back, it was pretty radical because you could tell someone was gay just by the way they dressed. Tight blue jeans, Lacoste shirts with the alligator, a mustache, short-trimmed hair. My friend Ali said, “If I want a man, I’ve got to clone out.” And I was like, Nope. I don’t want a man that much.

Molly: (laughs) And you were young.

Joe: Yeah.

Molly: So to reject the homogeneity, to say no to being part of the group—what do you think gave you that gall?

Joe: I think it was just in me. When the clone look was in, I was really into early-’60s preppy. Like Wally Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver. He was my fashion role model. You could find those clothes cheap at thrift stores—slacks with a crease, button-down shirts, big striped sweaters.

Molly: Hahaaa! I love that. You got off on being contrarian.

Joe: Yeah, at that point I did. There was this one time in Jacksonville Beach—I was visiting my sister and brother-in-law. He was in a reggae band, his stage name was Soy Blanco, and everybody called him Soy.

We were at a McDonald’s, and this whole family—mother, father, two or three kids—was staring at us. I finally said, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” They all turned away. It was like… no matter how plain I tried to dress, people just sensed something different about me.

My friend Lori once showed me an article about how some people have an energy that others notice instantly. You walk into a room, and people just stop and look. They’re trying to figure out what’s different.

Molly: Take me back to Kansas City, Missouri. In your book, so much of the premise is I gotta get the fuck out. What did that feel like?

Joe: Lonely. I didn’t think about it that much—it was more of an impulse. I just tried to get through high school.

For a little over a year, I was actually a Jesus freak. I went to Bible studies. There was this Hallelujah Joy Band on Sunday nights—hippie kids, ex-druggies. They lived in a commune called the House of Agape. My parents let me go because it was Bible study, but really, it was a wild place.

Molly: Did you join knowing it was wild, or were you genuinely exploring?

Joe: I was genuinely into it. I studied the Bible, carried it on top of my schoolbooks, tried to get friends to come with me. I even debated my chemistry teacher about God and the universe.

Molly: Oh my gosh.

Joe: It was all about forgiveness. They said you had to forgive, and I just couldn’t forgive my dad. I didn’t feel like they understood me. Eventually, I just wanted to get high again.

By senior year I stopped going.

Molly: Then cut to—you start hitchhiking. When did that begin?

Joe: I graduated high school a semester early, worked at a nursing home for a bit, then left the week I graduated. I was 17. Moved out of my parents’ house, started exploring.

For a while I tried to be “normal,” but I couldn’t. It was easier just to laugh at people—You think I’m weird? OK, I’m weird. And I had David Bowie, Lou Reed, Elton John as models. Rumors about them being bisexual… it was like, Oh, that’s what life could be like.

Molly: They were expanders for you—proof there was a better life out there.

Joe: Exactly.

Molly: I love what you said: you tried to be normal, realized it was easier to laugh at people, and leaned into the weirdness. Can you give an example?

Joe: More than anything, it was an attitude. When I hitchhiked up the East Coast to New York, I noticed all the gay guys had cut their hair and were wearing straight-leg jeans. So when I went back to Missouri, I did the same. My friends thought I’d gone straight, but really I was a couple years ahead of them in style.

Molly: Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

Joe: Yeah. I wanted to be a journalist. The University of Missouri has one of the best journalism schools, and I dreamed of going there. I had pen pals when I was young. I didn’t fully understand what being a writer meant, but I knew that’s what I wanted.

Molly: You also always knew New York was your destiny.

Joe: Yeah. At the time, it felt like things kept getting in the way. But looking back, if I’d come here earlier, I probably would have OD’d.

When I moved here, in the East Village, people were lining up outside abandoned buildings for heroin. There was a laundromat on East 7th Street where they sold drugs. My friend Sheila bought a few gutted buildings nearby—no one wanted them then—and now she’s rich because they’re worth a fortune.

Molly: Go, Sheila. I would love for you to describe what your “pink bubble” was, go backwards in time, and see how you ultimately wended your way to manifest what you visualized. Tell me about that.

Joe: Well, I already had kind of a spiritual background. I’d been a Jesus freak. And then my friend Qalbee—his real name was Ed—joined the Sufi order. It was like an American Sufi thing.

Later, in the early AIDS days, I found Louise Hay. She was all about healing with your word, with self-love. There was this little book everyone was reading called Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. And another one, Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain.

Louise had these huge seminars. I went to one at the Hotel Pennsylvania across from Madison Square Garden. She had this big heart-shaped mirror trimmed in lavender. And Prince was performing across the street the next night. At the end of the seminar, I went over and saw him in concert. He came out wearing the heart-shaped mirror. Purple lights hit it so the reflection spread across the whole audience. It was wild.

Molly: Wait, didn’t you write about seeing Prince in San Francisco?

Joe: (laughs) Yeah. I actually made that story up.

Molly: (laughs) Is that on the record?!

Joe: Yeah. But I did see him in New York, at least for a hot minute. And at a late-night club, too.

Molly: That’s so funny, because I remember reading that part in Tramps and thinking, Wow, Joe got to see Prince so intimately. Your details were so vivid it felt real!

Joe: (laughs) Yeah. At the time, I didn’t fully trust him. I thought, He’s a straight guy doing drag—it doesn’t quite add up. I liked the music, but I didn’t trust the image. My friends were like, Joe, what are you doing? You should come with us! And I was like, Nah, I don’t want to see him. So I missed it.

Molly: That’s amazing. And when was this? I want to locate us. Was this post–word processing days?

Joe: No—during.

Molly: Can you give me a description of what a word processor did?

Joe: Sure. Back then, a word processor wasn’t software—it was a job. The lawyers didn’t have computers in their offices. They edited legal documents by hand—big corporate stuff like mergers. Then they brought their edits to us.

Our computers were hooked up to a mainframe—a big machine that looked like a washing machine. We’d pull up the document, make the edits, print it, hand it back. They’d mark it up again. We’d refine it until it was final, then print it on legal paper.

My first job there was “printer tender.” Continuous-form paper with perforated sides—remember the holes along the edges? I had to load the printer, watch for paper jams, fold down the printouts, tear off the perforated sides, separate the pages, stack them, and flip them.

Molly: Eight hours a day?

Joe: Yep. On my feet, tending the printer.

Molly: Got it. And so it’s during this time—you’re doing the corporate thing, you’re doing what you have to do to survive—but you start to visualize your pink bubble?

Joe: Yeah. By then I’d been word processing for a while. I started in the late ’80s, after I moved to New York. I first used the pink bubble for a job. I’d quit a long-term job and was temping for a while, but that wasn’t working out. So I did a pink bubble—and I got a job.

That’s when I met my friend Debra, who I’m still friends with. We were both working at Jones Day—a really corporate, right-wing firm.

We both hated it. And I didn’t get along with management. I was always getting called into HR because I didn’t dress “right.”

Molly: Even then, your soul was rebelling. You were like, “I don’t fucking care. I know this is my job, but I cannot do the corporate thing.”

Joe: Exactly. I worked evenings because I couldn’t do the nine-to-five. I wore jellybean sandals—you know what those are?

They were comfortable, and I figured people wouldn’t notice. But one of the head attorneys saw me, called HR, and they told me, “You can never wear those again.”

Molly: And did you listen?

Joe: I had to.

Molly: But at this point, you’re obviously feeling internal strife about this.

Joe: Yeah, I felt like a square peg in a round hole.

Molly: Were you worried? Thinking, How am I going to save myself from this? This is not my path.

Joe: Yeah. But I needed health insurance—I knew I was HIV positive. So I had to have a job.

I worked evenings so I could write when I got home, and have my days free. I didn’t want to be stuck in the nine-to-five crowd.

Molly: You were writing! Does that mean that in your pink bubble, you visualized, I’m somehow going to be a writer?

Joe: Yeah. So one day, Debra was in the little coffee room crying. She said, “I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t.” And I said, “Let’s do a pink bubble.” She asked, “What’s the pink bubble?” and I explained it. We did one together: that we’d both get out of there.

And we did.

It works—it really works. It helps if you do it with another person; it magnifies the effect.

I did one for my book. I said: I have this book. I want it finished. I want an agent. I want an editor. I want attention for it. I want to make money from it.

I’d had an agent I met through AA, but he relapsed. He held onto my book for a year, kept saying he was working on it—but he wasn’t. Finally, I got it back.

I even called Farrar, Straus & Giroux, asked who to send it to. The receptionist told me, “We don’t do that. You need an agent.” But you needed an editor to get an agent, and an agent to get an editor—it was a loop.

So it didn’t happen that way. The book got published through a good small press instead. The publisher had a heart attack right after it came out, and things fell apart.

But with the pink bubble, we always say: This, or something better, for the good of all concerned.

Molly: You know what I love about that? I think acting in the service of other people—whether you recognize it as such or not—matters. Because sometimes I experience writing as a very self-soothing thing. I don’t always see how it affects other people.

Joe: Yes, but you know, floating something off to the universe doesn’t mean you stop working. The hardest part is the waiting. You still have to do the footwork—your day-to-day life. You can’t say, “Oh, it didn’t happen, so I’ll never do a bubble again.” You don’t give up.

Molly: And it’s about taking aligned action. Like, you wanted to be a writer, so you sat down and wrote. You didn’t expect something to just materialize out of nothing.

Joe: Exactly.

Molly: Take us back to that dreadful word processing period of your life—because it was around that time that AIDS was hitting hard, right? Your friends were dying. Did that brush up against your ability to come to work and do the stupid nine-to-five thing?

Joe: Yes, especially when I moved from San Francisco to L.A. I moved the day Qalbee died. I carried guilt about that—thinking I should’ve stayed. But he’d wanted me to go. We didn’t know he was going to die that day.

I left on a Friday, and by Monday, I was at work. And it was kind of comforting. Like, okay, this I know. Everything else is crazy, but this job I know. The people were hard to deal with, no matter where I was, but the routine was something I could hold on to.

Molly: I can relate to that. When my mom was sick, I was grasping for familiarity, structure, routine—anything I knew. I tried to hold on to work. Ultimately, I had to resign.

But I guess what I’m trying to get at is: when did you finally throw in the towel and say, Fuck it, I’m going to live my life as a writer. I can’t be anything other than “weird Joe.”

Joe: I left Jones Day for Price Waterhouse, which turned out to be even more conservative. You only got one week of vacation, and not until you’d been there five years did you get two weeks. You had to be on time to the minute. I was always ten minutes late.

The work itself wasn’t much. But the formality—I hated it. I knew I had to get out.

Around then, the CDC lowered the threshold for an AIDS diagnosis. If your T-cell count was 500 or less (normal was like 1,200 or more), you qualified for disability. I held out as long as I could, but after I’d been at Price Waterhouse a year, I finally went on disability.

Molly: And at that point, did you fully commit to writing?

Joe: Yeah. I joined the Writers Room—it’s still around, open 24 hours. I kept my evening word processing schedule and just transferred it there. Six to midnight, Monday through Saturday.

Molly: Wow. You had two jobs.

Joe: Yeah, it felt like two jobs. But after I quit word processing, I just kept that schedule and worked on my book.

Molly: Something I’ve noticed—in these interviews and in my own life—is that when people finally give in to that spiritual calling—like, I have to tell this story—other things in their life start to fall into place. Did you experience that?

Joe: Yeah. Back in San Francisco, I was taking film classes at City College. I thought I’d be a video editor. I loved Super 8, made little films. Video editing was just starting—big decks, huge cameras—and I thought: this is like word processing, cut and paste.

A friend asked me to move to L.A. with their band. I tried different video and film gigs. I was okay, but doors kept closing.

When I started writing, doors started opening.

Around 1991, when Clinton was running, my friend Eileen was running for President too. I was her volunteer campaign secretary. At a fundraiser, I showed her a story I’d written from a dream.

In the dream, my dad got lonely after his girlfriend left. We’d drink beer, sit together, and eventually wound up having sex. In the dream, I felt safe and comfortable. It was mixing incest with this feeling of okayness.

I wrote it down almost verbatim from the dream. People, including Eileen, were amazed by the story.

I read it at the event. When I finished, the room was silent. Lori Seid, Anne, Lucy—right in front of me.

I thought: They hate it.

But really—they were shocked. Amazed.

Molly: Oh, Joe.

Joe: It was like—this perfect moment. Suddenly I thought, Oh. People like what I write. I’d thought it was just this weird little story.

Molly: That’s what I’m trying to get at. For some people, that would be shadow material—something they’d never confront. But you did. It’s a theme in your book, something you write about so bravely. And yeah, you liked the story, but you were scared. And you did it anyway. You leaned into the thing that scared you.

Joe: Yeah.

Molly: Which sometimes is the very thing that makes you different. And it also sounds like you were getting signals from the universe—people telling you, You’re a writer.

Joe: Yeah. From that point, things started opening. People asked me to read at other events. Things fell into place.

I still doubt myself sometimes. I’ll think, Is this my inner voice, or just a crazy thought? But when I really listen—it shows me where to go.

Molly: That might be the answer to the question I always end with in these conversations: What would you tell someone who’s trying to get in touch with their inner voice?

Joe: Trust it. And let it out.

Because the inner voice—it’s what’s connected to everything. God, spirit, universe, other people. It’s like a homing device.

There’ve been times I was really sick—times I could’ve died. Sometimes it felt like I had a choice: go to sleep and never wake up, and that would be okay. But I always felt: I’m not ready. There’s something else I have to do.

So when they asked me to do this book, I thought maybe this is what I had to do. And I even say in my Afterword: now that the book’s out, I know I still have more to do.

Connect with Joe here.