It’s amazing how some people leave an impact on you even after a single meeting. His name was Mr. Alvin Steppes, and he was 71 years old when I sat down with him to listen to his story. A story about something that happened in his life. Something painful enough for him to still wake up in tears many years later. Tears that seemed to be welling up in his eyes even as we spoke. Those eyes, with that familiar bluish ring around a dark brown iris. The same ring that many Black elders in the Deep South seemed to carry, sometimes gray, sometimes light blue and sometimes a deep blue, like my grandmother’s.

I interviewed Mr. Steppes 9 years ago as part of my thesis documentary film school project exploring Black land loss and dispossession. There were many reasons for the land loss. One part of the equation and the part that I tackled most in the film was the discrimination Black farmers faced from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Mr. Steppes was the great-grandson of enslaved people and the heir to land his grandparents purchased from a white landowner who astonishingly sold his land only to Black people (or so went the story that was passed down to Mr. Steppes). What an amazing thing for a white man to do during that time; why would he do that, I thought to myself. So I asked. “Well, you have some good people of all nationalities,” Mr. Steppes responded. “He was just a good man; maybe a God-sent man that made sure he was doing something for other peoples,” he said. Mr. Steppes took over his family’s farm after his father died.

While I was developing this project, one note or pushback I received on the idea that the staggering amount of Black farmers’ land loss was specific to their race was the fact that a lot of white farmers had also suffered enormous amounts of land loss as well, specifically during the 1980s farm crisis.

In my answer to that notion, I turned to the phrase “when white America catches a cold, Black America catches pneumonia.”

In other words, the illness is the same, but the body’s ability to fight it is not. Not because we are weaker, but because our immune system has been compromised by design over generations.

Black farmers had been severely disadvantaged before the crisis hit; systematically stripped of wealth and land for decades through violence, legal manipulation, tax sales, heirs’ property vulnerabilities, and outright theft.

Black farmers’ starting place was at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. And that positioning matters when you talk about chances of survival during a disaster.

A Microcosmic Example

Take the Titanic disaster, for example. A few years back, my very young son had this impossibly cute obsession with the Titanic. I mean, he wanted Titanic coloring books and a toy replica of the ship to play with in the bathtub. We visited Titanic exhibits and watched countless hours of documentaries and random YouTube videos of people recreating the ship's crash and sinking in their backyard pools. It was very intense and hilariously strange; nevertheless, I now have had time to really dwell on the crash and see how it is a great microcosmic example of how survival during disasters works.

The survival rate of first-class passengers was 61%. Second-class passengers were 42%, and the survival rate for 3rd class passengers was 24%, suffering the highest casualties. And do you want to know what one of the key advantages to the people who survived was? It was access.

There were many system failures that brought the Titanic to its demise and caused so many to lose their lives, but one failure I find especially grotesque. There were not enough lifeboats for everyone on board.

It really aggravates me when people act like you are supposed to survive and thrive through sheer willpower and force and not acknowledge the negative impact of larger systems at play, especially ones built entirely without your well-being in mind.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I believe we ought to do all we can and seek to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps. But it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself up by his own bootstraps.”

There were not enough lifeboats on the Titanic. What were the people supposed to do, build their own boats to escape this man-made disaster, one they themselves did not create, mind you? With what knowledge about boat building, with what tools and materials? And how could they do it in the 2 hours and 40 mins that it took for the ship to sink?

Wealthier first-class passengers had the highest survival rates not only because they had access to lifeboats but also because they were closer to them, as the lifeboats were located on the upper decks near their cabins. They also had better access to information about what was happening. All while poorer third-class passengers were housed deep in the lower decks and were sometimes physically prevented from reaching the upper decks.

The parallels between this and Mr. Steppes’ story are striking.

Mr. Steppes’ Story

It happened in 1986, arguably the worst year of the American Farm Crisis.

To understand what happened, you have to know that farming runs on credit. Every late winter or early spring, farmers, rich or poor, would go to their local bank to borrow money for seeds, equipment, and fuel, money they wouldn’t pay back until after the harvest. But for Black farmers, local banks often wouldn’t lend to them. The Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) served low-income and disadvantaged farmers broadly, but because local banks so routinely turned Black farmers away, it became their primary available option, and often their only one. It was supposed to be the alternative, a federal lender of last resort that would give them the same fighting chance. Steppes mentioned that the white farmers in his area sorta turned their noses up at FmHA, called it welfare, and typically wouldn’t be seen in those offices.

That year, Mr. Steppes and his fellow Black farmers applied for their loans as usual and were told by the offices that no funds were available. One day, Mr. Steppes went in to speak to a supervisor about what was going on and was told he would have to wait until the supervisor was out of a meeting. While waiting, Mr. Steppes overheard a district director telling all the county supervisors who to let have money. And wouldn’t you know it, all the people being named to receive funds were, as Mr. Steppes put it, “big time white farmers.”

“The USDA cut us off and bailed out these white farmers,” he continued.

The farm crisis was a full-fledged disaster, and the banks that the white farmers typically borrowed money from were now foreclosing on them. While I can’t speak to why those specific farmers were facing foreclosure, I can speak to the circumstances that led to the overall crisis and foreclosures of many farmers.

During the 1970s, banks aggressively lent to farmers as the federal government encouraged agricultural expansion, farmland values rose, and credit was easy to obtain. Many farmers borrowed heavily to buy more land and equipment.

The crisis came in the early 1980s when interest rates spiked, farmland values collapsed, and farm incomes fell as crop prices and export demand declined. Farmers who had borrowed heavily suddenly faced much higher loan payments while earning less income, making it difficult to repay their debts.

By 1986, banks were pulling back, calling in loans, and foreclosing on farms. Credit that had once been easy to obtain became much harder or more expensive to access, worsening the farm crisis.

The ship was sinking; FmHA was the last lifeline, and in Mr. Steppes' case, it was just like the passengers on the Titanic, a choice was made about who would be saved. It wasn’t random. It wasn’t an oversight. Someone decided which farmers got the lifeboat.

A Painful Irony

Mr. Steppes was a fighter and a person who firmly believed in getting in “good trouble,” as the late civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis put it.

Mr. Steppes immediately confronted his county supervisor after the meeting, telling him he knew he had been lying to him and the other Black farmers. He and the other farmers would go on to file a complaint against the USDA.

Mr. Steppes said his mother told him that she was scared for him, scared that someone was going to kill him. He replied to her, “Mama, I will die for my rights, and I will die for other people’s rights. I’m no better than nobody else. If I see something wrong, I got to let them know about it. God put us here to look out for one another.”

As I’m sure you can imagine, this fight was not an easy one. It was a true David-and-Goliath story that would span more than a decade.

“It got rough, “ Mr. Steppes said of his experience. “I have cried. I have cried, I have prayed a many days baby. Many.”

But there was something about his experience that I didn’t have much exposure to at the time I spoke to him, and it was another layer added to the “weakened immune system” that makes the Black community more vulnerable during a disaster.

When a body is under prolonged stress and attack, it sometimes turns on itself. It’s been in fight mode for so long that it loses the ability to distinguish friend from foe. Inequality doesn’t just attack from outside; it burrows inside a community and creates internal fractures that make collective resistance harder.

Generations of seeing fighters get crushed, get made examples of, lose everything, teach a community to keep its head down.

Some people in Mr. Steppes’ community simply did not believe him, and they saw him as the enemy causing trouble. Some people were afraid and willing to accept what he was not, so he faced ridicule and attacks on his character.

Some believed in him and in what he was trying to do, praised him, and some became jealous. The fight against the USDA attracted opportunists and clout chasers. He witnessed how greed gets in the way of accomplishing good for the collective.

Things got so bad that he began driving big trucks as a means of escape, all the while praying every day that God would help him and the other farmers to save their land.

And there I sat with him, many years later, looking at the grief still present in his eyes as he remembered and retold the story of his years of isolation.

And this is the greatest lesson I received about what it means to be a fighter and to see clearly what others cannot. There is a price for being ahead of your time in what you understand and a loneliness of carrying knowledge that others aren’t ready for.

Sometimes your community will not rally behind you. Sometimes you will be ostracized and beaten down by the very people you are trying to protect and help.

What Remains

Mr. Steppes’ initial complaint against FmHA would later be a critical component in getting the historic Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit off the ground. The discrimination Mr. Steppes and other Black farmers in his county had experienced was not an isolated event, far from it. Black farmers across the nation had similarly awful stories of discrimination. The Pigford v Glickman lawsuit would result in the largest civil rights class-action settlement in U.S. history.

The lawsuit became like that floating wooden panel torn from the sunken ship in the 1997 film Titanic. The main character, Rose, climbed on top and held on. It bought her enough time to be rescued before the freezing North Atlantic waters claimed her. Jack, the other main character, was not so lucky. He would remain in the water and die.

Participating in the lawsuit stopped the foreclosure on Mr. Steppes' land, but not on others. It would take another decade before any settlement money reached the farmers. And just like Jack, the wait was too long. They simply could not survive it. The government continued to foreclose on some farmers with pending complaints.

At the time of my interview with Mr. Steppes, he told me that of the sixteen farmers who filed the complaint alongside him in 1986, only four were still alive. He was convinced that three of those men died from the relentless stress of facing foreclosure at the hands of the FmHA.

And Steppes had also not received any funds from the settlement, but was able to hold on to his land through other financial means.

When I found out that Mr. Steppes passed away in 2024, I thought long and hard about our short time together and about his story.

I’ve been told that I am an empath. I suppose that is true because sometimes I cry when I hear stories about people I have never met, and even more so when those stories are about people I have known. I am sometimes overwhelmed with anger and grief for people like Mr. Steppes. People who were in the most need, but had to spend the most energy fighting for change. Time and energy they could not give to their spouses, their children, and their friends.

But I also feel immense gratitude for their sacrifice. I know their sacrifices have rippled all the way to me, shaping a world that has afforded me opportunities they probably never imagined.

There is something profoundly surreal about watching Mr. Steppes tell me his story on film, knowing that the eyes on my screen were once looking directly into mine. In that moment, he entrusted me with a piece of his life. Though he is no longer here in body, that moment remains suspended in time. It is an honor and privilege to carry it with me.

A New Farm Crisis

I have begun to see more headlines, stories, and video clips about a new farm crisis bubbling up. There are reports of a surge in farm bankruptcies, and I’ve seen one too many stories about farmer suicides. It is truly heartbreaking. According to Senator Corey Booker, this trend has been going on for years. “It is a trend that we saw under democratic presidents and republican presidents,” he said. “It demands a bipartisan response. I know the policies of this administration, though, are making the situation worse for farmers, not better. They're acting as an incendiary to this horrible fire.

Recently, the White House asked Congress to approve $11.1 billion in farm aid, the second major farm bailout/aid package for 2026.

I’m concerned about farmers, as we all should be, in my opinion. Concerned for them as human beings and concerned about them because, let’s face it, they grow our food for Christ’s sake! So unless you grow your own food, they are your lifeline. Why anyone would turn their nose up at or completely disregard the hands that feed them is truly beyond my understanding.

But not all farmers are stepping into this moment, this impending disaster, from the same place. Some are the wealthiest farmers, above deck, and closest to the access and prioritization. Others have been below deck for a long time, working just as hard, weathering storms the rest of us never had to think about.

I simply can’t help but wonder about the ones below deck. I wonder how the Black farmers are doing? I can only hope there is room for them in a lifeboat.

A few years ago, I was going through an incredibly difficult time. I suppose it was a kind of identity crisis, my identity as a giver, to be exact. I turned to the internet, trying to get to the bottom of things, but the explanations for why I was the way I was never resonated with me. I didn’t see myself in the description of an “over-giver,” and the solutions and advice often seemed to lean too heavily toward selfishness and not enough toward sacrifice, which I still believe love requires.

As usual, I turned to writing to process everything. I’m not sure what to call what I wrote during that time, and I never actually finished it. Maybe one day I will and share it publicly. Maybe I won’t.

But I did want to share a prayer I created for myself. It was an attempt to find more balance, to learn not to give so indiscriminately, even to those closest to me and the people I love most.

Maybe it would make more sense if I shared the journey that led me here. Or maybe no explanation is needed for the givers out there who instinctively understand.

I hope it helps.

A Giver’s Prayer

Dear God,

I am grateful for my life. Please fill me up with love so I can continue to give love to myself and others.

Please guide me.

Give me the wisdom to know who or what I should show love to today.

Help me to know how that love should be shown.

Where is the thin line between loving others and self-betrayal? Where is the thin line between self-love and selfishness? Please stop me before I cross it.

Help me to know when it’s time to sacrifice and when it’s time to choose myself.

Give me peace when I need to walk away.

Thank you for the pain. Give me the strength to overcome it and to learn and grow from it. Help me to overcome the loneliness that comes when those around me do not operate in a loving mindset.

Help me to forgive and heal.

Purify my perception. Help me to see myself and others clearly.

Help me to stay balanced in all things.

Help me to never lose faith in LOVE.

Thank you. And so it is!

One day, I randomly opened the Notes app on my phone and started a list of my top ten favorite movie villains. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Welcome to the strange and winding interior of my brain. The list sat untouched for months among hundreds of other forgotten notes until recently, when I watched the trailer for The Devil Wears Prada sequel. I love, love, love the original, and immediately thought of my list because Miranda Priestly, brilliantly played by Meryl Streep, was surely on it.

What a spectacular villain Miranda Priestly was. “Please bore someone else with your questions,” she tells her assistant when asked something entirely reasonable. It’s funny on screen. In real life, not so much.

But Miranda occupies a curious category of villain. She is sometimes cruel, demanding, impossible to please, and yet admired. How can that be? Personally, I admired the character for her work ethic, commitment to excellence, competence and clarity, and strength, all while dressed to the nines.

Coincidentally, another promotional event caught my attention and reminded me of Miranda, Emma Grede’s tour for her first book, Start With Yourself. Emma is a British entrepreneur who co-founded and serves as the CEO of Good American. I admire her for the same reasons as I do Miranda, and simply put, she is a BOSS! From afar, she doesn’t seem to be cruel, direct, yes, but not cruel. And it seems that she truly has a passion for helping women achieve the same career success she has. She even has a record of investing in Black female founders.

Some of her comments made during some of her interviews struck a very sensitive nerve, and the pain rapidly spread, radiating online.

Commenters were speaking of her almost as if she were a villain. “Very interesting,” I thought to myself. “A villain like Miranda.”

A couple of the comments that created the most buzz were saying that she is a “max three-hour mom” on weekends and “work from home culture is career suicide.” The latter is the one I would like to address.

Let me start by acknowledging that, for a large segment of the workforce, this isn’t even a relevant debate. Teachers, chefs, factory workers, nurses, and doctors must be physically present, so, in many ways, the work-from-home conversation is shaped by a certain degree of privilege. But for those to whom it applies, the conversation warrants more nuance.

As with any difficult situation or misunderstanding, I have found that most of the time, there is something both parties could have done better. Let’s start with we the people.

We have a nasty habit as a society of reacting to headlines and clips instead of engaging with full interviews. We form fast opinions from mere fragments and produce passionate (often angry) commentary galore about those opinions. Some might blame a lack of discipline in the people, but the real culprit is the ecosystem itself, platforms, algorithms, creators, and audiences, all incentivizing speed and emotion over nuance and completeness. Just as quickly, before the full story even comes into focus, we’ve already disengaged, moved on to the next event, ready to repeat the cycle all over again. Round and round we go.

Let’s take Keke Palmer’s podcast, for example. Emma said that “work from home culture is a career killer for women.” Firstly, this statement is a very absolute and sweeping generalization, which, in my opinion, is never good and can be very harmful. And this is the part that Emma could have done better, but we will come back to this.

Having said that, I believe she did provide some context before and after this statement during the conversation that would have framed it as more conditional than absolute and clarified which lens she was speaking to the audience through, but that context didn’t carry over in the clip.

Emma comments

Emma:

“The important thing to know here is that, you know, I’m not an expert on a podcast telling you what, one, two, three things I can do. I am showing you the way it has worked for me. And I am honest about those things.”

My thoughts: Ok, got it, she is not presenting herself as an expert.

Emma:

And what I think is that the work-from-home culture is a career killer for women. And let me explain to you why.

Remembering that I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women that work for me. Now, what is happening is that we talk about all of this sort of upside of Zoom culture, but none of the rigidity of it. And no one will really tell you, but careers require proximity and visibility. You want a pay rise, you want the next promotion, you want the big corner office. Guess what? You need to be there.

Later in the conversation…

Question from Keke:

What’s your relationship to responsibility and accountability when it comes to work-life balance?

Emma:

It’s yours. It’s yours. And it’s very, very important that you take it seriously and that you match it with what it is that you’re trying to achieve. So, it is not for everybody that you want to give more, extend the boundaries, work extra. That’s for those ambitious little monsters that want a lot of success. And not everybody needs to be like that. Having said that, if you are those people, realize that you will need to go the extra mile.

My thoughts: Got it, so she is not suggesting that every woman should or does want the corner office and needs to do extra work. She is talking to “ambitious little monsters.”

Emma:

Your expectation of me is that if I don’t say something warm and cuddly and empathetic and put it in a way that is digestible for women because women might not be able to hear it in the same way that somehow I’m wrong. But the truth is women can take it. We can take the information and then we can make the decision. And again, it’s about you get to make that decision. You don’t have to do that. But it’s like at least have the information. Don’t be sitting there thinking, “Oh my goodness, I wonder why all of this great stuff isn’t happening for me when I am logging into that zoom all the time.”

My thoughts: Got it, she wants to present us with the truth of her experience and her beliefs, so we can take that and make a more informed decision about our own lives.

Emma:

Extraordinary careers come with extraordinary effort. And again, it’s only about right sizing your ambition to the amount of work that you’re willing to put in. And I do think it’s about seasons. You know, I look at my kind of late teens and throughout my 20s as this time where I didn’t have any big responsibilities. And I write about this a lot because it’s like there is a moment in your life where that is the time like that’s the time you put the pedal to the metal and you go for it. But you need to remember that life is long and then it comes in chapters and there will be times where you don’t have to play that game anymore that you don’t have to do that. But it’s like you really need to think about like what is it that I want?

____________________________________________________________

For me, this context takes out the sting of her comments, and I believe that if people had consistently looked at the full context, the reaction would have been very different, perhaps less emotional, less judgmental, and a bit more balanced. At the same time, disagreement would still exist.

What was really being debated?

What do Miranda Priestly and Emma Gede have in common? They both function as symbolic figures. In Emma’s case, her comments were reduced to viral soundbites and debated tirelessly for days. Her words were layered with different interpretations and became a vehicle for debate on broader themes of women, power, and work. The story was no longer about her but about what her comments triggered in people, based on their lived experiences.

To her credit, some of the backlash was unfair, but some of the criticism stemmed from the fact that certain word choices can carry more weight than we often realize.

As I mentioned earlier, she used very absolute, sweeping generalizations. This simply does not go over well, even with or without context. A lot of people get hung up on absolute terms, myself included. Our brain cannot move past it, and the message a person is actually trying to convey gets lost. Perhaps she used particular words because she does not believe that sweeping generalizations can be harmful. Or maybe she actually believes her words: that “work from culture is a career killer for women.” She believes that to be true across all industries and in all scenarios? And all, extraordinary careers come with extraordinary effort?

Let’s think about the subjectivity of the word extraordinary. What exactly is extraordinary by whose standards? Is it climbing the corporate ladder, financial success, is it a career that provides you the freedom to do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, for however long you want to do it, entrepreneurship and ownership, or is it by how much of an impact you can make in the world? Exactly when does the scale tip from ordinary to extraordinary? Emma is not a trillionaire or billionaire; does that mean her career isn’t extraordinary?

I’m not trying to be anal here, but this matters. A lot of women were rudely coming online, saying, "She is not talking to you!” But without a clear definition of what an “extraordinary career” is, it is unclear to whom she is speaking, as it could apply to many things, leaving everyone to interpret it in their own way.

Let’s talk about one group of women who were activated: Black American women.

I recently watched the Netflix docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, and there was something in episode 3 that really struck me as illustrative of how it sometimes feels to be not only a woman but a Black woman in America’s workforce. If you are unfamiliar with the show, it was a reality TV competition where aspiring models competed through weekly challenges and photo shoots to win a modeling contract and launch their careers. Photo performance was the most important factor in judging whether a contestant would advance, or so we thought.

Jay Manuel served as the Creative Director of photo shoots and on-set coach and mentor on the show. In an interview, he said, if there were certain girls who were not performing well on a shoot, he would sometimes be pulled aside and told by people working behind the scenes,

“This person, we have this story, we need them to go forward at least a couple more episodes. Get us there. If the photos are crappy, it will be hard to say that this person deserves to be in the competition.”

Which meant that Jay would spend more time with those particular contestants, giving them guidance and support, and giving them more chances to get a good shot, because the powers that be chose to keep that person on because it would be good for show ratings. Not because those contestants worked the hardest, not because they were present every day, and not because they were more deserving.

What’s worse is that some of the other contestants’ best pictures were not always chosen, just so they would be eliminated from the competition.

For a lot of the girls, this was their big chance, and they took what they were doing very seriously. They believed in the system that was in front of them, that it would be fair to them, and if they didn’t make it, it would be because they simply were not good enough.

But there was a game being played. No matter how present they were or how well they did, they were never going to make the final cut. They were being led on and promised riches, while being used for profit. This is the way it feels to be a Black woman in this country. This is what our experience has taught us. We see others being protected while we are not. We see the white woman who knows a lot of people, gets the executive role, despite your proven work ethic and her lackluster performance, and so on and so on. This is why some Black women were deeply hurt and insulted by the comment. We have been present and the workhorses in the office, only to be left holding an empty bag. I was literally told by a white female supervisor to “stay in my place” as I tried to negotiate a higher title that matched the scope of my work. What horrible words to utter, given the racial history of this country. Black women have stories like these and worse for days.

Of course, many Black women have scaled to the highest heights in their respective industries, but I can also guarantee that many more who deserved to be promoted were not, and at no fault of their own, but due to factors outside of their control.

For Emma, a biracial Black woman speaking on a podcast whose audience is predominantly Black women, not to think of and acknowledge the unique difficulties we face was irresponsible. Listen, talking to the media is tough, and covering all the ground is tough, but we have high expectations of our dear Emma. Her words have incredible power; she must wield them cautiously and responsibly.

We needed her to be sensitive to the fact that hundreds of thousands of Black women were laid off last year.

Perhaps she is unaware of certain realities. Having moved from the U.K. to Los Angeles, a place that can feel like a world of its own, she has largely operated within affluent circles, which may limit her exposure to other parts of American life.

She made a comment in her book about flexibility in the workplace (especially in her companies) that I thought was very telling.

“Nobody is looking to see who is or who isn’t sitting at their desk. “We don’t work like that anymore,” she wrote. “I don’t know if anyone works like that.”

Yes, Emma, unfortunately, lots of people still work like that. In some companies, people are expected to be essentially glued to their desks.

Am I the only one sensing a pattern with Emma? She seems to overgeneralize often.

When successful public figures come on main stages and make statements that essentially tell us that we just need to work harder, it feels like you are saying that even after I have worked myself to the bone and sacrificed immensely, that my exhaustion is only because I am weak, my burnout is a personal failure, and my desire for balance lacks ambition.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Remote work has actually been a powerful antidote for us in many ways. It hasn’t been solely about convenience but also a buffer for daily biases and microaggressions, and provided space and room for many to excel. For some women, it is the only reason they can be in the workforce. Companies that have fully integrated work-from-home culture or offer a hybrid model can be and are successful. Personally, I prefer a hybrid work model, but women are excelling in both systems.

This brings me to my next point.

America’s ongoing argument about work.

Again, Miranda and Emma have some things in common. Both adapted to the rules of a male-dominated system and mastered them. But after the pandemic, we began to question the system more strongly. The culture wants and almost seems determined to have something different.

We want output to matter more than physical presence. We want a new world where ambition can co-exist with well-being, and without so much sacrifice to our personal lives.

We are simply trying to renegotiate the cost of success.

Why can’t we live in a society where you can have an extraordinary career and work from home? Can’t we create proximity and visibility in more creative ways besides being in the office all the time? Aren’t we supposed to be the greatest, most innovative country in the world? Can’t we figure this out?

Emma talked a lot about old thoughts and new thoughts in her book. I wonder if it ever occurred to her that her stance on remote work could be an old thought? She is reinforcing the old rules rather than using her power and influence to build new ones because she believes that this is the only way.

Everyone gets to decide how they would like to use the precious time they have on this earth, and she is not required to meet anyone’s expectations that she will change the system.

But it does raise the question: what does it mean for women to gain power if the structures themselves remain unchanged?

Time and chance happen to us all.

Is Emma Grede a villain, as some have treated her? No, far from it. She is a diamond.

And here is the truth about natural diamonds: they are formed deep in the Earth’s mantle under intense heat and pressure and are brought closer to the surface by rare, powerful eruptions from deep within the Earth. Contrary to popular belief, diamonds aren’t rare, not geologically anyway. Scientists estimate that roughly one quadrillion tons of diamonds are deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Most will remain there, while only a small fraction is transported up. Success can work in much the same way, shaped not just by what someone is, but by what carries them upward.

Emma has worked very hard, no doubt, and I one hundred percent agree with her when she says success requires hard work, but she is doing what I have seen other successful people do far too often and that is lean in too heavily on the work they put in and not enough on the external forces outside of their control, the chance, and structural advantages they’ve had along the way.

She has shared in interviews and in her book that her husband was her first investor, though it’s unclear to me whether she fully recognizes or acknowledges what a significant break that was.

I think Morgan Housel said it best in his book, The Psychology of Money.

“Luck and risk are both the reality that every outcome in life is guided by forces other than individual effort. They are so similar that you can’t believe in one without equally respecting the other. They both happen because the world is too complex to allow 100% of your actions to dictate 100% of your outcomes. They are driven by the same thing: you are one person in a game with seven billion other people and infinite moving parts. The accidental impact of actions outside your control can be more consequential than the ones you consciously take. But both are so hard to measure, and hard to accept, that they too often go overlooked.”

We won’t all be millionaires or billionaires, no matter how hard we work or how much presence we have. Some people will not have the right conditions and external forces to push them to the tippy top.

With all of this in mind, I would still recommend Emma's book. Her experience has real value. The kind of knowledge she offers about vision, managing your emotions and money, building a brand, and resilience comes only from years of work, both internal and professional. She is honest about what she believes, and I respect that. Also, I believe there is something inherently generous about putting your life and thinking on display for others to learn from, and I am grateful to those who do.

But reading her book requires discernment. Some of her principles will resonate; others may not reflect your reality. That doesn’t make them useless; it makes them specific. My advice to women is simple: read her story, but think critically about her conclusions. You are allowed to accept what serves you and reject what doesn’t. And don’t stop there. Read widely. Seek out the stories of women who built companies, women who chose different paths, and women who redefined success entirely. Then decide, deliberately, what kind of life and ambition you actually want.

I turn to another quote from The Psychology of Money,

“Focus less on specific individuals and case studies and more on broad patterns. Studying a specific person can be dangerous because we tend to study extreme examples–the billionaires, the CEOs, or the massive failures that dominate the news – and extreme examples are often the least applicable to other situations given their complexity. The more extreme the outcome the less likely you can apply its lessons to your own life, because the more likely the outcome was influenced by extreme ends of luck or risk.

You’ll get closer to actionable takeaways by looking for broad patterns of success and failure. The more common the pattern, the more applicable it might be to your life.”

If you want to play the game, by all means play, but understand the risk.

Just know that, just like in the original The Devil Wears Prada, Emily didn’t get to go to Paris because, chance would have it, she became sick and was off her game one out of a million times. Nigel had a wonderful opportunity taken from him because Runway magazine was trying to replace Miranda, even though she was doing her job almost perfectly, and she chose to save herself.

These kinds of things happen… in real life… all the time. A global pandemic might happen again, and you might be laid off. What you thought was sure to be yours due to all your hard work is not guaranteed, just ask any talented and hardworking athlete who trained their entire life in their sport only to experience a career-ending injury.

You may do everything “right” and still not arrive where Emma is, because time and chance happen to us all. And the outcome alone is not the measure of a life. That’s all.

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I had a pretty rough, emotional day on Tuesday, and I still wasn’t quite myself when I boarded a plane the next morning. Usually, I don’t talk much on airplanes, aside from the polite “hi” or “oops, sorry I bumped you” kind of thing. You know how it is. I figured this flight would be no different, especially with the mood I was in.

But then, the petite woman with a shaved head sitting to my left struck up a conversation.

She turned out to be a Buddhist nun on the first leg of her flight to India. We began to talk…and talk…and talk some more. She was gentle and kind, as you might expect from a nun, but she was also unexpectedly funny. So we giggled, like two girls on the playground. We asked questions of each other and shared stories. Somewhere over the clouds, we found common ground.

We talked about our faith/belief systems, the differences, and the similarities. We talked about our backgrounds, how we grew up, and how we both carried a lot of responsibility when we were young. We both knew the ache of losing a beloved grandparent and how that shapes you. We bonded over our shared desire to do good in this world.

We talked about our current day-to-day lives, my family, and how she spent her days at the monastery. By the time the plane started its descent, I realized I felt lighter. The weight I’d been carrying that morning wasn’t as heavy anymore. That conversation had lifted me in a way I didn’t expect.

It reminded me how powerful a simple connection with a stranger can be, how a chance encounter can change your day, or even your heart. For a few hours, the Christian lady and the Buddhist nun were just two humans talking, connecting in midair, strangers no longer.

What?! She isn’t going to go with him?!

But she loves him!

She has to go!

I can’t remember if that is what I said verbatim, as I am speaking about something that happened many years ago, when I was a wee little one, but I imagine it is pretty close. After only a few years of life, I had already bought into the same idea that we still seem to be a little obsessed with in our culture: romantic love is the most important thing in life.

I believe this is due in large part to the media, and in my case, Disney movies, to be exact.

I grew up during the peak princess-film era, and I saw them all: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. All followed the same formula: the princess meets her man, they fall in love, there is some conflict, they conquer that conflict, and then they live happily ever after. It is amazing how powerful these images were on my little growing brain. How much I believed it despite my reality looking very different. My parents were divorced before I was old enough to remember. Their story wasn’t something I thought about, and my life was simply the way that it was. My limited understanding of romantic love was formed from Disney films as I watched the stories play out on screen.

Then came Pocahontas…

I was so excited when I saw the first preview for the Pocahontas film. She was beautiful and unlike any of the other princesses. She had full lips and skin that looked close to mine, deep brown or copper, as she called it.

To say that the film's creators took creative liberties with the historical figure and story would be an understatement.

First of all, how did Pocahontas, a Native American, magically understand and speak to John Smith, an English colonist, after a few minutes of meeting each other and never having any other experiences with the English language? It’s a kid’s movie, and we are in the land of some very serious make-believe, so I guess I’ll give them a pass.

But more importantly, and to the dismay of some at the time of its release, it completely rewrote history and oversimplified a complex and violent period of colonization. It is not historically accurate, and to its credit, it never claimed to be.

But for the purposes of this story, let us view it through the eyes of a young girl who knows nothing of these larger social issues. The arrival of English colonization in America and the conflict that followed served as the backdrop of the film. What I saw was something simpler: a woman and a man from opposing worlds who fell in love.

And I loved it.

I loved the spirituality of it. The connection to the earth.

I related to it a lot because I grew up in the country, among grassy fields, dirt, rock roads, and trees. I already had a budding love of nature, so I would spend a lot of time outside, twirling and singing "Colors of the Wind”

​​“You think you own whatever land you land on

The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim,

but I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name...

You think the only people who are people

are the people who look and think like you,

but if you walk the footsteps of a stranger,

you’ll learn things you never knew you never knew.”

The film affirmed in many different ways. But the ending… the ending is what left the greatest impact.

The movie followed the same formula as the rest of the princess films, but with one major difference. She did not ride off into the sunset with her man to live happily ever after. Nope. She watched him sail away back to London because it was the only way he could survive after being shot! My goodness, the drama of it all!

It was as if Disney decided to violently shove us, kids, into the real world after feeding us the same make-believe illusions for years! Hey, kids, love is messy. And it doesn’t always end up the way you planned or wanted.

It was so unfair!

It really broke my heart, and I was actually rather angry at the injustice of her story.

But I later realized what a gift it had been. It helped me to understand at a very early age that love does not always equal keeping.

It was quite evident that Pocahontas clearly loved John Smith. Just moments before the ending of the movie, she hurled her body over his to save his life, defying her community and her father, who was about to deliver a deadly blow. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

But she chose not to go with him? Even after he asked? Wasn’t romantic love always the most important thing? No, it wasn’t. Not in this instance. I saw a woman make a different choice. She chose her land, her people, her responsibility, and her identity. She chose, even though she didn’t know if he would survive the trip or if she would ever see him again.

She showed me that love can be unattached and that it was okay to let go of people if necessary.

It took me a while to realize that this lesson could be applied to lots of different scenarios, not just the one where a series of unfortunate events made it close to impossible to be together, like Pocahontas and John’s case.

If only I had realized it before I decided not to even consider a possible opportunity to teach English in Costa Rica to elementary students, because I thought my then-already long-distance relationship wouldn’t survive it. Costa Rica would have been an experience I am confident I would have thoroughly enjoyed, and that would have enriched me. Silly girl, what would Pocahontas say about you changing your plans for that man?

It turned out that while I was making that decision out of love, he was making a baby with someone else.

I should have done what I felt in my heart was right. Our relationship didn’t survive anyway.

Lesson learned.

Why do we seem to cling so tightly to romantic love in particular? Is it something as raw and basic as a biologically encoded drive to reproduce, ensuring the continuation of the human race? Is it simply the need for companionship? This question reminds me of a biblical scripture and the very real practicality of having someone by your side.

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (NIV)

That’s honestly a fair assessment. But you can get that from your friends and family as well.

Do we cling because of what some psychological professionals have theorized, that we are all searching for the love we didn’t receive as children? That we try to heal our wounded inner child through our romantic partners, drawn to what feels familiar as we attempt to rewrite the ending? Or perhaps we have misplaced our love, obsessing over the creation instead of the Creator.

Whatever the reason, it speaks to a deep human longing for connection, and that longing turns into the desire to stake a claim over another, to possess. We attach our happiness to them. We can began to require too much from the other, too much for any one person to hold.

Romantic love can be an important part of life, but not the pinnacle of being.

But the same is true for any relationship, whether it’s the love between friends or family members: the truth is that love is not something we are meant to hold on to, but something we must learn to experience without attachment, because at any moment we could lose the object of our affection.

This truth becomes undeniable in the face of death. There is no place to run, no place to hide. Inevitably, we will all lose someone we love deeply to the same end that awaits us, and the choice to let go is taken away.

I know this because I have lived it, and it is brutal. Our loved one is not there, but the love remains. It is in that realization that we begin to see that love is not what we keep, but what we carry. I’m reminded of an excerpt from a poem by e.e. cummings.

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

We carry love. We carry the memories, the lessons, and the way experiencing that love has shaped us.

As I’ve journeyed through my life, I have set out to be the type of person who I feel is capable of loving in this way, someone like Pocahontas. Someone who knows who they are and what they believe, courageous, empathic, connected to something greater than themself, emotionally secure, and unafraid of change; someone who can care deeply without needing to control, and who understands that each person has a purpose and value that exists independently of anyone else.

So what started out as the most disappointing story for me became the most beautiful love story. The realist of the real and one that I am forever grateful for.

I have no idea whether the creators of Pocahontas intended me to draw this particular meaning from their film, but alas, here we are.

That is the beautiful thing about art, isn’t it? It shows up for people exactly the way they need it.

Author’s Note:

As I mentioned in Issue #1, I’ve always written to process my life, and this is an example of one of those moments. This essay was written years ago, but never shared.

One night, I was abruptly awakened by the sounds of terror-filled crying and screaming from my then 7-year-old daughter. My husband and I rushed to her room to see what was the matter. Tears gushed from her wide eyes. She had a nightmare about a creature named Momo. She told us one of the kids at school had shown it to her on their computer. We sat down on the bed with her and told her the usual things that parents say… everything is ok, it isn’t real, you don’t have to be afraid, go back to sleep, and we are right here if you need us. We all went back to sleep only to be awakened to the sound of those same screams again, a couple of hours later.

This happened again the next night

and the next night

and the next night.

By the fifth day, my husband and I were so exhausted we couldn’t even think straight. We had tried everything, begging, pleading, bribing, sleeping in the bed with her, and nothing worked. She had been scared of things and had nightmares before, but those instances had never lasted this long. She was simply terrified of Momo, and understandably so; I looked it up online, and it was indeed a very scary-looking creature.

I searched the internet for ways to help her when I came across an article where the parents of an 8-year-old, who also couldn’t sleep after seeing a scary movie, asked a therapist for advice.

There were a few pieces of advice that I had already tried with her, but finally I got to a few techniques that I hadn’t tried.

“Imagine the feared character being placed in jail or being destroyed,” it read. “Rehearse a scene with him talking to the character and banishing him from his world, imagine the character speaking with a funny squeaky voice that is impossible not to laugh at,” and so on.

As scared as my daughter was, I had a lot of doubts about whether something like this would actually work, but I was willing to try anything at that point. I chose “draw a picture of the character but change the image and make him ridiculous” for her and me to try.

We sat down with some blank paper and crayons.

“Now, sweetheart, you know that Momo isn’t real, right? Can we agree on that?” I asked.

“Yes, Momo is not real,” she said.

“So if we know that she isn’t real, we can create her to be whatever we want her to be. We can make her happy! So let’s draw her being happy and doing something fun!” I said.

She drew her first picture; Momo was in a field surrounded by balloons.

I noticed 3 red marks on Momo’s dress. So I asked, “What are those 3 red marks on Momo’s dress?”

“That’s blood, she said, because Momo kills people.”

I swallowed hard. My internal monologue started going off!

I can not believe my child was exposed to this at school!

This is so ridiculous!

Where was the teacher when all this was going on, and why do the other little kids know about this?!!!

Deep breath… focus now, Ash!!

“Well, let’s change that. Momo does not kill people. Momo is a good person. How about instead of her having blood on her dress, we just make it a beautiful red dress! Mommy has a beautiful red dress hanging in the closet. Momo has a beautiful red dress just like mommy!

“Ok, “ she said, smiling up at me.

She drew a second picture where the tables were turned, and Momo was now afraid of her.

I drew Momo happily jumping on a trampoline.

“Alright! We’re all done!” I said. We talked about how beautiful our pictures were and how Momo was so, so, so happy and such a good creature.

She went to bed that night and miraculously slept through the night! “You mean to tell me that drawing those pictures actually worked?!” I said to myself. “Ok, that’s too good to be true,” I continued thinking. “Let’s see if she has a nightmare tonight.”

That night came and went, and there was nothing. No excruciating screeches. No wailing. Nothing. When I tell you I couldn’t believe it, I COULD NOT BELIEVE that she did not wake up from nightmares at all! I was absolutely astonished!

I kept thinking about this situation over and over again. Why had this simple exercise worked so well?! I realized that this scenario was a small but powerful example of how what we THINK about what we SEE determines how we FEEL, and how that feeling controls our BEHAVIORS.

The feeling of FEAR is especially crippling.

The answer to our dilemma with my daughter had not been to convince her that Momo was not real; therefore, nothing to fear. While that approach can be very good and had definitely worked in the past, it just wasn’t cutting it this time. Momo was concretely an unreal scary thing in her mind.

The answer was to teach her that she had an incredible power to choose. She could shift her perception. She could choose to change the way she saw and thought about the thing she feared. She could simply decide that this unreal scary thing was not scary at all.

I started thinking about fear in the lives of us adults. Fear itself is the bogeyman in our closets. As I said, it can be incredibly crippling. Of course, fear does have a very real and critical place in our lives. It helps to protect us. It can literally save our lives.

However, so many of the things we fear simply are not real and will not kill or hurt us, but that doesn’t matter; we are still afraid. Sometimes we can’t pinpoint why we are scared; we just know that we are. These things are, in fact, unreal scary things.

Things like trying something new, introducing yourself to a stranger, asking for help, opening up and being vulnerable, speaking up in a challenging moment, negotiating a salary or asking for what you think you deserve, changing careers, driving on the Los Angeles freeway ( there are freeways with 6 lanes you know and so many cars) the list goes on and on.

But what if that thing we are afraid of doing is actually a good thing, an exciting thing, a thing that leads to a beautiful, unforgettable life experience, a change your life for the better kinda thing, or even a hard thing that will ultimately help us grow and become better people or have greater success?

What would happen if we simply chose to say to ourselves that this unreal scary thing is NOT scary; it is something that will help us. That shift in perception could give us the strength to face whatever it is.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do understand that in some scenarios (even in some of the ones I mentioned) there is a possibility that doing the thing could hurt us, or we could stand to lose something. The fear we experience is rooted in that possibility (no matter how unlikely it is of actually happening). We are also afraid of any suffering that may arise from our actions, which is a real thing for us to consider.

I am certainly not suggesting that we should not be calculated when taking risks. I am suggesting that we should and have the power to practice discernment.

I am suggesting that we learn to question how we perceive and think about the things that scare us, and never forget that we have the power to choose.

We can choose to see things differently, and it ain’t nothing to it but to do it. For all my people of faith out there, you can and should ask God for help.

My little girl had been completely terrified for days, and then she wasn’t. It’s been years now, and her fear of Momo never returned.

To witness my child be so engulfed in fear, but break free in what felt like the blink of an eye, simply by shifting her perception…what an inspiration and a wonder to behold.

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I’ve been thinking about the O-negative blood type.

O-negative can be given and safely flow to everyone, literally everyone, but can only receive blood from another O-negative, which is rare.

I’m struck by the parallel between this and certain people.

Certain people being the genuine givers. People who give freely, love deeply, and show up for others. Their capacity for these things is extraordinary.

And while they give without expecting anything in return, there will inevitably come a day when they, too, need help.

And what happens when they need?

The pool to draw from grows small.

And sometimes, those who are there simply cannot match the depth and breadth of the love, care, and support they received.

It can be hurtful. Disappointing. But I wonder what would happen if we looked at it like blood types.

It’s not personal.
It’s simply a matter of makeup.
It just is what it is.

Givers, do not despair.
Don’t grow bitter.
There is nothing wrong with you, my dear.

You have the innate ability to give to more people than could ever truly give to you.

You are rare, like O-negative…deeply needed, but seldom matched.

You don’t have to wait for the people you’ve helped to match your energy because you understand that some won’t have the ability, and some simply cannot love the way you do.

And that’s okay.

Accept this.

Not to become a sacrificial lamb to everything and everyone, but to recognize the flip side of your nature.

The part of you that leads to depletion and burnout. The part that desperately needs you to know…

just because you can give
doesn’t mean you should.

Just because the demand is high
doesn’t mean you must supply.

Be discerning.
Draw the line.
Say no.

The world will keep spinning.

Protect yourself.
Take care of yourself.
Love yourself.

Celebrate the beautiful rarity that you are.
Be humbled by how much the world needs your ability and willingness to give.

Never stop being you.

And even though being rare can come with solitude, remember you are not alone.

There are other rare O-negative types out there.
You will find each other. And though they may be few, they will be enough.

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I was speaking to her about what I wanted for my future. She made the statement simply because of my age, as if to say that I was too young to know what I wanted. She did not say it because she had some meaningful insight into my level of self-awareness and self-perception; she barely knew me. I found her statement extremely irritating and incredibly unhelpful, on top of being wrong.

Age does not determine whether a person has self-awareness or a positive self-perception.

I did know who I was. And I knew what I wanted.

But what I did not know was that who I was in that moment was not permanent. I did not know just how much the knowledge I gained and the experiences I had as I made my way through this world would stretch and expand me. I did not know that while some parts of me would remain exactly the same, other parts would change very drastically, along with some of my beliefs, wants, hopes, needs, and desires.

I did not know that some of the changes would occur naturally and others through concerted effort. An effort inspired by the realization that parts of who I was needed to change in order to achieve the things I wanted to achieve or to be the person I wanted to be.

Perhaps I took the woman’s words too literally, and all that I have said is what she actually meant by her statement. However, I believe we all must strive to be very careful with our words and take the time to say what we actually mean (something I’m still working on, by the way). A statement like hers could be discouraging to a less self-assured 17-year-old and create doubt about their ability to make decisions about their life.

I believe the more appropriate, accurate, and helpful thing to say to someone is that you are alive and you simply are who you are.

Know and love that person well.

Be completely honest with yourself about yourself, and try your absolute best to make the best decisions with the knowledge you have.

Follow your intuition. Be open.

Accept that there is still so much that you don’t know. Learn as much as you can about the world around you. And know that as you journey through life, learning, experiencing new things, and gaining deeper understandings, who you are will change. Some parts of you will remain the same, and so will some of your wants and needs. Other parts of you will change, and so will some of your wants and needs.

Changing is completely natural and, at times, very necessary and advantageous for you.

Being and remaining self-aware will be an anchor, grounding you and providing the answer to who you are and what you want.

To be self-aware...to know who you are...is to be in a daily reflection and examination of yourself. The good, the bad, and the marvelous you.

For the rest of your life. Yes, for the rest of your life.

Because one day, many years from now, just when you think you have yourself all figured out, some major life event can come along and change you again.

Guard yourself from becoming something you don’t want to be.

Be who you are. Try your best. Practice self-awareness. Everyday. For the rest of your life.

And if you don’t know how to practice self-awareness, now is a good time to learn.

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Sometimes I forget I have an undergraduate degree in Journalism. The next logical question one might ask is, “How in the world could someone forget something like that?” Especially considering all of the hard work and time that goes into accomplishing that goal. Not to mention what it takes for someone like me, a person from a low-income background, who had to pay for college and take care of herself by piecemealing funds through scholarships, Pell grants, small loans, and working a night shift 30 hours a week. Working a night shift and going to school full-time naturally leads to sleep deprivation and the kind of exhaustion that has you clicking your vehicle key fob to unlock your dorm room door after you get off work, confused as to why it’s not unlocking. Yes, I did that.

But I was willing to pay the price for the promise.

The contract? You put in the work, and you will achieve success, and if you are really lucky, you can do something you love.

My love affair with writing began when I was given my first journal as a little girl. I began to process my feelings and life through my writings and tried to make sense of my world. I got the idea to write to God after reading a book that some of you may know…Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume.

Now every one of my journal entries began Dear God. In those pages, God and writing became the perfect and trusted listeners to a lonely little girl.

At this time, my love for writing didn’t translate to an idea for a career.

Journalism only entered the picture when I spoke to my first-year composition teacher. I was undecided on my major. She said she thought I was a talented writer, so we talked about what I might do with that.

Technical writing? I think I would die of boredom.

Creative writing? Do many people actually make a living doing that?

Journalism? Hmm… now there was an idea. The news felt very familiar to me. Largely because I felt like I had been watching it since birth.

I grew up in a rural area, and we couldn’t afford cable or satellite, so we had an outdoor TV antenna that we used to pick up the “big three” networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC.

Let me take a moment to drop a random photo for any youngin who might be reading and has no clue what I am talking about.

Our TV was on ABC 90 percent of the time.

I watched Good Morning America before school, the local news at 5 o’clock, and the 6 o’clock news. World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, 2020, and Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. I was learning journalism through osmosis. I was also learning about how the world works (or doesn’t). Perhaps all this news viewing planted a seed of curiosity and an early heaviness about the world. This is one reason I’ve always wanted to help people, to make a difference. Journalism seemed like one way to accomplish that goal.

And so began the journey

I recently took a trip down memory lane, thumbing through my personal stash of time-worn issues of my university newspaper and revisiting the articles I wrote as a staff writer.

There was a story about the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine (when a group of nine African American teenagers desegregated Little Rock Central High School), a story about a research expo on campus, a profile on the first African American to be crowned Miss Little Rock, and another about a step show performed by historically Black fraternities and sororities.

My favorite line from the article…” the pretty boys” of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. sent women into a frenzy when they came on stage in their three-piece red and white suits and showed a memorable display involving whipped cream.” Well, Ash, that was such a tactful way to say the Kappas were doing some freaky sh*t on stage! Haha!

I remember writing this story like it was yesterday. It was a Friday night, and everyone was headed to the afterparty, while I stayed in my room, furiously typing to meet my deadline. I didn’t mind this one bit. I was happy there, in a place where time and space fell away. Much to my surprise and delight, the article landed on the first page of its issue.

I excelled in my program and graduated with honors. Unfortunately, any feelings of accomplishment or pride were overshadowed by a sense of overwhelming anxiety about my future. It was 2008, during the height of the financial crisis, also known as the Great Recession. Every day, the news was filled with stories of layoffs, hundreds and thousands from this company and that one, millions nationwide. It was completely devastating for so many people and catastrophic for people such as myself with no financial safety net. Talk about a breach of contract. What a cruel joke, to have worked hard to uphold my end, only to have the promisor renege.

A new contract

A couple of years later, I entered another contract when I shook hands with Uncle Sam. I enlisted in the US Navy, open to the possibility of making it a career, and prepared to leave behind any of my former dreams. And if I lost my life, at least it would be in service to others. The military suited me in many ways. I was already disciplined, followed authority easily, and resilient long before I ever stepped foot in my recruiter’s office. I excelled, rising quickly through the ranks. Which is one of the reasons why my chain of command protested my leaving at the end of my contract.

“Why are you leaving?” they asked. “We need people like you.”

I was deeply honored by their compliment, but the military was not for me.

After 4 years, one deployment, a new role as wife and mother to an infant, and a truckload of experiences and memories (many of which I will share with you in this newsletter), it was time for me to move on.

Now the question was…move on to what?

The top-secret squirrel job I held in the Navy didn’t really translate to anything in the civilian world beyond continuing to work for the government. I made a list of areas where I thought I could be happy. I now had benefits to pay for school. I could go back and study something new.

Psychology? I’ve always wanted to help people; maybe I could become a therapist.

Non-profit management?

Documentary filmmaking? I had flirted with that idea before, after taking a documentary class while in my journalism program. In my view, documentaries were basically journalism on steroids, and they also combined most of my absolute favorite things: research, film, music, personal stories, and positive social impact.

A new adventure

And just like that, I decided to go to film school to earn an MFA in Documentary Filmmaking. My husband and I packed everything we owned, our baby, and my mother, and moved to the city of dreams, Los Angeles.

When I got here, I realized how naive I had been. Truly, if my life were a movie, the central plot would be the evolution of the ingénue.

Naiveté can be a virtue, of course. Not knowing all the reasons something “won’t work” can make you bold enough to try and sometimes succeed.

Filmmaking has historically been more accessible to the rich and privileged. So people assumed that my life had been easy. That my daddy was rich and my ma was good-looking, but only one of those statements was true; my ma was, and is, certainly good-looking.

One of my professors initially didn’t believe me when I first mentioned that I was from a low-income background. That fact was hard for him to believe because he said I didn’t act like “those people.” And what exactly do those people act like? This is another essay for another day.

I excelled in my program, directed and produced some short documentaries I am proud of, and graduated with honors. Immediately after, I got my first job in the industry as an assistant in the documentary department at a film and television production company called Participant Media. I was thrilled! This company’s films inspired me to pursue documentary filmmaking, and their movies were truly making an impact on the world!

The salary was embarrassingly low, but I was willing to “pay my dues” again. There simply could not be a better place for me to pursue the work I longed to do in the world.

Allow me to make this long story just a tad bit shorter by fast-forwarding through the next part.

I did well at my job. I was a sponge, growing and learning as much as possible. Participant Media lived up to my idea of it in many ways, but was not perfect, as no place is.

Surprise! I became pregnant with my second child. The idea of working only to have my entire paycheck go to childcare didn’t sit well with me, to say the least, and I was already exhausted with one child, so I hit the pause button on my career after giving birth.

I returned to work for another company, still positioned on the documentary film executive track.

I did well, was even promoted, but things still weren’t right for me.

I decided to try out life on the documentary production side and worked as an associate producer on an HBO documentary. It was a momentous accomplishment in my film career.

Then, I just…stopped.

I had gone through a lot over the years, including the emotional tug-of-war I’m sure most parents know well, with their career on one end of the rope and their family on the other. You know that feeling…that you’re failing all around.

It turned out the career I loved was a very demanding partner, taking up too much of my precious, non-refundable time. The time I needed to give to my child with a disability, not severe but a disability nonetheless, and one that requires a lot of my attention.

There are also real physical and psychological injuries that occur when you come up on the rough side of the mountain. All while trying to have integrity and values and to live with an open and loving heart. Those injuries affected my ability to perform at the level I wanted.

Ultimately, the cost and tradeoffs were too high. I made the decision that many women make, and I’m sure some men. Partially because of this lived experience, I am fascinated and have many questions about the lives of women, work, ambition, relationship dynamics, love, pain, sacrifice, and the journey of life, all things I will write about here.

Another new adventure

While I’m confident in my decision, the reality of the place I find myself has been a hard pill to swallow.

I’m blessed to have a husband who can support our family, but we are not wealthy (by American standards), and living on one income is a challenge with its own sacrifices.

While I love my children and feel a sense of purpose in being their mother, that role does not exhaust all my talents.

I am reminded of a moment from Ken Burns’ documentary series, Jazz. Duke Ellington, composer, pianist, and bandleader, is asked by an interviewer where he gets his ideas from.

“The ideas?” he says. “Oh, man, I got a million dreams. That’s all I do is dream. All the time.”

The interviewer responds, “I heard you play piano.”

“No, this is not piano. This is dreaming,” he says as he begins to play a beautiful tune.

Well, Mr. Ellington, I completely understand that sentiment. All I do is dream. I’m bursting at the seams with creative ideas.

I am what some might call “spiritually inclined” or perhaps even a “woo-woo” type of person who believes every single person has gifts they are supposed to give to the world, and it’s our responsibility to figure out what they are. Given this mindset, I cannot simply suppress my creativity when I believe it is there for a reason; how do I get it out?

At the moment, I’m drawn to a passage from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (Gregory Hays translation).

“Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces–to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it – and makes it burn still higher.”

My interpretation of this is to basically go with the flow of life. Accept reality, adapt to your circumstances, and adjust. Learn and grow from every obstacle. Use it all. So much so that you only shine brighter because of it.

So how do I adjust to my circumstances? What if I returned to writing, but in a different form? Creative non-fiction? The world is different now. There are places like Substack. So here I am.

I’ve used the word 'return,' but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. The truth is that I never left. I’ve been writing in the margins of my life for years, still processing through the practice.

When I was in the Navy, I wrote a story for my ship’s newspaper and a play about alcohol use. Some of the first essays I will share here are from personal writings I’ve done over the years. I have reached for writing’s warm embrace time and time again, at my lowest moments or moments of revelation.

Even still, somehow in this moment, I feel like a remorseful, inconsistent, and unfaithful lover groveling back. However, the benefit of all the twists and turns in my life is that I’ve had many experiences. I suspect it might be an unusual amount. Perhaps I’ll make for a much better lover, wiser and more suited to embrace writing and to never treat it like an afterthought again. In other words, and to borrow a phrase from the author bell hooks, I’m bringing writing “from the margin to the center” of my life.

As for documentaries, poet Langston Hughes once asked, "What happens to a dream deferred?” I suppose I’ll get my answer eventually.

I don’t know how any of this will turn out, or how the rest of my life will unfold. All I know is that I’m here now, and like the Disney version of Pocahontas, I’m willing to go wherever the wind takes me.

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