the good news in a bad breakup …

i don’t mean this in the “every cloud has a silver lining” way.

a bad breakup leaves us in a really dark place. which feels bad. and wrong. and like we’ve done something wrong. but even so, inside all that intensity is some really good news.

about five years ago, i sat at a table with my then-partner, trying to make sense of a big relationship rupture. it was a really nice japanese restaurant and i was so upset and crying so hard i couldn’t even taste the five-star rated food.

then an odd thing happened. a moment of grace really.

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Will you join me?

Here’s what I mean …. on this Friday June 19 let’s put our dollars consciously into Black (and Indiginous and People of Color) communities.

Juneteenth, June 19 (which this year falls on a Friday) is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States, when news that the Civil War had ended and that the enslaved were now free, finally reached Galveston, Texas. (2.5 years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, but that’s another story).

The sobering truth is that in the USA, white people (mostly white men) own about 90% of everything.

It’s easy to support them; we do every day, every minute. Let’s consciously support the REST of our communities with our attention and money. Let’s do some leg-work and amplify the work of BIPOC-led businesses and organizations across our regions.

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I was in lower Manhattan a couple weeks ago, and saw something unbelievable.

I was in town on a whim, meeting some friends for lunch at a spot that happened to be a few blocks away from where I lived during my 12 year tenure in NYC as a professional dancer.

How many times in 12 years did I come up to that same street from that same subway platform to be greeted by a huge billboard, usually filled with some high fashion image from Prada or similar that made me feel like crap?

But this time as I looked up I saw something remarkable.

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Most of us are familiar with the “easiest” way to grow confidence: you go for it, you work for it, you get it!

But I want to introduce you to the “hardest” way to grow confidence, as well.

It might be even better than the easiest way, in terms of the quality of confidence it grows, even though it will kick your ass the whole way.

I suspect this article on perfectionism will be useful to bring with you into this holiday season. It comes with a little challenge, too, so I hope you’ll stay with me all the way to the end.

Too often, to be a woman alive today means to be obsessed with being “perfect.”

Perfect hair, perfect nails, perfect posture, perfect weight, perfect grades, perfect kids, perfect partner, perfect manners, perfect shoes.

The promise is that once we reach “perfect” we’ll finally be okay. Accepted. Loved. Enough. Worthy. Safe.

Now, have you ever reached “perfect?” Me neither.

And yet, perfectionism remains a popular and crowded industry.

I think there are actually three kinds of perfectionism. One kind is deadly. Two kinds, however, hold clues to really learning to like ourselves. As we are, now.

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