highly recommend meeting your heroes

It was close to 7 years ago when first came into my life.

“I really think you'd enjoy this” read a text from my sister, Diana, with an attachment to a podcast by the wellness company Goop I knew very little about.

Slightly annoyed, I'm sure I quipped back something to the likes of “I'm not really sure what listening to a celebrity talk about how the latest algae based yoga mat oil is going to up level my practice will really do for me while I'm struggling with postpartum depression, sis.”

“It's not Gwyneth Paltrow that's leading the conversation, it's another girl and I think you'll really like it,” she urged.

Diana is rarely an urger, that role is usually reserved for me, so I obliged. The initial episode was about a motherhood center located in, I believe, New York. Elise and the guest spoke about maternal care in the state that it was in in the United States and the services the center provided. I listened back to it last year and not at all to minimize the extremely important topic that they were speaking on, the power in it wasn't necessarily that the conversation was that profound. But after I listened to the whole episode in my kitchen, I sat down on the table and wept. I had been in one of the darkest seasons of my life after having my first child. I was so sure if I searched hard enough I could find the fix for the foreign pain, discomfort, and questioning I was crippled by. The likes of which, could be corroborated by my Google search history at that time: “how to get a baby to sleep more than four hours?” “how little sleep do you have to have to stay alive?” “how long until you go back to normal post baby?” “can you cure colic with an exorcism?”

I would manically text friends that had babies older than mine grilling them about when their children hit these miracle milestones I had read about online. Ones I was certain would hold the solutions to all of my problems. I was simply one developmental leap away from getting back to business as usual. After listening to that podcast, I realized that I wasn't really just searching for solutions, I was grasping to feel seen. My rational brain could not understand that my soul was craving an open ended conversation. One to simply honor that what I was going through was big and scary and complicated. To help me come to grips with the fact that there was no solution one more page down the baby forum thread away. I needed to hear people more educated than me saying “It's OK to not be OK.”

This might sound so simple to many of you, but seven years ago in a small town in Louisiana the fact there conversations like this were being had wasn't anywhere close to my radar. Sure, there were magazine articles and parenting sites devoted to covering the issues that plague mothers. But to hear it in a true conversation was something completely different. The fact that it felt as if the speakers were sitting at my dinner table with me really made it resonate.

Since that day, I don't think a week has gone by where I haven't listened to or read a newsletter by Elise. She's brought into my life a wonderful and thought-provoking cast of characters that have opened my eyes to a to a wide variety of topics ranging from the woo (most notably psychic Laura Lynne Jackson and paranormal researcher, Leslie Kean1) to the more scholarly (a few of my favorites being Ellen Vora, Lynne Twist, and Michael Pollan.)

However, the most important lesson that Elise has reaffirmed in my life is that it's OK to stay perpetually curious. As a child, I wore curiosity like a badge of honor. Robert Stack was a north star bringing me stories that made me ask questions about fringe topics in life. In retrospect, I think my love of Unsolved Mysteries stemmed more from the interviewees having a safe, respected place to tell their stories that had no tidy endings. To open up bigger conversations about things that couldn't be proven. The courage to say, “I don't have the proof to explain this but this is what I believe to be true.”

That earnest curiosity was shut off in adulthood (which I started early.) I had to replace the curiosity about how to run a business with facts about how to run a business. I couldn't be taken seriously if I brought up all the topics that perpetually piqued my interest outside of how to maximize ROIs.

Fortunately, I found a life partner who, although he himself has never started a conversation about the intricacies of the Mayan calendar, is typically willing to oblige me in mine. But even kind, patient Michael grows weary of having to hold the bag of my big thoughts I have nowhere else to put. I worry when I bring these conversations up to friends they are thinking “oh boy here we go again.”

“Why can’t I just talk about tennis or soccer or the insane housing market??” is a shame cycle I constantly have ruminated through my head.

Even when attempting to post online, I get a hangover of ugh, people follow me for business/ tech advice and yet I just ramble on about solar flares and human design and whatever else had me fixated on this moment. “You must find a niche” declares every other “marketing expert” on the internet while dancing to trending audio. But it just doesn’t feel like I’m being truthful. My worst boughts of imposter syndrome come when talking exclusively about one subject for too long. “I’m more than this!!!!” I want to scream to the void (should I be screaming it to a trending audio with more details in caption, my subconscious doubts wonder?)

Elise has been the expander to show me that it's OK to be both. It's OK to say I'm an educated, successful businesswoman and I'm constantly exploring more nuanced and often fringe themes. One does not negate the other. In my day-to-day life, this has helped open up a whole new world. One where I can be the facilitator of those conversations. One where I can say, “I can’t provide you a text book of absolute certain solutions” but I can give you something better, relief that there isn’t one. You haven’t been missing it. Relief that ALL people are figuring it out as they go. And if they aren’t, they are missing the best pivots and shifts that really make you feel like you are growing. Not just growing a follower count, bank account, likes, etc. YOU are growing. The best thing you can do is intuitively throw spaghetti on the wall. (and I can help you streamline your text stack so you have more time to do so.)

We are in such a precocious time in history where we truly have no blueprint, no cheat codes, no backup plans. That can be extremely unnerving and unstabling. But after spending a weekend with Elise, her friend and coach, Courtney, and 40 other women drawn to the bigger open ended conversations Elise provides, I felt genuinely hopeful. I felt hopeful in the power that the more of us pulling the thread is the best thing we can be doing right now.

Thank you Elise for giving us permission and empowerment, two tools that are harder and harder to come by these days.

High on the fumes of a weekend spent digging deep and gaining much needed clairty-I am finally releasing a new “business” newsletter/ community to this account this Thursday called Modern Creatives! It has been sitting in drafts in my Notion for months. I had to come to grips with being ok with the fact that my passion and what I am called to share right now with the world is deeply nerdy and very unglam: tech stack optimization, hacks, and aggregating relevant business news for the Modern Creative. I will be sending weekly news round ups, tutorials and recommendations that are actually useful for those of us running a creative career or hobby with no blueprint. Who is the newsletter for? Those of us doing professional life in the brand new and yet ever in flux way the age of the internet has provided: the solo-prenuers, small business owners, artists, influencers, authors, podcasters, and everything else that doesn’t have a box to check on linkedin. We will cover my favorite use cases for AI, calendar management, inbox sanity, time saving tools and more. It will be fun, I PROMISE. :)