The Audacity to Be Queen

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QUEEN BY DESIGN

Growing up in the suburbs of Detroit, I didn’t know any celebrities, and possibly just like you, I knew I wanted to be one. Similar to so many naturally enthusiastic little girls, I never shied away from the spotlight. I danced in ballet recitals, performed in all the school plays, and was wickedly talented on my roller skates. I even won first place for my Lady and the Tramp routine.

In addition to my desire to entertain others, one thing I cared about deeply was helping people. I remember in first grade, my teacher, Mrs. Schmidt, had our class create a compilation book on paper almost as tall as us seven-year-olds, strung together with yarn. It was titled “When I Grow Up…” We all drew with crayons what our best lives would look like for our future selves. Firemen, ballerinas, policemen, nurses, and astronauts were all represented. My contribution declared, “I want to be a counselor so I can help people.”

I had a zest for a glamorous and meaningful life. My mother and father encouraged my natural instincts, instilling in me that the sky’s the limit (or so it seemed) and that anything is possible. Yet I also received mixed messages from society and culture that said, “Just be happy with what you have. You have to work really hard for money. You need to be responsible and practical so that one day you can get married and have kids.”

My parents were schoolteachers, and like most mothers and fathers, they wanted the best for their children. At home after school, my days were filled with playing tag with the neighborhood kids, finishing homework just in time to watch Little House on the Prairie, and practicing Pachelbel’s Canon for my upcoming lesson.

My parents worked hard and stretched every dollar to provide my brother and me with a home in a district with great public schools, plenty of extracurricular activities, and fun summer adventures including camping trips and later attending Interlochen National Music Camp. They did all the “right things” parents should do. They instilled in me: be nice to others, go to college and get a job, and always return your library books on time. I was grateful. But secretly, I was preparing for something much bigger than a life in Troy, Michigan. I didn’t realize it at the time, however; looking back, I can see that right from the very start, this world isn’t set up for women like us to express our full selves. It’s set up that either you’re famous or you help others. You can make the money to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle or you can make a difference.

This either/or situation went against what every little girl before age seven knows is her deepest truth, that one day she’ll be Queen and as Queen, she will lead an epic life. Presumably, similarly to you, I had envisioned playing a starring role on life’s stage. According to my big imagination, I was destined for a world-impacting career, legendary romantic love, and a jet-setting lifestyle that would take me far beyond my sensible and conservative Midwestern upbringing.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated my nice life in Middle America, it’s just that some of the constraints and mentalities I knew were not for me, like shopping exclusively off the sale rack, only being able to afford in-state college, and the idea that a fancy vacation meant driving down I-75 for two twelve-hour days to get to Florida. Begrudgingly, I did all three. I followed all the rules and maintained good (enough) grades, allegedly my golden ticket. Imagine my despair when it only took me as far as Western Michigan University and a mailing address of Kalamazoo.

“This isn’t me!” my soul screamed in protest. Living in what for me was the capital of mediocrity, getting my BA in communications because that was what the adults in my life told me I “should do,” had me in tears for three solid years. “This cannot be my real life! I see myself with a meaningful profession positively impacting the lives of others plus attending galas in New York and operas in Vienna, wearing Versace and Valentino. Instead, I’m in a snowsuit trudging uphill with my ginormous backpack, wasting my time sitting through boring general education classes like economics and astronomy, and generally hating life!”

By my third grueling winter in Kalamazoo, I was done with the city rumored to have last seen Elvis. I could no longer ignore the red flags that I’d been thrown completely off course of living the epic life I had envisioned for myself. I didn’t know what to do or who could save me from having no better options than going to basement grunge parties that annoyingly blared Kurt Cobain music. Just as I was coming of age and excited to step into my soon-to-be-glamorous style as a young adult, I realized this was the early ’90s, a time when it was illegal to look like you might have taken a shower or put a brush through your hair within the last three weeks.

I needed a win, so I turned to the relationship I had always relied on during an existential crisis such as this. “Dear God, please help me,” I prayed. “Show me the way to a magnificent life full of meaning. I’m asking for a miracle. I know you’ve created me for more than this.”

And because “Ask and it is given…,” a few weeks after putting my plea into the heavens, a childhood friend of mine from Interlochen “just happened” to call me to catch up. Abigail told me how much she was enjoying college life at American University in Washington, D.C., making new friends, going to fun parties, meeting interesting people from around the world, enjoying picnics on the National Mall, and having an absolute blast.

When I shared with her my bummer of a university experience, she encouraged me to join her in what sounded like the center of the Universe. Digging deep, tapping into those little-girl dreams of greatness, thinking bigger for myself, I decided to believe that a better college life was possible and immediately acted on what clearly was the answer to my prayers by submitting numerous applications for summer internships.

I was offered a position at a nonprofit organization, the National Center for Victims of Crime. I was thrilled to be of service in our nation’s capital, which was filled with people who were up to big things and at the top of their game. For the first time, I felt that here my contribution could have purpose and meaning that would affect people on a grand scale. Finally! Not only did I enthusiastically get up every morning to go to work, I couldn’t stop meeting fabulous new friends. My social life was thriving, nightly in Georgetown, on weekends at the beaches along the Atlantic Ocean, and midweek at fund-raisers where I mingled with other smart people who worked on the Hill, or for political action committees and think tanks.

I was loving my new life, and there was no way I was going to leave it just because the summer was over. By the fall of my senior year, I had secured a prestigious internship giving public lectures at the Supreme Court of the United States, and for my second semester I landed the holy grail of internships, working for the chief of staff in the first lady’s office at the White House.

My idea of the epic life had just hit the jackpot! Queen by design, here I am! Walking into the coveted, West Wing–adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building daily never got old. The women in Hillary Clinton’s office were amazing. High-powered, smart, on purpose, generous, and fun to be around. Fully committed to making the world a better place, and all while treating each other and everyone in the office, including me, with the utmost respect. They’d let me peek into state dinners, attend helicopter takeoffs, even sit in on a few unclassified meetings just so I could watch and learn. It was glorious! These were my first up-front and close role models of Queens, who, to me, were living the epic life.

Then it was time to graduate. Upon receiving my diploma, I accepted a paid position with a private company owned by a political insider, who I quickly discovered didn’t live by the ethics that had been modeled by my previous supervisors, so after a few short months, I resigned. I had witnessed the underbelly of what can happen in the political arena, while working for this egomaniac who wound up in an international scandal. Though his dealings were completely unbeknownst to me, I discovered what “guilt by association” meant by age twenty-one, which by definition had me exiled from life as I knew it. (We’ll discuss more of what it means to be exiled in Chapter 4.)

Seeing no other options, in a haze and fog I moved home to Detroit, where I now was surrounded with twenty-somethings who thought going to rave parties in abandoned warehouses was cool. What a fall from grace. I felt like my professional life was over before it had barely begun. I sank into a depression.

PLAYING BY THE RULES

Without having my identity directly attached to prestigious positions at the world’s most influential institutions, I was lost. But admitting that publicly? I couldn’t take it. What I could take was signing up for graduate school so my life could sound impressive again. I had been going to therapy three times a week to “find myself,” and after a year of inner exploration that even Freud would have been impressed by, I discovered a master’s degree program in clinical and humanistic psychology. In my head, this would be a great excuse for a socially acceptable year of personal development.

During that program, I did more than find myself. I learned firsthand about human potential. I proved to myself that a woman who was willing to grow could create anything she desired, which ended up being the subject of my master’s thesis, Living Life Unlimitedly. My inner child was roller-skating figure eights of joy in my heart.

The epic life was slowly coming back into clear view. Upon receiving my degree, I became a licensed psychotherapist, and now it was my turn to facilitate this exciting process of change and transformation for others. I was dazzled at the resilience of the human spirit. Women who had survived sexual abuse were healing. Marriages that suffered affairs came out stronger than before the betrayal took place. Children shaken from divorces made peace with a new definition of family. Teenagers who were angry, anxious, and even suicidal found inner joy and confidence. Active addicts experienced spiritual awakenings that led to sobriety. All of us were witnessing miracle after miracle as we tapped into the inner psychological and spiritual terrains. I was extremely grateful that I had been led to transform my own depression, pain, and professional exile into a deeply meaningful career. I enjoyed it so much that the pragmatic Midwesterner within could hardly believe I was getting a steady paycheck to do what I loved.

Surprise, surprise, two degrees deep and the legend of financial security had yet to be proven true. Mysteriously, after having done everything “right,” I still found myself in $75,000 of student loan debt, with my credit cards maxed out, and on a first-name basis with Delores at HSBC, begging her not to charge the late fee again. Yes, I was getting paid, but not nearly enough. Despite my higher education and government experience, I was clueless about how to make any decent amount of money, let alone create major impact in the world and be the successful mover and shaker I’d dreamed I’d be.

How was this my “epic life”?! Again, I had followed all the rules (except paying my bills on time). I did everything right. I went to college, got the jobs, earned the degrees, and wasn’t partying. (Sooooo boring, I know! Try being me at twenty-eight years old). I was willing to work hard, help others, and be a good person. And yet, fast-forwarding to age thirty, I found myself utterly disempowered, in debt, feeling alone and invisible, working seventy-five hours a week getting nowhere, unable to land a date to save my life, and (yes, it gets worse) living at home with my parents in Michigan.

WONDERING WHY LIFE ISN’T FAB?

I know I’m not the only woman in the history of the world who has had an era like this be part of her story. Maybe for you an epic life looks a little different, but the pain of feeling stuck is always the same. As women, if we’re not consciously making the choice to be the Queen of our epic lives, we usually find ourselves working really hard, as we’ve been told to do, yet secretly sad because nothing changes, not really.

Need proof? Let’s take a quick inventory. Since last year, how much of your life is relatively the same? Le muffin top? The lower-than-you’re-comfortable-with bank account balance? The going-through-the-motions sex life (or lack thereof)? The same circle of friends still venting about unbearable bosses, complaining about unexpected expenses, and pathetically insisting that he’s going to leave his wife this time (even though you know he’s not)? Family frustrations that have been reenacted since the Paleolithic Period? Tolerating the place we live rather than doing what it takes to move into a home we are inspired by and genuinely love? The demanding career that doesn’t actually advance, leaving us hope-addicted that if we work hard enough, we’ll hit it big “one day”? And then there’s the wardrobe that hasn’t been properly updated since Lincoln was in the White House.

Maybe if you’re lucky, at least one area of your life has had a significant change for the better. Yet as a Queen, that is just not good enough for you.

If you’re asking, “Is life meant to be this slow, this hard, this heavy? Where is the quantum leap? Did all miracles just exit stage left?” No, they did not. We stopped (or never started) believing in them.