Being my own version of a woman.

Nov 2019, in a suite at the Cosmo on the 30th-something-floor completely wasted with a carton of the Lord’s greatest gift, Goldfish Crackers in a tub that was — I shit you not — the literal size of my bedroom in Brooklyn.
I was in Vegas for a work retreat. Perhaps an hour before, I was at the tables with colleagues in peak drunkness as I truth-told a colleague that he didn’t love his wife. He found the accusation hilarious but I was dead serious.
I lost all my earnings, snagged a Bud Light from a cocktail waitress and retired for the night, and went straight to my tub, where I stayed for hours because I wanted to savor it.
Savor how I got there, my womanhood, my work ethic, my risks and failures.
I was stoked in my career, stoked in my body and my future.
I sat in my pruned skin with pride remembering of all the smiles that I’ve forced.
All the hats that I’ve worn.
All the anxiety attacks in the bathroom stall between meetings.
All the times I couldn’t afford lunch and banked on snacks in the work kitchen.
All the times I avoided getting to know colleagues because I was intimidated by their intellect, confidence and immaculate sense of style.
I sat in shame of all the times I’ve thrown colleagues under the bus because I didn’t know how to say, “I need help with this” until it was 5 pm.
Or how difficult it has been for me to get into flow, how at times my childhood wounds interfered with my present performance.
Looking at the Vegas strip, I sat while laughing in memory of all the past versions of me that have played in in this skanky-ass-town before. Laughing because I was comfortably induldging in a suite, by myself. that was completely up to me to get there.
I got there because I believed in me.
I got there because of the resilience that my athletic career served me, my bottomless curiosity of other people, my willingness to say “yes” and figure it out later. The list of how I got there is long but they all support this one radical and important identity.
Being a woman.
Being my own version of a woman.
One who would risk everything to see herself try, and somehow land in a tub, and blissed the eff out with complete pride of her journey being woman.