with Julie Brown I said something incredibly vulnerable to my husband recently. We were out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants – sitting at the bar, and I could see our reflections in the mirror behind the bar. I looked at him and said…“I think you’re aging better than me.” Chris and I are only nine months apart. So his aging like a fine wine and me aging like milk feels deeply unfair. I met Chris when I was 24… so I have been with Chris for more than half of my life. There’s a line I say from the stage when I’m talking about the importance of having your husband or wife in your Top Five. I talk about how the person you choose to build your life with can have an enormous impact on your ability to be successful. Whether there’s parity in the relationship. Whether your ambitions are supported. Whether the person beside you makes your world bigger…or asks you to make yourself smaller. And then I say: “Your husband or wife is the only family member you get to choose. Don’t pick a loser!” It gets a HUGE laugh. And it IS funny. But this is what I actually mean by it. Because before there was THE JULIE BROWN… Before the stages. There was Chris. And no one has ever believed in me the way Chris has. He believed I could run 26.2 before I knew I could. He believed I could cook when there was…considerably less evidence supporting that position – especially that one date we went on when I called risotto “rice”. He listens to me talk about dahlias and seedlings and whatever tiny thing has happened in my garden like this is breaking news. He’s believed in every ridiculous idea and every reinvention. And when I said I wanted to leave a career I’d spent 20 years building and become a speaker? He believed in that too. Not eventually. Not after the bookings started coming in. Not after people started paying me. Not after the stages got bigger and the lights got brighter and strangers started mailing avocados 🥑 to my office. Before there was proof. We talk so much about believing in ourselves. And yes, obviously, that’s super important. But I don’t think we talk enough about the extraordinary gift of having someone in your life who believes in you while you’re still becoming. Someone who sees the possibility before there’s evidence. Someone who doesn’t need the résumé or the results or the applause before they decide you’re capable of something. And someone whose own success doesn’t require the diminishment of yours. That’s what I mean by parity. It’s not that two people have identical careers or make identical money or split every single thing exactly 50/50. It’s that both people’s dreams get to take up space. Both people’s ambitions matter. Both people get a turn to be scared and uncertain and wildly optimistic about something that doesn’t make complete sense yet. And maybe that’s one of the reasons I’ve been able to do so many things that scared the absolute shit out of me. I have spent half my life knowing that there is one person who is relentlessly, unequivocally on my side. We all need someone like that. Maybe it’s your husband or wife. Someone who sees something in you before everybody else can. But there’s another side to this. Whose person are YOU? Whose ridiculous idea are you taking seriously? Whose ambition are you making room for? Who gets braver because you are in their Top Five? Because maybe one of the greatest things we can do with our relationships isn’t simply surround ourselves with people who believe in us. It’s to become the person who believes like hell in somebody else. So yes – to get back to where this newsletter started, apparently Chris is aging better than me. Which remains bullshit. But I got Chris. So I still think I’m winning.
P.S. If you like my work and want to support it, here are 3 ways! 1) Forward this newsletter to a friend and let them know they can subscribe here. 2) Buy my book 3) Bring me into your company to speak. (Either in person or virtual.)
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I think my husband is aging better than me.
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