On Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and other holidays, I write love letters to the parents who have made the sacrifice of raising our next generation, like this letter I wrote on July 4, 2024. Seeing kids in iconic holiday moments, like running with sparklers or catching fireflies, makes me especially appreciate the blood, sweat, and tears that parents pour into their children.
I love writing these love letters, but today I woke up with the realization that I’ve been starting them off on the wrong foot. I recently opened a letter by saying, “Thank you for doing a job that I have always been too selfish to do.” While this self-deprecation may seem subtle, both insinuating that opting out of parenthood is selfish and preceding a beautiful letter with self-deprecation can have massive ripple effects.
When I was deciding whether to have children 20 years ago, the biggest hurdle to being childless that I had to overcome was the notion that I would be perceived as (or perhaps even become) SELFISH.
As I was contemplating this decision, I serendipitously heard author Elizabeth Gilbert articulate her Auntie Brigade argument in her book Committed, in which she defends childless women against the idea that they contribute less because they aren’t mothers. These aunties redirect their money, time, and emotional labor to their wider family and community. As just one example, childless widow Elizabeth M. Watkins of the University of Kansas became known on campus as KU’s “Fairy Godmother” because she used her wealth to help students who couldn’t otherwise afford school. My Imperfectly Honest partner-in-crime, Kayla Gorski, calls this fairy-godmothering “Mothering the Collective.” I LOVE that term.
Shortly after I decided not to have children, I deployed my extra bandwidth to mother the collective by building a fund to invest in extraordinary entrepreneurs. One of the patterns that I saw from this experience is that extraordinary women often start their speeches with self-deprecation and/or an apology for not being “enough.” I routinely give women the feedback that if I were a 15-year-old girl and I heard an extraordinary woman start her speech by apologizing for not being “enough,” I would have a hard time believing that I could ever measure up and be “enough” myself. I realized this morning that I have been subtly doing the same thing.
I want to redirect that perception of myself as selfish and instead tell my 15-year-old self about the extraordinary Auntie Elizabeth she will become, and to inspire other 15-year-olds to believe they, too, can become extraordinary.
Dear Auntie Elizabeth,
Thank you for choosing the path you were chosen for rather than the one society told you you were obligated to take. Thank you for overcoming your fear of being selfish and using your talents in the way you were destined for. Thank you especially for:
Building a fund to help 54 extraordinary entrepreneurs become even more extraordinary, and for providing an 8x return to your investors to help prove that investing in extraordinary women makes financial sense.
Helping your ex-husband, Derek, use his childless bandwidth. Thanks in part to you, he went from having $20 to his name when he left college to playing a key role in taking a 20-person startup to an $870 million exit, and then achieving another nine-figure startup success three years later. These events had a tremendous impact on our community in Boulder, CO. Derek took that wealth and his childless bandwidth to support his hometown in Helena, MT, as a baseball and football coach and owner of a downtown sandwich shop, supporting Main Street, providing local jobs, and mentoring local teens.
Working to bring a much-needed public recreation and entertainment complex to Helena by taking a risk that the community would not. You continued your commitment for two years after your divorce and relocation away from Helena.
Taking a leap of faith on an extraordinary entrepreneur in need of help and companionship in rural Montana. You set your life aside for nearly two years because you had a feeling that you needed him and he needed you. That proved to be true. The seemingly impossible feat you’ve helped him pull off has made a meaningful impact on both of your futures, his family, and Park County, Montana.
Doing what you always do through life’s setbacks, like cancerous tumors that curved your spine: you make art out of adversity and turn tragedy into opportunity.
Making today the last day that you will start a story with an apology for your shortcomings or refer to yourself as selfish.
Finding the confidence to believe that you have the network, talent, and drive to have the kind of impact on others’ lives and on our world that four-time bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert had.
Thank you to all of you who are reading this, for allowing me to dream BIG, believe in ME, and inspire today’s version of my 15-YEAR-OLD SELF.
Onward and upward.
