The Kick-Ass Blog

Until you solve it, every challenge looks like a locked door with no handle. Your bad day can be a good story that helps someone else. We don’t give ourselves enough credit for our hard-earned experience. We certainly don’t recognize it as Wisdom.

One day, your daughter, or niece, may want to run for president. Will she be able to turn to a network that supports her to reach her goal to get elected? A team of women who have been there and know how to guide her? What do we need to start building now to support her run in 2040?

Over the last six years, each step I took outside of my comfort zone felt like trying to cross a room with no light to guide me. My first blog post, walking into my first improv class, signing a lease for my own office. Each step felt like inching out into the darkness with caution, waiting to bang my head against something I can’t anticipate.

Every speaker and every sign at the Women’s March made it clear what women need to do: step up, speak up, be counted. But when I got home, I thought long and hard: What can an advocate for gender equity, who happens to be a man, do?

“At the beginning I couldn’t even move. I was completely paralyzed. Then I rode around in the cul-de-sac. I immediately fell. And I fall to the left. I can’t help my instinct is to go that way. I always fall to the left which is kind of scary because when you’re on a road you should really try to fall away from the cars which would be to the right.”

Every single force in the world (schools, experts, Pinterest, your relatives) are in on the scam to make you feel like you are doing too little. That is a recipe for stressed-out parents AND stressed-out kids. You CAN do less. I am pulling out a post-it and scribbling you a BIG ASS PERMISSION SLIP… to back. the f*ck. off.