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Hi Reader, Welcome to Your Dose of Mana — a quick, weekly note with: If your biggest business challenges are actually people challenges, you’re in the right place. 1 Real Story Last week, I was in New York with the Women of ’86. Five of us who all started at Latham & Watkins in 1986. Yup, forty years ago. That sentence alone feels offensive because I’m fairly certain 1986 was only twenty years ago. Time is a scam We’re not the kind of friends who talk every week. We don’t have a years long group text going. In fact, there have been years when we may not even have connected. And yet… When life has cracked one of us open, we’ve shown up. Years ago, after my partner left me while I was living in New Zealand, I flew back to D.C., 20 lbs lighter and in pieces. Two of these women took the train down from New York just to have lunch with me. Lunch. Then they got back on the train and went home. No grand speeches. And hugged me. Ok, there may have been wine, too. Over four decades, we’ve stayed connected through Christmas cards, emails, life updates, marriages, divorces, children, career pivots, deaths, grief, and reinvention (mostly mine). This weekend we sat around a dinner table in New York laughing so hard I could barely breathe. And somewhere between the stories and the reminiscing, I had this quiet realization: These women have borne witness to my life.
1 Leadership Insight After I got home, I read Maria Shriver’s piece Fierce Hope, and one section struck me. She wrote about Roger Rosenblatt describing older women as people who “take my breath away.” Not because their lives were easy. Because they’ve lived. They’ve been tested. And they keep going. Maria Shriver called it fierce hope: “Not naïve hope. Not passive hope. Fierce hope. The kind that has been tested and beaten down and still gets back up.” That’s exactly what I saw sitting around that dinner table. Women who have experienced divorce. Loss. Parenting challenges. Health scares. Family crises. The death of a husband. Women who have every reason to become cynical. And yet they remain deeply engaged. Curious. Funny. Forward-looking. That’s leadership too. Not title-based leadership. Life leadership. The kind built through surviving things you never planned for and choosing not to become bitter afterward. As Rosenblatt says, they ”are wonders, winking lights in the universe, stars.” 1 Practical Takeaway Take inventory of the people who have borne witness to your life. The people who:
Keep those people close. And be that person for someone else. Because success is wonderful. But having people who can look at your life and say, “I see how far you’ve come”? That’s the real wealth. And maybe that’s what fierce hope really looks like. Not pretending life hasn’t been hard. But finding people who are winking lights in your universe and will help you believe there’s still more life ahead worth living. 1 Dose of Art A little whimsy. A little joy. A little doodle.
Doodle by Gary Schechner, 4/25/26 Even though this is a “mass email” I mean it when I say—let me know what you are up to. Reply, book a Zoom, pick up the phone. I’d love to catch up. If people issues are slowing down your business, let’s fix that. Thanks for letting me show up in your inbox. More joy. Less friction. Always. |