#59: We’re not meant to do it alone.
We all need someone *else* to pull up our bootstraps sometimes.
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On a steely gray January day in 2017, I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Giant plastic bags of new king-sized pillows filled my back seat. It was two months after Mike had died and obviously I had turned to buying new pillows to fill a fraction of the gaping chest wound where my soul had been.
My phone rang… I half-heartedly decided to rejoin reality.
“Hey there, just checking in! How are things?” Luanne chirped.
“Well, I’m sitting here surrounded by new pillows,” I dully replied.
“Ok, well that’s good!” Ever enthusiastic and supportive even when she thought what I was doing was nutso.
“Listen, I’m doing this consulting engagement, and this company needs a Chief Growth Officer, and I am going to put your name into the hat for consideration. I am calling to make sure that is ok. But really I am not asking you. You can do this. You should do this. You would be great at it.”
At that point in time, I pretty much did whatever Luanne told me to do. I trusted her judgment during a time when I could not locate my own with a thousand-person army kitted out with klieg lights.
“Ok, if you say so,” I said glumly.
“I say so. So, yes,” she replied.
Fast forward six years, and I’m slack jawed in an airplane coming back from an international meeting.
I went to the interview, I got the job, blah blah blah. But more importantly, now I’m watching The Return of Tanya Tucker as I fly over the Atlantic, and I’m in awe.
It’s like hearing my own story, my shared story with Luanne, from an alternate universe.
In this universe, I’m Tanya, a teen country sensation. I had my first hit at 13. It was a rapid rise, followed by a hard fall. Drugs. Alcohol. Lots of sexist bullshit along the way. Tanya (me) has not made an album in almost 15 years… Then Brandi Carlile (Luanne) shows up. Brandi feels the loss in the world of this amazing talent, someone who had influenced her own career from afar. So through highs and lows, fits and starts, frustration and joy, she and her team coax an album from Tanya, and more importantly, coax Tanya back into believing in herself.
Ok, not everything about the story is identical. I’m not famous, my pit looked more like grief and despair than drugs and alcohol, I only sing along with my car radio. But the broad strokes gave me chills. The fall, the listlessness, the return to confidence with the help of the irreplaceable friend.
While most people were politely averting their eyes as me/Tanya crawled into a hole, Luanne/Brandi were rolling up their sleeves, preparing to drag us out of it.
But Brandi and Luanne aren’t the first people in the world to try to save their friends from downward spirals. Why were they successful?
Why are both Tanya and I able to smile broad smiles as we share our redemption stories?
What’s the secret to helping another?
What’s the secret to being a ‘Brandi’ in someone’s life?
I think this is worth a return to 1996.
At 26, I was a wet-behind-the-ears MBA heading into my big new job. The orientation for my coveted corporate gig involved a gaggle of fresh-off-the-boat MBAs just like me, coming together at a conference center to get inculcated into the corporate culture and hone our presentation skills. My BFF Julie was also in attendance as we’d taken jobs for the same firm but in different cities. The rest of the class was made up of strangers who were carbon copies of Julie and me.
Expect one... Oozing intensity and business acumen, short black hair, wiry runner’s frame, a sharp, smart answer to every question. The rest of us were in awe.
I was intimidated but also intrigued. Turns out that she was also going to be working in the same DC office as me. In other words, not a random meteor I’d never see again, but someone who would be in my everyday solar system. Getting to know her was the practical thing to do. I approached her with wide eyes like a dog curious about a cat, but worried about those claws.
Turns out that was all in my head.
I didn’t know it yet, but it was Luanne. It was my Luanne.
Through the years we worked in each other’s orbit. Our careers advanced. We had babies. We had conversations. I worked for her. She came to me for advice. Our lives were on parallel tracks; it was priceless for us to have a friend, ally, cheerleader, and bullshit-incinerator walking by our side.
When my world imploded, our connection proved to transcend work. Luanne was at the viewing and the funeral, making sure no details slipped through the cracks. She brought the glasses to my house for the reception. She showed up in my driveway, eyeballing me to see how I was really doing. She cried along with me at many breakfasts.
She didn’t look away, she leaned in.
Luanne became one of my touchstones.
I don’t know if she meant to do it or some mysterious grief gravity pulled her into it, but it just became the way it was. Her check-in texts were a part of daily reality as the days, weeks, months since Mike’s last breath petulantly marched by.
Luanne was far from my only touchstone, but she focused her efforts specifically on my career. She knew how hard I had worked to get to where I was and wasn’t going to let anything — grief, despair, woe is me, I don’t wanna — ruin it.
She also knew grief. She had played the work-and-heal-at-the-same-time game herself. So she knew when to apply a light touch (see the pillow enthusiasm above), and she wasn’t afraid to try a heavier hand when she sensed I was sinking.
In the alternate universe where we are country singers, Brandi was likely also able to help Tanya in a way others could not because she got it.
No amount of sympathy can replace empathy.
In Luanne, I had a friend who had been through the pain of loss, who could commiserate, and who could say, “keep going, you can do this,” and I actually believed her. Many people told me something similar in those days, and while I’m grateful for all of them, with Luanne it wasn’t just a nice thing to say. Her entire being reverberated with the certainty of my ability to overcome and prevail. She acted on it. She fought for me with my future boss. She debriefed with me after every interview during the process.
Just like in the alternate Brandi/Tanya universe, Luanne was not doing this out of charity or pity. She was doing it because she knew me. She believed in what I had to offer to this job, this company, this community. She believed I should be out in the world leading people, not at home licking my wounds forever. She believed I could provide for my family. She believed I would find strength and purpose again.
She wasn’t holding my hand, she was treating me like I was the best version of myself who had simply gotten amnesia and forgotten what she was capable of.
Eventually her belief started pulling me into resonance, into self-belief, too.
Now Luanne tells everyone “I’m going to hold the lights when Sue’s onstage for her intimate-venue, worldwide Luminist Speaking Tour!”
No matter the circumstances — a launchpad to the job that changed my life or supporting my dream of changing the world — Luanne is there to believe in me before I believe in myself.
That’s what Brandi’s do. They don’t just hug us, console us, offer tissues and soothing words. These things are desperately needed and heartily welcomed. But they are not enough to qualify as a Brandi. Brandi’s do more:
They ACT. They challenge us. They cajole us. They encourage us.
They can speak from personal experience. No platitudes here, only honesty.
They know when to push and when to hold. Sometimes, they put up with our bullshit foot-dragging and self-confidence lapses. And sometimes they don’t take “no” for answer.
They don’t pity us. Because they’re not actually saving us. They’re just attaching the jumper cables that will light a fire under our ass so we can get going by our own power and volition.
Which leads me to my final point. Luanne doesn’t care if I’m a corporate bigwig or if I’m writing a newsletter about loss and life. She’s here to support my dreams, wherever they lead me.
Her goal was never to get me to a certain destination. It was to reignite my life force so I once again felt confident being in the driver’s seat of my life, pedal to the metal.
Six years ago, the job interview Luanne strong-armed me into made perfect sense. Chief Growth Officer would mean I was working to inspire, motivate, and improve people’s lives. I don’t know if you can tell, but give me half a chance to talk about these topics and I can basically rise from the dead. Brandi also knew that Tanya needed a taste of inspiring people again, just in her way — with a microphone, from the stage.
Tanya and I both worried that we had lost our spark. Brandi and Luanne made sure we rediscovered it. It’s so simple, it makes me want to smack my forehead, Homer Simpson style.
They just reintroduced us to ourselves.
It is an odd, contradictory fact of being human that others see us more clearly than we can.
We all sell ourself short in one way or another. But through the gaze of that other, we can find our true reflection.
Here’s to our Brandi’s, and to being Brandi’s ourselves,
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By the end of this one, I was just about standing up from my seat, cheering for Luanne (and Brandi!) and, of course, you.
The idea of having a support system through grief *specifically* for cheerleading you in your career is new to me, and wildly powerful. 🔥🔥🔥
The thing is, Sue, you let her. You didn't get angry at her, push her away, shut her out. Luanne is amazing. A true friend. You just let her do her job. xo