Atoosa Unedited

The purpose of this letter is to share my experiences in case you relate. I’m not a doctor or a therapist…but I would TOTALLY play one on TV if you ask nicely. 🤩

I had a really hard week.

And…cut. 🎬

How do you feel when I tell you I’ve had a hard week. Notice if you have a resistance to this. If you know me personally, you may gloss over the rest of this letter and just rush to send me an omg-are-you-okay note. Or you may even be thinking with an eye roll, “Here we go again….” Noticing my own feelings when someone shares theirs (particularly when they are experiencing difficult feelings) has been a very interesting practice. Spoiler alert: We get verrrrrrrrry uncomfortable when someone else is uncomfortable and we immediately want to wish it away for our friend or disapparate 🧙🏼‍♀️ourselves.

When I say it’s been hard for me, I don’t mean I’m sad and I want to be happy.

Newsflash: I am happy.

Here’s what I do mean: I’ve been processing difficult feelings.

We’re living in a society that encourages us to project that everything is GREAT! (Hey, Instagram! 👋🏼) Or that we have the right answer or opinion at the ready! (I see you, Twitter! 👀) We lurve to project that we are #livingourbestlives and #influencers. Insert cocktail cheersing boomerang. 🥂

And I assure you. I am living my best life. But sometimes…I’m not. Sometimes I feel like shit. Don’t you? I don’t want to gloss over these moments for fear of disturbing someone’s perception of me or themselves.

I’d like to normalize processing hard feelings.

Otherwise, we are inadvertently normalizing burying them. It’s like not allowing the emotional body to take a shit. 💩 The emotional waste has got to come out of our systems. Absent that, we have even more problematic strategies of emotional waste management like drinking, smoking weed (I know, weed lovers, I know 😘), shopping, overeating and perhaps even physical manifestations like auto-immune diseases or even cancer.

So let’s start this over again.

Last week was hard.

There’s no worthwhile storyline to explain exactly why it was so hard. I mean…one of my kids got Covid and her sickness required the cancellation of some plans…the kind of important plans made months in advance that involve many other people. But again, I don’t think it was really about these particular circumstances. Afterall, I’m a mother of three. Children get sick. Plans fall apart. This is all par for the course. She is generally healthy, we have solid health care. All in all, this was just a bump in the road. But perhaps because I’ve been reevaluating my relationship to power and control over the past few weeks, instead of frantically trying to salvage this plan or that one – I just let it all fall apart. I surrendered to the situation instead of trying to control it.

When a set plan goes sideways, do you ever feel that sensation come over your body that is directing every single cell to go into Defcon 1 mode? 🆘 Shit happens and my body just snaps into Fight (I’m not a flight-er).

I’m very familiar with this strong urge to exert force. This was the energy of Atoosa from CosmoGIRL! The girl who didn’t give a shit how late we had to work and pushed everyone (including myself) all night if necessary to make sure everything in the magazine was exactly as I wanted it. The girl who called everyone September 12, 2001 to say I expected them back in the office next morning because we had an issue that was going to press. Yes, our city (and our country) had just suffered a catastrophe that left us numb, terrified and unable to function. But that wasn’t going to stop our issue from making it to the press in time. That form of power can only be called force and I know exactly what it feels like in my body. But when it started up this time, I didn’t serve my master. Instead, I observed it. And once the opportunity and urge to control passed, there was something surprising hiding behind it. It felt like a lifetime’s worth of disappointment piled on top of one another. Disappointments I had You-got-this-girl-ed myself into burying. Have you ever had this type of emotional 12-car-pile-up?

Yeah.

It was heavy.

In fact, I was on a walk with my bestie David right after I found out my daughter had Covid (She’s a teen and went back to bed after her test was positive). At the end of our walk, he said something like, “I’m noticing that your energy has shifted very dramatically since we started.” And he was totally right. When we first met up, I was in my typical you-got-this-girl default mindset. This is a strategy that really works for me. When shit goes sideways like Covid or fill-in-the-blank-because-having-kids-means-something-is-always-going-sideways, being a positive person is helpful. But as I leaned into the steadfast support of my beloved friend, and my strategies were not as necessary, my true emotional backpack got heavier and heavier. And by the way, that’s why having a solid support system is so important. We all have strategies against feeling totally overwhelmed by what life throws at us because we have to be able to function. But always being in strategy mode doesn’t allow us to fully process our feelings. Anyway, by the end of the walk, I was essentially mute because of the back log of disappointment and pain this incident was kicking up. I pithily acknowledged to David that I was in a bad place and that I was going to lie in this bad place.

And I did. I did.

It. Felt. Awful.

I put aside the narrative and dropped into the bodily sensations. It was no longer about any plans that were cancelled or people who were sick or my efficacy as a parent or a human. It was just head to toe horrible sensation. No words for it, honestly.

In some ways not speaking about it and just feeling it, is what seemed to invite the energy of every disappointment I’ve ever experienced to come flooding in because the extent of how I felt was not at all commensurate with, “My kid got Covid and we had to cancel some plans.” It was bigger. It was actually debilitating when I let it flow through me, which I intentionally did during the day when my other kids were at school. I rested through it as my sick child did the same with her virus. I allowed the yuck to extend as long as it needed to, but not past about 3pm when I have to do my first school pick up every day. When that time arrived, I was with the kids, made dinner, and I was actually able to enjoy that time because I gave so much time to intentionally doing the processing work. During the days I rested and treated my convalescence with gravitas and respect. And I felt like complete shit until eventually…I didn’t. It took about three days… Interestingly, my symptoms were in synch with the worst of my daughter’s COVID symptoms. And no, I did not have COVID.

And you know what I realized? I was familiar with this feeling. Back when I was working at the magazines, I had two bouts of depression. Once when I was a Fashion Assistant at Cosmo and the second time when I was transitioning from CosmoGIRL! to Seventeen. Both times I felt so horrible, I could barely get out of bed. And it took me weeks before I even realized what was happening and got help. Then I used an SSRI (Paxil) that almost immediately erased the feeling and got me up and functional again.

The bodily sensations I experienced last week were very similar if not exactly the same as the depression of my younger years, but it came in and out like a virus as opposed to a chronic illness. I think (I don’t know – I think!) it’s because of these two factors:

*This is not intended as advice. Merely an observation of my own experiences over the years.

1-    I embraced the debilitation instead of pushing myself to work and function at a normal level. The ability to do this is a privilege, but it’s still interesting to note. Leaning into what was hard worked better than pushing it away or trying to push through it. I don’t think difficult feelings are unique to me or someone who specifically has clinical depression (which I do not have). I believe we all have old, hard feelings that come up for processing. I think we all also have many different (and seamless) strategies to ameliorate or push those feelings away. My experiment involved stripping away my strategies. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that safely if it weren’t for my next point.

2-    I am very resourced (meaning solid friends and a solid commitment to self-care). Back then, I didn’t have friends I could be vulnerable with and self-care meant keeping up with my bikini wax and making time on the weekends to bang out more work. Today, I intentionally create safe spaces for my feelings. Whether it’s my therapist, my energy healer (yeah, I know what that sounds like but energy healing and medicine really works!), the weighted blanket in my office, a meditation or chanting practice, the lavender oil in my bedside drawer, my medicine cabinet full of flower essences, the notebooks I keep in every room in case I need to explore how I’m feeling or the Theragun mini I use on my face, head, neck or any part of me that needs vibration, touch and presence. I take care of myself. I’m no longer a latchkey kid eating bowl after bowl of Lucky Charms to soothe the feelings I don’t know how else to cope with.

Listen, I realize having a therapist, healer and all the wacky accoutrements in my proverbial self-care backpack make me sound like a tone-deaf entitled douchebag. But listen, instead of having my eyebrows laminated, getting a new cute top every other day or going out for drinks left and right, this is what I spend my money on: Taking care of myself deeply instead of distracting myself from my feelings. I know not everyone can take a few days off from work to let feelings process. Most people can’t. But instead of making back-to-back brunch and dinner plans after a rough week, if you’re well supported, this may be the weekend plan you never knew you needed: Wallowing in the last place you want to wallow and just letting the hard feelings run their course as you would a virus. Perhaps there’s some emotional immunity for you on the back end.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

I am not an influencer. I am not a doctor. I don’t have the answers, but gosh I love exploring the questions…even when it drags me through dog shit like last week. In retrospect, I think that shit was fertilizer because I came out with some real clarity.

xo, atoosa

PS - Sweet Darkness by David Whyte is an incredible poem for these moments. 🖤

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These are My Current Flower Remedies 🤍:

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I had an experience the other night that felt psychedelic…except it wasn’t. But it was…even though it wasn’t. Let me explain.

I was out to dinner with some lovely folks. Smart, gorgeous, successful, the typical kind of 212s you may expect me to be out to dinner with. 212 being the shorthand for people who live in Manhattan, the 212-area code. They’re about my age, C-suite, enviable academic and career pedigrees, blah blah blah. You get the drift.

And then there came this one moment when I asked the wife about what she liked to do on the weekends. This is where it got psychedelic for me. I can’t tell you precisely what she was saying because it became a true out-of-body experience. She kind of laughed and said she worked and proceeded to paint the picture of her singular focus. She wasn’t describing it as a drag. It wasn’t served inside an I-need-to-find-more-balance context. It was pure unadulterated Generation X hustle. My energetic experience of this conversation was almost like watching a cannibal who is in rapture ripping their prey apart limb from limb with blood dripping off their lips. Did you see the recent Luca Guadagnino movie, Bones and All? Yeah. That’s what I mean by it feeling psychedelic. I looked around the table wondering if they were experiencing what I was experiencing. But the others were politely smiling and nodding their heads.

This was my trip and my trip alone.

Perhaps it speaks to how I have intentionally avoided hustle culture. After all, I gave a TEDx talk

about how I had to leave it all to find my own brand of peace. But coming face to face with it after so many years of rehabilitating out of it…I have to say…felt like a true horror movie to me.

And yet, I am saying this without judgment…but rather curiosity.

In fact, as a result of my intense feelings at the dinner, I’ve really sat with my choice to step away from the hustle even more closely.

Did I make the right choice?

Who is to say my relaxed low-key life is better?

There were so many aspects of my power life that I enjoyed.

The other day I was reading about that tech guy who spends 2 million dollars a year and 24 hours a day biohacking so that his organs revert to where they were when he was a teenager. I was literally eating a Korean corn dog treat (Mozzarella) while I read about his 1900-ish calorie a day plant-based diet and the sleep machine he’s hooked up to each night thinking, “Man…it must suck to be him.” But does it? Or does it suck to be me? Watching the world and its daily progress and innovations from my namaste lily pad? Does happiness come from peace or from impacting the world?

As a person with pretty high-level skills and talents, am I doing myself a service just by learning how to live a peaceful life? While Tech Bro works 24/7 to biohack his organs, I work 24/7 to hack my mind. To be able to sit with what’s hard and find bliss in it all. My ex-husband feels this is a complete waste of my time, talent and earning potential. I can understand that point of view.  The truth is, I got a lot of satisfaction out of doing my part to help young women. But the way I operated was problematic for me.

My power source was fear and aggression.

How can I step into my power without being power hungry. Without taking power away from another? Without exercising said power blindly. The general outside perspective of my career is of the smiling, waving big sister to teenagers all over America. And yes, I was that girl. But behind the scenes I was very tough. As I made my way up the ranks at Cosmopolitan where I started as an assistant, the more cutthroat the environment became, the more cutthroat I became.

Like, at one point there was a new Editor-in-Chief and Fashion Director, both whom I admired and respected. I got promoted to Fashion Editor and they brought a more experienced Senior Fashion Editor to the team from another magazine. I didn’t like this girl. She was kind of notoriously mean and didn’t spare me that treatment. It was all very Devil Wears Prada and tbh, I’d never been treated like that at work. I very naturally and unconsciously strategized to get rid of her with behind the scenes scheming and maneuvering. In fact, I hand-picked (from another magazine) the person I wanted to take her place and within less than a year despite being junior to this position in the department, I had executed this shift. Meanie was out. Nice-y was in. Except…ultimately, I didn’t love working with Nice-y either. She had a lot of opinions that were different than mine. She was super professional and kind but well…I wanted to do things differently. Time for more maneuvering. Within the year, Nice-y was out and I was the new Senior Fashion Editor. In both cases, I remember the girls each looking at me like tou-fucking-ché when all was said and done. My point is, I was a blood thirsty hustle culture vampire myself. Not proud. Just honest.

It was very easy for me to do and yet…it didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel good being Machiavellian. It didn’t feel good to win that way. There was a constant energy of unease. It’s surreal to have everything you’ve ever wanted and feel paranoid and scared all the time.

I’ve loved the process of changing my wiring.

I’ve attacked it like I attacked my ascent in the media industry. I went from waking up at 4am to catch up on emails and hit the gym before showing up at the office at 7 to becoming someone who sees a nap as a necessary part of self-care…without shame. That’s the key part. Self-care without shame.

I’ve loved learning how to see people. I mean really see them as opposed to play them like human chess for the win. I used to have sooooo many “friends.” But really they were all key high-level people at companies I did business with. Today, my friends serve only my inner life…and I, theirs. Ānanda, the Buddha’s cousin and closest disciple once asked the Buddha, “Is it true, Lord, that noble friends are half of the holy life?” The Buddha responded, “No, Ānanda, noble friends are the whole of the holy life.” And my friends are not just my nearest and dearest, with whom I spend hours a week in discourse. My friends are all those with whom I journey…each of you in some way impacting my path because of our sharing, and I hope, in some way, I, yours. Thank you, dear reader, for being such an important part of my holy life.

I have loved, through meditation, developing the ability to let my body and mind get as relaxed as my friend’s fluffy, fat cat, Auggie, basking in the sun.

My nervous system has been entirely hacked.

And yet…

Just sitting around being peaceful and happy is getting…I don’t know…boring. I see yet another reason I was always choosing “complicated” guys. I was fucking bored. Now that I’m here, just being peaceful is not enough at this stage in my life. There is something within me that yearns to be more active in the world. I don’t need to be a Girlboss meme or any other caricature of hustle culture…but I am seeking something.

Like for the past few years I’ve felt like there are two tall cliffs about a foot apart from one another. I have one foot on each. One side representing the hustle culture I was so good at. The other, the Buddhist-influenced meditation lifestyle that has completely rewired my nervous system and how I show up in the world. I haven’t been totally able to let go of hustle culture, although I’ve gone cold turkey in terms of my participation. My hustle culture self is dead as a doornail, and yet, like a zombie, my cold dead hands are holding on tight to this old identity of “Atoosa, famous teen magazine editor.” Because who will I be without that identity? Is that why I want to be of service to the world? To have an enviable identity? To bring value to the world to have value?

By holding so tightly onto the past, am I stopping the blood flow that will fuel my future? I’m not Atoosa from Seventeen anymore. I have so much respect for that girl. She was abused for much of her childhood and yet she stayed on the straight and narrow. She took care of herself, and her family financially. She was a philanthropist from the minute she had an extra dollar. Although she was a bully, she bullied people on behalf of saving girls like her who didn’t have another advocate.

But…I am not Atoosa from Seventeen anymore.

I have no fucking idea what my next thing will be.

I know I am helpful.

I am kind.

I’m intense.

In fact, when I’m passionate, I’m a beast.

I love to be on the front lines.

But I am introvert.

I hate group texts.

And small talk.

My river runs deep.

I have two best friends.

They know everything.

Except…what’s next for me.

Even I don’t know that.

And so, as I watch friends from today and yesterday write books, launch businesses, make declarative statements about who they are and where they are going. I bow with humility and remember I am rewiring my power source. My power source no longer comes from force or fear. I guess I’m going the way the world is going. Instead of tapping into trauma, I’m tapping into…a renewal source. I guess we can call it my own solar power. Tapping into my light. My knowing. My heart. I’m in the development phase though. I don’t quite know how to do this. But I also don’t know how to do THAT anymore either as evidenced by my nearly having a seizure as I felt my friend’s super intense hustle energy. A voice in my head says, Ugh you’re such a pussy. But then immediately another voice chimes in. Yes! I am! Pussy Power!

So tonight, I leave you with that. No answers. Only questions. And curiosity about…Pussy Power. Hey, it’s good for the climate…the emotional climate.

xo, atoosa

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I once had a boss when I was in my early 20s who said whenever she was really happy, she’d gain weight.

I have the opposite experience.

But there is one complication.

You will never actually hear me say that I am NOT happy.

In the depths of the hardest times of the hardest times, I will be crawling on the metaphorical floor, gutted and left for dead and if you bring your ear close to my mouth you will hear me whisper either a gratitude for the lesson or the silver lining in the whole situation.

For better or worse, this is my personality.

This is how I’ve survived some of the things I have survived. I have full faith in God and God’s plan (After all, you may remember I brought a “Faith” section to Seventeen which was kind of unheard of at the time. And yes, that is a link from the Alabama Baptist. Not sure they’d ever written a positive piece of news about a teen magazine before that. 😅)

Bestie David always reminds me that the difficulties of my childhood have lead to this militant focus on the silver lining and the hard earned higher threshold for pain and discomfort. In other words, I will remain in a bad situation long after others would have abandoned ship.

My body, however, never lies.

I gained 60 pounds in the final years of my marriage.

I didn’t seem miserable. I was smiling and actively involved in our schools and community. I showed up strong for my children and made all sorts of fun plans and trips for myself and my husband. (The other parents at school thought of me as the fun concierge!) But my weight just kept creeping higher and higher. Having been a thin person for all my life, I kind of looked at this weight gain with interest and curiosity….and optimism.

Always optimism.

My sizes seem to change all the time? Well, at least I can afford to buy bigger clothes!

“My mommy is the squishiest!” I mean…come on…what’s better than a squishy mommy?!

You get the mindset.

On the plus side (there I go again, and a pun, too! 🤭), I wasn’t hard on myself, so my self-esteem didn’t take a hit. On the downside, my blood work wasn’t going in the right direction and there’s no silver lining to that.

There was also another element to this.

Intuitively, I knew it had something to do with my husband. I’d tried to bring it up with him, but you know how that conversation went…and for good reason. “Don’t blame me for your stuff,” he’d say. And I understand that response. But I couldn’t help what I felt even though I didn’t understand it. Oh, and worth noting: I would literally never bust up my family. I. Would. Never. Bust. Up. My. Family. We were “The A-Team” forever and I was their chubby matriarch. Period, end of story.

Except that isn’t the end of the story.

When I say my self-esteem didn’t take a hit, don’t get me wrong. I certainly noticed when people noticed my weight gain. No one ever outwardly said anything, but come on… I can read a room. I’d see people from my past and it was right there on their faces. I had a quick line in my pocket that was meant to make them feel okay about this change in me…to be able to make peace with this now Mumu-wearing version of the tall, skinny person they once knew.

“Hey,” I would joke. “At least, I didn’t waste one moment of being hot. I showed that body every chance I got when I had it.” And I would belly laugh like a wizened elder who didn’t need that external affirmation anymore. And what I was saying was true. I dressed provocatively from my teen years all throughout my career. I was never ashamed of or hid my body. (Even in moments, I probably should have like my father’s funeral.) But I couldn’t ignore the voice in the back of my head that was saying, “You feel like you’re wearing a costume. Something about this just isn’t right.” But again, another voice would come in and say that I needed to love myself and my body whatever it looked like: Not every body is intended to be thin. Not everyone is going to look 25 forever.

I poured myself ample cups of self-love and acceptance Kool-Aid.

Part of that process was an inner exploration to better understand these two seemingly contradictory voices inside of my head:

1-Something about your weight feels off.

2-Accept yourself no matter what you look like.

Perhaps the most powerful thing I did was writing to my inner child. On the advice of a medical intuitive, every day I would spend a certain amount of time doing this writing exercise: With my dominant hand (I’m a righty), I would ask my inner child questions and with my left hand, I would write her responses. The idea seemed ridiculous when I first heard it. Like what benefit could come from the same person asking and answering the question? But as soon as I started, I witnessed how my non-dominant hand was able to access a whole other part of my psyche. And it wasn’t just a tool for better self-awareness. I used the writing to give my inner child love and support: That feeling of I’m here with you…You’re not alone…I’ve got you. So many of those messages (and I have notebooks and notebooks full of this type of writing) were just words of affirmation to my inner child. Words of affirmation my parents didn’t have the bandwidth to give me when I was younger and really needed emotional support. Perhaps if I’d had acknowledgement of what was hard, I wouldn’t have needed this strategy of creating a narrative that always shifts my attention to the bright side. Perhaps a feeling of unconditional and unwavering support during a hard time would have lead to the ability to shift out of a situation that doesn’t serve me instead of just feeling trapped in it and anesthetizing myself with food and positive vibes.

Gear shift.

I hadn’t had sex with my husband for years.

I am a very sexual being. I mean…we all are, I’m sure. But I’m just going to speak for myself. I am a very sexual being. For reasons unimportant here, I never had that connection with my husband. We were amazing partners in other ways, but the chemical vibe wasn’t there, and I assumed I’d go my whole life not having sex. Afterall, in most ways we had the perfect family. I didn’t want to bust up the fairy tale. Yet my commitment to authenticity prevented me from what a lot of wives do: Sex night…that age old eye roll in the hay that they see as part of their marital obligation. Part of my commitment to myself simply prevented me from doing that. I would do absolutely everything else. I cooked, I made plans, many thoughtful gestures. But not that.

Ultimately, that is what we both needed.

But of course, my pathway to self-discovery is never intellectual. I had to go on a whole journey. 🙄

My inner child practices lead me to start a memoir. I wrote 100 pages. I especially wanted to write about everything I had tried to bury. The affairs, the men I’d loved so deeply when I was younger. I basically wrote 100 pages of the innermost secrets of my younger years. Most of which my husband already knew. But some of which…he did not. I then gave him those 100 pages to read and comment on. He read it all in one day, at the end of which he said, “You were never my girl, were you?”

I won’t speculate about how he felt or what he meant. I know how deeply I loved him for the quarter of a century we were together. And I know how much I love him even today. I have two beloved brothers in this life. One that was born of my parents and this man who I walked most of my life next to.

I firmly believe that we do the best we can at every moment. But I cringe when I think of giving him that stack of papers to read and give me comments on as he did for all those years I was an Editor-in-Chief. He was always my most important read on the magazine. As someone who didn’t know much about teen girl issues, his comments were unique and important to me. But I recognize, in retrospect, I indirectly gave him a 100-page break up letter because I was too much of a coward to blow up our “perfect” family. Instead, I lobbed this grenade at him and made him throw it to save his own life.

I lost 60 pounds with ease within less than a year after he read that manuscript.

Oh, and we also got separated.

Since then, I’ve noticed when something is off about my relationship (I’ve enjoyed a few beautiful and meaningful relationships since my separation), my weight starts to change. I don’t let it go years anymore because I now know this is my barometer and rather than focusing on a number on the scale, I need to drop in to see how I’m feeling. I still have that scared girl inside me and she doesn’t like to make waves, so I check on her when I start to see her SOS signals.

But sometimes, like my old boss, I DO gain weight when I’m happy. Like I just turned 51 this past weekend. I had my no-sweet-better-on-earth Varsano’s chocolate covered caramel pretzel rods for breakfast one morning and my favorite ice cream cake and napoleon another (You know a bakery is good when they don’t need a website 😳). Last night after seeing Jerry Seinfeld perform, I had my favorite late night college meal of grilled cheese on rye with mozzarella fries at a diner and on Friday, my actual birthday (January 20), I was day-drinking Raspberry-Lychee Bellinis with my besties and free-basing truffle pizza and fries at The Mark, where we spend our birthday lunches every year. I suspect the scale will have shifted after this weekend. But guess what? I won’t be checking. I had a blast this weekend. No regrets. After all, life is a long journey. A little off-roading never hurt anyone.

Have a good week, my beloved friend. Thank you for off-roading with me.

xo atoosa

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I understand about New Year’s resolutions. Meaning, I get the appeal. I used to write really neatly every September and promise myself that this year…THIS year I would finally be the buttoned-up student I knew was hidden somewhere deep inside of me. But by October, without fail, I could only open my locker an inch to grab one book at a time or else I’d have an avalanche. Nah. New Year’s resolutions have never been anything more than a message from my internal patriarchy that I would, inevitably, rebel against. Useless.

I do something else.

I have an intention.

But it’s not an intention to be someone different or to even a better version of myself.

It’s an intention to explore a path. To see what’s on the other side of something I’m struggling with.

Like last year, I really wanted to explore the love thing. As you know (in excruciating detail…sorry!) I had a habit of falling in love with men that were broken. I didn’t see them as broken. I saw them as totally sexy and interesting. But then I’d get cut with their jagged pieces and be looking at my friends like, “How did this happen??” 2022 was about figuring out WTF was happening once and for all. I went on many intentional journeys inside and outside myself with various therapists, healers and men (and for a spell, no men at all) to better understand my wiring. And for the first time in my life, I’m in a relationship with a healthy person. I’ll write more about that shift in the weeks to come, but today I want to write about what I’m exploring this year.

This may come as a surprise to you.

(Or if you really know me, maybe not.)

I was a bully.

And sometimes, I still am a bully.

I’d written ad nauseum at CosmoGIRL! and Seventeen about how inadequate I felt as a teenager. It was something we had in common, right? Something all people feel at one time or another. But I don’t think I ever told you that I was also a bully. Sensing another girl’s vulnerability really jammed me up. Today, as an adult, I realize that it was because I needed to keep my own vulnerabilities buried. Or at least that’s how I felt. I didn’t really have grownups in my life with bandwidth for what I was going through, so my young mind decided my shit had to be buried and I needed to be tough. It felt like a matter of survival.

In grade school, I targeted more vulnerable girls doing goofy, but still hurtful acts like putting a spider down their shirt. In high school and college, I would gossip or turn my friends against whoever I was choosing to target. I also seemed to always have one girl in my friend group on my radar and ever so gently kept my metaphorical foot on their throat by gossiping about or excluding them. It sickens me to think about it and embarrasses me to admit it. I have compassion for and forgive the traumatized girl I was. And I have so much compassion, love and respect for the girls I hurt with my unconsciousness.

Fast forward to my career. Being a bully in the media industry was a positive attribute, so there was certainly no pressure to be introspective about this part of my character. I was a thug amongst thugs. I broke phones when I was angry, blacklisted people I felt slighted by, used the media to my advantage. As I worked my way up the ladder, I frequently maneuvered to get people I didn’t like fired and yet always managed to have a very “nice guy” reputation. I know. It’s upsetting to me, too. That was the way the game was played, and I was a natural at playing it. And if you were looking for proof that bullies are cowards underneath it all: As an Editor-in-Chief, I didn’t like firing people so I would turn the heat way up under someone’s ass when I was done with them so they would quit on their own. Anyway, you know the cliches, you’ve seen the movies. I was a bad bitch, and I was rewarded for it.

And yes, I bullied my husband.

We’ve all had friends married to a woman like me.

I was that woman.

I remember at one point in our relationship, I went on an SSRI. I was feeling super anxious: I was transitioning from CosmoGIRL! to Seventeen, had just gotten back together with him after a separation, we were moving, and in general I treated him like an emotional punching bag. I knew it wasn’t right and I wanted to fix it. The Paxil worked like magic…but just as things started settling down, he begged me to get off of it. He didn’t like the milder, gentler me. He said I wasn’t myself anymore. He’d rather have the “real” me instead of this new agreeable, sweetie-pie.

That was always interesting to me. You know what they say: It takes two to tango. He was actively choosing the bully and hell; it was a role I was born to play. When he and I finally decided to separate, it felt like a director had yelled, “Cut!” and we both dropped the scripts we’d been play acting for the past quarter of a century. Leaving my marriage felt like an important step in my ability to explore who I was beneath that role.

But here’s when I realized I still have a whiff of the bully blueprint.

Like you, I see a lot of girls I went to high school and college with on social media. But there is one particular girl who follows me on IG and frequently makes lovely comments. But I simply wouldn’t follow her back. My friend Stephen uses the word, “thirsty.” I’m sure you know what he means. Too eager, too desperate. This girl was always a nice girl yet she has and had an intense need to be liked that clearly triggered my own similar feelings. Here I was at 50 years old, not following her back. That felt just bitchy. Clearly there’s something in me that’s also “thirsty” and I’ll be sitting with that in the coming weeks and months. And yes, of course, once I realized I was intentionally not following her, I immediately followed her back.

Admitting this stuff is so “cringe” as my 14-year-old would say.

But there you have it. My intention for the year…my 2023 exploration. I suspect there will be many amends to be made. And many questions to consider: Why was I a bully? In what ways am I still one? What are the super tender feelings that the bullying part of me is protecting? Being that big-time Editor-in-Chief clearly kept those vulnerable feelings at bay. But today? I’ve got no big time anything to hang my hat on or to give me an externalized feeling of worthiness. Let’s see what’s under my well-honed strategy to manipulate and control people. I don’t need to be a bad bitch anymore. Or at least, I’d like to use my power intentionally and wisely and not out of fear and insecurity.

Oh, and when a friend or partner tells you something hard to hear about yourself when you’re fighting and/or break up? Honestly? They’re probably right to some extent. You may not be ready to hear it in the moment and for sure, it’s likely not as black and white as they may be making it. But hold it in your pocket and take it out for examination every so often. That’s how I got to this bully piece. I’ve been called a bully before, but I wasn’t ready to hear it. My sense of safety was too tenuous. I would hide behind all the good things I’ve done to protect myself and I had no shortage of friends who would join me in scoffing at the notion that I was anything other than a good guy in any given narrative. But I feel safe enough now and I can hold it all with compassion and love all around. Looking forward to seeing where this path leads me but for now? I’m just sitting with some healthy shame. And that’s okay. It’s all part of the process. To be continued, to be continued.

Let me know if there’s something someone’s said about you that just may be true…

xo atoosa

Soundtrack of my 🤍🖤❤️:

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com

Happy 2023!

While I took a break from Substack, I did not take a break from living and learning. If you follow me on IG, you know what I’ve been up to. If you don’t, please do 😇, and I’ll include some videos here today to get you up to speed. The Cliff Notes: Remember High School Guy? Yeah. Well…it’s game on, sister. 😅

I don’t know where you fall in the whole attachment theory world, but as for me, after my marriage, I was pretty avoidant…very much a commitment-phobe. And frankly one might say having affairs in the earlier part of the marriage was a way of creating some distance to make me feel more comfortable. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But I always talked a big love game so the guys I’d date were also avoidants who were running an I’m-an-earnest-guy-looking-for-a-relationship-script. So in some ways, we were perfect for each other. See the GIF below? That was the dynamic. They had a let-me-love-you, let-me-love-you energy which I liked on one level but I was like back-it-up, back-it-up energetically because I was afraid. The dysfunction is kind of hilarious when it’s illustrated, right?

Are you ready for the mind-blowing part though? After years of doing my work and finally being ready to do the real work of intimacy with someone who had frankly been chasing me down for it from day one, when I’d take my hand off their proverbial forehead so we can deepen our relationship, what do you think would happen? They’d get scared and peace out. It makes perfect sense when you think about it! They signed up for the girl who didn’t want intimacy. They needed to run an I-want-love script for their own reasons, but that didn’t mean they were actually ready for real intimacy. It’s just that our dysfunctions were compatible! The three significant relationships I’ve had over the past 20-plus years all followed this pattern. Seems obvious but I finally understood on the deepest level that I too, was following a script. If I wanted a different experience, I too, had to be different. I know, DERRRRRRRRRR! 🤪🤪🤪 I knew I had evolved. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have seen the pattern so vividly. But at their tail end, patterns are simply habits that need to be distrupted.

I was ready to be in a healthy relationship.

Enter stage left, High School Guy.

And…

He was ready, too.

TBH, he was readier than I was. He’d already been divorced for years and had cycled through the dysfunctional post-divorce relationships we all kinda have to go through to figure out what we brought to our marriages that ultimately failed.

So in the beginning, when I needed space, he didn’t get into a whole don’t-leave-me drama, he would simply give me space.

And as I worked to end my patterns of creating drama and a chase-me narrative, it was one step-forward and two steps back. Sometimes I’d unconsciously create drama. 🤭 But he just kinda didn’t participate. He wasn’t dismissive of my drama, but he would say things like, “Getting divorced is tough. It takes a lot of time to feel settled and ready.” or “If you need time, take it. I’m here and if it’s meant to be, I’ll still be here when you’re ready.” In other words, my drama didn’t trigger him. He understood it as a part of an unwinding…a shitty divorce…and ultimately a challenging childhood.

Oh, and we took this whole this sloooooooooooooow.

There was no physical relationship for many months. Zero pressure from him for commitment, sex or anything. He was happy on his own. He didn’t see me as the key to anything so there was no grasping on his end and nothing I felt the need to wriggle out of.

Plus, remember, I stopped dating for a few months. It was almost like changing my diet. Have you ever eaten really clean for a few months and then the idea of Crunchy Cheetos (which you used to fantasize about) actually no longer appeal to you? It was kind of like that. When I stopped having these out-of-habit relationships and situationships with people I had trauma bonded with, I felt ready to actually build something real. Ready, at least, to try. Before I wasn’t even trying. I was just passing the time and treating dating like I was rifling through my snack closets…going from salty to sweet over and over until I felt sick. Repeating old unhealthy patterns. After the man-fast, I felt ready for a normal meal. I had established a healthy appetite.

And as for HSG? Listen, he’s hot. He’s kind. He’s patient. He’s funny. He can fix anything. He’s got BDE. Okay, okay, I’ll stop. 🤓 But most importantly? He’s healthy. And…so am I. So am I. So. Am. I. 😭

I don’t actually believe in fairy tales or happily-ever-afters. Not because I’m a cynic, but my happiness isn’t tied into who I’m dating. I was happy before him and I’ll be happy again if we break up. The happily-ever-after concept is based on an attachment to one person and one status quo. And the person I’m most committed to is myself and my growth. 🤷🏻‍♀️ And maybe that’s what commitment-phobia has been for me: This idea that I’d need to be attached to being with another person instead of always being there for myself no matter what pathway my own journey takes me. So here’s what I believe instead: All we really have is the present moment in front of us and rather than scaring myself away with proclamations about the future or preoccupying myself with the past, I’m just…right here. In this moment. And the present moment is always perfect because I’m a happy person. My internal weather system is not attached to what’s happening Out There. Today, I happen to be enjoying the unique-for-me experience of dating another happy person instead of being the happy girlfriend of a complicated guy. Hopefully that’s a pattern I can leave with 2022. TBD, TBD.

The one thing I know for sure is that I’m always learning…always growing. And I love doing it alongside you. Here’s to a fun 2023 together. 🥂 I love you. I’m grateful for you.

xo, atoosa

Soundtrack of my 🤍🖤❤️:

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com

As we creep toward the holidays, I want to talk about what makes life and relationships hard.

Here’s what has been hard for me in case you can relate:

1-I’m going through a divorce with some not-easy-to-digest details. But unlike a friendship that isn’t working, you can’t walk away altogether from a relationship once you’ve procreated with the person, right? We have children and so we must co-exist while we disentangle. I can meditate 24 hours a day, but that doesn’t change the fact that Divorce Sucks, plain and simple. And my divorce kinda sucks extra hard.  

2- I was abused as a child, and no matter how much therapeutic work I do around that, a part of me is still angry about it. As goofy as it sounds, I’ve been waiting to be loved unconditionally by my mother and spoiler alert: It’s not going to happen in this lifetime. I don’t think about it all day but certain times…like now as I go through this divorce and really need my people to have my back…plus, with Thanksgiving coming up…it’s been bubbling up for additional processing.

3-Almost any Iranian you know is feeling a lot of feels right now because of the crisis in Iran. For me, I can explain it this way (and this is a very personal issue so I’m sure other Iranians would and could feel different feelings about it all). I spent my childhood being very ashamed of being Iranian: The way women were treated, the hostage crisis, the violence. And then when 9/11 happened, it opened that wound again. I was an Editor in Chief at CosmoGIRL! on 9/11 and I remember one of the Hearst Executives asked me if I felt any bigotry in the aftermath of the attacks as an Iranian and tbh, I kind of froze. I had spent my entire life trying to be as American as possible. He was asking out of genuine caring, which is so beautiful, but a part of me felt totally exposed as one of THEM. And of course, by THEM I meant a terrorist. An extremist. Because the regime change happened when I was a child, I didn’t have the maturity or the intellect to really understand that this wasn’t Iran. It was the religious regime. Just like we had a President in the US recently who didn’t represent many of our views…except the regime in Iran is a dictatorship and as such much worse, more violent and extreme. (The Mullahs actually believe women are no different than farm animals and God made them look like man so man wouldn’t be scared.) So, all these years of uncomfortable tightening around my cultural identity…it’s all very exposed and tender now. And every person suffering, fighting, dying over there to have an ounce of what I enjoy so freely…I feel powerless to help them. And yet they are fighting on behalf of all Iranians: Fighting for Freedom vs. Fear.

Freedom vs. Fear

This is the same battle I have fought my entire life.

Freedom versus Fear had been at the core of every conflict for me. Like, my fear keeps grasping for the mother who birthed me to have my back instead of leaning into the freedom to be my own mother. The fear of the choices my husband is making and how they may impact our children versus the freedom of letting him blaze his own path and accept that he is their father for better or worse and they will work through it, as I did with my own parents.

Freedom versus Fear.

And so, I’ve spent the last few weeks, working on another F- word. Forgiveness. I realized that when I’m gripped by the fear of letting go there is an absence of Forgiveness. I was having trouble forgiving my husband for his betrayals. Trouble forgiving my mother for her inability to be able to protect me. Even in Iran, today. Many Iranians would disagree with me but I feel I must forgive the Mullahs for taking our beautiful country and putting it behind bars. They have taken the stunning spiritual creativity of our people that created the greatest visionaries of all time like Rumi and Hafiz and putting them in boxes so they have to contort in the most cruel ways in order to be accepted. Did you know, for instance, a person can only be openly gay in Iran if they have gender reassignment surgery? We’re talking about non-trans people who are having gender reassignment surgery so they can love who they love. And we’re talking about generations of the most stunning women in the world who have had plastic surgery in droves to change their gorgeous ethnic noses because their faces are the only thing that’s allowed to be seen in public. And all the deaths. The deaths before this uprising and the senseless deaths during. So much death has come out of this fear-based government. I marched yesterday in New York. The chants have gotten angrier since my first protest many weeks ago. It’s not hard to understand why. So many children have been killed. So many beautiful souls lost and imprisoned.

And yet…I’m talking about forgiveness. Right now, it’s too soon for the people in Iran to forgive the Mullahs because so much blood is being shed. They are fighting for their lives.

But it’s not too soon for us to bring the energy of forgiveness into our lives. I recently found that forgiveness is the key to freedom. I guess I always knew that conceptually. I mean, obviously it makes sense. But I just couldn’t quite pull it off. I now understand that your mind can do many incredible things, but this is deeper than the mind. Forgiveness is energetic which is kind of like our own form of magic.

This practice will truly blow your mind.

My beloved friend and teacher, healer Caitlin Marino introduced a few prayers to me that were created by her friend and mentor Cindy Mattingly. And when I tell you doing this practice every morning yielded massive insight and results within a week on the divorce and mother front, I’m not exaggerating. This is magic.

Okay – so I do this declaration every morning multiple times in a row inserting a different name each time at the beginning – it could be anyone I am angry or upset with or locked in something with that isn’t peaceful. I tend to do my mother, my sister, my husband, his girlfriend and my last boyfriend. Sometimes I add the cousins who molested me and their father. I had a few other people who I felt a smaller charge with who have dropped out of the rotation because I only really needed to do this once or twice with them and I am totally not triggered by them anymore.

The Forgiveness Declaration

I fully and freely forgive _____________.

I release him/her mentally and spiritually.

I completely forgive everything connected to the situation.

I am free and he/she is free.

It is a marvelous feeling.

I release anyone and anybody who has ever hurt me.

I wish for each and everyone health, happiness, peace and all the blessings of life.

I do this freely, joyously and lovingly.

When I think of any of these people who have hurt me, I say “I have released you and all the blessings of life are yours.”

I am free and you are free. It is wonderful.

Then when I feel I’ve cycled through everyone I feel a negative charge with, I move onto this prayer.

Prayer

Dear Source,

I am sorry for any pain and suffering I have caused anyone in the past, present or future. I ask to be forgiven and I forgive myself for those deeds I do not recall. I ask now for the power of love and compassion and make that my new path of choice. I am grateful for all the blessings I have and will receive.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And there you have it. What more is there to say but those words. So grateful to Caitlin for knowing what I needed and sharing this with me and grateful to Cindy for writing and creating these beautiful practices. I have been doing them for a few weeks and it has shifted me in ways that I can’t adequately describe because it’s a felt energetic experience. I simply feel lighter. I was struggling about Thanksgiving coming up so much so that I had asked one of my best friends if we could spend it with her and her family instead. But with this practice, I was able to, from a place of freedom and choice, decide to go to my mother’s like we do every year. Doing the same thing as years past but coming from freedom instead of fear.

Tomorrow I will start doing the forgiveness practice with the Islamic regime in Iran. I need to begin to heal my own past with them while I support my brothers and sisters in Iran fighting. I can continue to amplify the voices and plight of those who are in the belly of the fire, but I am not in that fire. I can begin to heal and pray that in time, they will win their freedom and have the privilege of doing the same. Please amplify their voices and suffering on social media so these beautiful people can enjoy the same basic human rights we take for granted every day.

I’m going to take some time off for the holidays so I can deepen my spiritual practices. I’m going on a 7-day silent retreat and will be processing all the things I listed above. Please take it easy on yourself, too. These are challenging times for everyone. I hope these two practices I shared will help you during our time apart as enormously as they have helped me. Wishing you and your family peace, freedom and love. Wishing that for all humans. I will see you in January.

Please email me if you need me. I really am here, 24/7 at [email protected].

xo, atoosa

Soundtrack of my 🤍🖤❤️:

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com

I believe in naps.

In fact, last week I was fifteen minutes late for a podcast taping with the brilliant woman photographed above (check out her new Substack), Isabella Di Stefano, because I was…yes, napping. I needed it! 🤷🏻‍♀️

That sounds like something only a lady of leisure can say, but in fact, I was napping at the office at the height my busy-ness.

Wait. Busi-ness…busy-ness.

I never noticed that. Did you?

Relevant.

I don’t know about you, but back in the day, my life revolved around my work. I didn’t really have work/life balance, but I also didn’t even know to crave it. The internet was in its nascent stages so there wasn’t a large platform to really hear anyone else’s stories or voices. Teens were writing on platforms like LiveJournal, but I assure you there weren’t any executives pining for more downtime anywhere online (or otherwise). On the plus side, the magazine industry was bananas amazing back then, and for the most part I couldn’t get enough of it. Which was good I guess 😬 because I was at the office all the time or at one event or another (for which I would get ready at the office) and would basically come home to sleep. 😴

At one point during the launch of CosmoGIRL!, my friend, the world-renowned psychic, Terry Iacuzzo, told me that I needed to start getting regular massages every week. I remember looking at her like she was nuts. Prior to that I may have gotten two or MAX three massages…and always because I’d been given a gift certificate. But she was adamant: You are asking so much of your body. You need to take in rest. You need to give it good stuff. This is not a luxury. This is a necessity.

I started getting weekly massages.

I really liked that feeling of peace when my body was at ease. I simply operated better.

That gave me an idea.

I carved out an untouchable two-hour block in the middle of my day. I don’t think I told my beloved assistant I was napping (Did I, Char?) and truthfully I wasn’t usually napping. There was just too much energy at the office to do that on the regular. My intention was to take my shoes off, kick back on my couch, stretch like a cat, read, doze and talk to whoever I wanted to…or not talk at all during that period of time.

Although I didn’t have the words for it then, I was trying to regulate my nervous system as a counter stretch to the fast paced craziness of the magazine industry.

This experiment didn’t last too long. It was a brief moment in time. Even though I scheduled the time block, I suffered from Rest Shame and trying to do it at the office in the middle of all the intensity just felt untenable. When I got to Seventeen a few years later, I tried a different iteration of this plan that was much more successful. I’d work the first half of the day from home in a quiet and peaceful state with my two fluffy kitties (Thurston & Lovey) purring next to me on my desk and then come in after lunch, armored and ready for action. But again, I felt it all needed to be on the DL. Remember, this is a few years before Sheryl Sandberg famously told women to Lean In and put the pedal to the metal…and here I was trying to figure out how to consciously Lean OUT.

Today?

I am a shameless napper. I believe in the power of rest.

I can imagine people reading this and saying, “Must be nice” eyeroll emoji. 🙄

And yes. It is nice.

And that’s okay. We deserve to feel good feelings.

We are the Editors-in-Chief of our own lives. We can make life easeful. Or we can go with the tempo of the machine world that we’re surrounded by in pursuit of…what exactly?

In my 20s and 30s, I drove myself so hard. I realize today that so much of what drove me to work non-stop related to the incorrect perception that my value came from my output. Almost as though I was a “thing.” Like if you’re buying an appliance, the one with more bells and whistles is more expensive, right? It has more value. I was valuing myself this same way.

That’s probably from messaging I got at home, but frankly, it’s fairly standard messaging in our culture. You get good grades; you get good feedback; you (briefly) feel good feelings. Then we go back to searching for another achievement to get good feedback so we can once again briefly feel good feelings.

I’d like to disrupt that model and tell you that those good feelings are already sitting there right inside of us. But they are inaccessible to us when we’re stuck on the hamster wheel of looking outside ourselves for validation. Looking outside can look like finding self-worth through your career, like me. It can look like using a substance to simulate peace for the span of time it’s active in your body.

But here’s a little starter kit for what has worked for me. (Even if the world around me is on fire…especially then!):

* Rest when I need it. (Hint: You need it every day) It’s a form of self-love. Imagine you’re a child whose running themselves ragged, be it emotionally or physically. You need to be the loving parent that says to yourself, it’s time to rest now. It’s one of the hidden gifts of this new era of WFH. Instead of scrolling on IG for an hour over the course of the day, block an hour, turn your phone off and see how you feel. And I am an advocate of rescheduling meetings when you’re fried so you can nap instead. If you got hit by a car, the meeting would be rescheduled or take place without you. And the YOU that shows up well rested and feeling peaceful, frankly, is more creative and additive to your meeting. And btw - most people have the time, we just squander it on meaningless scrolling that makes us feel worse.

* Daily Meditation. I will never shut up about this. Teaching your brain to stop crunching for a short period of time every day is the greatest gift you can give to yourself. This is the equivalent of brushing your teeth for your emotional life. You can’t have good oral hygiene without brushing your teeth and you can’t have good mental hygiene without meditating. Sorry. I believe this 100 percent. Try starting with this.

I wish I had known to meditate during those periods of experimentation when I was knee deep in the busy-ness world of business, but I was learning and playing with different forms of rest. On the plus side, today I don’t feel guilty for wanting to feel happy, peaceful and free and doing what it requires to get there. If you look at the screentime app on your phone, you’ll see you have the time for this, too. Meet me here. It sure beats non-stop stress and anxiety. (And trust me, there are still plenty of opportunities to visit those zones!) 🤪🤪🤪

xo, atoosa

Atoosa Unedited is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Enjoy this meditation and chanting with Sharon Salzberg and Krishna Das. 🧘🏻‍♀️

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com

Lying is often a dance. One person can’t handle a truth and enables another who can’t handle rejection.

Growing up, I always gave the “right” answer to the grownups. I was so concerned with getting in trouble (#mymomhitme) that it didn’t matter what the real answer was, I learned how to say the right answer: The one the adults wanted to hear. If I spoke to a friend’s parents, I was always on point. (“You should be more like Atoosa,” they’d say. Yeah, right! If they only knew I’d just made plans to sneak out with their daughter to meet some 21-year-old lifeguards! 🤫) If I spoke to my own parents, I just said whatever would appease them so I could get out of the spotlight. I kept my makeup at school and washed it off before I got home. Same for my cigarettes. I was voted Biggest Brown Nose of my senior class in high school, so my teachers were not exempt from the “Atoosa” act.

It’s easy to understand why I was so mediagenic as an Editor.

I’d been giving soundbites as early as I can remember.

Deception was my middle name. But I wasn’t doing it to be an asshole. I was doing to save my ass. And let’s be honest. My mother wanted me to lie. I didn’t realize it at the time, but now that I’ve taken truth serum…she’d rather I not.

Perhaps that’s what this whole thing is about.

This Unedited thing, I mean.

Why am I spilling everything, for goodness sakes?

Even some of my good friends (ahem, not for nothing but…only guys) have said that sometimes they can’t get through the column. “Sometimes, it’s just too uncomfortable.”

Listen, I get it.

That’s why so many of us go through life giving each other soundbites.

How are you? Good! 👍🏻

I mean, that’s the most obvious one, right?

Sure, it’s partly about saving face. But it’s also out of respect for other people’s ability, or lack thereof, to deal with uncomfortable feelings. If they can’t hold space for your real answer? Ugh. That’s the ultimate rejection.

I grew up lying to my mother because she couldn’t handle the truth. And if she couldn’t handle the truth, I would get slapped or hit. So, I lied to protect her…and myself. I know that many people who have been lied to feel this is a cop out. “I didn’t want to be lied to!” But they only say it after the fact, when the cats out of the bag and they have to live with the consequences of the truth anyway. Especially cuckolded spouses. Sure, once everything has fallen apart, they wish they had known earlier. But how about those frequent “working late nights” for their spouse when they could watch whatever they wanted on TV? That was kind of nice, right? We can all suspend reality to maintain a status quo that feels comfortable.

Like my mom? I’m certain she didn’t want to know I was being molested. It would have been a deeply inconvenient truth. Likewise, my mom didn’t want to know I was smoking, wearing makeup and hanging out with boys in high school. If she did, she would have had to deal with it and what with my father’s health problems and her working two jobs around the clock to make ends meet, she simply didn’t have the bandwidth. No bad guys here. She was absolutely doing her best. But we had an unspoken agreement. I do my thing, say all the right things and everyone is happy. But man, I would get it if there was a crack in my story. But those times just made me a better liar. By the time I left her house, I was a pro. And most importantly, I held onto her love. Losing her love was scarier than any slap, hit or vicious insult she could hurl.

Not anymore. Today, I’m honest to a fault.

But here’s the conundrum that truth telling causes. People who are used to more superficial conversation literally don’t know what to say. And often, the truthteller finds themselves having to babysit someone who feels more comfortable not knowing.

Like I often get responses to my column (particularly from people in my real life) like, “Are you okay?????” Or “I’m so sorry, I hope you will be happy soon.” You get the drill. I often have to reassure them that life is not black and white and that I can experience hard feelings and still be in a great place. Both/and. Blah, blah, blah. 😴💤 And then there’s the other side of the equation if your truth is something that hits too close to home for their comfort level. This has also happened with some friends: They project all their shit on you.

But honestly, for the most part the pure readership of this Substack is super cultivated and high level. You’re all people who are interested in owning your shit. I see many people who publicly put themselves out there and encounter a lot of crazy projections on social media. Perhaps because I’ve never done anything to artificially grow this audience, I’m lucky enough to have the most thoughtful and emotionally intelligent people in community with me. I just wanted to say that because I never really address you. I’m always sharing about me, me, me. But I want you to know I see, feel, and appreciate you so much. If you all knew each other, you’d be blown away. So many ding-a-lings out there on social media flapping their gums, but your letters and messages are just astonishingly thoughtful and deep. I’m filled with so much gratitude and respect right now. ❤️

Anywayzzzzz….back to telling the truth even when it’s uncomfortable.

Amid all my truth telling, I’ve been lying to myself.

The lie: I am totally fine being alone after my divorce.

My rapid-fire relationships said otherwise. I would hop into a relationship and act out because I wasn’t there for the right reasons. I was there because I didn’t want to be alone. I held on tight because abandonment is my worst fear. So instead, I was abandoning myself. I had a maximum of one day (maximum!) between my last few relationships. One. Day. That means I always had someone on ice in the background.

A few weeks ago, courtesy of the man-fast I’ve been on, I finally surrendered to this inconvenient truth: I may never be partnered again…and that is okay. And do you know what happened when I surrendered to this formerly inconvenient truth? Well, for starters, I told the Bear to fuck off. I’m not even interested in being his friend. Because that friendship was just based in my hoping that we would ultimately get back together. And I no longer have any yearning for a mismatch that I could contort myself into happening. And you may be wondering why it so easy for me to meet guys? Because I was hell bent on the relationships to work from the get-go! Unless they were an axe murderer, they were in! Well not quite, but we’re not talking about a high level of discernment: I was in a serious relationship with someone who called his daughter a bitch on our first date! Me!

And hey, one day I may be one of those ladies you know in your neighborhood who’s 75, feisty and unpartnered. (Those women are always so stylish, right?) Accepting this fact has dramatically diminished my lifelong fear of abandonment. If you suck in bed, I’m not going to pretend anymore. If your friends are immature losers, I’m not going to laugh when you tell me they passed out on the street from smoking bad weed. If you’re a shitty father, I’m not going to try to gently guide you on how to be better. I’m going to be alone instead. I’ve surrendered. No idea what lays in wait but whatever it is, I am (finally) impartial and I will keep practicing holding that space. I’m sure some days will be harder than others. TBD, TBD.

xo, atoosa

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This poem…

by David Whyte gives a whole new understanding of aloneness. A wonderful 2 minute listen.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com

Welcome to the underside of joy.

I took this picture April 8, 2020.

I was still living with my husband, but he was no longer the person I’d known and loved for 26 years. He spoke to me like a stranger. I had spent hours alone sobbing over loss of my best friend. When I finally went to my bathroom to wash up for bed and saw my face, I was shocked.

This is the face of grief.

I took a picture.

I knew I would want to remember that moment forever. It seemed so odd to want to memorialize this. I never intended to share it with anyone. In fact, it’s the first picture in my “hidden” folder on my iPhone.

But it was the first time I had fully allowed myself to surrender to grief. Prior to that, I was a wholly committed optimist either glossing over what was difficult in favor of life’s many blessings or going into planning mode to ensure the best possible outcome in a bad situation. As Mark Twain famously said, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”

Let me explain.

Over the past few weeks, you’ve seen the courage, passion and ferocity of the Iranian people. It’s been incredible. But did you also know our culture is very formal. Everyone is very polite. You will rarely meet an ill-mannered Persian person out in the world. This clip from comedian Maz Jobrani nails it.

The dark side of this politeness and formality is caring very much what the outer world thinks of you. Being respectable is of the utmost importance. So, in my family, whichever child was doing the best out in the world (looks, grades, jobs, money), was the one my mother showered with the bright light of her love. As a dyslexic kid with low grades, I very much lived in the shadow of my very academically accomplished siblings. (Doctors!) So, I unconsciously cultivated this “perfect” version of myself over the course of my entire adult life to finally win her adoration. I was always perfectly put together, had the perfect marriage, perfect career. “Atoosa Rubenstein” was essentially a performance art piece designed to earn my mother’s approval, pride and ultimately her love. And believe me, I got it.

I had unintentionally cast myself in the role of a lifetime….as myself.

Behind the scenes, of course, I was far from perfect, but you know all about that.

I had a sense of this toward the end of my time at Seventeen because no matter what incredible accomplishment or material possession I’d achieved, I was just kind of numb. Meh. Nothing brought me joy. So, I began my quest to figure out what was behind this performance. Who was I really, if not this well-coiffed soundbite?  My therapist wanted to start with some tough things I had just assumed I could leave in the past. I did a ton of therapeutic work around the various forms of trauma I experienced as a kid: Incest, the stress of coming to America, the death of my father, all of it. I had always had a quick temper and it’s no wonder. There were so many buried land mines in my psyche.

All of that work brought me to a new and more peaceful place. My husband used to say that it was like I was a different person.

Except…

When I was around my family of birth.

No amount of therapy seemed to help me there. My anger was always right there waiting to explode.

This past week was no different. I went to dinner with my sister, but I could barely look her in the eye. It was the usual superficial conversation. Big smile on her end, talking about something, but talking about nothing. My old anger was gaining steam below the surface. A simple question about Thanksgiving finally pushed me over the edge. I was reading her a laundry list of why I was angry with her and my mom and one of the things I said was, “Listen, I’m over the incest but…” And she interrupted, “Obviously, you’re not!”

It landed.

I do think I’ve processed my experience of being molested. I really do.

But something about it stuck with me and a text she just sent me today crystallized it. She said, “I believe you are addicted to your victimhood and your obsession with this is driving you crazy.”

I finally realized why I’m angry with my family.

And yes, it is connected to the incest. But not just that.

A big part of my grit and perseverance in my career came from being a warrior in my own home fighting off a huge grown man every day after school. Today, I am working so hard to learn how to be in a relationship properly because I spent the first half of my marriage cheating on my husband. I keep dating and grieving the wrong men because I was never allowed to grieve the death of my father. I am not the first person who has gone through any of these situations in my family. I’m merely the first one that wants to talk about it.

Why can’t we talk about it?

Am I “addicted to victimhood” for wanting to talk about it? For not wanting to be ashamed about it? For wanting to be loved and held by my community for the fullness of who I am? Not just for my success but for my mistakes. My trauma. My grief.

So, as we discussed earlier, in the Iranian culture I was raised in, politeness is expected. “Perfect” Atoosa expertly navigated this. But grief and trauma defy politeness. I can no longer abide by this formality. I can’t pretend entire portions of my life didn’t happen because it’s not polite or appropriate to talk about them.

I am a survivor of incest.

I cheated on my husband.

And then he cheated on me.

It destroyed my family and now I’m picking up the pieces.

None of this is polite. But it is real. It is real.

I recently made a Reel about not getting involved in the little niggly dramas of day-to-day life (I like to use the example of RHONJ when Theresa was mad at her sister-in-law for bringing sprinkle cookies to her house when everyone knows she hates sprinkle cookies! 🤪). I stand by this advice because when we stop hooking into the little dramas, we make space for the bigger, older feelings that need to be processed.

For me, that feeling is grief and when it comes up, I want to scream. Writhe. Weep. I wish I could do all those things and be held and loved through it by my closest community. But my family is afraid of those feelings. They’re afraid of the impolite, messiness of it all.

I wish my family weren’t afraid of grief.

I wish my family weren’t afraid of me.

I long for open arms.

For someone to weep with me.

One person can’t heal in a box. The whole family system needs to heal. But what if the very uncivilized nature of healing is just not compatible with a culture? How can I heal but still have belonging? How can I not feel orphaned from my family for something that wasn’t my fault or my doing? No one, but me, has grieved for what I lost. And that makes me angry but ultimately, it makes me sad. It’s a lonely place to sit. But I sit with my friends and my own little family. I find belonging with you, my beautiful community. But I would be lying if I didn’t tell you I wish I could find belonging and acceptance with my family of birth. I feel like a refugee…all over again.

No happy ending this week. But the one thing I have learned in my 50 years is that every river of grief and emotional contraction leads me to a beautiful expansion. As the Buddha says, everything that arises, also passes. Including grief. I know joy is around the corner or maybe down the block. And perhaps that is the happy ending. Since that dark, dark night in April 2020, I have experienced more joy, passion and deep, deep love than I ever knew was possible. That gives me hope as I sit in the dark with my grief tonight. I love you. Thank you for listening.

xo, atoosa

This week, one of my favorite poems. Please enjoy The Well of Grief by David Whyte.

Atoosa Unedited is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com

I often make light of growing up as an Iranian immigrant in America during the hostage crisis. I’m from a very Red State part of a Blue State, if that makes sense. But I had no color-coded context for it as a kid. All I knew back then was that it was kind of uncomfortable being anything other than white and Irish- or Italian-American where I was from. I lived in a town where neighbors allegedly pooled money to buy a house before they would let a black family buy it. Luckily, I’ve heard it has become a lot more diverse in the past 30+ years since I’ve lived there.

As a child, I never analyzed it. I just wished I could be like everyone else. I wished my parents didn’t have accents and my mom cooked Ziti for dinner instead of the herb heavy stews my clothing always reeked of. I remember begging my friend Anthony to ask his mom why his clothes always smelled so fresh. I still remember the answer. Cheer. His mother used Cheer. I wanted to smell like Cheer instead of Khoreshte Gormeh-Sabzi.

In my TEDx talk, I joked about being called Ayatollah Atoosa when I was a kid and having super hairy legs because I wasn’t permitted by my mom, for cultural reasons, to shave them. And oh, how I wanted my kinky curls to look feathered like the coolest, most beautiful girls at school. I can laugh about it all today because I ended up growing up to be kind of attractive, successful and tbh…super Americanized.

In fact, when I was on the front page of the New York Times Business section, the editors chose to do a little visual storyline of how my long, flowing jet black hair had changed from wild to sleek as I shifted from one magazine (CosmoGIRL!) to another (Seventeen).

To be showcased in front of an international audience in this way when the girls back home in Iran had to hide their hair and femininity or risk being jailed or given lashes meant nothing to me at the time. I was so busy trying to fit in. Trying to earn my specialness…my worthiness. So thrilled to finally smell like Michael Kors (at the time) instead of my mother’s stew.

Today, looking at it from a place of maturity, stability and safety, it hits different. I see the incredible privilege I’ve enjoyed and continue to enjoy living in America.

Listen, I never advocate for falling down news wormholes or doom scrolling because I don’t think it’s good for anyone’s mental health. And I am not suggesting that now. But I encourage you to follow at least one social media account that solidly posts about what’s happening in Iran. Some good options are @from___iran, @1500tasvir, @ranarahimpour_bbc, @YasharAli, @samanism, @collectiveforblackiranians And please share. The Islamic Republic shuts down internet access during turbulent times to control the information that gets out of the country and we can use our social media to show solidarity as the Iranians fight for what we enjoy with ease. The American news media is grossly falling short here. But thanks to the democratization of media, we can amplify their voices during these internet blackouts

The younger generation, especially, are fighting so hard to break out of the tyranny they were born into...and my family and I narrowly escaped when we moved to America. We cannot see ourselves as advocates for women if we’re not advocating for the women of Iran who have been held captive by their religious leaders for so long. And frankly, this isn’t just about the women of Iran. This is about freedom of all expression in Iran including the freedom to love who you want, to wear what you want and to say what you want.

And speaking of freedom of speech, I’m going to pivot.

Unrelated…but related.

While I was identified as Iranian for the first part of my life, at exactly the half point, I became Atoosa RUBENSTEIN and from then on, people identified me as Jewish, although I am not actually Jewish. I really enjoyed learning about the Jewish culture but one of the things I did not enjoy is how often I would encounter anti-semitism.

I remember stopping for dinner at a TGI Fridays with my husband and our child while we were on a road trip. When they called our last name for a table, a group of teenage boys threw a coin in front of us and waited to see if we would pick it up. I blocked out what they shouted but they made their point abundantly clear.

And antisemitism doesn’t only happen in low-brow Red State areas. It just looks different.

We once spent the summer in Locust Valley while we were in between apartments in the city. Locust Valley is a very wealthy community in Long Island known for its exclusive “waspy” country clubs like Piping Rock. Part of the privilege of having been an Editor-in-Chief is that I kind of assume I’m welcome anywhere. 😬 I know what that sounds like, but I’m just being honest and sharing something people wouldn’t ordinarily share because of how douchey it sounds. I don’t enter any situation assuming I will be anything but warmly welcomed and usually, I manifest that.

And this time was no different.

On my first walk to explore the neighborhood, I was browsing in a cute shop when a group of very stylish women walked in and totally swarmed me. They were so excited to have a cool Birkin-bag-carrying newbie in town. They immediately started peppering me with questions. They loved that I was a former editor. They loved the Persian thing! (Like many very wealthy people, they were big fans of the glamorous former Empress of Iran, Farah Pahlavi.) They were talking about having a little gathering at one of their homes so I can meet the other women they were tight with.

And then this happened….

They took out their phones to get my number.

I spelled my first name for them.

And then I spelled my last name. R-U-B-E-N-S-T-E-I-N.

There was an immediate pause.

The temperature changed.

It’s like I could hear them all hitting an eject button in their heads.

Their warm smiles suddenly froze into fake ones as they said their goodbyes and peaced out. I suspect they didn’t hit save on my number as I never heard from my new besties again.

I don’t need to analyze this for you. It was a scene out of a bad Netflix series.

Except…

It was real.

Antisemitism is real.

If you’re a person of color reading this, none of this is new to you and sadly you may encounter this on a daily basis instead of it being the exception. In all cases, it sucks.

My point:

You may know I’m a huge fan of Kanye West’s music and I’m not a fan of cancel culture in general. But without his ex-wife dragging him off the global stage when he’s having an episode, he is unleashing his mental illness widely and will inspire other mentally ill people to target Jews. The media must stop giving a platform to mentally ill people to simply gain ratings. I don’t know if Kanye is actually antisemitic. I don’t think it matters. Giving him any platform right now is putting people in harm’s way. He is sick. He needs to be shut down.

My message to the media:

In this strange disconnected social media universe, we must not forget our humanity. We owe it to Kanye West and his family to impose silence upon him now if no one in his life has the power to do it. We owe it to Jewish people not to print hate speech just because it’s click bait. We owe it to the Iranian people to cheer for this long overdue uprising and quest for basic human rights.

Why the fuck is this not obvious?

xo, atoosa

Atoosa Unedited is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This song has become an anthem of the current uprising (English, below) ❤️🤍💚:

The song title, “Baraye” translates to “Because of:”

For dancing in the alleysFor the fear when kissingFor my sister, your sister, our sistersFor changing rusted mindsFor the shame of povertyFor the regret of living an ordinary lifeFor the dumpster-diving children and their wishesFor this dictatorial economyFor this polluted airFor Valiasr and its worn-out treesFor Pirooz and the possibility of his extinctionFor the innocent banned stray dogsFor the unstoppable tearsFor the scene of repeating this momentFor the smiling facesFor students and their futureFor this forced heavenFor the imprisoned elite studentsFor the Afghan kidsFor all these “for”s that are beyond repetitionFor all of these meaningless slogansFor the collapse of fake buildingsFor the feeling of peaceFor the sun after these long nightsFor anxiety and sleeping pillsFor men, homeland, prosperityFor the girl who wished to be a boyFor women, life, freedomFor freedomFor freedomFor freedom

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com