©2022 Alicia Dara
The city of San Francisco has an energy that I never get tired of. Every day the hilly streets push up through the morning fog, and shimmer in the golden light and fresh ocean air. When I fly there to work with groups of women at Microsoft and other places, I'm always struck by how alive people’s faces are. They look like they're full of energy and creativity, which is exactly the kind of vibe that coaches love. I always feel refreshed when I return.
While SF is known as a place of youth and cutting-edge innovation, there are also some incredible institutions that have been around for decades, guiding and supporting the region’s political direction. One of them is a law firm that specializes in environmental protection cases, the kind that can preserve a million acres of forest, or prevent a million tons of sewage from being dumped in the Bay. I’ve worked with several of their attorneys, but one who I’ll call Denny* stands out in my mind.
To look at Denny you would never know just how powerful she is. Always calm, cool, and collected, she does not speak unless she has something to say. I found this a bit disconcerting at first, but I came to realize that Denny’s brain functions on a very high level that does not allow for small talk. She is quiet and focused, with an inner fire that scorches courtroom opponents and wins major, precedent-setting cases. The responsibility on her shoulders is heavy, yet she wears it lightly, and goes about her work with methodical precision. To avoid distractions, she keeps everything simple. Her clothes are elegant but plain, and her office is sparsely decorated, with not a speck of clutter.
When I first worked with Denny she was recovering from pneumonia that had weakened her voice. Through our sessions she was able to regain her former vocal strength. Three months later she hired me back again, to work with the junior women partners at her firm whose voices needed some extra power. She invited me to lunch before the session, and gave me directions to a restaurant near the firm’s headquarters.
Generally I leave plenty of travel time for meetings in big cities, but although I left 20 minutes early, on this day traffic was backed up all over town, slowing everything to a crawl. I actually got out of the Uber 6 blocks early and sprinted to the restaurant, not wanting to be late for my important client. As I rounded the corner I could see Denny standing out front in her chic navy trench coat, with big headphones on her ears. Her eyes were closed, and she was smiling slightly and tapping her foot to the beat.
Not wanting to interrupt her personal concert, I gently touched her shoulder. Her eyes flew open and she removed her headphones, embracing me warmly. As we sat down to lunch, I asked her what she had just been listening to.
Reader, I kid you not: it was Britney Spears!!
My jaw must have hit the floor, because she laughed at my expression and said, “It’s my happy music! It just puts me in a good mood and makes me forget about everything else. I take it everywhere. My assistant even cues it up on my Ipod so I can listen to it at the courthouse before I’m going to try a big case. We call it ‘Britney Time’, and she saves it in my calendar.”
What I love so much about her answer is that she made no apologies for enjoying Britney’s music. She felt no guilt about it at all. In fact, she recognized how well her mood-lifter worked, and used it strategically, even during stressful work situations.
So many women feel like we have to conform to a certain way of being in the world (i.e. small, quiet and unobtrusive). It’s not our fault: we are socialized this way from the day we’re born. Add to that all kinds of other political, social, religious and familial conditioning, and we can start to feel severely limited by these constraints, and the expectations that come with them. We might feel like we have to hide our true appetites, or at least downplay how much we crave and enjoy the things we truly love.
What Denny knows about enjoyment and satisfaction, and how she embraces it fully without apology, is nothing short of a radical act. (By the way, Denny never misses a Britney show when she comes to town. Her assistant saves the dates in her calendar!) She reminds me that if we can throw off the limits that are placed on us, and fully own the right to love what we love, we can live in a much freer way. Leaning into our guilty pleasures might even help us to become fully whole, as we allow our various quirks and contrasts to openly co-exist and thrive together.
So what guilty pleasures can you stop hiding, and how can fully owning them help you to thrive?
*name and some details changed for privacy