When you are so deep in the grief of your own life, sometimes you forget that others — roughly 40,000 others — are going through the same thing. With over 14,000 structures burned in Los Angeles, there are many of us in different stages of grief and recovery. One year ago, I heard the clear message of letting go. And what I got was a complete serving of letting go of my life as I knew it. My home, office, podcast studio, belief system, what I wore, how I showed up, my accessories, my closet staples, the shoes, my favorite leather jacket. The list is endless. Our story is difficult because we had just gotten married and were on our honeymoon. We did not save anything. Not even our art, a piece of jewelry, or the cash.
And then sometimes you hear the other stories. The couple in their eighties, he is on dialysis, and they are rebuilding. The underinsured. The family with teenagers fresh out of Covid. The ones with a nine-month pregnant wife. We all have our story. There is a part about a disaster you are overcoming, where your friends and the world have compassion for you. It did not happen because you did something. It is outside of your control.
Now, let us go to the other side of things.
What if things are going exactly as you thought they should? You hit the jackpot. You found the thing.
The thing became successful. You hustle, you put the hours in, you are going somewhere. I cannot begin to tell you how many people I know who are successful who do not sleep through a single night. Whose relationships are volatile or sexless. Who has children who despise them? And that is what we are taught — you are either rich and unhappy and mean, or you are poor and happy.
MEET THE WOMAN WHO LOOKED LIKE SHE HAD IT ALL FIGURED OUT
She lost her home in the Palisades Fire, too. She is everything you want to be. Beautiful inside and out, successful at just about everything she touches, and she looks immaculate from afar. Tracy built Hatch Beauty into a $100 million empire in five and a half years. Self-funded. Three kids under five. EY Entrepreneur of the Year. Every metric of success you could point to and say, she made it.
And then she could not keep up with her own success.
One morning at 7:15, after another three-hour sleep night, with exactly 14 minutes and 30 seconds calculated to get coffee, use the bathroom and make her next appointment, she pulled over on Pico Boulevard and thought three steps into a truck doing 50 miles an hour was the only way out.
What I learned from Tracy is that once again, what we see on the outside — the carefully crafted image— is often not what lives on the inside. That no matter the level of success, we all have a story on the inside that does not match.
HOLDING ON TO THE IMAGE CAN COST YOU EVERYTHING
The biggest theme I keep coming back to is this. When all of our effort goes into keeping up outside appearances, we destroy ourselves on the inside.
This past week, I flew to Germany to hopefully catch my favorite aunt and godmother in time before she took flight. I made it just in time. She departed two days later. Then I went to see my mother, and I did something I have never done. I confronted her about what she did when I was a child. Asked her if she was even willing to admit it. And I realized she had completely erased twelve years from her memory.
It does not fit the image of who she has decided she is today. That is why she cannot ask me any questions. She does not know who I am, what my life is like, because she cannot bridge fourteen years.
We cannot have those remember when you were little conversations. The teenage years. None of it.
As I sat there, I was thankful. Thankful that I have done the work. That I can say it without anger.
That I am not even mad at her anymore, just sad at how much she missed. Because she was — and remains — obsessed with what other people think. She gave up the entire richness of connection and intimacy with the people who mattered most, so she could hold on to that image of herself.
TAKING A HARD LOOK AT YOURSELF — TIME TO LOSE THE PRETENSE
As a fire survivor, survivor of childhood abuse, raised by World War II parents who were raised by World War III parents, I have myself relentlessly pursued the upkeep of the image that worked for social media, that fit the brand, that matched what I was offering. And while we watch the great dismantling of our cultures, systems, and structures, I predict that what will rise is those of us who are done walking in the shoes of others. Done parading on the runway of life in borrowed clothes, we present as if they are ours.
This is a time of loss. The loss of the pretense and the pretending.
Because if I learned one thing in the fire, and while dealing with my own trauma, it is this. I am enough. I have friends. I am loved. I am everything that little girl was told she was not. And for every one of us who stands up and drops the act, we step into a new flow of living. Really living.
Enjoying and collecting moments of true connection where the dinner with friends supersedes in importance any deadline for a social media post.
Tracy’s story cracked that open for me all over again. The secret keeping. The toxic silence of maintaining a perfect outside image while quietly falling apart inside. The identity built around being the one who has it together, who never breaks, who figures it out. And how that identity becomes its own kind of prison.
She also shares what came after the turning point. The daily practices that recalibrated her thinking. How she rebuilt a $27 million business in 24 months. And the question that changed everything — not how do I keep up, but how good could it get.
A CLOSING REFLECTION
Where in your life have you been postponing yourself — your happiness, your relationships, your actual self — until after the next milestone? And what would happen if you stopped waiting?
