Five Traits That Make a Brave Woman Brave 

1. Brave women know what it is like to be afraid and they take that fear - nourish, use it and push forward with it. Does their fear every really go away? No. But it does make them stronger and those around them benefit.
2. Brave women say what that they really think. I cannot begin to count the number of meetings I have been in where I've said something smart, it is ignored, and then 15 minutes later it becomes the brilliant idea of someone more senior in the room. With clients you just have to grin and bear it. When you work for a company, your office or the bathroom is a great place to scream.
3. Brave women admit when they make a mistake. This one throws men in a company, mostly because they throw women under the bus because to them an error is weakness (women do it too BTW).  I once made a big error in abbreviating a series of point that a federal agency director made, without the miles of context she felt needed to be part of it. The idea was to spur her to reference it but not to make it the subject of her talk. A younger person that I worked with on the speech was blamed. She and the director were stunned when I said that I was responsible.
4. Brave women delegate. Even though you could more quickly do a task, and likely do it better than a junior employee, the whole point is to let them do it. People make this mistake all the time with designers - they get all caught up in what font the designer is using, colors, how something flows on a page (which is never what they think it is). The designer has a vision too and if you have given them the tools they need, they don't need you to design. Just have a discussion.
5. Brave women cry. In the corporate world women's tears are considered a sign of weakness. She cannot control her emotions, she takes everything so personally, she cannot be criticized. Bullshit. Women cry because they feel something and in marketing you want the consumer to feel something. You want them to like you, to care about your brand, to feel connected. If it makes you cry or laugh more the better. Don't be afraid of emotion. It's what makes us human. It also makes us consumers.

Who's the Bravest of Them All - Us if we could just stop reading and watching the news

FRONT PAGEFRI, JUN 1, 2018

• Trump imposes tariffs on E.U., Canada, Mexico
  By David J. Lynch, Josh Dawsey and Damian Paletta
• Pompeo touts progress in talks with N. Koreans
  By Carol Morello and Anne Gearan
• With pardon, president sends signal
• Atlantic City’s existential bet isn’t about gambling
• Hamas on precarious footing as Gaza Strip’s misery grows
  By Erin Cunningham

Since I am a writer and publicist it's important for me to know what people in DC and around the country are saying about what's happening in the world.

My daily dose of Trump outrage comes in many forms. Emails from political candidates with one word come ons in all caps flood my inbox as quickly as I can disengage from their lists. The news - which I get from NPR, the New York Times and the Washington Post - all of which I trust to at least give me the facts of what happened, are starting to play along. Plus various interest groups, newsletters, people, etc. that I have signed up for send me missives all day long.

Then there is Nita and Shauna of Ultraviolet, the queens of screaming in all caps, that I keep around because they want to eliminate sexism but are just too loud. Add to that Twitter, Facebook, and other social media and the comment sections of media that I actually read and contribute too. Aimee and her arguments with bots - how pathetic is that?

I even will briefly stomach Fox News to understand what the rest of us are up against.

But I just cannot take it anymore. Any of it. We are living in an alternate universe manipulated by a master at it, our president, and an endless cycle of "info wars" spews stuff out to see what sticks. Mainstream media plays along and debates everything Trump does as though it is not his "flavor of the moment" but something that if discussed could be addressed. That's ludicrous but at least they haven't brought out daily scorecards of who is winning. Did I mention that I don't watch CNN. I'm sure they have them.

The worst part of this American nightmare our country created and is now trying to survive in is that a 24 hour news cycle all of it is in front of us all day, all night. Last night I dreamt - how can I make this stuff up - that I was sitting in a board room with Donald Trump and he fired me. Just turned and looked me straight in  the face (which he does not appear to have done with any of the other people whom he fires). Probably my resting brain went back to The Apprentice's first season some of which I actually watched.

So I will be brave. I will take the pledge to only look at the news for 30 minutes a day. I will read novels of which I have several sitting on my bed beckoning me. I will write more. I will market more. The world will go on without me. And hopefully when I wake up every morning it won't be with that crushing sense of dread that we have all come to recognize as the new normal.

Who's the Bravest of them All? The French call him Spiderman

The story is out of a movie script. A Malian immigrant in Paris had just left a soccer game playing in one of the outdoor theaters, in I cannot remember which arrondissement. 

He saw a little boy hanging off a four story terrace desperately trying to hold on. Without a moment's hesitation he was scaling the side of the building to save the boy.

Now that's Brave.



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/world/europe/paris-migrant-hero-spiderman.html

Who's the Bravest of Them All? Happy Mother's Day Robin

We lost her just over a year ago and I feel, as many others who loved her do, like a gaping hole has been cut in the fabric of my life.

I do not know all the parts of Robin's story, but I do know when it changed.

One of the bravest women I know and a role model to me,  Robin was a woman who made the best of everything. She was progressive, optimistic, and she had a great big heart.

Robin was a child of the 1950s, poodle skirts, bouffant hair, and a smile that brightened every room she walked into. She loved all types of music and her rendition of Under the Boardwalk could get a room going. She was a ballroom dancer who won awards and kept up with it her whole life. She said she never felt more beautiful than when she danced.

One night Robin's husband went out for ice-cream and never came back. She had a baby who is now in his 50s. Turned out he got his girlfriend pregnant and then he married her. She was on her own with a young boy and kept moving forward. She was tough and when she wanted something she got it.  She rarely faltered and she always landed on her feet. I got that from her.

At 30, she met and married my father, a widower, and came into a house where the children had just lost their mom. She was kind and she tried and tried but what she wanted was us all to be a family, and that never really happened. In the meantime, she started a flea market business and made her own money. The marriage lasted 17 years, which she said was the longest time anyone should be married to the same person. After that she lived in Manhattan and danced and sang in piano bars and started making jewelry out of old watches.

Robin was the kind of woman who spent every day for months in my brother's hospital room when he was strapped to a bed, unable to move after breaking his neck. My father was the kind of man who let her do it.

In her sixties, Robin started a jewelry business called It's About Time. Her father was fascinated by timepieces and she took that childhood connection with him and started a company designing men's cufflinks and occasional pins made from old watches. The cufflinks were matched by hand and her work was  artistry - so unique in fact that for years her best customer was Saks Fifth Avenue. Every year she went to the flagship store on Fifth Avenue and told her story. An entrepreneur in her 60s and 70s. She was very brave.

The last time I saw Robin she was dancing (ballroom, jazz and ballet) and taking improv and art classes. She had finally gone to Florida to be with her family and made a life for herself. She was incredibly content and her joy in life was inspiring. I went home and decided to do more with mine.

She loved to read my writing. Happy Mother's Day Robin. You are the bravest of them all.

Who's the Bravest of Them All? Women Are

That's right.

Desiree Linden winning the 2018 Boston Marathon.

The Boston Marathon, one of the toughest in the country, is a test of character and physical prowess. Then why do men drop out more frequently than women? Take a look at the data.

For men this year, the dropout rate was up almost 80 percent from 2017; for women, it was up only about 12 percent. Overall, 5 percent of men dropped out, versus just 3.8 percent of women. The trend was true at the elite level, too. Conditions were particularly harsh this year.

According to the article in the New York Times written by Lindsay Crouse there are multiple reasons why women rule. 

• They persevere no matter how tough it gets for multiple reasons.
• They perform better than men in extreme conditions.
• They have a higher tolerance for pain.
• They pace themselves better.
• They are better adjusted to meeting goals.
• They finish what they start. (We are not quitters).

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/20/opinion/boston-marathon-women-nurse.html

Who is the Bravest of Them All? Tammy Jo Schults

Tammie Jo Shults is photographed in the early 1990s. (Courtesy Linda Maloney)

Tammie Jo Schults, a former Navy pilot, who landed a Southwest Airlines plane yesterday after losing all but one engine, and saved all but one passenger.

I have always admired women who go into professions dominated by men and where in many cases they are considered intruders who are not smart enough, or worse strong enough, to do the same job as men can. My generation broke down many barriers but it is those who came after us that are awesome.

Tammie Jo is a hero to all of us. She lived near an airport and spent much of her childhood watching planes fly overhead and wanting to fly them. In high school, she went to a meeting about becoming a military pilot and was asked if she had the wrong classroom.

A couple of branches of the military would not take her as a female pilot trainee but the Navy (not exactly a bastion of sexual liberation), did. Flash forward more than a decade later and the mother of two, and wife of another pilot, was flying a plane whose engine had exploded, there was a huge risk of fire, and part of it was missing. One passenger had been killed and seven others were injured.

She had to land that plane

Her mother said Tammie Jo is a very calming person, and she had the plane and passengers with her as she crash landed at the Philadelphia airport.

A college friend Cindy Foster told the Kansas City Star that Tammie never listened to the naysayers. "She said she wasn't going to let anyone tell her she couldn't"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/04/18/nerves-of-steel-she-calmly-landed-the-southwest-flight-and-broke-barriers-as-a-fighter-pilot/?utm_term=.6dd0e855f062

Who's the Bravest of them All? Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd has always been a voice I understood and could relate too. But in a recent opinion piece in the New York Times she struck home. Her question -

Why Would a Woman Go Home with a Man and not Want to have Sex with Him?

This question is at the top of what most women encounter at some point in their lives. They are on a date or they meet a man for the first, second, tenth time. There is an instant connection - they both want more. Then she goes to his apartment or home.

What matters and why this article is so spot on is that at some point whether clothes have been removed or not she decides she does not want to have sex with him. Lawyers will argue that if he forces her it is not data rape because she willingly put herself in that situation. But that's not the point at all. She has the right to change her mind. It's just that our legal system (by men, for men and implemented by men) often doesn't support her when she does. Shame the victim. Blame the victim.

It happens all the time. Not the rape part but the changing her mind. It could be something in his apartment, something he says, the way he pushes her to have sex, a hastily moved photo of another woman or that the glow didn't hold all the way through the night.

That's when women feel guilty. It's our fault. We have been told our whole lives that if we put ourselves in a situation like this it is our fault. And we end up having sex with a man when we don't want too. We've come this far. He won't leave us alone, So we do it anyway and it upsets us not necessarily in the moment but in the hasty moments afterwards when all we want to do is get the hell out of there.

Brave Women say NO. It's not easy and he may not take it well at all. But we can and we do say NO. The choice is ours.

Kudos to Maureen Dowd for raising the issue in the NYT so it can be broadly shared. Read on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/opinion/sunday/women-sex-dating-dowd.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-columnists&action=click&contentCollection=columnists&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront