Author's Embarrassing Admission

Let’s see if you can walk across 6th Avenue without criticizing yourself.” I have no clue why that thought jumped into my mind one muggy July-in-New-York-City afte
oon. Maybe it’s because I was so sick of the Criticism Committee playing its soundtrack during my every waking moment. I had an Olympic-standard internal nag. So I gave myself a challenge. Out of the blue, I decided to play an inner game to see how long I could last with-out negative self-talk.

As I walked across the gooey pavement (the streets do get mushy on hot summer days in the Big Apple) I felt my thighs rub together. “You are fat, fat. Faaaaat!” screamed the Criticism Committee in my head. Dang. I hadn’t even gotten to the center white line.

I lost my bet—and decided to begin learning how to love myself.

Funky to Fabulous started on the corner of 57th and 6th Avenue in July of 1981. Not the most glamorous of addresses, but that nondescript intersection is where this book was born. Not being able to walk across a street without bad-mouthing myself to myself sent me on a twenty-five-year journey. I did creative visualization, affirmations, forgiveness workshops, Insight Seminars, energy work, treasure maps, and mediation retreats. Yes, I am that woo-woo.

Using the techniques I learned, I started to turn my life around. I left the Euro-trash baron boyfriend who was an expert in bouncing checks. Instead of getting my sense of worth from a blue-blood beau, I started offering it to myself. I followed my dream, or delusion, of being an actress. John Madden (who won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love) wrote a role into a play just for me. I was Michael Fox’s girlfriend on Family Ties. I touted the joys of bread and cranberry juice in commercials. Then I moved to Los Angeles, where I discovered that in TV land I was the kinda girl they just love to kill on screen. You can die only so many times.

I used those techniques again when I started out with $ 17 and a glue gun and eventually built a company that sold $1.5million worth of women’s accessory products. Remember those sunflower scrunchies and flowers on jacket clips? That was me. Then . . . oops. I thought I was such a hotshot that I ignored what I had learned. n