Have you ever taken a work trip with your coworkers that left you all closer together? I find that traveling with anyone can result in closer bonds or decisions to never speak with them again. You see the fullness of your companions–the spectrum of their happiness and frustration–and it’s not always pretty. Ah, but when guards come down and everyone becomes at once vulnerable and sensitive to one another’s needs, you can guarantee that lives will be forever changed and those people will always hold a special place in your heart.

Last weekend, I found myself in a rousing group text conversation with a couple of friends about the favor economy. One friend shared that she and her partner were thinking about updating their will because the guardian they had in mind, should something happen to them, would not be willing to leave her community of friends to care for my friend’s son. The intended guardian noted that in her shrewd, parentless observation, the way to “reduced-stress parenting” was to have a community of friends and family nearby that could help with childcare in a pinch. Leaving her city for this city to care for a child who would have lost both parents without the support of her village was not exactly what she signed up for.

Earlier this month, our eldest child Ila turned 13, and it’s been bittersweet. For weeks, my sister has been asking about our plans to celebrate. Big celebrations and material gifts are not my strength. I do it, but it’s definitely a chore. Because I typically throw at least three birthday parties a year—one for each child and their classmates plus friends from outside of school—I told Ila a couple of years ago that her large party days had ended. Instead, we would pare down to celebrations with one to three friends.

Last Monday, I toured the National Black Theater (NBT), one of Harlem’s beacons of Black cultural preservation and creative thought when it comes to the arts and social enterprise. NBT’s founder, Dr. Barbara Ann Theer, opened the organization in 1968 as the first revenue-generating Black arts complex, and her vision laid the groundwork for the trailblazing institution that her daughter Sade Lythcott is leading today.

This evening my mother-in-law and I were talking about the fact that there’s only a month and a half left in the year. I was sharing with her that I couldn’t remember what I’d set out to accomplish this year. I was sure I’d written my intentions down but couldn’t remember where. Then I visited my archive of all the weekly emails I’ve ever written and found last year’s thoughts about what I hoped 2025 would be.

For the last three years, Nick and I have been attending our annual ice cream conference, which travels from city to city across the United States. This year, my creative but introverted husband presented on building a creative menu. He presented alongside Kristina Zontini, one of our ice cream friends who owns Super Secret Ice Cream in northern New Hampshire–one of two shops that has been recognized as a James Beard Foundation semi-finalist. 

This past weekend is one of my absolute favorites in Harlem. Halloween landed on a Friday, and today was Marathon Sunday. The streets have been festive all weekend.

Have you ever broken a promise to yourself? I’d bet the answer is yes. I sure have. We break promises to ourselves all the time: having just one more drink when we said we wouldn’t, not exercising when we said we would, watching just one more show when we wanted our bedtime to be earlier, going along with someone else’s opinion on something that defies our values so we can fit in a little better. All these micro-betrayals tell us that we can’t trust what we say. They are all forms of self-betrayal.

You know that feeling when you’ve had too much to eat and you kind of want to keel over to give your bursting stomach some relief from sitting upright, or you just want to lie down because all the food you’ve eaten made you tired? But you’re also really satiated?

“When was your last negotiation?” This is what our class speaker Mori Taheripour, author of Bring Yourself, asked our Goldman Sachs 10KSB class this past week. One person answered that he negotiated a contract a month ago. I answered that I negotiated with my seven-year-old son to take a bath the night before. My answer hit the nail on the head for the point Mori was making: We negotiate every day, whether with our family, friends, co-workers, neighbors or the strangers we sit next to on the subway.

Are you planning to leave your loved ones with anything when you die?

I’ve had conversations about leaving an inheritance with many different parents, and I often hear (even from my CPA, who seems to make a healthy salary) that they’re not leaving their kids with much. No one wants to leave their kids feeling like they don’t have to do anything after they’re gone.

I started the week on a stage with my mentors and former bosses–all brilliant Black women–at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. It was truly a full-circle moment. Dr. Deb Willis, my former undergrad professor and mentor at NYU, moderated a conversation with the early leaders of the beloved community-based arts organization The Laundromat Project (The LP), the organization where I cut my teeth as an arts administrator following grad school at California College of the Arts.

I've never been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD but I would be far from surprised if I am in fact a little neurospicy. That hasn't stopped me from pursuing my goals, but it has, at times, created some hurdles towards my path to achieve them.

Earlier this week, I was sitting in the first of 12 or 13 all-day 10K Small Business workshops focused on how to strategically strengthen and grow our business over the next several years. Naturally, I started thinking about the life I want to live in my 50s, which is only seven years from now.

The city is back! Yellow buses and rushed parents have returned to congest the avenues and side streets of Manhattan as they pick up and drop off children who are officially back to school. Our children went back to school this week along with many others, and we are adapting to the returned schedule-full cadence of life.

I've spent the last week "destination parenting"—what a friend calls vacationing with children. You're not really vacationing because vacations are supposed to be relaxing. Instead, you're actively parenting in a new destination, which is work, but make it picturesque.

Have you taken vacation this summer yet? We haven't. We tend to wait until the end of August to leave as a family for seven to 10 days. We started this tradition in 2022 and it marked a new milestone for us as business owners—we could leave during a portion of our peak season and things would still keep going. Inevitably, something crazy happens while we're gone but somehow we figure it out.

Do you use washcloths when you shower? Or, are you more a loofah/exfoliating gloves kind of person? Maybe you don't use any of the above—it's just you, that soap, and the areas that need to be cleaned. Over the years, we have used a combo of all of the above. But, very recently, Ila made us all convert to washcloths because of a hygiene class she took with her track team this summer.

I just returned from a pilgrimage to Martha's Vineyard. I started this email several times while I was there, but the whirlwind travel experience I had—spending less than 48 hours on an island that took me 12 hours to reach—didn't leave much time to finish this missive.

We celebrated eight years in business this week. We did not have a party. It was kind of business as usual. Actually, on the day of our anniversary, I remembered it was our anniversary as I was sitting in the waiting area for my final interview of the Goldman Sachs 10KSB program. I first learned about this program during the fall of 2019 from the now Managing Director of said program when she was the program VP and enrolled in our SHMOM program with her first child.