43

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.

Picture of me with a couple of my friends who attended my birthday dinner

I also celebrated my birthday at the top of the week. I’m not one of those people who makes her birthday a national holiday—it was a Tuesday, after all. Work needed to be done. But Nick threw a small celebration at home on the evening of my birthday, and on Wednesday night he organized an intimate dinner with friends at a new Mexican restaurant in Hamilton Heights called Cocina Consuelo. The food is delicious. Highly recommend. No notes.

I felt celebrated and loved, which is all anyone can ask for.

This time last year, I was helping my mother recover from brain surgery. This year, Nick and I are hoping to move into a larger apartment in our building that recently became available, which involves selling our apartment ASAP. It’s chaotic but nothing like what I felt last year with my mother’s health in the balance.

Sunday’s church sermon was about the lessons we can learn when we’re in a storm. I felt like I was in a storm last year. Honestly, I’ve been navigating the high winds of many storms since the pandemic. Nick’s dad passed away a few years ago, which only added to the crashing waves of emotion. But this year feels different.

Picture of my kids with one of my bestie’s kids on the evening of Halloween

Although there are a lot of moving parts in my life at the moment, I feel like I can breathe more than I have in years. My mother survived her surgery and now hosts her own podcast that combines two things she’s exceptional at and truly enjoys: broadcasting and prayer. I’m developing a scaling plan for Sugar Hill Creamery as part of my Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, and this idea is big. I’m not going to say more about it right now because it’s so early in the development process, but it has made me really consider where Sugar Hill Creamery fits in my life over the next 20 years.

I’m a firm believer in working back from an end goal when it comes to life planning and informing today’s steps toward getting there. We never started this business to hit the jackpot. Our goal has never been to build something to eventually sell. We started it to stabilize our quality of life—to have flexibility in how we balance our professional and personal lives while also contributing positively to our neighborhood.

Our intent was to be like the Crunchy Lady that author Shannon Hayes writes about in her book Redefining Rich. Side note: I love this book—it’s actually the book I wanted to write, but since she’s already done it, I need to rethink my proposal. The Crunchy Lady makes a modest salary but lives a very rich life: All of her needs are taken care of, and she has the time and energy to spend with her family and neighbors as she helps cultivate their community.

Screenshot of a text a friend sent me after we met earlier in the week. I can’t stop talking about the Redefining Rich book.

As we embark on the process of finding more space for our family in this packed city and I work on this big scaling project for the company, I’m coming back to the principles of Hayes’s book, particularly the Quality of Life Statement that she encourages readers to write. I wrote a version of this statement before we began this entrepreneurial journey, but we’re due for an updated version to guide our growth. You can read an excerpt of the book here. It’s a great read.

If you take nothing else from this missive, know you should eat at Cocina Consuelo when you’re in Harlem, listen to my mom’s podcast, and read Redefining Rich by Shannon Hayes.

All have been life-giving to me as I begin my 43rd year on this earth.

With gratitude,
Petrushka