You Have One Life…
My story starts in 9th grade Latin class, way back in 1989.
Betty Athanasoulas was my Latin teacher. I’ll never forget her. She had a bowl haircut and she loved to give out A plus, plus, plus, pluses. True story.
She always put a ton of extra credit questions on her tests just so she could do that. It was pretty cool.
The reason why I bring up Betty is because when I was in her class, I met a senior named Carl. Carl loomed large in my teenage life. He was a senior, taking Latin one. I don’t think I ever found out why. In retrospect it’s not too surprising that I was fascinated by him: He was tall, wore a brown leather jacket, he wrote me funny notes during class and he was a tad mysterious. He was also a tiny bit of a stalker. He used to follow me home after school and we’d talk on the back steps of the town library. He was a writer, he loved the Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin — and I was impressed.
At the end of my freshman year Carl graduated and after that he’d pop in and out of my life. At the end of my senior year, a typed letter came in the mail from Carl. It was a great letter — I saved it for a long time, I still have it, but I’m not sure exactly where it is these days. At the time that I read it, (and since then) it’s made a huge impact on me. There was one line in the letter that I read over and over again and I never forgot. Carl wrote … “You have one life babe, and when it’s all over, you’re dead.” I thought, wow that’s sooo true. I was with my high school boyfriend at the time who was kind of crazy — he was a locker puncher, for one thing. The first thing I did after I got the letter was to dump him.
There are a million moments since then that I’ve looked at my life through this lens of — hey, this is my one shot at doing whatever it is I was doing. I have one life. I don’t get another one. I’ve applied this philosophy to every area of my life, and it often works out well, but even if it doesn’t, I’m always glad that I tried.
WORK
In 2005, When I changed jobs from Adweek Magazine to the Boston Business Journal, my new editor told me that I’d be doing live TV hits regularly on NECN. Needless to say … I had NEVER done live TV in my life and I actually had always hated public speaking. I was one of those kids who got up in front of class with note cards and my hands would be shaking. I had to do an oral report on Watergate when I was in 8th grade and I actually made a video (I got my best friend to play deep throat) just to avoid getting up in front of the class. Then I realized that watching yourself on video is maybe ten times more painful than doing an oral report. Oh well. But since graduating from journalism school for print, I had become more and more curious about doing TV. I knew this was my one shot at doing TV — no TV station was every going to hire me with zero experience. After two weeks at the BBJ, my editor told me he wanted to me to talk about my story on TV that week. The story was on a survey about the tiny percentage of women on boards at Massachusetts companies. (Sadly not much has changed in 2016.) My first time on live TV, I figured I would either fail miserably, or be OK at it and have a starting place to get better. Luckily it was the second option. I used to take the T into work at 5:46 a.m., rehearse my script about 10 times before I went on air and I definitely had a case or two of the flop sweats. I eventually became the BBJ’s go-to TV person and got my own on-air morning business segment on NECN that I had for two years … That is until … I got fired.
LOVE
It turns out that NECN’s new general manager disliked all non-reporter segments and cut the segment and essentially “fired me.” That’s the downside of TV. That was a bummer because it coincided with me dumping my boyfriend of 5 years, when I realized that I definitely did not want to spend my one life with him. It was a bad few days. (He was a “birder” and this is one of the best decisions I ever made.) Luckily, the new BBJ publisher was so mad and motivated after our segment was cut that he went out and the next week got us the same type of segment on Channel 4 — a whole new level of TV. This Channel 4 gig could not have been more fateful.
The producer for that show happened to be someone named TJ Killilea. Right before I started on air with Channel 4, I met a PR girl who came up to me at a BBJ party… Her name was Francy and she was an old colleague of TJ’s. Francy ended up setting me up with TJ and I immediately fell for him.
But there was one tiny snafu. Isn’t there always? TJ was moving to Africa. To do the Peace Corps. For two years. I was crushed he was moving Botswana, but I still wanted to hang out with him — that one life thing again. I didn’t care if we only had a short time together — it seemed totally worth it. We dated for four or five months and then it was April 2 — the day he was flying Botswana from New York. He got to the airport but he never made it through security. He called me and decided to come back and live with me. Hurray! I may have mentioned my one life philosophy with him before he left. I can’t quite remember.
On a not-so-side note, Francy and I also became good friends. She eventually asked me if I would come and meet with her two bosses, the founders of the PR firm InkHouse. Let me tell you, changing careers from journalism to public relations is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But it’s a move I’m extremely happy that I made.
LIFE
My life’s philosophy of living your one life to the fullest took on even deeper meaning further into my 20's and 30's, because since being diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, I have had four major abdominal surgeries dealing with related issues. And let me tell you, coming close to dying definitely makes you appreciate your one life to the fullest. By the time TJ and I got married, I was concerned that having kids would be a problem. But it was something I always wanted to do. TJ and I actually asked my surgeon if it would be OK to have kids… He said go for it. Low and behold I got pregnant with twins and that was one risk that 100 percent nearly killed me.
I truly had the pregnancy from HELL, I had most things you can think of and a few things you’d never think of … horrible morning sickness, Norovirus (twice), worries about the health of both girls and, finally, I ended being hospitalized for six weeks — and I wasn’t allowed to eat because of a bowel obstruction brought on by my pregnancy. I fought extremely hard during those weeks in the hospital to stay pregnant for as long as I could. I did survive and at 30 weeks, I had an emergency C-Section at 1 a.m. on April 16th, and my two gorgeous twin daughters were born, very small, but they are now thriving. So, I had happy ending most definitely … but it was very dicey there for a while.
I haven’t spoken to Carl since about 1994, but I’ve probably read his letter over about a 100 times. Especially since having my daughters, I think about what I’m going to tell them about how to live their lives (assuming they’ll listen). I’m going to make a point of telling them, to try out for the school play, the varsity sports teams, whatever it is they want to do. Go for it and shoot for the stars. Because in the end, we all have one shot usually, one life. And even if you don’t succeed — hell, at least you tried.
