Something here

This was not the first time I found myself dreading a class that was about to begin. This particular one was my third year of a pretty reputable acting conservatory in D.C. that I somewhat stumbled into a couple years prior. Before that, it had been a group guitar class. An extreme noveling class. Essay writing. Short story writing. Screenwriting. Tai Chi. Knife skills. Playwriting. Web design. Documentary filmmaking. Art classes. Brazilian dance … you get it.

It was always the same, tough. The start-of-class dread.

I don’t belong here.

What am I doing here?

This is crazy.

I’m going to fail.

Everybody knows it.

Why did I even sign up to begin with?

I should quit.

That’s a lot of doubt for day one. For any day, really.

I have come to discover that this is a type, especially among designers. If we were a song, we might go something like:

When you’re weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes … take a class.

Now, there is a difference between taking and finishing classes. Or taking and enjoying classes. Taking does not guarantee those other things. That is why dropping out is so common — at least for me. But, I had managed to make it through two acting classes into this third class and that was progress. Not enough to eliminate the dread, but progress.

Like on most first class days, I arrived early. That helps ease the nerves a little.

As people started trickling in, I realized I knew about half the students. I was not a seasoned actor or an aspiring actor or even a good actor. I was a designer with terrible stage fright that was really starting to affect my work, and who, for whatever reason, had survived two acting classes so figured I could survive a third. Design was my calling, so I didn’t really have an option not to do it. But to keep going, I really had to take the hesitant, insecure, constantly self-evaluating, side of myself and learn a little bit of trust. I had to reconnect with being present and finding gifts and enjoyment in what I was doing, and being vulnerable and all those other things you learn from Bréne Brown and TED Talks.

In class, none of the actors seemed to notice that I was an imposter, which was nice. I did sweat a lot, but also wore dark colors, so they couldn’t really tell. I always felt nervous. Always. But I also realized I could play at acting, and learn so many useful things — like body awareness and breath control and letting go of hangups and preconceptions — and then go to my day job and be better at things like presenting and facilitating and all the things that designers who want to be leaders inevitably end up having to do. It’s just acting by another name.

Back to that day in class, my friend Anderson, a six-foot-something, gorgeous, monument of a person and artist with a smooth, deep voice came up to me. He kind of, like, theater-shouted my name — “Graziiiii!” — and followed it with the kind of hug that just squeezes the dread right out of you. “BTW, I’ve got a friend for you,” he said, and behind him was this green-eyed, massively smiling, gently blond woman about my height and age, who was just like kind of lurking. “Rebecca, Grazi, Grazi, Rebecca. Y’all take it from here.”

I don’t exactly remember what happened next, but I know we exchanged phone numbers and I was worried about whether or not she would end up being a crazy person. (Because aren’t we all). I have no idea what she was thinking about me at the time. Probably that my hair was big and would have been an asset during her adolescence in North Carolina, because that has come up a few times since. When I first met her mother, Marty, she looked at me, then back at Rebecca, then at me, then Rebecca and said — “Rebecca, if you had her hair, you might have been more social.” So the hair was a thing.

On that first day of class, I wasn’t thinking too much about that part of first impressions. To be honest, I was more worried about looking like a fool in general.

Time went on and things were good. I did okay in the class. Week by week, Rebecca seemed more normal, laughed easily, knew everything about theater, and was the kind of actor that made me want to eat loads of popcorn. She was soooo good. She always said things to me like, “you’re so smart and funny, you really know how to read a play, I love your mind, I love your ideas, I want to spend more time with you.” I had never had a female friend say things likes that to me, especially not a new one.

A few months of class passed and we grew closer. Somewhere in there, I took a trip to South Africa and Rebecca went home to North Carolina to get married, so we didn’t see each other for a while, and then class ended and summer came, and I didn’t see Rebecca for a much longer period of time.

It was a weekday afternoon that she called me, quite out of the blue — our first real out-of-class contact. She was in my neighborhood for work, she said. Had a break and wanted to meet me for lunch. “Okay,” I said, thinking cautiously that I’d give it a try. I had had some difficulty with new friendships in the past, so was nervous.

I told her that I would be up for it, only that that morning I’d had a root canal and half my face was numb and immoble, and perhaps we should meet another day when I didn’t look like a drooling Picasso. This was all true by the way.

She laughed and said “Look, I know I just met you and this may sound creepy, but I’m new to the area, and we hung out in class, and then class ended, and I said to myself, ‘oh, she’s the shit and I need to be her friend.’ And I don’t do that often with very many people. And I frankly don’t care about your saggy, droopy root canal Picasso face or your drool. I just want to have lunch with you so we can be friends and talk and gorge on delicious food like pizza, exactly in that order.”

I mean, who says no to that!?

So we picked a restaurant near me and I was there in about 10 minutes. We sat, ordered, and then for four hours, just talked. Like, layers upon layers of conversation poured out of us, about art, being a woman in your mid-thirties, our bodies, life, our careers, our callings, the world, her past, my past, our husbands, why pizza is so damn good, why pizza is so damn bad. Just pure, unrestricted connection and curiosity. We ended up staying until the evening wait staff basically chased us off and we realized our husbands might call to file missing persons reports. Look, when you’ve been there long enough that tea transitions into wine, it’s generally time to go.

Over the next year of knowing Rebecca, I realized I had found something precious and rare — a creative soulmate and collaborator who was a woman. Someone smart, courageous, curious, and remarkable. Someone who could blend her passions and experiences and ideas with mine and bring about beautiful new things.

As a designer, this had always alluded me. First, because I was often in the company of men. Second, because the environment was so competitive in a hyper-masculine way. Like, aggressive and stressful and a total killer of curiosity. Third, because I never really thought to seek it out — the women who were above me were often preoccupied with staying there, and staying relevant. Me, and the women adjacent to me were often preoccupied with proving our value, so we could move up into those scarce and coveted roles. And the women junior to me were vying for space, and to be seen. All of this, because as a woman designer you’re in a man’s world. That’s changing now, but really not fast enough.

I had always thought that as a woman, and one moving higher in the ranks of design leadership, that I had to be fiercely independent and likely also comfortable under the constant wings of male mentors. But with Rebecca, all that changed.

That year of getting to know each other, was amazing. I finally had a person to bounce ideas off of who was interested in the raw stuff of me. Likewise me for her. We ate a lot more pizza. I had a few more teeth fixed. We took more classes. Wrote more plays. Took trips together. It wasn’t all perfect, but it was pretty damn great.

And while all this was happening, our professional lives were falling apart.

Rebecca, who had always been an actor, had recently left a role as a company player at a Southern Virginia theater. She took a few auditions in D.C. but was struggling with trying to establish herself in a new, and fairly insular theater city.

Just before meeting Rebecca, I was laid off from a design job that had me splitting time between D.C. and Detroit. I was in a brand new job, working to set up a user experience design practice inside a small company that was focused on social change — which I love — when the founder and key leader abruptly left, leaving the entire company unmoored and in the hands of ill-prepared secondary leaders. The one strong female collaborator I had there, a good friend to this day, also left. My days started to see-saw between fight and flight — stay and fight to bring great design to important progressive and social causes, or leave and likely go back designing in a more corporate, male-dominated setting. I really did not want to return to the second kind of work.

Rebecca was in the same place. She felt her acting life coming to a close, but wasn’t certain how to leave it behind. She didn’t want to deal with the rat-race of auditions in what also was a very male-dominated industry. We talked about it over and over and over and over and over, sitting on my porch, drinking coffee, reading Shakespeare and Greek Tragedy and Absurdism other plays for our classes, reading pages from my plays, and just being present with and for each other.

She encouraged me to keep going — to step up into leadership and use what she called a blend of curiosity, resourcefulness, and resilience to turn the company around. Eventually I did — I took on the role as CEO of the troubled company, which was a terrifying step. I worked my way through it day-by-day. But I also called her almost daily on my commute into work to trade ideas. At work when I felt like an imposter, I’d think about her advice and encouragement. I also started to seek in my colleagues the qualities I had found in Rebecca and she had found in me — connection, humor, openness, compassion, resilience, resourcefulness, curiosity. I started noticing it in myself and others more and more. I looked for strong, curious women to bring into our company and work, as staff and leadership and partners, who sought this approach in their work and life and could support each other.

Around the same time I was shifting, Rebecca also was. She was close to finishing the conservatory and still wasn’t certain that acting was her calling. During one brunch I mentioned the Japanese concept of Ikigai — that to find true happiness in life you need to do something that you love, are good at, that the world needs, and that you can get paid for. I asked if that was acting — she said she didn’t know. By the end of our eggs benedict, we decided that I would write, and Rebecca would perform in, a one-woman show for D.C.’s fringe festival that next summer. It would be either her final performance — you know, closure to help her move on from acting — or a way to unblock her, renew her calling as an artist, and launch her performance career in D.C. and hopefully beyond. Of the eight story ideas I suggested, she rejected only one. Despite her initial hesitation, we both knew that that was her play.

About two months ago, after COVID, Rebecca was diagnosed with Stage 4 Neuroendocrine Cancer — in her lungs, in her vertebrae, all over her body. And that’s the kind of moment that makes you think. It’s also the kind of moment that asks you how you’re going to proceed because you can’t design your way out of that. And, I think we’ve both leaned on the things that Rebecca had taught me — resilience, resourcefulness, and curiosity.

I’ve never stopped believing in the power of shared curiosity and soulful collaboration among women — among anyone, but especially women — to help change your life and the world. This is the power that women bring to design, and to each other, and why it’s so important for us to find and be with one another in meaningful ways. I owe my knowledge of this to my Rebecca, who I am so glad I found in this life. And I truly hope that each and every one of you finds yours.

-Graziella Jackson, 2020