Atoosa Unedited

hey!For the last three years, together, we have picked through my dirty laundry.Did you see it all?Believe it or not….No.But I think you will agree that you've seen puh-lenty.In fact, maybe it was more period-stained undies than you wanted (or needed) to see.I am reminded of a line from Forrest Gump:“My momma always said, you got to put the past behind you before you can move on. And I think that's what my run was about. I had run for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days and 16 hours. I'm pretty tired now. I think I'll go home. And just like that my running days was over.”That's what this column was about. Putting the past behind me. 3 years, 3 months and 21 days. All of my stories shared privately in deep dialogue with my closest friends on the phone and over long walks. And almost all of it shared with you, dear reader.You may wonder why I opted to share it with you. It was not my catharsis. I have always been well supported by my friends and therapist of 23 years. I shared it with you because I have loved you since you were a teenager and now as I have teens of my own, I wanted to model for you (and them…and their future children, my grandchildren) what I wish I had known when I was a teen and a younger-than-50 adult: Truth telling. Hard truth telling.You do not have to be a good girl.I told you about my abortions. I told you about the worst things I've done and some of the worst things done to me. I told you…and many, many people in my life who previously only knew me as this always friendly, shit-together upstanding member or even leader of their community. In other words, this project wasn't just a letter that went out to former teen magazine readers that I've never met and would never meet. Anyone could read it. And did. Including people I have a more formal relationship with. This part was for me. I was sick of having an image that felt discordant to who I really am. No more costumes for me. No more perfect performances for people on the outside.  No more showing up to some event I'm dreading because “it's the right thing to do.” No more overriding my comfort to assure someone else's. It took three years to break the pattern of living to feed some external perception of me. Like many of you, as a child, I was programmed to perform for my parents. I'm not sure if we are naturally supposed to evolve to simply stop being led by external approval, but I suspect not. Look at the success of Instagram. But after this project, there are no more shoulds in my life. I am here for me.The only way I found to truly put the past behind me was to look it in the eye. To sit with it. Like a big box of trash that requires the same love, attention and care as a big box of family heirlooms. You explore each piece. And no, it's not easy. I had many (very close) friends say about my Substack, “I just don't know if I can read this one.” Picking through trash is not for the faint of heart. But we, my sister, are not faint of heart. We are brave beyond measure. Pick your people…even your one person. (Not your romantic interest.) It can be a therapist, a true long time best friend, or even your journal. But tell someone EVERYTHING. And not everything except “that.”Say THAT.Let me say it again.You do not have to be a good girl.What I know for sure: Exploring the depths of our interiority, our sometimes bloody and oozing interiority…the parts of us that are decidedly not ready for Instagram, is integral to living our best life.Like, I cringe when I remember telling Charlie Rose about my AMAAAAAAZING childhood living with my various relatives as one big happy immigrant family (leaving out the part about how two of them sexually abused me) and my easy breezy life as an Editor-in-Chief. I had taken every bit of ugliness and shoved it way down below the surface of my being. The world at large certainly didn't need to know what I was hiding in my basement. Except, well….you can't keep bags and bags of oozing, foul garbage in your basement without it eventually stinking up your living room. At the very minimum, I needed to acknowledge, accept and clean up what was in my own basement.Listen, we all have garbage aka trauma. Sure, some people more than others. And it's all relative. But our true strength comes from what we have endured….not whether or not we can pretend it never happened. In my experience, pretending it never happened keeps the trauma alive, and so in some ways, it's still happening to us. By trying to ignore it, we are adding to what we need to endure instead of ending the difficult chapter and beginning to process it so we can move forward.The true difficulty is not in the sharing.The true difficulty is in the NOT sharing.Case in point: In my last Substack, I was sitting with my anxious back and forth pacing about my next step. What will it be? Why isn't it coming to me?  Who AM I, if not Someone Important?I felt like a hunter with nothing to hunt. If you have a cat, you know how they sometimes wildly stalk some unseen prey in our homes. It was explained to me that it's left over in their nervous systems from when they were wild.  The hunt still thumps inside them.Through the process of sharing with you, I finally understood what I was hunting for.My single biggest epiphany of the past three years.My unspoken secret…that was even a secret from me.And YOU, dear reader, helped me unearth it in the comments section of the last Substack.The very first comment was from Alexa.No-Atoosa-Comeback - I think it's already happened. Not in the traditional overachiever business way but in the you came back as your true authentic self way. The real you, with your new values and priorities, is the comeback!And FrancisSo funny… I (a business owner that can now be absent/successful) has these thoughts every day. I also am divorced and cook dinner for my kids every night cause it's our time together. Yet, I was yearning for more even though I also burned out from overworking in the past. The overachiever in us isn't comfortable yet we are thankful in many ways for the privilege to be present mothers. A week ago I finally got my answer.. we are EXACTLY where we are supposed to be! I made peace with the constant voice that is always searching and just embraced being a full time mom to twins that are in their junior year of high school. They will both be leaving for college in a year and a half and I will be an empty nester. I have faith that life will show me the way when the time comes. We just have to quiet those voices that make us think that time is running out. Atoosa, you are just getting started and you are blessed!Until I read these two comments, I may have been unconsciously aware that I am at my destination. But there was a very old part of me – I think of it as a remaining splinter from the original wounding of not being “enough” that had me still pacing back and forth trying to architect My Worthiness.In that time since I shared with you….and some of you generously shared back with me in the comments and via private messages, I have relaxed into my truth:What I had wanted my whole life…My. Whole. Life….is closeness with my family.I have a very nice family of birth. There isn't a person on earth who would say a bad word about any of them. But we were not a close family. As many children do, I wordlessly assumed the blame and responsibility for this lack of deep connectivity. And so, with the maturity of a small child, I made decisions as an adult. It never occurred to me that there were cultural and ancestral reasons for this lack of intimacy and closeness. My child's mind thought that if I was impressive, I would finally earn this mythical unconditional love and connection. This hidden desire drove my early success. The child within me kept recalibrating each time I would achieve the milestone that I thought would SURELY bring the closeness I wanted…and yet, didn't. And it wasn't all career related. It was marriage, my children, my home(s), my hostessing of various holidays, my generosity, on and on and on. I kept feeding this small child's yearning for closeness. Over time, it felt like feeding a ravenous monster. I tirelessly fed this bottomless pit… unaware of its existence.I had NO conscious idea closeness with my family was what I was seeking.We can make as many vision boards as we like, but I found that despite our best intentions, we tend to organize our lives around what is unspoken. And as long as it's unspoken, our actions are unconscious and our choices are not coming from our known values, but from what's hidden. As such, our lives can feel like an enigma to us.I have learned that a family is not close because we always make a point to get together for holidays, special occasions or have an active group chat. A family is close when we can hold space for each other when it's most difficult and inconvenient. When we love and accept each other unconditionally. And loyalty. Blood is thicker than water. I really understand this now. I realized that while I love my family of birth, I will likely never have a close family. And yet, I DO have a close family. I have these three magical human beings I birthed. That I love unconditionally. And who love me unconditionally. I choose them first, always. I finally unconsciously created that closeness. I am here. Right now. The chase is over. And it's been over for years. My family unit is a living breathing thing and I want to tend to it with loving care for the rest of my life. That is my most important calling.Today, I love my life. I have peace. I have freedom. Even with some very difficult emotions during the past few years as I have cycled through dating various people, divorce and cancer…to write about it with complete honesty? Girl, that can ONLY come from a place of freedom and empowerment. But it's also bizarre. I had to live through so many versions of what I THOUGHT having my best life looked like, until I had my big lightbulb moment.Living your best life is not about what it looks like.It's about what it feels like.Duh. xo atoosaSoundtrack of my ❤️ : This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com

hey,Once upon a time, I was the poster girl for ambition. So much so that 16 years after I stopped working, The Cut profiled me for their ambition series. And I fondly remember the fun New York Times profile entitled, “Coconut Shrimp? Ambition Can Wait,” in which the late, great David Carr referred to me as “one of the most ambitious editors in New York.” Fun fact: I had explosive diarrhea during the Bubba Gump leg of our Dining Out voyage and I even got some

The Weeknd is starting to use his given name, Abel Tesfaye.This feels meaningful to me. You know what they say. Words are spells. And if words are spells, then your name must be the personal spell you cast on the world. Or at least that's what I always thought. After all, when I got married at age 26, I changed my name in the masthead of Cosmopolitan even before it was official so the issue that hit newsstands after my August wedding would reflect this new and improved version of me. I was no longer Atoosa Behnegar, the kid at home no one noticed or cared about…this background character of my family and school communities so who desperately wanted to be seen and cherished. I was finally seen and cherished by this boy who put me above everything else.But wait, let's back track. When I first met him at 23, I didn't think we could possibly have a future simply based on his last name. Rubenstein. Atoosa Rubenstein? I just couldn't see it. I was born a Shiite Muslim and immigrated to the US from Iran. If I married him, I would be identified as Jewish for the rest of my life. It didn't bother me, it just felt like false advertising. But honestly? I was 23 and living the dream in NYC. Surely this guy wouldn't be The One anyway – I mean, I wasn't searching for a husband, I just wanted a side kick for Tasti-D-Lite runs and watching 90210. But as luck would have it, just a few years later, I would become Atoosa Rubenstein. And it didn't feel weird at all. I was proud…thrilled…all good things.There was one hiccup.I didn't get along with his family. The reasons don't really matter. They didn't feel they could be themselves around me…and frankly, they were right. It was a mismatch. The real mismatch had nothing to do with religion, but they did want to hide the fact that I wasn't Jewish from his religious grandmother who cared very much if her only grandson married a goy. They relied on this grandmother for approval (and other things). They didn't want her to know about me or our upcoming wedding….but OBVIOUSLY, she ultimately she found out. Now that I'm around the age his parents were back then, it's kind of funny to think of people my age lying but perhaps it's funny imagining myself lying to anyone…much the less my family. But I certainly was a liar back then. And you know what they say: You attract the energy you vibrate so in retrospect I guess it makes perfect sense.Sidebar:Today, whenever I meet a younger person who eye rolls their beloved's family of birth, I am quick to mark it as a red flag. Even if your significant other is the literal OPPOSITE of their family, pay attention to how you feel around said family. It's important. There's a reason for the old cliché the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And I don't mean that as an insult. People should be like their families. It's natural and normal. But sometimes when a family has a lot of trauma, a kid may reject the family thinking that by simply rejecting the people, they can bury the dysfunctional patterns. But I've experienced that without therapy and processing, those vibrations stay within us and will pop out like proverbial zombies from the psychological ground they're buried in.  Date someone whose family you really like, please. Your partner does morph back into a card-carrying member of his family of birth eventually and you want that to feel like a good thing!Okay – my public service announcement is over. Back to spilling tea.One week to the day before my own nuptials, we went to another wedding. His whole family was there. In fact, to this day, it was the most beautiful wedding I'd ever attended. For sure, after all these years as a New Yorker, I've been to fancier weddings. But it was the first fancy wedding I'd ever been to and nothing else will ever touch it in my mind. So beautiful in spirit and vibe. But at the very end as we're leaving, in a scene right out of a bad movie, his grandmother called him over to her wheelchair, motioned to me and croaked, “Why, Ari, Why?” I wish I could unhear her voice.One. Week. Before. Our. Wedding.My husband, who always had (emphasis on had

I won't lie.I did NOT want to be a single mom. Despite knowing deep down that my husband and I had grown apart, I held tight to my marriage. I did over a decade of deep therapeutic soul searching trying to pinpoint the cause of that pebble in-my-shoe feeling. Was it my mother? My career? Was it the death of my father when I was a kid? The incest? Being an immigrant? The too-big career at the too-young age? And sure. Check, check, check.  All those things needed to be processed. But in the back of my head in every therapy, shaman, astrology, energy healing or whatever session…what was very present but unvoiced: Let it be anything but THAT. And of course, by THAT I meant my marriage. Let it be anything other than my marriage. When I first stopped working, I would stare at my dishwasher like, do I really have to unload this? See, when I was an Editor, I was absolved of all household responsibilities. After all, I was so “bizzzzzzzzzzyyyyyyy.”

I have a theory and if it makes you worked up, I encourage you to sit with it a little longer before you disagree.If you've had trauma of any sort as a child, I believe your first marriage will be based in that trauma. Some version of repeating it so you can either finally break free or remain engaged forever (pun intended) with the trauma that tangled up your childhood. Oh, and those who jump right into a second or third marriage after the first? Same. Same. I don't think the trauma-based marriage necessarily ends with Spouse Number 1. We've all seen people who keep marrying the same person in different bodies thinking each one is vastly different from the last. You can't bury the past…but it can bury you.Of course, there are our friends who've had the blessing of a balanced and mostly normal childhood. I'm not talking to you….but honestly, I don't think anyone like that comes around this particular neck of the Substack woods.

I'm racing to write and record this for you in the moments before my second surgery. But before I go in, I want to tell you something odd.Cancer has been good for me.I can't lie. In the first 24 hours, I journeyed through some very difficult feelings relating to my mortality and how that would impact my three children. I let those feelings truly sink in and tenderize me. That felt important.I recognize not everyone will agree with this take, but when it entered other people's lives, I'd always thought of Cancer as an important messenger. So when it knocked on my door, I wanted to fully receive my message. What came up for me was grief. So much grief. This made a lot of sense. See, before I was separated from my husband, my mammo was all clear. So The Big C came on after the separation. I will spare you divorce details, dear reader, but ever since my husband moved out of our home, my focus has been on keeping things steady for the children. I wake them up the same way, I put them to sleep the same way, the breakfast and dinner tables are set the exact same way, our vacations haven't changed. No matter what shit storm is happening behind the scenes, I've kept it all Steady Eddie on my end. I rarely let myself grieve the dream I had for our family. I wanted to be the face of resiliance. The all powerful Momma. After all, if I fell apart, it would make everything so much worse for them, right? Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. I didn't fall apart. That's the path I chose. And so, perhaps, that's why Cancer chose me. Again, maybe. Maybe not. This is how I see it. How many women do you know who've gotten some form of female cancer during or just after their divorce? The unprocessed grief takes a toll in my opinion.So diving into and sitting with that abject grief felt important to me.In meditation, we stay with the breath. But when a very big wave of feeling comes, we release the breath and stay with that feeling and allow ourselves to feel it fully.Just after the diagnosis, when I felt that grief come on, I allowed it to engulf me (when my kids were at school and asleep, of course) and eventually, it passed. When I allow hard feelings to come in full force, they usually pass through me within 24-48 hours like a rough storm. I suspect I will weather many such storms during this process Today, I have another surgery. They didn't get it all the first time.I fall into the 10 percent who need a second surgery.Some people would call that unlucky.I see it differently. I am lucky. They caught the problem.Out, out damn spot.Whether the source of the proverbial spot is the divorce or something else, I don't really know. Whether I will ever fully get it out, I don't know that, for certain, either. But I am committed to the exploration and understanding of my internal life in tandem with the exploration and understanding of my physical body. I believe the two are linked. Many people use the phrase, Fuck Cancer as a source of strength to fight the disease. I don't gain strength from that personally. I do see the Cancer as a toxicity that needs to come out, but it feels like emotional waste for people who have gone through something hard.  So Fuck Cancer feels, to me, like being mad at your bowel movements.

I'm going to do something a little differently this week. Instead of writing an essay and then reading it for the audio portion, I'm just going to talk and then transcribe what I say. It's what I'm more comfortable with so let's try it as an experiment. I've been thinking about friendships…intimate, close friendships. My first best girl friend was Katie Modica in 4th grade. (And btw - if anybody knows a Katie Modica who is around 51 and originally from Long Island, PLEASE put us in touch because she was really a very special person to me back in grade school.) I had a lot of obstacles to making friends back then because we moved to this country when I was in pre-school, I didn't speak English and it took awhile to get fluent in the language. Plus, my family is not American so it wasn't second nature for my family to set up playdates for me or for my mom to socialize with the other moms at school. And so I was on my own and it took until 4th grade for me to really resonate with someone like I did with Katie.On a parallel track, there was another obstacle to my having really close friendships. In my culture, and CERTAINLY within my family - but I do think it's an Iranian thing, there's a face you put on for the outer world and a face you have on the inside. So my mom could be screaming bloody murder at me and calling me names but the moment someone from the outside would come by BOOM, she's the nicest person in the world. “Oh my gosh, your mom is the absolute nicest.” And yes. She was that person. But she was also that other. There was always this mask that you put on for social purposes that showed you're kind and polite and put together and, you know, all of those wonderful things. (And I'm sure every culture and family have some version of that.) This mask was really internalized for me: I was always going out into the world as this “perfect” version of myself. And you can see how that can get in the way of real vulnerability because there are times when your head is in the proverbial toilet bowl and you're suffering terribly. But if you're always feeling the pressure to seem perfect you can't be real or authentic with your friends. I've struggled with that for most of my life.But then when my “perfect” marriage fell apart, I started to explore what's behind the myth of perfection for me. If I'm not in this perfect marriage, with this perfect family of 5, blahditty blah blah, who am I? So I began dismantling myself to really explore what's behind the mask. Ironically, it happened during COVID so the mask takes on a different connotation as well.

I have breast cancer. No burying the lede here, right?Listen, I'm not trying to be coy or clever. I just want you to know why you haven't heard from me. Well…that's not entirely true. I hadn't written for a few weeks already before I got my diagnosis.So…perhaps we go back in time a bit. As I mentioned in a past letter, I'm finished being led by fear. It's such a powerful and effective source of fuel that most people who've successfully figured out how to channel it don't want to give it up. They may want to be more peaceful. Less stressed. But no one wants to acknowledge that their power source is the problem. And believe me, I understand why.It reminds me of the Billy Bragg lyric,“The TemptationTo take the precious thingswe have apart to see how they work.Must be resisted.For they never fitTogether again.”Who wants to stop being impressive? Who wants to stop being a winner in a society that defines winners as people who are productive and successful professionally?  I wouldn't have had the courage to even explore these questions over the past 20 years if I hadn't already let the fear program run wild so I could rest on my laurels.But fear is like fossil fuels. We can ignore what's happening to the environment because we're set in our ways and like the cars we like. We can reduce the climate crisis to something we can tune out like Charlie Brown's teacher in the Peanuts cartoons. Or something that will work itself out without our concern.It's the same for stress and fear. Most people think one day they will not have stress. Or one day they will stop hustling…striving…once they achieve fill-in-the-blank. And how many of you have a physical condition that lists stress as a possible cause…and you gloss over that one and look to the other “real” causes.We KNOW what is best for us. We KNOW what is destroying our peace of mind. But it's usually the one thing we're not willing to acknowledge, much the less change.I kind of had that relationship with fear. My fear made me a beast. My fear made me the most organized mom who had all the answers…the one who was the President of the PA. My fear fueled incredible productivity and success from myself and my teams at the magazines. My fear made me the youngest Editor-in-Chief in the blah blah blah and earned me many other awards I won't bore you with. Everything “good” in my life came from this fear. But none of said good things actually felt good for more than a few moments. Isn't that crazy? It was all just good on paper.And that's it. That's why I haven't written. I noticed that I was really stressed before writing every week. I am, honestly, more of a talker less of a writer. But even that is beside the point. I was writing because I felt I “had” to. I was writing because I was afraid of not hitting send on a column at 7pm every Sunday evening. I was writing because I was afraid that if I didn't I would disappear…cease to be relevant. Cease to be…worthy.So I took a week off. Then another. And another.Then I went for my yearly mammogram. Except I hadn't had a yearly mammogram since 2018 and then a few days and biopsies later got a call that I had cancer.Honestly? It's been as great as it can be. I couldn't have scripted it better. I was with my best friend David when I got the call. My friends and partner are literally the finest, most supportive and loving people I could possibly have in my life. I'm in great medical hands with a surgeon who also operated on several people who are dear to me (and she accepts my insurance!). You see what I'm saying? I got wind beneath my wings. And that's my point here.When you hear the C word, it's so easy to be led by fear, right? But…I don't feel afraid. Sure, I have a great prognosis, great healthcare and support system. But we know people with all the money in the world and a backache who will perseverate and drown in fear, right? But I am, instead, swimming in love.I am writing to you, when I felt ready. Your patience with me allowed me to work through my automatic fear reflex that's been driving me my whole life…to breathe through it. I've always felt your good will and I'll say it…love. I feel carried by love. By the love of my partner, my friends, my family and you, dear reader.This is likely the last time I'll write about this diagnosis. Mostly because I don't want to identify with it. Or rather allow it to identify me. I'm just traveling through this town as I have so many others, but I did want to send you a post card. Let's see if this world view is entitled or a powerful manifestation. TBD.Heading over to surgery now at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center – one of the best hospitals of its kind in the world. So much to be grateful for…including this cancer that's given me some real stakes to practice with. Humbled. I choose love…a slower but more peaceful fuel source that feels way better for my environment.See you on the other side.

The purpose of this letter is to share my experiences in case you relate. I'm not a doctor or a therapist…but I would TOTALLY play one on TV if you ask nicely.

I had an experience the other night that felt psychedelic…except it wasn't. But it was…even though it wasn't. Let me explain.I was out to dinner with some lovely folks. Smart, gorgeous, successful, the typical kind of 212s you may expect me to be out to dinner with. 212 being the shorthand for people who live in Manhattan, the 212-area code. They're about my age, C-suite, enviable academic and career pedigrees, blah blah blah. You get the drift.And then there came this one moment when I asked the wife about what she liked to do on the weekends. This is where it got psychedelic for me. I can't tell you precisely what she was saying because it became a true out-of-body experience. She kind of laughed and said she worked and proceeded to paint the picture of her singular focus. She wasn't describing it as a drag. It wasn't served inside an I-need-to-find-more-balance context. It was pure unadulterated Generation X hustle. My energetic experience of this conversation was almost like watching a cannibal who is in rapture ripping their prey apart limb from limb with blood dripping off their lips. Did you see the recent Luca Guadagnino movie, Bones and All? Yeah. That's what I mean by it feeling psychedelic. I looked around the table wondering if they were experiencing what I was experiencing. But the others were politely smiling and nodding their heads.This was my trip and my trip alone.Perhaps it speaks to how I have intentionally avoided hustle culture. After all, I gave a TEDx talk about how I had to leave it all to find my own brand of peace. But coming face to face with it after so many years of rehabilitating out of it…I have to say…felt like a true horror movie to me.And yet, I am saying this without judgment…but rather curiosity.In fact, as a result of my intense feelings at the dinner, I've really sat with my choice to step away from the hustle even more closely.Did I make the right choice?Who is to say my relaxed low-key life is better?There were so many aspects of my power life that I enjoyed.The other day I was reading about that tech guy who spends 2 million dollars a year and 24 hours a day biohacking so that his organs revert to where they were when he was a teenager. I was literally eating a Korean corn dog treat (Mozzarella) while I read about his 1900-ish calorie a day plant-based diet and the sleep machine he's hooked up to each night thinking, “Man…it must suck to be him.” But does it? Or does it suck to be me? Watching the world and its daily progress and innovations from my namaste lily pad? Does happiness come from peace or from impacting the world? As a person with pretty high-level skills and talents, am I doing myself a service just by learning how to live a peaceful life? While Tech Bro works 24/7 to biohack his organs, I work 24/7 to hack my mind. To be able to sit with what's hard and find bliss in it all. My ex-husband feels this is a complete waste of my time, talent and earning potential. I can understand that point of view.  The truth is, I got a lot of satisfaction out of doing my part to help young women. But the way I operated was problematic for me. My power source was fear and aggression.How can I step into my power without being power hungry. Without taking power away from another? Without exercising said power blindly. The general outside perspective of my career is of the smiling, waving big sister to teenagers all over America. And yes, I was that girl. But behind the scenes I was very tough. As I made my way up the ranks at Cosmopolitan where I started as an assistant, the more cutthroat the environment became, the more cutthroat I became.Like, at one point there was a new Editor-in-Chief and Fashion Director, both whom I admired and respected. I got promoted to Fashion Editor and they brought a more experienced Senior Fashion Editor to the team from another magazine. I didn't like this girl. She was kind of notoriously mean and didn't spare me that treatment. It was all very Devil Wears Prada and tbh, I'd never been treated like that at work. I very naturally and unconsciously strategized to get rid of her with behind the scenes scheming and maneuvering. In fact, I hand-picked (from another magazine) the person I wanted to take her place and within less than a year despite being junior to this position in the department, I had executed this shift. Meanie was out. Nice-y was in. Except…ultimately, I didn't love working with Nice-y either. She had a lot of opinions that were different than mine. She was super professional and kind but well…I wanted to do things differently. Time for more maneuvering. Within the year, Nice-y was out and I was the new Senior Fashion Editor. In both cases, I remember the girls each looking at me like tou-fucking-ché when all was said and done. My point is, I was a blood thirsty hustle culture vampire myself. Not proud. Just honest. It was very easy for me to do and yet…it didn't feel good. It didn't feel good being Machiavellian. It didn't feel good to win that way. There was a constant energy of unease. It's surreal to have everything you've ever wanted and feel paranoid and scared all the time.I've loved the process of changing my wiring.I've attacked it like I attacked my ascent in the media industry. I went from waking up at 4am to catch up on emails and hit the gym before showing up at the office at 7 to becoming someone who sees a nap as a necessary part of self-care…without shame. That's the key part. Self-care without shame.I've loved learning how to see people. I mean really see them as opposed to play them like human chess for the win. I used to have sooooo many “friends.” But really they were all key high-level people at companies I did business with. Today, my friends serve only my inner life…and I, theirs. Ānanda, the Buddha's cousin and closest disciple once asked the Buddha, “Is it true, Lord, that noble friends are half of the holy life?” The Buddha responded, “No, Ānanda, noble friends are the whole of the holy life.” And my friends are not just my nearest and dearest, with whom I spend hours a week in discourse. My friends are all those with whom I journey…each of you in some way impacting my path because of our sharing, and I hope, in some way, I, yours. Thank you, dear reader, for being such an important part of my holy life.I have loved, through meditation, developing the ability to let my body and mind get as relaxed as my friend's fluffy, fat cat, Auggie, basking in the sun.My nervous system has been entirely hacked.And yet…Just sitting around being peaceful and happy is getting…I don't know…boring. I see yet another reason I was always choosing “complicated” guys. I was fucking bored. Now that I'm here, just being peaceful is not enough at this stage in my life. There is something within me that yearns to be more active in the world. I don't need to be a Girlboss meme or any other caricature of hustle culture…but I am seeking something.Like for the past few years I've felt like there are two tall cliffs about a foot apart from one another. I have one foot on each. One side representing the hustle culture I was so good at. The other, the Buddhist-influenced meditation lifestyle that has completely rewired my nervous system and how I show up in the world. I haven't been totally able to let go of hustle culture, although I've gone cold turkey in terms of my participation. My hustle culture self is dead as a doornail, and yet, like a zombie, my cold dead hands are holding on tight to this old identity of “Atoosa, famous teen magazine editor.” Because who will I be without that identity? Is that why I want to be of service to the world? To have an enviable identity? To bring value to the world to have value?By holding so tightly onto the past, am I stopping the blood flow that will fuel my future? I'm not Atoosa from Seventeen anymore. I have so much respect for that girl. She was abused for much of her childhood and yet she stayed on the straight and narrow. She took care of herself, and her family financially. She was a philanthropist from the minute she had an extra dollar. Although she was a bully, she bullied people on behalf of saving girls like her who didn't have another advocate.But…I am not Atoosa from Seventeen anymore.I have no fucking idea what my next thing will be.I know I am helpful.I am kind.I'm intense.In fact, when I'm passionate, I'm a beast.I love to be on the front lines.But I am introvert.I hate group texts.And small talk.My river runs deep.I have two best friends.They know everything.Except…what's next for me.Even I don't know that.And so, as I watch friends from today and yesterday write books, launch businesses, make declarative statements about who they are and where they are going. I bow with humility and remember I am rewiring my power source. My power source no longer comes from force or fear. I guess I'm going the way the world is going. Instead of tapping into trauma, I'm tapping into…a renewal source. I guess we can call it my own solar power. Tapping into my light. My knowing. My heart. I'm in the development phase though. I don't quite know how to do this. But I also don't know how to do THAT anymore either as evidenced by my nearly having a seizure as I felt my friend's super intense hustle energy. A voice in my head says, Ugh you're such a pussy. But then immediately another voice chimes in. Yes! I am! Pussy Power!So tonight, I leave you with that. No answers. Only questions. And curiosity about…Pussy Power. Hey, it's good for the climate…the emotional climate.xo, atoosaAtoosa Unedited is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.What I was listening to today: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

I once had a boss when I was in my early 20s who said whenever she was really happy, she'd gain weight.I have the opposite experience.But there is one complication.You will never actually hear me say that I am NOT happy.In the depths of the hardest times of the hardest times, I will be crawling on the metaphorical floor, gutted and left for dead and if you bring your ear close to my mouth you will hear me whisper either a gratitude for the lesson or the silver lining in the whole situation.For better or worse, this is my personality.This is how I've survived some of the things I have survived. I have full faith in God and God's plan (After all, you may remember I brought a “Faith” section to Seventeen which was kind of unheard of at the time. And yes, that is a link from the Alabama Baptist. Not sure they'd ever written a positive piece of news about a teen magazine before that.

I understand about New Year's resolutions. Meaning, I get the appeal. I used to write really neatly every September and promise myself that this year…THIS year I would finally be the buttoned-up student I knew was hidden somewhere deep inside of me. But by October, without fail, I could only open my locker an inch to grab one book at a time or else I'd have an avalanche. Nah. New Year's resolutions have never been anything more than a message from my internal patriarchy that I would, inevitably, rebel against. Useless.I do something else.I have an intention.But it's not an intention to be someone different or to even a better version of myself.It's an intention to explore a path. To see what's on the other side of something I'm struggling with.Like last year, I really wanted to explore the love thing. As you know (in excruciating detail…sorry!) I had a habit of falling in love with men that were broken. I didn't see them as broken. I saw them as totally sexy and interesting. But then I'd get cut with their jagged pieces and be looking at my friends like, “How did this happen??” 2022 was about figuring out WTF was happening once and for all. I went on many intentional journeys inside and outside myself with various therapists, healers and men (and for a spell, no men at all) to better understand my wiring. And for the first time in my life, I'm in a relationship with a healthy person. I'll write more about that shift in the weeks to come, but today I want to write about what I'm exploring this year.This may come as a surprise to you.(Or if you really know me, maybe not.)I was a bully.And sometimes, I still am a bully.I'd written ad nauseum at CosmoGIRL! and Seventeen about how inadequate I felt as a teenager. It was something we had in common, right? Something all people feel at one time or another. But I don't think I ever told you that I was also a bully. Sensing another girl's vulnerability really jammed me up. Today, as an adult, I realize that it was because I needed to keep my own vulnerabilities buried. Or at least that's how I felt. I didn't really have grownups in my life with bandwidth for what I was going through, so my young mind decided my shit had to be buried and I needed to be tough. It felt like a matter of survival.In grade school, I targeted more vulnerable girls doing goofy, but still hurtful acts like putting a spider down their shirt. In high school and college, I would gossip or turn my friends against whoever I was choosing to target. I also seemed to always have one girl in my friend group on my radar and ever so gently kept my metaphorical foot on their throat by gossiping about or excluding them. It sickens me to think about it and embarrasses me to admit it. I have compassion for and forgive the traumatized girl I was. And I have so much compassion, love and respect for the girls I hurt with my unconsciousness.Fast forward to my career. Being a bully in the media industry was a positive attribute, so there was certainly no pressure to be introspective about this part of my character. I was a thug amongst thugs. I broke phones when I was angry, blacklisted people I felt slighted by, used the media to my advantage. As I worked my way up the ladder, I frequently maneuvered to get people I didn't like fired and yet always managed to have a very “nice guy” reputation. I know. It's upsetting to me, too. That was the way the game was played, and I was a natural at playing it. And if you were looking for proof that bullies are cowards underneath it all: As an Editor-in-Chief, I didn't like firing people so I would turn the heat way up under someone's ass when I was done with them so they would quit on their own. Anyway, you know the cliches, you've seen the movies. I was a bad bitch, and I was rewarded for it.And yes, I bullied my husband.We've all had friends married to a woman like me.I was that woman.I remember at one point in our relationship, I went on an SSRI. I was feeling super anxious: I was transitioning from CosmoGIRL! to Seventeen, had just gotten back together with him after a separation, we were moving, and in general I treated him like an emotional punching bag. I knew it wasn't right and I wanted to fix it. The Paxil worked like magic…but just as things started settling down, he begged me to get off of it. He didn't like the milder, gentler me. He said I wasn't myself anymore. He'd rather have the “real” me instead of this new agreeable, sweetie-pie.That was always interesting to me. You know what they say: It takes two to tango. He was actively choosing the bully and hell; it was a role I was born to play. When he and I finally decided to separate, it felt like a director had yelled, “Cut!” and we both dropped the scripts we'd been play acting for the past quarter of a century. Leaving my marriage felt like an important step in my ability to explore who I was beneath that role.But here's when I realized I still have a whiff of the bully blueprint.Like you, I see a lot of girls I went to high school and college with on social media. But there is one particular girl who follows me on IG and frequently makes lovely comments. But I simply wouldn't follow her back. My friend Stephen uses the word, “thirsty.” I'm sure you know what he means. Too eager, too desperate. This girl was always a nice girl yet she has and had an intense need to be liked that clearly triggered my own similar feelings. Here I was at 50 years old, not following her back. That felt just bitchy. Clearly there's something in me that's also “thirsty” and I'll be sitting with that in the coming weeks and months. And yes, of course, once I realized I was intentionally not following her, I immediately followed her back.Admitting this stuff is so “cringe” as my 14-year-old would say.But there you have it. My intention for the year…my 2023 exploration. I suspect there will be many amends to be made. And many questions to consider: Why was I a bully? In what ways am I still one? What are the super tender feelings that the bullying part of me is protecting? Being that big-time Editor-in-Chief clearly kept those vulnerable feelings at bay. But today? I've got no big time anything to hang my hat on or to give me an externalized feeling of worthiness. Let's see what's under my well-honed strategy to manipulate and control people. I don't need to be a bad bitch anymore. Or at least, I'd like to use my power intentionally and wisely and not out of fear and insecurity.Oh, and when a friend or partner tells you something hard to hear about yourself when you're fighting and/or break up? Honestly? They're probably right to some extent. You may not be ready to hear it in the moment and for sure, it's likely not as black and white as they may be making it. But hold it in your pocket and take it out for examination every so often. That's how I got to this bully piece. I've been called a bully before, but I wasn't ready to hear it. My sense of safety was too tenuous. I would hide behind all the good things I've done to protect myself and I had no shortage of friends who would join me in scoffing at the notion that I was anything other than a good guy in any given narrative. But I feel safe enough now and I can hold it all with compassion and love all around. Looking forward to seeing where this path leads me but for now? I'm just sitting with some healthy shame. And that's okay. It's all part of the process. To be continued, to be continued.Let me know if there's something someone's said about you that just may be true…xo atoosaSoundtrack of my

Happy 2023!While I took a break from Substack, I did not take a break from living and learning. If you follow me on IG, you know what I've been up to. If you don't, please do

As we creep toward the holidays, I want to talk about what makes life and relationships hard.Here's what has been hard for me in case you can relate:1-I'm going through a divorce with some not-easy-to-digest details. But unlike a friendship that isn't working, you can't walk away altogether from a relationship once you've procreated with the person, right? We have children and so we must co-exist while we disentangle. I can meditate 24 hours a day, but that doesn't change the fact that Divorce Sucks, plain and simple. And my divorce kinda sucks extra hard.  2- I was abused as a child, and no matter how much therapeutic work I do around that, a part of me is still angry about it. As goofy as it sounds, I've been waiting to be loved unconditionally by my mother and spoiler alert: It's not going to happen in this lifetime. I don't think about it all day but certain times…like now as I go through this divorce and really need my people to have my back…plus, with Thanksgiving coming up…it's been bubbling up for additional processing.3-Almost any Iranian you know is feeling a lot of feels right now because of the crisis in Iran. For me, I can explain it this way (and this is a very personal issue so I'm sure other Iranians would and could feel different feelings about it all). I spent my childhood being very ashamed of being Iranian: The way women were treated, the hostage crisis, the violence. And then when 9/11 happened, it opened that wound again. I was an Editor in Chief at CosmoGIRL! on 9/11 and I remember one of the Hearst Executives asked me if I felt any bigotry in the aftermath of the attacks as an Iranian and tbh, I kind of froze. I had spent my entire life trying to be as American as possible. He was asking out of genuine caring, which is so beautiful, but a part of me felt totally exposed as one of THEM. And of course, by THEM I meant a terrorist. An extremist. Because the regime change happened when I was a child, I didn't have the maturity or the intellect to really understand that this wasn't Iran. It was the religious regime. Just like we had a President in the US recently who didn't represent many of our views…except the regime in Iran is a dictatorship and as such much worse, more violent and extreme. (The Mullahs actually believe women are no different than farm animals and God made them look like man so man wouldn't be scared.) So, all these years of uncomfortable tightening around my cultural identity…it's all very exposed and tender now. And every person suffering, fighting, dying over there to have an ounce of what I enjoy so freely…I feel powerless to help them. And yet they are fighting on behalf of all Iranians: Fighting for Freedom vs. Fear.Freedom vs. FearThis is the same battle I have fought my entire life.Freedom versus Fear had been at the core of every conflict for me. Like, my fear keeps grasping for the mother who birthed me to have my back instead of leaning into the freedom to be my own mother. The fear of the choices my husband is making and how they may impact our children versus the freedom of letting him blaze his own path and accept that he is their father for better or worse and they will work through it, as I did with my own parents.Freedom versus Fear.And so, I've spent the last few weeks, working on another F- word. Forgiveness. I realized that when I'm gripped by the fear of letting go there is an absence of Forgiveness. I was having trouble forgiving my husband for his betrayals. Trouble forgiving my mother for her inability to be able to protect me. Even in Iran, today. Many Iranians would disagree with me but I feel I must forgive the Mullahs for taking our beautiful country and putting it behind bars. They have taken the stunning spiritual creativity of our people that created the greatest visionaries of all time like Rumi and Hafiz and putting them in boxes so they have to contort in the most cruel ways in order to be accepted. Did you know, for instance, a person can only be openly gay in Iran if they have gender reassignment surgery? We're talking about non-trans people who are having gender reassignment surgery so they can love who they love. And we're talking about generations of the most stunning women in the world who have had plastic surgery in droves to change their gorgeous ethnic noses because their faces are the only thing that's allowed to be seen in public. And all the deaths. The deaths before this uprising and the senseless deaths during. So much death has come out of this fear-based government. I marched yesterday in New York. The chants have gotten angrier since my first protest many weeks ago. It's not hard to understand why. So many children have been killed. So many beautiful souls lost and imprisoned.And yet…I'm talking about forgiveness. Right now, it's too soon for the people in Iran to forgive the Mullahs because so much blood is being shed. They are fighting for their lives.But it's not too soon for us to bring the energy of forgiveness into our lives. I recently found that forgiveness is the key to freedom. I guess I always knew that conceptually. I mean, obviously it makes sense. But I just couldn't quite pull it off. I now understand that your mind can do many incredible things, but this is deeper than the mind. Forgiveness is energetic which is kind of like our own form of magic.This practice will truly blow your mind.My beloved friend and teacher, healer Caitlin Marino introduced a few prayers to me that were created by her friend and mentor Cindy Mattingly. And when I tell you doing this practice every morning yielded massive insight and results within a week on the divorce and mother front, I'm not exaggerating. This is magic.Okay – so I do this declaration every morning multiple times in a row inserting a different name each time at the beginning – it could be anyone I am angry or upset with or locked in something with that isn't peaceful. I tend to do my mother, my sister, my husband, his girlfriend and my last boyfriend. Sometimes I add the cousins who molested me and their father. I had a few other people who I felt a smaller charge with who have dropped out of the rotation because I only really needed to do this once or twice with them and I am totally not triggered by them anymore.The Forgiveness DeclarationI fully and freely forgive _____________.I release him/her mentally and spiritually.I completely forgive everything connected to the situation.I am free and he/she is free.It is a marvelous feeling.I release anyone and anybody who has ever hurt me.I wish for each and everyone health, happiness, peace and all the blessings of life.I do this freely, joyously and lovingly.When I think of any of these people who have hurt me, I say “I have released you and all the blessings of life are yours.”I am free and you are free. It is wonderful.Then when I feel I've cycled through everyone I feel a negative charge with, I move onto this prayer.PrayerDear Source,I am sorry for any pain and suffering I have caused anyone in the past, present or future. I ask to be forgiven and I forgive myself for those deeds I do not recall. I ask now for the power of love and compassion and make that my new path of choice. I am grateful for all the blessings I have and will receive.Thank you, thank you, thank you.And there you have it. What more is there to say but those words. So grateful to Caitlin for knowing what I needed and sharing this with me and grateful to Cindy for writing and creating these beautiful practices. I have been doing them for a few weeks and it has shifted me in ways that I can't adequately describe because it's a felt energetic experience. I simply feel lighter. I was struggling about Thanksgiving coming up so much so that I had asked one of my best friends if we could spend it with her and her family instead. But with this practice, I was able to, from a place of freedom and choice, decide to go to my mother's like we do every year. Doing the same thing as years past but coming from freedom instead of fear.Tomorrow I will start doing the forgiveness practice with the Islamic regime in Iran. I need to begin to heal my own past with them while I support my brothers and sisters in Iran fighting. I can continue to amplify the voices and plight of those who are in the belly of the fire, but I am not in that fire. I can begin to heal and pray that in time, they will win their freedom and have the privilege of doing the same. Please amplify their voices and suffering on social media so these beautiful people can enjoy the same basic human rights we take for granted every day.I'm going to take some time off for the holidays so I can deepen my spiritual practices. I'm going on a 7-day silent retreat and will be processing all the things I listed above. Please take it easy on yourself, too. These are challenging times for everyone. I hope these two practices I shared will help you during our time apart as enormously as they have helped me. Wishing you and your family peace, freedom and love. Wishing that for all humans. I will see you in January. Please email me if you need me. I really am here, 24/7 at atoosa@atoosa.com.xo, atoosaSoundtrack of my

I believe in naps. In fact, last week I was fifteen minutes late for a podcast taping with the brilliant woman photographed above (check out her new Substack), Isabella Di Stefano, because I was…yes, napping. I needed it!

Lying is often a dance. One person can't handle a truth and enables another who can't handle rejection.Growing up, I always gave the “right” answer to the grownups. I was so concerned with getting in trouble (#mymomhitme) that it didn't matter what the real answer was, I learned how to say the right answer: The one the adults wanted to hear. If I spoke to a friend's parents, I was always on point. (“You should be more like Atoosa,” they'd say. Yeah, right! If they only knew I'd just made plans to sneak out with their daughter to meet some 21-year-old lifeguards!

Welcome to the underside of joy.I took this picture April 8, 2020.I was still living with my husband, but he was no longer the person I'd known and loved for 26 years. He spoke to me like a stranger. I had spent hours alone sobbing over loss of my best friend. When I finally went to my bathroom to wash up for bed and saw my face, I was shocked.This is the face of grief.I took a picture.I knew I would want to remember that moment forever. It seemed so odd to want to memorialize this. I never intended to share it with anyone. In fact, it's the first picture in my “hidden” folder on my iPhone.But it was the first time I had fully allowed myself to surrender to grief. Prior to that, I was a wholly committed optimist either glossing over what was difficult in favor of life's many blessings or going into planning mode to ensure the best possible outcome in a bad situation. As Mark Twain famously said, “Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.”Let me explain.Over the past few weeks, you've seen the courage, passion and ferocity of the Iranian people. It's been incredible. But did you also know our culture is very formal. Everyone is very polite. You will rarely meet an ill-mannered Persian person out in the world. This clip from comedian Maz Jobrani nails it. The dark side of this politeness and formality is caring very much what the outer world thinks of you. Being respectable is of the utmost importance. So, in my family, whichever child was doing the best out in the world (looks, grades, jobs, money), was the one my mother showered with the bright light of her love. As a dyslexic kid with low grades, I very much lived in the shadow of my very academically accomplished siblings. (Doctors!) So, I unconsciously cultivated this “perfect” version of myself over the course of my entire adult life to finally win her adoration. I was always perfectly put together, had the perfect marriage, perfect career. “Atoosa Rubenstein” was essentially a performance art piece designed to earn my mother's approval, pride and ultimately her love. And believe me, I got it. I had unintentionally cast myself in the role of a lifetime….as myself.Behind the scenes, of course, I was far from perfect, but you know all about that. I had a sense of this toward the end of my time at Seventeen because no matter what incredible accomplishment or material possession I'd achieved, I was just kind of numb. Meh. Nothing brought me joy. So, I began my quest to figure out what was behind this performance. Who was I really, if not this well-coiffed soundbite?  My therapist wanted to start with some tough things I had just assumed I could leave in the past. I did a ton of therapeutic work around the various forms of trauma I experienced as a kid: Incest, the stress of coming to America, the death of my father, all of it. I had always had a quick temper and it's no wonder. There were so many buried land mines in my psyche.All of that work brought me to a new and more peaceful place. My husband used to say that it was like I was a different person.Except…When I was around my family of birth.No amount of therapy seemed to help me there. My anger was always right there waiting to explode.This past week was no different. I went to dinner with my sister, but I could barely look her in the eye. It was the usual superficial conversation. Big smile on her end, talking about something, but talking about nothing. My old anger was gaining steam below the surface. A simple question about Thanksgiving finally pushed me over the edge. I was reading her a laundry list of why I was angry with her and my mom and one of the things I said was, “Listen, I'm over the incest but…” And she interrupted, “Obviously, you're not!”It landed.I do think I've processed my experience of being molested. I really do.But something about it stuck with me and a text she just sent me today crystallized it. She said, “I believe you are addicted to your victimhood and your obsession with this is driving you crazy.”I finally realized why I'm angry with my family.And yes, it is connected to the incest. But not just that.A big part of my grit and perseverance in my career came from being a warrior in my own home fighting off a huge grown man every day after school. Today, I am working so hard to learn how to be in a relationship properly because I spent the first half of my marriage cheating on my husband. I keep dating and grieving the wrong men because I was never allowed to grieve the death of my father. I am not the first person who has gone through any of these situations in my family. I'm merely the first one that wants to talk about it.Why can't we talk about it?Am I “addicted to victimhood” for wanting to talk about it? For not wanting to be ashamed about it? For wanting to be loved and held by my community for the fullness of who I am? Not just for my success but for my mistakes. My trauma. My grief.So, as we discussed earlier, in the Iranian culture I was raised in, politeness is expected. “Perfect” Atoosa expertly navigated this. But grief and trauma defy politeness. I can no longer abide by this formality. I can't pretend entire portions of my life didn't happen because it's not polite or appropriate to talk about them.I am a survivor of incest.I cheated on my husband.And then he cheated on me.It destroyed my family and now I'm picking up the pieces.None of this is polite. But it is real. It is real.I recently made a Reel about not getting involved in the little niggly dramas of day-to-day life (I like to use the example of RHONJ when Theresa was mad at her sister-in-law for bringing sprinkle cookies to her house when everyone knows she hates sprinkle cookies!

I often make light of growing up as an Iranian immigrant in America during the hostage crisis. I'm from a very Red State part of a Blue State, if that makes sense. But I had no color-coded context for it as a kid. All I knew back then was that it was kind of uncomfortable being anything other than white and Irish- or Italian-American where I was from. I lived in a town where neighbors allegedly pooled money to buy a house before they would let a black family buy it. Luckily, I've heard it has become a lot more diverse in the past 30+ years since I've lived there.As a child, I never analyzed it. I just wished I could be like everyone else. I wished my parents didn't have accents and my mom cooked Ziti for dinner instead of the herb heavy stews my clothing always reeked of. I remember begging my friend Anthony to ask his mom why his clothes always smelled so fresh. I still remember the answer. Cheer. His mother used Cheer. I wanted to smell like Cheer instead of Khoreshte Gormeh-Sabzi.In my TEDx talk, I joked about being called Ayatollah Atoosa when I was a kid and having super hairy legs because I wasn't permitted by my mom, for cultural reasons, to shave them. And oh, how I wanted my kinky curls to look feathered like the coolest, most beautiful girls at school. I can laugh about it all today because I ended up growing up to be kind of attractive, successful and tbh…super Americanized.In fact, when I was on the front page of the New York Times Business section, the editors chose to do a little visual storyline of how my long, flowing jet black hair had changed from wild to sleek as I shifted from one magazine (CosmoGIRL!) to another (Seventeen).To be showcased in front of an international audience in this way when the girls back home in Iran had to hide their hair and femininity or risk being jailed or given lashes meant nothing to me at the time. I was so busy trying to fit in. Trying to earn my specialness…my worthiness. So thrilled to finally smell like Michael Kors (at the time) instead of my mother's stew.Today, looking at it from a place of maturity, stability and safety, it hits different. I see the incredible privilege I've enjoyed and continue to enjoy living in America. Listen, I never advocate for falling down news wormholes or doom scrolling because I don't think it's good for anyone's mental health. And I am not suggesting that now. But I encourage you to follow at least one social media account that solidly posts about what's happening in Iran. Some good options are @from___iran, @1500tasvir, @ranarahimpour_bbc, @YasharAli, @samanism, @collectiveforblackiranians And please share. The Islamic Republic shuts down internet access during turbulent times to control the information that gets out of the country and we can use our social media to show solidarity as the Iranians fight for what we enjoy with ease. The American news media is grossly falling short here. But thanks to the democratization of media, we can amplify their voices during these internet blackouts The younger generation, especially, are fighting so hard to break out of the tyranny they were born into...and my family and I narrowly escaped when we moved to America. We cannot see ourselves as advocates for women if we're not advocating for the women of Iran who have been held captive by their religious leaders for so long. And frankly, this isn't just about the women of Iran. This is about freedom of all expression in Iran including the freedom to love who you want, to wear what you want and to say what you want. And speaking of freedom of speech, I'm going to pivot.Unrelated…but related.While I was identified as Iranian for the first part of my life, at exactly the half point, I became Atoosa RUBENSTEIN and from then on, people identified me as Jewish, although I am not actually Jewish. I really enjoyed learning about the Jewish culture but one of the things I did not enjoy is how often I would encounter anti-semitism.I remember stopping for dinner at a TGI Fridays with my husband and our child while we were on a road trip. When they called our last name for a table, a group of teenage boys threw a coin in front of us and waited to see if we would pick it up. I blocked out what they shouted but they made their point abundantly clear.And antisemitism doesn't only happen in low-brow Red State areas. It just looks different.We once spent the summer in Locust Valley while we were in between apartments in the city. Locust Valley is a very wealthy community in Long Island known for its exclusive “waspy” country clubs like Piping Rock. Part of the privilege of having been an Editor-in-Chief is that I kind of assume I'm welcome anywhere.

At the end of summer, I was so gung-ho on this idea: I'm giving up boys for 3 months! Renunciation, like my beloved Buddha! (Or my Catholic friends from college who would give up soda or chocolate for lent!)You know this feeling, right? Maybe you've given up carbs, sugar, coffee…It seems so right! You are so sure!And then…Well…Inevitably you realize why the fuck you've got an issue with the substance at hand.Joseph Goldstein, my favorite Buddhism teacher, calls renunciation, “The End of Addiction.”This reframe is crucial for me because what I've realized in the past month and change is that I've been, in fact, nursing a low-level addiction. I say low-level because it's not ruining my life, but that tall, bald glass of water is my equivalent of another person's morning coffee. I want it. I need it. And I get verrrry cranky without it. But honestly? I don't like anything having a hold over me like that.The man-fast started off strong, my sister. I'd really had my fill of guys. I was cycling from one smart, cute guy to another. But no one was scratching my itch.I needed a break. I wanted to recalibrate.But it's like those mornings after a crazy night out in college. You honestly believe you will literally never have another drink again…until the following Thursday night, of course. The strictest phase of my man fast lasted about that long: a week.But wait. Let me tell you about the most recent man I've been struggling to renounce.So, in June when my last boyfriend and I were on a 3-week break, I went on Bumble for the first time. I was kind of annoyed and wanted to revenge-date someone new. (I know – what your girl lacks in maturity she makes up for in honesty! Plus, I do like to lean into my freedom. After being shacked up for 26 years, it's pretty fun to be single.)Anywayzzzzzzz…My first night on Bumble, a guy, who went to my college, exact same age, swiped on me.Hmmmm….He was super tall, shaved head and athletic: My specialty in college.I swiped back. “Did we know each other at Columbia?”

I've been really crunching on something over the past few days.On a short break from my last boyfriend, I started dating another guy from high school (I know - I know…but it's me and you love me just the way I am, right???) and I was really struck by the response I got from several women I knew from childhood.Are you ready?“Congratulations!”Is that fucking weird to you, too?Congratulations??Did I just win a stuffed animal at a carnival?Congratulations.This guy (a wonderful guy, to be clear) was our Homecoming King…but I don't think that's why they were congratulating me. Can you imagine? Congratulations! You finally snagged the Homecoming King…at age 50!

Most of you know I gave a TEDx talk on April 30. I hope you'll watch it (above)!What you may not know is what the talk meant to me. I left my career to work on my marriage (and in turn, myself) and saw that partnership through to it's natural end after almost 26 years. In some ways, it's been almost like a fairy tale: Waking up from a long, long slumber, Sleeping Beauty has arisen to find her old Kingdom (the magazine industry) has essentially vanished. I totally get it. A favorite story of mine to tell is of one of my last corporate meetings in 2006. In prepping for our annual budget meeting with the President, I came to the men who work directly with her with a big idea. (Whenever an Editor wanted to pitch something big at a budget meeting, we needed to get the President's Men, so to speak, to sign off on it before we pitched it.) My idea: Let's take me and my entire team and put us on seventeen.com. We'd learned from our magazine partners in the UK that you can create a perfectly good magazine with just 5 or 6 junior to mid-level people. Let's reverse the paradigm! We can be so much bigger than a US based teen magazine if the top talent were on the digital platform. The corporate folks looked at me like I had lost my mind. Today, of course, most magazines have resorted to content farming and innovation is happening Somewhere Else. Where? Little pips and pops all over the place online but the ruling days of those big, glossy monthly magazines, are over.So where does that leave me? A Queen with no kingdom. On one hand, I'm not bending over backward trying to figure it out because I'm going through a divorce and I'm focused on being present for my children…and also processing all my own stuff that's coming up. “Old” Atoosa would have plowed through such an intense and painful personal untangling fueled by burning ambition. My newer self moves much slower. I'm not taking myself out of the experience, but rather sinking in, knowing that these last moments of my marriage as difficult as they are, are cooking me in some ways, changing me in preparation for what lies ahead.It's like I'm in a hallway that takes me from one room of my life to another. But I have to live in the hallway. I have to sit in the hallway. I have to sleep in the hallway. I have to eat in the hallway. I'm not just passing through this hallway.But…I can't lie. The less meditative side of me just wants to get to the other fucking room already, right? Who wouldn't? Being in a hallway is so unnerving. What's next, I keep wondering. What's next??When the nice people from TEDx Asbury Park called me in the spring, I thought THIS is what's next! This talk will usher me out of the hallway. Help me reenter this world where my platform, the one I knew so well…that I was so good at, had disappeared. Where do I find my place in a world with no magazines? I mean, sure, technically there are magazines. But there aren't any magazines as they used to exist. It's like a lion without a roar. I'm all about the roar. I thought THIS would be the place for my roar. But then…have you heard the TEDx talk? Well, you can't hear my roar. Literally. You can't hear my roar because of of a fucking microphone malfunction.

Most people enter a relationship hoping it'll last forever.And then…there's me.It's not that I'm hoping for a breakup. It's just that…well…my work (and my passion, honestly) is to learn about life, and you don't learn too much about life when you're just holding hands and going out for brunch. So, it's not that I'm looking to make problems. I just act like myself with zero filter…and I'm ready with a notepad when things go awry.Bestie David said this one thing this past Spring that has truly been vexing me: “Why do you keep choosing guys that are such projects?” Do your friends ever drop one-liners like that and your face is twitching because you know they're right, but you have absolutely nothing smart to say in your own defense?Yeah.I admit it, I'm a fixer.Obviously, I know intellectually it's not right to try to fix someone. That's Co-dependence 101. But Pro-bono Life Coach is a natural modus operandi for me. I see someone with eczema, I have a diet for them. My friend drinks too much coffee, may I suggest Ceremonial Cacao? Anxiety? Meditation! Frustrated at work? Here's what you're doing wrong and how we can get you on track. Works great when you're a magazine editor. But my husband used it call it my lectures. “Let me know when your lecture is over.” And the last guy would say, “Can you be my girlfriend, not my life coach today?” So even though I knew it wasn't helpful, the pull was deeply embedded in my psyche. So, I sat and sat (and sat!) with this “project” quality of my last two relationships until I dug deep enough within my own layers to grab the root of my toxic impulse to fix.And wait for it…the roots lie in my childhood. Big surprise.

Giiiirrrrrlllll,Let's dissect my latest breakup like a frog in 7th grade, shall we?I know I might sound as cold as the aforementioned frog, but believe me, a few days ago, I was gutted. Absolutely gutted. But not gutted in a why-me kind of way. You know, that's not my style. But rather in an I've-tapped-into-something-very-primal-and-now-I-need-a-nap kind of way. So…I spent two hours in bed on Thursday totally lost and sobbing, letting my grief flow through me like a river leading me down into my deepest depths.At 50, I've learned that tough moments are almost always attached to treasure if I allow myself to sink deep enough to claim it. For so much of my life, like many people, I veered and shape shifted to avoid the depths of discomfort…I mean, most people do, right? And by the way, I almost did it this time: The breakup happened August 19. I was literally out with another man on August 20. And not just a random date to get my mind off things. It was someone very special with whom I had a par-baked relationship ready to go. But I caught myself within two weeks and ended it to avoid this man becoming collateral damage because as Charlie Puth so correctly sang, “Don't give your heart to a girl whose still got a broken one.” He may have wanted to give his heart to me, but I know better and did better.Anywayzzzzzzzz…Let's breakdown this break up, shall we?A Prologue:This guy was absolutely gob smacked by me on our first date. “You're the first girl who looks even better than her pictures!”  Now on that same first date, this man (who I still consider wonderful btw – you know you'll never get an angry breakup story from me) also told me that he regularly blocks his mother's phone calls. Like literally blocks her on his phone. I had never blocked anyone in my life at that point and I remember thinking, Okay…I can help him with that. See how I swiftly I whitewash red flags? My psychological Clorox comes out the moment a man puts me on a pedestal. And so high was the pedestal he put me on that you could see it from the outer boroughs of New York City: Atoosa, the beautiful, stylish, brilliant career woman who left it all to do brave introspective work and raise this army of powerful and spirited children. Through his eyes, anyone would be deeply impressed with me. Just days before it ended, he used words like “partner,” “forever,” “I want to be the father to your children.” (Oh, and just to be clear, my children don't even think of me and dating in a one sentence. I'm merely their full-time chef and sherpa. They have never been introduced to a significant other and I suspect I won't do that until I'm officially divorced. I'm kinda just playing the field and learning – and sharing with YOU - until those papers are signed!)Anyway…spoiler alert:After the breakup, the dude fucking BLOCKED ME. I've never been blocked in my entire life! I didn't do any of the things people do to get blocked. (I block dick pic senders and name callers) But alas, the man who wanted to spend the rest of his life with me has vanished from Instagram and I suspect he has only vanished to me…and perhaps, his mother.A theory: Was I too controlling? He said I edited him like a magazine.If I didn't demand he quit smoking weed, would we have made it?Listen, no judgment if you smoke weed but I don't use substances recreationally and I no longer date people who do, either. I get that it's legal, but as a psychological explorer, I love growing by walking through the emotional fires that relationships and life can present us with. Anesthetizing with weed to keep uncomfortable feelings at bay (and a relationship status quo), for me, is like sitting in a boat that's up on blocks in the boatyard and pretending to go on a journey. I want to go to on the actual journey. I want to see the horizon. I want to experience the storm. I want to wonder if we will make it. I want to barf over the side if I must. I want to feel the sun on my skin when it comes back out. I want the full experience. I don't just want a nice picture of me on a boat.So, I'm going to answer my own question. No, we wouldn't have made it if I didn't make my weed boundary clear because then I wouldn't have been authentic. And I'm committed to being authentic before I'm committed to any particular relationship. But it was a sign, wasn't it? A sign that he was not comfortable being uncomfortable. And the fact that I moved forward with someone I had to convince to quit weed is further proof I'm an expert at bleaching red flags. That damn pedestal is so seductive to me.A Brief Synopsis:I was reluctant to get involved with him from the get-go. Not necessarily because of the mom blocking or the weed. I mean…perhaps it should have been for those reasons. But I was reluctant because I had just had another breakup days earlier (

Hey,Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” We all know what he meant…and perhaps it's never been more true, right? Everyone I talk lately has been lamenting, “Where did summer go??”Raise your hand if you know someone who responds to texts in two seconds flat. Perhaps you ARE that person. Worse are the colleagues who are that fast. Worse? Better? I guess it depends on where you fall related to the transaction in question. Do they need something from you? Do you need something from them? Because what feels better than an instant text response to an urgent work question? I just had an endorphin rush simply imagining it.

Hey,Sometimes our fears are ones we aren't even aware of, right?So I Wordle with a guy I know at 9:45 every morning. We aren't physically together, but we do it simultaneously and then compare our journeys. (Side note: You can learn a lot about someone by their Wordle choices! I highly recommend it as a dating tool.) One day, I had a meeting I couldn't reschedule at 9:45 and I Wordle-cheated on him and did it on my own.It did not go well.I started out with my usual word: Death (I like to know where my as,es,and ts are at!), but things just went south from there. Look for yourself. (below) Even though I got the first letter right off the bat, once I realized the second letter was going to be another consonant, I kind of lost it. None of my subsequent choices even made any sense. I'm using letters I know aren't in there over and over again. But putting aside the bad choices, my experience was so interesting.I. Was. Terrified.I couldn't have guessed how much comfort having a puzzle buddy had given me. After my incorrect guess of Dingo, I was literally in fight or flight till the end. It felt like I was a non-swimmer dropped into the ocean desperately trying to stay on the surface…trying to stay alive. But dude, I was playing WORDLE.Because I'm me, I had to discuss this with my beloved therapist, Joseph: Something happened when I was playing Wordle and I think it may be significant. (Raise your hand if you're glad you're not my therapist!

Hey,I just got home from the Pride parade in Manhattan.

Hey,One of my favorite things to do when I was an Editor was getting in trouble. I mean, I must have loved it on some level, right? Because I never tried to avoid it. But in all honesty, I never set out to get in trouble, I just got really into whatever I was doing and often ruffled some feathers in the process. Kinda like those puppies we see on IG with the big innocent eyes surrounded by something they totally wrecked.I've told you about my last kerfuffle. It was when we ran pictures of vaginas in our Vagina 101 piece in Seventeen. Apparently, in October 2005, this was a big no-no.

Hey,Something happened at my TEDx Asbury Park talk a few weeks ago.Before the actual event, we did a quick run through of the whole program and I learned that the whole cast (all the speakers) would go back on stage at the end and sing a musical number about Joy with a group of performers. The idea was that we would be holding hands, clapping and singing lyrics like, “This joy I have, the world didn't give it to me. The world didn't give it, the world can't take it away.” It was a beautiful song and they had a wonderful lead singer. And forgive me if this is right up your alley but for me doing this type of thing on stage is the equivalent of dying a thousand deaths. I can do my thing anywhere, no problem. But singing and holding hands?I was like…Yeah…no. I don't fucking think so.I waited until after the run through and explained that I wouldn't be participating in the finale. My Ted point person kind of laughed and was like, Everybody's doing it! Even so-and-so celebrity chef! I was very nice about it all, but I didn't budge from my position. I'm not doing it. No way. No how. No chance. Not my jam. And honestly? I felt proud of myself for standing up for my inner child.I gave my talk, it went great. And so I sat in the audience to watch the second set of speakers.Out came Edafe Okporo, author of the upcoming book Asylum. Edafe is a Nigerian refugee. He spoke about feeling Othered. Nigeria had criminalized homosexuality with up to 14 years imprisonment…Edafe was outed, beaten and humiliated. He came to the US as a refugee. He spoke about being othered in Nigeria because he was a gay man…being othered in America because he was a refugee…being othered in the black community because he's African…being othered in the LGBTQ community because he's a refugee. It was one of the most painful yet beautiful and inspiring talks about belonging and finding home that I'd ever heard.But I'm not just sharing this because he is incredible (which he is!).This talk penetrated me viscerally in the moment. I realized that the reason I didn't want to do the group activity was I was Othering myself before someone else had a chance to do it. I also grew up Othered as an Iranian immigrant. My family would get chased by a group of teenagers with sticks when we first moved to America. I was othered for being Muslim. Even when I was at the height of my career, I was othered by Gawker for being successful. And not just Gawker, Jane Pratt, my hero at the time publicly made a statement about how she was younger than me when she became Editor-in-Chief of Sassy at 24 because some news outlet said I was the youngest ever Editor-in-Chief. Other Sassy Editors went on record for a book about Sassy's history saying how desperate I was to work there in college (true) and made me sound like a big dork. (True, yes. I was. But publicly? In a book? Who does that?) I'd been othered my whole life – not as horrifically as Edafe, but it was a wounding for me. And by avoiding new group settings, I was othering myself before anyone else had a chance to do it. As the following speakers came on, honestly? I didn't hear a word they said. I was just replaying the different strategies I'd come up with to avoid feeling Othered. It was truly a revelation. I told myself, “Atoosa, next time, you'll make a different decision. A braver decision.”Just then one of the Ted people found me in the audience to tell me it was time for the song performance. She hadn't gotten the memo that I was a hard no. In that moment, I realized this is next time. I got my opportunity to make a different decision. And I went. I went.I sang the song. Held hands. Awkwardly clapped. The whole nine yards.Was I horrified? Hmm…well….it wasn't my most comfortable experience. But I stuck my proverbial paw out from under the couch. I became part of the group and took several big steps outside my comfort zone. And most importantly, I felt so proud that I course-corrected in the moment. I credit meditation with my ability to be present enough to really hear Edafe's powerful message and gear shift in real time. That felt big for me. I wouldn't have been able to do that just six months ago.And the progress doesn't end in Asbury Park!Yesterday, as you may know, Planned Parenthood helped organize Bans Off Our Bodies rallies all over the country to protest the Supreme Court leak. None of my friends were available to attend with me…and I had actually never attended a rally ever….and well…we've already established how I feel about groups where I don't know anyone. Add to that, I'm not a yeller or hooting and hollering type. I was feeling all the feels I felt at the TEDx conference. But I did a 40-minute meditation, put on my favorite new jeans and reminded myself I could always leave if it was too uncomfortable.And off I went to the rally!I bee-lined all the way to the back and stood on my own. I told a woman next to me I had never been to a rally before and I was feeling a little anxious. The lovely organizer of the event, poetically named Joy (I swear! I couldn't make that up!), came over and gave me a very warm welcome and draped a fun pink necklace around me. Another person came and gave me bubbles. And…I blew bubbles! That felt like something I could do. And little by little, I started woo-ing…maybe not as loud as the others. But slowly I melted and relaxed into belonging and before I knew it, it was 2pm and the protest was over. I did it and I even made a new kick-ass friend (Hi Jennifer!) in the process! We chatted about my opinion about the importance of overcoming shame to tell our abortion stories so that our side comes out of the shadows. Women who exercise their right to choose don't belong in the shadows. And neither do I. Neither do I.Thank you for co-creating this space of belonging with me. One day, we will have more comments in the comment section!!!! I know it!! But as the girl who was tucked in at the back of the rally yesterday, I also understand that it can be scary to put your voice out there. But still, I wonder - where do you feel the most belonging? Leave a comment!Whether you comment or not, I'm here for you, 24/7, as always at atoosa@atoosa.com.xo, atoosaSoundtrack of my

Hey,On this Mother's Day, I want to talk about a child I chose not to have.I was pregnant in the picture above.I was married. My lover, too, was married and had a family.I terminated this pregnancy.I was filled with shame. I was ashamed in front of my gynecologist, so I just sped through the conversation making it clear I didn't want answer any questions. I mean, here I was this person seemingly at the top of my game…but so clearly at the bottom. But mostly, I was ashamed that the stain that I thought I had escaped, the stain of the sexual abuse of my childhood had caught up with me despite my best efforts. I was not really the successful media “It Girl” that the New York Times portrayed me as. I was still that little dirty girl with an embarrassing sexual secret. A liar who left work early one day for a “routine procedure.” I didn't have to feign tiredness when I got home to my husband that evening. I was exhausted: Physically, emotionally and spiritually. I didn't tell my therapist. Only my best friend and the baby's father knew, and even then, it was just the facts. We never spoke of it again after the procedure…including the procedure. I never spoke about it to anyone. My heart aches for this younger version of me, all alone and terrified in her suffering.I left my job as Editor-in-Chief of Seventeen within months.That fetus or child…however you prefer to define it according to your beliefs – gave up its life for me.The Pope would say that I should have had this child. That at the height of my Atoosa-ness which coincided with the height of my being an emotionally unprocessed adult - when Gawker was writing about me daily…I should've really give them something to write about. That I should've destroyed my husband…my lover's wife and family. Certainly, I'd have needed to be replaced at Seventeen because what kind of a role model was I, really? I didn't think that far ahead at the time, but for sure, by terminating the pregnancy, I took the easy way out. But was it really easy? Getting an abortion wasn't like getting a pedicure. It was one of the most awful experiences of my life. At the time, like all the trauma I'd experienced earlier in my life, I tried to bury it and move on. To be totally honest, I tried to bury it until today…until this week's Roe v. Wade news.Ironically, one of my colleagues unknowingly used the picture above in a Reel she made to promote my TEDx talk, so I was haunted by this covert reminder of my pregnancy for the whole week preceding the Supreme Court leak. So when the news hit, it touched me in a very personal place. A place I didn't even feel comfortable sharing with my closest friends. This week has been spent privately grieving. I grieved for the budding life that was lost. I grieved for my own life that led me to that point. I grieved for my husband who didn't deserve such a broken person. I grieved for my then-best friend who had to hold the enormity of my secret all those years ago.I didn't realize until just today the impact this pregnancy and subsequent abortion had on my disappearance from public life. This secret that I thought I would take to the grave with me. This experience that drew a line in the sand, showing me I could no longer dodge the trauma of my childhood without continuing to replicate it in one way or another. That I needed to stop my life as I knew it, to let my heart break wide open because, as my teacher – the great Frances Weller says, it's the broken open heart that is the medicine for the circumstances we are facing. Until today, I had still armored myself against this last unsavory detail was that the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back all those years ago.I am speaking about it today because I wonder if we are contributing to the precariousness of our right to choose by making it a scientific debate and holding these terrible losses in secrecy. Does it hurt all of us that we do not mourn the loss of these souls in community? Is that why pro-lifers feel these losses must be stopped because they are gratuitous…in vain. Perhaps if we share our stories, it can be clear that these beautiful martyred souls were grieved. That they, too, had an impact. That they, in some instances, saved lives or like mine, directed others toward a better future. That these ephemeral souls touched us. Their arrival and loss changed us.For sure, it changed me. Each one of the children I ultimately did not give birth to changed and impacted me as much as the ones I did feel prepared to give birth to. There was nothing throwaway or disposable about these angels. But we have, understandably, because these are not easy conversations to have, hidden their significance in our lives and hidden the work of grief after their losses.So, I for one, want to make transparent that on this Mother's Day, I carried three babies to term and three others that I chose not to. I continue to have so much gratitude for the three I never met…and gratitude for my ability to make the choice. I realize 3 probably sounds like a lot. Maybe you've had one…if that at all. I don't judge myself. It took a long time for me to build sound judgement. I had to learn from scratch. And in the same way that I do not judge myself, I don't judge the people who want to take this right away from me…from us. Because their personal journey, too, brought them to this place. We all value life. I think I valued life too much to bring a baby into the fucking mess I was living in when I got pregnant. Everyone has their own story. But I know for sure we all value life. And we all grieve every pregnancy that is terminated, whatever the reason. I just wonder if with more open grieving, we can all see that no one is taking this lightly and we can also provide loving support for each other as we walk difficult paths like this particular one. Perhaps it's not such a black and white debate and the answer is somewhere in the shades of grey. I believe it's in those spaces that Choice lives.Today I'm somber. I can't lie. I'm really sitting with the ways in which my childhood trauma has impacted my life and the lives of those I love so I can't tie this letter up in a bright pink bow. But I will invite my grief in for tea and work with it. We often feel discomfort when grief comes knocking and we armor up with any variety of easier-to- feel emotions like righteous anger or denial. But the only way out of grief is through it in conversation, writing, ritual and even dance (ahem, not dance for me! At least you got one joke out of me this week!). As Denise Levertov wrote in her poem, To Speak: “To speak of sorrow works upon it, moves it from it's crouched place barring the way to and from the soul's hall.” Thank you for helping me work through my personal and collective grief here. I'm always ready to return the favor at atoosa@atoosa.com. PS - Oh and hey, comments are open below. Would love to hear where your heart is at.xo, atoosaSoundtrack of my

Hey,One of my favorite dances seems to be back: The tango cosmetics companies do with magazine Beauty Directors. Maybe due to Covid restrictions opening up, maybe money is flowing again for cosmetics companies, I honestly have no idea because I'm not a magazine insider anymore, but I'm taking in the view (and effusive product recommendations) on IG. The very first beauty junket I went on as an intern was for Unilever my senior year in college. It was across the Hudson River in New Jersey, but they had a swanky boat taking us there and they gave every attendee a tote bag stuffed with more product than I had ever owned in my 21 years alive. The tote itself was a designer bag worth hundreds of dollars. I could have died. It didn't take much to impress me then, but my goodness, to this day, I get starry-eyed remembering that trip to…Jersey, of all places! I also remember the camaraderie between the many different editors. They all knew and liked each other. Like a sorority of girls with great energy and beautiful hair.We Fashion Editors were also treated to lots of great junkets. One of the most memorable for me was when Joe Boxer took us all to Iceland for a long weekend. Somewhere in my storage unit there exists a really funny picture of me, Rachel Zoe and Finola Hughes, of General Hospital fame at The Blue Lagoon in Reykjavik. At the time, Rachel was still known as Rachel Rosenzweig and she was one of my closest friends in NY before she moved to LA and became the phenom she is today. My funniest memory of this press trip was being so annoyed with Rachel that, she was (in my eloquent words), crawling up the ass of a C-list actress. Rachel was enchanted by Finola. I was mortified. (Yes, I was a total bitch – welcome to pre-teen-magazine Atoosa – I can own it.) Rachel's inclination to sidle up to the only celebrity on the trip was certainly a foreshadowing to her huge career as a celebrity stylist. And my horror at the sight speaks to my own waning interest in the industry as celebrities replaced models. But I digress. There were so many of these over-the-top trips. Wolford hosiery took a group of us to tour their factory in Breganz, Austria and showed us their beautiful country in unforgettably high style. I remember literally running across these perfectly green hills singing, “The hills are alive, with the sound of muuuuuuuusic.” It was a scene out of a movie. One night we had dinner at a stunning restaurant with a view of Luxembourg, Switzerland and maybe Italy?? Germany?? I don't remember. I just remember me and my $35K a year salary would have never otherwise had that experience. Nor would I have met the super-hot blonde, English guy who was also at that dinner and kept calling me from all over the world (I'm at St. Andrews; I'm in Ibiza!) to figure out where in the world we could meet up for our next and first date…which never happened…because I got engaged. Wah-wah!My point in sharing all this is to say, I have participated in this culture. I loved my fellow editors from the other magazines and we didn't make enough money to stay at or have the incredible experiences these deep-pocketed companies would lavish us with so it truly felt like a dream come true. This emoji -

Hey,A lot of people have been asking me about ambition lately.I totally understand why. In the aughts, I was the poster girl for ambition, right? On the surface this young, overachieving Editor-in-Chief. Killing it at work and seemingly living the high life with the requisite house in the Hamptons, fancy car, NY Times headlines, seat at the Met Ball. I had two assistants: One was a full-time assistant just to answer reader letters most often asking, “How can I get to where you are?” To which I had crafted a detailed game plan to do EXACTLY what I did to get where I was in my career, nothing left out. And perhaps you got one of those letters and followed the game plan and if so, hi again. (And I'm sorry I steeped you in hustle culture so early. Really. I'm sorry.

Hey,We never talk about sex. I mean, sure, we've danced around it. But usually, it's through the lens of trauma or with a least a little regret – like all the errors of judgement I made when I was younger. But today, let's talk about…gasp…pleasure.

Hey,You may have read the Q&A Yasmin Gagnè did with me in The Cut this past week. I made a funny reel about how when Yaz first walked into my apartment, minutes after greeting her, I dropped a huge glass bottle full of water and it shattered all over the place. It was an awkward nice-to-meet-you, for sure. But what really freaked me out was right as I was trying to clean up the crazy mess, Yaz, herself likely flustered because the whole thing was kind of jarring said, “Are you nervous? Don't be nervous!” Something about that little interaction activated me so much. I wasn't sure why, but I really wanted to figure it out. I felt drawn to talk to my former therapist from back when I was working. Since I usually just kind of go with my instincts and had plenty to catch up with him about….This week, I had a Zoom with Joseph, my therapist of 10 years.I wanted to tell him I was getting divorced (“I'm sorry to say I'm not surprised,” he said) and that I was dipping my toe back into the world-at-large again (He was pleased about that). I felt inclined to do a post-game of the old days with him. If his walls could talk…it would read like this Substack. But of course, it's not that simple. See, I'm the girl whose kitchen cabinets are perfectly lined up with OXO containers marked “cereal” and “flour” courtesy of my trusty label maker. You know my type, right? After talking to him, I realized I had done some of that with my emotional life, too. Sure, the labels are more confrontational: “Incest” “Infidelity” “Blind Ambition” but still fairly neat and digestible in these 1200-word Sunday snacks for you, my beloved reader.But after said post-game, I was as dismantled as the water bottle I mentioned earlier.“What was your impression about why I left my job, Joseph,” I asked him. His eyes got very big. “Don't you remember?”

Hey,I'm in the process of renovating my fighting-with-boyfriend style. To be honest, it's a gut renovation right down to the studs. And it's kind of going amazing, so today I want to flex. I'm starting from such a low place that honestly, being normal is a flex for me, but hell, I can't be the only one who is used to fighting dirty. Anyone? Anyone?I used to have a signature fight move that I inherited from my mother. Let's call it The You're-Dead-To-Me. It was my go-to when I genuinely didn't have the emotional musculature to deal with the situation at hand. Like a week into dating The Bear, he told me he had plans with his ex-girlfriend that pre-dated our togetherness. In all fairness, our getting together was kind of cosmic and out of the norm. We didn't have a typical first week. It was a love-at-first-sight kind of craziness which also speaks to my emotional immaturity coming off my 26-year relationship. But the point is, when he told me he had this dinner plan with his ex- and and they were planning to go vote together, I shut down all conversation and just said, “That's great. If that's what you think is appropriate, I hope you will feel you made the right choice down the road” and I hung up. He kept calling me over and over. I wouldn't answer. Of course, by the end of my maneuver, he had cancelled plans with his ex- and cut off communication which probably felt abrupt and confusing to her. But once that happened, I was back to my warm-I'm-gonna-love-you-forever self. (Cue the Jessica Simpson song please!)Believe me. I take no pride or pleasure in sharing this with you. I may have “won” but we both know, there were no winners in this situation. I feel like vomiting as I type. Definitely feeling ashamed. Grief for how I treated him…and in turn, her. The power play. The manipulation. Easy to see why he and I are not together anymore.

Hey,Today, I keep trying to write about anything but this. I have so many good stories from the past! And this is so fresh…it feels so vulnerable. But alas there's only one thing bubbling up, demanding to be exposed and explored. And so I begin…I started seeing a new guy (let's call him Sweet Yogini

Hey!I missed you…missed this. Sitting in my yellow office in my yellow Womb chair writing to you, my beloved reader and sister. But I really needed to take January off. I often say my life's work is my life's work. Meaning what I feel compelled to write and create is what I'm actually learning and experiencing personally. And this past month, I was like a cat lurching and heaving and gathering a monster hair ball that just wasn't ready to dislodge. It wasn't comfortable. I needed some extra processing time. This was a big hairball with very old roots. But it's out. I think it's out. I know I've spent many a Substack waxing on about my grand sweeping unconditional love for The Bear

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atoosa.substack.com/subscribe