out west. I flew all night to get there and then found myself in a small terminal, standing outside a circle made up of other speakers waiting to be picked up and delivered to the event. I hate how people stand in circles. I wish we’d all agree to stand around in horseshoes, with room available for awkward outsiders to join.
A woman walked over from baggage claim and stood next to me. I smiled and stayed quiet, which is my strategy for making it through. She smiled back, but her smile was different from mine. My smile says: Hello, I am warm, polite, and unavailable. I smile like a period. Liz smiles slowly and openly, like a question mark.
“Hi. I’m Liz.”
“I know,” I said. “I adore your work. I’m Glennon.”
“Oh my gosh! I know you. I adore your work, too. Where are you from?”
“I live in Naples, Florida.”
“What’s it like to live there?”
“It’s slow. It’s a retirement city. I’d say the average age in my neighborhood is eighty. The cool thing is that most of my friends are turning forty and worried about starting to look old. Not me. I feel fantastic. Like a spring chicken. I go to the gym, look around at all the grandparents, and think ‘Actually, I don’t need to work out after all. I look amazing.’ It’s all perspective, right? I tell my friends to skip the Botox and just move to Naples.”
Liz says, “Wonderful. How did you end up there?”
“I got neurological Lyme disease a few years ago. My entire body shut down, and I was in bed for two years and popping fifty pills a day. I went to stay in my friend’s place in Naples, and I felt so much better. I moved there temporarily, and I was able to ditch the pills, so I just stayed. I’ve always known I wanted to live by the beach. I guess women have to almost die before we give ourselves permission to live how we want.”
Liz put her hand on my arm and said, “Wait. Wow. That last thing you said—about having to almost die—can you say that again?”
I said, “I don’t think so. I’m a little nervous. I have no idea what I just said.”
She smiled and said, “I like you.”
“I like you, too.”
The next night, along with everyone else at the convention, I went to see Liz speak. I got to the event early and claimed a seat in the front but off to the side—close enough to see her clearly but not close enough for her to see me clearly. She was standing behind the podium wearing a black shirt with a high white collar, and she reminded me of a priest at a pulpit. When she started speaking, I found myself holding my breath. She spoke with gentleness and authority. A man in the front row kept talking to the woman beside him, and Liz paused midsentence, turned to him, and asked him to stop talking. He did. Something about the way she spoke, the way she carried herself, made my heart beat quicker than usual. She seemed certain, steady, free, relaxed. She was not complying and she was not rebelling. She was creating something new. She was original. I wanted to ask “Can you say all of that again?”
The next night, all the speakers attended a fancy banquet in a ski lodge at the top of a mountain. Snow was flurrying outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, and people were flurrying inside, trying to figure out where to stand and who was important enough to talk to.
I saw Liz in a corner across the room, surrounded. My general policy is to honor people I admire by leaving them alone. I didn’t that night. I walked over to her, and when she saw me she smiled like another beginning. I drew closer, joined the huddle. The entire circle was pressing Liz with questions and requests for advice like she was a vending machine. I wanted to step on their toes.
After a while, the host of the event walked over and said to Liz, “It’s time to take our seats for dinner. May I lead you to your table?”
Liz pointed to me and asked, “Can I sit with my friend?”
The woman looked nervous, then apologetic. “I’m sorry. We’ve promised the donors that you’d sit with them.”
“Okay,” she said. She looked forlorn. She squeezed my arm and said, “I’ll miss you.”
During the dinner I thought about how much I liked Liz and