Hi APW,
Happy 4th of July weekend (if you celebrate it), or happy family time long weekend (if you don’t). Around here, 4th of July is my daughter’s birthday, and she is… somehow… turning five this weekend. That marks five whole years till I gave birth to her at 8:30 on a bright holiday morning (and hemorrhaged and rushed to the ER, and all of that, but it worked out and we have our magical firework). This year, of course, we’re not having the birthday party she so badly wanted. And I don’t know if I’ve had a lower point in quarantine than the day I had to tell her that she wasn’t going to see her friends at her party, and she sobbed for 15 minutes before telling me that “My birthday heart was crushed.” Instead, we’re having the families we’re in a bubble with come to our yard, one family at a time, to spend a little time eating cake and celebrating her. I hope it will give her some of the joy she deserves in this difficult time.
My family has an EXTRA lot to celebrate, because one week ago David made partner at his law firm. Those of you who have hung around APW a long time have been around to see me finish putting David through law school, help support him while newly running APW full time while he tried to find a job during the great recession, and then may remember him taking the job he has now right after our oldest was born. It’s been a long (long) road, and seeing him make partner last week was one of the proudest moments of my life, and the happiest I’ve seen him since our hard years started six years ago.
To observe the holiday week, the APW team is mostly taking a sabbatical week next week, and we won’t be publishing much on the front page—though come chill with us on APW’s Instagram page, or my personal Instagram page. Our staff won’t be on vacation (we only wish) but we’ll be hard at work rolling out a project that we’ve been working on and off on since March and are so excited about: Practical Business School, or education that the patriarchy doesn’t want womxn entrepreneurs to have. If you’re interested in being one of the first ones to know when it launches, you can sign up for my semi-secret personal email list right here.
With that, happy holiday weekend!
xo
Meg
