Good Life Project - Reclaiming Your Path | Cyndie Spiegel

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

Cyndie Spiegel was a rising star in the fashion industry. Fifteen years in, living the life so many dream of, she made a bold decision. To walk-away from her career and, in no small part, her life, in order to create the space to step into a powerful new season of contribution and connection. Now flourishing and more fully-alive than ever, she's a keynote speaker and author with a focus on empowerment, culture and inclusion (http://www.cyndiespiegel.com/), community-organizer, and founder Dear Grown Ass Women™ (http://www.deargrownasswomen.com/), a movement to redefine and elevate the diversity of Xennial & GenX women. Speigel is also regularly featured in publications like Entrepreneur, Forbes, Glamour Magazine, Teen Vogue and The Huffington Post, and is the author of A Year of Positive Thinking: Daily Inspiration, Wisdom, and Courage (https://amzn.to/2lKiLfO).-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So my guest today, Cindy Spiegel, grew up in New Jersey in a family that lived under the weight of poverty. And as soon as she could, finishing up high school, she made her way straight into New York City where she ended up in FIT, the sort of legendary Fashion Institute of Technology, and then launched herself into an incredibly successful career in the fashion industry in New York, working for some of the biggest brands at high levels. And she was really riding that wave for a lot of years until about 15 years in, everything changed.

She awakened to a truth about herself, her life, what she wanted, what she didn't want, that led her to essentially start completely over and build a new living, a new life, a new set of friends, a new way to form her contribution to the world. That led her onto stages where she now speaks around the world, has built community to bring together, especially women, a diverse group of women who are out there looking to build and contribute in a similar way to her. She has recently launched a really wonderful new community called Dear Grown-Ass Women that we talk about towards the end as well, which kind of feels like it's never been more needed in this particular moment in time. So excited to share this wonderful story and her words with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk.

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The majority of Perth Amboy still is black and Puerto Rican. Okay. Now I think that's shifted a little bit. But I grew up very poor, you know, and that town I think is representative of it, even though it has a very rich history. But growing up there, you know, I often say I wouldn't have it any other way. It was, I, you know, I look the way I do. And growing up in New Jersey, 40 plus years ago, looking the way I do, which is, you know, kind of freckle faced with this wild curly hair and this sort of tan complexion, but I didn't speak Spanish, you know, so it just didn't really

make sense in that space. And so I would often actually get picked on for having these quote unquote stains on my face. They're freckles. But in that community, in that frame of reference, it's not really a thing, you know? So, you know, as I said, we grew up really poor in this town and most of the folks that I grew up with were also very poor. And what's interesting is particularly my friend group in high school, we all did very well for ourselves. And I think that was in no small part to the community that we built within one another. Tell me more about that. Yeah. So again, I talked a little bit about Perth Amboy and I think we felt kind of a soul connection to folks who saw us for who we really are, which was bigger than the town that we were

in. And that's not to say that Perth Amboy is this terrible place. It wasn't, you know, it was my childhood. But there's a kinship, I think, in folks who realized that there was something bigger out there and that we knew that where we were wasn't it, but there was a possibility for something. So we all went off to college. You know, I have no stories about saying, well, this friend unfortunately went the wrong direct, whatever that means, the wrong direction. We all kind of continued our education and got master's degrees and doctorates and

all kinds of things that I think most folks would not expect from kids growing up in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Yeah. Do you, do you, looking back, do you feel like you and that immediate friend group were more of the mainstream or more of the outliers? Outliers. For sure, the outliers. We were weird kids in high school. Yeah, we were weird. We were very mixed culturally. We spoke English in a way that other folks often didn't understand. They're like, why are you trying to sound white? I didn't know that was a thing. I just didn't know that was a thing because growing up with both of my parents, we never really had those boundaries around who we were supposed to be. And my mom is a white Jewish woman, and my dad, who has since passed, is African American.

So I didn't understand this concept of trying to sound white, and nor did any of my friends because we grew up with everybody else. Yeah. How did your folks meet? Oh, I think it was a dare when they were 16 years old. I'm not kidding. Yeah. My father was up from North Carolina, black folks in the South. He was up in New Jersey visiting his sister at the time. And my mom, who was 16, had gone out with my father on a dare. And then they spent the next 45 years together until he passed away.

That's amazing. Yeah, that would have been in the early 60s. Yeah. Because my brother was born in 69, mid 60s, it would have been. Right. So then mid 60s, that had to be really interesting also, right? So you have like a black man living married with a white woman. Yeah, they never got married. They stayed together for 45 years, never got married.

What was, did they ever talk to you about why they made that call? No, you know, there was, again, growing up in poverty, I think my parents had a lot of other issues that were drug addiction and alcohol abuse. I don't think that was their priority. And also very early on, my mom's family, who had worked very hard, you know, my relatives had escaped the Holocaust to get here. They weren't okay with this business, this black-white business, and especially not poor and black, which is what my father was. So I think there was a real deterioration of what family was for my immediate family. And I think we grew up in a way that was very different. And it's probably partially responsible for why I do what I do today in terms of community. Because as a Jewish woman, when we were younger and my grandparents were still alive, my grandmother in particular, we would celebrate Jewish holidays. And when I was eight and my grandmother passed

away, this is my mom's mom, those just sort of disappeared because no one else in the family spoke to us. So we never had that connection that a lot of other folks grow up with. And because my parents were into what they were into at that time, there was just a real disintegration of family values the way I've come to know them today as an adult. Yeah. I mean, I'm imagining also you're eight years old and your one connection to like your mom's whole family. Yeah. Two-ish, two-ish. My aunt as well. So like that had to have, did you experience that as a real loss at that age or was it already things just weird in a level where it didn't register in that way? You don't know what you don't know. It's all we knew.

I didn't have a family growing up to that extent. So it wasn't, it didn't seem that abnormal to me. And so when my grandmother passed away, it was, again, it was a thing that was kept very much separate from me. You know, it wasn't like I was, I went to the funeral or took part in any of it. I went away for a couple of days and came back and she was gone. Yeah. Have you ever talked to, since then, looking back, have you talked to your mom about what that window was like for her? No. I shouldn't say no. Every now and again when I talk to my mom, she gets very emotional still. My mom's a tough cookie. She doesn't wear her emotions on her

sleeve. And there are a lot of things I think she doesn't want to remember, truth be told. And so I feel like at 42 and my mom is 70, I'd rather communicate with her in a way that she wants to communicate today and not force her to go to a place that maybe wasn't the happiest for her. Yeah. Tough by nature or tough by necessity or who knows? I think by necessity. Yeah. Sounds like a... Yeah. I think by necessity. I think I was born being a little bit tough by nature, but possibly a bit more balanced. But my mom, and this is when I realized she doesn't want to talk about things. I think she was forced to be that way in a lot of ways to survive. Here's this Jewish white woman that, you know, her community were black folks in the 70s.

We grew up eating matzo ball soup and listening to soul music. And so we had this real, my mom, I think, because she was so young meeting my dad, we became and she became this woman that became very sort of culturally mixed herself as she was growing up and growing into becoming a mom, you know, because where she was accepted was by the black culture, not by the white culture, and certainly not by the Jewish culture. And so, you know, I remember my mom who has red hair, did when she was younger, she had this big orange fro. It was amazing. And now I look back and I'm like, oh, I wish I had that orange color hair that you had naturally. But in hindsight, she was like a version of like a white woman shaft, Dita the character shaft. Yeah, of course. Fascinating. But yeah, she found acceptance where she did. And it wasn't with folks that looked like her. Yeah. And I guess also at the same time, like if she's 16, she's also a kid.

I mean, she's literally just growing up herself around this whole thing and trying to find her own identity and sense of while dealing with it sort of like everything else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think back to her having my brother when she was 19. And it just is mind blowing to me because again, it was a time in the world where you didn't really mix races in general, but then she's dealing with all of these other issues, which are, you know, that's not my story to tell. And so I don't talk a lot about that, but I can't imagine being my mom, but I can certainly understand why she's,

why she has such a thick skin today. you know, and if you know my mom, she's actually highly sensitive. But from the outside, she's fascinating from the outside. She's really tough. But the second you start talking to her, she builds a fan club. Everybody calls my mom. I mean, my friends in particular call her mama Shelly because my mom is, she's a character. She says ridiculous things. She's kind of bizarre in the best possible way. But she's found this way of really coming off, I think, is really tough because she's had to. So how much of her is in you? Oh, gosh.

A lot. A lot. And I think more than I'd say five years ago, I would have wanted to admit, because I think at some point in our lives, we look at our parents and we say we never want to turn into them. And then we grow up, you know, and we decide like, huh, she's not so bad. But there's a lot of my mom in who I am. And I truly think it's not the things that folks would expect, but it's her generosity. It's her kindness. And I feel like I live in a different world than she did. And I am who my mom would have been if she were allowed to be.

God, that's going to get me emotional. Do people cry on the Good Life Project? Every once in a while. I mean, when you say that, do you experience that as any sense of obligation or responsibility or not so much? Explain that a little bit more. If you feel like you're sort of living the life that she would have lived had she been your age in this time, do you ever feel like you're almost like living for her in any way, shape, or form? Oh, that's fascinating. No.

I feel like the gift my mom has given me is allowing me to be whoever I am. And in a lot of ways, I feel like it's an homage to her, but it's not living for her, if that makes sense. No, it does. You have siblings also. I do. I have three older brothers. One of them doesn't speak to us any longer.

And two of them live very near my mom. I'm the only one who's actually left. And I left home at a very young age to go off to college and never turn back, except to visit every other Sunday. But I have two older brothers. And all of my brothers had gotten into trouble very young. All of my brothers have been to prison. And I talk quite a bit about that in a lot of the talks that I do, because I think we have a perception of what it means for somebody to go to jail in this country and what that must mean about them. And to me, it's important that we all understand we are two degrees away from one another, one degree away from one another,

you know? And if you saw my brothers, you wouldn't necessarily know any of that. And again, it's not my story to tell, but I will just say growing up in the way I did with the family that I have has normalized a lot of things that for other folks is not normal. Like it certainly doesn't mean that you should go to jail, but it also doesn't mean that you're a terrible human being if you made a mistake, you know, and did go to jail because of that mistake. And I share that story as well because I want folks to realize that sometimes who we see is not who we are. And they look at me and perceive one thing in one way that I may have grown up by the way that I look and the way that I sound.

And to hear my own truth and my own lived experience is very different. And I think for folks to have access to that changes their perception of the world around us in a different way, in a bigger way. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I often wonder if any of us were judged by our worst moment, our biggest mistake, we would all have like stuff, you know, and certain people, you know, the world turned its back or just accepted it, or you come from certain backgrounds where things happen differently and unfold differently and you have unequal access. But we've all done stupid things. We've all made big mistakes. We've all done things that we've grown out of. And God willing, none of us are the person 10, 20, 30 years from that moment. We have learned and evolved and changed. But it is a fascinating thing to sort of see that there are certain bad choices or mistakes or moments that affect or drop into so many people's lives, but only a handful have the balance of their lives and the perception of their identity almost permanently changed because of it. That's right.

Particularly black men. Yeah. My brothers are black men. We are mixed, yes, but they are black men. And I can say again, without going too deeply into it, that their experience is very much so because of that. Yeah. So you reach a point where you said you left.

I did, yeah. So where'd you end up going when you were going to school? New York City, I came here. I came here and never left. Was that always growing, the kid growing up in New Jersey, was New York City always the aspiration in some level or? I knew it wasn't New Jersey. Okay.

I didn't know where it was going to be, but I knew it wasn't there. I knew it was somewhere in my mind that was bigger, that was more accepting, where I wouldn't be the odd man out. And I came to New York City and I went to college, I went to FIT. And I remember being at FIT and that was when I started to wear my hair naturally, curly. So when I went back to my 15-year high school reunion, no one knew I had curly hair. Oh, that's funny.

Because again, as a child, you're just trying to fit in with everybody else around you. And hair is a whole other topic. But I remember growing up, again, I have these, this is me derailing the conversation a little bit, but I have these pictures, my fourth grade school pictures, and my mom, who used to smoke because it was the 70s and 80s, and who was a white woman, had put this curl activator in my hair and was smoking while doing my hair in what seemed to be in hindsight somewhat of a mullet style, like a curly mullet.

And I had this white dress on and there are ashes and like liquid on my shoulders. And it's incredible because I look back and I'm like, holy shit, that was curl activator and cigarette ash. And it's very visceral to me, you know, so it was, it was a big deal when I sort of, you know, found who I was in New York City. And I do feel, you know, in so many ways, like I did. And part of that was going back to curly hair after the curl activator incident. That's too funny. Yeah. My 15 reunion people were just like, what happened to your hair? You used to have a lot of it. Really? I'm like, thank you for the reminder. She had like the opposite experiences, but similar in a lot of ways. Same, same, same.

FIT, what were you into? Yeah. You know, again, I grew up in New Jersey. My first job was at the mall because that's what you do. And I worked at Gap Kids and it forever changed my world. I realized that there was this world out there where I fit in and I wasn't the weird kid that was wearing scarves and high heels to high school anymore. That was weird in hindsight. But I started working in retail and was like, wow, there's so much room for creativity here. And so when I went off to college, my dream really at that point was to go to FIT, to come to this big city and go to this very cool fashion school. And I did. And it was really about fashion and buying and merchandising.

And the retail scene at that point was very, very different 20 years ago. And I didn't know what I was going to do with all that. I just knew it was where I needed to be and I made the right choice, not knowing that 15 years later I'd implode it all and start over, but it was the right choice then because it allowed me to be free. And I think pretty much everybody implodes everything at some point these days. Yeah, I hope. Was FIT what you thought it would be coming into it? Yeah, again, you know, growing up poor in New Jersey, anything was going to be even cooler, I think, than what I thought it would be because I had no expectations of what it could be. So it may have been different,

but it certainly was better, if anything. Right. So you get out of that experience. Yeah. And you end up staying in New York. I did. Yes. I stayed in New York. I got a job. I was interning for DKNY at the time and Liz Claiborne shortly after that.

And I've been working ever since in fashion. So like you're just, okay. I was doing great. I'm following the FIT fashion. I'm in the world. I'm in New York, the're just, okay. I was doing great. I'm following the, like the FIT fashion. I'm in the world. I'm in New York, the capital of that world. And I'm in the biggest companies with the coolest names. Exactly. And I, by the time I was 25, was making more money than most of my family combined. What did that feel like? Oh goodness. You know, it's interesting because it felt very imbalanced. You know, it felt very imbalanced. And so I think for a long time, I would say in my 20s,

however long that could be, but I felt like I had to separate from my family a bit. You know, and there was a lot of shame at that point for the way in which I grew up versus the world that I was in then. At that point, I was flying business class to Asia. I think my first trip to Asia was when I was 23. I was flying business class to Asia and my family was on food stamps in New Jersey. And so there was a sense, I think, then of having to separate and having to, I don't think it was conscious, but I think there was a sense of having to figure out who I was in the world. And how I knew that having money, whatever that looked like then, wasn't going to make me forget who I was. But I think it was also at a time that I probably wanted to forget who I was. I wanted to belong in the world I was in then, not in was also at a time that I, I probably wanted to forget who I was. I wanted to belong in the world I was in then, not in the world that I came from. Does that make sense?

As long as it made sense to you, like, especially, especially in that window, were you, were you still going, doing like the every other Sunday at home thing? Uh, I think so. Yeah. I feel like it's, was that weird at that during that window? No, it wasn't, it wasn't weird. Now I'm questioning if I was doing that, but I'm pretty sure I was. It might've been every week at that time. No, it wasn't weird because ultimately my family was where I belonged. And so they didn't, again, with the way I grew up, there was no judgment around who I was becoming if they recognized who I was becoming. And I didn't have to be anybody different at home. They were just proud of me. They were proud of what I was doing.

I mean, if you ask my mom still, you know, or any of my family members for that, you know, for that matter, they think I'm a model. They have no idea what I did in fashion or what I do today. And like, there's just no relativity for them. And so it wasn't weird to go home. I think it was weirder in some ways to be here, knowing how much I loved my family and how close I am even now to my family and how I felt this inner turmoil around who I was becoming and who, where I came from. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious where the turmoil was coming from. Like, was it like a feeling, a sense of I'm rejecting like something that's a part of me or was it a hiding sensation? Yeah. I think maybe it was, well, so I'd grown up and it had always been ingrained in us to not

forget who we were and not forget where we came from. That was always really important to my family. And I think a part of it then was, as I become more successful, does that mean that I'm forgetting where I came from? What does that mean to forget where you came from? I know I shouldn't do that, but by carrying, I don't know, an expensive hand bag or flying business class, does that mean that I forgot where I came from? So I think the turmoil was really trying to understand how all of that fit together. Because at 25, it needs to fit together. It felt like it needed to fit together. And it didn't smoothly. Yeah. getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required.

Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So meanwhile, while the backdrop is you are building a career. Yeah. In this industry in New York City.

What was the world like in that industry? Because this would have been 90s? Yeah. No, no. It was early 2000s. Okay. Yeah, early 2000s. What was happening in that world in New York City around then? What was it like? It was fun. I mean, there was a lot of, again, I worked for very large brands, so it sounds very exotic, but it was corporate bureaucracy. And so we created these little,

you know, sort of mini communities. I was in product development. So I was in the sort of liaison between creative and business. And we had fun. You know, my boss then is one of my closest friends today. And she really created a space for us to explore who we were and explore the work we were doing and find interest in it. And so I have no big tall tales about the fashion industry, but what I know for sure is that I think folks on the outside would think there are a lot more or there were a lot more women in senior positions. And I very much remember that there weren't. And the ones that were, were not kind. They were not kind, but they were successful.

What was your aspiration then? Was it clear to you or were you just kind of heads down and showing off? No, yeah. My job was to just one foot in front of the other and see where it took me. I don't think I had an aspiration in a deeper philosophical sense, at least. I think I just was trying to do the best I could. Yeah. So you're doing this for a series of years, for 10, 15 years. 15 years, yeah. Right. Rising up in the industry, building reputation, building living, living in New York, which is not easy. What happens that everything

changes? So probably 12 years in, I did this crazy thing and I partook in a yoga teacher training. And of course that just changes everything because you can never see the world the same way again. And not only did I take one of them, but then I decided I should really learn more about the philosophy of meditation and yoga. So I did another yoga teacher training and multiple meditation trainings and it shifted everything for me. You know, I didn't intend for it to, but it really forced me in many ways to question who I was in the world in a way that was greater than what was around me. And something that I'd realized in hindsight was that I was building a life that was very admirable to many. I was building a life, not even admirable, but was inspiring for many, was something that they would seek if they did

what I did in the world. And it looked great on paper, but it didn't feel great. And for me connecting to who I was, you know, via yoga, it really didn't allow me to do something that no longer felt in alignment with my core values. And I realized when I had to dismantle so many things that the work I was doing in the world wasn't necessarily who I was. And one of the questions, the first questions that they ask you in yoga teacher training or in the one that I did was, who are you without the titles? And I thought, shit, I don't know. I mean, I am these titles.

So if you strip me of those, I have no idea. And that question is so powerful. Who are you without the titles? You're not a mom, you're not a sister, you're not a daughter, you're not a friend. Who are you beneath it all? And when I started to strip away the titles, I was no longer Cindy that worked in fashion and dressed a certain way and had to look a certain way and sound a certain way and fly a certain way, but I just became me and me was a very simple human being without all the shit. I was a very simple human being. And so I was 35 at the time and I was working as a consultant in the fashion

industry then and was working for a luxury label. And it was the night before spring, it was spring 2013 fashion week and it was 2am.m. Now, to be in the fashion industry and experience Fashion Week is unbelievable. There's nothing like it, you know? And so folks are running around all over the place, and in the back end, everybody's got their Macs opened, and they're looking at all of the shows that are going live at the time at style.com. And everybody's really excited, and the designer is like screaming for another pair of pants for the runway show tomorrow night. And I remember, again, it was 2 a.m.

I looked around and I thought, holy shit. These folks are really running on adrenaline and they are so happy to be here. And I knew in that moment it wasn't where I was supposed to be. I just wanted to go home. I wanted to go to sleep. I didn't care about the pants. I didn't care about who was showing what, you know? And it was very visceral to me in that moment. It wasn't a decision I was going to make right then, you know, outwardly,

but I knew I was done. I knew that I no longer had to prove to the world that this poor little girl from New Jersey could do something, could be someone. And a week later I gave my notice and I never went back to the fashion industry. So when you, when you reach that point and it becomes clear to you what you don't want anymore, was it remotely clear what you did want? Of course not, silly. No, it's never that easy. No, but- Wouldn't it be nice if it was though? Somebody handed you the notes and go, here you go. Open the first page of the next book and start reading it. No, fuck no, no.

You know, but what I did know about myself is it was all or nothing. You know, what that meant to me then was that I had to leave the fashion industry. I had to, there was no, because, you know, to back up a little bit, I had sort of been inching out for a while when I left my full-time career to consult. Because consulting to me was sort of me being able to be in and be out and go on these vacations and come back and work.

And the last straw was really pulling away from all of it and just saying, I'm out. I'm not excited about this. And the emotions that are wrapped up in a pair of pants are not for me. It's not to say they're bad, but I don't feel them. And this isn't where I want to be anymore. And not shockingly, I suppose, about much of the fashion industry is it doesn't make you feel good about yourself, at least in my experience. I remember, you know, again, since high school, I've had a sense of self stylistically, meaning I wore what I wanted. I didn't try to impress anyone. And, you know, a lot of times it was weird and interesting, but I remember wearing cowboy boots to this company and the designer sort of launching into this talk in front of a buyer who was in from

Barneys New York at the time. And he just looked at me and he's like, Cindy, do you have to wear those cowboy boots and make that sound in the showroom? And I looked at him and with so much calm, again, it was my newfound yoga calm, I suppose. I just went, well, you can hire another person to oversee product development. And nothing happened. I didn't get fired. I didn't. It just was this moment of sort of taking back a certain power and saying, I'm not going to let you say shit like that to me for no other reason than your own ego, for no other reason than to show a position of power. But I wasn't his employee, you know? I was there as a consultant and I can leave whenever I wanted to. And so in that moment, I think it reminded me of who I wanted to be and who I didn't want to be in that world.

Yeah. Was there any... Because you'd spent the last, you know, like 12, 15 years building, building your, I mean, not just your living, but a solid chunk of your identity around being this person in the world. Yeah. You know, and having these things around you. And very often we build the trappings of a life around the assumption that they're going to be there.

Yeah. And we also build a certain sense of social status around that. When you say this isn't for me, you're not just stepping away from a paycheck. Because for you, it wasn't just, I'm going to get a different job in fashion. It was like, I need to completely step out of this path. How does that affect you on a

sort of like a social level and an identity level? Yeah. That next year was the hardest year of my life. And I say that my, my father had passed away at that point already. It was still in so many ways harder than that, because this was as an adult, you know, a grown ass woman. I now have to figure out who I am. I thought I knew. I thought at that point I kind of had my shit together and I knew who I was in the world. And to feel displaced by choice, I did this to myself. You know, at 35 in a city like New York City where everything is so tied to who you know and what you do. And I didn't know who I was anymore. And I had these moments where I went through a long bout of insomnia. And I remember crying by the garbage can in my kitchen on the floor at 3 a.m. Here I was in this fancy apartment

in Brooklyn, an old converted piano factory. I couldn't afford to live there anymore, but I had to keep living there. It was the one thing I wasn't afford to live there anymore, but I had to keep living there. It was the one thing I wasn't willing to give up. But I remember crying by the garbage can and just saying, Cindy, what the fuck did you do to your life? You grew up here and here you are again. Now, of course, that's the way it felt. That wasn't the reality of it, but that is exactly what it felt like. And I had to spend that year really digging deep. And it was also a year that I lost a lot of my close friendships, not because they were terrible people, but because we didn't converge in the same places anymore.

And as I was in this phase of discovery and that meant digging deep and it wasn't always attractive mostly it wasn't there were just a lot of tears and discomfort and you know I really was making some conscious choices around the kind of conversations I wanted to have and the people I wanted to have those conversations with and I realized that I had gotten to 35 which is still very young but by surrounding myself with relationships that were in many ways very shallow. We all had fun. It was great, but they weren't very deep.

And so it was in that year that I really discovered who my people were and who they were in. And there was no, there was no hard feelings, but I knew that certain ties were going to have to be severed because I was no longer the same person. And I still have a shit ton of fun, but it's different. There's a depth. And I realized that there wasn't enough space to have folks around who couldn't go there, whatever that meant to me at the time. Yeah. What did it mean? I mean, who were those people and where was there? Yeah. Oh, Jonathan. Those people were friends. And there was going

to that dark place that I was in. I think generally I'm a very positive person. I walk into a room and folks have said, you're like lightning in a room. But I couldn't be that. There was a year where I could not be that. And I couldn't find myself in it. There was nothing. I couldn't pull myself out of it. There was nothing that I could do except sit. And I had to sit in it. And I was either going to sit in it alone or there were going to be friends that could sit in that with me. And that meant just sitting in our apartment and talking for hours about things that seemed meaningless, but because they felt of value at the time. But it was not a frivolous year. I love frivolity, but that year between 35 and 36, or that year I should say, was not frivolous.

It was heavy. And so there were definitely folks that could be there and could bring me out of it um but there were some that didn't know how to be in that and that's that's not a bad thing but it's not what i need it's not what i need now and it's not what i needed then yeah i think also like i wonder often whether i feel like so many of us are wired to two things. One, when we have a friend, somebody who's really close to us, a relative, and we see them in that space, or maybe when we're in that space,

the impulse is, okay, it's not okay for them to be there. What can I do to help get them back to, quote, who they were before? Yes. Rather than, no, they're going through something which is really hard, but also really important. And it may not feel good, but it's actually okay to be in that place.

Not forever, but let me just, what can I do to just support them while they're there and walk beside them until it's time for them to emerge? And that's, I think we're so impulse driven not to respond that way. That sometimes you have to kind of like just check yourself and be like, then I'm actually doing more harm than good because I'm uncomfortable seeing this person there. Yeah. And it really did become about them inadvertently. It's not from a place of bad will. It's almost just the way we are to a certain extent.

Yeah. And I think folks were really trying to do the best they could, but I was in this place where at that time, no one even knew how I grew up. I didn't really start to talk about how I grew up until then. And it's so interesting, five, six, seven years later now, I talk about it all the time, but because I'd created this separate version of myself. And in a lot of ways, I look at that time as a coming together. But because I'd created these two separate, the Cindy that was out in the world, but didn't necessarily know what to do with this other Cindy, this other self. And so I think that folks really, friends did the best they could, but they didn't know what they didn't know.

And I wasn't in a position and or willing or interested in having them help me figure it out. I needed to do it on my own. I needed to sit and connect the dots on my own. So how does that start to happen? How did the dots start to get reconnected and where do they start to point you? Yeah. Well, first was the garbage can incident. What I talk about is like laying on the floor at 3am in my fancy apartment. But I think for me, that was a moment of clarity. The garbage can incident became a moment where I, it was kind of like put on your big girl panties and keep it moving. You've had it.

You've had your year. Now get up and do something. And I did shortly thereafter. But it was a moment I had to have within myself. It wasn't an announcement to the world. I didn't even have an Instagram account then. It was a decision, an internal decision. And again, something I credit with growing up the

way I did is an inner resilience that everyone in my family has. We know when enough is enough. We know and we don't need anyone to tell us. We will make the decision. But when we do, all hell breaks loose because we go all in to whatever it is that we've decided. And in that moment, I decided I need to get up and figure out, at least take the next step. And shortly thereafter, I started teaching. I'd stayed in touch with a lot of my professors from FIT. And a few of them actually had said, Cindy, you should come teach. You should come teach.

And again, while I was in the midst of figuring out what I was doing was not a time to have me around folks that are very excited about the industry. But I did. I took them up on the offer. And I had spent that year going through my 401k. Luckily, somehow I still have some remnants of it left. But I had really spent that year going through everything. So I had nothing to show for my life at the age of 36, even though I worked to get something to show for my life. It all sort of, it didn't fall apart. I threw it in the garbage. And so the first thing I did was started teaching. And the second thing I did was started teaching, but teaching yoga in my apartment. Again, I had this big fancy space. I may as well use it. And it really was every once a week,

I would have maybe 10 people come over somewhere somewhere between 6 and 10, and we would have this three-hour yoga and meditation session that I would lead. And we would have chai, and we would just gather and communicate with one another. And again, I think that was the early representation of the work I do today, because for me, the real shift became when I started teaching, teaching not only students at Parsons at the time, but also teaching yoga, which I never intended to do. I had a career. I was just here to learn some shit. I'm not here to teach this to anyone, nor am I qualified. But I think what that did was gave me my voice back. It taught me that as I was, it was okay for me to say things out loud. It was okay to teach and that I didn't need to be any particular version of a teacher. I just had to do what I did best, which was be myself.

And even in teaching yoga or teaching my students at Parsons, and by the way, what I did best, which was be myself. And even in teaching yoga or teaching my students at Parsons, and by the way, what I was teaching wasn't fashion related. It was about managing creative teams and teaching the students how to work together and to embrace one another. But that time and those two steps really allowed me to gather the courage to stand for myself and to show myself to the world, not as two separate Cindy's, but as one. And so I shortly thereafter threw together a terrible website in hindsight. I mean, terrible. It was bad. I did it myself. And I remember emailing it out to everyone. I knew I was so proud. It was bad, but what it was was me taking a stand for who I was and saying, this is me publicly announcing who I am.

It didn't even really, I don't recall in what ways you could hire me at the time. I think I said I would come consult for your startup fashion brand. That might have been it. And one thing led to another and from teaching and sort of connecting, but I think on a larger level than that, putting myself out there. And it's the whole manifestation thing that I believe firmly in. and from teaching and sort of connecting, but I think on a larger level than that, putting myself out there. And it's the whole manifestation thing that I believe firmly in. Once you point your arrow, it will land where it needs to.

I had more and more women in particular who wanted to start fashion businesses, small, small businesses, micro businesses even. And I had a background in the operations side of it. And so I would help them do that. And I realized possibly, I guess maybe about a year after that, that what was really missing for me and a lot of these women who had left careers was the community aspect. We had these inborn communities.

When you work for somebody else, people come with that. You don't necessarily like them or belong in them. But by nature of being part of a shared mission or a shared vision, you do belong. And these become your people. And when you work for yourself, you don't have those people. Your friends are all going off to jobs. There was myself in a bunch of 20-somethings at the time. I was also too old, I felt like, to be in this space where I didn't know who my people were. But that was in fact where I'd landed. And I remember going out on social media at the time and saying, OK, I can teach you all how to build fashion businesses, at least the basics of it.

Does anyone want to do this in a community with others? And I think maybe 34 people came back and said yes. Shortly thereafter, I formed something called The Collective of Us, which was about getting these women together who had these smaller micro-businesses and coaching them in some ways as best I could, but more so getting culturally, the women that would show up in those spaces were also very diverse, like incredibly diverse. You know, I think our communities tend to be really homogenized. We surround ourselves with people who are like us. They look like us. They sound like us. They have the same beliefs that we have. And it's very comfortable and it's very safe. And the spaces that I was creating within the collective of us, they weren't always comfortable, but they were safe. And there was this shared mission

of collectively creating something, creating our businesses and supporting each other in creating those businesses. And so there was a safe space to say, well, I don't understand this or I don't understand that, that many of us who were around my age had never really had before. Which, you know, interestingly enough, I think millennials grew up in that. They created these spaces for themselves, but we never had that. We didn't, I don't even think I knew the term safe space at that point. But that's what we created. It was,

it was all online until we all met in person, and that became a whole other magical experience because I look back at those pictures, and there are women from every walk of life that had somehow found their way together in this hodgepodge group of women that will forever be known as the collective of us. And they're still part of my community to this day. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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How much of the way that they came together and the ethos that sort of everyone formed around, do you think, came from you having spent time in the shala, the sangha, in the yoga space, which is, it's an interesting world. I have a background in that world as well. And there's being in community is such an integral part of the practice and following your dharma and learning sort of like walking that path.

You don't do it alone in those worlds. It always unfolds in some level as a personal practice, but within the bigger context of community who are all sort of like along their own personal practices, but also kind of in service of themselves and each other. Yes. How much do you feel like that informed in a meaningful way, what you ended up creating?

150%. Prior to my practice, I wouldn't have known what that was like. Again, I grew up in a family that didn't really have family values in the traditional sense. We didn't have a religion. We didn't have a family culture in that way. So that was very fractured for me at a very young age. And really it was in my yoga community that I started to understand the divine benefits of us. You know, I had spent my life at that point, again, as two separate people.

And it was in that community. I mean, so integral to the collective of us, but to my life that my very first yoga teacher, he officiated our wedding. We're very close friends. And I think yoga really taught me that it was okay to be about the collective. Again, I grew up in a family that said, don't ever forget who you are. And in some ways, I think that made me feel as though it always had to be me individually, me and who I am, because I'm so different than everyone else. And I can't ever forget that. And if I become part of something that includes other people, then I'm going to forget who I am. And I can't do that. You know, that being in this space with these folks and this community of people that really believed that as much as we are individuals, we are a drop of water.

You know, we're the drop. We're not the ocean. And it shifted for me. And again, I often refer to community, Jonathan, as like the divine benefits of community and the divine beauty of community because it taught me yoga, my practice, my yoga community taught me that collectively we could do and achieve so much more while still individually being whomever we are meant to be in this world. It wasn't either or. It was both. And it's like, you know, Brene Brown talks about the distinction between fitting in and belonging, which I think is so, it's nuanced,

but it's so important, right? It's like, it's not about morphing yourself, you know, like to fit in with a group of people where you just want to feel like you're being accepted. It's about showing up as exactly who you are and knowing that you are still going to feel that sense of belonging because everyone else is doing it. And there's just this sensibility that says,

that's all we're asking of you. You don't need to look like us or talk like us or aspire to the same things. We just want you to show up as you because we want to relate to who you really are. A hundred percent. I had never experienced that before. And it's interesting because I don't think I ever, I never really thought about it, but I had never experienced that before. That sense of show up as you are, you know, in the workplace and fashion, people may say, I mean, I don't even think we would use that language, but they didn't mean it for sure. But in yoga, folks meant it like show up who as who you are. Don't change. Just come.

Yeah. At some point, you also did, you started to explore positive psychology as well. I did. Yeah. What drove that? I knew that I had, again, coming from a traumatic childhood, and I say this at the same time that I also say I had a pretty great childhood. I think people, you know, folks think that because you grew up poor, you grew up with the worst childhood. I've had people apologize to me after talks, and I was like, I think I've misrepresented the way in which I grew up. But I knew that for some reason, even as a child, I had a very optimistic outlook on

the world. And possibly because as an only girl or the youngest, my job was the happy maker. It just was from a very young age, but I knew that it was deeper than that. And that there was an ability that I had to bounce back that I didn't always see in folks. And I needed to understand why that was. Because my brother and I will talk a lot today and we say, in our blood, we have the Holocaust and we have slavery. We can do just about anything. Truly, we can come back from just about anything. And I knew that there had to be something scientific behind it. It wasn't, you know, this magical bloodline of trauma, but that there was something, that there was something there. And it's when I really started to understand grit and resilience and the ability to rewire

the neurons in your brain and what that did and how we can consciously choose that and create that. But for me, it was again about self-discovery. I think once I partook in my first yoga training or teacher training, there was no going back. There was no going back to just caring about myself. Like from here on out, it will be about discovery and connection and learning. And so I think the next phase for me was positive psychology. And really, once I understood this resilience thing, this grit thing, I was like, yeah, I have that. It's kind of the hustle mentality that is just who I am because of the way in which we grew up.

Yeah. It's fascinating you brought up grit also in the context of positive psych. By the way, when we're using the phrase positive psychology, we're not talking, it is not the functional equivalent of pop psychology. It's a whole other field for those listening. And we've talked about it a bunch on the podcast, came out of sort of Seligman and developing the whole world of psychology from baseline to flourishing. But the idea of grit has fascinated me also

because I don't see it as the same as resilience. And in part also, I'm fascinated by the fact that there has been a lot of work on how to train resilience. And it, I think, is widely considered now a trainable thing, like a trainable state. Whereas there's a lot more debate about this thing called grit, whether you have it or whether you don't have it, whether, you know, the original, a lot of the original research from Angela Duckworth viewed it and actually spoke about it as a state and not a trait. And some of the follow-on research has really, nobody's gotten to the core of, well, if you don't feel like you actually have this thing

where nothing can knock you back, like you set your mind on something and it shall be, can you get it? And I've been fascinated with that question, which I think is different from resilience, which is the ability to develop the skills to when hardship or adversity comes your way, navigate your way through it and not be completely destroyed by it. That's right. That's right. You know, and a lot of, I can't imagine that grit isn't a trait. I can't see it as not a trait. I keep defaulting to that too, but I don't want to see it that way because like, I would love to think that there is a process by which you could acquire that as a skill. Could learn it.

I haven't quite figured that out yet, but I haven't given up on that. Yeah, well, keep me posted, you know? But as I think about the folks that have grit, have it, you know, it's a thing that to me is oftentimes innate. Actually, everyone that comes to mind, it's innate in who they are.

It's not to say that you have to have gone through hardships, but I think it certainly comes very natural if you did and saw the other side of it. You know, you've arrived at something different. And so it's hard for me to imagine that it's anything other than a trait, but I'm open. I could change my mind. Yeah. I wonder if there's some middle state where it's sort of like the, almost for a lot of people, the post-traumatic growth-based outcome of really intense high stakes early life adversity. I don't know. But I'm fascinated by some of that explanation. Who did you explore on Positive Psych with? So there was a program.

It's actually put on by Marty Seligman, by his folks. And they put it on right here at the Open Center. Oh, beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, it was amazing. So you also, I mean, you're building, you're consulting, you're building community. At some point you write a book. I did.

And you also start to step onto stages. Yeah. Where does that get? And that is a big part of what you do now. Like you're out in the world, traveling the world, speaking. Yeah. Where does that come from? The first time I stepped on a stage was when I was, it was again, it was maybe five years ago.

And it was when someone asked me to speak about fashion or something at a creative conference in Utah of all places. And I remember being so nervous. I went to meditate in a bathroom stall beforehand. I was just so nervous and my palms were sweaty. And something happened when I got in front of a room full of people where it almost seemed as though I was outside of myself. I'd never done this before. But there were maybe, I don't know, 200, 250 folks in the room, mainly women. And I just remember feeling like something was coming through me. And I know what that sounds like. And it is exactly what it sounds like. But it didn't feel like there was anything consciously that I was doing to share what I was sharing. It just came through me in that moment. And I remember being on such a high when I was done because I felt for the first time that I had done the thing I was put here to

do. It was only transmitting information, but beyond that, it was the connection. It was seeing Seeing in that space that I saw people and they saw me for who I was. And in that space, no one was asking me to be different and I wasn't asking them to be different. But instead, I was able to connect with them in a way that I had never been able to. It wasn't about me being on a stage and knowing all the answers. It was about engaging in a larger conversation with a community of people. But it was never about coming alive on a stage so much as like building this broad conversation. And the response that I had after that sort of changed the trajectory for me. Because then one by one, you know, folks started asking me if I would come speak at different events and do different things.

And I'm still kind of overwhelmed by all of it. And I think because of some of the opportunities that come my way and quite frankly, what I get paid to speak is mind blowing to me because it is doing. I stand there and it comes. Whatever I meant to share with an audience, I'm no longer afraid of very large rooms filled with people, thousands of people. I think I trust that whatever I'm meant to share with the folks in that room will come through me. And I believe that. And it's never served me wrong, at least not yet. Yeah. And I mean, what you speak about has also evolved a lot over those five years. Yeah.

Yeah, sure. It used to, initially, it was about women with these micro-businesses. It was what I was learning. Really, I was speaking about it as I was learning it. And it's evolved. The more comfortable I think I've become in my own skin and the work that I do in the world, I no longer feel contained. And what I mean by that is now I can talk about whatever the fuck I want. And a lot of times that's fear in the imposter syndrome, but it's everything I do, regardless of the topic, is through the lens of humanity and of empathy and of seeing us for who we are collectively. And so I speak about everything from collaboration to diversity

and inclusion, fear in the imposter syndrome, women in general. I speak a lot to women, primarily women audiences, but also to mixed audiences. And I'm always so overwhelmed when a middle-aged white guy will come up to me at the end and go just like, shit, we needed you here. And that happens so much more than I would expect because in my mind, I wasn't necessarily speaking to them. But I was speaking to them because what I do is not specifically about the women in the room. It's about connecting on a human level. And I start off most of my talks with talking about my background. And the reason that I do that is because as somebody on a stage,

I want to level the playing field. I want you to know that I'm not this person up here who had all this training and sort of appeared with all of the answers on a stage. I'm a person who's experienced some shit just like you and also came out on the other side and, hey, I'm doing okay. And I get to speak to you from a stage, but also, you know, off the stage afterwards. And I think that that has made all the difference. And that's something I've done consistently, probably initially out of fear of being found out. I was like, I should tell you everything right now because you're going to find out later. And then I'm going to be a fraud. Social media. I'll get busted if I don't just lay it out. Yeah. I'm just going to lay it out. But that in laying out my experience, much of which I

shared here earlier, but more so, it creates a sense of balance in the room and a sense of me not needing to show up on that stage with an ego. I am going to share with you. I'm not going to teach you anything, but I'm going to share with you what I know. And we are going to co-create this. Even if it's a room of 8,000 people, we are going to co-create this. And I will walk into an audience and I will talk to people. And again, it's like this thing that just comes through me where I am the vessel to share the information and I will do it in the way that feels genuine to me. And that is not necessarily going to be the way in which most

people do it. I'm incredibly vulnerable on a stage. I don't do any acrobats. I don't do anything fancy. I still use slides. But I think the folks in the audience really connect to the humanity of the topics that I speak about and the way, I suppose, in which I do it. You use the phrase, you felt for the first time that you're doing the thing that you're here to do. I think when we show up that way in front of other people, it's such a rare experience that people are drawn to it. They can't not find themselves being compelled. It's like there's a gravitational pull towards it. I think in part because it's so rare,

in part because also so many of the people who are in the audience don't feel it and they want to, and they become phenomenally curious about like, what is happening in you that I'm feeling? Cause it seems like your energy is how I wanna feel too. And it's funny when I see that in speakers and leaders and people in all domains, I almost don't care what they're talking about. Right. I just want to know how they're feeling the way they're feeling.

Like what's happening inside of them? How have they arranged their worlds, their practices, their devotions, whatever it is, so that they're radiating something into a room that I can feel and I want more of. Radiating, that's sort of the perfect word, right? It's this thing that happens on stage where in many ways I say I leave everything I am on the stage. You know, not by design, but because, you know, when I'm co-creating in a space with an audience, I am 100% there. And so I'm going to share things that I didn't necessarily plan to share or whatever that may look like. And I'll often say at the beginning of my talks to please turn off your phones, or if you're recording this, like, you know, I respectfully ask that you shut it off

for the first five minutes, because I'm going to share things that, as I said earlier, it's not my story to tell, but I will share it in this room because I trust that this is a safe space. Yeah. As we sit here in the studio today, it's kind of the eve of you launching something brand spanking new, which I kind of love. Just like to tease a little bit, because I'm really, I mean, literally,

I think you must've launched it like a day or two ago at this point. It was about five days ago, yes. What is it and why is it an agency? Yeah, so I created a platform called Dear Grown-Ass Women. And Dear Grown-Ass Women is a platform for women over 35 to truly show up in the world for who we are, but to in the world for who we are,

but to show the diversity of who we are. I think millennials have done this magical thing of making the world see them. You know, for good or for bad, it doesn't matter, right? But the world sees millennials. We are in this space, and I, you know, I refer to this age group as Xenial and Gen X. I am 42 and we are not, we don't see ourselves very often. We live in a, in a world today where it's a compliment if somebody says you look young for your age. When people say that to me, I go, do you mean that as a compliment? Because what that says to women and it speaks to this platform, Dear Grown-Ass

Women, is like we exist. Not only do we exist, but we are incredibly badass and educated and diverse and we look so many different ways with so many different abilities that we have to be seen and we have to stand up for ourselves. And in standing up for ourselves, that means standing up for one another. And this platform is really meant to do that, to really represent the diversity of who we are as women. And the shirt that I'm wearing, I am not for everyone, is very much a part of that because maybe two years ago on social media, I started writing these posts and addressing them, dear grown ass women. And then I would say something like, you are not for everyone. And they just really sort of had their own traction. And I realized over time, again,

sort of like the moment when I left fashion, it was all or nothing. I realized a year ago, I was in a very similar space and the communities that I'd built were very successful. The work I was doing was great, but I knew I had to leave it all behind. Again, and now at this point, being the second time this happened, I didn't question it. I just went, okay, game over. I don't know what this is going to look like, but I trust that what I'm meant to do in the world will show up. And it too has taken a while to come, but it did. And we just launched a week ago.

I had no idea what I stepped into when I envisioned this. And the response that we would have to a platform for women, diverse women over 35, and really creating a space for us to be seen. The response that I've gotten and literally the day, like the first day, my team and I said, how many responses have we gotten for local chapters? We will eventually create local chapters. And we put that on our website in all honesty, thinking like, you know, maybe there'll be one or two people that want to bring this, you know, dear grown ass women idea to communities. But we've gotten so many. So I suppose there was a need, but that wasn't, I didn't know what it was. I didn't know how big it could be. And we've launched five days ago. Yeah. That's amazing. So it's been overwhelming. Yeah. It just

speaks to you tapping into a vein. It's like deargrownasswomen.com, right? Yes. It's interesting for me also, right? I'm 53. 53, right? And not a grown ass woman. No, most days. But I often think about how, so I'm literally like, I'm the first year of Gen X, actually, I think is what it comes down to. In so many ways, I feel like most of Gen X, it is like the invisible slash forgotten generation just generally and women even more so, but as a generation, we're kind of like the generation that was jaded. And now the marketing world and the social media world, a lot of the business world just kind of forgot about. The boomers, there's a lot of stuff going on. They're recognizing our services, like tons of stuff. Millennials and Gen Y, Gen Z. But at Gen X, something happened.

We kind of vanished. Yeah, no one cared. Well, we're wedged between these two huge generations. You know, we're kind of stuck in the middle and just no one cares. Like, it really feels like no one cares. We don't see ourself represented. And it really, I think, was by default of being shrouded,

you know, sort of encased or sandwiched between these two very large generations. But there are 41 million Gen X women in the U.S. There's a lot of us. But no one seems to notice. Not only that, but we are the only generation to live analog and digitally. You know, I didn't have a cell phone when I was a kid growing up. There were so many things that we just didn't have. So we know the realities of both. We still are cynical, but there's also a certain optimism that we have. And the lens that we have on the world is different because of the

generation in which we grew up. And also because we are surrounded by these very large generations where we had to create an identity for ourselves. And the reality of it is, is that this age range from 35 to 60 is so diverse. It doesn't look like any one particular person or one particular ability. And no one seems to notice. And I think empowering folks to see us has been overwhelming. I love that. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So sitting here in this container, hopefully safe container of of a good life project. If I offer up the phrase, to live a good life, what comes up? To allow yourself to see and be seen.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to

click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. Apple Watch Series 10 swimming or sleeping and it's the fastest charging apple watch getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes the apple watch series 10 available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum compared to previous generations iphone 10s are later required charge time and actual results will vary mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman i know you're gonna be fun on january 24th.

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