Laura Gassner Otting

Are your critics right about you? I had an interesting experience last week. And, I don’t mean my happy sheet cake dance for my 50th birthday. (See what you are missing if you aren’t following me on Instagram?) No, I did something even more uncomfortable than eating half of a sheet cake meant for an … Read more

This is me. This is 50. This is unbridled enthusiasm running headlong into discomfort and doubt. ⁣ This is bravado, bravery, and boldness questioning all the things at all the times. ⁣ This is fierceness and femininity wrapped in a moxie-driven, awkwardly uncoordinated, lemon of a body. ⁣ This is a best-selling author and in-demand … Read more

In 1992, I fell under the spell of a candidate and even more of an ideal I heard him state in an impassioned speech on a tiny black and white TV in a small strip mall in Gainesville, Florida. I dropped out of law school, and went to work to get him elected, and later … Read more

The best gift I was ever given didn’t cost a dime, and it changed my life. When I was 17 years old I began to slow dance with an eating disorder. By the time I was 21, it had its lifeless clutches wrapped so tightly around my self worth that every waking moment was spent … Read more

I’m learning how to say goodbye. For someone who has so much, I wrote a lot about loss this year. I wrote about loss of identity in the first weeks of the pandemic — loss of my business, loss of my kids’ rites of passage, loss of all of our normalcy. I wrote about loss … Read more

Goal setting is hard, but it doesn’t need to be. Once upon a time, long ago, likely before you were even conscious of what was happening, someone handed you a scorecard. And, on that scorecard there were a great many items: the right school, the right internship, the right job, the right spouse, the right … Read more