In less than a week I have become an investigative reporter. I am both serious and completely unserious at the same time, except that it is seriously true.
On Tuesday, September 14th, I managed to not have to do early morning baby duty and snuck some phone news time while making coffee. That’s when I read a small story about Gabby Petito being missing. What really moved me in all of it was that I ended up on her youtube page and watched her video and saw her discovering the place I’ll always call home (Venice and Santa Monica) in a way I remember doing when I was 18. Then to know she was doing road trips and going to parks that shaped our 15 years on the west coast also triggered me. And then now, being a mom, made me internalize the story and the what-if-this-happened-to-AB thing in a new way. I was so shook, I didn’t even tell my husband about it. I think I did a small post about it on my new instagram with like 2 followers, including my sister. That’s who broke the news to me two days later that the story was blowing up and The Cut was covering it.
I’m not going to go into how the story develops here because it is all on my stories on Instagram and my investigative journalist hero, @houseinhabit, has been sleuthing in this and sharing my coverage. They say don’t meet your heroes, but I’d love to meet her.
I spend every day contemplating what drives me and what I’m passionate about… maybe it’s boredom, maybe it’s because I can’t get to the computer enough to write as much as I want to write, or maybe it’s the good ol’ Hamilton adage of feeling like I want to do anything like I’m running out of time.
But really, I already know what moves me. And the last 48 hours has reminded me of it.
I don’t think there is anything in the world that makes me more angry, defiant, passionate, than when the patriarchy robs us of a strong, smart, courageous woman. When a man comes into a woman’s life with his entitlement to anything and takes from a woman, everything. Whether it’s her dignity, her innocence, her opportunity, her money, her safety, her body, her—
In fact, this anger became my manifesto. When I had the opportunity to write and direct a short film, I made a dark comedy about regular women taking back their power from the patriarchy ONE YOGA CLASS AT A TIME! Did I mention it was a dark comedy??? I got into a bundle of festivals and even won Best Director in one of them, which felt fucking great because the last thing Hollywood needs is another dude winning best director of anything.
Anyway, so when people are asking me why I’m so into this story, I think of my little short film and how it was born out of a real experience where I felt on the razor’s edge of everything I ever wanted being taken away from me for simply being a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. I grew up with four sisters and a Dad who told us every day that we can be anything we want to be. And he really really believes that—without his own knowledge or experience that to some extent, that’s just simply not true and the harshness of that reality is what I find so fucking unfair. But, as we’re often reminded, life is unfair.
I think about the extremely stupid shit I did when I was 22, and younger, and how lucky I am that it took as long as 32 years for me to really get what luck means. And how luck isn’t guaranteed. Being married doesn’t exempt or guarantee the luck continues. And this is the burden all women carry when we walk at night with our keys stabbed out; when we’re told we shouldn’t have been wearing that outfit or drinking that drink; or when we look at our daughters and hope and pray they’re luckier than us. Safer. Happier. Free.
Let’s find Gabby. Let’s get justice for those two beautiful, terrified women, Kylen and Crystal, and let’s keep talking. Let’s keep sharing our stories. Let’s keep telling people the truth. Let’s keep telling people what they don’t want to hear. And let’s figure out how the fuck we’re going to get people to listen, listen, listen, and in the mean time, let’s hold space for every single person who needs it.
Now go drink your coffee and let’s get to work.