I Slept With My SoulMate and Didn’t Even Know It

The funny thing about my life on the interwebs is that it’s taught me not to regret. Some of the greatest losses I’ve had professionally have brought me outstanding personal connections.

Once upon a time I tried out to be an iVillage iVoice and was not chosen. Actually, TWICE upon a time that happened. (What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment.) In those misses, I was joined by the amazing Lela Davidson; who, incidentally, is now an iVoice. The fine folks at iVillage clearly saw the error of their ways and have since snapped her up to be on their team.  A year ago, Lela and I not only bonded over our self-proclaimed loser status but also our mutual love of fabulous shoes, and, well, booze.

It was one of those great internet friendships that seems strange to anyone not involved in this world but made perfect sense to me. Who cares that she lived in Arkansas and we’d probably never see each other in real life? I loved her 140 character snark on twitter enough to spend too much time trying to reconcile how someone so sharply witty and clearly stylish could have that big southern hair in her profile picture. (It’s ok, she and I have addressed the profile hair.)

Then I slept with Lela.

Ok, ok the internet’s not that weird.

What really happened is that we reached out and decided to room together at BlogHer last year and she showed up after I was well in bed, snuck in next to me and barely made a sound. We first laid eyes on eachother the next morning as she lapped me in the 5K race we were both entered in and yelled, “Cristie? I think we slept together last night.” Seriously, she was passing me on my way out as she was finishing and I barely recognized her through my haze of sweat and heavy breathing. Yeesh.

Somehow she still wanted to hang out with me and I was delighted to learn in those three days that she is not only as wickedly funny as I thought, but also warm, kind, ridiculously driven and successful and doesn’t snore one bit. You may also want to know that she is a tiny but mighty little thing who wears the hell out of the fashion she loves and her  hair is not anywhere near southern big. That profile picture told an exaggerated tale. Lela is gorgeous inside and out and the one thing the online persona did not exaggerate was her collection of fabulous shoes (or her penchant for cocktails).

I had a great time at last year’s BlogHer following Lela around to important events for authors, meeting the other cool people in her circle and hearing tales of publishing her book. I learned a little about hustling from this girl and I mean that in the best way possible. If you’ve ever had to market yourself for anything, you know the power of hustle and Lela Davidson is the face of it. She’s pushing genius in the area of marketing and I feel pretty lucky to have sat at her finely soled feet while she was doing it for her book.

Which brings me to this post today. This is the one year birthday of Lela’s book BlackListed From the PTA. (Even the title is awesome.) For the book’s birthday, Lela asked a few of us to write something in celebration. I was eager to do it because I love celebrating my awesome author friends, but I was also struck with the terror that can come from the fear of letting someone down that you admire. I tried on all sorts of creative posts. I tried to be funny. I tried to be eloquent. I even thought I’d just post a picture of shoes. But nothing I wrote seemed good enough to honor this BookBirth Day. Then I decided to just tell you about Lela. Good old genuine gushing on people I care about-that’s what I do best.

Trust me when I say you want to read Blacklisted From the PTA. Wanna know why? Read this from Lela’s Bio,
“I believe it’s your moral responsibility to find the thing that makes you lose track of time, the thing that empties all the racing thoughts from your head and leaves you deaf to the oven timer so you forget about the cookies until the smoke finds you.  Writing is my thing.  Here’s to hoping you find yours.” 

If you need some of that in your life read Lela’s book. If you want to do it for free, leave me a comment below telling me about a unique friendship you have and I’ll choose one comment to win a free copy to send to you-signed by Ms. Davidson herself. Contest ends July 15. If you don’t win, you can get copies of Blacklisted here or Kindle copies here (free for Amazon Prime Members).