Oh, rest assured that I will be detailing in grueling and painstaking detail my divorce so that y’all can either sympathize with me (my favorite currency being PITY) or also learn from my mistakes WHAT NOT TO DO. However, I would be grossly negligent if I didn’t dedicate this blog, SWEET REVENGE, to the person who started me on my path to healing. No, it wasn’t the dutiful girlfriends who held my hands until my nails had dug into their skin leaving marks or went to court with me in troops (until they were banished by New York’s Judge Drager who told my sweet but unpaid attorney Ravi Sharma (a saint masquerading as a Hottie lawyer) “tell her not to bring her POSSEE!!!” No, not the anguished late night phone calls listeners who hung on my every incoherent word while I burning through a pack of ciggies with a Thera Flu chaser to battle my insomnia. I must start my blog with a dedication to the man who saved my life, gave me a job worth doing, a place to call home and encouragement to start over with all my businesses. A man who while he paid me to start an on-line magazine that would include a story on me, gave me back my belief in myself, Michael Bruno the founder and owner of www.1stdibs.com, the world’s leading on-line marketplace for antiques and mid-century design, refused to let me wallow in self-pity and yet endured what no boss should -the never-ending intrusion of my personal life. Michael believed in me when I couldn’t. He held me up as I fell time and again into a morass of self-defeat and he gave me the encouragement to Stop writing yet another book-this time on divorce and instead create a website that would transform the lives of divorcees.
Having saved the Paris Flea markets when 9/11 threatened their very existence and then sustained New Orleans legendary dealers when Katrina swept away anything resembling a customer in its wake-he flew in his own photographer to shoot the dealers antiques for free and dropped all charges for a year.
Yes, he is a hero to two cities and one lone divorcee. When my father died (more on that relationship in a coming blog-Marrying Daddy) and I was told in his car hurtling along a Hampton’s Highway and threw myself out of the car onto the grassy embankment Michael picked me up literally and figuratively. He did not skip a beat despite his own crazy schedule (he is the most popular man in Interior Design with a cell phone log that rivals Netanyahu and more emails than Larry Ellison). He called and bought my ticket to Birmingham, picked up my daughter Anabelle and took us to a public place so that I could tell her and not completely crumble and then went to my apartment and packed my clothes and got me somehow on a plane. I don’t know how he does everything that he does and still is compassionate and kind and awake to every detail of his friend’s lives. He gave Anabelle and me hope and we ran with it. I am dedicating my blog to Michael because he gave me faith when all was lost, pride where their was crippling self-doubt, a job when I had no purpose, a future when I was blind to possibilities and compassion through all the days I surely drove him crazy. This and all that I do now-is his.
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