Thank You Jean Runyon

My friend just died.  She was 82 and she was everybody’s friend, or I should say everybody wanted to be her friend.

The legendary Jean Runyon.

Jean was a powerful woman with a resume and charm that was envied.  Accomplished actress, founder of powerful public relations firm, philanthropist, mentor, woman of the year, businesswoman on the year… and the list goes on.  The City of Sacramento even named a theater after Jean, The Jean Runyon Theater.

Jean was intelligent, lovable, generous, shrewd, calculating, successful, funny, and deadly serious.  Behind her “Carol Channing” funny lady was a brain and wit that could stop you in your tracks.

She owned a painting by Picasso and displayed it next to a painting by her grandson.  Jean made me smile when she would shrug and with a wink say she couldn’t  tell the difference between the two (often neither could her guests).  They both were priceless to her.  Point made.

I had the privilege to know Jean in the final years of her life.  She adored my husband Ettore, and through Ettore and our good friend Eric, I got to know Jean in the last years of her life.

Despite being in her 80’s and in frail health, Jean came to see me in the play The Vagina Monologues.  She didn’t mind the sirens outside the theater, the dingy seating, or my bad New Jersey accent.  She laughed at my jokes, cried at the end, clapped the loudest, and took me for champagne afterwords praising everything about my performance.  Jean was always encouraging me to continue in the arts and was delighted when I started this blog.  Every time I went to see her she asked how my website was going. 

About 6 months ago when I went to visit Jean I asked her for a piece of advice.   I had contacted a cosmetics company that I liked in New York called ELF Cosmetics inquiring if they could use a mommy perspective on their cosmetics blog.  ELF wrote back and said they were interested in my writing and they wanted my best writing sample, hence  my dilemma.  My best writing sample happened to be a humorous story about my battered vagina after childbirth and post-birth vagina surgery.  Doesn’t exactly make you want to jump up and buy lipstick, or jump up at all really.

I went to Jean seeking clarity on what direction to take.  Send a cosmetics company a writing sample about my “down there parts” or send them something less risque and watered down, but most likely more appropriate for a cosmetics website.

Jean was clear in her answer.

She said, “Never live in fear.  Go big.  Never compromise your voice…AND IF THEY DON’T LIKE YOUR VAGINA…THEN SCREW THEM!  You don’t want to write for them!”

Got it.  I went home and I followed Jean’s advice.  I sent ELF my funny story about my beat-up, tore up from the floor up, sewed up vagina….AND THEY LOVED IT!

That post got the ball rolling.  In addition to writing for ELF cosmetics, I now also write for Safeway, momversation.com, and aiminglow.com…and more to come…never once changing a word.  My site continues to grow and I will always remember the words of advice Jean gave me and I took to heart…her vagina version of be true to you. It is good advice for us all, even if you never pushed out a 9lb. 11oz. baby, wrote a story about it and then sent that story to a cosmetics company in New York.

THANK YOU JEAN RUNYON, for believing in me, my vagina, my voice.

I’ll never forget you honey.

Love,

M

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