Starstruck

A book about Audrey Hepburn arrived.
It was from him. The man himself. The one who revolutionized reality television.

I held it close to my chest and smiled.

The personal note was lovely, I thought.

Dear Keira,
Great work this year!
Many, many thanks.

I read it twice, then read it to my mother.

It was kind. Thoughtful.
It was brief.
It could have been written to anyone.
And that was the part I couldn’t quite place.

I had worked hard, and I had done great work, just as he said.

I was pregnant, and it was a difficult pregnancy.
At two months, I flew to Los Angeles, slept for three hours, went to an engagement event, and flew back home.

My partner at that time said, “You are going too hard, too fast. Nothing better happen to that baby…” The weight of parenthood and career, and how to do both well, was a gut punch. The responsibility for a life that started before I even held her.

I missed my son’s first birthday. But I closed a one-million-dollar gift that was announced for a mini campaign.

Along the way, I crossed paths with people I had once idolized: writers, producers, executives, performers, the kind of people I used to think would clarify something. Instead, they taught me how carefully one must perform oneself.

Standing in front of them was always the same internal checklist: Am I wearing the right thing? Is my makeup okay? Don’t talk about politics. And if it comes up, smile, nod, and move on. Exude warmth, competence, grace — and close.

And above all: do not drop your silverware.

Calendar full, flights booked, meetings stacked, names added to the list of people I was “in conversation with.” The language of it all was always forward-facing. Next quarter. Next gift. Next introduction. Next win.

But the note stayed with me.

Dear Keira. Great work this year. Many, many thanks.

I kept thinking about how easily it could have been someone else’s name. How cleanly it would still function if it were. How often I had written versions of that same sentence myself, believing I was being personal because I had used the word great instead of good.

I started noticing how often recognition arrived without specificity. How often praise routed through a system.

Proximity is not belonging. Access is not being known.

And still, there was a gap I couldn’t close with any of it.

I think about one donor in particular. Breakfast meetings in New York. A room where he was always greeted by name. Ease that felt like certainty. Conversations that could be riveting and empty at the same time.

I knew him in fragments: laughter, quips, charisma, intelligence, the comfort of being around him without ever fully being known by him.

And then I think about how it ended. Quietly. In Switzerland. Assisted suicide.

It doesn’t sit in the same place as the rest of his life. It felt like something beneath the surface I never actually had access to.

I don’t know what pain he carried. I only know it existed alongside everything I could see: success, wealth, movement through rooms like the ones I was still trying to master.

That’s the part I didn’t understand then.

We are not only what is visible about us. Not only what we produce, or who we stand beside, or what we close.

We are also what is not said. What does not translate into rooms like that. What does not fit into CRM notes, introductions, or applause.

I used to think the work was about closing gaps; between people, between institutions, between money and possibility.

Now I think some gaps are not meant to be closed. Only noticed.

Because even in the most extraordinary rooms, no one is fully readable. Not really.

Not him. Not them. Not me.

And sometimes the most accurate thing anyone can say is still the simplest:

Great work this year. Many, many thanks.

Proximal Recognition: A form of recognition granted through proximity to power, achievement, or systems of influence that acknowledges presence and output, but does not confer personal knowing or specificity.

Trust the reader. Cut until it hurts. Earn the silence.