August 2026
Editor's Note:
The Power Play, First Annual Round - Up
I apologise for the tardiness of this edition of the Power Play. To be blunt, shit happens.
I sat down to write this expecting to tell you a simple story: that after a year of promoting this book alongside running my business, I'd reached the finish line. That I'd take a breath. Recover. Feel that quiet relief of a chapter closing well.
Instead, life had other plans.
Over the past couple of months, I said goodbye to my mother-in-law and to a dear friend, two losses that landed close together and landed hard. In the same stretch of time, I stood in a room full of love watching my parents celebrate seventy years of marriage. Seventy. Grief and joy, sharing the same breath, the same weeks. I'm still not sure how to hold both at once, except to say that I did, because that's what we do.
Then my body cast its own vote. After months of crossing oceans and continents - trains, planes, automobiles, time zones I lost count of - it all caught up with me: a chest infection, laryngitis, the works. The kind of exhaustion that doesn't ask permission before it arrives.
Here's the truth: I did the things I tell you to do. I paced myself. I watched for burnout. I tried to put my own needs on the list, not just at the bottom of it. And still, this happened. Because sometimes the work of prevention isn't about avoiding the storm - it's about how you meet it when it comes anyway. And I'm meeting it.
So I'm stepping back for a little while - to rest, to realign, and honestly, to look forward. Because if this past year has taught me anything, it's that we are built for exactly this: for holding sorrow and celebration in the same hands and still finding our footing. That's not a burden. That's proof of how fully we're living.
So this isn't a goodbye, it's a pause before the next chapter. I'm already looking forward to what's ahead, and I couldn't have gotten here without you. Thank you for walking this last year with me, for reading these pages, and for being part of something I never could have built alone: a sisterhood of women who lift each other up, even when one of us needs lifting too.
I'll see you in September - rested, realigned, and ready. 💛
Lx
Power Play Picks
We love.
Tenuta Negroamaro
If you need to disappear from the world for a while, go to Tenuta Negroamaro in glorious Puglia. Tucked into seven hectares of pine woods just outside Gallipoli, it's the kind of hush that lets your shoulders finally drop. I spent my mornings relaxing in the pool, my afternoons doing absolutely nothing by design, and every meal tasted like the garden it came from, with the sea just a stone's throw away whenever I wanted it. Ten suites only, so it never feels anything but private and yours. This is where I went to remember how to rest - and I promise, it will do the same for you.
Regime Change
As someone who's followed politics - and journalism - closely for years, I don't say this lightly: Regime Change is the book of the year. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have spent a decade covering Trump, and it shows in every page - the access, the detail, the receipts. As a native Washingtonian who's watched this presidency unfold up close, I found it both validating and unsettling to see it all laid out so clearly, from named sources who were actually in the room. This isn't punditry - it's meticulous reporting that reads like a thriller. If you want to understand what's really happening behind the headlines, start here.
