[ CHAPTER 1]

Why Your Voice Matters

The scene of my humiliation occurred in a chic boutique in Tel Aviv, Israel, where I was living because of my dad’s job as an American Foreign Service Officer. I was thirteen years old.

My mother, Theresa, had amassed a pile of awesome back-to-school clothes for me and deposited them at the checkout counter. The young woman at the cash register was sullen and silent as she rang up our order and stuffed the clothes into a bag.

My mother, five feet, eight and a half inches tall in her stocking feet, pulled back her shoulders and snatched the bag with a flourish. Her eyes flashed in a way I knew meant trouble.

“You have given me terrible service,” she said, in a sharp, steely voice that echoed throughout the crowded store. “You didn’t greet me, you didn’t thank me, and you didn’t look at me. But you were perfectly willing to take my money. You were downright rude. If this is how you treat your customers, you have lost my business.”

My mother grabbed my hand and pulled me with her out the boutique door. “Sometimes,” she said, “you just have to say something. Do you understand what I mean?”

Still engulfed in my fog of humiliation, I gave a noncommittal shrug. Because the truth was, I didn’t understand at all. Why couldn’t my mother have just paid for the clothing, taken the shopping bag, and left without making such a fuss in such a public place? I just didn’t get it.

Nine years passed.

Newly graduated from college, I was visiting Los Angeles, contemplating whether to move to Hollywood to pursue a career as an actress. A supposedly well-meaning relative introduced me to a colleague I’ll call Dick, who had high-level contacts in the entertainment industry.

Perching uncomfortably on a spindly chair in an airy, plant-filled, Beverly Hills living room, I listened in discomfort as my relative and his very slimy pal regaled me with stories about how they had