Wendy Braitman never planned on being single. She thought she would follow in her family’s footsteps, get happily married and stay that way. When her my mid 30s rolled around, a painful reality started to sink in, “Why are my friends married, and I’m not? Where did I go wrong?” She was confident there wasn’t one who “got away” so rather than sit around and mope, she got busy carving out an amazing life for herself. First Person Singular, is her site, dedicated to surviving, thriving and living single.
How do you describe your work? “Having experienced this full life as a single woman, I think it’s important to let women know it’s a track of life you can go on and end up being really happy.”
What three adjectives best describe you? “Resilient. Passionate and Stubborn.”
Cats, dogs, birds … describe your pets? “The sweetest girls and really good bed companions. I have a dog and a cat.”
Favorite season? “Summer.”
Name a city you’d love to visit. Why? “Paris because it’s so beautiful visually.”
What’s the best thing about being single? “Flexibility. You get to do what you want when you want it.”
Describe your ideal “Girls’ Night Out.” “I don’t go on girl’s nights. I have so many gay male friends and they wouldn’t like me to call it girl’s night. I love to go to the movies and I love to have a nice dinner out.”
What’s the nicest thing a friend (or friends) have done for you? “When my father died, the morning he died I saw him and my friend said, `What can I do for you? What do you need me to for you?’ I really felt taken care of. It was as much as I could hope for in a partner or a husband.”
What do you do for “Wendy” time? “I take ballet class almost every morning and that is really a thing that keeps me physically fit and really sane. I don’t think I could live without it. I used to be a dancer when I was younger and I still have the same passion for it. Now I just don’t think about it as a profession but that’s really sacred time for me. Ballet is so challenging and it’s something impossible to master.”
What’s the best advice you ever received? “Don’t compare your insides to somebody else’s outsides.”
What quality do you admire most in a man? “One? Grace. If I had to pick one. It’s hard to narrow it down.”
What quality do you admire most in a woman? “I mean I guess I would say the same thing. The ability to roll with the punches. The ability to take what life dishes out and make the most of it.”
Who are your real life heroes? “Well one is a little esoteric and not many people would know. He was a theologian in the 20th century. His name is Abraham Joshua Heschel. He overcame enormous tragedy to be an amazing, inspiring, poetic activist and religious spiritual guide. He believed that spirituality and political activism are two lines that have to meet and I like that. I find that inspiring. He marched with Martin Luther King and had enormous gratitude and passion or life.”
What is your guilty pleasure? Bad TV. Gossip Girl.
What is your biggest fear? “Well I do have a fear of heights but I guess. I don’t know what it would be like to not be able to take care of myself physically – like getting sick.”
If you could change one thing in your past, what would it be? “I wish I was a little bit better at – even when I didn’t have the perfect job but there were a lot of good things about it – I’m not very good at working for other people.”
When I think about being single there is not one man, I think got away. That person just never showed up in my life. It’s not a question of being too picky, that kind of agnony some of us put ourselves through.
Other than your own talents, what talent would you most like to have?
Grace and what that means to me is not grace in a physical way. There are so many things that we have that we take for granted. It you get stuck in the palce wehre your expectation haven’t been met. Heschel talks about radical amazement. Keep your eyes trained on all the amazing things that happen every day. Everyone’s got something. The late 30s are the hardest time to be single. It’s excruciating because the clock is screaming. I remember being at my most desperate. Even before that it wasn’t an issue and then I thought oh shit.
What is your motto? Or what words do you live by? “Make the most of whatever life gives you.”
