Michelle Sassa's Blog

The last twelve months have been a whole lot. Which I totally predicted at the turn of the decade with my super catchy slogan: 2020. The Year of Plenty . I was definitely angling for abundance of the joyful kind, which for me would have meant chasing dreams, making moves and putting myself out there. Then Covid came and shut the whole world down and there was nowhere for me to go but inward. (Or Target but they were out of toilet paper so what was the point?) 
So I started embracing my inner Buddh...

In our new normal, dough is the new sign of wealth. Not the green kind, but the bread kind we need to feed our familiesand right now, its especially precious and scarce. So imagine my horror a few days ago to open my bread drawer and find a gaping hole in the bag that packaged my Arnold 100% Whole Wheat, and an alarming number of the slices were half-chewed.
Friends, dont tell the government, but it turns out I had house guests. And after weeks of being forced to keep my distance from...

In our new normal, dough is the new sign of wealth. Not the green kind, but the bread kind we need to feed our familiesand right now, its especially precious and scarce. So imagine my horror a few days ago to open my bread drawer and find a gaping hole in the bag that packaged my Arnold 100% Whole Wheat, and an alarming number of the slices were half-chewed.
Friends, dont tell the government, but it turns out I had house guests. And after weeks of being forced to keep my distance from...

photo credit: @fuckjerry  shirt design: @emgphotodesign
Hi friends. I hope everyone is doing well and finding ways to keep your minds healthy, in addition to your families. I am finding so much hope and joy in the good deeds of my neighbors and trying to not let bad behavior get to me. But its hard when I get emails in my inbox like the one from a hotel in Myrtle Beach advertising their EASTER GETAWAY DEALS!! As if any of us can plan three weeks ahead let alone tomorrow.

Or the sales alert I...

Every year I like to think of a slogan to encapsulate my vision for the next 365 days. Last year was ‘Living the dream in 2019.’ Before that, I was ‘Starting off clean in 2018.’ And I can't forget this nugget of poetic wordsmithing: ‘Everything’s great in 2008.’

But now there is a whole new decade ahead of us. At once it feels vast, overwhelming, and ripe with opportunity. How to quantify that?

I am a superstar in my own mind, and this was recently confirmed when I learned I inspired a sneaker.

Just like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and Kobe Bryant, y’all. Big time!

But Michelle, you’re not even a pro athlete, say the naysayers.

Skk skkk skkk.

I can explain.

“Here we go,”  I whispered to my director and producer as we stood on the porch of Abby Wambach’s home, my fist just about to knock on the door of one of the most prolific female athletes of our time.

A soccer player myself, I was a fangirl about to meet a legend. Ramaa, Hope and I had been invited to Wambach’s house because we were shooting a commercial with the icon, her wife and their daughters. The three of us were nervous. But I was about to discover we had no reason to be.

Sure, she is #2...

In my household, we take our holidays pretty seriously. For Halloween, we creep out the lawn with life size monsters, a graveyard and a kids playhouse we converted into a haunted house. There’s even scary music blaring from the porch speakers that makes toddlers rethink how badly they want free candy. Christmas gets the full Chevy Chase holiday light experience – even indoors – and we’ve got a snow village the size of a small village under our tree, with a Polar Express railroad encircling it...

I was not the star kid on my soccer team. Shocker, I know, considering the size of my thighs (Schwarzenegger-ish) and the way I strut around like Team Captain, doling out nonstop direction: “Pass the ball! Take the shot! Put your dish in the dishwasher!”

Still, once a week you’ll find me running around a real soccer field with a group of real “soccer moms,” burning off bad carb choices and the incessant demands of spawn and spouses. To see me in my pickup league, blasting shots past the goalie...

My creative partner and I both launched our advertising careers at a notorious boys club, both hired by a hotshot CD who has since, only quite recently, been outed in the media for his toxic culture and penchant for broism. Since ditching that scene to go freelance, Karen and I sometimes  wondered aloud what would have happened to our careers if we'd stayed at that ad agency.

Last fall, we had the chance to find out. Read the full story on Medium.