Take a Lesson. Caroline V. Clarke
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but there were cons as well. And the thing that used to really just irritate me was this notion that, somehow, I didn't stand on my own. I've been standing on my own for a long, long time, and this notion that someone else thought for me, or made me, was infuriating—and I still deal with that.
As mayor, I had people say—and this comes from men—“I don't know who's advising you, but…” or, when I endorsed Joe Biden, “Whoever advised you to do that…”
How about, I advised myself?
The other part was, as the only African American woman in the race, it wasn't just about me running for mayor, it was about how I represented Black women day to day. I have a very good sense of how people feel about me, and I always say to my team, “The streets don't lie.” I could feel it when I was running. You can feel it when you walk into the grocery store or the bank, when you go into the mall. [At first,] people didn't dislike me, but they were very neutral on me. And then I could feel it when they started to shift, when people were with me.
The nature of that campaign was physically grueling. I did forum after forum, going from 7 in the morning until 10 at night, and then I had to do it all over again. I keep a picture of myself at the first forum that I attended, and I look at how thin I was and how healthy my hair was and, by the end of the campaign, I literally had pulled out the front of my hair because when I'm tired and stressed, I pull on my hair. By the end of the campaign, the woman who does my hair put little tabs in to fill in where I was pulling on my hair all day. So, the physical part of it was probably the most stressful of all.
Being mayor was the first time I had [only] one job. Even as a teenager, I always worked in my mom's shop in addition to school and whatever other jobs I had. And between work study and internships in college, I always did multiple things. Being mayor, in many ways, fed into that ADHD that I have, which can be a wonderful thing when it's used for good, because you're constantly having to switch gears and think through multiple things. As mayor, you're dealing with the here and now and the crisis of the day, but you're also planning ahead and addressing issues from multiple constituencies. So for someone like me who really thrives on doing multiple things, if you have to have one job, it's a great one to have.
To serve as mayor is an incredible honor, but professionally, it has been the most difficult thing I've ever done. It's still frightening to me the way people are influenced by false information or false narratives, and that quite often, the masses will latch on to something—true or not—and it becomes reality. We saw that with Donald Trump. I saw it on a smaller level during the mayor's campaign, and I saw it every day as mayor. Someone will create a story, a narrative, and then it becomes reality for hundreds of people—and there are people who do it for sport.
I knew what I was getting into, but the inability of people to see me for me—I think that was the biggest surprise I had.
My mom often tells me that I remind her of my dad in that he really was a homebody. He had a garden in the backyard; he coached the Little League baseball team; he was the one who always planned our family outings. At his core, he was very insular, but you would never know it because he would get on stage and perform for tens of thousands of people. He could turn it on and turn it off.
My team used to laugh when I was campaigning. They would set goals for the number of people I had to meet and shake hands with. They'd say, “Okay, in this room, you have to shake 50 hands.” I would do it, and say, “I'm at 50. Let's go.” That's something that I've come to understand about myself, and to be okay with.
I was talking with my minister one day and he said that he's an introvert who masks as an extrovert, and the lightbulb went off. That's what I am, too. But I think that's why, in many ways, I've been misunderstood.
In high school, people would say, “I thought you were really siddity until I got to know you,” which I always thought was interesting. But when I began to campaign, I realized that it really was about me being introverted, and for people to understand why I cared and why I wanted to be mayor, I was going to have to allow them to see me.
That was a big lesson—that it doesn't matter what's going on in my head and how I process, it's how I project. Another thing I learned is that the more exhausted I become, the more authentic I become, because it really does take energy to wear a mask.
There are a few things that a lot of people struggle with that I really don't. I'm not afraid to ask questions, and I am very forgiving of myself. When I say and do from a pure place, if it doesn't work out, at least I know what I intended, and I'm okay with that.
There's vulnerability in admitting what you don't know, especially for leaders, because you're usually the one people are looking to for answers. But at some point, I learned that the vast majority of people like educating you, and so, rather than being insecure about it, I'll just ask a lot of questions.
Part of that goes back to being on the City Council. You sit there and people are spouting out acronyms, and you could think, Well, maybe if I listen long enough, I'll figure it out. Let me write that down, let me Google it. Or you can just say, “Hey, what does that mean?” And at some point, you realize the people who will take exception with that are people who weren't for you anyway, so you can't worry about what they think.
Over time, you realize that if you don't know, probably nine out of 10 people in the room also don't know, and you'll have people say, “Oh, I'm so glad you asked that because I didn't know it either.” You gain wisdom and confidence by doing that. It's ultimately about being comfortable knowing what you know, and knowing what you don't know, and not being ashamed of what you don't know.
When I was considering running for mayor again, I kept waiting for that moment of clarity that I had the first time. I was like, Okay, Lord, I need one of those sitting‐in‐church moments. But I know God doesn't work the same way twice, and my husband, Derek, gave me this great lesson one day.
He was standing in the doorway and he said, “As long as I'm standing here, the only option I have is to look straight ahead of me. But if I step out, I can go to the right, I can go to the left, I can see what's over there. You're not going to be able to see it until you take that first step.”
My good friend Vicki Palmer also said to me, “It's really not faith if you know what's on the other side.”
What I do know, from any number of things that I've consulted with God on, is that He gives you peace about what's right for you, and I didn't have any peace in my heart about running again. As soon as I said publicly that I wouldn't run, I absolutely knew it was the right thing to do.
I made two versions of [my announcement] video—the good‐bye video and the stay video. When I did the stay video, I said all the right things, but I didn't feel it. When I did the good‐bye video, I felt it, and I knew it. I wish I had a better ability to articulate it, and I pray at some point I'll have the words to help people understand—but I just knew.
I've done plenty of hard stuff, so it's not the challenge of the job that made me not run again. That's not it at all.
My dad died suddenly at 55. He died of congestive heart failure. He never stopped smoking, he didn't take care of himself, like so many other entertainers in his era. They lived hard and fast back then. I don't claim this for my life, but I thought, if I had four more years on this earth, is this how I would want to spend those next four years? The answer was no.
When I watched [tennis champion] Naomi Osaka [withdraw from the French Open last year], I wished I had her number to just send her a text and a hug. I think what we've all been through [recently] really has so many of us choosing peace, and it's giving us courage. I so understood what she did, and to be 22 or 23 and have the courage to do that is absolutely incredible.
The last few years were hard for all of America and the world. In Atlanta, we had hard on top of hard. There was a cyber attack, there was a federal investigation into the city's previous administration, there was the presidential election and insurrection and the attacks on voting rights, there was race‐based violence in our streets, and more. So people recognize that it's been a very challenging time, especially in