Paulina Porizkova - No Filter: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

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Copyright 2022 by Paulina Porizkova

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THE OPEN FIELD is a registered trademark of MOS Enterprises, Inc.

The essay Medicated was previously published in slightly different form as Ending a Midlife Affair with Meds in The Huffington Post in 2011 and the essay Occupied was published in slightly different form as I Was a Child When Russia Invaded My Countryand My Mind in the Los Angeles Times in 2022.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Porizkova, Paulina, author.

Title: No filter : the good, the bad, and the beautiful / Paulina Porizkova.

Description: [New York] : The Open Field/Penguin Life, [2022] |

Identifiers: LCCN 2022031683 (print) | LCCN 2022031684 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593493526 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593493533 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Porizkova, Paulina. | Models (Persons)United StatesBiography. | Models (Persons)SwedenBiography. | WidowhoodUnited States. | WomenUnited StatesSocial conditions.

Classification: LCC HD8039.M772 .U5369 2022 (print) | LCC HD8039.M772 (ebook) | DDC 746.9/2092 [B]dc23/eng/20220801

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022031683

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022031684

Cover design: Elizabeth Yaffe

Cover photograph: Adeline Lulo

DESIGNED BY LUCIA BERNARD, ADAPTED FOR EBOOK BY MOLLY JESZKE

Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

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Dear Reader,Years ago, these words attributed to Rumi found a place in my heart: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. Ill meet you there. Ever since, Ive cultivated an image of what I call the Open Fielda place out beyond fear and shame, beyond judgment, loneliness, and expectation. A place that hosts the reunion of all creation. Its the hope of my soul to find my way thereand whenever I hear an insight or a practice that helps me on the path, I love nothing more than to share it with others.Thats why Ive created The Open Field. My hope is to publish books that honor the most unifying truth in human life: We are all seeking the same things. Were all seeking dignity. Were all seeking joy. Were all seeking love and acceptance, seeking to be seen, to be safe. And there is no competition for these things we seekbecause they are not material goods; they are spiritual gifts!We can all give each other these gifts if we share what we knowwhat has lifted us up and moved us forward. That is our duty to one anotherto help each other toward acceptance, toward peace, toward happinessand my promise to you is that the books published under this imprint will be maps to the Open Field, written by guides who know the path and want to share it.Each title will offer insights, inspiration, and guidance for moving beyond the fears, the judgments, and the masks we all wear. And when we take off the masks, guess what? We will see that we are the opposite of what we thoughtwe are each other.We are all on our way to the Open Field. We are all helping one another along the path. Ill meet you there.Love,Maria Shriver

For Jonathan and Oliver.

Or

Oliver and Jonathan.

The birth order is indisputable, as is my love for you both.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Y ears ago, I sat across the table from a journalist, a young woman, as she pulled out her phone to record our conversation. We sipped our lattes and chatted informally before she planned to plunge into her questions. I asked her about herself, something I know interviewers often dont get to talk about. She was all of twenty-two and had just started her job at the magazine. As we talked, she loosened up and said, laughingly: Yeah, my publisher said, Lets get Paulina Porizkova for this, she has no filter and will say anything!

No filter. Say anything. So this is how others thought of me.

Certainly, I am unfiltered when it comes to myself. My thoughts. My feelings. I have always been this way. But say anything? That gives me no credit whatsoever for keeping the secrets of others. Yet the truth is that Im weighed down by all the secrets Ive kept for other people. Those are mine to keep forever. And so I lighten that load by being unfiltered about myself.

This collection of essays contains things I want to share, things I have thought about, things that hold me back, and things that propel me forward. It is all of me. But it is not a revelation of anyone else. I bring up others only insofar as how they have affected my life.

I spent thirty-five years with my late husband, the most important person in my life, and as such, I have to include him. But he is not here to agree or repudiate my take on things, so this is only my perspective.

And I feel the need to clarify a few points before you leap into these essays with me.

My widowhood and the subsequent events of my life have gotten much attention, and for reasons that have to remain hidden, I must be careful where I tread.

I loved my husband for most of my life, and I always will. But we were separated at the time of his death, although we still lived together and I continued to see him as family. After we had separated, I had fallen in love with someone else and was in a relationship with this man when my husband died. Ive never spoken about this publicly, though Ive never hidden it either. My friends and family were all aware. My husband knew him, my children knew him, he was an accepted part of our lives. He is unnamed in this book, partly so as not to encroach on his privacy and partly because he no longer needs a name in the story of my life.

When my husband passed away, he left a will in which he stated that I had abandoned him and was therefore not entitled to any part of his estate. The will was drawn up hastily, a few weeks before his death. By using the word abandonment, my husband wasnt just making a hyperbolic statementhe was making a legal claim. Abandonment of a spouse, legally speaking, is when a persons partner disappears and cannot be contacted for the duration of at least a year. I understand that my husband may have felt abandoned emotionally (although he never let me in on that). But it wasnt the truth. Yes, we were separated. We were in the beginnings of a divorce. Yet we still lived together, we still had family dinners, we still went to dinner parties together as best friendsor so I thought. We laughed about women putting the moves on him, and we talked openly about my boyfriend. We discussed getting apartments close to each other after we sold our home, so our sons could easily go from place to place, and so we could help each other when needed. I thought we had found the perfect way to navigate the end of our marriage, so the will came as an absolute shock. I didnt for a moment imagine I should inherit the full estate. But I thought I would get what one gets in a divorcehalf of everything we had acquired together in our thirty-year marriage. But the hastily written addendum to the will made it so I was to inherit much lessand it was based on a lie. This is why I had to pursue a lawsuit, which got settled out of court two years after my husbands death.

No one expected my husband to die. Not his doctors, not his business associates, not his friends, not his family, not me, and not himself. I believe had he known the repercussions that this hasty arrangement wrought on his family, his children specifically, he would have never done it. The will left me in a very strange position of having assetstwo large mortgaged houses and our pension plansbut without any income. It pit me against my own business manager and my sons.

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