Episode 75: Kristy Whitford
To Find a Soft Place to Land.
Kristy Whitford didn’t have an easy life growing up. Everything she has accomplished she has had to fight for on her own. There were no parents in her life that she could rely upon for guidance or that extra check to make the rent when funds got low. There wasn’t that special sibling she could turn to for help when the going got tough, as it most assuredly did. There were even times when she was homeless. Not the biography you would expect from a woman who has started her own hospitality company The Hotel Club, climbed to the top of the luxury spa industry, and helmed one of the most iconic spas in the world at the Beverly Hills Hotel & Bungalows. The pink hotel at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and North Crescent Drive, in the heart of Beverly Hills, CA.
As Kristy describes it, her mission in spa and wellness is to provide a soft place for people to land. It’s almost like a secular religion for many people when they walk into a spa. It’s a space of non-judgment, where they can be free, where they can cry, where they can be healed. And for Kristy, this isn’t just flowery language for a spa brochure. This is powerful, animating truth for her.
In 2020 during the heat of the Pandemic, Kristy and I sat down for breakfast overlooking a vineyard in Healdsburg, CA. Wine Country. It was fall and we were just about to go into another series of protracted shutdowns. The optimism of vanquishing Covid that we held onto that summer quickly disappeared because the weather was turning cooler. We would all be inside again, sneezing on one another. I had seen on Kristy’s Instagram that she was on a road trip from Los Angeles, CA to Coeur d’Alene, ID and she was passing through Healdsburg. So, we decided to meet on her journey from Southern California to Northern California before she crossed the state line into Idaho. Over freshly squeezed orange juice, omelets with a side of crispy bacon and a basket of perfectly baked croissants and muffins, Kristy told me she was on that road to Coeur d’Alene to see her father. A man who had been missing in her life for years. She had a single question that only he could answer for her so that she could move forward with her life.
Her journey seemed to me risky (What if she didn’t get what she was looking for? What then? If he hadn’t showed up for her in all these years, why would this time be any different?). And the journey seemed epic. The kind of consequential voyage that great poems and novels recount – the hero’s journey. How you have to leave behind your life and family, resist the song of the sirens, and descend into the netherworld only to rise again to find your way back home. We didn’t know at that time, but Kristy’s journey would include the purchase of a peace plant, a walk down 72 flights of stairs into what she describes as heaven, and a detour to the places she spent as a child with her grandparents. As for the questions and her singular ask, well… they are the anchor of our conversation today.
We sat for a while talking in that sparkling vineyard with the sunlight warming that chilly autumn morning. I could see in her eyes and hear in the hopeful yet cautious expectation of her voice, that she wanted him to give her that answer, that freedom, that healing. This great hope was at the heart of her 1200-mile journey to see him after so many years had passed. Kristy was looking for him to give her what she has given to thousands of people throughout her career – a soft place to land.
