Jodi Guber Brufsky + I Am That Girl
On April 27, Beyond Yoga founder Jodi Guber Brufsky donated her birthday to the charitable organization I Am That Girl, which aims to empower women by turning self-doubt into self-love.
Brufsky raised more than $42,000, thanks to the help of her girlfriends, who included the nonprofit’s founder, Alexis Jones, NBC Entertainment president Jennifer Salke, model Elaine Irwin, actors Sabina Gadecki and Rebecca Gayheart, producer Lysa Hayland Heslov and socialite Kelly Egarian.
“I thought, ‘You know what, I love my birthday, I love my girlfriends,’ so it was a great way to do something where there was a giving back element,” said Brufsky of the luncheon, held at her parents’ home in Bel Air. “I don’t want to jump ahead, as life is uncertain, but I have a feeling that this is what I’m going to do moving forward with my birthdays. I don’t need presents from my friends. We all have so much, and we’re all so blessed and lucky—I feel like giving back is so much more important.”
A modern-day sorority is how Brufsky, who is on the organization’s advisory board, described I Am That Girl: “Meaning, you have a place to go to where people really want to hear what’s actually going on. It’s not all flowers and unicorns.” They discuss anything and everything, from acing a calculus test to overcoming extreme suicidal depression, she explained. “It’s about bringing people together to create connections and have meaningful conversations.”
One of her favorite moments from the day was seeing the haikus created on the spot by the Haiku Girls collective. “You walk up to the girls, and you talk to them for a minute or so, and they ask you what are you thinking about,” she said. “For me, I had told them, ‘My thing is owning the totality of who I am enough that all of the noise goes away,’ and they wrote the most amazing haikus based on that.” Inscribed on one of them: “There’s a million things/All of the time going on/Be present here.”
Email This To A Friend