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Fortune Teller
Greenville entrepreneur Kym Petrie puts a spin on fairy tales / by Jac Chebatoris
t was time for a new fairy tale. And, likely, another vodka martini. That’s what Kym Petrie thought more than a decade ago when she would sit with her group of friends—all women, all driven, all successful— but struggling (including Petrie, herself) to various degrees in their relationships. Those roundtable nights not only prompted her appreciation for a stiff drink, but also led her to write what at first just seemed like a long letter to a friend, whose marriage was about to collapse. This note turned into a 40-page charming, uplifting book that’s to be published by Greenleaf Book Group on September 18— The Enchanted Truth: A Modern-Day Fairy Tale for Grown-Up Girls. “The only way I knew how to help my friend was to write her a story, so I wrote her a story,” says Petrie. The unexpected twist was that she helped herself in the process. Petrie, who has a degree in international business and runs her own consulting firm, is from Toronto, Canada,
started modeling at age 17 in Japan, has two children, and has lived in Greenville for the past four years with her husband, Ron Petrie. She wrote a few children’s books when her oldest son, Spence, was young (I Love You More and There’s a Moose in My Milk). She never thought that fated letter would take on another life, but it couldn’t come at a more appropriate time. We’re still shaking off the love hangovers from a Sex and the City society that convinces us we need to look outside of ourselves—especially women—to change what we think will please Prince Charming. Petrie’s take is more “Hey, you in there . . . yeah, you, what do you think about you just finding your own happy ending?” And it isn’t about Disney perfection or about being Gloria Steinem. “This isn’t a book about being single or married; this is a book about being whole. It’s for every woman, regardless of what their relationship is, because being whole is about finding out who you are on the inside instead of searching for it on the outside,” she says. Petrie’s candidness in talking openly about her own struggles—whether it was living up to an unrealistic notion of perfection while modeling or going through the strife of divorce or other relationships woes—boosts the book’s message that much more. “Here, I wrote it for this woman,” says Petrie, “but it ended up healing me.” Your own happy ending, Petrie is encouraging women to realize, is the one you write for yourself.
Photograph by Pat Staub
Write Stuff: Greenville resident and president of consulting firm Driven Global, mother and former model Kym Petrie inspires women to carve their own paths in her short book The Enchanted Truth.
48 TOWN / towngreenville.com
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