✨55✨ (Part 1)

It was the hottest of times, it was the dumbest of times

Hello new subscribers! (And big thanks to

Virginia Sole-Smith

’s Some Personal News and

Craig Calcaterra

’s Cup of Coffee for October 16th for their recent wonderful mentions of this newsletter that brought so many of you here.) I want to let you know that, for me, the paywall isn’t just a paywall but a privacy wall, especially when the topic is an intimate one like marriage, divorce, non-monogamy, and/or sex. If you’re a paid subscriber and want to forward this email to someone? Always ok! But I’d ask that you please not share screenshots or excerpts from beyond the paywall on social media. Also: if you’re new here and frank writing about any of those aforementioned topics tends to offend you, this is probably not the newsletter for you. No hard feelings?

---

✨55✨ (Part 1)

When I turned 54 last year I wrote, I’ve never had a year like this last one and I suspect I never will again. Then again, no two years are ever the same for anyone, are they? In my case, as it turned out, some years are about fucking. And others are about getting fucked.

The year between turning 53 and 54 was one of extremes, as I said often then, the highest highs, the lowest lows. I had 25+ years of stories and narratives I had believed with all my heart and brains were true—absolutely true, do not argue with me about how true they are—implode, clarify, and transform before my eyes. And what that left behind was a clean page where I could write whatever might come next.

Who am I? is a common separation and divorce narrative. I’d argue that it’s a fairly common marriage narrative too, but we don’t talk about that. What does it mean when you commit to one (theoretically) lifelong partner and then commit further by having children together? Marriage and parenthood are constant narrative-making machines, you join your story to others and are transformed by them, for better or worse. When you’re a woman and you’re story becomes only yours to tell there is such obnoxious freedom in it that no wonder dominant power structures, social dynamics, and our own internalized scripts keep trying to shut us up.

Of course I actually believed I already knew exactly who I was. You don’t write two books with yourself as the main character if you don’t, or at least I’d like to believe that too. But what I discovered over a year ago is that I only knew who that particular version of me was. I had forgotten who I had been before.