50 Blog Posts Later: My Biggest Surprises and Lessons Learned
50 Blog Posts Later: My Biggest Surprises and Lessons Learned
“Who does she think she is?”—I've stopped listening to that voice, real or imagined. I know who I am and that's enough. And so is EVERYone else.
To celebrate my 50th post, I’m looking back at the stories I’ve shared.
I thought my life was figured out by forty. I expected to coast along until aging bumps in the road started slowing me down. I knew perimenopause would come and mess with my body in some way. But I had no idea it’d take over my brain and literally dissolve my whole way of interfacing with the outside world.
“My enteric coating is disappearing”—that’s how I explained my entrance into the hellish hormonal early days of perimenopause. My inner self—the active ingredients that made me me—was no longer concealed within an outer shell, resistant and impervious under most conditions.
I couldn’t force a smile, hide the hurt, or bite my tongue. My secrets started spilling out, and I couldn’t stop the overflow. Some of it I talked through in therapy. Some I talked with to loved ones. But there was too much. Writing was the perfect place for it go.
Since then, I gradually stopped feeling like I needed to be encased in an outer shell at all times. I’m even glad now that I’m not. Because I no longer care about an imagined or real person saying, “Who does she think she is?”—because I know who I am, and I know that’s enough.
Looking through my old posts, I see three themes:
Many of my stories were about healing past hurts from body or sexual violation or shaming. Like other young people, my body stopped feeling like my own from the moment puberty hit. Why didn’t my body feel like mine—for all those years? The older I became, the more pissed off I was at this “right of passage.” I’ve stopped trying to understand why anyone should think another person’s body, sexuality or fertility is their business, but I know there always will be people who do. So I also know there always needs to be other people (lots of people) saying, “No, not, never.”
My earlier writing had even more disjointed fragments turned into “but this” and “but that” sentences. Those are my parents’ voices always inside my mind—my parents who were on “completely different wavelengths.” Writing my stories helped me find my own thoughts and feelings amid the mess. I needed that clarity to find a way forward through change and loss. The contradictory voices are still there, though. Looking ahead, I want to try fiction writing as an outlet for them—and the stories I’d never tell.
I’ve grown kinder to myself while writing these posts. I never learned how to comfortably say anything about what I wanted or needed, thinking it’d make me selfish. Now I’ve learned that acknowledging my own desires doesn’t mean they matter more than other people’s, or even that they need to come first. It just means I’m a person like everyone else. Most people I know (women and men) struggle with feeling deserving. But learning to be kinder to yourself can be one of the kindest things you can do for those around you—this I’m finding to be so true.
.
Below are snippets from 49 posts, randomly arranged under headers where they fit best. The post is “too long for email” so if you’re viewing the post that way you may need to click “view entire message” if you want to see the rest, which includes a recap of going to F Middle Age, held by
Growing up Gen X
The No-Wins of Labels, Boxes, and Black Eyes: I really tried being a “nice” girl, but I really wanted as many of those little, colored foil stars from my first grade teacher as I could get.
The Childhood Music That Shapes Who We Are: After climbing up the extra steep and long staircase, I’d sit on the colonial bench in the landing waiting area while tapping my feet until my teacher, Kimberly Schmidt, would pop open the door, usually walking out with another student. Next up, it’s my turn.
Crazy-ass things people told me years ago: He complained about being almost 30. All his friends were settling down, getting married, and having kids. “I need some youth,” he told us, and he got quite specific about it: “I’m looking for girls who hit their sexual peak after 1988.”
After I lost my brother, I longed for childhood like never before: For the first time in my life, I’m mostly surrounded by people who have no memory of the industrial-earthy ‘70s, gritty and smoke-filled, but warm and flowing with natural whimsy too. It’s slipping away, but I’m not ready to let go … not yet.
7 lessons from the '70s to stay chill today: Flowing hair and hemlines. Folksy, funky music. Bold colors and mismatched patterns. There’s something so human about whimsy. In the age of AI and bots, whimsy feels necessary in our automated, robotic world.
Teen Trauma
Better not get him in trouble: I first learned about this “responsibility” when my 14-year-old friends and I began being called “jail bait,” as if our still-girl bodies had the power of tricking grown men into committing crimes, really?
Barbie through the hypnotic spiral of nostalgia: He tried pressuring me to get in the shower with him. “I was hoping to see that,” he told me after I refused. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Your ass,” he said, reminding me Barbie isn’t “everything.” She’s just parts. And someone always wants a piece of her.
Snow Globe Memories of Malls, Hairbands and a Scarlet 'S': I felt like my world had ended in an instant and couldn’t imagine feeling any worse, but I soon found out there’s always a worse. A last-minute decision to meet my friends at a house party took me to hell and back.
The Nineties
I can tell him anything, and he'll still like me: My Gen X heart wanted the irresistibly flawed guy who wasn’t overpowering and who valued my ambition—a Say Anything love story with a guy I could say anything to.
Feeling Like Screaming in '90s Boomer Work Culture: Alpha males were pumped up by America’s new superpower status, their own expanding portfolios and those little blue pills—for everyone else, there was a growing feeling of impotency.
Late '90s look behind the Walgreens counter on Chicago's North Shore: Then, one day, Mr. Walgreens came to visit while I was working. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything or even make eye contact with him as I stood in my station checking prescriptions—inside the two-by-two square box duct-taped to the floor. Always staying inside the box.
Why Gen X Needs to Lead Now, Before Time Runs Out: Doherty’s Brenda character seemed most like me and my friends, a blend of ambition, insecurity and defiance, often leading to self-sabotage, making it hard to find a good friend—or to be one. Her storyline seemed familiar too.
Family Drama
When Your Dad's a Jerk, Is it OK to Accept His Love?: If you fell down, Dad would give you a swear-word version of “I told you so” rather than comfort. If you dropped your 49 cent hotdog on the floor of a 7-Eleven, he wouldn’t buy you another. If you got a good grade, he didn’t care unless you outscored the rest. The harshness was the point.
One and the same with your mom—why is separation so hard?: Enmeshment felt normal, even good. Then, sometime in the late 2010s, it started changing. Was it the cultural shifting and divisions? My peri-hormones keeping me edgy and up at night? My mom listening to rad-trad talk on Catholic radio? Or me being GenZfluenced by my teens?
Marriage and Scandal in the Pre-Boomer Olden Days: “Well you married him,” my grandma’s mom told her when she voiced her dissatisfaction with married life. There were no backsies to anything in life. Nor sympathy. You made your bed, you slept in it, you had no choice.
The strangeness of being in the middle of your mom and her mother-in-law: At nine, I watched my mom finally take off her wedding ring and place it in a Valium prescription vial she no longer needed, and never really helped. My mom was labeled a whore and blamed for scandalizing my dad’s family. She was “forbidden” from stepping foot in their hometown as if they somehow owned it.
When a parent treats you like crap, why is it so hard to let go?: Trying to understand complex trauma can feel like trying to put jigsaw puzzle pieces together from different puzzles. Or did it feel like that because the big picture was so awful that my mind protected me from seeing what I didn’t want to see?
Feeling alone at the cafeteria Catholic table: I felt all alone at the cafeteria table. It didn’t make sense. Rad-trad what? I kept thinking, ”Isn’t that just another cafeteria Catholic table, picking and choosing different rules aligned with your own personal preferences and sense of self?”
Picking a side, the always-present past, and never-ending drama—that's family for you: The new fault lines divided my family on different sides of issues that hadn’t been “issues” since they were for my Archie and Edith grandparents. And in 2010s fashion, they were framed as thumbs up or thumbs down—wasn’t that like a middle school thing? No, actually, I think it was like third grade.
Motherhood
My late '90s choice: Have a baby now or wait? Whose body is it anyway?: Why is this happening now? I’d been telling myself for years, “I ain’t no baby machine”—literally writing this note-to-self in my teenage diary. I was the first woman in my family to go to college and wanted to follow the “smart” woman’s rules for success: No baby before thirty. No more than two. And no large gap—in babies OR career.
So You Became a Mom: Instead of the doctor showing up at the end in Brooks Brothers wool pants and leather pumps, my midwife stayed with me, dressed in scrubs, there to support me through the messy, unpredictable, and sometimes loud process of giving birth.
Mama Needs Her La-La-Land Time: “I’m leaving on a jet plane / Don’t know when I’ll be back again,” Mom would sing, calming a high stress moment down in the only way she could while still doing the damn laundry and dishes. The never-ending piles of laundry and dishes — the two bitches that never leave you alone.
Moving past the mom-labels: This is when I started learning that so many of the complicated parts of being a parent had nothing to do with the kids.
My parents' cost-of-living struggle in the '70s. Why is help still so hard to get?: In exchange for rent, they’d both help out whenever needed. Mom would leave Patrick in his crib while he napped or played. Run down two floors to set up for visitations or three floors to do laundry in the basement where they embalmed the bodies. Dad went on ambulance runs and helped carry the bodies.
Working third shift while pregnant: No shades or curtains, anyone passing by could see Mom through the big picture window, while she sat alone in the empty office, punching holes in paper cards. She worked nights throughout the pregnancy, and then went back after a short unpaid “break.” Ever since she told me that I can’t help but wonder: Is that why I’m hypervigilant? But my bigger question is: Why on earth did she have to do that?
Body and health
How I'm thinking about health and well-being after 50: I want to approach aging with a softer stance and a sense of ease and curiosity. I want to enjoy my body in whatever state it’s in, knowing it’s such a lie that only young people can enjoy all the sensory pleasures that life brings—a lie that makes young people feel even worse when they’re feeling depressed or down.
Talking fertility with the Egg Whisperer: “I think [fertility education] should start with when you start learning about your periods. It shouldn't be just all about preventing pregnancy; it should also be about pregnancy, fertility and menopause.”- Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh, a.k.a. the Egg Whisperer
Gen X Health: What the hell is happening?: Everything I’ve ever seen from anyone I’ve ever known is that the preventable side of illness—diet, lifestyle, health-related behaviors—seems more about community health and mental health than an individual’s “choices.”
Bodily change, middle school to midlife: But the real problem wasn’t the PMS; it was that it didn’t fit the somewhat weird expectation that people are supposed to mostly feel the same way all the time – happy.
The Fifty Face Soon to Come: Outside of my own headspace, I’m well aware the body is also about power and privilege—how someone looks can determine so much, stupidly so.
Writing my way forward: As I untangled each strand of a story, one at a time, my feelings and relationships started feeling less stuck and more manageable. And I stopped turning my stories into a subplot of ones that weren’t mine. Well, maybe not completely stopped, but at least now I can catch myself when I do. I had no idea how much I did that before.
My brother was a risk-taker. As I turn 50, maybe I should be too.: As I cross the 50-year milestone, I’m recalibrating my own sense of risk. Sure, I’ll take care of my health, but I don’t want to die tight-fisted and overly focused on preserving my own physical stuff doomed to decay, including my own body.
Loss and change
Forget what’s next on the horizon. Savor the view now.: I’m not fifty yet, but already I’m being inundated with new timelines to worry about and AARP advice—ad nauseam. I can’t imagine spending this second half of life focused on timelines the same way I did in the first. I’m too tired. I’m more bored. And I don’t believe there’s some place, number, or thing that means anything for sure.
Why do other people tell your story first?: My old teen selves were with me, along with their memories of rape and restraint. Like broken-into-bits Matryoshka nesting dolls, they’d been hidden away, broken and trapped inside. And they’d been broken and left abandoned by me.
The First Birthday After the Death of a Love One: Losing a sibling is losing someone who knows your family's precise flavor of crazy like no one else can. The same crazy you spent early adulthood trying to escape. But at some point realize you have to make peace with the crazy because it’s a part of you too, in some recombined way.
My Grandma Odessa: My grandma had a stillness of one moment, followed by another, and in those moments she shared her stories from long ago, in full color and tell-all style.
Staying Alive Inside While Feeling Dead to the World: I know my brother didn’t want to die. But he was tired of hoping and trying and wanted to be some place where he could be alive and unbothered. I knew that feeling. I think everyone does. But fleeting feelings are different from lingering ones. A too-much tipping point is closer than you think and anyone can end up on it.
Why turning 50 made me cry, and no I don't want to be young again: But what’s really thrown me off hitting this 50-year milestone—and brought me to tears—is how lonely and adrift I feel when I look back and see the island once my home. As I look to my left and right, I realize the people next to me can’t even see it. And the people who could see it are gone. It’s like it never even existed.
Self-storage: A perfect "temporary" solution: Two years ago, my husband and I joined the self-storage club. It seemed like the perfect temporary (“two months tops”) solution for storing my brother’s belongings after he unexpectedly died. Self-sabotage may be a more accurate descriptor.
Interviews
"Surrendered Motherhood" author Bled Tanoe finds sweetness in every season: “Daveed taught me that life happens. Life doesn’t owe you anything. You can either learn from it and move on, or just be stuck and let all your pain go wasted.”- Dr. Bled Tanoe
Dr. Bled Tanoe Says Fix the Pharmacy, Forget the Pizza: “So that makes me wonder if the idea of having a single pharmacist in the chain pharmacy is meant to demoralize a person. Because I feel like it's so important that you have support in a high moment of stress.”- Dr. Bled Tanoe
Brooklyn DEI Editor Examines her Native Hawaiian Roots in Local, a Coming-of-Age Memoir: “I was white presenting, but I didn’t feel just white. And I also wondered if I was Hawaiian enough. That’s when I decided to do the work to own that I'm both mixed and Native Hawaiian — and that included better understanding my Hawaiian culture and history.” - Jessica Machado
From Tragic Loss to Healing: Soojin Jun Advocates for Better Patient Care by Listening to the Often Unheard: “Community means everything, from your individual being, career, and basically any endeavor you attempt to do. We are social beings and understanding that aspect and owning it will help you in every direction.”- Dr.
South Philly Author, Editor and Ghostwriter Reveals Why She's Ready To Be Unmasked: “Discovering my tics were due to a disorder, not some hardwired moral failing, was a revelation for me that started to unravel a lot of shame.”-
Business Leadership Writer Talks Work Culture Trends, Past and Present: “Gen Z is much more awake to the fact that company cultures that allow them to be happy and to be themselves can be measures of prestige too.”-
From the Bay Area to the Central Coast, Latinx Writer Advocates for Future Generations: “I mentally dumped my athletic wear and stopped 'saving outfits.' I wear big skirts and fun matching jumpers for everyday errands. Wearing something I love is a small way to elevate my mood and my day.” - Olga Rosales Salinas
Meet Tanya Kertsman: a pharmacist taking a creative side project to the next level: “Little Blank Diaries has continued to be a creative outlet for me and a way I carve out space for myself. It’s a temporary pause on the never-ending tabs open in my brain — that never seem to actually close.” - Dr.
"Wired for Music" Author Pieces Together Her Past Note by Note: “I think I had an unconscious desire to go back into my past. Like some part of me wanted to look at music again, but at arm's length and through an intellectual lens.”- Adriana Barton
It's a family affair for the Egg Whisperer: “Life is short, so do something every day to make yourself feel alive. Do something every day that will make you vibrate—I don't think I could say that when I was 39.”- Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh
So Femininomenon fun! My daughter Nora came with me to
’s first IRL event at The Robey in Chicago. I treasured our mother-daughter weekend! And I was thrilled to see , founder of The Midst (pictured bottom right), and thank her (in person!). Amy gave me my first writing opportunity three years ago—and the support and encouragement I needed. Amy has inspired, supported and mentored SO many people trying something new. How freakin’ amazing is that?
F Middle Age was filled with insight, inspo and a LOT of energy—because the middle years are a dynamic time of life. But midlife is also a time when support and information are SO important. Here are some thoughts I left with after listening to three engaging panel discussions (find info on the guest speakers here):
Stop and take stock. What’s happening with your health, relationships and career or life? What are you struggling with or wishing were different? What brings you joy and energy? What do you still want to do?
If you’re feeling stuck, what can you change up? What’s something new, anything new, that YOU want to try?
There are no rigid rules (or any rules!) about what being over a “certain age” needs to be.
If someone or some place doesn’t want you, go somewhere else. You’re wanted somewhere and by someone.
Advocate for yourself to get the healthcare you need. It shouldn’t be that hard to find care and be heard, but it often is. Dr. Lauren Streicher gave great advice on this while also pointing out that menopause is just a day, but post-menopause is until you die. Managing whole-body health (physical, emotional, sexual) in midlife helps you now and has major later-in-life implications too.
My mom didn’t know what her period was when she first got it. Thankfully, that’s less common today (though I’m sure it still happens). Yet today, being blindsided by perimenopause seems so common. That needs to change. And it was great hearing that conversation too!
I’m so glad I went! Amy’s a change-making force in the perimenopause space! Check out
!Coming up: My next post will be Cinderella-themed, starting with my first time backstage after a Cinderella concert in 1989 and ending with the Pretty Woman blockbuster take on the fairy tale the following year.
I’ve been doing a lot of interviews in my health writing work, but I want to come back to some interviews again here because they are SO fun. I’m interested in hearing voices talk about health equity and trust building. And I want to interview more fiction writers. I want more stories in life, and I’m curious about people who know how to write them.
I came to Substack first as reader and still am. If you have a newsletter and you’d like to share it in the comments, please do!
