That’s what they keep saying. My husband. My daughter. My best friend.

I turned fifty this year. It is also the year my publisher took out of print my books THE OBVIOUS GAME and THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, reverting the rights to me to self-publish again if I wished.

I’ve been working on my third book, CHOMP, since before the pandemic.

I have an appointment to get my faulty veins ablated. I went to physical therapy recently because my right hip suddenly stopped working. I forget where I put my phone almost instantly.

I’m considering spending $600 on a Dyson tool to breathe life into my thinning cornsilk hair.

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I find myself rereading books that moved me. Listening to playlists sung by artists who can’t hit the notes anymore. And yes, who the fuck do I think I am that I shouldn’t be content to fade away like everyone else?

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In March, I got a line of poetry I wrote in college tattooed on my arm. I like this line. I thought it was original. I even googled it before I got the tattoo to make sure I am the only person who has ever written this line down.

My co-worker recently asked me what the tattoo was.

When I told him, he said, “Oh.”

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I remember when I worked in media reading that middle-aged women suddenly started to feel invisible, because society was no longer interested in how they look. I suppose there’s something to that, in this culture that worships youth, but there are also women my age who are still killing it, looks-wise, so I don’t think it’s that. It’s not societal failure I’m grappling with.

Plus, I wasn’t so hot to begin with that losing beauty is my problem.

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“Who are you comparing yourself to?” she asked, genuinely befuddled.

I looked down at the line of poetry on my forearm, thinking I haven’t written a good line of poetry in fifteen years.

Maybe I didn’t achieve what that girl wanted for me, but back then I still believed in her.

I shifted my weight on the bench at the pumpkin patch. My hip bothered me. I thought about this blog. (The kids don’t know what a blog is.)

I thought about those out-of-print books.

I thought about how my personal mission statement — written in my twenties — is to make myself and others feel heard.

I think I need this old gray mare to find something new about herself to believe in.

My 1:1 got moved. It got moved a lot. But when I went to connect, instead of her face, I saw just a flash of our HR business partner.

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There is only one reason someone from HR crashes your 1:1 without warning.

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The minute I saw her face, I knew what was happening, and my stomach turned over, a lake in summer.

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And thus commenced the last meeting at this employer, a place which I’d left and to which I’d returned three times over a broken twelve-year period that spanned the whole of my marriage and all of my daughter’s life. The last time I came back was a year and half after my first-ever career lay-off - the one that broke my heart and my ego.

Lay-offs. I didn’t see either one coming, but this time I greeted the news with equal parts rage and disgust, with a serum dropper of relief dribbled across the top.

When I came back last, I’d gone through a huge, terrifying six months of unemployment, during which I could not settle or find purchase in my personal life. Money was tight before the lay-off, and there was very little in savings. We cut all the way back. Like all the way back. In a way I don’t want to repeat.

This time, it was five months.

This time, I had seven additional years of life experience and some more cash in the bank with which to line my foxhole.

It was still awful.

The thing I noticed the most was my inability to let myself feel anything other than surface emotions. With so much uncertainty, my anxiety lived on idle most of the time, revving with certain headlines but never shifting from neutral to park. I stopped writing. I stopped thinking farther into the future than when I would find my next job.

The hardest thing about being unemployed: Nobody can pull you out but you. The worse you feel about yourself, the longer the process will take, because people can smell professional fear over Zoom. I wanted so bad to dig like a badger into the pockets of why, but doing so would not bring a new job. Reflection was for another day, a paid day.

Three days after I got laid off this time, I found myself standing in line in customs in the Dominican Republic. We prepaid. A coworker reached out on LinkedIn. At the time, the whole thing was too fresh. I cried in the customs line. Yep. I did. I was an achiever with nothing to achieve. Losing a self-identity can’t be underplayed. There’s not that much holding us in this world.

Here’s what I thought about over those five months of unemployment this summer. Most people I respect have fallen from glory at some point in their career. If you’re the kind of person who throws in with authenticity, at some point, you’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. When the chips are down, you go from this moment to that moment as well as you can. The current world of work is a game of thrones where loyalty went out with pensions and you must test the ice with every step. That’s scary and hard and I won’t pretend it’s not.

But. But! ONWARD.

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Update: It ended. The bad times always do. I started a new job - actually a better job - in October 2023. I started working on a writing project again. I let myself probe the emotions I hid from myself over the summer. My husband and daughter had the best summer of their lives — which is awesome — but I did not. I could not, because I breathe achievement and this summer, I was a live wire dancing across pavement too close to your front door.

That, too, is done. Giddyup.

I’ve been interested lately in when stories shift. I’m trying to do something new for me, which is not to be thinky or preachy and just watch the world happen. I’ve been re-reading some books that surprised me, because for me, the best gift an author can give is a surprise.

There are no new stories.

So here I sit, five books in my lap, trying to decipher at what moment I missed a cue. Kudos to those authors. I would very much like to learn that.

In 2053, I will be 69. If the world still has exists.

I talked to a woman today about why we write. I admitted the novel I’m working on now has been very slow going. A thriller. A new challenge. COVID got in the way, and all that. She was asking why, WHY? And I said, well, this will seem arrogant, but for me it’s immortality. The ability to be heard after death. For someone to identify with you after you are gone.

The reason I write is to leave a mark. This blog, these books that will soon be out of print … just graffiti on the sidewalk of humanity. It’s an effort to be seen. And as I told this woman today … most people don’t actually try that. It’s dangerous to put yourself out there for artistic criticism. You don’t have to.

Nobody but you will ever care if you create art.

And that is why you must.

Long ago, we had a white marlin house hanging from a post on our deck. When Lily had trouble sleeping, I would ask her to pretend that we were there, together, in that little white house, swinging in the wind but protected from the rain. Lined with grass and fuzz.

I created the story for her, but that narrative has soothed me, through the pandemic, through learning to separate in her first year of college, through the passing of my elders.

Through realizing I am in my fall and my parents are in the beautiful fluffy snow of their early winter, when everything is still soft and Christmas and hymns. Before it gets really hard.

This spring I went home to see my cousin-in-law and her daughter. A baby three months old when her daddy died of pancreatic cancer, something I still can’t really believe. He was the most alive of all of us, until he wasn’t. I loved his energy so much. I loved him, and I’m not sure I told him.

That’s a loss.

It is pretty easy to pretend we aren’t all terminal until your mom points out she’ll put up with piles out of thanks your dad is still alive, and you realize that’s fair.

He’s wearing his little brother’s jackets.

I think I’m going through a moment where I’m really aware of our time here. It’s short. It is maybe or maybe not important — I think that’s up to us.

I wish I could be a better writer, to adequately capture an early summer night with fire at your feet and the perfect playlist and a mindset to appreciate what you have been given in life before everyone else comes home and wants to watch TV.

May you have these nights when you realize.

This afternoon my sister sent me a text with a link to a TMZ post saying Heather Armstrong had died of suicide.

Outside of my community, I’m sure most people don’t know Heather in the way that they know Ree or Brene or Jenny or Luvvie — or any of the other women who rose to the national stage beyond the blogosphere. Women whose origin stories to some extent I was privy to and for whom I have that much more respect, having seen them before they got used to the spotlight.

But back then, Heather was an It Girl. She was the queen of the mommybloggers. She was the one woman who was harnessing the dollars, bitch. Out of curiousity, I found this bit about meeting her at a BlogHer conference in the archives of this blog:

She gave a really good talk. Heather is very articulate. At the end of her panel, there was an awkward silence, because we weren't really sure if she was finished talking. She took a deep breath and said, "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."  And that was when I knew I thought she was pretty great.

Afterward, I went up and shyly introduced myself.  Heather strikes an intimidating pose.  She is 800 feet tall and quite thin, and she dresses in that casually hip way of Bossy that this former-sorority girl finds intimidating.  I am not tall and thin, and thus anything I wear comes off looking "perky." 

I told Heather the name of my blog, and she smiled and said she remembered it because somebody spray-painted "Surrender Dorothy" on an overpass near the Mormon Temple in Washington, DC.

Funny, this blog name to me means tornadoes and chaos and realizing you're not in charge, but to Heather it meant a connection to a former religion.  Funny how titles work.

I didn’t know Heather. I didn’t have a relationship with Heather. We talked, on and off, over the years. When I was working on my first book, I learned that she was coming out with a book, and I emailed her, worried they would be competitive and that I would lose, because I had the writing of 25 other women riding on my book, and I was not her.

She was not me.

She sent me back a nice note telling me not to worry, she was writing something completely different.

As my father would say, “As it turns out,” all that is not important.

What maybe is important is that our firstborn daughters are the same age, Heather’s and mine. And so when I think about Heather, I think about my daughter, Lily, and her eldest, Leta. They have never met and probably never will, but we mothers — WE MOTHERS — we emailed each other about their sleep.

What is also important: There is a whole community of writers for whom Heather served as a figurehead of sorts, whether she wanted to or we wanted her to. The mainstream media crowned Heather “Queen of the Mommybloggers,” and with that title both legitimized us and reduced us, all in a headline.

Hearing today about Heather’s death made me very sad. For her, for her family, for her children, for her community. Her very public struggle with mental health — one waged by so many of my writerly friends and heroes — is a paragraph in a library of human struggles. We are only scratching the surface of how much power our emotions and minds have over our lives. I’m relieved we are openly talking about self-care post -COVID, but we’re not all the way there yet.

And also, I can’t deny that any reminder of the period between 2004-2016 is for me a very bittersweet nudge. I found my voice. I birthed my amazing daughter. I published three books. I met women I never would’ve crossed paths with in my little life. I lived a bigger life, thanks to the Internet. I stumbled and stubbed my toes and learned and became a better human being. I would not trade that era for anything.

And it’s been gone for a while. I don’t think about that time all that much.

So today, when I came home from my corporate job, wearing my patent heels and thinking about KPIs and excited to see my 19-year-old daughter home from her first year of college — the daughter who was three months old when I started this blog — it was indeed a shock to hear we lost Heather Armstrong.

It was like opening the wardrobe and seeing the lamp post with snow blowing past.

I don’t want to reduce Heather Armstrong to a symbol. She was a woman.

But also? She was the queen of the mommybloggers.

And so I came here, to write about it.

Today my neighbors brought home a baby girl. Beloved and I paused from where we were doing our annual battle with a garden fountain when we saw them pull up and park in front of the big green house that has held so many people over the years. This is the first couple we’ve seen really make it a home, and now, with the sound of newborn squalls eminating from the vehicle, a home where a family intends to stay awhile.

The husband crossed behind the car to the backseat on the driver’s side and opened the door. I could see the familiar rise of a rear-facing carseat. My breath unexpectedly caught in my throat. I remember vividly what my newborn looked like in her little carrying case. It was grey and white and she was pink and crying, her little toothless mouth open in fury and shock over being ejected so mercilessly out into a raw April world.

Maybe it’s because this little girl was born so close to my own baby’s due date. Maybe it’s because we just made the final tuition payment on Lily’s first year of college. Maybe it’s because I missed her so bad last night that I slept with a crocheted hippo my sister created identical versions of for her and for me. But when I saw my neighbor reach into the backseat to bring his newborn daughter home for the very first time, I felt my eyes prick again with unexpected tears. They have come so many times over the past year — through the graduation parties and ceremonies, the shopping and packing and leaving and visiting and leaving and phone calls and facetimes and snaps and texts and the missing — oh, so much missing.

He reached into the vehicle and lifted out the carseat full of little pink baby, glancing over us, his face a mix of uncertainty and pride. “Congratulations!” I called.

He smiled, looking down at the baby, then looking into the backseat for anything he’d forgotten.

I remember spending twelve years obsessed with leaving something in the backseat before she joined me in the passenger. The first drives in parking lots with her in the driver’s seat. Waiting six hours to get her license the day things opened back up in 2020. Staring from my home office at the little redheaded avatar speeding along I-35 on FindMy when she came or went to and from campus. Watching her tail lights disappearing down the hill after Easter, knowing the next time she comes home she’ll be here for the whole summer. And then, in July, I’ll put her on an airplane with her college friends to go to Spain without me — to have her own adventures.

He glanced back at us and waved.

“Welcome to the rest of your life, dude.” I said, gesturing to the backseat.

He laughed.

And we turned back to our yard, to the fountain, to today.

Lily and I ate dinner tonight over Facetime. Turkey burger for me, chicken and waffles bought with the IHOP gift card the cat sent for her. She’s wrapping up her freshman year of college. I miss her.

We talked about the saddest things we ever saw.

All the promises we made, from the cradle to the grave.

The separation of an orca mommy and her baby. The day we went to the zoo and saw the utter devastation of a once jubilant monkey couple, then found out later their baby had drowned six months before. The monkeys acted like no time had passed at all since that day.

Lily read me a poem about a two-headed calf. Twice as many stars.

We weren’t sad to begin with. Weren’t seeking to be sad. More discussing the concept of being bone-breaking sad. The capacity for sadness, which requires self-awareness, I think.

I think.

Today my husband sent Lily and me a link to a list of things verified to give you the chills.

Last night I dreamed a high school friend asked me if I was aware of how much weight I have gained.

So you become a monster, so the monster will not break you.

I’m sitting now in my library, listening to Songs of Surrender , staring at my books, my marbles, Lily’s paintings and baby shoes. Pictures of me and my girls from college. A photo of my cousins and me taken the weekend of my grandfather’s funeral in front of a tree in the yard that is now my sister’s.

Every once in a while, I sit with the future sadness that I know will come as my people are growing older, and I try to feel a little bit of it now, as if doing that will siphon off some of the orca sadness that I know is coming my way in the future. I push on it to see if I can handle it. If I will make that sound no human has ever heard before.

Lily leaving for college introduced me to a side of me I haven’t seen since my grandparents died. An unbelievable capacity for pain. I had no idea I had this talent until I tapped a vein of emotion I’m pretty sure most people avoid like cancer.

You got stuck in a moment, and you can’t get out of it.

You float through your days, you know? You drive to work, you listen to some asshole bitch about some stupid thing, and you get upset about it, but it’s nothing. Somewhere out there an orca is making noises no human has ever heard before. We worry about parking spots because deep down we don’t want to admit we are all terminal, and every single one of us will lose someone we love. We will lose them, and we will survive it, and if love wins, we’re more compassionate for it. And some of us will actually feel that pain, will let ourselves touch the stars and be humbled by what sentient beings are able to feel, what all those folds in our enormous brains bring us, both a blessing and a curse.

If I could, you know I would. If I could, I would let it go. Surrender. This is a song of surrender.

Every once in a while, I think back on the wise observations of Ani Difranco:

In a coffee shop in a city
Which is every coffee shop in every city
On a day which is every day
I picked up a magazine
Which is every magazine
Read a story, and then forgot it right away

They say goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle
Is a surprise every time

What else is a surprise?

Normal people with one child can’t afford college.

Retirement is probably a myth now, but that’s not a bad thing.

In their heads, old people are ~35 years old.

Nobody on this planet knows absolutely what they are doing.

We are all terminal. This means more approaching 50.