Letting Myself Go

I turned 56 this week—what I've learned so far about getting older, and what I'm wishing for most in the year ahead.

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A few weeks ago, I was leafing through an old cigar box of photographs left to me by my grandmother. Tho her parents emigrated from Italy in the early 1900s, she was born on the South Shore of Long Island just like me.

In this photo (above), taken in her tiny apartment attached to our equally tiny house where I grew up, she’s holding the newborn version of me in her arms, and my sister, who is three years older than me, is sitting beside her. One of the great boons of having printed photographs is most people who were from my grandmother’s generation would customarily write the date or a little note on the reverse of a photo, so years or actual lifetimes later they might remember when said moment took place.

Here’s the inscription:

I turned 56 on Wednesday. And what struck me when I found this photo was that my grandmother was only a few years from where I am now. This was December of 1968, and so much about that time was different than it is now. I always knew what my grandmother looked like, her formed gray curls, her soft hands, her tanned ankles in cotton house-dresses. But I’d never considered how old she actually was when she looked that way. To me she was just always my grandmother and…old.

For some reason holding this picture in my hand and thinking about her made me both sad and also happy. She never learned to drive, I’m not sure if she ever voted, she never flew on an airplane or experienced the gamble/delight that is takeout. But she loved to cook on Sundays and knit Barbie clothes for me. She loved getting dressed up for a special restaurant in one of her three beautiful handmade dresses and a monogrammed mink stole, wearing all of her finest jewels at the same time (which I own/wear now).

Something else my grandmother loved deeply was getting her hair done every week by Mrs. O’Connor down the block (we called her aunt Lita). She came to my grandmother’s apartment, lovingly washed her hair in the kitchen sink, dried and rolled it up in curlers, all while chit-chatting about the humidity, the neighbors, what was good/on sale at the local King Kullen. Sometimes I would sit on my grandmother’s carpet and watch while this weekly ritual took place. My grandmother caring for herself, doing the little bit that she could to show up in the world in the role she was dealt—a mother, a wife, a grandmother, a housekeeper with customary short gray hair shaped like a wavy helmet. Everyday she wore a dress (I never saw her in pants and I don’t believe she owned any). And everyday she cooked/served/cleaned up after herself or anyone else. And occasionally, she would sit on the front porch in a wicker chair and simply watch the world go by. Maybe even imagining, once or twice, what if?

Three of my grandparents all died before 72, which tbh, does not feel far off from where I am today. My grandmother Angela, tho, lived to be 94. And one of my greatest regrets was not understanding/knowing as a college student how much of a privilege it was to still have her on this planet with us. And how much I would eventually yearn to know about her and her life and her dreams like I do today. Especially now that I am almost as old as she was in that photo.

When I posted on Instagram that it was my birthday, I honestly hesitated for a moment about sharing that I was 56. Like, for a second, it was something to feel ashamed about that I had to hide.

But I didn’t want to hide it.

I woke up to 56 almost elated. To feel the way I feel. To look the way I look. I don’t look like my grandmother did when she was 59 in that photo. But I also know I wouldn’t be me or look like I do if it hadn’t been for her and the WORLD of safety and love and nourishment she created for me everyday when I would visit her in her teeny kitchen or when she would walk to pick me up from school because my parents couldn’t. She took care of us, like my own mother did, so I could have the tiniest shot at having some kind of life or experiences that they didn’t.

I don’t think I realized it, when I acknowledged my own birthday, that every birthday and getting older IS the gift. And why hide it? I’m 56…I’m still here, figuring all this shit out everyday and trying not to waste ANY of it (comparers/despairers, I SEE YOU).

My friend Andrew died a few years ago at 50. My friend Pam died at 37. My own dad died at 72. And I still think of a boy named Kyle who died when I was in 6th grade, and the look on our teacher’s face when he told us that morning that Kyle wouldn’t be back in class anymore. I didn’t understand the permanence of that…of Kyle dying. But I cannot tell you how many times over the decades I’ve thought about him. Who we were then at 12, where he might be today if he had lived. The finality of him and my friend Andrew and anything/anyone we’ve known + loved and lost is tragic. But it is also the reminder of our own lives and our presence—our flexibility—to shift and grow and work and change and be moved to tears by the silliest + also the most tremendous things.

56 rules. Wednesday night feeling 🔥 coming home from a cheeseburger/Paloma date night with Kevin. Vintage Sonia Rykiel blazer, very old Zara sequin mini dress, glorious flattering exquisite black Heidi Merrick jeans and these new platform sandals that were gifted to me from my friend and neighbor Caron Callahan. Highly recommend.

After a long illness, and about a year after someone I loved very much died, I asked a psychic about them—if they were okay…happy. And the psychic closed their eyes and after a few seconds frowned a little bit, “They’re still adjusting,” she said. “They didn’t want to go so soon.”

God…that was hard to hear. And do I really want to spend my days here feeling shitty about not getting invited to a party I see on Instagram or worrying myself over a thing in my life that I know that I need to FINALLY let go of?

No, I don’t. And I won’t. Because getting older is amazing. And to be 56 now feels a little bit like being at the most thrilling point on the ferris wheel…at the tippy top, rocking, a little scared, but also—holy fucking hell—it’s the BEST view in every direction EVER. Right here, right now.

A few more things I’ve learned about getting older/feel pretty good about now that I am 56…

• I no longer like to waste time. And I won’t. Reading/watching something I don’t enjoy. Spending time with someone who makes me feel drained. Eating something that doesn’t taste very good (sorry Matcha). In many ways, I am 56 now and I am finally becoming AWAKE…awake to all the things that might have been easier to ignore before.

• I accept compliments. Sometimes with enthusiasm! Instead of brushing them away or instantly contradicting them as I have for my entire life. If someone tells me something positive about me or my work, I make a point to look/listen. And like Gay Hendricks says, to let it “land on me.” When we do, we let that river of ✨ between two people keep flowing…instead of standing in the way of something really beautiful taking place.

• Choosing to be happy. Or to dance. Patti Smith quoted Allen Ginsberg in her newsletter from 11/4/24, who said, “there comes a time when we must turn our mourning into dancing.” I believe in mourning and I believe in regret. But not forever. There comes a time, usually in our 50s, when letting go of the thing that has agonized us, finally allows us to live…and also DANCE.

• I do not have to be perfect. One of the greatest gifts of making the leap 20 years ago from the world of magazines to digital was—for an unruly perfectionist like me—was no longer living in abject fear of making a mistake. A typo. A human error/blemish that would live on for eternity. Despite trying very hard to make this newsletter and everything else in my life has flawless as possible, I do sometimes fuck up and make a boo boo. Don’t hate me for it. A mistake won’t ruin anything, but hating yourself or someone else for it will. PS: Perfect is boring. 🤡

• Dry cleaning is expensive. Get a spray bottle with some essential lavender oil and call it a day. If it’s a life-altering stain there’s probably a YouTube video hack that’s cheaper and more sustainable. Use the money you save on dry cleaning to go sit in nature or buy something wonderful that does not need to be dry-cleaned.

• The less I do to my face, the better my face looks. I haven’t gotten Botox in over a year, and I’m also open to plastic surgery someday. Lately tho, being on a budget, my skincare routine has gotten simpler, and I’m enjoying it. Maybe in the new year I’ll do a follow-up to the last skincare piece I did, but for now, this is the only product I feel is worth mentioning here. I love it, especially on mornings when I didn’t get great sleep, and it really works.

Adding to this—the things I no longer care about now that I am 56:
1. Old boyfriends
2. What I look like from behind in my underwear
3. What someone whom I do not know/like/care about thinks of me
4. Losing my shit occasionally (it happens)
5. Feeling guilt over spending money on pricey organic foods that give me/my family pleasure. And, as Mel Robbins says, NOT spending my money on “dumb shit”
6. Comparing myself to other people whom I know nothing about
7. Doomscrolling
8. Falling for the trappings of other people’s success
9. Missing my own Life Goal deadlines. It’s okay, I WILL get it there. I always do…

And—the things I DO care about now that I’m 56:
1. Saying Thank You and I Love You as much as possible
2. Noticing beauty and miracles in the world, everyday, not just on my birthday
3. Dancing…after a lifetime of never dancing
4. Only wearing clothing that makes me feel held and radiant. Not like someone pretending to be me…just ME
5. Thrifting as much as I possibly can, because I SWEAR it’s good for my health!
6. Knowing as much about my mother and where she came from/what she’s lived through as possible…as my daughter’s only living grandparent, she deserves to know my mother deeply, too
7. Writing. And telling the truth.
8. Wealth. ON MY TERMS✨
9. Scheduling good sleep/making time for it like it’s a dinner date.

Those of us who are still here—at 22, at 68, at 18 or 90—we are here to be and do all the things that our mothers/grandmothers/great grandmothers could not. Even if that is simply to open ourselves to the possibility of those things. Instead of distracting ourselves/running from the fear or that crack in the doorway, beckoning to us…leading us into who we might become…at 56 or 94.

Last thing I’ll share here before signing off is this: I visited with a friend a few months ago who said something I couldn’t forget. She had just turned 60, and was reminding me, quite emphatically, that now that she’d reached this milestone age she wasn’t going to “let herself go.” I knew what she meant, continuing to put the effort in/taking pride in how she looked. But I immediately felt the opposite. Like man, all I want to do these days is LET GO of ANYTHING that feels restricting. Anything that feels bad, small, punishing. I turned 56 this week and I just want to let myself go…so I can see where I’m headed. And go there.

I guess that’s what I’m wishing for in the year ahead—the courage to let go and also the courage to create. To walk through the doorway and want every single thing that I want knowing that it’s good regardless of what anyone else thinks. And also knowing that my grandmother would have wanted that, too. xxCb

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