A Letter to my 34-Year-Old (Child-Free) Self

What if she knew it was all just the beginning?

About a year ago, I did a live Zoom talk with Farrah Storr of the Substack “Things Worth Knowing.” Farrah, a former EIC (and now on staff at Substack) has a knack for gathering people for good conversation. But I was nervous about doing it. So much so, I almost didn’t say Yes. At that point, I hadn’t done an interview like it since my Refinery29 days, when I did them weekly…sometimes every day. I felt out of practice. Scared someone might ask me something I didn’t have the answer to. But as soon as she let the audience into the “room” and I saw all their faces begin to appear on the screen—smiling faces, warm faces—I felt at ease…and exactly where I wanted to be. That is, talking with other women—women I don’t know but somehow do know—about what it feels like to be on the verge of something. Something you want and you’re scared you won’t have. Or WILL have...

Me at 34/35, in the first Tribeca basement office of my former company Refinery29. When I wasn’t at my beautiful desk with a gorgeous landline, I was somewhere else, worrying about being back at my desk (with a landline).

When I was younger I was always drawn to older women…learning from them, reading them, observing them at restaurants, at work, on a plane, wherever I might catch a glimpse of my future self…imagining ME one day at exactly the same moment, in exactly the same chic blazer:). Lately, I love talking to women at my stage of life, probably because it’s comforting and illuminating to have other people encountering all the peculiar/frustrating stuff that happens around the time you turn 50, that none few of us are prepared for.

But there is something about talking to women around 33/34…post Saturn Return, at the very beginning of their grown-up path. Full of hope…and a good amount of terror. I think the Tully line gets it just right: “Your 30s are like a garbage truck coming around the corner at 5 a.m.” When I talk with people at this part of their lives, and listen to what they’re feeling, like I did with a few of them after that Zoom talk, it’s like I’m back there, too, waiting for the sound of the garbage truck in the not-so-far-distance—34ish, sitting alone in the middle of my studio apartment floor on East 82nd Street, lighting a match in the dark, and praying into a smelly drugstore candle, to anyone/anything, to show me the way…to give me A SIGN. To please-please-please give me some kind of indication that I’m on the right track. Please…let me have all the things I desperately want, even if I can’t exactly put them into words. Even if they seem impossible. And, please let it be okay if I decide I don’t want some of those things, too. Because even though everything was truly just beginning, I already felt like I was running out of time.

Mother’s Day always makes me think of that time…being 34. And not knowing if a child was in my future…and feeling ashamed for not knowing. And despite all that immobilizing fear and doubt and the countless delays she had to navigate, that the 34-year-old version of me kept it moving, cobbling a life together anyway. I get why women are applauded for being moms. It’s harder than anything I’ve ever done. But I also know that the women we were before we were moms deserve that same appreciation. That love. For holding it all together and hoping…so we could someday have those things. Even though we were probably falling apart.  

A Room of My Own…

It reminds me of this guy I dated back in my 20s. He worked in advertising but what he really wanted was to be a photographer (he is one today). Over the years, we’ve kept in touch infrequently. But I remember he mentioned once in a DM thread about wanting to write a book about what it felt like to be a “reluctant” father. He, too, had a family on the later side like I did. And I understood what he was talking about. Even if, as a woman, I didn’t feel like I had permission to even think such a thing let alone write a book about it…or discuss it out loud. Reluctance over being a mother. Or just becoming one.

I wasn’t sure for a long time if I wanted children…if it was in the cards. The idea of it scared me, along with anything else that might possibly sideline my path to creative success or whatever version of that I was hellbent on—writing; becoming an editor instead of writing; starting a magazine instead of writing; applying to grad school instead of writing (and then not going to grad school); starting a media company to work with other writers; become a writer…and finally write. My own mom worked long hours from the time I was very young, late nights and often weekends, too (I know a lot of you can relate). And I was always kind of clinging to her, wanting to be with her, especially when she wasn’t there. Even at 7/8/9, I could see how hard it was. How tired she seemed. How disillusioning it was, even from my naive, very primitive vantage point. I could sense a longing in her. That often there was some place else she wanted to be, even if maybe she didn’t know exactly where that was. It was clear her train had left the station. Working constantly, raising two kids, helping my dad tend to my grandparents who lived upstairs, being unbelievably young and inexperienced herself…there was no getting off or changing seats. Absolutely NO time to be reluctant or anything else.