A Little Pep Talk Before We Get Going

Me, a few minutes ago.

A couple of posts ago, I shared that I’m devoting 2025 to pursuing my creative dreams — and so far, things are going pretty well! I have lots of ideas and I’m plugging away at them and feeling good about the response I’m getting as I put them out in the world. The biggest challenge I’m facing is TIME. I have two freelance jobs that pay my bills and my Substack, Something Totally Divorce-Related, has enough paying subscribers now that I feel a big sense of responsibility to put out a thoughtful, well-researched newsletter every single week. That means this blog, my labor of love, has to come last — but it’s no less important to me and I’m doing my best to make time for the ideas I have for this space, as well. Before I begin posting content here more regularly, though, I want to give you a little background on some of the things I’m going to be doing here, and why.

More than a decade ago, I created a separate style blog called She’s Still Got It. I hoped it would motivate me to figure out how to feel fashionable and pretty again, after several years of parenting small children and completely losing my sense of style in the process.

The blog took off quickly, and less than a year after I started it, I ended up selling it to CafeMom and continuing to write it for their website. I had a blast doing it and loved getting to write for CafeMom’s much larger audience. I never portrayed myself as a fashion expert — I was just learning about trends along with everyone else and laughing a lot in the process. It was lovely to discover so many moms out there just like me, wanting to stay current and reclaim their former selves, even if they didn’t have a whole lot of cash or a size two body.

The CafeMom gig led to other opportunities and I eventually had to give up style blogging. Honestly, I also got a little burned out — I was writing thirteen posts a week and it was… a lot.  I started doing more TV and video work, then travel writing, and staying fit and reasonably fashionable was part of the job.

But then, right around the time I hit my 40s, my world started falling apart.

It began with the death of my grandmother. She was the most important person in my life and losing her absolutely gutted me. Then, a close family member became very ill and I cut back on work and devoted my energy to helping take care of them. For a long time, we weren’t sure what was going to happen with the illness and treatment and that was incredibly stressful — It was, in all honesty, the toughest thing I’ve ever been through and I haven’t been able to write much about it out of respect to my family member’s privacy. As you know now, at the same time that all this was going on, I was in an abusive marriage — and things with my husband were only getting worse. In addition to being abusive, he had also pretty much left me to handle the logistics of our family member’s illness and treatment on my own, and even complained that I talked about it too much, and that felt so overwhelming and scary.

That was the state of things throughout most of my 40s, and I often found myself struggling just to get through each day. I gained weight and hated buying clothes in sizes I had never worn before. My husband began referring to me using terms like ‘big girl’ and ‘middle age city,’ and he frequently assured me that no one but him would ever want to be with someone like me. I had never felt more unattractive or undesirable, and I was certain I would never really feel pretty again.

By the time I left my marriage in 2022 (honestly, ‘fled’ is a better word for it), I was 40 pounds heavier than I had been during my style blogging days, and I was living on next to nothing, so I was very limited in what I could do to physically improve myself. Life felt pretty bleak.

Me in 2022, two days after I left.

But as I began working on healing and creating a new, toxicity-free life, I discovered that my self-esteem started improving almost immediately. Without my husband around to make comments about my age or my weight or criticize the things I did to try and build myself up, I felt a freedom I  hadn’t experienced in decades, a freedom to find my real self again. And even during one of the darkest moments of my life, when I had just left my marriage and had absolutely no idea how I was going to live on my own or pay for anything, that freedom felt glorious.

Very slowly over the last couple of years, I’ve been able to reconfigure my life to fit my terms. I prioritized living in the city instead of the suburbs, in neighborhoods that included miles of safe, sidewalk-lined streets. I started walking two to four miles every single morning, and walking instead of driving to coffee shops and restaurants when I could. I only bought and cooked healthy foods. I surrounded myself with friends who encouraged me and built me up, a welcome counter to the many years of putdowns that had become my norm. I figured out ways to take care of myself on a budget, scouring the shelves at TJ Maxx and Marshalls for effective beauty creams and serums on deep discount, or waiting for big sales at my favorite stores.

The creams (and the nights of peaceful sleep and the healthy foods and the reduction of stress) did their work and the lines that had started appearing around my eyes, shockingly, went away. I started watching hair and makeup videos on TikTok and YouTube and figuring out how to update my look without spending a fortune. The weight I had gained slowly started coming off. By the time I was able to buy a place and finally get my things out of the attic of my former home, all the hanging bags of beautiful, classic dresses I’d bought during my TV days actually fit again. I cried the day I tried them on and zipped up every zipper. I never really thought I’d be able to wear them again, and had always felt a little guilty about keeping them. Who knew that they would end up providing me with a whole new wardrobe ten years after I bought them, at a time when I needed them most?

I’m turning 50 in a few months and I’ll be honest — I’ve never felt better about myself, inside and out. I still have a lot to work on, but I think that’s part of what makes me feel so good now  — I’m learning to be honest with myself about my flaws while still celebrating my strengths and how far I’ve come since leaving my marriage. I’m hopeful that my 50s will be my best and most fulfilling decade yet, and these feelings are a big part of why I decided to rebrand Suburban Turmoil and turn it into, well, Something Totally Different. I want this to be a place of fun and hopefulness and excitement for all of us, at a time in life when we’re too often told by society (and in some cases, by asshole husbands), that our best years are behind us and only gloom and doom and wrinkles lie ahead.

I can’t help but want to share all I’m discovering with you all, whether it’s miracle products or beauty hacks or affordable clothing websites. And I’ve been thinking about how ridiculous it is that I’m not making more videos doing just that, given that it’s so easy to shoot and edit videos now with a phone and a $20 microphone, not to mention the fact that a big part of my career included shooting, editing, and appearing in videos and TV shows. Why am I so afraid now to use the skills I was literally trained in, for years?

I’ll tell you why. That inner critic is sadly still there, claiming I’m not good enough and that people will laugh at me if I make the videos I want to make, or think I’m shallow or conceited or deluded. And it’s ridiculous, because there’s nothing to back up my inner critic’s assertions. I’ve made a few videos for my social media accounts already and I haven’t received any negative feedback. Or lost followers. Or gotten anything except supportive and engaged comments, from people who were interested in what I was talking about. The troll, in this case, is me. And that’s the saddest, most pathetic thing ever. I am holding my own self back and it’s unacceptable.

So I’m going to work really hard to squash that inner voice, and do what I want to do and make the videos I want to make and write what I want to write about. And I’m telling you all this because I’m hoping this resonates with a lot of you reading it. Our 40s and 50s are a time of transition for many of us — Our kids are growing up and moving on, we hopefully have at least a little more time for ourselves, and many of us are assessing what we want to do with the next two or three decades of our lives. I’m hoping that if I’m openly working to dream big and conquer my fears here on this site, it encourages some of you to do the same, whether you want to feel stylish again or try your hand at gardening or start your dream business or leave a dead relationship or write a book or anything, really, that’s been on your heart to achieve. Because now’s the time, right? I do feel a new sense of urgency to do the things I’ve always wanted to do — I don’t get that sense anymore that I’ve got my whole life ahead of me and all the time in the world. It feels more like it’s now or never at this point, and I want to use that as positive inspiration, rather than a reason to give up.

This post is all over the place, and it echoes some of the sentiments I’ve already written about on this blog. But as I start creating more style and beauty posts again, I wanted to share with you a little bit about what’s behind that decision, and why it means so much to me. I’m still not an expert — just a soon-to-be-50-year-old trying very hard to feel good about myself again and not let my age or someone else’s assessment of me hold me back. I hope you feel motivated to do the same thing in your life, however that looks for you. We’re just getting started… and anyone who doesn’t like it can move along.