Good God, My Caftan is Writing a Scathing Tell-All About My Menopause... 😂
And Holy Hell, the Dirt She is Dishing!
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Fellow Empresses,
Welcome to all the new people! I’m so glad you are here! And thanks to my dear friends at TueNight for the brilliant shoutout! How the hell are you?
So, this was supposed to be a simple post about how my Frenchy girlfriend saved $15,000 on waxing over the years with these little devils. She whipped one out when we were in the loo before a meeting, and I was in awe of her crazy brow skills.
Then, when she told me how much she'd saved and that she no longer gets those little zits that you get when you get your eyebrows waxed, which I get every freakin’ time. Plus, there is nothing more demoralizing than your teenage daughter reaching across the breakfast table and plucking a pube from the middle of your forehead. I thought... Damn, I need those. And she said, “Zey're only seese (six) dollarrrrr,” in her wicked-charming accent. I tell you, these Gauls know everything about getting old!
But lordy, I’ve been working in this old caftan so long, it’s now writing a scathing tell-all about my menopause, starting with how my body is rapidly decoupling... especially this one muscle in my right ass cheek. It's like it's decided to secede from the union. I almost want to shout at it... WHO do you think you ARE? Idaho? Get back in there with the rest of the muscles and stay right there in the United States of my ASS!
Next, it's going to pen a searing rebuke of my bikini line, which has been on strike longer than the WGA, picketing, and hurling epithets. “Hell no, we’re going to GROW!” And “Help! It’s like barbed wire fencing down here!” As New Yorker writer Audrey Burges would say, “It’s gone full rambutan.” Live footage of that for your botanical edification:
Ah, the caftan has dirt to dish but… you know when you turn in something crazy important like a book or a chapter of said book or a big presentation… and you feel like you've just climbed Mount Everest? When you get to the top, completely spent, and you're all, “Ggaaagh, I forgot my camera. Or, I really should have brought more snacks,” but you feel like all the blood has been drained from your body and your eyeballs are about to fall out... And you realize, wait, the thing you were writing that was supposed to be a radical new playbook on midlife womanhood isn’t quite the groundbreaking primal Yellow Jackets initiation you thought it might be. It’s really just a playbook of everybody else’s playbooks that needs to keep evolving because we all keep learning new sciency things or remembering mythical things that we forgot since everything is cyclical and we get cultural amnesia. Plus, also, we all keep arguing with ourselves about what to do... Like this thing that I wrote to Gabby Bernstein a couple of weeks ago. It was a response to the whole rejection is protection mantra…
And so, of course, I said this...
See... this is where I get confused... One winter, I'd planned this elaborate trip for my daughter (who's autistic) to Disney World w/ 1:1-character experiences & all these extraordinary things that would not overwhelm her, and the night before we were meant to leave, there was a MASSIVE blizzard, our flights were canceled, there was no way to get there from Vermont, 95 was shut down. I literally shook my fist at the sky and said, "Eff you, universe! I reject YOU! YOU and your effing blizzard are NOT stealing my kids’ joy!!" And I grabbed the girls, our trusty, brave sitter, and the portable DVD player and drove 1800 miles through the snow. We arrived at the Grand Floridian at 2 am—the only people there. And we had the best time ever DEFYING the universe??? Giving it the full-on finger! We had Mary Poppins and the entire Magic Kingdom all to ourselves because we took a risk. So... I just don't know how to reconcile this with what you're saying because my plan actually DID work out better?
I wasn’t trying to troll. I was honestly asking the question because it was like that scene from the film Baby Boom where Diane Keaton is in Vermont having a total meltdown in the snow and has to be rescued by Sam Shepard, who she then confesses to that she's had no sex in eons and then the whole thing unravels from there. Live footage of me having a meltdown with the universe:
To be clear, I’m not saying that I know better than the universe, but in this particular instance, I’m just saying I think I was right. And so, that's why I had to put one section in the book that I just turned in about our WILL... as women, even with all this “rejection is protection” stuff, there's something about your WILL being everything at this point in midlife, and not being made smaller or invisible that I think is really important? Because that self-determination and that fire about you is just so key right now and we need to NOT let that de-kindle or flame out. You know?
Perhaps, the trick is cultivating a kind of superpower of discernment (this is what I’ve been calling it), of knowing when to use it, knowing when to muscle the deal, and when to let it go. I think that's where the real midlife wisdom kicks in. And having a sense of self-determination, self-regulation, and a sense of amplitude, like in soundwaves, when to dial down your volume versus when you dial it way up. I feel like this also applies to when and how to adjust a diverse career portfolio. Because you don't want to be working in a linear, meaningless fashion, just to work and miss out on your life entirely, which is what so many of us could do because we were raised as these Girl Scouts of perfectionism, so how do we let that bit go so that we’re able to rebalance according to life and market conditions? Maybe part of stepping into greater ease, which is what I’ve been trying to figure out with this chapter, is admitting that things just aren't effing easy, and the sooner you accept that, paradoxically, the easier things get?
That's the part I left out last night. Others have said it before, but that's the camera I left behind at base camp when I was at the top of Everest after I hit send. I was like… OK, I'll remember it and tell my agent on our call next week. Will you help me remember it? Because, you know, I have this terrible brain fog these days… I couldn’t possibly tell you why… Lol.
Again, we will have more EMPRESS goodness in our upcoming series on vaginal & sexual well-being. You won’t want to miss it. Until then, remember… you are wise AF!
Yours in Grandeur,
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Sheer will is what's gotten us this far! Not accepting rejection. Those don't feel like 'wise AF' words to me. Certainly not words to live by at any rate. Driving in a snow storm with your kids so you can see Goofy and Snow White? That's bad ass Empress stuff. And I can hardly wait for the scathing tell all. I love that word 'scathing' it conjures all kinds of juicy tidbits I look forward to reading about.
Thanks for the shoutout! I'm now looking to get a blue comfy hoody. I will need one each for warm/cold.
You rock-- and roll! Driving to Disney is one of those mom hero stories. You need to enter it in a mom of the year contest. And oh, if my forty caftans could talk. I still have all the caftans my gma made me. How did she not need glasses at age 96 with all that knitting?!She probably knew the secret of butt cheek muscles too.