Dame Helen Mirren who turned 70 this week.
This is from back in 2015 when I was a Huffington Post contributor and my very existence seemed to rest on whether or not they ran something I wrote. Maybe you can relate?
I look back on this and marvel at how much I’ve changed in five years. No longer at HuffPo, and writing mostly books and screenplays, I’ve developed what I guess you could call a ‘submission callus’. I write, submit and go on with my life because what I’ve had proven to me over and over and over again that God, or the Divine, or whoever runs this show—she has a plan—and the details and timing involved are none of my business.
Carry on,
xoxJB
Hi, My Lovelies!
Here is my latest Huffington Post essay on rocking the years after your fifth decade, AND, there’s a cool, humiliating, humanizing, little life lesson attached.
I know there are a few over-fifties in this group and you guys will appreciate this post. So you get your glasses while I find mine…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/turning-50_b_8282198.html
Anyway, the lesson was this: I gave this to the HuffPo over three weeks ago. Three. That’s like an eternity in dog years.
Anyway, cue the crickets…
I was well aware that the divorce pieces had gotten some legs, but come on! There’s more to my story than a divorce that happened thirty years ago—WAY more! Yet, the divorce pieces continued to run and my thought process went something like this:
Why didn’t they run the Over Fifty piece, it’s been a week? Clearly, they hated it and are rethinking their decision to make me a contributor. Shit. I’ll just lay low, fly under the radar.
Then…
It’s been two weeks, I can’t continue to just lay low, maybe they never received it. Should I risk seeming desperate and re-send it? I sent something else instead, an essay on unsolicited advice, you know, just to check the system for bugs (no bugs detected, the piece ran the next day).
Instead of making me feel better I was now convinced they HATED the Over Fifty piece. A plain and simple case of literary loathing.
In my imagination, they all laughed over lunch about how stupid it was, “Can you believe that Janet Bertolus! She doesn’t know shit about being over fifty! Or writing for that matter!” Bahahahaha! (insert diabolical editor laughter here).
Fuck.
By week three I decided that for the sake of my mental health and to maintain any shred of self-confidence I had left (it was hiding somewhere in the vicinity of my big toe) —I had to just forget about it and go on with my life.
That was last week. Yesterday, they sent me the email that they were running the Over Fifty piece.
Oh, really…that piece? Remind me again which one? Oh, yes, hahahahaha (insert insipid, forced, and awkward laugh here) the one about being over fifty, Oh, well, I’d forgotten all about that one. (Insert somersault inducing eye roll here).
When I pulled up the link I literally gasped (and not for the reasons you think, like grammatical errors or blatant overuse of commas). There, at the end of the essay, was one beautiful photograph after another of spectacular women over fifty! What a great surprise!
Sometimes I can be incredibly batshit insecure.
They’ve obviously been busy the past three weeks compiling pictures to run in this section—and here I thought it was all about me.
Lesson #1789–Trust the process. At a certain point, it has nothing AT ALL to do with you.
I’m beginning to think this applies to every situation in life!
Carry on,
xox
