Dame Helen Mirren who turned 70 this week.
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 the 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 is this: I gave this to the HuffPo over three weeks ago. 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 that—WAY more! Yet the divorce pieces continued to run and my thought process went 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 blogger. Shit. I’ll just lay low…”
“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.
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! (diabolical editor laughter).
Fuck.
By week three I decided that for the sake of my mental health and to maintain any shred of confidence (that 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.
Well, that’s…unexpected…
When I pulled up the link I gasped (and you will too). There, at the end of the essay, is one beautiful photograph after another of spectacular women over fifty! What a great surprise!
Sometimes I can be such an ass.
They’ve obviously been busy the last three weeks compiling pictures to run in this section—and here I thought was all about me.
Lesson #1789–Trust the process. At a certain point, it has nothing AT ALL to do with you. I think this applies to every situation in life!
Carry on,
xox
