The Longest Relationship I Ever Had

Ten years ago today, I smoked my last cigarette. I wish I could tell you I quit for a noble reason.

Ten years ago today, I quit smoking. I had smoked for 22 years, a pack a day and to gross you out even further - menthol. I started when I was 15. I remember my first one. My parents were getting divorced, and I was sitting at a boy’s house who I had a huge crush on. I was upset. He was a smoker. He offered me a cigarette, and I was off to the races. Or, more accurately, off to the convenience store to buy cigarettes for the next two decades.

That was the beginning of what would become the longest consistent relationship of my life. I smoked through everything. I smoked through my parents’ divorce. I smoked through my first marriage and my divorce. I smoked when I was happy and when I was miserable, when I was bored and when I was stressed. I smoked with coffee in the morning and cocktails at night. I lived for a smoke break.

The only time I stopped was when I found out I was pregnant with my son. I quit immediately and didn’t smoke throughout my pregnancy. But after he was born, eventually, I started again. Because that’s what addicts do. I had rules, of course. Smokers love rules because rules make us feel slightly better about being smokers. Never in the house. Always outside. Never in the car. Never around my son, or anyone that found it to be objectionable. See? I was responsible.

I even smoked through my stepfather dying of lung cancer. From smoking. You would think that would have been enough. I can’t believe it wasn’t but I lit a cigarette at his funeral. Just typing that - so horrible.

But I wasn’t going to quit. I loved smoking. I really, really loved it. I loved the sound of packing a new pack. I loved peeling off the cellophane and loved turning a lucky. I loved the ritual of it. I loved the first cigarette in the morning, with coffee. I loved a one with a cocktail. I loved sitting at a bar or coffee shop with someone and talking over a pack of smokes. I loved the little community smokers created when we all got banished outside together. We were the fun ones…no one else understood. And I loved the pause of it. The deep inhale always felt so soothing, like I could breathe. I understand how insane that sounds but for five minutes, there was nothing to do except stand there and smoke .

For years, I joked that cigarettes were the longest relationship I’d ever had. Twenty-two years, consistently. Although ten years after quitting, that’s not true anymore…friendships have lasted longer than my time with my Parliaments. Ohhh or Camel crushes. If you know..you just know. They were like dessert. Smoking and I really went the distance.

Eventually, though, smoking stopped being cool. Or, at least, everyone else decided it wasn’t cool. Restaurants turned against me, hotels did too. Bars turned against us amp forced us outside and they all immediately felt less sexy. Suddenly you couldn’t smoke anywhere. The entire world had collectively decided that smoking was disgusting while I always knew that was true, how do you break up with your oldest friend? Even if they’re hurting you?

Then one evening, ten years ago today, I was sitting on our porch having a cigarette when Patrick came outside.

Here’s an important bit of history here. When I first met Patrick, he bummed a cigarette from me. I think it was his way of having a reason to come up and talk to me. Naturally, I assumed he was a smoker. Two weeks later, I discovered he hated smoking. Like hated. At first it was very cute until we eventually married and he spent years wishing I would stop. He never demanded but it was just there…and of course rightly so.

But that evening he came outside, looked at me sitting in my normal spot - back to the house, staring at the garden, and said something along the lines of, “At some point, I am not going to be able to fix what you’re doing to your face.”

Excuse me? You can’t?

Because apparently I had been operating under the assumption that modern cosmetic medicine and I had a plan. I’ll keep smoking and you’ll just…fix it. We’ll laser things. I’ll use tretinoin. I get that I’m a little gray but I’ll wear more bronzer. It’ll be fine.

Patrick explained that no, actually, it would not be fine. The collagen loss I was causing by continuing to smoke wasn’t something he could simply undo later. This was genuinely news to me. Like people who live in the sun, I was under the assumption that all of this damage could be fixed. If that’s also you, consider this your porch moment too.

I realize how ridiculous this sounds. Lung cancer? Apparently not enough. Premature aging? Absolutely not

Vanity won and I’m not even ashamed to admit it. Listen yall, whatever gets you there.

But that wasn’t actually the moment I decided to quit. What happened next was Patrick looked at me and said, “How much would it cost for that to be your last cigarette?”

I laughed and threw out a number. I don’t remember if I thought he was serious. I don’t think I was particularly serious. He was.

“Go get the checkbook,” he said. “That’s your last cigarette.”

I finished it, and I never smoked another cigarette again. Literally not one puff.

People sometimes ask how I quit smoking, and for years I gave some version of the abbreviated story: I just quit. Which is technically true. But the real story is that my husband paid me to stop smoking because apparently financial incentives and the threat of facial collagen loss were more persuasive to me than mortality. There are probably more inspirational smoking-cessation stories. This is mine….

And here’s the strangest part: I still miss it. I’ve never met a former smoker that doesn’t still miss it

Ten years later, I can be in Paris and see someone sitting outside a café smoking a cigarette and still think they look incredibly chic. I know. I have lost someone I loved to lung cancer caused by smoking. I understand what an objectively terrible statement that is. But there is some part of my brain that will probably always associate a cigarette with a certain kind of glamour. The cool kids all used to do it

Sometimes I’ll walk past someone smoking and take a slightly deeper breath. Just enough to catch it. Just enough for 15 year old me. I don’t want to be a smoker again. But somewhere inside me, apparently, a 15-year-old girl still thinks cigarettes are cool. Thankfully she doesn’t get to make the decisions anymore.

What I didn’t realize when I quit was that when you stop smoking after 22 years, you don’t just quit cigarettes. You quit an entire ecosystem you built around them.

I used to drink coffee all day long. Two cups, three, four. Coffee and cigarettes were partners. Without the cigarette, I discovered I didn’t actually want that much coffee. Bert without Ernie Hansel without Gretel. Sunscreen without Retin A…you get it

Drinking changed too. There was a time when an perfect night was sitting at a bar with friends, a pack of cigarettes on the bar, a Zippo - you had to have one, a couple of cocktails in front of us, feeding quarters into a jukebox and talking for hours. Hours That was community. It was friendship. That was my social life. The truth? A cocktail just isn’t quite as fun without a cigarette. So I don’t drink nearly as much anymore either. Healthier on all fronts I suppose

Quitting smoking quietly dismantled a bunch of other habits I knew were connected to it but I don’t think appreciated how strong the bond was. It also forced me to learn something I hadn’t really had to learn before: how to just sit there. How to have a conversation without reaching for something. How to be stressed without going outside. How to finish dinner without immediately wanting a cigarette. How to have a drink without lighting one. How to live through something difficult without the little five-minute escape hatch I had been using since I was 15 years old. I’m not sure how much progress I’ve really made in 10 years I think I’m always still looking for the exit to carve out a few minutes for me

Also for all wondering I think this is why I mess with my hair so much. My hands don’t have anything to do after all these years.

When I think about it now, that’s what cigarettes had really been for me. They were punctuation. Something bad happened? Cigarette. Something wonderful happened? Cigarette. Needed to think? Cigarette. Needed not to think? You guessed it. First thing in the morning. Last thing at night. For 22 years.

And then I ended it. Just like that I broke up with my longtime love for a better face and a few bucks

Today marks an entire decade without a cigarette, and I am really proud of myself. Not because quitting transformed me into someone who thinks smoking is disgusting. It didn’t. Not because I suddenly developed extraordinary willpower. I didn’t. And certainly not because I arrived at some profound understanding about my mortality. Apparently that wasn’t going to do it either.

I’m proud because I loved something for 22 years that was terrible for me, and eventually I put it down anyway. I look back now and I find it hard to believe I was ever a smoker because it just seem to run so opposed to everything I do today

Still wouldn’t trade that part of me for the world

Happy Anniversary to me.

Shopping to me isn’t usually supposed to be profound. As a lover of fashion it sometimes feels like visiting a gallery and taking in beautiful art - but you get to take the art home and wear it. Vapid as it sounds some of my best moments come from great day shopping.

For example.

I was standing half-dressed in a fitting room at Johanna Ortiz, doing what we all do under that uniquely unforgiving lighting - squinting your  eyes and negotiating with a mirror that never quite feels like it’s on your side. Zippers half up, hangers clinking, Don Henleys “Boys of Summer” stuck in my head.

And then a conversation started on the other side of the curtain.

A young sales associate, maybe late 20s, said casually, “I’m about to turn 30.” He was so excited, almost like he could barely get the words out in order. The kind of excitement that comes with milestones that still feel shiny and full of possibility. He asked the woman he was helping, “Do you have any advice?”

She paused. “Well, I’m 64.”

He said, “Great, I know you know what’s up then.”

From my fitting room, I stopped moving. There was something about her tone which seemed so steady, certain. The kind of tone that you know you should listen to what’s next.  At 47, I wanted the advice too.

When I stepped out in my first outfit, she looked my way and smiled before she began.

“In your 30s,” she said, “you’ll spend the entire decade trying to get people to like you. It will matter so much. Your friends, your coworkers, your family, strangers—the person ringing you up for coffee. You’ll want to be liked by everyone.”

It was so specific and so true.

“By your 40s,” she continued, “you start to build an inbox and an outbox for people. You narrow things down. You care a little less about being liked, and more about what fits. Not everyone goes in the inbox. Some people go in the outbox—not because they’re bad people, but because your life is full.”

I stood there, suddenly aware that I was living in that sentence. I wondered if she could tell just by looking at me; standing there fiddling with the ties on my dress.

“By your 50s,” she said, “you might even start hoping people don’t like you as much. Fewer accepted invitations to things that don’t speak to you. Fewer obligations. You stop showing up for things that don’t matter to you. You stop feeling like you need to explain yourself”

She smiled a little when she said it, almost in a satisfied way. I literally sat down at this point.

“And in your 60s,” she finished, “life gets smaller. But it gets more focused. More intentional. It’s about the people and things you truly care about.  You’ve hopefully curated a life of things that mean something to you everyday ”

There was a pause.

And then he turned to me.

“Well, you’re older.”

Which—fair.

I laughed. “I’m 47,” I said. “So interestingly, I’m exactly 17 years older than you and 17 years younger than her.”

A perfect midpoint. A human Venn diagram. Three generations.

“I don’t know that I have anything to add,” I said. “I think that was kind of perfect.”

But I’ve thought about it ever since.

Because the truth is, you can hear something like that and immediately recognize its accuracy and still not be able to skip ahead. You can’t fast-forward through the parts where you need to learn it the hard way. The overextending. The people-pleasing. The heartbreak. The staying too long. The leaving too soon. The saying yes when you mean no.

You can’t shortcut the evolution, but if you’re looking for it, you’ll catch it happening and you can lean in.

The last few years of my life have been… a lot. Stressful and really complicated. Heavy in ways that don’t always translate neatly into conversations at Friday lunches with the girls. The kind of years that quietly rearrange you and how you see the world and even more so, what you want from it.

And when I look around now, I see my “inbox.”

The people who are still here. The ones who have always been here. The ones who showed up without being asked. The ones who stayed when things weren’t particularly easy or fun or convenient.

I also see the outbox.

Not with resentment or with drama. But with the clarity that only comes from having to go through it.

There are people I still care about who don’t live in my day-to-day life anymore. Not because anything catastrophic happened. But because life filled up. My priorities shifted. Energy became finite in a way it never used to be. I can feel time speeding up and getting shorter.

And maybe that’s the part no one tells you when you’re younger—that your capacity isn’t limitless. Not your time, or your attention. Not your emotional bandwidth or even your physical capabilities.

You don’t lose people as much as you choose where to place them.

I often joke with my friends and we toss around the phrase “you’ve only got this one life” as a means to explain or justify a purchase or a trip. But really. You’ve only got this one life...and the clock ticks faster it seems with each passing year. What’s the saying? Long days but short years…something like that.

I accept fewer invitations, but the ones I say yes to? I’m THERE. I show up fully. I care more deeply about fewer things and feel less guilt for not always being able to plug in more. I protect my time in a way that would have felt selfish to a younger version of me. The younger version of me would’ve felt scared that people wouldn’t like me or that they’d be mad at me.

It doesn’t feel selfish anymore, it feels… precise?  That feels like the right word here. My friend Sanja said to me recently, “when things don’t start adding up, start subtracting and you’ll get there.” Everyone get you a Sanja if you can.

There’s also something quietly freeing about no longer needing universal approval. It’s not that I don’t care what anyone thinks because in some ways I do. Whose approval maybe matters more to me today but it’s no longer the organizing principle of my life.

That woman in the store didn’t say anything groundbreaking. Not really. None of it was new information. It’s probably something you talk about at dinners or long phone conversations with your closest friends. She just said it with the confidence of someone who just knew

But sometimes the most ordinary truths land at exactly the right moment.

Half-dressed in a fitting room. Listening to a conversation that wasn’t meant for you. Realizing, mid-zipper, that you’ve already started to become the person she was describing. And turning it over in your head ever since.

Mirrors really do come in all forms, not just in fitting rooms but sometimes in the conversations that reflect light right back on you so you can see better.

Here’s to seeing better. ♥️

Not one person asked her “why are you doing that? You’re smart enough.” Not one person told her she didn’t “need” to do that.

No one suggested passive aggressively that they were going to let their level of intellect age more gracefully as perhaps nature intended. There wasn’t a “gosh, how much is THAT going to cost? No one questioned what she was trying to prove by doing something that made her feel better about herself.

No one - at least that I talked to - felt intimidated or triggered by her choices. Which leads me to the question that tuns over and over in my head: Why can’t the betterment of ourselves, include what we look like as much as it includes how we plan for our investments, our mind, our comfort or our physical health?

Why?

I’ve long been mystified why women just simply do not support other women’s decisions to care for themselves as they see fit. Not always anyway. I’ve heard all sorts of reasons - women are competitive, they can be prone to jealousy. Maybe it’s affordability, maybe it’s bravery. Perhaps it’s more anthropological and goes back to the days of securing a mate that could literally go out and shoot the bacon that needed to be brought home. Could be societal or generational. I suspect it’s a mix of all. I’ve made a series of surgical choices over the years and even within my own friend or family group it’s usually been to mixed opinions.

“Mel. Why. I don’t see why you need that. You look fine. I mean you do you, but if it was ME....I wouldn’t....”

Cool. Don’t. Meanwhile I’ll be over here selecting which scar gel best defines me as a person. You keep on starting sentences with the unbelievably unhelpful and usually unsolicited, “if it was ME...”

It’s not helpful, this judgement - what we do to one another. While masked in “I’d want someone to tell me” or “I’m just saying this because I care about you..” I remain often unconvinced as I think sometimes the true intention is something far deeper and unexamined. It doesn’t create more intimacy between women or foster a sense of security in their relationships. At its best it serves as a giant wedge between people and at its worst, it can be catastrophic for someone’s self esteem. Shame someone - it’s the fastest way to lose a friend, I promise.

Why do it? Why does this need to opine persist? Someone tell me. Please.

And it’s not just us regular citizens that feel the need to weigh in with the people in their lives or even better - random comments to people online - celebs do it too. I absolutely adore Kate Winslet, easily one of my favorite actresses. However, I saw a recent interview she gave where she called the recent trend in GLP-1 use and plastic surgery “devastating” and “fucking chaos” and how physical alterations or enhancements goes against her morals.

Really Kate? Janet in lowa deciding to get a facelift is devastating to you? Cindy in Indiana pulled the trigger on some lip filler and Botox so she desperately must not want to be herself? Or what about Susan in Oregon wanting to lose 30lbs with a GLP-1? Is she really circling the ethical drain by doing so? Hop down off the pedestal Kate and take the weight of the plastic surgery world off those devastated shoulders of yours. It’s going to be okay. Last time I checked, women still had some rights to choose.

What saddened me further is the amount of comments under each repost of her quotes cheering her on, saying we need more women out there saying that. Telling women how they should age and why they shouldn’t do it the way they want. Insert so, so many “Well if it was MEEEEEEEE….”

More women out there shaming other women?

Yeesh. The internets cup runneth over with those.

Just checking the til here Kate for the realness you’d like us all to aspire to...this edited photo seems a bit incongruent with your messaging…

Beyond being an objectively beautiful woman with a storied career, maybe remember the photos that accompany every interview you give or magazine cover you grace is professionally lit, professionally shot by the top photographers in the world, with hair, makeup, wardrobe tailored to your exact specifications and any perceived flaw or hair out of place cleaned up in “post production”. I maybe wouldn’t need or desire Botox or surgery either if no one really ever saw my face in its most raw state and I could solely exist to many as a marketed and edited image. Also, your hair is really that color? Still? Your skin that fair without the use of ANY intervention? No lasers? Microneedling? Peels? No Retin A? I love an English rose but let’s be real. You drew an arbitrary aging line somewhere for yourself and you measure and judge everyone against it. It’s unfair and reeks of your absolute privilege that almost no one has.

It’s awfully easy to say those things when makeup artists, designers, and photographers are fighting for the chance to make you look your most beautiful. Everyday.

Cindy in Indiana doesn’t have that. She’s got what’s within her grasp and within her understanding and budget of what’s capable for her to feel her best and what aligns with her definition of what makes her feel beautiful. Maybe we should let her have it without commentary.

Me thinks there’s a tiny bit of photoshop going on here, seemingly without protest from Ms. Winslet.

Winslet said “the secret to aging at any age is accepting who they are and accepting you can’t fight change” I think that these issues get conflated. I don’t see a direct link in accepting who I am and deciding to age without any intervention. Wouldn’t the opposite also hold some truth? If you know who you truly are - then don’t you also know how you want to live your life and what you want to look like while living that life? I’m quite clear on who I am, what I believe in, what I stand for and exactly how much laxity I’m willing to accept in my jawline before I decide to make a change. For me. Change isn’t always bad.

Can plastic surgery be overdone? Yes of course. Do some people sincerely deal with dysmorphia issues? Absolutely. Does that mean people with great surgeons and realistic expectations should choose to not do something that would make them happy? I’d say no. The issues of some shouldn’t outweigh the benefits or overtake the narrative for all.

Maybe we just stop doing this to one another.

Running the page I do on Instagram and there’s a lot of DM’s that come my way where people send me a celebs photo or any photo and want me to answer “what’s wrong with her...” I used to entertain it. I’d play along and chat with the best of them....but I realized years ago these are peoples faces, bodies, it’s their lives and their mental health we are passing around as entertainment and gossip to one another and it’s pretty awful. If you don’t want plastic surgery or any cosmetic intervention, you shouldn’t have any. But the judgement of others in one breath with “I’m a girls girl” in the next can be pretty disheartening as we collectively continue to strive for progress and growth.

If someone doing a lot of work on themselves triggers you, you can actually withhold comment. You don’t actually have to say something. Log off social media, put down your phone. Better yet, ask why the choice of one person has such a negative affect on you. Why do you feel so inconvenienced by it. My friend - that same one referenced in the beginning of this will always say to me when I’m about to lose my mind about something “what kind of day do you want to have today Mel?”

2026 is here. I want good days. For all of us. Let’s all try to put down the sword this year and give everyone a little bit more space to exist - happily- in the choices they make.

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There’s a great old movie quote from Kathy Bates’ character, Evelyn Couch in the film Fried Green Tomatoes “I'm too young to be old and too old to be young.” If you never saw it, it’s a gem of a film about a woman in her mid forties who seemed to be on the search for deeper meaning in life and seemingly finds it through a friendship with and the stories from a much older woman. It’s a film and she’s a character I’ve grown to love a little bit more every year as my understanding and compassion for Evelyn has grown. I think every woman past forty can understand Evelyn in their own way.

Towanda!

I have a complicated relationship with aging. Being married to a dermatologist I would’ve thought that relationship would be easier and more streamlined for me. I have the ability as an insider looking out to sift through what works and what doesn’t without the noise of bullshit beauty marketing getting in my way. That being said, I stopped understanding what any sort of natural aging process looked like with that first Botox stick at thirty one. I’ve gone under the knife twice to counter effects aging has had on my face (an upper bleph and a brow lift) and I plan on continuing procedures as age, my finances and gravity dictates that I should. I’m lucky given my husbands field of work he understands and supports these choices as I know so many women don’t have the same.

I see women around me that do a lot more to their faces and bodies than I have, and I know some that have done nothing procedure wise at all. Both claiming space under the umbrella of “aging gracefully” which has been a term commandeered by the wellness industry but I’m here to steal it back. When I look at both groups of women, each still look at or near their respective ages to a great degree, give or take a few years depending on which path they chose. I might not look 45 but I don’t look 25 either. It doesn’t work like that.

I think a lot about what aging is supposed to look like by year or by decade. When I was in my thirties, rich with collagen and lacking a lot of wrinkles, I’d see women 10 years my junior, and think I could easily fold into their group and no one would probably be the wiser. Probably not the case anymore. It’s the miss to ma’am transition and it happened while I wasn’t looking so I feel like I didn’t have time to prepare. I know I’m not alone with this mindset either as women reach out to me via my Instagram page on the daily or hourly wondering my thoughts on some celeb or notable and whether I think they’ve aged well and/or can tell what they’ve done. I’m just not sure I totally know what that means anymore. It seems like everyone’s skin is smooth and unlined. Everyone has pretty lips and a lifted brow. Jaws are snatched left and right.

On the one hand part of me thinks the question really is, does her work look appropriate or believable for her age? That might be the better question to ask these days. On the other hand, I think we each define for ourselves what aging well looks like based on our own goals. Some people’s goals are to see the earned smile line on their faces as it gives them comfort to see evidence of a life lived. Others, want to be frozen because those same lines remind them that the clock is ticking. I hear my father’s voice in my head from a recent phone conversation as he’s about to turn 75: “I’ll tell you what Melissa, I might be turning 75 but I FEEL 30. “

I don’t feel thirty. I’m not sure I’d want to feel thirty again. Thirty was me at the tail end of an anxiety driven, terrified, hanging on by a thread young adulthood. I blazed through my twenties with my hair, cigarettes - and a lot of times - my life on fire. It was fun, but I’m not sure it was the kind of fun I’d be dying to get back to if I could. So in that case, I’m quite comfortable with the aging process. I sometimes feel like my mind, like my vision is becoming slightly less sharp. I squint to see a little bit closer, and metaphorically to think a little clearer. I’m ok with that. Some of the sharp edges of my relationships have rounded over the years to something softer, some to something duller.

I’ve learned there’s a difference.

I live in a world where beauty and the aging process is a daily, of not hourly conversation. Between my husband’s practice, my friends and my ever growing Instagram account on all things dermatology, skin and aging, it’s not something I get much of a break from. I’m not sure I’d want to anyway as from a visual and a psychological point of view it fascinates me. The human condition is intoxicating. I also find that my ability to help others navigate through this is one of the more rewarding things I’ve done with my life.

I’d like to say my own aging process is one that I constantly track and one I’m ever tweaking in the name of research for my page, or as test case for my husbands clinic, but in reality it’s also something that’s important to me. I want to age the way I want to age and I don’t know that I want to provide a lot of wiggle room there for nature taking its course. All gained wisdom and life experiences aside, and while those are invaluable to me, I still don’t always love that I look like I’m getting older.

I type this with the awareness that to harp on the exterior effects of aging is a shallow, trivial, superficial point of view, albeit an honest one. I’ll spare everyone the annoyance of not prefacing each thought with some intellectual insight to counter each aesthetic one. I think that’s part of the problem for women anyway. We can’t just say how we feel. Roll your eyes at me and sigh about the menacing trappings of external beauty and youth, about pretty privilege or vanity, I get it. The thoughts buzzing around my head remain all the same.

I’m saying out loud what the toxic positivity community wants you to keep inside lest you have a real, honest, public feeling: watching yourself age is really hard. Seeing an image reflect back at you that you don’t always recognize is hard. The invisible woman thing in theory sounds great (wait! people will leave me alone?) but in reality can test ones self image and self esteem (wait, people will leave me alone). Stepping on a scale and not understanding the number is hard. Feeling yourself age is hard. Finding out which joints no longer work correctly is hard. In my head I’m still an athlete…I mean it was just yesterday that I was, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

We don’t talk about it because we aren’t supposed to right? We’re suppose to cheer ourselves and others on with all the right platitudes (stop!!! You’re INSANE. You look amazing, I’d kill to have what you’re complaining about!) and false equivalencies in order to lessen the blow the mirror provides. Yes you have wrinkles but it could be worse! Turn on the tv and see the struggles in the world! Your wrinkles should be THANKING YOU.

Yawn.

Society would tell us we’ve done this to ourselves with our overconsumption of social media. Before that it was feeding into the profit hunger of various beauty and skincare companies. Both letting us know that the goal post has been moved and by the way you’re never going to reach it but here’s a cellulite cream that’s not going to do anything. Thanks for playing. I’ve never been one to compare myself to anyone else from a beauty perspective or any other for that matter. I never found that I looked similar enough to a “type” that there was some sort of map I could follow to get from here to wherever I was supposed to go. Maybe I’d feel differently about all of this if there had been. I don’t look anything like either of my parents so neither provides much of a glimpse into my future.

I can tell you from the countless consults I do with women searching for a plan that while the comparison thing is real and can act like some sort of invasive aesthetic cancer, most women truly just want to look like the best version of themselves. The version they remember in their heads before life kicked all the way in. Most women are also scared to say out loud that they are having a hard time aging because they’re scared of seeming self indulgent. God forbid.

The desire to restore ones features to a more youthful look usually comes next and Velcro’d to it is the anxiety of “can I say these things out loud and be accepted for it by my family and friends?” The sentence “I’m getting a consult for…...” is terrifying for a lot of women. For those with budget, time and courage this is the age where a casual visit to your dermatologist for Botox and laser becomes a more serious visit to your plastic surgeon for the skin laxity happening head to toe. Most women I know speak about it in hushed voices for privacy reasons or for fear of the “but you don’t need to do anything” onslaught from their surroundings. I wish people understood that the worst thing you can say to a woman who wants to address something that makes her feel insecure is “you don’t need to do that.”

Define need.

Having been under the knife a few times and having been told that by many, it shows just how far we have to go in our collective journey of supporting the choices of women. Like real support. I’ve never met someone who came to the decision to have elective surgery easily, and telling their loved ones what and why they have something planned is often an even bigger step than the knife itself. Nothing feels worse than having to justify and defend addressing your insecurities. If I leave you with any advice at all it would be when someone you care for tells you they’ve made a cosmetic surgical decision, give them a hug or a high five and offer to pick them up post-op.

I don’t really know how to end this because to me that would mean I’ve come to some sort of a conclusion about how to manage my relationship with looking older. I definitely haven’t. My feelings on it I’m sure will continue to evolve like the aging process itself. I’m comfortable enough to say I’m not sure I’ll ever really embrace it, but rather work on finding the grace to accept it.

Here’s to Father Time. 🥂

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I logged onto Instagram the other day and one of the first posts I saw was a warning about Invest 95. For the uninitiated - and be grateful for that - an Invest is a system meteorologists watch in the Atlantic to see if it’s going to become a tropical storm and then possibly a hurricane. The ever threatening spaghetti models show that should this become a named storm, it could be headed my way. While wildly unpredictable, the citizens of New Orleans know that theoretically any storm could be THE storm. Again. Everyone knows New Orleans faced Katrina in 2005, something I lived through and lost everything because of.

In 2006 at 27 years old, I wrote this piece on Hurricane Katrina. It was more of a meditation to myself as I had just moved back to New Orleans a year post Katrina and was trying to make sense of the very different landscape around me. But I filed it away and hung onto it. Even though I haven’t read it in years, I wouldn’t change a word of it. In honor of this hurricane season and Invest 95, I thought I’d share it here.

I Know What it Means…

I was a child of New Orleans, Like a sponge, I absorbed everything there was about this city, including my share of love and heartbreak. The people around me were children of New Orleans as well. We lived, played, worked, dreamed and loved within the breakable walls of the city. Something about here just clicked with us and once it did not one of us were ever the same.  And it was instant, in the way that you meet a strangers eyes from across a crowded room knowing that a love affair is about to begin.

       It was you know, a love affair. Delicious and sexy, one as intense and as any living love affair could be. I celebrated on the streets of New Orleans for all that it had to offer, and cried when I was alone and couldn't feel its embrace. As a child of New Orleans, I learned how to live. Here I understood what it took to make it on my own, that the people were as full of love and passion as the jazz clubs were full of music or the bars full of booze. The generations of traditions honored by this city became part of my heartbeat. I knew that if I didn't have food to eat or money to buy it, friends always had a place for me at their table.  If you came to New Orleans and found yourself criss-crossing the alleys of the French Quarter wondering how your life got you here but at peace because it did, then perhaps you are a child of the city as well; an orphan in the sense of never really feeling at home until that moment. Let me assure you, you will feel at home here.  

     I have known all kinds that have arrived in this city for no reason that would sound reasonable. More than you’d believe came down for Jazz Fest and just never left. I knew a woman that read A Confederacy of Dunces, and promptly moved here, sight unseen.. They were like me, and live we did until one day, the life, the energy force of this city was gone.  I remember sitting on my father’s sofa a thousand miles away as an evacuee watching this place, this home that I loved so much drown, betrayed by the very walls that were supposed to protect it.  I have never hurt so much in all my life.  I remember casting a long, sideways glance at my father who was so horrified at what was unfolding on the television screen in front of him that the look on his face is imprinted on my brain forever.

The aftermath of the storm was what was and is to this day the most devastating thing of all.  Displace half a million people from a Midwestern town, and they will find another Midwestern town exactly like it finding solace in its strip malls and chain restaurants.  Displace half a million people from New Orleans and you will have half a million people who have absolutely no idea how to function.  The rest of the country doesn’t work like New Orleans does, and residents from here cannot just set up shop anywhere.  They need the food, the music, the neighborhoods, the traditions, the Tennessee Williams like characters roaming the streets, or the quirkiness of life here in order to live.  Friends of mine ended up all over the country after Katrina, but for as bad as they were all reacting, they might as well have ended up on the moon.  Nothing felt right; every place was like a foreign land that nobody had the map for.  Eventually we all started coming home for fear that we truly could not make it anywhere else….failure to thrive I think is what it’s called.

       Rebuild. Renew. Restore.  Those became the three words most commonly heard here.  Bumper stickers wallpapered most cars here with residents determined to make the statement known to the world.  We will not be defeated.  We will rebuild.  Bigger, better, blah, blah, blah.  We don’t need Bush, or Nagin or FEMA to make this town ours again.  Except for the fact that we do, and they don’t care.  If it’s possible, Bush cares even less about this city today than he did during the storm - with Michael Brown doing his heckuva job. Mayor Nagin, well he does a fine job running this place from his newly built home in Dallas.  The really sad part about Mayor Nagin - and true to Louisiana politics is that he actually got re-elected after the storm, running his campaign on the Rebuild Renew platform.  Thank God he can’t for a third term since he has lied and fucked this city in every conceivable way.  And sadder still, we let him.  Sometimes I swear citizens here elect morons just so they have something to talk about over coffee.  It’s generational at this point.

       And the rebuilding process is slow.  Painfully slow.  Drive through certain neighborhoods and it is as if August 2005 was yesterday. Those neighborhoods serve as an ever present reminder of what once was and what will probably never be again.  The people here are different too, everyday I still hear somebody’s Katrina story: all different and all heartbreaking.  They speak in terms of “before” and “after” as if each one of them was fundamentally changed and perhaps they were.  Most for the better, however some people here still walk around looking confused and depressed as if they misplaced their life somewhere and are still looking for it.  I have high hopes that one day they will find it.  It’s what so many of us came here for after all.

       Visitors love to talk of the charm of the city, the great food, the music, the sexy rhythm of the town.....but at the core of it are the people. The people are real. I mean genuine, authentic, real people who have found their place in the world no matter how tough their world is, and they will be absolutely damned if they can’t somehow make it better. These children of New Orleans are fighters and if we have to fall to our collective knees and pray for a better New Orleans because if no one else will listen then maybe God will so be it. Never will you meet a group so rich with culture, so proud of what is theirs, so unflinchingly brave.   I admire the strength of the people that were here in those first days after Katrina when there was no water, no power, food, shelter or safety.  Who gutted their own homes, who cleaned mold off family heirlooms, who buried the pets left behind.  There was almost nothing left. And still we returned. Many of us…most of us. We came back to put the pieces back together again to collect the scraps of what’s left and try to make it whole fully knowing with each passing year might be our last year in this city with the next hurricane season always just around the corner and the last one just behind us.

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Share Field’s Substack

Every year my husband and I take a long summer vacation. Well, long by his standards which is to say 9-14 days or however long he feels his patients can survive without him. Or vice versa. Also, if we’re being honest after being together for 14 years it’s also how long we can reasonably entertain each other without starting to lose our respective minds. I told a friend recently after X amount of days of togetherness I’m Miranda from the SATC honeymoon episode, standing in the woods, calling Carrie, desperate for the call not to drop because I need outside human contact with one of my girlfriends again.

You guys get it. I know you do.

So this year it’s 14 days in Greece. As someone who is Greek on my mother’s side, I’ve been dying to visit the country of my ancestry but for reasons I can’t explain, it’s taken 45 years. Also that’s completely untrue. My obsession with the food, history and fashions of France and Italy over the years is the real reason why I haven’t made this trek coupled with the fact that it’s a boat heavy vacation and my ability to do well on boats…remains in question. One day we’ll talk about Cabo 2021.

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Having gone to visit a friend in Bol, Croatia a few years ago I became familiar with the whole experience of the ferry trip to the island vacation and how much your excess baggage matters. Literally it will weigh you down and I’d argue that figuratively it’ll keep you from relaxing properly. I was arriving in Croatia from Italy where I had spent 10+ days eating and drinking, shopping and playing and with that came my enormous suitcase. And backpack. And purse. Lugging it onto a ferry, off it, and up a hill to my friends apartment in Bol instantly taught me one thing: when you’re island bouncing and there’s hills and cobblestone streets involved, pack light.

Here’s my problem: I like vacation specific wardrobes. I really like them. I crave them. I have shopping carts all over the internet filled with items just begging to be purchased and filed away in a location specific part of my closet. Scotland for one week in November? There’s a tweed for that. I have a whole section in my closet that’s dedicated to cold weather in New York City. You can guess what it looks like. Nili Lotan blazers and tailored pieces, leather pants, loads of cashmere from the Doffer Boys, black tanks, Khaite boots, camel hair and cashmere coats, crossbody bags…androgyny and monochromatic themes reign supreme here. All in various shades of black, camel, ivory. That section translates well for my Paris vacation wardrobe albeit it gets slightly more feminine - last time I remember packing this nude Khaite ruffled tank being so excited that it would finally get worn because it was so chic but was deemed far too sweet for Manhattan and perhaps not Southern enough for New Orleans. There’s another section that could be labeled “fancy beach” and it has all the accoutrement that one would think would go in that section.

I want a Greece wardrobe. I need a Greece wardrobe. I’ve dreamt for years about piles of white dreamy pieces that flutter in the wind, gauzy dresses, perfectly curated resort wear that somehow transforms me into part of the Greek landscape, the caldera just over my shoulder as the sun goes down. In my head, I’m a vision. I get mistaken for a local obviously. In reality, this requires an enormous overweight checked bag and when I look at our scheduled itinerary, I just don’t know that I have it in me. My suitcase already feels heavy and it’s not even packed yet.

Athens - Sifnos - Paros - Santorini - Athens. Four ferries. Four times unpacking and repacking. I just spent 12 days on a Palm Beach, NYC, Paris, NYC loop and by the end of it all my suitcase had gained 30 pounds and my shoulder gained a new appreciation for how much it hates my decision making skills. Problem is, the 20 year old in me that was dying to make a trip to my mother’s homeland has very specific outfits in mind. She has requests and an unrealistic budget. She’s expecting some sort of killer bikini/coverup situation everyday. A different white dreamy look for every moment. 9 pairs of sandals. A statement dress or four. 45 different lipsticks because you just never know.

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Except I do know. I know and I know and I know. I came home from my last trip with a crush of dresses that I packed and never wore. A pair of heels that never left my suitcase. Custom ivory pants in the softest wool silk I’ve ever felt that barely got a whiff of the Parisian air. I’m an overly optimistic packer every time I travel and yet I know better. I know that often times what I wear during the day carries me through dinner, and I’m stuck with a glut of pieces that were purchased for some dream vacation and never worn. The lesson repeats itself until it’s learned I grumbled to myself as I unpacked all of this excess last week.

So I’m doing it. Challenge to me by me is accepted. Well…accepted and about to be enforced by my friend Sanja who is going to help me “minimize” for this trip. “You can do this Mel, I believe in you” are the words I’ve decided she said to me during our brief Q&A on “how to pack like an adult.” My carry on bag is sort of cheating anyway. I own the extra large carryon bag by Roam luggage

(they’re amazing and you can customize your bag) and it breaks every rule of carryon travel from a size point of view but it is in fact classified as a carry on bag.

Wish me luck.

xx

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I’ve never been known for my tendency to overanalyze things. Hyperfocused has never been a descriptive term that’s been used by friends when they’re asked how they would describe me. Impulsive, instinctive, passionate…me, me, me. I’ve always specialized in knee jerk reactions when I’ve chosen most things in my life. It’s been a practice that has served me well in life more times than it hasn’t and one that I’ve come to trust. However, like anyone, I love the things, relationships and moments that catch my attention, make me sit up straighter, break or warm my heart. This platform seems like the right place to entertain these musings and this seems like the right moment in my life for it. Field Notes from the Mirror is my thoughts on all the things that reflect brightest upon me. As someone who used to write all the time, it’s something I’ve missed. Call me inspired these days….

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I don’t have an intended direction for this substack except to guarantee it will be a fair representation of the contents of my head. Most days you’ll have to forgive and hopefully embrace the randomness that this might become. My brain is rarely quiet and can swing wildly from politics to travel, from current events in my life to current fashions that meets my stylists eye. I have a page on Instagram (@mrs.derm) with a singular focus as my experiences and life of being the wife of a dermatologist, having been the point person in developing my husbands practice into what it is today. and using the knowledge I’ve accrued over the last decade and a half to help my friends and followers alike navigate what can be an overwhelming field of medicine. It’s been something that I’m incredibly proud of. Some of that content will of course bleed into this as it’s an encyclopedic amount of information and experiences I’ve gained over the years, a constant topic of conversation in my life and it’s something I enjoy. However as someone who seems to be incapable of not looking for creative outlets, I find myself seeking more.

A huge part of my life centers around so many other topics and encounters that I feel like there are times I lose my focus on those things as my Instagram alter ego can become a full time job. She’s me but…she’s just a small part of me. However it’s part of me that’s been rewarding from a personal point of view as its been instrumental in so many new friendships and experiences but in some ways…seems lacking for no other reason than its narrowness in scope. Contrary to what seems to be the internets belief, there really is only so much one can discuss about skin that’s going to be productive. A lot of it is just becomes warning people how not to waste their time or money, which in itself is a worthy endeavor if not an exhausting one at times. The great thing about substack is it’s relatively new and so the pressure to perform á la Instagram just isn’t there. Yet. Seems refreshing to me.

I haven’t decided on a paywall feature as I just want to feel my way through this. I’m not sure it makes sense for me right now but if there’s a post where is makes sense to link the items referenced, I will finally relent and do it as has been requested by my followers for over on Instagram since the inception of that page. For now though this page will remain free. I make no promises on frequency of posts, I imagine sometimes you’ll hear from me more than others

I feel like it’s important to note that as I expect to import a lot of the same followers from Mrs. Derm that while I believe in maintaining the integrity of that page in terms of topics I will and won’t cover, they should except to see a lot more freedom of thought and expression over here. This will obviously be more lengthy in prose and more personal in views. For all that wish to only view me from the lens of Instagram it’ll always be available to you. For everyone else…

Wish me luck

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