Years of co-working, co-sleeping, cleaning, driving, attending parties at Chuck E Cheese all added up. Did I still want to be married? I wasn’t sure.

Twenty-six years ago, I met Tim. At a bar. It breaks my heart that there really aren’t any bars anymore. Although the bar where we met, Coup De Ville’s, in Charlottesville, still stands.

It was June 28th. I randomly asked when his birthday was, and he said two days ago. I said, “What did you do to celebrate?" He said, “I went to work.”

I knew his coworkers, the other neurosurgery residents. I said. “Work starts in three days.” That’s right. He went to work three days early. The fact that a conversation ensued, much less a twenty-six-year relationship, is a miracle.

But there was something about him. If he was a song, he’d be Peaceful Easy Feeling. He played it on our first date. That date was a hike up a mountain. He didn’t bring any water. He brought a backpack full of maps to other mountains. This paragraph is foreshadowing. Read it again.

We got married a year and a half after we met. We had our first child one year later. Neither of us stopped to consider that we’d only spent thirty months together before we started a family. We didn’t wonder, “ Will I like this person in five years? What do we have in common? What are our communal strengths and weaknesses?”

But boy, we were in love. Goosebumps when he kissed me. Starry-eyed. He drove an old car. I loved that. All the other neurosurgery residents drove leased BMWs and Porsches. He was driving a fifteen-year-old Saab.

What I know now is that we are both terribly disorganized. We both love animals too much and have, at times, had seven pets. Eight if you count the tortoise, seventeen if you count the chickens.

Neither of us is good with finances. At all. We both put the bills in a pile that taunts us until something forces us to manage it. And it turns out the IRS moves faster than either of us thought when we relocated back to the USA from New Zealand.

We started a family quickly. A son born in Charlottesville. Then eighteen months later another (in New Zealand). Then twenty-two months later another.

We didn’t have time to think about our marriage when the kids were little. Or when they were bigger. No in-laws were jumping in to help us. Truly. Not a single time. We were on our own.

We got along well. Until we didn’t. When we relocated from Tennessee to Delaware, we had a rough patch. It was ten years in, and I was like, do we call it? There was one fight. Right before Christmas. I will never forget seeing our little girl crying on the steps as she listened to us scream.

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This year was wild. One year ago, I started my Instagram. Zero followers. Fake name. My profile pic was a dahlia. I had just dropped off my last child at college and was a bit forlorn. So I started making Instagram Reels and Carousels. It kept me busy, and I thought it would help if I wanted to start a Substack.

I didn’t have a plan. No intention of becoming an influencer. But I was drowning without my kids. I was lonely. With nothing but time on my hands, I threw myself into learning the editing apps.

If you had told me one year ago that twelve months later I would be going to a fashion event and visiting the ShopMy offices, I would have said, “What’s ShopMy?” (ShopMy is the affiliate marketing app most people who create content use to share shopping picks.)

ShopMy has made it possible for women like me, women who stayed at home with their kids and gave up years in the workforce, to help supplement their family’s income. This week I had an opportunity to speak with Paige at ShopMy. What an interesting call. Paige did the very first gift guides at GOOP. Yes, that GOOP!!!

If you had told young Helen, Helen who didn’t have many clothes but who liked to design dresses and play with her paper dolls, that one day she would share her love of fashion, she would have gone wild.

And maybe that is the best part. At 53, I somehow found my way back to something I loved at ten.

I am also heading to an event at Gérard Darel. It’s a French brand and the designer of my favorite dress of the summer.

Wednesday, I am going to see Jennifer Aniston interview Jim Curtis, author of The Book of Possibility. Seeing him speak this week feels wildly appropriate given that his Instagram and his insights on manifesting are part of how I changed my life this year.

What I will be wearing:

A lot of Me+Em. This is the brand I sell the most of on ShopMy. It’s just so easy. They create pieces that women can wear easily. A lot of their denim and pants come in three lengths: S, R, and T. These are the leg-elongating jeans. They run true to size. I am 5’4 and got the 26S and can wear it with a one-inch heel. I think I may get the R to wear with a higher heel.

Me+Em is also great for occasion dressing. This season they stepped up their game with these tuxedo pieces. I have the oversized Icon Tuxedo Jacket and I have my eye on the shorter jacket and pants (I tried them in a 2s and they were perfect).

The oversized Icon in brown plaid is gorgeous. I paired it with the pouf sleeve knit top (it has a small turtleneck and a perfect puff sleeve). I need it in more colors. This Parker Thatch bag is so fun. Leopard is always a yes. Then the Nili Lotan in brown stripe herringbone. I wear a 2 in these pants. I bought these sneaks on sale. Love them.

Thursday I have a 7 AM flight from JFK to LAX. Why do I do this? I wear jeans on the plane. I like to wear my Agolde Crop Low Curve because they are super comfy and chic but don’t graze the ground. I wear a bomber because planes are freezing. This Anine Bing one is a favorite. The New Balance sneakers are adorable and not crazy expensive. Mine have blue laces but they are sold out.

How did I not know about Jenni Kayne? I mean, I have wandered into her stores before but haven’t bought anything. Paige at ShopMy told me I would love it (we were chatting about favorite brands), and she was right. This sweater is perfect.

I love the Margaux boots. So good. This is the longer tuxedo blazer I bought. I am wearing it to the Jim Curtis event on Wednesday. Actually, this is the exact outfit I am wearing. The bag is the Andiamo from Bottega Veneta, but I borrowed mine from Vivrelle. Yes, I borrow my bags. And you can get a free month with the code HelenBoulos! I have my eyes on this Chanel.

I have these pants from LeSet. They are perfect. They sell out early too. This Jenni Kayne top is also perfect. Chef’s Kiss. I ordered it because it’s going to sell out and isn’t in stores yet. And this COS jacket is great too. The fun military look but more chill because it’s navy on navy. Don’t even with this bag. Is it a little small? Yes. Impractical in suede? Also yes. Perfect? Also, yes. These shoes are the Bottega Loafers. Expensive. I fell in love with them in November 2025 but didn’t pull the trigger until April 2026. I have worn them on repeat since then. They are so comfortable.

This is the dressy outfit. I try to avoid events that require dressing up, but this is so perfect and timeless that I fear I will really regret not buying it. I pair it with my favorite earrings.

I can’t wait to share the details of all the week’s events with you. Especially the evening with Jim Curtis. Get the book here! I really believe that changing our lives is possible. Not easy, but possible.

Last July I started a faceless Instagram account under a fake name, with a profile picture of a dahlia. It now has over 350k followers. Nobody is more surprised than I am.

When my friends’ kids started leaving, it looked to me like they had “plans.” Some of them were taking classes at the local museum. They could do things with floral tape that I simply could not. I am still, in fact, completely mystified by using sticky tape and water to make flowers stay in place. I just cannot make it happen.

Other friends are like Ina Garten, only they golf, needlepoint, and sew when they aren’t deboning fish and deglazing sauces.

As the empty-nest era loomed, I panicked. Dreams of joining a pickleball league dried up when the competitive tennis moms decided tennis and padel weren’t enough and annexed the game grandparents pioneered as a less intense way to have fun. The tennis moms did not get the memo.

So, with no talents, no children at home, and nothing to do all day, I decided to “give social media a whirl.” I’ve written in anthologies and have a few romance novel drafts sitting unfinished on a computer so disorganized that the only way I maintain a digital life is by buying computers with bigger and bigger storage drives. If only there were a Junk B Gone for my Mac.

I did not start Instagram to become an influencer. I did not really think about how many followers I would have. The account that now has over 350k followers started as a faceless account called Luisa Limon. Luisa did not want fame. Luisa wanted mastery, a cup of coffee, and a reason to get out of bed every day.

If you venture into the creator space, you will hear terms like Trial Reels, hooks, open loops, and sticky content.

I started with something more important than a deep understanding of how to make viral Reels: curiosity.

Apps like Canva and Templify taunted me. I couldn’t put a font where I wanted it. I spent hours trying to make text appear magically over a cup of coffee.

And while I would love to say I was being brave, I wasn’t. I was hiding in plain sight.

I didn’t tell friends about Luisa Limon. And the writing I was supposed to be good at? I couldn’t even write an Instagram hook tempting enough to get thirty people to stop and watch my video of flowers and cappuccino.

Every day I woke up, walked my dog, and thought about what I would post. Some faceless dressing-room try-ons? Cute mugs at Anthropologie?

My self-esteem should have been in the toilet. I’d spent twenty-three years driving kids to sports, forgetting the sports equipment, getting my kids to school late every day, and making dry salmon and soggy broccoli.

But it wasn’t.

Looking back, all I can say is I was blessed with the gift of delulu.

The fact that no one watched my posts didn’t bother me at all. Dancing around with flower petals floating around my head, insinuating I had witchy powers, didn’t embarrass me.

Women talk about becoming invisible in their fifties. Invisibility was my superpower. I could fail every day, and no one cared. No one even noticed. I was just another cringey woman in her fifties trying to find herself after the kids left.

Honestly, many Reels were just horrid. But some were funny. There was one masterpiece where I filmed myself doing very un-Martha Stewart-like things to a Martha Stewart voiceover that I thought should have earned me a Webby.

Spoiler alert. I did not win a Webby.

I spent hours making things that seventeen people watched. Four of them were immediate family members who had been instructed to “like, save, and share” every post.

But the whole experiment was becoming fascinating. When I posted coffee with a story about how I failed out of college but went on to attend the University of Virginia for graduate school, people followed me. When I posted about running a trail marathon when I hated trail running and was trying to get over Long Covid, people commented.

By October, women were messaging me. Saying, “I’m in the empty-nest phase too.”

“How did you decide to start this?”

I wasn’t filming face-to-camera Reels, so I answered every question with on-screen text. It was genuinely low-quality production but high-quality content. Because it was the truth.

I realized women going through this phase of life didn’t want to be influenced. They wanted to be seen. Acknowledged. They were standing in their kitchens wondering the same thing I was.

What now?

What do I do with a PhD in grilled cheese without the crust? The mean girls won’t let me sit with them. What do I do?

By then, I had a few thousand followers, and I decided it was time to bid adieu to Luisa Limon. Telling people to go out and be brave while hiding behind a fake name was ironic in a bad way

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I was creating

I wanted to use Instagram to practice storytelling. My husband asked why I wasn’t working on my book.

“Because I will just stare at the pages all day long. There will be no feedback. It will turn into sitting on a sofa thinking about writing instead of writing.”

There was no plan. And very importantly, I did not prepare. There were no notebooks or calendars. I didn’t sign up for any courses. I just created something every day. Sometimes people watched; sometimes they didn’t.

But I wasn’t staying in bed. And that had been my biggest fear when my last child left for school. That I would quit. Give up.

My family was disappointed I wasn’t “writing,” but I was creating. Say what you want about editing silly videos. I was mastering skills every day, and that gave me confidence.

Why women discount their worth

I spent twenty-three years running every aspect of five people’s lives. My husband was at work. I know the Social Security numbers, the frequent-flier numbers. I know who won’t eat asparagus and who loves it. Who is failing French and how to soothe the French teacher’s ego (a completely different approach from appeasing the algebra teacher).

If I did my job well, at the end of the day the house looked exactly like it did when we woke up. The children were alive. Not always happy. And we had toilet paper. Bad days looked like Instacart toilet paper while a child sobbed uncontrollably about giving a speech in school.

But most days looked the same. There were no trophies. No compliments on a job well done.

And more importantly, this was unpaid labor. Was I lucky that we could afford for me to stay home with my kids? Absolutely yes. Would this have been harder if I had a job outside the home? Also yes. Would my title have changed significantly in the eyes of teachers, children, and society if I had a job outside the home? Also yes.

When the kids leave for college, it can leave an enormous hole. Questions about worth and ability emerge. Women want to know what to do with the talents they spent years discounting.

The business came later

I had zero intention of monetizing Instagram when I started. That concept would have been hilarious. I couldn’t find the button to post a Reel without a Google assist.

I started with no followers. A fake name. A profile picture of a dahlia. I didn’t know what a brand deal was. I didn’t care. I needed a place to call my own. Virginia Woolf had a room; I had Out_of_office1971.com.

Affiliate sales, brand deals, management weren’t part of the original plan because there was no plan.

And that is important. I believe every woman has a talent that she can build into a business. But I think leading with curiosity will help you find your passion faster than leading with How can I make some money on the internet?

This is not a post about how to get rich quick on Instagram. I didn’t make any money until I had well over 150k followers. But I learned so much. My vocabulary expanded exponentially into fields I knew nothing about. A friend said he had never seen me so happy.

I was making something I believed in. And it was mine.

And that is important. Leading with curiosity will help you find what absorbs you faster than leading with How can I make some money on the internet?

Here is the permission

Women have started asking me how I started. And I don’t think they are asking how I started an Instagram account. I think they are asking what happens if they fail. What are they good at? What skills do they have after twenty-five years out of the workplace?

You are not underqualified. You are an overqualified Renaissance woman with a certification in first aid and psychology.

You don’t need to know what you are good at. Just start. The truth is I spent at least ten hours a day on this little side project. That is a lot of time developing a skill set.

People watched me fail so many times this year. No one else remembers the Reel that bombed. The one where I convinced my husband to wear an influencer outfit and sing Taylor Swift. Sorry, babe.

You have questions: How do I begin something when I don’t know whether I’m good at it? Am I allowed to try something without knowing where it will lead?

Don’t wait to get good at something before you start. That’s literally not how it works.

Try the thing. Fail at the thing. Great news. You are a fifty-something-year-old woman. No one is paying any attention to you.

Until they are.

You don’t need to tell anyone you are starting something new. You don’t need to buy thirteen different notebooks to start. You don’t even need to show your face. You do not need permission to start something that is just for you.

Write the first paragraph. Make the flower arrangement. Take the class. Make the pillow.

You may end up with a business. You may end up with a book.

You will not know what you are building before you begin. I did not know. I had no idea. But here I am, twelve months later, taking meetings and asking questions. Still failing. Still trying. And weirdly, the gift of invisibility gave me more visibility than I could have imagined. And I am still trying to navigate that as gracefully as possible.

This is Part One of I Started at 53. In the next installments, I’ll tell you how the faceless account grew, when I finally showed myself, how it became a business, and what the inspiring version of this story leaves out.

Subscribe—it’s free—and Part Two will show up in your inbox. That’s the one where I finally show my face

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I had so much fun checking out fall looks this week. Full transparency: this is the week we drop everyone off at school. On top of feeling emotionally verklempt, I have been shattered. I haven’t been sleeping. I am trying to run my Substack and Instagram, and spend quality time with my family, and find everyone’s missing (favorite pants, shirt, jeans). I have also done some FaceTime apartment decorating. And traveled from home to Manhattan to LA to set up our new apartment there. I decompress by shopping. (Yes, I know that maybe meditating in a Yurt would work better, but that isn’t on my fall bucket list).

I think the biggest surprise on this list is the Veronica Beard denim jacket. I haven’t shopped with them in a few years and wasn’t expecting to adore this jacket the way I do.

I got a lot of DMs about sneakers, jackets, and sweaters. I also get asked what I am reading. (Not enough). But I enjoyed putting these looks together. This Sea Sweater is so good. posted it the same day I bought it. She and I are always on the same page. Make sure to check her out. This sweater is fantastic and comes in two colorways.

The earrings are Mejuri and perfect for every day. I bought them in LA when I discovered I lost my entire jewelry box. (I cannot even).

This bag by Parker Thatch is SO good. I can’t wait to carry it this fall. Camo and pink and a shoulder strap. Oh my.

These shoes are amazing, on sale, and hopefully still available. I bought them last night on the plane when I started getting messages asking what sneakers I like.

The jeans are my all time favorite loose wide leg. They go with anything. I am 5’4 and size up to a 26 rather than staying in a 25.

Okay, we NEED to talk about this Veronica Beard jacket. It’s denim, it’s got a cool plaid lining, a gorgeous corduroy collar and a great swing fit. The store photo does it no justice. It is literally so good. I don’t know how to show you because it just doesn’t photograph that well. But it’s gorgeous.

I got the small black denim Gucci Giglio canvas last year. I carried it every day and will carry it every day this year too. It’s just that good. It looks small but it’s a clown car. You can fit everything in it.

The brown Gucci loafer. If it’s in your budget, buy it. Gorgeous. Super comfy (wide toe) and oh such a beautiful color.

THIS SWEATER. Just go buy it. I had to source it for like ten friends when it sold out last year. It’s argyle with a solid blue back and crystals in the argyle. It is the PERFECT fall and Thanksgiving sweater. Not lying about how many people wanted. They tried to buy mine.

These are great Veja sneaks. The jeans are the straight Lexi from Pistola. The only straight jeans I can eff with because i have knock knees.

The jacket. Buy it. It’s perfect for fall. It has a great swing. It’s great for Sept-November and it’s neutral.

This Parker Thatch bag in brown suede. Chef’s kiss. And you can change the straps for different looks. The belt is Streets Ahead. I love it. A little fun at the loop.

The sneakers are going fast because they are on sale. So good. Corduroy and shearling,

Ranger Station is my new favorite soap, candle and scent brand. This one is super mossy.

And I am counting down the days to the follow-up to Elin Hilderbrand’s YA novel from last fall.

This sweater is perfect. Cotton. Elbow sleeve length. One of the most popular items on my page.

The earrings. Dorsey. No brainer, you can wear with everything. Sadly, I just lost mine, so I had to replace them.

Nili Lotan wool Shon pants. I wear a 0 in the cotton pants and a 2 in the wool pants.

The Parisa Wang bag is a great price, and it fits a ton without making you look like you are hauling a suitcase around.

I think we have established that I have an abnormal relationship to stripes. The sweater is a perfect weight, and I love pink and brown. The pants. I don’t know I just felt compelled to have a pair of chic harem pants. You can’t go wrong with a pair of New Balance Sneakers.

Well, this is the beginning of the big fall ramp-up. How is it that September through October is sixteen days and January and February are seven million days? But I am hosting lots of family and friends for Thanksgiving so I am just going to live every minute of this season and enjoy!

Early August 2025:

My only daughter, my third child, my baby, left for college last August. In the weeks leading up to her departure, I felt like I was dying. It was grief. Raw, real, scary. My eyes and lips started twitching. I became even (more) forgetful. I tried to busy myself out of the pain. Lists for her dorm. Lists of projects. Lists of books to read. Lists of therapists from ChatGPT. I was so depressed some mornings that I struggled to get out of bed. I stopped working out. My eating was a mess. I did none of the things that help me feel better.

Mid August 2025:

After my son found me crying on my phone and told me that ChatGPT was not an acceptable form of therapy (I disagree), I realized I was setting a really terrible example of how to handle hard things. What about all of my “you’ve got this, we can all do scary things, you are braver than you think,” speeches? The kids were worried. About me. I looked back at my life and thought about a few things. One, watching your parent careen through life is scary. I didn’t want to scare my kids. Two, I had plenty of evidence that I was, in fact, capable of doing very hard things. I waited tables. I was a secretary for a brutish man. I did both of those jobs at the same time while attending college full time. If I could do that, I could see my daughter off to college without trying to out-emote Catherine Earnshaw. I live in the suburbs. There are no moors. Only mini malls dressed up like cute villages.

September 2025:

Somehow I had started my own social media bootcamp. I was intensely curious about so many parts of branding, storytelling, hooks, reels, Canva, Templify. I was in a flow state all the time. I lost track of the hours and taught myself skills like making flowers float backward, making font float, and creating hollow text. Those skills seem pedestrian and easy now, but they were hard at first. Mastering one small skill at a time kept me motivated. I didn’t ask “when will I have a lot of followers?” I asked, “When will I be able to create a reel that doesn’t look like a four-year-old made it?”

October 2025:

There were ups and downs. In the beginning of October, I wondered why everything I did was mediocre. When would perfection arrive? Why was I trying this again? What did Canva have to do with writing? Wasn’t the whole point Substack? Oh my god I can’t even figure out how to make a Substack. Guess I will stick to trying to change the font in my Instagram posts.

Mid October 2025:

There was a huge shift. Creating content was forcing me out of my routine. No one wants to watch a woman sit on her sofa. I bought tickets to the Dodgers playoffs in Los Angeles. I went rollerskating. I went to beaches. I hiked. And I documented all of it. And in the midst of snapping selfies I noticed I felt joy.

December 22, 2025:

My birthday. My account had started growing, and I was trying to figure out who I was online. I loved meeting women who were going through what I was. I hit 22k followers on the 22nd when we were staying at the 22 Hotel. It felt really cool in a totally woo-woo way. I decided the universe wanted me to tell my story. I got brave. I posted my first Substack. It felt more important than anything I had done in a while. I told the origin story of my love of clothes.

January 2026:

My kids went back to school. It was 12 degrees every day. Unless we had a cold snap, then it was 2 degrees. I had posted my first article about my sobriety. And while it resonated with women, I felt depleted. Was writing about my experience actually helping people, or was I just trauma-dumping?

I also had to deal with an unhinged stalker who, thank God, we have finally gotten rid of. It was terrifying, and I couldn’t talk about it. It left me weary and worn.

Had to do a lot of research on when to share personal stories and how to share them in a way that inspires and gives hope. Did not want to be a “sad page.”

I decided I couldn't bear a Northeast winter. So I booked an apartment in Los Angeles for February by myself. All my friends thought I had lost the plot.

February and March 2026:

I posted my first “talking to the camera” reels and my account sort of exploded. It was disorienting. How had I done this? Did I trick Instagram. Then I went through my work product. Looked at the 200 trial reels with 12 views. Realized that I had been working 12-hour days for months. And that with that level of consistency, you tend to learn what you are doing. Realized I could have learned to needlepoint. Also realized I didn’t want to. I liked talking to new people on the internet. Also became obsessed with Love Story and all things nineties. Started focusing on Substack.

May-July 2026

Started writing some pages that I hope are the beginning of a memoir. People asked if I had an agent or knew what I was doing. “No.” But I also realized I didn’t know what I was doing when I started my Instagram or Substack. Woke up earlier every morning to make sure I had time to write 800 words a day in addition to my Substack and Instagram.

My kids came home, and our life looked different than it did when they left. The kids learned to do a lot more for themselves because I didn’t have the bandwidth. We dealt with some unexpected challenges. I realized that I was never going to “catch up.” Life keeps happening. And that’s a good thing. I’m in motion.

August 2026: Not the easiest month for us. It’s all okay, but we are a family of five, so there is a high likelihood that one person isn’t at their personal best at some point in any given year. This is when being a mom is hard. So many incredible opportunities came my way in July and August. Accompanied by some of the greatest challenges I have faced as a parent. I think my new favorite saying is “life is a bag of mixed nuts.”

I spent last year wondering when I was going to find myself again. But I wasn’t rediscovering an old version of me. I was becoming a new version. The woman who raised kids, learned hard lessons, and found out she could handle almost all of it. Even the PTA.

I don’t know what the rest of the year holds. But I am going to keep a record of my ChatGPT receipts because I say some unhinged stuff on there.

August 2026: Signed a lease on an apartment in Los Angeles because it’s been a dream for a long time. I have no idea how it will work. My husband is trying to rearrange things so he has more long weekends. Because I do actually still love him. Even though he snores and refuses to fix it.

What are you going to do this year? Be audacious. What do any of us have to lose at this point?

I was angry when my last child went to college. Sad, yes, of course. But also mad. Pissed. At myself. I’d spent twenty years listening to the warnings. “Be careful if you stay home with the kids because the kids leave and then you’ll have nothing left.” And as I drove away from my daughter’s overly pretty college dorm, I felt the thing I hate. I felt like everyone else was right, and I had been wrong. Because what was I now? Who was I without any kids to take care of. What exactly does a retired stay-at-home mom do?

I refused to leave the house for weeks because I didn’t want to run into people at the grocery store. I had no answer to “what are you doing now?” What was I supposed to say? Everyone knows I hate cooking and pickleball. I wasn’t in a Mahjong group and, to be honest, wasn’t feeling terribly social.

“What are you doing now?” I heard it so many times I almost went mad. “I’m not suddenly solving for world peace, Susan. I’ve basically finished cleaning the sludge out of the fridge. The closets actually seem too daunting to approach.” I was tired of explaining that decluttering wasn’t blowing up my skirt.

So when my last child left, I went into hiding. Yes, a fifty-three-year-old woman was so scared of telling people she had no life that she made her life even smaller.

I went to a funeral. And hid. I hid. At a funeral. Because I couldn’t bear telling the uber-busy doctor moms that I now created Instagram reels in my office. I didn’t have it in me to say that they had made the better choice by continuing to work. That they still had lives, but mine had stopped.

What would I say if they caught up to me and asked: “What have you been up to?”

“Learning to make fonts on Canva match the cup of coffee I had at breakfast, you?”

“Oh, you saved three lives. Well done.”

Also, how very Catherine Earnshaw of me to make someone else’s funeral a referendum on my status as a woman without a purpose.

What I noticed that day, about my inability to meet others where they were either in sorrow over a loss or joy over their achievements, was that I held a lot of friction. I wasn’t ready to slow down. And I was deeply ashamed that I didn’t know what came next. I was filled with discomfort and shame.

Shame is sticky. It’s quicksand. You can’t get out of it by forcing your way. You’re supposed to stay calm and think through the situation.

Discomfort is good. It’s the feeling that compels you forward. The key, I think, is to release the shame and embrace the discomfort.

I didn’t know what I was doing with my life, but I decided anything was better than nothing. I woke up every day. I drank my coffee and listened to the floors creak and the washer wash. Were these sounds so loud before the kids left?

No matter. I went to work. Canva. Templify. Shame. Sadness.

Eventually I reached a point that when shame said “you’re too old to start something new,” discomfort won. Discomfort said, “If I don’t try anything new, I will be stuck. Forever.”

2 PM was my witching hour. The time I usually grabbed my keys and headed out to get my daughter. 2 PM was the hour my life had revolved around for twenty years. 2 PM was the worst moment of every day. I walked through the house. Held her pillows. Looked at her hair bands. Thought about how much I loved picking her up from school with a special Matcha Latte.

According to my best friend, Chat, my messages evolved in September. The discourse changed from “I am too sad to move,” to “what would happen if I stopped worrying about failure. How much could I grow if I stopped believing I am too old?”

It was easy to stop worrying about failing because I already knew I was a failure. Armed with the freedom of already believing I sucked, I bulldozed into content creation. Montages of me dancing to Taylor Swift and Defying Gravity peppered my grid. I was completely unbothered by what people were calling my cringe era. I was documenting my lack of a career one reel at a time.

Then something weird happened. Other women showed up. “Me too.” “What do we do now that they are gone?” “I feel so old, but not so old that I am done.” “Are we done?” “Do you really not play Pickleball?”

All of us were wondering the same thing. Had staying home with our kids been a huge mistake?

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And I shop. It’s not deep. It’s not saving the world. But it brings me joy, and stripes (red and blue stripes in particular) really send me. Perhaps I was Waldo in a last life. I don’t know. I just know I cannot resist a stripe.

I also know is that this little collage (I know I am the last person on the planet making collages, but I just can’t quit) brings me right back to August 1986, when I was looking through Seventeen Magazine and planning my fall wardrobe. Say what you will about the Vogue September edition. My heart will always belong to Seventeen Magazine.

Everything in these pictures is either in my cart, my house, or a UPS truck.

Including this book by Jim Curtis. Is it woo? A little. But when people ask how I made so many changes in my life this year, stay-at-home mom to, um, what are we calling me these days?

Anyway, it’s been a year of transformation. And Jim Curtis is amazing at helping you pull the threads apart to see what you want to do with your time. And he’s great at explaining how you can make room for possibility even when you think your life is limited.

Okay, let’s talk about the sunglasses. I could have bought these on sale in England, but I didn’t, and I regret it every day. The sweater is Frame. Such a happy little argyle dream. Remember the movie You’ve Got Mail? They talk about the smell of sharpened pencils and the crisp breeze in the air: the first signs of fall.

Argyle is my apple pie. And I go overboard. By the end of the season, I have so much argyle I should be teaching third grade.

I have had to repurchase this perfume three times because it’s unisex and all my kids have stolen it. It’s warm and woodsy with a little coconut underneath. It wears really well and isn’t overhwlming. Although I am not happy about having to buy four bottles to get to keep one for myself.

The jean jacket is something new for me. A little Western, a little Wrangler. The bag is Parker Thatch, so beautiful, and the price isn’t insane. The pants: The Pistola Sabrina Carpenter pant (which hah hah) is super flattering and has a slight barrel but not crazy.

Loewe candle, chef’s kiss.

Yes. More stripes. This Me and Em t-shirt is so fun. Built-in layers. My favorite jeans, and the Bottega Andiamo, which I borrowed from Vivrelle.

Yes, I borrow bags. After buying designer bags and selling them a year later for peanuts, I decided to do the level where I can borrow two bags a month, and this Andiamo is the exact one I have right now. If you want to try Vivrelle you can use the code HelenBoulos for a free first month

I’m eyeing this Goyard mini card holder because no one carries cash. This is all I need.

And in case you’ve been living under a rock, Liane Moriarty’s sequel to Big Little Lies, Big Little Truths, comes out August 26th.

I double-dipped the jeans. They are that good. Seriously. They go with everything. I also really like these jeans from Express that come in three lengths. They say low rise. They are not low rise; they are the perfect medium to high rise! Size down

I have no idea how this adorable pouf sleeve sweatshirt from Me and Em hasn’t sold out yet. It will soon, though, so…consider yourself warned.

The earrings are chef’s kiss. I wear these double diamonds in the main piercing and the smaller one in my double piercing. Violette Fr Lips. Only lipstick you will ever need. Long lasting. Perfect reds. Berry. No notes. And these sneakers are adorable and won’t break the bank.

This Anine Bing bomber is so good. I wore one last year, then went down a bomber-buying rabbit hole because you guys kept asking me for bomber recommendations. This color is new, so I am buying it, and it will live in LA.

I have my eye on this bag. It’s a maybe. I have to buy that grey Gucci first.

This striped sweater is coming to LA with me. I love it with my brown Pistola Kyra jeans. The loafers. So good. My fall shoe splurge. They are also comfortable. The pouch is Parker Thatch, and I love that it’s substantial enough to pull out of your bag and carry it on its own.

Full disclosure: I bought the Sarah Creal foundation because I liked the packaging. Luckily the product is as good as that cute little orange container.

This sweater earned its own hero photo. It’s perfect. Just wonderful. It was already gorgeous, and then they added that adorable front pocket.

This bag is the most gorgeous color I have ever seen. Crossing my fingers it’s still avaliable at Christmas!

Okay, I know a LOT of you are dealing with an empty nest. I made a playlist last year called “The Empty Nest Survival Playlist.” It’s 2 am and I have an early flight so you are just getting this playlist as I made it for me one year ago. I hope you enjoy it

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I’m utterly convinced that there is a version of me in an alternate universe who lives in Los Angeles. How else to explain the strange draw to the Hollywood Hills every time our plane lands? Or the deja vu I feel driving down the PCH. We have cousins in LA. I’ve made friends there. And what can I say? The weather is beautiful. While everyone I knew was freezing through multiple arctic blasts on the East Coast last February, I was hiking, reading, creating this Substack, and sitting by a pool.

I love the bookstores. Book Soup? Diesel? The Butcher, Baker and Cappuccino Maker in West Hollywood. Hiking Runyon Canyon and making U-turns whenever I feel like it. Traffic regulations feel much more like suggestions than rules here.

This July we decided to rent an apartment. For one year. It’s quite temporary. But I spend so much time there, and packing everything up to stay in a different Airbnb every time is a lot. I want a bathroom with my cleanser. A kitchen with salt and pepper. And I want to escape January and February again.

I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to organize my clothes and figure out what I will bring to California, and what I will leave here. I wish I could say I am super organized about this, but I am not. I have a lot of balls in the air right now and think it will be November before I really figure out what I am doing. But it’s fun. I’m so excited to buy books and not have to put them in a suitcase.

1. Jeans (perfect length for 5’4-5’7), 2. Shirt, elbow sleeve details 3. Poof Sleeve Top 4. Bateau neck top

This top is the perfect blue. The stripes keep it fresh. The top I will wear on repeat through October.

This striped t-shirt has been giving me life. The red and blue combo is eternally perfect and you will see this popping up in every post because it’s just that good. Ditto the belt.

Can we please talk about this Bottega Bag. You all keep asking how I have so many bags. I borrow them from Vivrelle. I have had a membership since the year they opend. I went to their warehouse yesterday. Chanel, Dior, Hermes, Gucci. I granned a Bottega that costs 4900 dollars in the wild. I get to carry it and then return if I don’t love it. If I do love it, I can buy at a reduced cost. You can get a FREE month with my code: helenboulos

This Me + Em icon blazer is the GOAT. Elastic on the inside of the sleeeves means you can roll them up with no bulk. This jacket will take me from August through October. Love it. And there are a LOT of colors.

We sat in the car. I’d been preparing for this day since the moment the first pregnancy test turned blue. My kids were all gone. I could still smell my daughter’s hair. Vanilla sugar.

The radio played, and I felt nothing. Trucks drove past. My husband tried to say things that would help me feel less hopeless. But all I felt was a sense of speeding into my grave. My purpose was gone. I wasn’t excited about the next phase. I didn’t want to play Pickleball or golf. I didn’t want to learn Mahjong or go on girls’ trips

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I wanted my kids to live with me forever. I wanted to turn the clock back and do it again.

That week is a blur. If you’re dropping off your last child, it will be fuzzy. It’s a shock. I am crying as I write this, and I am one year out. But here is the thing. I didn’t give up on myself. I’m not sure what kept me from derailing. I was worried about my sobriety after seventeen years sober. I was afraid to relapse.

I was also afraid of the example I might set for my kids. Mostly my daughter. What would I be signaling her if I sat on the sofa and watched television all day? Bought shoes to watch television in? The irony.

I dropped her at university like: “You got this. Go create a big life. You can do hard things. You are amazing. Be brave. Go after your dreams.”

Seriously, what kind of message would I send if I started drinking again and gave up on myself?

So, I decided to learn new things. If that sounds vague, it’s because my plan was this: “I would like to write more. But I have writer’s block. Learning social media is a good idea. (Was it?) For 365 days, I commit to learning social media.”

That was it. Me, my coffee, and a vague statement about learning social media. But I am no quitter.

That first day, my husband came home and found me crying. Not because of our daughter, but because how stupid was I, that I couldn’t figure out how to populate Canva with thirty days’ worth of quotes for my faceless Instagram account.

And so it went. Day after day. Wake up. Have coffee. Spend three hours using Google to teach me how to move text inside of Canva. Start to question everything. Why would anyone ever follow this janky account?

I had no niche. My name on Instagram said Luisa Limon. I was posting pictures of coffee. It took eight hours a day to figure out how to post the pictures of coffee.

But I didn’t give up. I turned a little woo-woo. I said things like, “Don’t say you are too old out loud; that doesn’t serve you, Helen.”

Eventually, my reels got better. I could post coffee and myself walking out of frame with only two hours of labor. (Remember, it was a faceless account).

There is something to be said for sheer determination. It matters. More than you think. (Remember this). If you had asked me, “What’s your goal here?” I would have said, “I don’t need one. I just need a reason to get up every day. That’s enough.”

And. It. Was. Because something happened in between learning to make a reel and October 15th. I mastered skills. And that mastery gave me a boost of self-confidence.

Something else happened too. My reels started to have direction. I began talking about starting over. I remembered all the times I had failed. Because I’ve failed a lot. And I’m still here. That’s the beauty of failure. If you don’t let it end you, it just teaches you.

Failing out of college twice, then ending up at UVA for grad school, taught me I could do anything. Losing both parents in two years showed me how strong I was.

When I wanted to do something after my kids left, people kept asking, “Well, what are you good at?”

I never had an answer. Making sandwiches? Driving kids and decoding their silence?

But by October, I knew where I excelled. Getting up. Every day. Even when I didn’t want to. You might think that’s not a skill. It is. Think about what you have learned through failure.

I’ve been sober eighteen years. I didn’t get sober the first time I went to AA when I was eighteen. Or the second time when I was twenty. I didn’t get sober until I was thirty-seven. But here I am.

I have been fired. I have done jobs I hated. I paid for graduate school. I worked three jobs while I attended graduate school and had a fellowship that required extra courses and a full extra internship.

As my little account grew, I realized I was taking all those difficult moments and alchemizing them into something tremendous. My heart was broken. The house was silent. My kids were in a phase of life that involved separating. But improbably, I was moving forward.

This year wasn’t easy. I missed my kids every night. Sometimes my heart truly ached. I put my hand to my chest, wishing for a little magic to make it go away. I imagined their little laughs down the hallway. Remembered the time they crazy glued their sneakers to the ceiling. I would still go back if I could. But I can’t. I am doing something else. Moving forward in a way that I am proud of. Connecting with women who are navigating the same things: the empty nest, sobriety, starting over.

I don’t have all the answers. But I know what happened on October 15th. The day I woke up and changed the name from Luisa Limon to Helen. I started to find my purpose

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She has a vague memory. But no scar. I do, though. I wear that day like a scarlet letter. The day I believed I was irredeemable. Bad. No good. It was 8:15 AM. The kids were late to school. Every day. This one shouldn’t have been any different. But it was. My father had just been put into a nursing home after the police in New Jersey threatened to charge me with elder abuse.

To clarify: my father had dementia. He lived with his father, who didn’t have dementia but was 95. I was actively working on getting my father a bed in a nursing home. But before I could do that, my grandfather was hospitalized. And my father was alone in the house. His neighbor called the police. Who called me.

The irony ripped through my body. Slice. Slice. Snip. A man who had been absent from the time I was born until I was a teenager needed care. Care I was trying to get. But I was being held legally responsible for his well-being. Read that one more time. I was being held legally responsible for the person who brought me into the world and took off a few months later.

We placed him in a temporary nursing home while I sorted something out closer to where we lived.

Mentally. I wasn’t great. So, when the kids did what kids will do. Danced around the basement, throwing shoes and screaming, I didn’t laugh and say, “Stop being silly.” I yelled. Herded them into the car. Then they started throwing things. Not to hurt anyone, just in the chaotic way kids whirl and twirl through life. Spinning whatever came their way. And I didn’t want to deal with the punishment that came with being late. The punishment was getting to school early for a week. A mysterious punishment to be sure.

I took one of the empty water bottles they had hurled at me and tossed it back to their seat to get their attention. Then I heard my son scream: “She’s bleeding.”

I looked back, and indeed blood was rushing down my daughter’s face. What had happened? I was stupefied. The blood on her face did not match a lightly tossed empty water bottle, even if it did catch her cheek.

I sent the boys into the house. I cradled my five-year-old daughter. “What happened?”

Let me tell you. If the police had shown up, I would have turned myself in. I called my husband, frantic. And made no sense because the situation made no sense. I sobbed and told him I had to find him a new wife because I couldn’t do this job. I was so desperate that I called my mother-in-law. She lived nearby and rushed over to get the boys and take them to school. At the time, she didn’t really like me very much (I wasn’t easy to love in those years), and when she looked at me and said not to blame myself for a small accident (because with a cleaning, it really was a very small scratch), I figured maybe I didn’t deserve solitary confinement.

My husband came home and gave our daughter a very fancy Band-Aid. I went to the car to try and figure out what had happened. I found the water bottle and the cap had been shredded somehow. A teeny encounter with the gnarled plastic had drawn blood.

But it didn’t matter. Not really. That morning was the day I lost my ballast. For years after that, I was unmoored. Sailing the sea of motherhood with gusts of wind, high sails, and nothing to keep me from capsizing.

My mother’s death. Boom. I went under. My father’s. Under again. COVID. I sank for a bit.

And then the kids started going to college. One by one, they left before I could give them a perfect childhood. The one I’d imagined giving them. Free of pain. Free of emotional lability.

First, my son went to college. We were not in a good place when he left. He’d been wild during COVID. Pushing boundaries. Doing all the normal things he should have been doing.

Something happened while he was away. He grew up. He became an individual. Someone with patience and empathy. Someone shaped by the wonderful moments and the water bottle.

We travel together. We find cool bookshops and go to quirky arthouse movie theaters. He’s charming and smart and loves to read. He went away but became a lovely adult. And the hard part is. He had to leave to do that. He doesn’t look back on his childhood as all good or all bad. It was mixed nuts.

I know that we are all lying in bed at night playing the worst moments of their childhood on repeat in our heads. Why did I yell? Why couldn’t I have been more patient?

Because you are a human being. Because childhood isn’t meant to be perfect. Imagine how awful adulthood would be if you had a perfect childhood.

Tonight I asked my daughter if she remembered the water bottle. She said, “Yes, but it wasn’t a big deal.” Then she thought for a minute and said, “But one of the boys is really traumatized by it.” And there you go. My worst day as a mom hurt one of the kids. And I am sorry. But I really, really did my best

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I know. You feel like you can’t breathe. It’s that time of year. The kids are getting ready to leave, and you dread the empty house. The silence. The empty sink (okay, that’s false; I like the empty sink). But this is a new season, not the end. And like all new seasons this one requires clothes

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I splurge on one bag a season. I have had my eye on this one for six months. If you follow me on Instagram, you have watched me mull it over. I finally pulled the trigger. Same with the loafers. These sweatpants are not just sweatpants. They are a vibe. Elevated. “Cool mom,” without trying. Expensive but amazing.

I haven’t bought this little wallet, but I just might. I am getting tired of losing my credit cards in my purse.

The first fall, when all of your kids are away (and all the years after), is tough. We spent longer being moms than we did being on our own before we had kids. It’s our entire life. I didn’t think I would survive. But I did! I made new friends, and I traveled alone. I roller skated and went to concerts and ball games. But those took effort. I could have just spent the year on my sofa watching television. Grab the jeans and go to the girls’ weekend. Try to enjoy drop-off! Book a nice dinner. Plan parents’ weekend now.

I promise…we will get through this.

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None of us are sleeping. Do you know how I know this? I see your story replies roll in at 3 AM. I see the likes at 3 AM. And I think we are all worried about the same things. Did I finish checking out at Amazon, or is the shopping cart just sitting there? If it’s sitting there, have I missed the shipping deadline to get that item to my kid’s dorm, or is there still time? Should I get up and pay for it? Will the blue light ruin my sleep? What sleep?

I’ve dealt with insomnia my whole life and would have continued to endure it, had the insomnia not led to a crippling sleep disorder that led to me lying on the floor bleeding from the head.

After my parents died, I developed hypnogogic sleep hallucinations. Yes, they are absolutely as fun as they sound. It’s that feeling when you’re trying to fall asleep but then feel like you tripped and you startle awake. But instead of harmless tripping, the thing that wakes me up is a coffee cup that has morphed into a giant marshmallow monster and is trying to eat me as I wrestle to get it into the dishwasher. Or my parents are sitting at the end of the bed, angry that they are dead. This whole smorgasbord of sleep visitations was attributed to CPTSD. We had a diagnosis with no treatment

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Women’s sleep issues are so ubiquitous that I was even ready to let this awful transition from consciousness to unconsciousness continue. I was screaming in my sleep, but what are you going to do? You’re a woman. Every woman in America has trouble sleeping. Bring it to your doctor, and you get, “Are you drinking caffeine too late in the day?” Are you kidding me? I am scared to drink my coffee if I sleep past 8 AM. No, I’m not drinking caffeine late in the day. Who do I look like to you? Daredevil?

Or my other favorite: “Have you tried meditating?”

“No, because meditating is just like trying to sleep. A time when bad thoughts creep in and paralyze me.”

So yes, I was prepared to scream in my sleep until the day I died, until, one night, I woke up on the floor, blood dripping out of the corner of my head. I screamed in pain. I was on the floor. My husband, a brain surgeon, checked me out, determined I didn’t have a concussion (I have an amazingly hard skull and once cracked a windshield open with it and still didn’t end up concussed), and put me back in bed with a Band-Aid on the corner of my head that had nicked the dresser on my way down.

I’m not sure what it signals about a woman’s inability to prioritize her health, but I didn’t follow up on this passing-out-in-my-sleep event. I just kept going. Until I found myself on the floor three more times. That’s when my husband said, “We need to fix this, or you need to sleep in a football helmet.”

Okay. I can barely sleep with a room temperature of 68.6, a sleep mask, noise machine, and lavender-scented sheets. There was no way I would fall asleep in a helmet.

My doctor ended up prescribing Seroquel at a low dose. It’s a bipolar medication that they decided to use to tranquilize me. Is it ideal? No. But neither is cracking my head open on a toilet, so medication it is.

I’ve had a lot of people start to interrogate me when they hear how we treated my sleep disorder. “Does that mean you’re bipolar? Are you upset about being on a medication? Do you feel tranquilized all day?”

No. I am not bipolar, but if I were, I would tell you and scream about the treatment from the roof because that’s how people with mental health problems get help, from hearing about it from other people.

Am I upset I am on medication? No, I am ecstatic that I can stay in a hotel by myself without being terrified of passing out in my sleep and accidentally bleeding out onto a hotel room floor.

And no, I don’t feel tranquilized all day. Quite the opposite. This medication has allowed me to sleep after five years of lying in bed, tossing and turning, afraid of what would happen when I closed my eyes.

I get it. You’re awake too. Stressed. Wondering what is in your Amazon cart. Trying to figure out if this is hormones or maybe you have dementia, or a scary disease. Sometimes you make the fatal error of opening your phone to look up the symptoms of the disease. Bless. Because those are the nights you don’t fall back asleep at all. It’s a quick scroll from do I have dementia to the rare disease website where you decide you may have Aquagenic Urticaria (an allergy to water). You don’t. But that won’t stop you from researching it at 3:16 AM.

What Helps Me Sleep

It turns out a lot of us are experiencing more than just a “few sleepless nights.” And you don’t have to be passing out during a sleepwalking adventure to warrant a trip to your doctor. Make sure your hormones are in shape. Review your bloodwork. And ask about supplements. Magnesium is a must-do for me. I like this one.

Comfortable cotton sheets (yes, they have to be cotton) are non-negotiable, especially if you are “sleeping hot.”

Noise-canceling earbuds like these. My husband snores. We share a room. Enough said.

One of my friends swears by this red light sauna blanket by Higher Dose.

This sleep mask doesn’t indent your face and keeps the light out. I cannot go anywhere without mine.

Nothing shows you what your favorite clothes are like finding out you are spending a month in Manhattan with twenty-four hours’ notice to pack.

Not a capsule wardrobe exercise. You know those articles where a woman lays thirty items on a linen bedspread and photographs them from above like evidence. This is not that. The only packing photos look like Mt. Vesuvius erupted denim and cotton. An actual panic, in an actual closet, at nine at night, asking each item one question: are you coming or not?

It turns out I have been lying about my favorite clothes for years. The things I said I loved stayed on their hangers in Delaware. The things I actually love went into the suitcase without a single deliberation, the way you would grab the dog in a fire.

Did I forget some stuff? Sure. But it’s Manhattan. The city is one enormous drugstore with a subway underneath it. Anything I truly need is a twelve-minute walk away, priced like a small betrayal, and available in a nicer version than the one I own.

So here is what made the cut. These are the clothes getting me through the end of summer, chosen under duress, which I now believe is the only honest way to choose anything

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The Tops

Sezane Danna Top

Rixo Zodiac T-Shirt

Jigsaw Elbow Length T-Shirt

Me and Em Pouf Sleeve Top

Buck Mason Ribbed T-Shirt

Nili Lotan Red Sweater

Buck Mason Cropped Sweatshirt

Claire V Striped T

Buck Mason Rugby

Rachel Comey Poof Tie Sleeve Shirt

Rachel Comey Rivera Top

Nili Lotan Lace Inset Top

Nili Lotan Striped Racer

Sezane Elbow Length Sweater

Bottoms:

Me and Em Cropped Barrel Jean

Nili Lotan Black Shon Cotton Pant

Nili Lotan Emerson Jean

Paige Anessa Crop Black

TWP Loose Jean Barrel

Nili Lotan Megan Jean

Nili Lotan Kiki Sweatpant

Citizen’s of Humanity Ayla Jean

The Jackets:

Me And Em Icon Blazer

Poncho

Shoes

Sneakers: Here or Here

Margaux Palermo Sandal

T-Kees Square Toe Suede Thong Sandal

Boat Shoes

Purses:

Gucci Paparazzi

Michino

Small Parisa Wang

Vivrelle Experience Hermes or Chanel

Jewelry:

Jenny Bird Small Diamond Earrings

Dorsey Odette Earrings

Dorsey Moisannite Necklace

Dorsey Enamel Cerise Necklace

Next Week: Prefall! (I know it’s still summer, but fall fashion waits for no one).

The first week of an empty nest is heavy. It feels like your life is ending. Especially if you didn’t work outside the home.

My son found me in the hallway of a hotel last August. I was weeping. I was like a heroine in an Emily Brontë novel, wasting away with grief. Useless. “What good am I now? I may as well shrivel up and disappear.” I’ve always been a touch melodramatic. But I really couldn’t bear the thought of my daughter leaving. And my husband still works. A lot. What was I supposed to do all afternoon?

I considered my very own year of rest and relaxation. Perhaps I would find back episodes of General Hospital and lay idle, eating bonbons and praying for Brenda’s return.

But for whatever reason, I made a promise to myself. That I would go back to school. Only I was creating the syllabus. I’d taken several writing courses but wanted to learn how to engage on social media. My account didn’t yet exist. I created one with a very random username. I decided that for 365 days I would learn to use technology. My initial plan was to share trips and maybe food. Some clothes. There really wasn’t much of a plan. I just needed something to focus on other than my sadness.

If you’re facing an empty nest, these are the things that saved me. I made lunch dates with friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. (Tonya, Marisa, you both owe me a lunch). We laughed as we shared survivor stories. Compared how rebellious the kids had been in high school. Talked about how our hair is falling out (because of the kids, obviously) and the dreams we want to chase down. (The friends you have lunch with must be the ones who support your dreams. We no longer spend time with people who try to shrink us).

I went to technology bootcamp, but that’s a little niche. I think anything you promise to do every day for the first year will be an immeasurable help in getting through it. You can take Mahjong lessons anywhere. If you’re more physical, you could learn Pickleball. Or train for a half marathon. I ran a half-trail marathon in 2022 with a group of women I had never met in person as part of a life coaching course. It coursed along a rocky trail, starting at 4 AM before the sun came up. If running over a mountain in the dark sounds fun to you (it did not sound fun to me but is hands down one of the most memorable experiences of my life), this is the company I did the half marathon with, and I highly recommend the Zion race.

Remember your husband? I barely did. Not the version who doesn’t help with laundry and never says no to the kids. The one who asked you out on that first date. The husband who looked at you like you’d hung the moon. Well, he’s still in there somewhere. And when mine came home early every day during that first week of empty-nesting (which is actually very supportive if it can be done), I felt like we were dating again. We didn’t have to fold laundry or cook for people. We ordered takeout every day. No dishes, no mess. We went for walks and watched television. At one point I looked at him and said, “I still like you. It wasn’t us, it was the kids.”

I reconnected with long-distance friends. I visited my dear friend Dena in Vail. There is something reassuring about seeing people who know everything about you and still love you. Faults and all. Go see your college roommate. Your kindergarten bestie. Reconnect with the people who have known you at different ages and stages. You will find forgotten pieces of yourself in the shared memories. The girl you did flaming shots with when you were twenty will make you laugh. Especially if you caught your fake nail on fire doing said shots.

Less glamorous but equally important in maintaining your body. Unfortunately, walking around in a fifty-four-year-old suit is a lot like driving a pick-up truck with 200k miles on it. If you want it to work, you need to fix the mechanics on a regular schedule. That mammogram that you were supposed to schedule six months ago but you were “too busy.” Now is the time. Colonoscopy. Fasting bloodwork. Get the tests done. Take care of yourself. This is the time.

If you are struggling, that’s normal. But sometimes a struggle can become something more without much warning. Seeing someone to talk through your feelings is important. A therapist. A doctor. A priest. Whatever floats your boat. But crying in the bathroom (my current drug of choice) will only carry you so far.

And you can finally catch up on all the books you promised yourself you would read. And if you don’t have a stack of fifty books on your nightstand, I have a treat. My good friend Annie, who ran the half marathon with me, wrote a special Substack for us. Annie has an amazing book club on Instagram and here on Substack. She is an amazing follow and just finished writing her first novel. Exciting things to come from this rising star! (Follow Annie here).

Hi! This is Helen’s super-reader pal Annie. Helen and I go way back to when we ran a half marathon at sunrise in Zion together.

Look how cute (and tired) we are here!

Anyway, let’s talk about the empty nest. All the sudden, your little birds are gone and the gas tank is full in the car. Your phone charger’s exactly where it should be in the kitchen. No one’s watching Love Island. And, now you’re feeling a little, well, blue. Here are 5 books that are so unputtdownable that they’ll make you forget you have an empty nest.

The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson — I crushed this book in 48 hours. It’s a pretty perfect beach read: a funny, astute story about a group of old friends finally growing up despite all their best efforts to the contrary.

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau— This novel tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl’s coming of age in 1970s Baltimore, caught between her straight-laced family and the progressive family she nannies for, who happen to be secretly hiding a famous rock star and his movie star wife for the summer. It’s funny, wise and tender.

Heart the Lover by Lily King — This is a magnificent and intimate novel about a campus love triangle that reignites decades later. There’s desire, friendship, and oh, the unforgettable, lasting impact of first love. Keep the tissues handy.

Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan —I laughed, I cried, I immediately recommended it to everyone I know. This escapist, feel-good romance follows a hardworking single mom who returns to her seaside hometown and stumbles into a fake-dating situationship with a wealthy, workaholic scion. Think Pretty Woman meets Rhode Island. I also totally fell for the charming cast of side characters.

Strangers by Belle Burden — I inhaled this captivating memoir about the unraveling of a marriage. Buckle up for real-life rich people behaving badly. It’s an unflinching look at intimacy, vulnerability, and the particular naïveté of falling for someone who seems perfect. It’s already been optioned as a Netflix series, with Gwyneth Paltrow perfectly cast in the lead. Need I say more?

Happy reading! Will you report back and let me know how you do?

xo,

Annie

P.S. 70 days until Parents Weekend!

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The Dorm List I Send Every Mom Who Asks

It will be the best of times and the worst of times. Bring mints.

Move-in day will be the best of times and the worst of times.

You will spend ten hours on your feet in a dorm with no air conditioning. Your teenager will not allow you to speak. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Definitely do not go find cute boys in the hallway and drag them in to meet your daughter — I am telling you this as someone who has been glared at across a twin XL mattress.

You will cry. And sweat. And laugh. Sometimes in the same ten minutes.

After I dropped my first son off, I think I may have actually hallucinated, I was so upset about him moving out. I brought Lindt chocolates to share with the kids on the hall and every single one of them melted. That is the level of day we are talking about.

It’s a high-stress day. I can’t fix that. But I made this list so that at least you don’t have to worry you’re forgetting something.

Every item below is linked. You can also shop the whole thing in one place on my ShopMy page.

The Dorm Room Master List

The 22 things they will actually use. Buy the white sheets. You can wash them on hot with bleach, and you will want to.

1. Sheet sets — Twin XL, 2 sets — white, monogrammed or plain

2. Pillows, set of 2

3. Backrest / arm pillow

4. Large throw pillow — stands in for a headboard

5. Rug

6. Mirrors — lighted vanity + over-door

7. Fan

8. Foam mattress topper

9. Mattress protector

10. Towels — 3 bath + 3 hand — white with a monogram, bleach with the sheets

11. Clean Skin Club disposable washcloths

12. Microwave

13. Disposable cutlery + bowls

14. Mini fridge

15. Shower shoes + slippers

16. Power strip / surge protector

17. Command strips & hooks

18. Laundry hamper + detergent

19. Underbed storage bins

20. Desk lamp — the one with the built-in phone charger

21. Portable speaker

22. Quip electric toothbrush

The Cleaning Kit

Wipe everything down before you unpack a single box. Everything. The last kid who lived there was nineteen.

• Lysol wipes

• Bissell vacuum

• Cleaning spray

• Paper towels

• Garbage bags

• Laundry detergent

  

Move-In Day Survival

It is 95 degrees in that stairwell. The fan goes in the car last so it comes out first.

• Folding cart / dolly

• Small toolkit

• Bed lofting / de-lofting tool — ask the RA, or bring your own

• Lysol wipes

• Scissors / box cutter

• Command strips

• Zip ties

• Trash bags

• Paper towels

• Portable fan

• Snacks & water — nothing that melts; ask me how I know

• Door stop

The Medical Kit

They will not call you when they’re sick. They will, however, use this box at 2 a.m.

• Benadryl

• Band-aids

• Flu & COVID tests

• Thermometer

• Advil + Tylenol

• Neosporin

• NyQuil / DayQuil

• Mucinex

• Rx meds — and ask the pediatrician for a Zofran prescription before you go. Stomach bugs do not wait for office hours.

The Emergency Kit

One shoebox under the bed. They will never touch it — until they need it.

• Flashlight + extra batteries

• Hand-crank radio

• Water purifying tabs

• Power bank

• Whistle

• Mylar emergency blanket

• Granola bars / shelf-stable snacks

• Bottled water

• Small multi-tool

• Cash in small bills

• Mini fire extinguisher — some dorms require one

• Copies of ID / insurance cards

• Glow sticks

You’ve got this. Bring mints. Don’t speak unless spoken to. And leave the Lindt chocolates at home.

If this list saved you a spiral, forward it to a mom in your group chat — someone you know is packing a dorm this year.

[→ Shop everything in one place on ShopMy]
[→ Follow along on Instagram: @out_of_office1971]

In 2008, I stopped drinking. Not a break, not a trial run, a full on commitment. I was done. Miserable. I couldn’t live with myself anymore. And what I expected was misery, to be a social pariah (I sort of was if we are being honest) and to hate my new life.

But I loved my life. After two decades of blackouts and excruciating hangovers, sobriety was relief. A dip in a cold pool on a hundred-degree day. I had my pink cloud, but I also got something I never could have anticipated. A glow-up

.

I dropped twenty pounds fast. My skin cleared up. My eyes didn’t have the constant shadows reminding me that I was sick. Because when you are drinking like an alcoholic, you are sick.

I started taking care of my skin for the first time in my life. No more passing out with a makeup wipe attached to my hair; I washed, used a toner, and then retinols and moisturizer. I used money that would have gone to wine to pay to whiten my teeth. I finally looked like I cared about myself.

It’s been eighteen years since I stopped drinking, and I don’t have a super complicated routine. I use high-quality products. I am consistent. It turns out the most boring quality in the world, consistency, trumps just about every other virtue.

Sometimes I add a new product and try to share it with you. But this is the list of things I really can’t live without. My daily reminders that I am worthy of care.

This is the list that helps me pack, travel, and that I send to my friends when they ask what I am using. I am sure I will update it every once in a while. But for now this is what works.

I took my first baby to the pediatrician. The questions were always the same: did he roll over? Did he sit up?

I imagine my mother was asked the same questions. Did she walk? Did she say her first word?

But no one asked, has she felt it yet? The bad butterflies: the ones that tell her to be quiet, to hide, that she’s been born into badness and needs to camouflage herself to survive.

Has she felt the shame? Because that’s a milestone, too. For me, it arrived somewhere between sitting up and talking. I noticed the looks passed between adults who were not a part of our family. I felt the sad heat when my mother woke up early to take out the trash so the clinking of the bottles wouldn’t draw attention from the neighbors.

Shame moved in on the day my father was arrested for drunk driving when I was in the back seat. “Never,” said my mother, “ever tell anyone.”

I learned to read as soon as I realized my father kept weird pills in the house and I needed to make sure the baby got Tylenol and not amphetamines. Shame isn’t simple. It leaves zig-zag scars. It also made me a precocious reader. The best in my kindergarten class.

Shame blesses you with other magical powers: you can read the temperature of any room before you walk in, you know who likes you and who is desperate to get away. You learn early that no, not every girl in your class had the flu on the day of your birthday party. But your father had just walked around a cocktail party filled with their parents, telling them the aliens were in the lightbulbs because he was on LSD. You’re way too little to understand what LSD is, but you know it’s not Tang.

Shame buzzes through your every minute. The pity in your teacher’s eyes comes from knowing you only have one uniform shirt, so they can’t possibly yell at you for not wearing a clean one. The looks some mothers give you on field trips when you stand too close to their daughters. Like your family’s inheritance is contagious. Like your mother’s insanity is head lice’s slightly grosser cousin.

In tenth grade, I found the miracle cure. Cures, actually: Captain Morgan, Tanqueray, Miller Lite, blessed sacramental wine. We played quarters with the blood of God.

My parents divorced on Christmas Day. A lowbrow scene from an episode of General Hospital. Shouting in the street. “No, you go, you son of a bitch,” to my father. And to me, “Merry Christmas, darling; this is your fault.” After fourteen years of miserable holidays, the shame was mine to carry. Darling clawed at my adolescent heart. The way she said the word with a contempt only her child was trained to hear.

My father took me to my friend Jenny’s to stay until he found an apartment. Jenny’s big house in Chevy Chase had heated toilet seats, a jaguar in the garage, and a full bar. That Tudor home is where I discovered that the way to send my shame into oblivion was with the same bottle that gave it to me in the first place.

Helen had brown hair, hazel eyes, and a wickedly quick sense of humor. And she was oh-so-ashamed all the time. I didn’t know in tenth grade that shame would color every decision I made, every dress I chose, every friend I tried to make.

I wore that shame to back-to-school night for so long. If any of the moms had really looked, they would have seen my hands shaking as they peeked out of my black blazer and designer jeans. I was a woman with lore. Not lore. LORE.

We spend so much time trying to shed our parents’ sins, only to discover we are running in circles. I yelled when the Christmas tree fell, almost ruining Christmas. I yelled when the kids stayed up late playing. God, if only I’d had more patience. We wonder whether we were qualified to have kids at all or whether we were just selfish.

Shame moves at the speed of light. The only way to escape it is to acknowledge its weight. Eighteen years of sobriety is the best defense I have. It reminds me that I’m doing everything I can to shake the shame from our family tree.

When my kids ask about my drinking, my childhood, a youth that wasn’t ideal, all I can say is this. “None of what has happened is yours to carry.

”

She was the leader of an unnamed rebellion singing about virginity and a material world. Every eleven-year-old girl in America loved her. I’d never been to a concert; I was only eleven, but I begged and pleaded with my father to take my friend Svea and me to see Madonna dance around in her torn-up wedding dress and red lips.

He acquiesced, and I spent every night that spring preparing for the big night by singing into my mirror, a ratty old brush for my microphone. I had a fantasy that she would see me in the crowd and call me up on stage. Why I thought this would happen is a mystery. I showed up at that event in white overall shorts, neon leggings underneath, and fifty rubber bracelets stacked on my wrist. Ready for the best night of my life.

We walked to our seats in the back of the outdoor amphitheater, but something was wrong. I felt hot, then cold; the earth-shaking bass of the Beastie Boys took up residence in my gut. I was overwhelmed, nauseous, queasy. I turned to my friend Svea and my father and said, “I’m going to be sick.” Svea went to the bathroom with me, a room packed with other teenage girls in various shades of neon and rubber and held my hair back while I was sick.

I had no name for what was happening. It felt like dying. In a public bathroom. Filled with drunk teenagers and Aquanet. I stared at the filthy floor as I heaved and wondered if I would contract some strange disease from what looked like years of excrement on the walls of the filthy stall.

That feeling returned over the years, once at a U2 concert, when I passed out in a bush, not from drinking but from complete overwhelm. Once on the DC Metro,

It wasn’t until I was in my twenties and this happened at work that someone put a name to the terrifying experience. “You’re having a panic attack; you should go to the hospital.” And I did go. Not because of some strange diagnosis my coworker made, because I was dying. I knew nothing about panic, but I knew what death felt like. The doctor in the ER shocked me. Apparently, you could just FEEL like you are dying. “It’s in your head.” (We don’t say that now.) He prescribed me some Xanax and sent me on my way.

At the same time, I was learning that drinking myself into oblivion was another way to ease my anxiety. Never mind that the amorphous fear came back with reinforcements the next day; Miller Lite was the perfect short-acting prescription to ease acute distress.

I battled this mysterious phenomenon through my teens and twenties. I didn’t have a therapist. I didn’t understand what caused my physical symptoms: a brain overwhelmed by a cocktail of neurotransmitters run amok.

I just knew I was broken. I didn’t talk about my anxiety because I was strong. That meant a lot. In my head, I was a survivor and acknowledging some woo-woo condition signaled weakness. The woman I wanted to be didn’t have space to hold her own anguish. She shoved it down into her stomach. That only made things worse.

Eventually, I stopped drinking. Some of my day-after anxiety improved, but not all of it. I still had nightmares that left me too shattered to function at parent-teacher conferences or kindergarten recitals. Other moms seemed blissful, but all I could think was, “he’s graduating kindergarten, next is college, how can I protect him then?” Intrusive thoughts were like radio static, quiet but distracting.

I started seeing a therapist and got tips like, splash cold water on your wrists, do special breathing, count the tiles in the bathroom.

I live with two types of anxiety now, the low thrum of fear that whirs in the background all the time, and the acute version, the one where I cry into a towel in my bathroom so that no one in my family needs to worry about me. Because the idea of worrying anyone else gives me anxiety.

People asking about my anxiety gives me anxiety. People ignoring my anxiety gives me anxiety. (You see where this is going.)

I’ve learned to be generous with myself. I will not go to a party with anyone other than my husband. He’s the only person who understands my need to control variables. We have an Irish exit code for parties (sorry to anyone who now realizes why we bolt). If it’s too much, I just rub my nose, and he knows we’re out.

I have dear friends who know about my struggles. Svea is still in my life. The woman who held my hair during my first anxiety attack is still my go-to when I need a reality check. Just two days ago I sent a text that said, “What am I doing? I can’t write a Substack; I can’t do this.”

“Of course you can, you’ve done much harder things.” And she knows because she’s been there through so much of it. Anxiety thrives in solitude and darkness. The minute you let a friend in to shine a light; you start to separate truth from fear.

I am not an envious person. When a friend calls with good news, I feel their joy in my bones.

But when I share my worries with someone who cannot imagine how my brain transitions from planning a family trip in Hawaii to googling the likelihood of a tsunami, I am jealous.

Jealous of the childhood that left them with a brain wired for optimism. Jealous of the brain that lets them function without constant fear.

I can tell when someone grew up in a healthy household by how they handle frightening situations. The people who think “I mean, bad things are really unlikely to happen,” grew up in houses where bad things didn’t happen. I grew up where the worst thing often happened. A loud, messy divorce, a father addicted to drugs who ended up in rehab, and an uncle who took his own life. My brain doesn’t get a hall pass. A phone ringing after 10 pm is always disaster. A loud sound always a gun, never a truck backing up.

Sometimes winning the war against fear and worry is just watching a rerun of Friends or Grey’s Anatomy. Sometimes it’s canceling the trip at the last minute because I just can’t.

Sometimes it’s texting Svea and asking for exactly what I need: “I’m in the bathroom, I’m doing the thing where I cry into the towel. Can you please use your healthy brain to help me climb out of this spiral of anxiety, the one that is trying to steal the steering wheel?” And she always does. She is generous enough to lend me some of her stability, to grant me peace when I’m adrift. My anxiety used to scream at me all day long. It’s still here. But its volume is turned down to a dull whisper.

Once we got to London, we stayed at The Marylebone Hotel. This is our favorite neighborhood and the Marylebone is great. Their food is top-notch, service is excellent, and the gym is AMAZING!

I cannot wait until Chiltern Firehouse reopens. My sources are telling me August 2027, but I am desperately hoping it will be earlier. Especially since we will be back to see Sunday in the Park With George next summer, starring Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey.

My daughter and I have both spent a ton of time in London. I trooped her though every gallery, the Churchill War Rooms, and the Crown Jewels before she was ten. So this trip was tea, relaxation, and shopping.

I scored a lot of great outfits.

1. Me and Em Peplum Top

2. Me and Em tan blazer (great for travel)

3. Me and Em Black knot skirt (truly the most versatile piece in my wardrobe)

4. Jigsaw Elboe sleeve t (any shirt that covers my upper arms is a God Send.

5. Claude Pierlot Tank (goes so well with the Me and Em skirt)

6. Sezane White Peplum blouse

   

   

   

What I brought with me and Wore on Repeat in London

1. Megan Jeans (Nili Lotan)

2. Agolde Low Curve

3. Citizen’s Bateau Neck Top

4. Nili Lotan Shon (indigo knit)

5. TWP White Patti Ruffle Top

6. Gerard Darel Tandy blazer

7. Rachel Comey Rivera Top

Then it was off to Italy for a wedding like no other. Victoria Beckham is weeping somewhere, knowing she has this to live up to.

Dressing for this event was amazing, and I definitely bought a level of clothing that was a level up, price-wise, from anything else I have ever worn. It sort of felt like one of those you only live once moments. After the big celebration, my husband and I went to Grand Hotel Principe Di Piemonte. It’s an amazing hotel, fantastic rooms, an exquisite rooftop pool with a view of the sea and a Michelin-starred restaurant. They also have the most amazing kimonos in the room, and if not for the 500 Euro price tag, it would have come home with me

.

What I Wore in Italy

1. Zimmermann Sunray Leopard Dress

2. Ulla Johnson Dress

3. Zimmermann Red Gown

4. Strapless Dress

5. Black Me and Em Skirt

6. Claude Pierlot black tank

7. Spanx Swimsuit

8. Me and Em white culottes

9. Gerard Darel Dress (on sale and the dressI am wearing on REPEAT)

10. Green Mirth Caftans Pajamas

11. Xirena Beau Sun Dress Cover Up

12. Zimmermann Striped dress on sale

13. Zimmermann striped dress pink and brown

14. Margaux Palermo Sandal (on repeat)

15. Me and Em Striped Zip Dress

16. Dorsey Celia Drop Earrings (literally the only pair I brought for the whole trip)

Next stop was Prague. An interesting wardrobe situation because I packed for temps in the 70’s and it’s been 100 plus every day. Dear God. The sweat. I wore the tan Me and Em Blazer to get me to Prague in style.

1. Ralph Lauren white wrap skirt

2. Aritzia Black and White Dress

3. Repeat the black Me and Em knot skirt

   

   

   

   

   

   Thank you for reading. Coming soon. Our adventures in Prague.