About Amanda Long

Massage came into my life like it does for many -- through an injury. I broke my femur in a cycling accident when I was an over-exercising 27-year-old. Massage and physical therapy helped me feel whole again and reaffirmed my belief in both the healing power of touch and the human body’s own resilience. In 2011, I made the switch from client to practitioner, catalyzed by the loss of a friend and burned out from sitting all day as a full-time editor. I started my career as a licensed massage therapist with an invaluable six-month fellowship at The Teal Center, where I focused on neuromuscular massage and how bodies move and don’t through pain, injury and stress. In 2017, I sought treatment for an eating disorder and am grateful for a career that reinforces tender care of oneself. It's not as easy as it sounds, we all know. Sometimes, we need to call in the reinforcements. 

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My work is grounded in helping your body accept and recover from pain by tuning into the patterns that reinforce stress. I'm interested in discovering not just where you hurt, but why — and responding with skilled hands and a curious mind. My clients say I’m specific, and intentional.

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My multidisciplinary sessions can include:

• Neuromuscular

• Swedish

• Myofascial

• Oncology

• Sports

• TMJ

An aging former runner in recovery from an eating disorder, I am very much invested in finding new ways to strengthen my body, move it with joy and less judgment and ease its stressors.

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And yes, I still write. Until the past year, mostly for the  The Washington Post and the Washington Business Journal. Changes in media --and in me -- have led me to Substack, where I write what I want, whenever I can, which feels like often now!  So much to say, it seems, hence the name, A Long Story. 

The through line between massage and journalism is curiosity, paying attention and responding accordingly. Listening is a full-body experience and one I rely on full-time, whether I'm helping a client figure out why her neck hurts or putting into words the experiences of my source.

What Is Therapeutic Massage?

My experience is grounded in anatomy and kinesiology. Knowing which muscles, bones, ligaments, nerves, organs, lymphatic vessels, arteries, etc are where goes a long way in having an informed conversation and an effective treatment. Knowing how the body moves -- and doesn't -- gets us closer to figuring out why yours may be hurting.

In one session, depending on what you need and want, I may blend all kinds of treatments and modalities, from warming up fascia, to finding deeply held areas of pain and tension in a muscle belly, or gently holding your neck.  Therapeutic massage is specific to each person and what that person is experiencing in the moment. This job is the ultimate reminder of the power of being present and still. And boy howdy, do I need that reminder.

Saturday morning, I booked airline tickets to Fort Myers in November to join my high school friends for a long weekend in a house near the beach. I love these women. I have written and shared lots of prom pics of them on this app. I see them when I go home, but my whole eating disorder got in the way of any group travel especially a girls trip in one house!

NO MORE! In the past year, we traveled to Italy with a group for my friends Kristen and Sean’s wedding and I traveled alone to Paris and stayed with Kristen!

That afternoon, I drank cacao for the first time and then danced to Olivia Rodrigo with eight women, (six new to me!), in the middle of the day in a brightly lit office suite.

It was downright liberating, heart -opening and slightly awkward funny in the best way. Vulnerable is the word I’m looking for!

After work today, I joined my pool friends for our first ever trivia night. Our team, The Memory Laps, tied for second. I was proud I knew an Updike line about Fenway Park and the flag of Morocco. My watermelon sliced and Trader Joe’s gummies were a hit. Then, my friend and I did laps and gossiped.

Turns out I’m not a hermit!

I ended with two dives off the board and am now looking forward to alone time with Helen Gurley Brown and the first staff of Cosmopolitan in my ears courtesy of @John Searles’ SINGLE LADIES. I love listening to women talk and come up with ideas together — so maybe that’s also the theme of the weekend!

I’d already been thinking of this year in epic proportions. I mean, look around. And on a personal level, I’m the age my dad was when he died at 54. My husband and I have a ZIllow-text-fueled conversations about where we will move as a step toward retirement. I have lived in the same Northern Virginia community for half my life. I am ending a chapter as a writer and eventually as a massage therapist. I am looking at all the stuff in our house — the 1997 baby doll dress and all the books — with less sentiment. I am definitely ready for a shift.

I think.

And that’s why instead of rolling my eyes at her suggestion, I took it. I need to write myself away from old stories.

With all my love to Homer and the third-person voice, here’s my mythic approach:

The Highly Sensitive One

Nothing got past her, she noticed and sensed it all. And the first thing she remembers feeling was alone.

At a young age, her father died of cancer and shame. Her mother disappeared into grief and and a smaller sense of self, one that on some level felt like she deserved to be alone and was not good enough for attention. Her mother became good at being invisible, of easy to get along with.

They moved far away into the woods from the young girls’ friends. It was a modified A-frame, a lesser version of the sylvan escape with the swimming pool her mother and father designed up during the fantasy future making they did during chemo treatments. Into the woods, followed another lonely man, so lonely that he’d never known love and feared its removal with a jealous rage. He also drank too much.

Routines were lost. Meals were stressful and infrequent. Mail feared. Mom had three jobs. The boyfriend made promises he couldn’t keep. Disney became Chuck E. Cheese, one beer became a case or two.

She vowed to be seen. She vowed to be heard. She thought if anyone would just see her as not damaged goods, she’d be safe. Attention for the right reasons meant safety.

She got good grades, made student council and head cheerleader. She was enmeshed into a friendship tribe of seven girls. Their families, routines and holidays became hers. She got very boy crazy, looking for Mr. Nice Guy, which meant popular, nice and middle class, or at least no as poor as she was. She was fun, but not too fun. She guarded her virginity fiercely, knowing the locker room talk at her high school meant the basketball coach was asking her boyfriend how much he “got” from her over the weekend. To be a slut meant to be alone, in her equation.

She fell in love with the son of a banker, two years older. He was in high school, she an eighth grader. He was so very cute. So very preppy. And he was friends with all her friends. She latched on. She was 13.

Puberty hit. The boyfriend didn’t really kiss her. He said he was afraid he couldn’t stop, like he was afraid of her sexuality. He broke up with her — twice. In a dream four decades later, she is still asking him “how many times are you going to do that to me?”

She began to hate her curves and her sexuality as it spelled loneliness. She began to diet. She built a world around exercise and food.

Her mother became a teacher; the boyfriend moved out for good. The girl got skinnier and skinnier. She wanted that attention. She craved the order. She leaned on men she met at the gym and at work as father figures. She fell in love with a quiet , quirky nice big city (Chicago suburbs tbh) boy at college, the never-had-a-girlfriend of his friend group, the polar opposite of all the frat boys who saw her as nothing but a body and will to overpower. He made her mix tapes of The Smiths and Uncle Tupelo. She left him, then Chicago.

The smaller she became, the louder she got. People are nicer to skinnier people, you’ve heard, surely. She got published in The Tribune and The Washington Post. She became known as the fit one. She was funny and known. She credited it all to her smallness.

She broke her leg biking to work on a rest day. Her future husband and then editor was waiting with a teddy bear after surgery. The wound healed, her eating disorder deepened. She fell in love with a man whose own eating patterns are as wild as hers. It worked. He is the ultimate protector. He provides the stability her nervous system has long craved. He sees her.

She knew she was broken, so she leaned into her story of survival, of bouncing back, of never slowing down.

She found a friend, a brother, whose mind worked as fast as hers. They shared white-trash anecdotes and deep wounds and single mothers. She never confronted him on his drinking, they joked about her not eating. They loved one another. He died.

She kept trying. She sought comfort in healing others. She overdid it.

She went into treatment. She began telling her story. Loudly. She sloughed off the shame of the eating disorder and put in the papers. She yelled again.

She is done yelling. She’s ready for an unfolding of the next chapter, not a forceful writing of it.

She’s ready to lean into her sexuality and power and body without apology.

She’s not lost her powers to feel it all; she’s just choosing what to take in and what to let go.

She’s making room for what’s next, trusting her intuition — an

Anyhoo, this is about luck — really, I promise every single piece won’t be about my eating disorder or my seeking safety in smallness. Nope, imagine the theme of the Moth Radio Hour is luck, or I got a writing prompt to talk about winning — specifically about winning at the Pic-Pac, the nearest grocery store to our small town of Depauw, Ind.

My mom and I never won anything, which may or not be true, but since Mom said it often, it was the family air I took in. Besides, we’d not exactly had a run of luck of late back then. Dad died of colon cancer less than 10 years into their marriage, and six years into my life. Then Grandma showed up and took a bunch of my favorite furniture to play “fancy lady” or “secretary” in. We soon moved out to the middle of nowhere, just the two of us into a modified A-frame on 16 acres of mostly woods. Upon spotting a hay-feed frame from the Realtor’s car, I pointed and exclaimed: Look, a jungle gym! I was a burbs baby. Until then, outside for me was for Red Rover with the hoard of neighborhood kids or the New Albany Country Club pool. The closest neighbor with kids was a mile away, past an angry goat. No joke. Oh, and then that big lug of a boyfriend, Rudy, moved in, all funny songs and handy house fixes one day, all stinky feet and drunken fights with the wall the next.

I was constantly entering sweepstakes, as I wanted to make everything better. Also Ed McMahon and his big check seemed believable to an eight-year old. I had every radio station’s number memorized, determined to win tickets, never pausing to consider if a third-grader should really go to a Ronny James Dio concert. When we saw the Pic Pac Raffle, there was no question we’d enter. I talked Mom into it immediately, likely promising not to beg for Big Red (the soda) if I could get a dollar or two to buy raffle tickets. She folded hers like always —

in a fan so the pleats would tickle the picker’s hand.

Well, Lady Luck must like having her palm tickled, because we won that damn freezer. Only then did we realize, with the kind of Charlie Brown sense of humor we’d taken on to survive, that of course, we’d won something we didn’t need. What were the two, sometimes three of us (Rudy showed up intermittently and rarely with groceries) going to do with a full-size freezer.? We didn’t hunt, had no extra anything. Mom was working as a dental assistant by day, Census counter by summer and sometimes waitress at night — so we weren’t doubling up on the gallons of ice cream and steak filets. Our current freezer’s main tenant — by both importance and square inches — was Mom’s Merit Ultra Light 100s,. They shared space with the envelopes; our house in the woods came equipped with damp and shag carpet in the bathroom.

A get-rich plan was hatched with the speed known by every single mother and every child raised by game shows. We sold that sucker in the Penny Saver, and Mom got to exhale and I got to get my first pair of leather Nikes, with a pale blue stripe.

We started telling ourselves a different story, I think. Or at least I did. By fifth grade, I was feeling more at home in the country, making friends and swimming almost every day at the pool. I’d ride a bus from the school’s parking lot at around 11, and Mom would pick me up six to seven hours later, after work. If it rained — bonus — I could to hang out with the lifeguards, all of whom I had a crush on, especially Gary, who looked like Rick Springfield, minus the leather blazer and mousse.

By sixth grade, I’d set my mind to being popular, happy, less lonely, accepted, using the mixing of two elementary schools as a fresh start. I tried out for cheerleader, ran for student council, got a boyfriend and made friends I still text to on the regular — all in the first week — all in my Nikes. For the next six. years, every time I heard my name called over the loudspeakers or put on a cast list, telling me I’d made cheerleader, or homecoming or got the part, I was convinced that I — and I alone — had to make my own luck. If I was good and dedicated to improvement, things would be OK. It only took another four decades to learn I was never in trouble, the fates were never against me, and that maybe, I could stop taking it all so personally and just live a little. Maybe even enter the next raffle I spot.

In 2011, I quit full time editing and became a massage therapist. I kept freelancing for The Post Magazine mainly and the Washington Business Journal.

Now I am a massage therapist. Nobody else pays me. I fill out zero W-9s and my taxes and days are much less complex.

I don’t miss the stress of lining up interviews, or the stickiness of getting into a piece and not knowing how to come out of it. I especially don’t miss the stress of worrying about the reactions. I wasn’t writing puff pieces but I always wanted to do right by my sources.

I miss the thrill of publication, of seeing how the art director and photographers translated my ideas and captured the sources. I miss hearing from sources gobsmacked to find a picture of their grandma’s china or their kid’s pandemic project in a national newspaper. I very much miss pitching the idea and wrangling and playing it. I was lucky to have stellar, receptive editors.

What I miss is no more. The sections slashed, the special pub profiles reduced to sources answering easy questions, the editors fired or hamstrung by limited budgets.

I do still get jazzed when capturing a memory, weekend, trip or emotion in an essay on here, but it’s not the same and I can’t expect it to be. That expectation has stolen joy and stoked jealousy. I am letting it go and embracing the satisfaction, real time feedback, trust and lifelong connections massage brings.

Today is my day off — and yesterday was unexpectedly too, thanks to menopausal headaches and cramps. I struggle not to feel guilty listening to Robert on endless calls, as I scurry off to Trader Joe’s, or comb the carpet with one of those dog hair removal doo dads — playing housewife to the hilt.

It’s gonna take some reprogramming to shift into my next phase(s). My body can’t lean over a table forever, and I don’t want to wind up unable to enjoy retirement because I said yes for too long.

Some may argue that caring for Mom is a part-time gig, and it does demand focus, flexible hours and the occasional Xanax.

What I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to rush into filling my hours just to avoid guilt. Adjusting to the change in tempo of my days takes practice. I want to volunteer, but I’m starting at locally, helping neighbors and picking up trash in the parks around my house.

I’ve been lucky to be good at the two careers I set my mind, body and heart to. Why not trust myself to let this story unfold? Am I afraid the rug will be pulled out from me financially? No, we’ve saved, I’ve worked through old fears and done all we can. Do I feel as if the world is such a shit show that I should be doing more to clean it up? Definitely.

I’m going to think about that at the pool, after I walk Laser.

By Amanda Long

Thursday, May 28

Up at 4 a.m. to workout before my 7:36 a.m flight to Louisville. I love National Airport in the early morning, the way the sun comes through the long-enough-for-a-moving-sidewalk hallway to gates E. I don’t love the gift shops full of Trump shit, but I was pleased to see stacks of it marked down. Decided to test my ability to read an actual book after mainlining audiobooks for the last six months. Bought The Seven Deaths of Eve Hardcastle, on the recommendation of a client and because it has a pretty cover. Paid $2.79 for Mentos and a Diet Dr. Pepper, because I allow myself soda on trips and because why not create a gastric bubble factory before I get on a plane.

When I scanned my boarding pass, the gate guy told me I’d been switched to 21C. I blurted out — “Oh, just like the Jack Harlow song — and we’re going to his hometown, Louisville. Blank stare from young guy, big laugh from his older coworker. It felt like a good sign for the trip, and was followed by an even better one: I fell asleep on the plane. I haven’t fallen asleep airborne since perimenopause — not back and forth from France in April and never on these short jaunts to see Mom. What I did on the way home from Italy in September was more like happy, groggy hallucinating than sleep. I landed in Kentucky, well rested and ready to rumble with the final details of selling Mom’s house.

“Justice has arrived,” my phone announced as my Uber pulled up in the bright sunshine outside Muhammad Ali International airport. About time, Justice!

His gold Buick was spotless and he quizzed me about living in Chicago and the D.C. suburbs. When I told him I moved to D.C in 1999, we learned he was half my age. “I moved to Chicago when I was exactly your age, and it remains one of the best moves of my life. Go for it!” Here’s hoping Justice makes it to Chicago.

Got to Mom’s house before 10 a.m, eliciting squeals of joy at my early arrival. She greeted me in a cute new dress and her gait was much less wobbly as we walked around her fancy still-new retirement villa. Her front porch plants had died and at age 83, my green thumb of a creator, announced she’s done trying to make outdoor plants happen. She’d bought some fake ones and was just fine with it. Inside, a Mother’s Day gift plant was thriving in the windowsill. Her sun-filled cottage is a 180 from her former, cozy but dark little place and she’s thriving too.

Got right down to business calling all the utilities at Mom’s old place to finally shut them off. Made some more financial-related calls and explained the concept of Auto-Pay to Mom, the first of many such explanations of the weekend.

Mom wanted to show me off to her friends, so we met them at the main building of RiverCrest as lunch was about to be served. We were greeted heartedly by Jacklyn, the social coordinator, and her daughter who was working there to earn volunteer points for school. “Did your Mom tell you how she got that dress,” Jacklyn asked. At her favorite consignment store, The Mustard Seed, I answered.

“Well, it was on a mannequin, so your Mom had me ask to get it off and we left that mannequin naked in the middle of the store.” “It looks better on me, right!” Mom chimes in to laughter from all of us.

Before we even got to the table, a young cute server was bringing two (!) glasses of milk to Mom, the resident lactose lover. I was introduced to the gang, asked about my stay while Mom chugged one glass. We didn’t stay for lunch (ham, it’s so very often ham).

Picked up three bunches of roses at the grocery store. Drove to the cemetery where Mom’s mom, Mary Francis, her sister, Barbara, and brother in law Donald, are buried Found Grandma easily, but hadn’t a clue as to the location of Barbara’s gravesite. Aunt Barbara was Mom’s fiercest protector and closest friend, and her death was too early from Alzheimer’s is a wound not yet closed in our family. All of us were too wrecked and the weather was wicked for any graveside ceremony after Aunt Barbara’s funeral more than 10 years ago. I wanted to make sure I was with Mom when she made her first visit. Mom assured me there was a map at the office.

The office doors were locked due to ongoing construction and renovations, so I followed the handmade signs to what I thought was the right door. Wrong. Cleaners greeted me and told me to go around another corner, immediately enter the elevator and go to the second floor. Fluorescent lighting and low ceilings greeted me in the office, but no receptionist. I saw two very bored “salespeople” in a room waiting for someone to die. The fun fact a day calendar was stuck on Wednesday and I pulled it off, hoping to move us all into the future a bit more quickly. Just as I was about to give up, three officious older women ended their funeral-home renovation meeting and saw me standing there, holding the past, Wednesday, in my hand. The receptionist wasn’t in that day, one lady explained and she’s in charge of the calendar. She took my aunt’s name, I guessed at the year she died and she disappeared into another room in the warren of them behind the desk.

The place was quiet and had “Six Feet Under’s” absurd blend of mortality, mind-numbing office work and cemetery-map treasure hunting. During the long wait to find Barbara in the files, I read Thursday’s fun facts. I simply had to read this one aloud to the salespeople: Did ya’ll know that the patron saint of funeral homes, funeral directors, and embalmers is Saint Joseph of Arimathea?”

They did not.

Back out in the sunlight, we followed a confusing map in the soggy grass to the third row down and second column to the left of the St. Mark statue (after we’d done the same thing at the wrong statue, St. Matthew). Neither of us could find her; neither of us would give up, passing the map back and forth, reading aloud names and trying to not trip over graves. After about 10 minutes, a young landscaper came to our rescue. Again, the absurdity saved us — walking in circles, with Mom occasionally asking aloud, “Barbara, where are you?” we couldn’t cry for laughing. “We should do an escape room next,” I said. “We just did,” Mom retorted.

Next stop: Roses for the estate lawyer’s office manager who helped me clear every Power of Attorney obstacle during the sale of Mom’s old place.

Our visiting and paperwork chores done, we headed for lunch and sat in the sun, drinking Prosecco (me) and sipping Maker’s Mark (her), laughing and celebrating all of it: the sale of the house, finding the grave, me eating lunch and not throwing it up, being home.

I took a nap at 5:30 and woke up the next morning in Mom’s bed to her sweet snore/sighs that sound just like those of our older dog, Laser.

Tune in for the next installment: Friday, when we drive 45 miles into the country to do a cheer in my high school’s parking lot and trespass on the wooded driveway of the house I grew up in.

For the first seven years of my massage career, I gave advice I never followed: Rest, listen to your body, swim, know that you can’t just keep doing the same thing and expecting something different, like doing cardio daily and wondering why your ankle throbbed.

I was in my third decade of an eating disorder, one marked by overexercise, which helped me mask and present as a fit, healthy person, a massage therapist who understood the many running injuries and obsessiveness that pushes us past our limits. In running communities, that kind of mind set is celebrated. In my treatment room, I would offer a safe space that allowed the client to hold onto that identity and rest. Witnessing my clients heal when they rested, somehow, I could never allow myself the same grace. I saw my every injury as proof I was already broken, so why give up my coping mechanism?

I came to the massage through an injury. When I was 27, I broke my femur in a bicycling accident, hitting steel plates on the way to work, flying over the handlebars and thwacking my right leg into the trunk of a maroon Nissan. I was taking a rest day by biking to work instead of going to the gym twice, because. my R hip flexor was injured. No more than two minutes after I hit the ground, I was immediately in b series of good hands: the cops who stopped to call an ambulance (one took my bike back to my apartment), the EMT who told Me to yell my favorite cuss word when she straightened my leg, the ER nurse who called my mom and editor (now husband) and the orthopedist who expertly placed a rod in my leg. But the hands that helped me come back into my body were those of a PT and one helluva if a massage therapist at Athletico in Chicago. I didn’t stop over exercising then, but I did start seriously thinking about becoming a massage therapist.

In 2017, I checked myself into a residential treatment center for eating disorders, and my recovery has been like all healing: the opposite of linear. What it has done, however, has allowed me to connect with clients who have also long relied on their bodies as their only arena of control. They are afraid of aging (dying), of giving up their identities as a runner, or athlete, or person who always walks 12,000 steps a day. I mirror to them the cost of that obsession. I’ve lost teeth, a femur, hours of time with now-dead friends and family so I could be with my eating disorder and make it happy. I have never kept that cost a secret.

I gave up my smart watch two months ago, and the liberation is real. So was the fear at first that I “wasn’t doing enough,” that I didn’t walk enough steps to stop for food, or enjoy a seat in the sun with a friend. All of those revelations have informed how I talk to clients -- it’s softened me and opened them up to the spectrum many of us are on when it comes to exercise -- especially in this data-driven culture.

Massage is a door, a speaker, a way into being present with your pain and the message your body is always sending to you. Being nonjudgmental is always the goal, but being candid and super human about my own struggles with loving my body and being kind it has been a game changer. I see clients let themselves off the hook; I see the shame lessen, and that’s when we can work together more effectively.

I recently went to Paris for the first time in my life, a trip my eating disorder would have hated. I got a massage there from a therapist in her second year. She asked me for advice. I told her to protect her thumbs, get lots of massages herself, and always be real with clients because no healing can happen if lies and a fixer mentality are in the room.

Every body is aging, changing and coming up to the limits of what the mind demands of it. Massage reminds us we are one with our bodies, not at war with it. Being a massage therapist reminds me I’m not fixing anyone because no one is broken, just deserving of rest, care and presence.

Articles are what I used to to write for more than 20 years for The Washington Post Magazine, its Home and Living section and the Washington Business Journal. Substack has been my off ramp as those assignments ended.

Essay seems the more appropriate term for the 57 pieces I’ve published since May 18, 2025 My first real one, “Split (Almost) in Two” was about the undeniable closeness of my mom and me. About our shared pain and our inability at times to keep our emotional and physical realities separate. Talk about a tone setter!

Mary June has starred in about a 20 percent ?? (as she says: I don’t do numbers) of my essays, and continues to fuel the creative flow. In the past year, we’ve moved her out her house and into a retirement villa. I’ve mostly taken over finances after a few scam attempts. We are finally closing on the sale of her home this week, nine LONG months after it went on the market. I’ve written about her pain and abuse at the hands of men who were supposed to love her. I’ve written about the hilarious stories she tells, about letting Muhammad Ali and James Taylor. She’s fallen on her head and bounced back with no concussion. I’ve called her stupid when she accidentally posted financial information on Facebook. I’ve written about the need for tech desks at every single retirement community and already come up with a name for it: A Place for Mom’s Phone. I’m sure Joan Lunden would approve. I’ve written about her strength and her fragility, about her blind spots to my pain and eating disorder and her refusal to condemn my asshole of a grandfather for touching her in ways no father should. I’ve likely caused her shame in my efforts to cauterize wounds with exposure. She remains my biggest fan. She’s welcomed my help at every stage — only recoiling when I mention how much the fancy ass Ford Escape that she bought from my sixth grade boyfriend who owns the big dealership is costing her.

I’ve rediscovered and relied on Hoosier hospitality as I’ve called her bank, her financial advisor, doctor, realtor, lawyer, HOA and resident assistant wonderwoman at the retirement community. I’ve celebrated and memorialized her brother, Bert, who died last summer, having taught us all how to keep on living loving, cussing, inhaling and playing after being paralyzed from the waist down in his late 40s and getting cancer in his last decade. I’ve become the family memoirist, without asking permission.

The woman who created me is in my every creation. It seems fitting to celebrate and acknowledge that on the birthday of A Long Story.

Yesterday, I stuffed two paper towels in my bra, despite the fact that my boobs were the biggest they’ve been in my 54 years. The paper towels were there to soothe my chaffed, sore nipples, made raw and tender by a surge of hormones I’m paying for. The day before, I’d cut my workday in half, felled by cramps that made me hate the smallness of the word “cramp.” Both pains felt inescapable, which is why I was distracting my nervous system with Bounty and a uterus-shaped heated pad.

I started hormone replacement therapy 11 weeks ago, after hemming and hawing about another endocrine intervention. I’ve been on thyroid medication since childhood, and I pretty much fucked up the whole feedback loop with a three-decade eating disorder that shut down my period and allowed bra-free living since 1990. In recovery since late 2017, my period has come back with a vengeance, introducing headaches, cramps, and a gushing flow I’d only heard friends and clients (I’m a massage therapist) describe. I told myself that I deserved all this — to feel like a woman, since I’d avoided menstruation for most of my adult life. And sometimes, I just wanted an excuse to lie in bed all day with my heating pad while my husband delivered Gatorade and cleared the nightstand of saltine crumbs. I followed all the menopause gurus on social media until they offered diets or tried to sell me weighted vests. In recovery, I am overly sensitive to anything marketed as a belly-fat buster and worried HRT would be another muffler keeping me from listening to my body and accepting its changes.

But in the past two years, the hot flashes became almost comical. I dripped sweat on clients more than once. I left parties when I felt like someone put a microwave on my head. I awoke at least twice a night for a wardrobe change. I began sleeping with a towel close by, to put under my soaked body when the 3 a.m. puddle beneath me had me shivering. Sometimes, I welcomed the mood swings as they allowed me to be a little bitchy, to not always worry about making everyone around me happy. I liked the excuse menopause gave me to be irritable in a world that increasingly unleashed its hostility on women shamelessly.

Then I’d read something about women who wished they’d done HRT, only to find out it was too late. Friends and clients started taking it and reported they “felt like themselves again,” that “the bloat” was gone and their “skin didn’t look so damn crepey.” I recognized all those symptoms — and my own anxiety about “missing out.” And even more importantly, I was just learning what feeling like myself actually felt like. I was allowing my body to fill out and change, the inverse of what I did in puberty, the last time I boarded the hormone rollercoaster, only to shut it down with extreme dieting, purging, and over-exercise.

My primary care physician, who’s seen me at every weight and every injury, recently began winding down her practice as she’s become the head of Virginia Hospital Center’s menopause clinic. The serendipity seemed too good to ignore, so I finally made the appointment to discuss HRT. Like always, Dr. Remy got right to the point: “Look, here’s what HRT is FDA-approved for: hot flashes and bone-loss prevention — both of which you could benefit from.” She, my therapist, and I are still surprised that my DEXA scan didn’t reveal osteoporosis, but I know I’ve been bouncing around like a Crystal Light commercial and not eating enough long enough to want all the bone help I can get.

That was March 3. I got the Estradiol gel — because someone at the factory didn’t make enough patches and they were backordered — and 200 mg of progesterone, both of which I “take” daily. Slathering the gel into my lady hips nightly makes me giggle a little, like “here, lady parts, this is for you.” The progesterone makes me sleepy, and as Dr. Remy said, “no one complains about that.”

So all was going well, and then the breakthrough bleeding started on schedule, two months in while I was in Paris. Then it stopped. Travel messes with all your systems, and like my GI tract, my uterine lining was going nowhere until I got back home.

I also noticed I was horny as hell, another sign the estrogen was kicking in. Every man and gal in black-panty hose in Paris was worth a double take; I couldn’t keep my hands off myself or my husband. That and the fact it was 90 degrees when I got home from Paris and summer always brings out my sexy beast. My skin started looking fuller and I started wearing sexier clothes and reading more smut written by women on here. Hello, ladies!

But all good things come to an end, or at least a bloody mess in your drawers.

Since the beginning of May, I’ve bled daily and heavily. Last week, my breasts seemed to grow a cup size overnight and became so tender and sore I began cupping them as I walked around. I’d take my bra off for some chaffing relief only to feel the weight of them slam with every step. I used to be able to do a warm-up without putting on my sports bra, stretching and jumping in place to wake up my lymphatic system. LOL. No going now. I complained to my closest friends and husband, but felt like I had no right. Other women, my large-breasted mom, sister and close friends included, have dealt with unwieldy, un-ignorable large breasts since puberty.

My time in the itty-bitty committee had come to a painful, startling end. Sure, I took some sexy pictures, of my new chest shelf, nipples erect and looking like a 70s truck stop waitress. I tried on old bathing suits, and separated a few that were not fit for the family community pool. But most of what I did was put heating pads, Aquaphor, Tiger Balm (bad idea) and paper towels on my chest.

When I sent a message to the doctor about my sore boobs, she said we could cut my progesterone in half, but that would likely make periods heavier. Pick your pain, basically. I got a facial yesterday from a shaman (it was perfect) and she questioned whether all this intervention was worth it. I don’t know. My friends who’ve been through this say it will pass, that it gets easier and the periods go away and you get used to larger breasts. My body has changed more in the last five years than it has since puberty so I’ve decided to hang on for another month, to see if I find some homeostasis and don’t go through 10 tampons in two days.

The universe has a sense of humor I can’t match. I recently wrote an article for Another Jane Pratt Thing, entitled “My Eating Disorder Made Me Look, Act and Feel Like a Teenage Boy.” My recovery has definitely erased all signs and symptoms of that. I no longer treat 7-11 as my lunch spot, nor do I shop in the Old Navy boys section. Since I am touching my boobs lots, I guess I do “feel” like a teenaged boy, still. My recovery has made me feel like a woman — and I’m both grateful and gobsmacked at the range of pain and pleasure our bodies endure and enjoy.

I write this not to complain or even crowd-source sore-titty remedies, although I welcome them. I write to keep the menopause record as complete and multi-voiced as possible.

In an attempt to text me a photo of her annuities dispersement document, my 83-year-old mom had posted a document with account numbers onto the internet’s bulletin board for scammers. My gut knotted, and I thanked my cousin. Then I did a series of stupid things. I called my mom from the car.

“Is it down, yet?” I asked, with no hello or preamble.

“I’m trying,” she said.

“Do you know how to do it, or are you just clicking around?” I said, hot sun in my face, foot on the brake, cursing Derby-partiers2 double-parked in front of the wine store.

“It won’t go away,” she said.

“Mom, can you for once admit you don’t know how to use your phone?”, I asked, like a little bitch, as if such an admittance would help anyone in the moment.

“I didn’t even realize it was on there,” she said, a defense that proved my point, but again left us nowhere closer to safety.

“How can you be so stupid as to not know when you’re posting to Facebook? We had just got all this money stuff situated. We both finally felt OK, and you just put your bank info on Facebook!”

Silence.

I told her I’d figure it out and hung up. I don’t have a Facebook account anymore, so I couldn’t log on to see it or even log in as her. I voice texted my other cousin who lives nearby, begging him for help and promising to Venmo him money for the inconvenience. A long string of helpless words that took Siri a full 30 seconds to read back to me. I sounded insane. “Do you want to send?” SEND.

I called my husband. He didn’t pick up.

I called the front desk of the small retirement community at which Mom has an independent villa, explained the situation and asked them to send someone over, acknowledging it was not in their job descriptions and explaining I’d never ask except for the financial risk. They sent over the gal Mom calls RoadRunner, for her speed and efficiency in weaving between the tables at lunch and dinner. I’m sure this has been logged in some book that we’ll all use to convince her to go into assisted living at some point.

I pulled into a 7-11 and called Mom to tell her help was on the way. “I already took it down,” she told me, defiantly. “Before they even got over here.”

I treated myself to some Twizzler and gnawed through them nervously as I texted one cousin to see if she could double check it was down and the other to tell him to stand down. “Parenting our parents is a full-time job,” cousin one texted back. “What’s going on? I was taking a nap like an old person. How can I help?” her brother chimed in, waking to my two-inch text.

I tried to tune back into Bosch, for an escape, only to hear him describe his strained relationship with his daughter. All of us stupid with people the closest to us.

“You didn’t have be so harsh to me,” Mom texted, her communication skills in fine form. “You’re the one who asked me to send you these important documents on my phone. I remember every harsh word.”

The Twizzlers roiled. I exhaled. She was right. Of course, she remembers every harsh word. The harsh words from her father, when he snuck into her room; the cruel ones from her boyfriend as he punched a hole in the wall as I stood outside of the room, mad at them both for staying together. The snarky ones from old friends who didn’t talk to her at the high school reunion.

She was right about my forcing her to use her phone in ways I know she’s decreasingly comfortable with. Whenever I try to explain the phone to Mom while on the phone with Mom, I realize how goddamn infuriating it is. This woman didn’t have a color TV inside her home until she was eight. Now, she has one in her purse (or likely plugged in the wall and off). Am I gonna understand how to hologram my crypto card to the robot that delivers soft food to our retirement condo? Likely not. Am I gonna have anyone who loves me around to call me stupid? Nope. No kids to nag or help me out. That’s when Karma is gonna show up in a pair of scrubs and take my hologram machine away from me, and likely mutter “stupid,” as she walks away.

I have to admit that whenever Mom can’t do something, I feel as if I must. I take every misstep as a welfare check, and that’s not fair. We all misstep. She’s got her wits about her. She’s social. She goes on outings and calls me with hilarious stories. This week alone, as we’ve navigated trying to sell her house and cash in some annuities until then. She’s thanked Robert and me countless times for our help: “I just don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Yeah, Mom. I know. I know the cord between us grows stronger. I know Dad’s death put us in a codependent relationship out of necessity and loneliness before the word was in either of our vocabulary’s. When calamity strikes, that cord can feel like a constraint. When I get those calls that start: Um, Mandy, your mom ….

And really, whatever comes after that is some form of: Mandy, your mom is human and needs help.

I reacted yesterday, as if she purposefully ruined my Saturday. I reacted like a frightened only child who wishes someone else would help out, even though I was surrounded by evidence of family members and a food-staff member on her break going out of their way to offer assistance. I was the stupid one, stupid with a fear that blinded me to all her intelligence, independence, her humanity. If I was afraid, imagine her fear.

I apologized. I explained I was tired, that the exhaustion of worrying about her finances had shortened my already short fuse. She kept going, claiming her ground.

“We are not sending each other financial information via the phone anymore. Don’t ask me to do that.”

OK, that’s sound smart. ]

“I don’t deserve to be yelled at.”

I was still sitting at 7-11. If you wonder why people sit in their cars in the hot sun in 7-11 parking lots, here’s one answer for you. Overwhelmed at the thought of dumping this on Robert when I walked in the door and worried I needed to do more, I called him. He told me to email our contact at the bank, to monitor her online account and then reminded me that she doesn’t have that much money in there anyway, so don’t worry about it. And then he said what he’d said a thousand times, overhearing us.

“Don’t yell at your mother. And don’t ask her to do what she doesn’t want to do.”

Later, on a walk with my other old gal, Laser, I called Mom’s landline after calls to her phone went unanswered. She was napping and wanted to hear about our plans for our anniversary dinner, excited that we were going to the Greek place we take her when she visits. “Oh, I can picture you two by the window, in your new skirt from Paris.”

I apologized again, admitting my helplessness and decades-old fear about money. I owned up to reverting to 17-year-old Mandy’s approach: saying things to your mother you say to no one else, sharpening proximity as a weapon. I blamed menopause. I blamed the distance between us and the guilt. She said something worth more than anything in that bank account.

“Well, once I started defending myself — not for what I did, I know that was a mistake — but for not letting you talk to me like that — I couldn’t stop.”

Don’t ever stop defending yourself, Mom. And don’t talk to your mother like a scared bratty beast, Mandy.

Epilogue: This morning, I checked the status of an anniversary gift I’d got Robert: a magnifying glass (romance in your 50s). Turns out I’d sent it to an address of a condo I stayed at two years ago, a stupid mistake.

In Paris, last week, I did something I haven’t done since I was 15. I ate three meals a day. Since my first diet and the decades of an eating disorder that grew out of it like the spawn of deep trauma and a whisper of control, I have skipped meals with Olympic-level ease and velocity - if skipping were an Olympic sport. Some lunches were protein bars and fruit, but every day, I ate three times a day. I felt freaking fantastic.

I ate on the plane. I ate in airports. I consumed food that was not Twizzlers, or Mentos. I ate those too, but I also ate the protein bars and dried fruit I packed, the salad with asparagus and shrimp while watching “Sentimental Value,” over the Atlantic, and the garlic pretzels that gave the entire Air Canada flight a certain stench.

I’ve been in recovery for eight years, and ventured into breakfast this past September on vacation in Italy, alive with the pleasure of the juicer in the hotel and the taste of yogurt without fake ingredients. Sure, sure, the many steps we took helped, but mostly I felt freaking better. It is truly amazing how the obvious eludes you when you’re sick. Waiting until 1 or 2 p.m. to eat is not a victory. It is not.

I’ve written about my husband’s own complicated relationship with food, born of a birth defect with his gastrointestinal tract and multiple food allergies and sensitivities that presents as colitis and IBS. This can keep him in the bathroom for hours, and to avoid that, he often avoids eating until he just has to. On vacation, our schedules would merge and I’d not stop until he did to eat, and often not as much. The first time we had lunch together on vacation was in 2018, one year out of recovery when I had a smoothie in Hawaii. I could feel us both exhale.

I went to Paris, solo, to visit my friend Kristen who has seen me at my worst. She visited me in treatment, she drove me home tipsy from too much wine, she pulled the car over when it caught up with me, she watched me skip meals and promise everyone I’d eat when I got home. When I arrived Wednesday morning, my jet lag had my stomach in a mess, but the first errand we ran was to the grocery store around the corner. After that, the rhythm of Kristen’s day helped set my own, removing the shame of being the only one eating.

That day, in St. Germain, she patiently helped me read menus at at least five cafes before we found one that didn’t scare me. My salad, with dressing and yummy goat cheese and honey, was delicious and overwhelming. I didn’t finish it, but I ate more than half and when I got up to go to the bathroom, it was only to pee and marvel at the tiny winding stairs inside the cafe. That night, I had breakfast for dinner because I was falling asleep at happy hour and my stomach was doing its own Olympic routine.

I’d given up Diet Coke in mid-February when a bout of gastritis forced me to face my one lasting crutch, the most powerful high jacker of hunger cues. I tried a glass that first night at Cafe Boheme, and it did nada for me. I did find some excellent gummies from Haribo and others I had to buy at CarreFour whose packaging enticed me with “For Your Pleasure” promises. So, candy, I still love you; aspartame, not so much.

The next morning, after jumping rope in front of the Eiffel Tower, I stopped at a boulangerie for a baguette and coffee. We shared the baguette and yogurt (I want that yougurt in America maintenant!) and berries on the train to Epernay, to drink in the gorgeous scenery and its output. There, I had my first omelette with a green salad at cafe called — you can’t make this up — Le Progress! Eating disorders make no sense. I know omelettes are healthy. I just had no facility with ordering beyond the salad menu until the last two years. That evening, worn out from walking all over Epernay in 77 degree weather and up and down the steps at the train and Metro stations, we stopped at Monoprix, where I bought a chicken and green bean salad, and ate it on the floor in front of the TV with the baguette from the morning. C’est parfait. I fell asleep as Sean served Kristen the hamburger and fries he made her. Still, I ate dinner. That’s three meals and a victory pour moi!

The best meal of the trip was at Liza, named for its chef, described in the Michelin guide: “Originally from Beirut, Liza Asseily gives pride of place to the food of her homeland. In a bright interior strewn with Middle Eastern touches, you can expect mezze to share, grilled meats or fattet batinjan (aubergine, minced lamb and yoghurt).” Emily, Kristen’s friend in Paris, suggested it when she spotted the decision fatigue on Kristen’s face and the overwhelm on mine. It was perfect. In flickering candlelight, I ate fatoosh inside a pita-like ballooon (I got cracking honors), hummus, chicken, roasted potatoes, bread and the salty tears streaming down my face at all that I’d missed and all I was finally taking in.

I asked for dressing on the side only once, in the safe confines of a hotel bar, Frame. But you better believe I dipped my shrimp in that dressing several times. I ate the rosemary-crusted cashews, too. So there. I had a carafe of Diet Coke and Champagne there, eating dinner solo in the shadow (had it been sunny) of the Eiffel Tower.

I missed my eating disorder when I was feeling frumpy about my style and unmoored the first 48 hours, but I shook that off after writing about it. As its hold loosened, I felt more confident and less anxiety-ridden, more likely to seek comfort in a good meal than in a mirror. Finally, I am learning to trust myself to know what to consume.

Premier Jour

Arrived at 8 a.m, April 8, wearing a thick layer of plane sweat and sporting a navy blue Marine Layer ringer tee under a Sweaty Betty oversized running hoodie, paired with 2015 maroon track pants by Mossimo via Target. They looked cute, but after 10 hours the ‘80s football-coach fabric felt like forced exfoliation. Varsity Blues, indeed. Comrade tie dye compression socks for health and my reliable Saysh sneakers that proved their worth on Sperlonga’s stone steps in September. A Mountain Hardwear (!) cargo green jacket completed the look and refined the silhouette, IMO.

Kristen, my Annie Sullivan of Everything Europe, and her made-for-Paris pooch, Ranger, greeted me outside her flat on Avenue du Suffren just as my Uber arrived. We dropped the bags, walked the two blocks to the Champs de Mars in front of the Eiffel Tower for some neighborhood reconnaissance. Hit the market around the corner for yogurt that will forever change how I consume it, produce, legumes and protein bars (Bonjour, Barebells, good to see you here.)

Back to the flat for a mini stretch and workout then a shower. Changed into what can best be described as a “goes to Paris once ensemble:” super soft bell-bottomed denim from my local consignment boutique, with zippered pockets, and a middle seam that delivers a faintly Jane Birkin vibe, paired with a white boatneck Madewell top with cornflower-blue stripes and 3/4 length sleeves. Changed into my bright yellow Sauconys and orthotics. It was hot, hot and hot, and my first-day-on-vacay sense of overwhelm and bloat had me way inside my head, feeling gauche and fixating on every fille in a crop-top and mini skort or fancy pair of pleated shorts. Parisians and their layers, however, shall not be parted, and oversized leather jackets, black pantyhose and lug-soled boots paraded by us as we sat, sardine-style, at a cafe in St. Germain, drinking rose and eating a gigantic salad with goat-cheese toast. When we first sat down outside, I was next to a glass partition, and could feel my legs cooking. With my knee compression sleeve under denim, I feared a sous-vide situation, so we moved, much to the entertainment of our equally hot, and likely perpetually aggrieved with tourists, waiter.

Zero complaints about the weather, but I’m wishing I would’ve packed a little-bitty bottom layer that wasn’t a 2007 Lululemon skort. Reminded myself to get out of my head about 30 times and succeeded to about 20. I mean, look around, lady. Notre Dame! My friend, the Seine! Beauty, history, Gallic noses and kids with more style than Vogue. As we enjoyed the sidewalk runway, Kristen told me she felt a similar sense of playing catch up when she first moved to Paris almost two years ago, but has since been reminded with every consigned gaucho and Gucci getup that “anything goes.”

Kristen is not only my intercontinental guide, she’s also my personal shopper. She led me to a street full of quilted and hand-sewn jackets I’d never seen, nor would have ever purchased without her encouragement and the impassioned “serving suggestions” of the vendor: “It’s made to be oversized! You can wear it with a belt, right here,” gesturing to my under-boob region. (I will never wear it with a belt). I don’t even know how to describe this jacket, other than I love it because I bought it on a whim on my first day in Paris.

Deuxième jour à Épernay

Up at dawn and in my forever fashion equalizer: workout gear. Ran, skipped and danced in front of the Eiffel Tower, downright giddy. On the 10:30 train to Epernay with Kristen, eating a baguette and yogurt. Wore a shirt dress from EverEve that I bought on a date night in February, shouting out of the dressing room to Robert, “Oh, this sucker is going to Paris avec moi!” It was the one item that didn’t fit the Sodoku puzzle method of packing in which every layer matches another, top to bottom). But who cares, Champagne demanded I dress up a little.

Here’s a fun fact that will make Robert’s toes curl when he reads this: I went braless, the weight of the sweater, the heat of the day, and the site of so many nipples encouraging me to do so. On the train, I felt bound in by my panties. I’d packed period underwear, as this trip was timed for the breakthrough bleeding of HRT about which I’d been warned. They had to go. I took them off in the tiny bathroom and shoved them in my Wilco tote. Undergarment-free, I drank in the gorgeous quaint town and the charming, made-for-TV-Champagne at Perrier-Jouet, with Kristen at my side sporting a saucy little culotte-jumpsuit meet-cute. I may have flashed my fellow Metro riders, when facing a stuck turnstile, and I had to canard under it. C’est la vie!

By Friday, temperatures and confidence were rising. My use of fashion as armor, born of a country girl’s fear of getting it wrong (what’s street style on Rural Route 1) can be like many overuses: crippling, rendering me dependent on “what everyone else is wearing” and feeling left behind, affordably and culturally. I’ve long had this fear that I’m wearing the wrong thing. It was surreal to read an essay I wrote, titled "J’Adore My Anorak of Armor” about a J. Crew piece that helped me through a vulnerable college time, published on this Friday, while I was in France!

Open Secrets Magazine

Object-ives #30: J’Adore My Anorak of Armor

It’s August, 1990, Indiana University. College classes start in one week. I’ve already noticed that my clothes are not quite right. They’re cute, but it’s as if I missed some internal memo about Rugbys, Doc Martens, and rainbow belts. I was able to secure the belt at the co…

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4 months ago · 19 likes · 5 comments · A Long Story

I knew I couldn’t adopt my own style if I was always wearing what the girls in Seventeen wore and we couldn’t even afford the ugly brown oxfords all the private school girls wore in Louisville! I had to make it up as a I went. I had a mall-rat via aspirational Espirit ads kind of look. I inhaled everything sporty (Adidas crops, Umbro shorts) striped and beachy, as I always looked my best on Spring Break. I love complimentary colors and silhouettes and comfort. I often err on the side of things that make me feel thin, but I’m outgrowing and out aging that. This is all to say that by Friday, I had picked up on the local vibe, spotted all the white jeans and sweaters, and knew just what my suitcase had to offer.

and now, back to the clothes

A Shift to the Right Bank

The day ahead offered the marble floors of the massive, but doable, Musee D’Orsay admiring art, made by the former residents of the day’s second location: Montmartre and its many steps and consignment stores.

For all of this and more, I wore off-white, straight-legged, mid-rise J. Crew jeans from Goodwill, a navy thrifted school uniform button-down and a navy white and green rollneck sweater, a nod to the sweater’s periwinkle ancestor I wore to French class in college. All the layers served me well, and the only thing missing was a scarf, sported by Emily, an American in Paris along with her husband Andrew, I met at Kristen’s wedding in Italy. I equally coveted and complimented her black pants by Madewell. Like his bride, Sean knows coats, and apparently, also shackets.

Day 5

Day 5 shows up on brand as a drizzly, cold Saturday, perfect for a massage, shopping and an early dinner in terrarium-like hotel-lobby bar, all glass windows, giant plants, jewel tones and people who looked like celebrities.

My base layer comprised very wide-legged Madewell jeans and a ribbed navy Buck Mason top, a brand I found via one of ’s excellent essentials list. On top: a Zara zip-up I got at a mall in Assisi on the day of Kristen and Sean’s rehearsal dinner in Spello. It kept me dry and toasty in Paris too.

Au Revoir

Full-day of travel ahead of me, so I’m up early to move my body and inhale all the fresh air I can. I dance on a neighborhood sidewalk early Sunday morning, wearing Figs leggings and the 80s-forward bubble gum pink and black wind breaker Kristen nabbed for me at a T.J. Maxx in Arlington.

I made it the whole trip without joggers, but today is made for soft clothes. Up top, a Buck Mason crop top under a Marine Layer crew sweatshirt. Saysh on my lavender Sauconys, fortified with orthotics in in my backpack, lest my steps catch up with me on that layover in Montreal.

On Monday, buzzed on six hours of sleep and the slumber-party energy of being awake for 24 straight hours the day before, I caught the Spring Cleaning Bug easily, made more potent by unpacking into a disorganized closet. I culled five bags of clothes, including items made immovable by nostalgia: my first pair of Chuck Taylors, Moving Comfort running tights in bright teal. I’m no longer hanging onto jeans that don’t fit, but I was still able to cull some back-benchers. The edit left me grateful for for what I’ve kept, and what I’ve let go.

I decided the summer before middle school that the mixing of elementary schools would give me the chance to re-launch Mandy Temple into the North Harrison school system’s greater collective. By the end of the first day of sixth grade, I’d signed up to run for student council (got it), cheerleading (made it) and started “going with” one of the two most popular boys from the other elementary.

I’d also met Maria, who sat next to me in a few classes because our last names were at the end of the alphabet. Tiny, but fierce, Maria was the youngest — by 15 years or so — of three girls and way too much for her aging parents. She was sharp-edged and a trouble maker, but she “liked” me and there’s nothing I like more than befriending a wild animal, proving that a little love can make the most feral of cats stop scratching my eyes out. One week into sixth grade and I was teaching Maria moves for Take It to the Limit, the try-out cheer. Half-way through the year, and we were writing our boyfriends’ names on one other’s backs with our fingers, jostling her waterbed and earning shouts from her dad to KEEP IT DOWN. To this day, I don’t have an inside voice.

Maria was mercurial, telling me her deepest fears one minute, then hip-bumping me onto the basketball court mid-chant to the giggles of the other girls on the squad. Her parents loved me, considered me a good influence (I was smart and a rule follower, a get-along gal who tried and failed to keep the peace at my own house). Even Rudy, my mom’s boyfriend whose anger was physically directed at my Mom and verbally directed at me (“yes, your ass is still there, stop looking in the mirror)”, noted that Maria had a hold over me like no other. “What’s the little rat fink got on you? She treats you like shit.” Game recognizing game and all that. What she had was a first right of refusal in many ways. I’d bounced around like a satellite on the edges of slumber parties and Girl Scout meetings from third to fifth grade. I had a few good friends, Sheri, Chris, Marla and Krista, but not my own person. Maria pulled me into her orbit and I couldn’t figure out how to exit without making her mad. I spent most of my youth trying not to make anyone mad.

And then Jennifer came into my world like the tap-dancing force of good and family rituals that I could not resist. Like Maria, Jennifer, Julie, Julie, and Nichole were from the other elementary and I spied their easy way and laughs early on. They even joked with Ms. Walton, the sixth grade teacher everyone knew was the coolest. She wore jeans and had horses, or a guitar, something cool. They were so nice to me and soon we were sitting near each other in English class, doing our homework together and complimenting one another’s Nikes and pleated jeans. Maria was not pleased, but I walked the line between cliques like Philippe Petit crossing between the Twin Towers, careful not to look down or be lost to no friends at all.

Maria was a wild child, and wanted to do increasingly wild things. Her parents had the harshest rules and she broke almost all of them, just not as many when I was around. I was her good-girl friend, until I didn’t want to be anymore. The summer between sixth and seventh grade, she started hanging with a rougher crew, drinking in barns and getting into cars with boys I knew would at best, get me labeled a slut. I made my move, writing a long, carefully worded note, basically breaking up with her. I remember being impressed by her response: “Your (sic) so low you have to look up to see down. I’ll throw away your toothbrush.”

By the time seventh grade began and were cheering on the sidelines together again, we were cordial. She had an older boyfriend and I was just a boring nerd, a stuck-up prep — not worth her time.

I was at Jennifer’s house almost every weekend, often from Friday to Sunday. I loved going into Louisville to her dance classes, playing tennis and sprawling games of hide and seek with her older brother and his best friends. My first date was a double date with her big brother, Steve, and his best friend, Troy. Every thing about that house was safe and bright and flat, meaning the light was everywhere and we could go on walks in her subdivision. I lived in the woods, surrounded by trees and hills. I got a mo-ped when I was 13, so Mom, a teacher, wouldn’t have to drive me to driver’s ed during her summer off. Mostly though, I was at Jennifer’s house. I got ready for eighth-grade graduation in her ballet-pink bedroom, shellacking a chin zit in Cover Girl Foundation, so you couldn’t miss it. In 10th grade, Jennifer and I helped get our chemistry teacher fired because, well, he wasn’t teaching us chemistry. He’d tell us to open the book and read, and then oversee a few labs. Our chemistry two teacher, for whom I was a teacher’s assistant, had to dedicate the first eight weeks of the semester to the basics. I was posing for Spring Break photos in Jennifer’s yard the night my boyfriend took his ex to prom. I’d start Christmas or Easter morning at my house, and end the day at Jennifer’s. I watched her dance to “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey” at recitals and slink around in a boa like a woman born of another time. She was the Fritzi to my Mitzi, two of the three USO dancers in our junior year production of MASH. Things were so PG at Jenn’s that when her brother had over friends, we’d all sleep like sardines on the living room floor, watching re-runs of “The Andy Griffith Show.” No hanky panky except all the fantasies playing out in my head for her brother’s friend who’d dumped me.

Jennifer knew I was a bit wilder than her, and loved and accepted me for it. She also called me on my shit. She knew my house was the fun house, and her was the one where dinner was served every night. I knew where the crackers were in her Lazy Susan (truth be told, I knew where the crackers were in all the cabinets of all my friends. Crackers couldn’t survive in our mildew-prone woodsy home). I got closer to other girls in our crew during high school, but Jennifer occupied a special place, that represented home, routine and goodness.

When I left for college at IU-Bloomington, Jennifer stayed home and attended IU-Southeast. She called one day with what I could tell was important news. “I’m going to quit college and marry Aaron (her older boyfriend of at least three years at this point). I’ll work at the bank. I want babies!”

She must have known she had little time to waste. When she died at age 36 of cancer, she had three sons, all of whom I’ve watched grow up, thanks to social media. I’d moved away, first to Chicago and then the suburbs of D.C. I remember walking to the Metro as she shared her cancer diagnosis. I distinctly remember feeling guilty. I had an eating disorder and lived the opposite of the healthy life she did. I never went home enough and will forever be grateful for all the hands-on care our friends provided for her, her boys and her husband. When I went home once, a local elementary class had raised pennies to help pay for her trip to Atlanta for treatment.

Her oldest, Cameron, a middle schooler when she died, stood next to her coffin at St. Michael’s for the entire packed Mass. He’s so much like her. An elementary teacher, with a gift for turning the mundane into an event - JUST LIKE HIS MOM— he’d decorate his classroom like a ‘50s diner and host sock hops.

Jennifer shared a birthday, August 6, with her mom, Jean. I can’t imagine the ache of that day. I text Jean, but don’t interact as much as I should now that I’m off social media. Maria’s birthday was August 7. She died when she was 41. The last time we were together was Father’s Day of our freshman year. Her dad told her she could bring a friend to the lake if the friend was me. We slathered on Panama Jack, listened to Motley Crue and then got back to our wildly different lives. Jennifer and Maria shaped me in ways I am still learning. Tiny, fierce and fighting the world Maria softly scratching my back. Graceful, giggle-prone but never gullible Jennifer hoisting me on her back in her front yard, talking me down from every heartbreak, us dancing at every chance.

Last night, the high school friend group text lit up with news that Cameron is a dad. This morning, Easter morning, we put heart emojis on the picture of the baby, all agreeing that the kid would have had the best grandma, and reiterated our protective, 40-year love to one another. Saint Jennifer, I know you were in that room, because you’re in every room when I feel myself fill with a love that’s holy and forgiving.