Dear Fifty-Six Year Old Mette

You don’t exist yet because I’m still creating you, but I write fiction as well as memoir, and I am actually you in some sense, so if anyone has a good idea of who you are going to be, I figure it must be me. Also, I have an advantage in that I actually get to create you out of the parts of me that are here now and the parts of me that I want to add to those.

You have finally finished the terrible divorce. You changed your name, refusing both the link to your father’s name and your husband’s. You have a new book out and it is completely different from anything you’ve written before. It’s a new era of book writing for you. This will never be the steady career you once imagined, and it will always have the terrifying ups and downs of big reviews and stretches of no books sales and no visibility. There were never be any sense of having “reached your goals” or of having “arrived.” You will always be arriving, but you’re learning to accept this. You have other spaces in your life where you will be able to scratch the goal itch.

You are financially stable and you are still waiting for something inside of you to push you into dating again. For whatever reason, that hasn’t happened yet. You’re still working on yourself, still giving yourself the grace to be broken and wonderful. Your kids have plenty of problems, but they rely on you in ways that show that you didn’t break things with them after the divorce and your messiness in the terrible years in between.

There are other things you are beginning to think of offering to the world of yourself and you feel a confidence about listening to yourself and following your own instincts in a way you never have before. You’re figuring out that this inner part of you has always been there, always been shouting at you when necessary, whispering when that worked better. You’ve always been you, and now you’re just more you.

You find quiet spaces to be still. This is a new skill of yours and you’re still in awe that you actually know how to rest now, how to do nothing and how to turn off that eternally spinning brain of yours. You don’t have to prove yourself anymore. You don’t need to make your mark on the world stage. You have no obligations to do anything but what suits you.

Retirement is on the horizon and you’re looking forward to slowly embracing the last part of life. You’re joyful about the idea of letting go of the frenzy of the rat race. You are still a mother, but that’s not your primary identity. You’re not trying to be good all the time, as Mary Oliver says. It is enough to simply sit on the couch, turn on the fire, and pet your new dog. Yes, you did eventually get a dog, and she is perfect for you.