Six years ago I was depressed and miserable after my second divorce. If someone had told me, “Don’t worry, Linda, in a few years you’ll write a book and have a one-woman show in Las Vegas” well… I probably wouldn’t have believed it. But I also wouldn’t have worried nearly as much.

I finally had weight loss surgery a couple of months ago after being overweight my whole life. WLS is not a quick fix, as everyone seems to believe; this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I feel so much better because I took big steps to improve this situation. I never knew how liberating it would be.

One of my old favorites (from Marianne Williamson lectures) is that if someone calls you a Polyanna, thank them. It is a compliment of the highest order if other people notice that we are always seeing the good in a situation.

Book sounds great. It will go onto my list.

“She’s not what she was when she was in her young adulthood, i.e., ‘hot’ in that cursory-glance way that the world looks at young women. But now she’s hot in that way that only a woman who has had some time on this earth to think can be.

I only know her persona, not her person, but from everything I’ve seen and read it seems like as a Formerly, she occupies her body and her self with the authority and security of a homeowner, rather than the way younger women sometimes seem as if they’re renting (or worse, squatting), prepared to abandon who they are entirely if a better option presents itself. I know I often felt that way in my 20s, as if I were shopping for a life, that I was often just a composite of other people’s opinions of me.”

Reading this, it sounds like becoming a former is like winning the lottery: delivering jaw-dropping riches, with only a teensy downside, paying the $1 price of the ticket. Sure, you give up your edge in the “cursory-glace” competition, but that sounds so trivial anyway—I mean really, who even cares?—and besides, every other aspect of your life gets way better.

I really hope your blog is not turning into a pollyanna celebration of how cool it is to be a formerly. What has made the “formerly” concept interesting to me is the deep mixture of loss and growth. We (I know the phenomenon is more acute for you ladies, but I feel like a Formerly too, sister) have to let go of things that were (and are) important to us. If we’re lucky, and either read the blog or have some wisdom of our own, we start to notice that in exchange for a lessening of qualities that our culture defines as beautiful, and often some decline in fitness and health along the way, we have gained experience, wisdom, maturity, and ease. I have no problem with your argument that it’s a good deal, but I read your post as suggesting that it’s practically free.

Celeb X moving through the world with confidence vs. Celeb X squatting: I can tell you which image I’d rather hold onto…

Celeb X is a great example of this painful involuntary tradeoff. Maybe she’s happier now than she was at 18 or 20, and maybe she looks good, and maybe she has an all-around better life. But those characteristics alone do not make her a Formerly. She is also someone who was an A-List Star. She was on “most beautiful” lists back in the day, but would not be now. Maybe that’s messed up, but that’s a fact that she lives with. A writer or a lawyer who gets some wrinkles may be sad and feel a sense of loss, but with identity mostly intact. Some pretty baby movie star/model, in contrast, who ages needs to do some serious career and soul searching. It’s like entering another country and having to surrender all your money at the border: you may have a better life ahead of you, but it’s a vulnerable, terrified feeling. I imagine anyway.

Sorry if it sounds like I’m trying to tell you what your blog is about. But I read the post and feared it was drifting from the focus that was most meaningful for me, and wanted to say something, cuz, y’know, that’s the whole point of a blog as opposed to a column.