Greetings my lovelies,

I went down a rabbit hole today, and this particular rabbit hole came with more than five decades of photographs, some questionable fashion choices, and enough 1980s hair to require its own building permit.

It started innocently enough. I was looking through old pictures of myself—childhood school photos, teenage years, prom, pictures with my grandparents, pictures with my daughters, Christmas mornings, different houses, different hairstyles, different bodies, and eventually the woman looking back at me now at 56.

At first, I thought I was looking at how much my appearance had changed. I noticed my hair, my weight, my face, the makeup, the clothes and all those different versions of me that existed over the years.

Then something shifted.

I realized I wasn’t really looking at my appearance anymore.

I was looking at my life.

What You Couldn’t See in the Pictures

Looking at childhood photographs is strange when you’re the adult who knows what was happening outside the frame. Someone else sees a cute little girl with brown hair, big eyes, nice clothes and a smile for the camera.

They couldn’t see the little girl who was being severely abused.

They couldn’t see the daughter who yearned for her parents’ love and affection. They couldn’t see the girl who learned to be the role model, the responsible one, the good one—the one who tried to do everything right because somewhere along the way she learned that being good and pleasing people mattered.

They couldn’t see the granddaughter who did what her grandparents told her to do. They couldn’t see how badly she wanted to make people proud of her or how much of herself she learned to tuck away because it didn’t fit the role she thought she was supposed to play.

They couldn’t see the broken parts.

They just saw the girl in the picture.

Looking at her now, though, I see something else too. I see how beautiful she was. Not in some nostalgic, youth is wasted on the young bullshit kind of way. I can simply look at her now and recognize something she couldn’t recognize in herself then.

She was beautiful.

I wish she had known she didn’t need to be perfect to deserve love.

Even My Story Had to Be Edited

Writing those words publicly isn’t easy for me.

For years, I would have struggled to put any of this in a blog post. Not because I didn’t know what happened to me. Not because I didn’t remember my own life. But because I knew who might read it.

Mom might see it.

Other family members might see it.

And then what?

Would someone get angry? Would somebody deny what happened, defend it, tell me I remembered it wrong or come after me simply because I dared to say it publicly?

That possibility used to matter enough that I would edit myself before anyone else ever had the chance.

I would think about what I wanted to write and then think about who might read it. I’d soften something, leave something out or decide maybe I shouldn’t write about it at all.

Apparently even my own damn life needed family approval before publication.

And when I think about that now, it fits this story almost too perfectly.

I didn’t only learn to dress a certain way or behave a certain way depending on who was around me. I didn’t only learn to become the good daughter, good granddaughter, role model, wife or whatever else was expected of me.

I learned to edit my own story according to who might be reading it.

But I’m 56 years old now.

I don’t want to do that anymore.

Being honest about what happened in my life isn’t about attacking anyone. I’m not writing this to drag my family through the mud or start some decades-old family battle royale on Facebook.

I’m writing about my experience of my own life.

The little girl in those photographs was being severely abused. The daughter behind that smile yearned for love and affection from her parents. She learned to be good, responsible and perfect, and those experiences affected the woman she became.

Pretending those things didn’t happen so somebody else can feel more comfortable doesn’t change them.

It only keeps me hiding.

And isn’t that what this entire story is about?

I spent enough years worrying about whether people would accept the woman on the cover.

I’m not going to start editing the pages now.

When My Appearance Became Camouflage

As I got older, I became pretty damn good at figuring out who I was supposed to be.

Good daughter. Good granddaughter. Role model. Good wife. Good mother. Respectable woman. Whatever position was currently available in the Great Production of Please Accept Me, apparently I was prepared to audition.

And appearance became part of it.

I dressed certain ways because sometimes I was hiding who I really was. I learned how to present myself as the person I thought other people wanted to see. Clothes, hair and makeup weren’t always simply self-expression for me.

Sometimes they were camouflage.

There’s a photograph of me in a beautiful blue prom gown. When I look at her now, I can admit that she was a very pretty young woman.

What you can’t see in that photograph is that I weighed about 87 pounds and was struggling with anorexia and bulimia, using diet pills and caffeine.

The photograph captured the dress and the body inside it.

It didn’t capture the cost.

That’s something I think about now whenever women look at old photographs and say, I wish I could have that body back. I understand the temptation.

But I know what came with that particular body.

I don’t want it back.

And Then There’s the Pumpkin Picture

One photograph that really got to me is the pumpkin picture.

There I am sitting in the autumn leaves with my two little girls and a pumpkin roughly the size of a Volkswagen. My hair is gloriously enormous because I was a young woman in the era when we apparently believed our bangs should be able to receive AM radio signals.

It’s a sweet picture.

If you knew nothing about my life, you could create an entire story from that photograph: happy young mother, two little girls, beautiful fall day, family life. Frame it, put it on the mantel and cue the wholesome television commercial.

Except that’s not the whole story.

Behind the photograph was an unhappy housewife in my first marriage who was trying her damnedest to be a good wife and raise two little girls. I was trying to make the marriage work. I was trying to be the kind of wife I thought I was supposed to be and the mother my daughters needed me to be.

Once again, I was playing a role.

And I was trying really fucking hard to get it right.

That’s what photographs don’t show us. They freeze a fraction of a second and let everybody else fill in the rest of the story.

But I know the rest of mine.

Different Decade, Different Costume

Fast-forward through life and eventually we arrive at 46-year-old me.

At that time I was going to church, and the environment I experienced there felt very particular. It seemed to me like almost everybody looked like everybody else. Many of the people had money, and frankly, I found a lot of them snooty.

Here’s the uncomfortable part:

I wanted to be accepted.

So when I look at photographs from that period, I notice things differently now. My face was leaner and more angular. My makeup was stronger. My hair was extremely structured. I looked polished, coordinated and very put together.

Now, I’m not saying every woman with perfectly styled hair is secretly experiencing some identity crisis. Sometimes fabulous hair is just fabulous hair. Sometimes you buy a lipstick because it’s Tuesday and the color is fucking fantastic.

But I know what was happening with me.

I was still looking around the room and figuring out which version of myself belonged there. I had been doing some variation of that my entire life.

Different decade. Different costume.

Same damn audition.

Who do I need to be so you’ll accept me?

That’s exhausting when you think about it. Spending years reading every room you enter and adjusting yourself accordingly doesn’t leave much room for figuring out who the hell you are when nobody else gets a vote.

Sometimes the Cover Lies—and Sometimes It Tells You Everything

We’re always told not to judge a book by its cover, and there’s a damn good reason for that.

You couldn’t look at little-girl me and see abuse. You couldn’t look at the prom photograph and see an eating disorder. You couldn’t look at the pumpkin picture and see an unhappy marriage. You couldn’t necessarily look at carefully styled 46-year-old me and see someone who desperately wanted to belong.

But after looking through all these photographs, I realized the opposite can also be true.

Sometimes appearance tells you a hell of a lot.

You just don’t know how to read it until you know the story.

That tiny body was telling a story. The carefully controlled appearance was telling a story. The different clothes, hair and versions of myself that appeared throughout different chapters of my life were telling stories too.

Sometimes appearance is expression. Sometimes it’s armor. Sometimes it’s camouflage. Sometimes it’s an attempt at control. Sometimes it’s a way of saying, Please accept me.

And sometimes a woman just wants fabulous eyeliner.

Both things can be true.

Then I Got to 56

Eventually, I reached the recent photographs.

I’m heavier now. My face is fuller and softer. My hair isn’t nearly as structured. I wear big glasses. Sometimes I wear makeup and sometimes I don’t. There are wrinkles, changes and assorted evidence that I have committed the apparently controversial act of continuing to age.

Gravity has also become increasingly involved in my personal affairs without being invited, but that’s another post.

And yet, when I put the photographs beside each other, I kept having the same thought.

I think I look better now.

Not younger. I’m not going to stand here at 56 and pretend I’m 26. And I’m certainly not holding some ridiculous beauty pageant between every version of myself to determine which Rae gets the tiara.

That’s not what I mean.

I think I finally figured out what I’m seeing when I look at myself now.

I look like me.

There’s less performance. Less hiding. Less carefully constructing the person I think someone else will accept. I’m not looking around the room quite as much anymore to figure out what everybody else is wearing before deciding who I’m allowed to be.

I don’t look like I’m asking permission.

And holy shit, I love that.

Take Me or Leave Me

That may be the biggest difference between this woman and so many of the women in those older photographs.

I’m not auditioning anymore.

I’m not trying to be the perfect daughter, granddaughter, wife, mother, church woman or whatever other role somebody thinks I should be playing. I’m not interested in sanding down the parts of myself that might make someone uncomfortable just so I can fit neatly into their little box.

Sometimes I’m put together. Sometimes my hair has apparently made independent plans for the day. Sometimes I’ll wear makeup, and sometimes I won’t bother. Sometimes I’ll look witchy. Sometimes I’ll probably resemble the eccentric woman down the road who has suspicious things growing in jars and knows far too much about the moon.

I’m comfortable with this arrangement.

This is me. Take me or leave me.

That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring about how I look. Funny enough, going through all these photographs actually made me want to start playing with makeup again.

But there’s a difference now.

Makeup doesn’t have to help me become someone you’ll accept. I can wear it because I like it. I can dress up because it’s fun. I can do my hair because I feel like it.

The decoration can change.

The woman underneath it doesn’t have to.

I Can Finally Admire Her

One of the most surprising things about this whole trip through my photographs is how much tenderness I feel toward the younger versions of myself.

I don’t hate them.

I don’t look at 46-year-old me and think she was fake. I understand why she wanted acceptance. I don’t look at the young housewife beside that enormous pumpkin and judge her for trying so hard. She was doing what she thought she needed to do.

And I certainly don’t look at that painfully thin young woman and wish I had her body.

I want to tell her she was already beautiful.

I can finally admire the girl I was without wanting to become her again.

Every one of those women got me here—the little girl, the daughter who wanted to be loved, the granddaughter trying to do everything right, the role model, the wife, the mother, the woman trying to belong and all the versions in between.

For years, I changed the cover depending on who was reading.

Hell, I even edited the pages because I was afraid of what some of the readers might say.

Not anymore.

There are battered chapters. Funny chapters. Painful chapters. Beautiful ones. There are probably a few I’d happily toss straight into a bonfire. There are coffee stains on the pages, dog-eared corners, questionable language in the margins and probably some glitter stuck somewhere it has absolutely no business being.

But it’s my book.

My story.

And I’m finally willing to tell it honestly.

After 56 years of trying to be good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, polished enough, acceptable enough and every other exhausting version of enough…

the cover finally matches the damn book.

And this time, I’m not changing either one for the reader.