On Twitter, on Threads, on Bluesky, on one of those text-based apps that is not this one, I see mention of a Reddit sub that is immediately of interest to me, r/askwomenover40.
There are women who need guidance navigating divorce and loveless marriages. There are women who wonder if it’s possible to find love and companionship after 40. There are lots of questions about perimenopause and menopause. Women in their early 20s wondering if it gets easier with your mom as you get older and women who are sad that their kids are growing up. And so many questions about how to handle floundering friendships (and how to make new ones). And most importantly, there are no influencers or anyone attempting to sell you anything (aside from easy to scroll-by ads).
It brings me comfort, this digital space to sit at the feet of your elders or commiserate with your middle-aged peers, no question too insignificant — “What do you do after work?” — or too niche — “Dating a combat veteran.” It’s an online space that still feels real. Like your favorite 90s AOL chatroom real.
I’d avoided Reddit for the longest time because it always popped up in sentences alongside “cesspool.” But then, like most people, once Google became unusable, bogged down with spon-con, I began seeking out Reddit reviews on items I was considering purchasing. (In fact, now that I’m thinking about, did Reddit follow the inverse trajectory of Twitter? As more “regular” people joined the platform it became a less noxious place to hangout).
My comfort with Reddit increased, and I found myself turning toward it for making a major life decision. I needed courage.
When I moved home in 2016, I expected it would be my last move ever. I even said it out loud, multiple times, “I’m never leaving Louisville.” In interviews, I told people that if they wanted to conquer something, move to New York City. But if you want to build something, move back to your hometown.
I imagined that I would meet my long-awaited love and we would buy a home and maybe he would convince me to get a dog. The cost of living was low enough that I could afford to take my writing career seriously and, yes, I would be in Kentucky, but I’d eventually have enough expendable income to jet off whenever I wanted to. AND I’d get to watch my one-and-only niece grow up.
Then the pandemic happened. And I was just in Kentucky. Single and alone. Married friends forming pods with other married friends. Families with small children seeking out other families with small children. I begrudged no one any of this, but it did make it very clear that I was one of the few single, childless people that I knew. I began to not want to feel like such an outlier. I wanted to be in community with more people who shared my circumstances. People who made life decisions centered around their art.
I was extremely fortunate in that I lived next door to my middle sister and her husband and my little niece. So I was not entirely isolated but it also meant that their potential exposure raised the stakes on any pandemic dating — I would not be finding myself starring as one half of a COVID couple love story. There were also friends who loved on me from a safe social distance, making even a cold miserable pandemic birthday meaningful.
I resisted the desire to move for as long as I could. I built and built and built community in Louisville — socially and literary and professionally — but still something felt missing (and it wasn’t just the brackish dating pool…).
Throughout my entire life a kind of restlessness has plagued me. Quite the contradiction for a Capricorn that loves sure and steady. But I’ve learned that the restlessness cannot be denied. The longer I put it off, the stronger the feeling becomes. Just like I knew I needed to heed the restlessness that had told me it was time for me to leave sunny California behind and return home, I would not be able to quiet the feeling that was telling me it was now time to leave Louisville.
But what would it mean to uproot myself and leave my family and community and begin again somewhere new at nearly 40? This was a question I asked the Internet over and over in different ways and it mostly responded in Reddit threads. Threads unspooling stories of moves that made for major mistakes, but mainly stories of moves people were glad that they’d made.
I’ve felt a connection to the city of Philly ever since the first time I visited it on a whim more than a decade ago. I’d tacked a quick night or two on to a trip to see a friend in NYC simply because it was a city I’d never been to. Then my baby sister lived here for a few years and then that spectacular “post-COVID” AWP where everyone got… COVID (except for me, I’d come down with it in Portugal a few months later because I’m extra like that) happened. Way back when, I was even accepted to an MFA program in Philly, unfortunately, they offered me no money and I headed back to California instead.
So Philly was the clear contender for the city I’d move to next. I returned to Reddit. I spent a lot of time on various Philly-affiliated subs. Learning about different neighbors, the hassle of trash day and the pain of the city tax. I did searches for my salary and living in Philly because the city’s cost of living was 2x what it cost me to live the lux life in Louisville — farewell, $900 rent!
The women sending questions out into the cosmos of the Internet for guidance from women over 40 are seeking the same thing I was searching for — answers I hoped would bring me the courage to make the life choices I knew must be made.
I made the move. (After much research on the cheapest way to move to a new city — I got a U-Haul U-Box.)
Q: What would it mean to uproot myself and leave my family and community and begin again somewhere new at nearly 40?
A: It would mean nothing. It would just be what came next.
Life is such a grab bag of the good and the bad, the things you choose and the things that happen to you.
I have this theory that there’s this invisible gold thread (How the thread invisible AND gold? I dunno, it just is, y’all!) that runs through the story of our lives. And when we are making decisions true to our story, it’s like our fingers are gliding along it smoothly. And when we loose grasp of that string — because it’s so fine and you can barely feel it all — is when we feel untethered and out of sorts. But no matter how far we stray, the thread is always there, always possible for us to finally grasp it again, like brushing a stray hair from your shoulder — something you sense, something you feel, even when you can’t see it, until your fingers pass over it in that specific right way. And then, there it is.
And there’s the thread pulling us forward through our future memories.
When we stay in a city, a job, a relationship we no longer belong in, we have lost our grasp on our string and we can’t move forward until we take it up again. Because we are autonomous creatures, we can choose to stand still. To live stagnant lives. But if we want to experience all that is possible, we have to grasp that thread again, we must move forward in some way. This doesn’t always look like a major move or a monumental career shift, sometimes it’s just deciding you’ve outgrown your bestie from the third grade and that you’re going to join a book club to bring some new pals into your world.
Months after settling into my new Philly life, a Facebook memory popped up that surprised me.
In little more than a month in my new place, before I had even fully furnished it, the restlessness was already seeping in. Back then, I cast it off as the never-good-enough attitude I share with Prince’s mom and whomever Prince was singing to in “When Doves Cry” (Maybe you’re just like my mother, she’s never satisfied). But now I can recognize that feeling as the early seeds of semi-permanence beginning to sprout.
So here I am seven years later, in a new city (relieved to report my restlessness has been momentarily quelled).
A couple days ago, we lost Nikki Giovanni.
Social media has been flooded — in the best way — with quotes from the revolutionary poet who insisted we live while we’re alive.
“A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked, don't want to go without guarantee. But that's what's got to happen. You go naked until you die.”
It doesn’t matter what you call it — the golden thread, going naked — life is continually asking us to take risks. It’s inevitable. And then you die.
And for me, my end of life may or may not come with a Philly address attached to it. Who knows what adventures remain to be revealed.