“For a long time, my mother wasn’t dead yet.” -Jacqueline Woodson
I encountered this line in Jacqueline Woodson’s beautiful novel, Another Brooklyn, in the bath (where I do my best reading) and felt a great spiritual shudder. This was in 2016. My mother indeed wasn’t dead yet, but I lived in a state of fear that I’d get the call any moment. I thought I understood something of grief because I’d lived a grieving life since as far back as I can remember—grief over the living—which is the best way I can describe loving someone whose life is colored by addiction. But still, I feared deeply what the ultimate grief would be like, the capital-G-grief of an actually dead mother. I suspected these were two very different things. In that bathtub I was on borrowed time, but still, had time nonetheless. I was not naive to the fact that despite my pain, this was a gift.
I was right to suspect the two griefs would feel different. My mother died last September, so it’s been about a year since I crossed over from motherless-in-theory to actually motherless. I was no longer in the “for a long time” part of Woodson’s line. And once my mother was dead and I could no longer call her, or hear her voice, or listen to her relay a story or a memory, or just hear her let me know that she loved me, which she did frequently, or receive her long, wild texts, or worry worry worry about her safety, her health, her last drinking binge…I found myself researching tubing mascaras.
The irony of wanting to find the BEST mascara during a time in my life when I was crying so much I thought I had done clinical damage to my eyeballs because they felt so swollen in my skull, was not lost on me. My current tubing mascara—which I was very happy with and have used for years—was dried out and needed replacing. It was a basic fact I could not deny, even considering the circumstances. And before you judge me for thinking of makeup at a time like this, just know my mother is on the Other Side in full solidarity—she was never seen, whether on her way into detox or hip surgery, without her lips covered in Revlon Wild Orchid lipstick.
This basic fact of mascara still seemed necessary to me even in the face of immense loss. I am not sure it’s vanity or even superficiality that makes this true. I’m sure I pictured grief being different. More of a vast one-colored sadness when instead it proved to be a tapestry of mundanity that looked a lot like normal life, just with the metaphoric shades drawn. When someone close to you dies, even your own goddamned mother, life does go on. For instance, as a mother of two myself, I continued caretaking my children. I continued getting dressed to take them to school. And in order to feel something like myself, I had to make a decision about mascara. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to just re-order what had worked before. The allure of a new and unknown mascara called out to me. I made it my job to discover it.
The compulsion to talk about makeup in times of distress is not new to me. During the pandemic I started posting stories about favorite lipsticks, cream blushes, and hair wavers. Never have I had more “engagement” on social media than when I brought up the controversy of Miracle Balm. People really seem to wanna have real talk about if these products that are being forced down our throats as women are actually going to work. We want to see someone apply it who isn’t eighteen years old with preternaturally good looks and a facetune subscription, and, if you’re like me, I want to know if it will make me look less dead in the throes of say, grieving my mother.
My mother is dead! I wanted to cry out during every menial task. How can I be expected to function? May I offer that with the right tubing mascara, you can cry streak-free.
But mostly, mascara felt like a safe place to get lost and forget my life amid the endless beauty reviews and YouTubes. I amassed several books on grief right away, but my question then during those hours of need, became not about grief itself but instead, can there be a better mascara than my holy grail? Could I possibly replace what had worked well for me for so long?
My orders began to come in, little pretty boxes at my door. I’ll cut right to it and say that each one failed to live up to its hype. I was especially disappointed in that one teal colored brand that kept coming up on my feed as the best one EVER, but instead turned out to be flake central. It was not it. My old and sturdy, the one that had worked for me for so long, could not be replaced. In the end, I ordered two more tubes and put an extra crystal on my alter in prayer that they never discontinue it. (If you try it, don’t get discouraged about removal. The trick is to wet it with warm water for just a few seconds and it slides right off in little mess-free tubes. You will never have raccoon eyes again.)
But it was the act of the hunt that offered it’s own soothing power. It made me feel normal in a very abnormal, awful time.
My mother, too, cannot be replaced. If you’ve read my writing before you know some of our struggles. I shared these essays years before because I thought they might help someone else; I thought they might help me. I stand by them but I also want to say, she was these things and so much more. She was my mother. She was a beautiful person and I miss her. My life is both easier and much harder without her in it. Writing about grieving her can be tricky. I feel both too exposed and also that I am not conveying properly the magnitude of my love, my loss, the complicated nature of our relationship. My fiction is where I take my best swing at that. This space? This is for something different.
So what is MAKE UP YOUR LIFE?
Well, it’s a newsletter born out of wanting a space to write and build community that is somewhere between a published piece of writing that I’ve spent years working on, and say, an instagram post that I tap out in minutes. A place that feels free and easy, but is more put together and thought-out than a blurb below a photo. Ideally it will be a way for me to talk about the things that feel vital to me as an artist but not just about books on craft, or making the perfect writing routine, or deep cuts on the issues that matter most to me—domestic violence, for instance—though that will all be here—but it’s also about levity. Like, say, angel numbers, the right amount of protein, inner child work, the best purple shampoo, meditation, etc. and how it’s all part of what makes up a life. If you’ve read anything I’ve written, I’m sure you can tell it was done with a lot of heart. And because we’re all doing a lot of really heavy lifting in life, I’m of the belief that we deserve little treats. I hope this can feel like a kind of treat.
I can’t promise how often I’ll post, but I won’t drown you. I have a new book coming out next year and so I also hope for a place where I can post updates about it and keep you all in the loop with offerings and events. I cannot wait to share the stunning cover, and tell you all about it. (And of course, the low-down on that pesky Miracle Balm.)
Above all, I hope MAKE UP YOUR LIFE is a place that reminds you of your own personal power. Let’s have fun here, get teary, take some deep breaths, try new things, and not be alone in grief, in art-making, or in the task of finding the world’s most perfect trench coat. (You are welcome).
Thanks for joining me.
C
I started using that tubing mascara after you first talked about it on IG and it’s legit the best. If one thing’s for sure it’s that I’ll always read your writing and take your beauty recommendations!!
"I thought I understood something of grief because I’d lived a grieving life since as far back as I can remember—grief over the living—which is the best way I can describe loving someone whose life is colored by addiction."
This is a hugely informative piece of framing for me. My father died when I was quite young, and then my mother never really came back to life. I was a parentified child, and she was always vaguely suicidal (never acting on her depression) and clearly an alcoholic. She then, later in life, developed Alzheimer's and I cared for her through that even as I was raising small kids. When she died, I raged? But I then just got numb for years and I think that what happened was I was stuck in that grieving life you so clearly and cleanly describe.
And also, finding the right mascara is everything.