While I’m continuing to recover from my spinal fusion surgery, a process more uneven than I anticipated, with some decent days and others when pain reappears and my energy has left the building, I thought this would be a wonderful time to share Dena Kouremetis with you as our guest writer today.

I met Dena eight or nine years ago in a writers’ group at our local bookstore. I was immediately drawn to her fierce intelligence, humor, interesting take on life, and willingness to experiment and try new things.

Dena has spent nearly three decades turning observation into words, balancing humor with real-life experience and reminding us that we are all rowing in the same boat. Since beginning her writing career as a weekly columnist for The Sacramento Bee in 1997, she has written for Forbes and continues to write for Psychology Today. She is also a professional copywriter who has authored and ghostwritten books and blogs.

Then, at an age when the world often expects women to begin narrowing their lives, Dena expanded hers. She became an audiobook narrator and voice actor, bringing colorful characters to life and narrating documentaries.

Recently, she added swimming to the growing list of things she never expected to love, apparently acquiring enough equipment along the way to open a small aquatic-supply store.

Dena is the living embodiment of the encouragement we all need on those days when we think, I’m too old. I can’t. I won’t be good enough. She tries new things because she isn’t afraid of failure. She figures that if something doesn’t work out, she’ll try something else. I’ve watched her do exactly that, and more often than not, she succeeds.

I’m looking forward to the day when I’ve healed from surgery, can get into the pool, and discover my inner Olympic gold medalist, Summer McIntosh.

In the meantime, here is Dena on discovering an entirely unexpected passion while playfully trying to determine whether she’s become an athlete or simply lost her mind.

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Wet, Toned, Confused

Does swimming continuous laps three times a week an hour each time for two months make me an old lady athlete? Or just a crazy old fart? I'm addicted. And I can't explain it.

I now own four sets of swim goggles, two boy-shorts-one-piece-zip-up swimsuits, swim fins, a swim snorkel, and special swim conditioner to slather my hair with before diving in so it doesn’t turn green.

I smell like chlorine all week long despite regular showering. And even though I wear protection, my arms are getting deeply tanned. Arms, legs, shoulders, and back are also showing signs of toning.

WhoTF am I? Pickleball was an unexpected passion until I broke a wrist. Tried to keep at it after that but my fear of falling again while diving for a volley made me a lousy partner. And it’s just not fun to lose every set.

Now. Swimming laps? It’s an addiction I could never have predicted. And apart from writing, I’m not an addictive personality. In fact I’ve often said that I hate exercising. I still do.

But swimming laps is ... fun! In my head I’m a kid again in my eight-year old royal blue nylon Catalina racer. It’s also a solitary task. It’s just me, my goofy appearance, the cool water, and the line at the bottom of my lane. The world around me vanishes. I’m in Zen. Endorphins (something I had never felt before) are a bonus when I emerge from the pool.

Take heart. Goes to show you can develop entirely new passions at an advanced age. Besides, you can’t fall down in a pool!

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A song that played when I was a teenager advised men that if they wanted to be happy they should never make a pretty woman their wife.

The only song I recall making any suggestion about what to look for in a man was to pay attention to his kiss because that’s how you’d know he loved you.

My advice is to find a blind man.

I didn’t know Bob was blind when we met, or even for most of the past twenty-three years we’ve been together, first as a couple, then living together, and finally marrying.

Only recently did I realize he’s blind, and in the very best way.

“How do I look, honey?”

“You always look great.”

Sometimes that would frustrate me because he didn’t seem to notice the difference between me with makeup and me first thing in the morning, looking like the bed had won the battle.

It took a long while for me to understand the gift of someone who is blind to my flaws, not only the physical ones, but the more human ones too. Speaking before I think, fuming and fussing over things that don’t matter much in the larger scheme of life, and making bodily sounds no other human should ever have to hear.

Bob is remarkably astute about the true nature of our friends and the new people we meet. He listens more than he talks and has the ability to hear beyond words. If someone has faults, he doesn’t dwell on them, if he thinks of them at all. He likes people and sees them in the best possible light. If he likes you, all he notices is that he’s with someone he enjoys.

The beauty of having a blind husband is living in a criticism-free environment that encourages my spirit and creativity.

I’d heard about unconditional love, but until Bob, I didn’t know what it felt like to be bathed in this gentle light every day.

I no longer live with a ready apology for my mistakes. Now I laugh and let Bob know I see my foibles. His lack of judgment allows me to find them human, entertaining, and sometimes very funny.

He’s not perfect. No one is. But who cares when he’s blind to everything that’s unimportant?

Shame does not live in our home.

And that’s because of Bob.

Loving Bob has been one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. I unwrap this gift every morning, always with gratitude, a thank you, and, “Good morning, my darling. I love you.”

“Good morning, my love. I love you, too,” he says.

And in our home, no matter the challenges, love is where we begin and where we return.

“Good night, honey. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“See you in the morning.”

“You’ve got a date.”

Because Theme From a Summer Place is his favorite song, this is for you, Bobby. Happy Anniversary.

I love you.

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A brief note before we begin:

I’m sharing this playful piece while I continue recovering from spinal fusion surgery and not always in any shape to think, write, edit, or pretend to be profound on command.

This is not one of my deeper life-lesson essays, unless you happen to be a writer preparing to query agents, in which case please pull up a chair, pour something restorative, and know that I see you.

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Query Letters: The Cruel and Unusual Punishment of Memoir Writers

I finally finished writing my new memoir, Breaking My Heart Until It Opened.

I thought that was the hard part.

Apparently not.

It isn’t enough that memoir writers mine our hearts and souls, pore through some of the hardest times of our lives, and turn private experience into story. No. Once the manuscript is finished, we must convince someone to publish it. We are expected to become corporate marketing specialists for our own trauma, which means learning an entirely new skill: how to write a query letter and synopsis. And, if asked, a full proposal or outline, because apparently the query letter alone wasn’t punishment enough.

When I finished writing and editing my query letter and synopsis, polished until they shined, I wished I could lead with humor. I’ve been advised to stay professional since I don’t know these agents personally and have no idea how my humor would land.

Still, I want to play.

So here we go.

The query letter openings I wish I could send:

Dear Agent:

Who the hell ever thought a query letter and synopsis were good ideas? If it was you, please stop reading. I’m not looking for representation from anyone capable of this level of cruelty.

Dear Agent:

I am submitting my new memoir, Breaking My Heart Until It Opened, complete at 63,000 words. Before I tell you about the book, I think you should take a moment to appreciate the hell I’ve gone through learning how to write this damn query letter and synopsis.

Dear Agent:

Do you realize I already spent years writing my memoir, Breaking My Heart Until It Opened, complete at 63,000 words, before having to endure the torturous task of writing this query letter and synopsis? I have now followed the rules, bent my voice into submission, and arrived here only slightly less human than when I began. I still have one nerve ending left, so here goes.

Dear Agent:

To query or not to query, that is the question. I guess the answer is yes because here I am. I would rather jump out of an airplane than ever write another query letter or synopsis, and I hate airplanes, heights, and decisions that involve plummeting.

Well, that was fun.

Of course, I won’t send any of these. After working so hard on the query and synopsis, I needed to play.

The version I send will be professional. It will follow the rules. It will include the title, genre, word count, comparable books, platform, bio, and all the other required pieces writers learn to assemble while quietly wondering who invented this system and whether they are still at large.

But the joking version is not just a joke. Writing a query and synopsis asks a writer to do something strange: step outside the book, reduce years of work into a few paragraphs, and make the story sound clear, compelling, and marketable without flattening the life inside it.

That is its own kind of torture writing.

So yes, I’ll send the proper letter. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

But somewhere beneath those polished paragraphs lives the sentence I really wanted to write:

Dear Agent, please understand. I have one nerve ending left. Handle with care.

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This life is a test.
It is only a test.
Had it been an actual life,
you would have received further instructions
on where to go and what to do.

Mornings like today have me wondering whether I’ve been telling the truth about all the lessons I thought I’d learned. Or whether I’ve been fooling myself.

I think I’ve learned how to live with uncertainty. I think I understand that a good life doesn’t depend on everything going right. I believe I’ve developed an attitude that helps me get through difficult days and still find something to smile about.

Apparently, life has decided it’s time for a pop quiz.

After another horrid night of disrupted sleep, exhaustion has stripped away my usual defenses, and finding gratitude is another challenge. I’m struggling to find my footing before my feet even touch the floor.

To get up, I roll onto my right side and grab the bar Bob installed before I came home from surgery. As my legs slide off the bed, I reach for my back brace and let my feet search for my slippers. I’m used to this routine. I do it in the dark when my bladder screams me awake in the middle of the night, usually without complaint.

What I still grapple with is the loss of spontaneity and how profoundly vulnerable I feel. Everything I do, every move I make, has to be planned. I can’t simply rise from a chair. I position my feet, lean forward, and prepare myself for the pain that accompanies the movement. Nose over toes, I tell myself as I hoist myself upright.

Even standing up has become an assignment.

If there were a crisis, I couldn’t simply jump up and handle it. The worst is when Shelby struggles. Normally, I would get down beside her and rub her throat. Now all I can do is watch and talk to her.

I can’t just reach out and touch her.

Yesterday and today, after lying awake for hours watching my thoughts, none of the skills I’ve used and taught others helped. Focusing on my breath didn’t work. Mentally visiting a place I love didn’t stop the chatter. It was more like going to paradise with an irritating voice narrating every benign detail. Even my mindless online game failed me.

This morning, as I write, a rumbling, grumbling gremlin inside me is eager to bitch and moan.

I’m alone in the bedroom. No one would hear me, but that isn’t where I want to go. I attempt a smile, but it feels weak and ill-fitting.

If I were younger or still had PMS, I might be able to cry and get some of this out of me. At almost seventy-seven, I’m simply stuck with it: the weariness, the frustration, and the unpleasant feeling in my chest that threatens to overpower my efforts to find gratitude, peace, laughter, and a smile.

Is life testing me? Hey, Ginni, do you think you’ve really learned all those lessons? Let’s see. Try this one on for size.

I know I’m fortunate. Bob and Shelby are still here with me, and I’m grateful every time I see them. I don’t take that for granted. Four of my close friends are widows, and I’ve been paying attention to what their lives are teaching me. But knowing I’m fortunate doesn’t make exhaustion disappear or erase how I feel this morning.

And apparently, four weeks after spinal surgery, I reached a limit today. Isn’t living with all these physical restrictions enough? Isn’t it enough that I look as though I’ve been run over by a truck? Everything that was once muscle has given up, despite the exercises my physical therapist has assigned me.

I don’t own one cute or stylish outfit that looks good with a cumbersome black back brace. I can’t even put on makeup because getting close enough to the mirror requires bending.

Dark glasses are my friend.

Here I am, struggling to find my way into the day. As I continue writing, the feeling in my chest begins to ease. My attention moves away from my body and out the window. The plants are alive with color. The sun is shining. Bob and Shelby are alive. So am I. It’s another Thursday, and it has already been four weeks since my surgery.

This morning was a bump, but it was also an opportunity to reengage the lessons and attitude I’ve been working on for years. Not because I’ve failed them.

Because I need them again.

Maybe learning the lessons doesn’t mean I won’t lose my balance. It means I know how to find my way back. Perhaps I’m coaching myself into a day I will enjoy.

What helps you find your way back when life threatens to hijack your day?

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P.S. After writing this, I propelled myself out of bed, took a shower with Bob’s necessary help, got dressed, struggled my way into the car, and off the three of us went to a nearby outdoor shopping area, where we walked for half an hour. Vibrant pink crepe myrtles bloomed against a sky so blue it looked painted. Sights I hadn’t seen in weeks. It was all perfect: me walking, Shelby sniffing, and Bob watching over both of us.

I may not have aced the morning’s test, but I passed.

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This adventure called life is truly remarkable. I’m glad you’re here, joining me as I continue exploring what I’ve learned and am learning about living a life that makes sense, has joy even on the hardest days, and gratitude because it’s so clear everything and everyone in our lives is a gift not to be squandered. If you’re a subscriber, whether paid or not, thank you. If you haven’t subscribed yet, hit the button and join me. Please consider upgrading to paid if at all possible. Your support allows me to continue writing The Other Side of Young. Thank you.

This morning, after climbing up and down a full flight of stairs for the first time, I took my second outdoor walk as prescribed by my physical therapist. With my hips, glutes, and quads tighter and sorer than yesterday, I felt like the Tin Man in need of oil. As I walked, I became my own motivational speaker.

Without intending to, I’ve been talking myself through each difficult movement for days, urging my body to do what it needs to do. My words override my body’s urge to scream, “I can’t. It hurts too much.”

On my walk, with each difficult step, I heard myself say, “I can do this. I can do this.”

My newly coined mantra transported me to my childhood room, where I lay sick in my twin bed reading what I recognized this morning was my first motivational book: The Little Engine That Could.

What I recall is that as the engine struggled up the hill it kept saying, “I think I can. I think I can.” And so it did.

This morning, many decades later, as I walked the slope to the end of the block and back, this childhood memory propelled each step: “I can do this.” And so I did.

I’m grateful the lesson lived in me this morning when I needed it.

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Three weeks ago, I had spinal fusion surgery. I knew the recovery afterwards would be challenging and take time. I didn’t know that every day would present me with the most profound lessons in mindfulness, patience, humility, and vulnerability.

I’ve been to meditation retreats, read innumerable self-help books, and investigated traumas in my life through education and writing so that I could let go of any lingering pain. Each of these taught me about living. But none was an everyday, moment-to-moment lesson in living mindfully.

Spinal-fusion recovery has forced me to practice, moment by moment, everything meditation retreats and self-help books teach in theory.

The difference between my current lived experience and a retreat is that, after the high of a retreat, we return to our regular lives. Before long, the ecstasy of the group experience fades into the background as everyday life takes over.

But after spinal fusion, retreat-level lessons are an every-moment opportunity, requiring me to live with presence, intention, mindfulness, patience, humility, and vulnerability.

Everything I do demands choices. I cannot move without giving thought to how. To stand up, I use a mantra one of my first nurses offered: Nose over toes. I repeat those words as I stand, and they have become a source of focus and energy, allowing me to move into an upright position focused on what I need to do rather than how much it hurts.

I didn’t think I was a particularly impatient person, but compared to how I now live, for sure I was one of those people tapping their toes with a “let’s get on with it” attitude. Now, impatience has no power. It’s not even in the backseat of my life.

When every move you make demands thought, when everything you drop is unreachable, when you must wait for help to clean your body, and even drying your body is no longer a solo event, patience, focus, and mindfulness are how you live.

Every day, there’s something beyond my reach that I want. I have no choice but to wait for Bob. The rules I must follow are BLT—no bending, lifting, or twisting. So, if something I need requires any one of those movements, because my arm and fingers aren’t long enough to reach what I want, I must wait.

I’ve learned to do so without frustration or impatience. Well, maybe a little frustration, but since I’m somewhat of a potted plant, I choose to bloom where I’m planted.

I’d like to get back to dropping things that become unreachable. Sure, I’ve always been a bit of a klutz, but nothing compared to now. I drop things all the time. And sometimes things drop of their own volition.

I have a grabber. Yesterday morning, the charging cord for my computer slipped to the floor, and before I could grab the grabber, it dropped down to join the cord. I waited for Bob to come back into the room and rescue and reunite the three of us.

And it’s not just the cord or the grabber. I’ve dropped towels, books, pens, water bottles, well, anything you can think of that you might need on a given day.

Shelby, our Golden Retriever and guru on how to live our lives in the present moment, has seized on my limitations to further my education in patience with a touch of humor.

She has become a canine blockade. She manages to position her body between where I am and where I need to go. I dare say that she is most amused by blocking my access to our bathroom. She sprawls her body across the doorway or makes sure at least her legs and paws impede my ability to get through.

Nudging has no effect. She doesn’t budge.

So, there I am, in the middle of the night, needing to get to the toilet, my access blocked, my stability questionable, and I must abandon my walker, step over Shelby, hug the wall, and use it to tap my way to the bathroom.

On the rare occasion that she’ll let me into the bathroom, she repositions herself so that I can’t get out.

The other night, Bob, a normally light sleeper who wakes at the slightest change in my breathing, managed to sleep through me yelling, “Bob! Bob! Help!”

Obviously, I survived and am here to tell the tail.

This was another lesson in humility and patience, in finding humor amid frustration, and in forging a new path back to bed.

I could go on and on with my daily lessons, but the biggest one right now is staying present while understanding that it will be months before I know if my surgery is successful and whether I’ll live my life with pain or with freedom.

Would I recommend the type of everyday retreat I’m on? Absolutely not! But I do appreciate it and the lessons I’m given every moment.

I sense this is a life-altering time, one in which my priorities and plans will look different than they did just last month. Right now, the deck is being shuffled, and I don’t yet know what hand I’ll be dealt. But when it appears, I’ll be paying attention.

For now, I will embrace living fully in the uncertainty of the present.

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This adventure called life is truly remarkable. I’m glad you’re here, joining me as I continue exploring what I’ve learned and am learning about living a life that makes sense, has joy even on the hardest days, and gratitude because it’s so clear everything and everyone in our lives is a gift not to be squandered. If you’re a subscriber, whether paid or not, thank you. If you haven’t subscribed yet, hit the button and join me. Please consider upgrading to paid if at all possible. Your support allows me to continue writing The Other Side of Young. Thank you.

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Revisiting the trauma wasn't easy, but keeping silent wasn't an option. This morning, I am smiling.

Good morning, Friends:

Last time I wrote it was about wanting to find the smile I lost after the post…

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I’ve lost my smile. And I’m not asking you to help me find it.

Unsolicited advice is not the path I seek. I am living a new call to awaken and reorder my life, but this call is attached to sleepless n…

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Before you read, a song about the quiet grace of letting go.

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Author’s Note: This piece was written just prior to my surgery. I wanted to share it with you while the insights were still fresh, even as I take some time to rest a…

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I’ve usually been the one in the waiting room, and definitely the only one when it came to major surgery. This time is different.

When Bob had emergency surgery, I was the one standing beside the gurn…

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Sunday, June 21, 2026

Shelby, our elderly Golden Retriever, got bored before we did.

We’ve taken the same walk every Saturday for the past few months. It’s a lovely wal…

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People want to be kind. I know that.

I am also certain people mean well.

Because of what I’ve experienced since the moment I was given a surgical date, I feel it’s important to share what helps, what d…

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Five days before surgery, the What Ifs showed up early. I declined the invitation.

I woke up this morning to an attack by the What Ifs while my mind was still s…

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I thought I had things under control. My body was not so easily impressed.

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June 12, 2026

She said it wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought when I told her I had a date scheduled for my spinal fusion. …

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We didn’t have calendars.
We had ideas and imagination.

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We didn’t plan our days—we invented them.

It was a wistful time, long ago now. Before our lives became calendar e…

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I’ve watched Bob for years. He is the most nonjudgmental person I’ve ever known; the worst thing he’s ever said about anyone is, “They’re not my cup of tea.”

He also possesses the healthiest boundaries I’ve ever witnessed—not hard or brittle, but kind, gentle, and almost invisible. No one even realizes when Bob has quietly stepped away.

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Don’t let our age fool you. Ins…

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Life. You know Life. Life with a capital L. The one full of tricks, detours, and “fun challenges” whether we need them or not, usually arriving at the worst possible moment.

I found myself in one of t…

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Growin…

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