deborah copaken

At 18, I thought I wanted to be an actor. I acted in one film, Key Exchange, and realized when I saw myself onscreen that I wasn’t movie star material.

At 22, I moved to Paris to become a war photographer, covering stories in Afghanistan, Israel, the former Soviet Union, Romania, Zimbabwe, all over Europe and the U.S., etc. At 26, I transitioned to TV journalism, working as a producer first at ABC News then at NBC News.

At 32, the mother of two small children, I took a leap and wrote Shutterbabe, which became a bestseller and launched my writing career. Five more books followed (Between Here and April, Hell is Other Parents, The Red Book, The ABC’s of Adulthood, The ABC’s of Parenthood) with a sixth in the hopper, but I also became a solo mother at 47 and have had to juggle corporate jobs with health insurance on the side to keep my family afloat and healthy. Some of those jobs sucked, some were fun, but they’ve all provided excellent fodder for my new memoir, LADYPARTS.

This year, I spent all winter in a TV writer’s room as a staff writer for Darren Star’s new show, EMILY IN PARIS. I also served as a consultant on his other show, YOUNGER.

THROUGH MY DECADES!

20’s 
Love! Passion! War photography! Paris! And then I moved to New York, got married, and was suddenly supporting both of us while my husband went back to school and worked at unpaid internships. We got married at 27, had our first child at 29. I loved being a young mother. But I didn’t love the lack of paid maternity leave or affordable childcare. We went into debt during my maternity leave, just so I could continue breastfeeding and caring for our infant during his first crucial three months of development. Plus there was the $9000 it cost to have each baby. And that was with insurance. I ended up doing all of the childcare, even after I went back to work. I remember walking along the Hudson one night after dinner with my new infant, alone, seeing all of the other new parents in pairs, strolling hand-in-hand with their babies, and weeping. In retrospect, the fissures in my marriage were already clearly visible.

30’s
I had my second child at 30 and took a leave from my TV news job at 32 when I got a contract to write Shutterbabe, my first memoir. I had to learn how to be a writer on the job, having never formally studied it, and it was an extraordinary period of growth and discovery. Plus it allowed me to be more present in my children’s lives. I got pregnant with my 3rd child at 39: an unexpected but beautiful surprise. I started writing in earnest for various magazines and newspapers during this time as well.

40’s
Back to infant care, I published my first novel, then two more books, lots of magazine articles, and watched my father die from pancreatic cancer at 67: devastating. After he took his last breaths, I realized I did not want to reach the end of my life still miserable in my own marriage. I still had time, and I was truly unhappy by then in my relationship, hard as we worked in therapy to try to fix what was wrong. It was unfixable. We separated when I was 47. He moved across the country. Suddenly, I was not just a single mother but a solo mother, in charge of all income, health insurance, childcare, etc. Back to the corporate world, I went, with many twists and turns, publishing two more books on the side. I also had serious health issues: DCIS, heart issues, cervix removal followed by an emergency bleed out (“vaginal cuff dehiscence,” do not google it, it was hideous.) Meanwhile, I was using all the new apps––and I mean all of them––to search for love: a truly humbling few years of nine parts humiliation for every one part grace. I’m writing a book about all of this right now called LADYPARTS: that’s how hard it would be to try to summarize this moment in time in this small space.

50’s
A rebirth, in every sense of the word: personally, professionally, spiritually. Met my new partner at 51, and we’ve been together ever since. What a revelation mature love is. The relationship has been honest and beautiful and grounding. Meanwhile, I’m holding down four jobs to make ends meet: my full-time job as Head Writer at a company called Neurotrack, which is trying to crack the nut of Alzheimer’s; my column at the Atlantic; my book contract for LADYPARTS for Random House; my job as staff writer for Darren Star’s new show, EMILY IN PARIS. I love this new chapter in life. It feels earned as if all the lessons and mistakes have been carefully titrated down to this moment now. There are times these days when I can be brought to tears by the simplest stuff: a sunset, a blooming flower, the touch of my lover’s hand, wind. Also, being played by Catherine Keener in Amazon’s new series, “Modern Love,” based on my New York Times column by the same name, is kind of a dream I didn’t even know I was allowed to have come true.

YOUR ADVICE TO YOUNG WOMEN OF TODAY?
For fuck’s sake, stop worrying about your body. Feed it good food, get 30 minutes of exercise a day––yes, a walk in the neighborhood counts and is good for you––and throw away your scale. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? You’re beautiful, just as you are. Also, please do not put up with cruelty, disinterest, selfishness, or apathy from a partner. They can’t commit? They lie? They put themselves first? Empathy and showing up when you need them is “not their thing”? Bye-bye.

One more thought: Botox, really? Are we that afraid of aging that we’re putting botulism toxins in our faces? I’m typing this in a Pain Quotidien on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, having just taken part of an Alzheimer’s study at Weill Cornell. The women walking around this well-off neighborhood look like cartoon fembots. Lip fillers! Cheek fillers! It makes me deeply sad. Embrace your lines, my friends! Embrace the wear and tear, the graying of your hair: you’ve earned it, and you’re beautiful.

– Deborah Copaken xoxo