You Can Create the Joyful Life You Want

Plus, 10 more things we learned during Big Salad’s second year.

Hello, my loves!!

Thank you so much for being part of Big Salad — this community brings us joy every day. Our editor Kaitlyn Teer and I were reading over the 70+ issues we’ve sent over the past 12 months and marveling over all the life lessons, fun finds, and vulnerable moments people shared. Women are amazing (understatement).

This year, I also wrote about falling in love. After my marriage ended, I took a long time to get my kids and me settled into our new normal (it wasn’t easy). Then I slowly started dating, had sex for the first time after my divorce, and leaned into my female friendships. I’ve loved sharing ups and downs and hearing readers’ juicy stories, too.

Then, last fall, I met a history teacher named Freddie with the kindest eyes, and pretty soon I was texting my friend Gemma one million firework gifs.

Since then, I’ve written about Freddie and my burgeoning relationship, as well as sex, dating, and divorce. A few fun issues: how to know if your partner is the one; why Freddie’s age surprised my mom; how to talk dirty in bed (if you want to); 13 fun date ideas that aren’t dinner; my dream marriage proposal; how to know if you should get divorced; the brilliant advice my therapist gave me when my marriage ended; and Freddie wants to say hi to you. xoxo

Plus, we’ve had fun chats about things like surprising habits in your 40s, whether to get botox and fillers, and how I finally figured out my hair.

Most of all, we’ve learned so much from the amazing women we interview…

In my twenties, I read a beautiful piece of advice that said, “You can create the life you want.” And I remember thinking…but can you, really? There seemed to be pretty strict guidelines about what life, career, and marriage should look like, especially for women, and I wasn’t sure how much could be stretched outside of that, or what it would even look like. But now I see women everywhere blazing trails, trying new things, following their hearts and guts.

Here are 10 examples from Big Salad over the past year…

1. You can find your style. “When I was a kid, my sister had a nameplate, and it was such a rite of passage,” says LaTonya Yvette. “Five years ago, I got one, too. I’m reconnecting with that teenage part of myself, getting back into my body, who I am.” As for my friend Liz, who has the best high/low style? “I swear by Adidas slides for my everyday hustle.”

2. You can feel at home. “I’ve always felt this sense that I don’t quite belong,” chef Samin Nosrat told us. “When I’m in my garden, though, I feel connected to my ancestral lineage. My grandparents had fruit orchards in Iran; gardening is core to who I am.”

3. You can show your strength. Julia Turshen entered a weightlifting competition, “purely for fun,” she told us. “It’s incredibly empowering if you’ve ever struggled with body image or disordered eating, which I have. You stand up in a room full of people, while wearing a singlet, and show them how strong you are.”

Virginia included both these glorious photos on her dating profile.

4. You can take up space. “My friend Corinne gave the best advice for dating profiles: If you're fat, go right ahead and say you're fat, unapologetically,” says Virginia Sole-Smith in our dating apps issue. “It’s a myth that people don't want to date fat people. And include full-body photos because we’re not apologizing for the space we take up.”

5. You can change careers. “Early on, I was like, I don't have the brain to be a lawyer,” Jubi Williams says in our career change issue. “But every semester, I understood it better. Now I’m like, oh, I could go to med school. I’m not intimidated by the learning process anymore. Don’t limit yourself by your own insecurities.”

6. You can cherish your family, whatever it looks like. “One thing that surprised me after my husband died was that he actually died,” revealed my twin sister Lucy Kalanithi. “He’d had late-stage cancer for two years, but when someone actually dies, they just disappear. Now we visit his grave regularly. And, every year, we write ‘The Kalanithis’ on our Christmas cards. Cady and I are only two people, but we are a full family.”

7. You can live joyfully alone or with others. “I love sitting on my sofa with the French doors open,” says Ali LaBelle. “There’s something about L.A. light in the fall. I don’t know how to describe it. Buttery? It’s the best.”

8. You can tell your friends they’re beautiful. Gemma and I are forever swapping makeup recs. “Golden Hour is my favorite moisturizer for bouncy, glowing delicious skin,” she told me. Culture critic Hunter Harris added: “I recently decided against Botox because my expressive eyebrows are my livelihood. To fill them in, I swear by this pencil.”

9. You can handle hard things. “When I found out I had an aggressive form of leukemia, everything went dark,” remembers Nicki Sebastian. “But, over the years, my therapist taught me a motto: whatever it is, I’ll handle it. Life can be fierce, but we DO have control over the fact that we can face challenges. Whenever I go to an appointment or get test results, I repeat to myself: whatever it is, I’ll handle it.”

10. You can always keep growing. “I was raised in an extremely conservative Evangelical community,” says Alison Piepmeyer. “But as I’ve moved states, met new people, read books, and listened to podcasts, it’s been impossible to stay the same. My life motto is, ‘It's okay to change your mind when presented with new information.’ I treasure my evolution so much that I had it tattooed on my arm: ‘You've changed.’”

Thank you to all these amazing women. You can find more interviews here, if you’d like to read them.

Here are a few of this year’s most-clicked links…

1. A pennant that LaTonya Yvette displays in her home

2. The crossbody bag that I carry every day

3. Perfect white jeans for ”stick of butter” dressing

4. A big-hearted novel that I packed for vacation

5. The hair product that completely changed my hair

6. Blurring primer that my bff Gemma swears by

7. The sneakers that Aisha Muharrar wore to the Emmys

8. The card game that Freddie and I play on dates

“The greatest thing about getting older is that you have all these versions of yourself still inside you. Every decade that I’ve had is the best decade yet. Whatever I would tell my younger self is nothing that she’d listen to! She would just keep making her own mistakes, which is good, because making your mistakes is what leads to wisdom, like scar tissue — you have to live to get it.” — Barbara Kingsolver

“Take your time off. Paid time off is not free, it’s a benefit you’ve earned. I come up with my best ideas on vacation.” — Aminatou Sow

“When someone tells you what job they have, if you reply, ‘That sounds hard,’ they’ll open up. I said this while meeting a high school theater teacher, and they were like, ‘It IS so hard — people don’t think about how hard it is!’” — Brooke Barker

“If you’ve messed up, say sorry to your kids and mean it. Apologies show your sense of humanity and demonstrate to your kids how to repair.” — LaTonya Yvette

​​”BonBon’s sour blackberry fish are the best gummies, no discussion.” — Youngna Park

1. My Boyfriend Freddie Wants to Say Hi to You.

2. The Genius Advice My Therapist Gave Me When My Marriage Ended.

3. The Cool Way to Style a Shirt, According to Somsack Sikhounmuong.

4. How Dreamy Is Barbara Kingsolver's Appalachian Garden?

5. Readers Often Ask, ‘Do You Get Botox? Filler?’ Here’s My Answer.

6. 7 Things We Spotted People Wearing in Paris.

(Collages by Diana Moss. Opening photo of Joanna by McGuire McManus. Photo of LaTonya Yvette by Nina Barry. Photo of Samin Nosrat by Aya Brackett. Photo of Hunter Harris by Emma Trim. Note: If you buy something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission or have a sponsored relationship with the brand, at no cost to you. We recommend only products we genuinely like and use ourselves. Thank you so much.)

Thank you so much for being here. We are so grateful for this wonderful community. We have an even bigger next year in store! xoxo