Tuesday Kuykendall

Vogue Cover – 1914 Halloween HJB, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

That word—successful—it’s a loaded one, isn’t it? It’s not on my list of best words. It is almost an empty calorie word, like something, or someone, or stuff or everywhere; it’s non-specific.

When I was a kid, under seventeen, my image of the most successful person was Marla Thomas in “That Girl”, a 70s TV show that depicted a working girl in New York City. Everything about her was perfect to me; her hats, her suits, her apartment, her friends, her job. She was beautiful and happy.

Then, as I grew, my tastes changed. Pictures in Vogue and Cosmopolitan had a similar impact on young women then as TikTok does today, airbrushed perfect women in perfect worlds inviting us to long to be like them, and I fell for it.

For the first half of my life, I thought success meant that I had to follow those magazines and TV shows and movies depicting glamorous people. I wanted the life I thought they had. At first I thought I’d get there if I married a rich guy. But I fell for someone decidedly not rich. When it was clear marriage was a dead end, I was convinced that success lay on the other side of a bachelor’s degree.

I was well into my forties by then. Getting the education I’d always dreamed of was a satisfying experience. I’d accomplished something that most people in my life at the time were sure wasn’t possible. But I wasn’t thin and airbrush-beautiful and I still had to struggle to make ends meet.

In time, I found a job that paid extremely well. I didn’t have to ask, “how much is it?” That was nice, but now I was in my late fifties, and the perfect figure and smooth skin I’d sought weren’t possible anymore and the money didn’t change anything other than to cause me additional stress.

I’d stopped caring about looking a certain way right around the same time I buckled down and determined to finish college. I didn’t have the room in my brain for the other things. I found a challenging job; I cared for my family; and I found the love of my life, who also didn’t care about those old external things.

When I read this prompt, my mind went blank. I couldn’t think of a single person I could hold up and say, this is a successful person, because I don’t know what that even means.

If it means to be satisfied with ones life, being successful is an internal journey that can change daily, and has nothing to do with anyone else.

If I must hold up someone it would be my children and my husband. They are examples of success because they are living their best lives.

And finally, so am I.