Being Gigi at 55: The Real Reason I Care About Longevity

This post is a companion piece to episode 155 of the Beautifully Whole podcast. You can listen to the full episode here if you would rather hear it in my voice.

I want to write to you today about a completely different subject than the ones I have been on all summer. Not longevity science. Not the four levers. Not the business I have been building or the muscle I have been protecting. Something quieter, and truer, than any of it. What being a grandmother at 55 with an ostomy actually looks like on a normal week. Why my grandchildren call me Gigi. What I have taught them about the pouch. And, most importantly, why every single thing I have been writing about all summer has really been about this.

Before I go a word further, I have to acknowledge Anna, because I always do. My stepson and his wife had their first child, a little girl named Anna, who they lost. Anna is not physically here. But she is with us all the time, and I could not write a post about being Gigi without naming her. She is part of the whole story.

The Three Who Call Me Gigi

A year after Anna, along came Mila. Mila is my eight-year-old, and she is a full person. Big feelings, big opinions, loves Sephora, loves anything with a light sparkle, is starting to have a sense of humor that catches you off guard. A couple of years after Mila came her brother Jack, who is six, all boy, currently obsessed with Pokemon cards. Then, just this year, my other stepson and his girlfriend had a beautiful little girl named Maeve, who is six months old and one of the calmest babies I have ever met in my life. All three of them call me Gigi. John is Papa. They say our names as one word most of the time. Papa Gigi. Gigi Papa. As if we are one unit, which, at this stage of the story of us, we kind of are.

I chose Gigi for myself when I was 45, back when the kids were pregnant with Mila and John asked me what I wanted to be called. I did not want Nana. I did not want Grandma. Neither one felt like the version of a grandmother I planned to be. I sat with the options for a while and settled on Gigi. Ten years later, I have never once regretted that choice. The kids say it like a song.

Why We Moved Home From New York

John and I lived in New York City for a stretch of years that I loved and would not trade. When the older two started coming, we made the specific choice to come home to New Hampshire. Not because New York had run its course for us. Because we wanted to be a bus ride from the grandchildren, and we wanted to show up. Softball games. Soccer games. Gymnastics when Mila was in it. School events. Ordinary Tuesday afternoons. All of it. When I was raising my own children, and John was raising his boys with me alongside him, we both worked demanding careers and we missed things. Not through fault, just through the math of a working parent’s life. What being a grandparent has given us is the second shot. Different chairs at the same table. And this time, because I work for myself, I can arrange my day around it. I am determined not to miss it.

Sephora and Pokemon Cards

This year I made a small decision that has turned into one of the best things I have added to my grandmothering. I noticed that with Mila and Jack, our time together was almost always the four of us. Papa Gigi and both kids. I love that. It is the shape of our family. But I realized that the older two had never really had solo time with just me, and I thought I could change that. So I told each of them, on your birthday this year, you and I are going out. Just the two of us. No Papa. No sibling. No anybody else. We are going wherever you want to go, and we are going to lunch, and it is our day.

Mila picked Sephora, because Mila is eight going on eighteen when it comes to lip gloss and hand sanitizer. We spent an hour and a half walking every aisle of that store while she carefully picked the three things she was allowed to bring home. She was so serious about it. We had lunch after. We talked about school, and her friends, and what she wants to be when she grows up, which changes weekly but was, that day, a veterinarian who also owns a bakery. She rated her sandwich. It was the best day I have had this year.

Jack picked Pokemon cards, which turned out to be more complicated than I anticipated because you now have to walk into a Target service counter and ask for them by the pack, and there is a per-person limit, and they keep them behind the counter like they are trading gold. Ten-year-old me, who bought baseball cards for a quarter with terrible bubblegum inside, would not have understood the future we live in now. But we got the cards. We opened them at lunch, at a restaurant Jack picked because we had been there together as a foursome the month before. Halfway through the meal I said, should we let Papa know where we are, and Jack thought about it and shook his head and said, no Gigi, this is our time. Which is a whole entire sentence of grace from a six-year-old, and I have been thinking about it ever since.

Both kids told their parents that they want to do more of it. So I am. Not just birthdays anymore. Regular little one-on-ones. Because family is the most important thing in the world to me, and if I have learned anything about a life, it is that time with the people you love does not just happen. You have to arrange it.

How I Have Talked to My Grandchildren About My Ostomy

I have told Mila and Jack about my ostomy for as long as they have been old enough to ask. And they have asked. Kids ask better questions than adults do most of the time, because they have not yet learned to be polite about their curiosity. So they have wanted to know what it is, and why it is there, and how it works. And I have told them the truth in the kindest version of it. That when I was younger, I got very sick. That the doctors had to take part of my body away in order to save me. That what they took away used to help me use the bathroom, so now there is a small opening on my belly and a pouch that catches everything instead. That is the real version, in words a five and a seven-year-old could understand, and they have never once looked at me like it was strange.

What they have wanted, and what I have not yet been ready to give them, is to see the stoma itself. So far my answer has been not today. Not because I do not think they can handle it. Because I am not ready for that specific moment yet. I will be, eventually. In the meantime, they have seen the pouch. And a few years ago Hollister gave me a set of educational dolls that have a small red stoma on the belly and a little clear pouch that attaches to it. I gave the dolls to Mila and Jack, and they have used them the way kids use anything they are curious about. Peeling the pouch off, sticking it back on, pointing at it, asking questions about what happens next. They know the routine now. Doggy poop bag. Peel off, throw away, stick a new one on. Move on with your life. It is not a mystery to them anymore.

A couple of weeks ago Mila was laying with her head on my lap while we watched something on TV, and out of nowhere she picked her head up and asked, Gigi, am I leaning on your poop. I laughed harder than I have laughed in a while. I told her no, there was no poop in the pouch at that particular moment, which is the kind of sentence you never expect to say to another human, and she put her head back down and finished the show. That is what it looks like when your grandchildren know the shape of your body and it does not scare them. They ask. You answer. They move on. I would not have it any other way.

There is a bigger reason I have wanted them to know all of this. If Mila or Jack or Maeve ever meets a classmate or a teacher or a coach who has an ostomy, I want them to be the kid who says, oh, my Gigi has one of those, it is really not a big deal, do you want to sit with me at lunch. That is worth every conversation we have ever had about the pouch.

What Nobody Told Me About Being a Grandparent

Here is what nobody explained to me before I got here, and what I want to name for you if you are approaching this chapter. Being a grandparent is different from being a parent in one specific, dramatic way. The pressure is off. Not the love. The love, if anything, is bigger, because it has fewer job-related duties layered on top of it. But the fiscal responsibility, the schooling responsibility, the keeping-a-tiny-human-alive-through-the-night responsibility, all of that belongs to your children now. Your job as a grandparent is completely different. Your job is to show up, to love, to make memories, to send them home.

People sometimes describe it as, oh, you get to spoil them and then hand them back. That is not what I mean. What I mean is more like this. When you are a parent, love is bundled with responsibility, and the responsibility is heavy, and sometimes the love has to work its way through the responsibility to reach the surface. When you are a grandparent, the responsibility has already been handed off. The love is right there, unobstructed, at the top of every moment. That is why grandparents cry a little easier and laugh a little louder. There is nothing between them and the feeling anymore.

Yesterday Maeve Was Sick

I had Maeve yesterday. She caught a cold, probably from me, which I am not proud of but which is one of the small hazards of a grandmother who is around a lot. She was fussy in the way six-month-olds get when their nose is stuffed, and she wanted to be held, and I held her. She fell asleep on my chest. And I fell asleep with her, right there on the couch, my hand on her back rising and falling with her breath. When I woke up she was still there, still asleep, warm and heavy. I do not remember the last time a nap felt like a gift. That one did.

Watching my stepsons become fathers has been another gift I did not fully see coming. I have known both of them for 25 years. I have watched them grow up. I have watched them go through the things that boys go through in their teenage and twenties years, and I have watched them come out the other side into men. And now I get to watch them be dads. Patient. Present. Softer than I ever thought either one of them would be. That is the other quiet magic of this chapter. You get to see the people you love become new versions of themselves, and you get to be there for the whole thing.

Why Every Post I Have Written This Summer Has Been About This

I want to name something that I have quietly known while writing every longevity post I have written since Nashville, and that I hope has been coming through even when I was not saying it out loud. Every conversation I have had with you about biological age, about the four levers, about muscle protection, about the collagen I have taken every day for six years, about the business I have built and the food I eat and the sleep I protect and the walks I take and the phone I put down before bed. All of it. Every single piece of it. Is about being here for the wedding. For the college graduation. For the adult version of a six-year-old who currently keeps his Pokemon cards in a plastic sleeve and asks me not to tell Papa where we ate lunch.

I want to be able to get down on the floor with Maeve when she starts to crawl. I want to still be able to stand up after. I want to be at the sidelines of Mila’s games in her middle school years and her high school years. I want to run around a yard with Jack for as long as he wants to run around a yard, and past that, into whatever he wants to do next. I want to be at Mila’s wedding, whenever that day comes, which will be far too soon regardless of when it actually happens. I want to be at Maeve’s college graduation. I want to be here. Present in my body. Thinking clearly. Moving without pain. For as long as this life will let me.

That is why I have written about all of it. The supplements, yes. The science, yes. The business, yes. The food, the sleep, the strength training, all of it. Not because any of those things is the point. Because every one of those things is a small daily deposit into the account that pays out in years I get to spend with these three children who call me Gigi. That is the whole reason. Everything else is method.

A Note to the Ostomy Community

A lot of you reading this have found me through the ostomy work, and I want to speak to you specifically for a minute. Whether you got here through Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, cancer, or one of the other roads that lead people to this shared corner of the world, we know something most people do not know. We know how short a life can be. We know that a week that started completely normal can end with a surgeon telling you your body will never be the shape it was before. We have crossed something.

That gives us a specific responsibility, I think. To take care of the bodies we have now, more deliberately than most people ever will. Because we have already seen what happens when a body is left alone with something that should have been caught earlier. So the four levers, the food, the sleep, the movement, the stress management, the community. All of it matters more for us, not less. If you are reading this and you have been putting off some of that work, please take this as your gentle nudge. We of all people should not be leaving years on the table. Your grandchildren, or the grandchildren you have not met yet, or the version of you who will be here at 75 and 85 and 90, are counting on the version of you who is here right now to do the daily things. Do them.

If You Are Approaching This Chapter, or Living Inside It

If you are already a grandmother or grandfather, I hope this landed for you. If you are a soon-to-be grandparent, I want you to know that everything the people ahead of you have said about how much you will love these children is somehow, unbelievably, still an understatement. If you are watching this chapter approaching in your family, I hope you are giving yourself real permission to prepare for it. Move your body. Eat like a person who wants to be here in 20 years. Save the money. Let your career keep evolving. Build friendships. Do the work that longevity requires of the woman you are today so that the woman you will be at 75 is ready to say yes to the trip, the game, the sleepover, the wedding.

This chapter is worth it. I say that as someone who did not fully know what it would feel like until Mila arrived, and every day since has been an unfolding I did not expect. I wanted to share it with you today. Thank you for being here for it.

If you want more of the quieter version of this life, my private email community is where I share the pieces that do not make it to the feed → Beautifully Whole community