Words by Amanda Lennard
When my relationship ended, I thought the grief would be about losing my partner. Instead, it was about the realisation that I had lost myself along the way.
I had become muted and agreeable, which wasn’t who I was at all as a fiesty aries. I wore clothes that didn’t start arguments, something I feel ashamed of putting up with. I confused being low-maintenance with being a pushover. After the breakup, I stood in front of my wardrobe and realised almost nothing in it looked like me.
So without someone breathing down my neck, I had to discover what I liked again as an older adult.
The first was a haircut, who knew I wanted a ‘fox cut’?! The second was purple lipstick which is apparently my colour (says the store clerk and I don’t know for sure if I should believe a store clerk, but I like it). The third was stepping into a tattoo studio with no appointment and shaky hands, where a walk-in tattoo parlour can be a bold act of self-ownership. I chose a tiny design I’d been thinking about for months and let someone mark my skin with something that belonged only to me.
I’d spent so long adjusting myself to fit someone else’s comfort that making a permanent decision for my own body felt radical. As the needle buzzed, I realised how rarely women are encouraged to belong fully to themselves. We are asked to be desirable, flexible, forgiving, beautiful, easygoing. We are less often asked what we want.
I gave away the clothes that made me feel like a cardboard cut-out of a neat woman. I stopped buying things because they were flattering yet modest and started buying things because they made me feel awake. Loose pants that moved when I walked (and didn’t hurt when I sat!). Oversized shirts in colours I’d once thought (or been told) were too loud. Boots that sounded decisive on pavement.
I learned comfort is not the enemy of style. Sometimes comfort is style. Sometimes the most elegant thing a woman can wear is something that lets her breathe.
I also didn’t want to have just one style. Some days the answer was linen and sneakers. Some days it was a fitted dress and gold hoops just because.
I also began reconnecting with sensuality in a way that had nothing to do with anyone else’s gaze. Silk sheets. Body oil after a shower. Expensive perfume oil to the supermarket. Matching underwear under track pants. There is something quietly powerful about enjoying your own body without offering the experience to anyone else.
The breakup taught me that identity can erode slowly, almost politely. You don’t always notice it happening. You compromise here, shrink there, postpone yourself for later. Then one day you look in the mirror and realise you’ve become a placeholder in your own life.
But identity can be rebuilt the same way.
It can happen in op shop change rooms. In the decision to stop saving “good” clothes for imaginary occasions. In saying yes to the colours that scare you. In finding women who celebrate your experiments instead of mocking them. In buying flowers for your kitchen because beauty counts, even if no one sees it.
I still have difficult days. Days when I feel plain or lonely or unconvinced by all my own wisdom but I’m learning to love those days too.
Sometimes healing looks like therapy. Sometimes it looks like crying on the bathroom floor. Sometimes it looks like a new jacket, a fresh fringe, purple lipstick or a tiny tattoo on your wrist reminding you that your body is yours.
And that, after everything, is what I was really trying to wear.
