I thought you were writing about my life. Not so much about your events but definitely about what was going on in my head. (I did, however, work at Michigan Bell as my first job before heading to MSU.)
I’m not certain when I grew - but I am thankful at the age of 79 that I did.
You didn’t know how lovely you were. How many of us do at 17? Your story touched me, the story of so many young female lives. And here you are, writing it.
Rona, I wrote this because I’m aware now of how many girls turning into women have these same doubts and feel these same feelings. Self-esteem was drowned out of us in so many ways. What a shame that we fell for it. It’s a tribute to our own resilience that so many of us are here to both recognize our own worth and to celebrate it.
Mona, this is beautiful! I could not stop reading until the end. Harry Chaplin does a song, “Always Seventeen”. It’s a very meaningful song. I’m sure you can find it on you tube. The photo with Ed is precious. Love you both.
RU sure that was a Harry Chapin song? "At Seventeen" sounds like one of my favorite Janis Ian songs, she being a contemporary or slightly older more withdrawn and ruminating than Harry "Gapin'" Chapin. The Janis Ian song is one of an entire album full of early stage heart and soul tuggers that makes us look at ourselves inside & out when we were likely too full of ourselves!
Ramona Grigg in her comment in the thread up above seems remorseful for being young and unsure of herself and wishes she hadn't been raised that way. I wish I had the self-control back at that age and to have thought more of others and less from my Id stage of childhood where satisfying my own curiosities and appetites seemed of paramount importance. Now I see how correct my folks were to be so firm about "trimming my sails" and sending me into my adolescent years much more fit company for keeping with a girlfriend than I was only a few years earlier as a pre-pubescent.
From the lens of my adult memory good things and better relationships did not come during my Id phase and satisfying my childly curiosities and uncontrolled appetite, only once I became too self-conscious to have any self-confidence did I learn self-control and then became withdrawn throughout my adolescence and in retrospect served me better socially.
I let the less shy kids do the clowning in high school and sharpened my own observations and wits (and even sense of humor, which I mostly kept to myself) during that withdrawn time and while I learned self-control slowly. I like myself better looking back on that quieter less self-assured and more self-conscious and self-regulating kid throughout my teens and into my college years. Temper returned as a problem right after college in the job market and that helped me move out of my home, city, farther from family and neighborhood friends and I got to finally have to self-regulate and self-discipline if I was going to survive on my own.
Oh, this touched so many memories, Ramona. Seventeen- the age I have always claimed as the best year of my life. But I probably have sugar-coated it in my recollections, as I think about and compare the things you said. Thank you for sharing this vulnerable piece.
You captured more than just you at seventeen with this piece. You captured the times and a part of all of us who are in the same generation. You had no idea of your gifts, your power, and neither did we, but somehow the gift of curiosity and being open to growing and learning new things opened up the world to you and so many of us who lived through a time where everything was designed to keep us in our place.
Thank you for sharing. Keep on writing. We need your voice, your insight, your wisdom.
I don’t know why our generation holds back on sharing the stories of our young days. We lived through extraordinary times, just after a world war and before the generation when all hell breaks loose. We shouldn’t be invisible now. We had to be us in order for them to be them.
So many of us were closeted in one way or another, hiding our scribbles, sketches, dreams. Shielding who we really were and wanted to be. Thank you for capturing it well--and with a happy ending, no less!
Ramona, I read your piece and felt something settle inside me, the way truth does when it’s spoken without any need to impress or defend. What stayed with me wasn’t any one detail, although there were dozens that caught at me. It was the emotional weather underneath it all. That tender mix of bewilderment, honesty, regret, humor, and hard earned self knowledge that only arrives when you look back at your younger self long enough to see her clearly.
There’s a quiet courage in the way you told this. Not the loud kind that announces itself. More the kind that reveals itself through plainspoken memory. The way you let us see the girl who was trying so hard to belong, trying so hard to be good, trying so hard to understand who she was before she even had all the pieces. I recognized that. Maybe all of us do, although most people never risk saying it out loud.
There’s something universal in the gap between who you felt you were at seventeen and the young woman staring back from that rediscovered photograph. The gulf between how you imagined yourself and how the world actually saw you. The way the dangers you lived through felt normal at the time, and only later gained the weight they deserved. The way belonging felt like currency, and beauty felt like a kind of passport, and how much of your early life got shaped by rules no one admitted were rules.
But the part that stayed with me is the subtle shift you described at the edges. That moment when you began to look beyond the small maps you’d inherited. When you started writing in secret. When you started listening for a different kind of conversation. When you met someone who saw something in you that you had not allowed yourself to see yet. That’s the hinge point in every life. And you opened that door with such generosity that it’s impossible not to feel the years behind you gather close.
What you wrote is not just a remembrance. It’s the kind of truth telling that lets the rest of us breathe a little easier in our own memories. It reminds me that every one of us carries a seventeen year old inside us. A kid who was trying, guessing, pretending, surviving, dreaming, slinking past danger, making mistakes, following scripts we didn’t write, and hoping there was a future big enough to hold us.
Your piece isn’t nostalgia. It’s testimony. And it’s beautiful.
I think each of us should write our own At Seventeen piece in honor of the strength and beauty in yours
Dino, first of all I’m honored that you took the time to offer such a thoughtful comment. Your writing is dazzling, always, and here you drew out the parts that meant most to me in a way that honestly made me cry. But in a good way. ❤️
I thought about asking my readers to search their own ‘seventeen’ but stopped short because I wanted it to end the way it did. So thank you for suggesting it. I can’t imagine anything more perfect than using this as a prompt for others to sail away.
Much of this resonates. By the way, my older sister was in a created sorority in High school called Epsilon Iota. No pins, only sweatshirts — that was 1962 - 1966.
Lovely story, Ramona. I'd love to sit on your porch and talk.
Any time!
I thought you were writing about my life. Not so much about your events but definitely about what was going on in my head. (I did, however, work at Michigan Bell as my first job before heading to MSU.)
I’m not certain when I grew - but I am thankful at the age of 79 that I did.
If only we had known at the time that we weren’t alone…
You didn’t know how lovely you were. How many of us do at 17? Your story touched me, the story of so many young female lives. And here you are, writing it.
Rona, I wrote this because I’m aware now of how many girls turning into women have these same doubts and feel these same feelings. Self-esteem was drowned out of us in so many ways. What a shame that we fell for it. It’s a tribute to our own resilience that so many of us are here to both recognize our own worth and to celebrate it.
The more things change… The women who most need this essay are young enough to be our granddaughters.
Yes, but I don't kid myself. I wouldn't have paid much attention to it when I was that young, either.
Thanks Mona. ❤️
Mona, this is beautiful! I could not stop reading until the end. Harry Chaplin does a song, “Always Seventeen”. It’s a very meaningful song. I’m sure you can find it on you tube. The photo with Ed is precious. Love you both.
RU sure that was a Harry Chapin song? "At Seventeen" sounds like one of my favorite Janis Ian songs, she being a contemporary or slightly older more withdrawn and ruminating than Harry "Gapin'" Chapin. The Janis Ian song is one of an entire album full of early stage heart and soul tuggers that makes us look at ourselves inside & out when we were likely too full of ourselves!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESS0eKJpEZQ
Janis Ian - At Seventeen (Audio)
Ramona Grigg in her comment in the thread up above seems remorseful for being young and unsure of herself and wishes she hadn't been raised that way. I wish I had the self-control back at that age and to have thought more of others and less from my Id stage of childhood where satisfying my own curiosities and appetites seemed of paramount importance. Now I see how correct my folks were to be so firm about "trimming my sails" and sending me into my adolescent years much more fit company for keeping with a girlfriend than I was only a few years earlier as a pre-pubescent.
From the lens of my adult memory good things and better relationships did not come during my Id phase and satisfying my childly curiosities and uncontrolled appetite, only once I became too self-conscious to have any self-confidence did I learn self-control and then became withdrawn throughout my adolescence and in retrospect served me better socially.
I let the less shy kids do the clowning in high school and sharpened my own observations and wits (and even sense of humor, which I mostly kept to myself) during that withdrawn time and while I learned self-control slowly. I like myself better looking back on that quieter less self-assured and more self-conscious and self-regulating kid throughout my teens and into my college years. Temper returned as a problem right after college in the job market and that helped me move out of my home, city, farther from family and neighborhood friends and I got to finally have to self-regulate and self-discipline if I was going to survive on my own.
Tio Mitchito™
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of A-Tone-ment Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
❤️
Oh, this touched so many memories, Ramona. Seventeen- the age I have always claimed as the best year of my life. But I probably have sugar-coated it in my recollections, as I think about and compare the things you said. Thank you for sharing this vulnerable piece.
You captured more than just you at seventeen with this piece. You captured the times and a part of all of us who are in the same generation. You had no idea of your gifts, your power, and neither did we, but somehow the gift of curiosity and being open to growing and learning new things opened up the world to you and so many of us who lived through a time where everything was designed to keep us in our place.
Thank you for sharing. Keep on writing. We need your voice, your insight, your wisdom.
I don’t know why our generation holds back on sharing the stories of our young days. We lived through extraordinary times, just after a world war and before the generation when all hell breaks loose. We shouldn’t be invisible now. We had to be us in order for them to be them.
So many of us were closeted in one way or another, hiding our scribbles, sketches, dreams. Shielding who we really were and wanted to be. Thank you for capturing it well--and with a happy ending, no less!
Ramona, I read your piece and felt something settle inside me, the way truth does when it’s spoken without any need to impress or defend. What stayed with me wasn’t any one detail, although there were dozens that caught at me. It was the emotional weather underneath it all. That tender mix of bewilderment, honesty, regret, humor, and hard earned self knowledge that only arrives when you look back at your younger self long enough to see her clearly.
There’s a quiet courage in the way you told this. Not the loud kind that announces itself. More the kind that reveals itself through plainspoken memory. The way you let us see the girl who was trying so hard to belong, trying so hard to be good, trying so hard to understand who she was before she even had all the pieces. I recognized that. Maybe all of us do, although most people never risk saying it out loud.
There’s something universal in the gap between who you felt you were at seventeen and the young woman staring back from that rediscovered photograph. The gulf between how you imagined yourself and how the world actually saw you. The way the dangers you lived through felt normal at the time, and only later gained the weight they deserved. The way belonging felt like currency, and beauty felt like a kind of passport, and how much of your early life got shaped by rules no one admitted were rules.
But the part that stayed with me is the subtle shift you described at the edges. That moment when you began to look beyond the small maps you’d inherited. When you started writing in secret. When you started listening for a different kind of conversation. When you met someone who saw something in you that you had not allowed yourself to see yet. That’s the hinge point in every life. And you opened that door with such generosity that it’s impossible not to feel the years behind you gather close.
What you wrote is not just a remembrance. It’s the kind of truth telling that lets the rest of us breathe a little easier in our own memories. It reminds me that every one of us carries a seventeen year old inside us. A kid who was trying, guessing, pretending, surviving, dreaming, slinking past danger, making mistakes, following scripts we didn’t write, and hoping there was a future big enough to hold us.
Your piece isn’t nostalgia. It’s testimony. And it’s beautiful.
I think each of us should write our own At Seventeen piece in honor of the strength and beauty in yours
Dino, first of all I’m honored that you took the time to offer such a thoughtful comment. Your writing is dazzling, always, and here you drew out the parts that meant most to me in a way that honestly made me cry. But in a good way. ❤️
I thought about asking my readers to search their own ‘seventeen’ but stopped short because I wanted it to end the way it did. So thank you for suggesting it. I can’t imagine anything more perfect than using this as a prompt for others to sail away.
Much of this resonates. By the way, my older sister was in a created sorority in High school called Epsilon Iota. No pins, only sweatshirts — that was 1962 - 1966.
Thanks for this. As a nerdy teenager during the ‘50s, I shared many of your anxieties, albeit from an alienated, male perspective.
Love this so much.
My years were the sixties and seventies, but all the feelings of being unsure and insecurity cross generations of girls just as you describe.
I never knew any of this about you, I’m impressed. And I think you were beautiful and still are ♥️
You might be a bit biased! ❤️
I will read this again and again.
Beautiful.
Ramona, thank you for sharing your memories, wisdom and life truths!
Wishing you a peaceful Thanksgiving in the company of loved ones!
Thank you.