✨What Makes an Empress? 👑

✨ A vibrant space for midlife women, The Empress now reaches over two million readers through our networks of networks. ✨ From bestselling author Alisa Kennedy Jones. ✨ If you enjoy content about midlife, humor, and agency, I’d love to welcome you as part of our community. ✨ For only $50/year ($4.17 a month!) or $5/month, you’ll gain access to all my articles, Monday columns, book clubs, and virtual events.

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Fellow Empresses, how’s the queendom holding up? Doesn’t Dante’s Inferno seem like an episode of Ice Road Truckers compared to our present meteorological reality?

The past two weeks have felt unimaginable with the loss of Jill Smokler, founder of Scary Mommy. If you haven’t read The Midst’s incredible remembrance of her, drop everything and do it now. It’s a near-mythic loss for our community.

Over the years, Scary Mommy has been a remarkable supporter of The Empress Newsletter, sharing our pieces, and now with the novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Menopause, by Heather J Robertson, who knows what we can make happen. ✨

When we started this newsletter, we gave a lot of thought to the question:

What makes an Empress?

Not the title. Not the crown. Not the platform. Not the number of followers. But the archetype. The person. Jill was one. She was giving so much pure Empress juju, no matter what she was working on.

The very etymology of the word from archaic French is simply “one who is a maker of ways.” From the earliest pre-Hellenic goddesses, the notion of ‘the empress’ was a self-generating creative force who made worlds. The tarot’s ‘Empress’ archetype held much of the same highly generative, creative, and fertile iconography.

These were the women I knew in midlife—finally emerging into this space.

Still, I don’t think I fully grasped the meaning until this week. Or maybe I did, but it took losing someone I admired to fully recognize it.

Long before I ever wrote for Scary Mommy, I was living it. I mean, really capital ‘L’ Living it. I was a single mother raising two daughters. I did not know what the hell I was doing. One had significant special needs. We were trying that awful ABA therapy everyone told us we had to do. (Don’t!) I was working eighty-hour weeks, trying to write, and then, just when I thought life couldn’t become more precarious, my perimenopausal brain decided to revolt. I morphed, quite literally, live-action figure: Terrifying Mommy.

Grand mal seizures. The kind that empties a room of certainty in seconds. The kind where your ten-year-old daughter is suddenly standing in the middle of your living room while strangers lift her mother onto a stretcher, police officers ask her what happened, and you’re trapped beneath an oxygen mask, unable to reach for her hand or tell her it’s fine, she’s safe. There are moments as a parent that divide your life into before and after.

That was ours. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I was “Traum-Mom.” 😂

No parenting book covers this. If I could erase those memories for my girls, I would. In a heartbeat. Back then, I wasn’t looking for a lifestyle mommy blog to help me. I was looking for somewhere that didn’t require me to lie.

And somehow I found Scary Mommy. Or maybe Scary Mommy found me. It was one of the first places that understood I desperately needed someone to say it out loud: You can love your children with every fiber of your being... and still give voice to the rag-and-bone cells deep in your heart, that motherhood is impossibly brutal.

Those two things are not opposites. They’re the same sentence.

Years later, life did that funny thing it sometimes does. It made a circle! I eventually found myself writing for Scary Mommy through the newsletter, and I remember thinking how surreal it felt. Not because I’d “made it.” But because I had survived long enough to contribute to the place that had once helped carry me.

Jill’s passing also made me think about my own mum and mentor. She also died of glioblastoma nearly 18 years ago, and we’re still all feeling that loss. That’s the strange thing about mothers and maternal stand-ins who are true north. They don’t ever leave your daily life. You still catch yourself reaching for the phone. You still wonder what they would have said or done. You still really need them.

Our mum had this quality that I’ve only recently realized is incredibly rare. Catastrophe would arrive—and believe me, catastrophe had no trouble finding this Royal Tenenbaum kookadoo family—and she’d pause for exactly one beat, and her eyes would sparkle right before saying, “Okay... here’s what we’re going to do.”

There was never any drama in it. Just movement. Forward.

She believed there was almost always a way through, if you were willing to think creatively enough to find it. Looking back, I think that’s one of the greatest gifts a woman can give the people around her. Not the illusion that life won’t fall apart. But rather the confidence that when it does, you’ll figure it out together.

Long before Elizabeth Warren had “a plan for that,” our mother had a plan for “everything.” Except glio. She did not have a plan for glio. None of us did.

Maybe that’s why Jill’s death affected me the way it did. Not because she reminded me of my mum so much, but because they shared an instinct. They were both makers of ways. They both held space for the seemingly impossible. For authentic voices. For contradictory truths. Jill did it on the internet. My mum did it around a kitchen table. Different rooms. Same instinct. And in doing that, they lifted other women. Again, even when facing the impossible.

***

Since the Fallout launch in May, I’ve also been thinking about the opposite scenario.

What does an Empress do... when another woman refuses to show up as one?

When, instead, they show up to absolutely destroy you, everything you have, and also that of your authors who’ve worked so hard these past years to finally see their work out in the world? It’s a chin scratcher, for certain.

Because almost every woman I know over fifty has a story she doesn’t tell quite as often. Not about the woman who lifted her up. But about the woman, she tried to lift up. The woman she believed in. The woman she hired. Mentored. Recommended. Opened a door for. Or simply loved. Who turned around and then shut the door on her. Or staged a midlife mean-girl pile-on. Or fomented a kind of garbagy tattle culture to ensure her downfall.

It’s one of the strangest heartbreaks of midlife. Not because men don’t already disappoint us. We’ve been expecting that since 1987.

No. It’s because somewhere deep inside ourselves, I think we still want to believe that women understand each other differently. That having lived through so much—the pay gap, the pregnancy penalty, the sandwich of child & parental caregiving, invisible labor, perimenopause, menopause, aging, and grief—we’ll naturally choose generosity. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don’t.

The one thing I do know now is that an Empress, at her peak, in her highest, creative, generative power, doing the best, most compelling work of her life, doesn’t ever knowingly, intentionally seek to harm, denigrate, or destroy another midlife woman’s work, art, or ability to thrive. We don’t do that to each other. Not here. Not ever.

It totally distracts from the work... not to mention the mission.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from publishing this past year, it’s that there is no shortage of women with extraordinary voices. There is an absurd shortage of places willing to bet on them. I’d rather us bet on them because the creative ingenuity and output of midlife women is astounding.

I see it every week across all our author meetings. Every one of them is world-building around their books in ways only a consummate artist can. And sure, we may not always deliver according to the world’s strict corporate calendars, but valuable work is still happening here, and it needs to continue.

Take Molly Moynahan, author of MotherPerson (out October 13). We are working on a groundbreaking I’m a MotherPerson series that feels like an old-school radio hour all about identity, motherhood, disappearance, the cost of visibility, and how we become ourselves again. It’s a weekly collective storytelling event leading up to the book's launch, with rituals, group storytelling, community, and again, deep world-building. Plus, you always want to hang out with Molly. She’s amazing!

Then, Heather J Robertson has this incredible five-city tour shaping up for Are You There God? It’s Me, Menopause, (October 6), along with a gorgeous Oracle Deck inspired by the novel’s characters. She even wrote a theme song for the book because (of course) she’s a theater kid. It’s called Perrenials, and it’s a mix of Indigo Girls meets Dolly meets Natalie Merchant. How Gen X can you get? (She wrote it without knowing it’s a key brand pillar over at THE WHAT LIST, but we adore them and would love to partner, so let’s talk!) Mixtape designs, Sony Walkmans, and prequels are next!

Then there’s The Download, by bestselling author Sara Connell, which couldn’t be arriving at a better moment. Already a bestseller on Amazon, it’s a book about learning to regulate your nervous system and intentionally retrain your brain to unlock your intuition, creativity, resilience, and innate wisdom. In a culture that constantly tells women they’re losing something in midlife, Sara teaches a method we can all use to gain access to the most powerful parts of ourselves. This work feels more essential than ever.

And because the book has so many juicy references to The X-Files, we also see a fun opportunity to develop a must-watch metanarrative prequel series in the same spirit, where, like Scully and Mulder, Sara investigates some of the stories behind the stories. We’re still Downloading here, so stay tuned!

Then, for big 2027 news… From Sad Ass to Bad Ass (January 5) by Holly Becker-Lockett is becoming From Sad Bitch to Bad Bitch (YES! We’re finally getting the original title we wanted, BACK!) for this practically perfect in every way divorce guide that covers everything you need in bite-sized practical steps because during a divorce, you are often on deck, alone, financially strapped, and ultra-time challenged. The mental load is enormous, and you need to become the bad bitch heroine of your story! New cover coming soon! With every amazing resource, worksheet, checklist, questionnaire, Holly has developed, I’m wondering if the Bad Bitch App doesn’t need to be a thing, like tomorrow. We all have so many pickups, dropoffs, and meetings—you might as well be able to do your divorce on your phone? No?

But hang on, there’s more! Meg Oolders with See Dot Smile (February 9), already a runaway bestseller in pre-orders, is working on a John Hughes Film Festival that will allow an entirely new generation to feel seen through the eyes of her characters and his. (Well, that’s after a much-needed holiday) But the Dot movie poster art downloads inspired by the originals are going to be a wonder! We can’t wait to show you.

Then we have Elaine Wolff, author of the thriller, Up to Her Neck (January 19), quietly plotting mysteries that only a midlife Nancy Drew could pull off with a “Sleuth Society” we can all join to solve a twelve-part mystery! It’s RAD. There are badges, sleuth kits, and killer Nancy Drew-style looks of the week! She’s calling it The Secret of the Lost Mine: An Up to Her Neck Prequel, and I am so here for it!

Next, we have Beth Lisogorsky with her novel, So This Is Happening (February 9), which is shaping up to be a fantastic Jewish Bridget Jones meets Eat, Pray, Love story, where the protagonist, Becca, finds love amid layers of unresolved grief, with an ensemble of unforgettable characters. This book made me cry so hard because midlife women so deserve better love stories, and this is absolutely one of them. Look at the WIP brand kit shaping up! Oh, there is a prequel coming!

And there’s Just Like a Movie by Francesca Bossert (March 16), where we’re seeing Francesca do things with rom-com book content that we’d never dreamed of! Developing a Eurovision Song Contest-style prequel series based on Emilio’s music and life before Gemma. Plus, you learn the secret origin of his global fanbase—the Callientes. Below is the Brand ID kit to guide all our creative—from videos to songs to a universe of fan merch! And here’s the first song…

Corazón Loco by Emilio Calliente

Beyond that, we’re seeing authors like Margie Zable Fisher mustering up the courage to make major genre pivots in her work with the help of other Empress authors—and I can’t even tell you how excited I am for her.

We have another author who is wildly talented and hilarious, and because of our upcoming organizational shift in January, we can finally give her all the cover updates she’s been asking for. I love it when we can be that flexible.

And last, but far from least, we’re seeing the long-tail readership grow around masterclasses, audiobooks, and sold-out events across the country with <Mary L. Tabor>, author of the Rachel Cuskian masterpiece, Who By Fire, teaching the art of literary fiction, Imogen Vane’s new Dark Errands audiobook out August 4th, and tour events with Kimberly Warner, author of the award-winning memoir, Unfixed, imparting the value of a unique brand of stoicism and the philosophical memoir, so needed at this exact moment in our history.

***

What strikes me across all these activities isn’t that these women are writing books. It’s that they’re becoming more themselves. I honestly don’t think we’re in the book business anymore. Not really. I think we’re in the becoming business.

To this end, our model needs to shift away from the tortious interference of investors who are neither authors nor publishers, and toward a co-op model, where the authors are the board, where they are educated point owners, and we all decide collectively what kind of press we want to be over the long haul.

And if we were ever acquired by a larger organization as an imprint, I would want all our authors to be a part of the decision-making and to profit from it. I think it’s important. So that’s been part of my larger thought process lately, how to make that happen equitably and in a way that empowers our authors long-term, without liability. It’s no easy feat, but that’s where my head is at.

In the meantime, check out this Empress theme song Francesca Bossert created for us. This is just pure magic…

We Are Empresses

So, if you find yourself in the richest, most creatively alive chapter of your life, don't apologize for it. Don't diminish it. Claim it for all it's worth. Then turn around and make way for another woman to do the same. An Empress doesn't make way because she expects gratitude or glory. She makes way because that's who she decided to become. I can't think of a more fitting way to honor Jill's memory—or a better answer to the question we've been asking all along: What makes an Empress?

Please know we have some exquisite excerpts and EQs coming up from the wondrous Melanie Maure, author of the acclaimed novel Sisters of Belfast, and from our own marvelous <Mary L. Tabor>.

OK, stay safe out there.

Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,

p.s. If you are so inclined, follow us on IG for flash content & upcoming giveaways. We’re at @the.empress.age and we’d love to see you there!