Living well, for me, does not look like a rom-com.
It looks like covering your mouth before you speak because morning breath is real.
It looks like a quiet rub on his back before the day begins.
It looks like knowing — without spectacle — that I am loved.
No cinematic lighting.
Just steadiness.
Living well is getting my daughter ready for school without rushing her out of childhood.
It’s a real breakfast.
Morning dance parties in the kitchen.
Doing her hair while she debates me like her opinion carries legislative weight.
It’s understanding that our humble beginnings were not something to escape.
They were enough.
For so long, living well was sold to us as achievement.
The corner office. The perfectly renovated brownstone. The relationship that photographs beautifully.
But the women who stay with me — on screen, in books, in memory — are not the ones performing perfection.
They are the ones inhabiting their lives.
When Carrie Bradshaw walked through New York in Sex and the City, what felt luxurious wasn’t the shoes. It was the friendship. The ritual of brunch. The willingness to narrate her own becoming.
In Girlfriends, Joan Clayton built a beautiful life — but what lingered was her desire. Her softness. Her insistence on love and community alongside ambition.
In Eat Pray Love, a woman leaves everything familiar to sit quietly in foreign spaces and rediscover herself. Not because she failed — but because she wanted more aliveness.
In Under the Tuscan Sun, reinvention looks sun-drenched and uncertain. A woman at midlife buys a crumbling villa and slowly builds a life inside it. Not rushed. Not explained. Just lived.
And even in And Just Like That…, we watch women past 50 continue to choose romance, pleasure, risk, couture, reinvention. They grieve. They date. They host dinner. They remain visible.
Living well does not eliminate heartbreak.
It makes space for it — without losing yourself.
For me, living well is learning a new sport in my late 30s and being unremarkable at it.
It is letting my body move without demanding applause.
It is date nights — sometimes silk, sometimes denim.
Lunch with a friend on a Wednesday because connection deserves weekday energy.
It is finally settling into my style.
No more shape-shifting.
No more dressing for approval.
More ease.
More silhouette that feels like memory.
I think of the quiet confidence of women in a Phoebe Philo collection — strong lines, soft movement, nothing begging to be seen and yet impossible to ignore.
That is how I want my life to fit.
Living well is family dinners and seven-year-old debates across the table.
Travel that expands our references.
Dancing in the living room.
Laughing until my stomach aches.
It is choosing to pivot careers — or slow down — without issuing a press release.
It is creating because the act itself feels honest.
When I think of emotional depth, I think of how Toni Morrison wrote about love — not as fantasy, but as something grown, tended, weathered. Love as work. Love as sanctuary.
Living well is sanctuary.
Not escape.
It is waking up inside your own life and recognizing it — even the ordinary parts — as chosen.
The women who are living well do not look frantic.
They look rooted.
They are not performing arrival.
They are practicing presence.
If you’re reading this, I hope you take inventory of your own Tuesday.
The partner beside you.
The child asking questions.
The friend who answers on the second ring.
The body that still carries you through the day.
The home that holds your noise and your quiet.
What if living well isn’t a destination?
What if it’s the accumulation of small, intentional yeses?
That is my love letter for 2026.
Not to a future self who has finally “made it.”
But to the woman I already am — steady, evolving, and fully inside her life.
xo,
Krystal Phillps