Yes, I finally found Mr. Right. He’s the handsome guy lying in front of me in the picture.

No, I never found a swimsuit, but I’m perfectly happy wearing my baggy sweatuit to the beach now. A whole new kind of hot.

I was blessed to have the amazing format of a comic strip in which to pour all my hopes and frustrations for more than three decades. I got to bond deeply with millions of women and their wonderful mothers in our dating, dieting and dreaming years. We all helped each other know we weren’t alone.

After 34 years of daily deadlines, I ended the comic strip in 2010 when I faced three even more pressing deadlines: I was turning 60, my parents were heading into their 90s, and my daughter was starting her last year of high school. My plan was to use my new time and freedom to patiently usher the generation on either side of me into the next phase of life with my wisdom and guidance. The generation on either side of me rejected all my wisdom and guidance, which inspired me to write a book of essays called Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault. 

The pandemic inspired a passionate relationship with Amazon, a reconnection to chocolate and a return to drawing in a book called Scenes From Isolation. 

The anniversary of the start of the comic strip inspired the Cathy 50th Anniversary Collection. It was hard to re-read every strip and re-live every relationship, very hard to choose one fourth of the strips I ever drew to include…but I loved the idea of having this chunk of our history in chronological order in one beautiful bound collection. The one and only thing in my house that’s finally organized. The lovely scrapbook none of us will ever have time to make.