Michelle Herman’s memoir of private essays, If You Say So (Galileo Press; 2025), affords an insightful reflection on getting older, grief, and discovering sudden neighborhood later in life.

The opening essays within the assortment concentrate on how Herman found a love of ballet in her sixties, the way it reworked her relationship along with her physique and herself, and the way it solid new friendships. In later sections, she writes about dropping her father, shopping for her house in Columbus, Ohio, and the dying of a beloved canine, adopted by a difficult relationship with an adopted rescue canine.

In “On Steadiness,” Herman remembers a cherished childhood dance instructor who inspired the youngsters to be assured and expressive — “Telling us to take up area. To be joyful, to be daring.” That’s precisely what she does on the web page in these essays.

In every of those essays, Herman fights in opposition to loneliness. Her daughter has moved away, she’s processing the dying of her father, and residing by means of the COVID pandemic. She writes about how dance gave her a objective and a brand new place on the earth:

“Because the dance takes form, it provides form to our lives, too. Seeing each other twice per week, at the same time as small squares on our laptop screens, going by means of Russ’s acquainted warmup, step-touch by means of shaking each a part of ourselves, then settling in to assessment every part we’ve got up to now, then leaning in to the display to look at as Russ exhibits us the brand new motion he has labored out since our final rehearsal, then making an attempt it ourselves as he talks us by means of it—that is one thing we will rely on when there’s so little else that may be counted on. I really feel anchored by this challenge. I really feel as if, with out it, I might float off into area.”

Other than the power and knowledge Herman discovers by means of dance, sudden treasures emerge in these essays by means of the small particulars. Cooking along with her daughter, an inside joke or particular saying shared with a good friend, the drawings her father makes on his deathbed:

“He had me write down the tackle of his elementary faculty, after which the names of his favourite lecturers. There was one who had inspired him to attract — he had beloved drawing as a baby. “Why did I give it up?” he questioned aloud. I requested him if he remembered educating me to attract, and the drawings he had made, to reveal, then had me copy — a three-dimensional-looking field, a park bench, a highway reaching to a vanishing level — and he did. He had me hand him a Sharpie and his yellow authorized pad: he drew a field, a bench, a highway. Then he drew another issues — a phone, a desk. “I used to attract airplanes on a regular basis,” he stated. He turned to a contemporary web page and drew some airplanes now. He stuffed an entire authorized web page with airplanes.”

I used to be shocked that in a set targeted on Herman’s experiences, the ultimate essay in If You Say So is completely about her good friend Judith, whom she met at her dance courses. However this essay, meant to honor a cherished good friend, ties collectively all of the themes of the sooner essays. Specifically, it emphasizes how, at the same time as {our relationships} evolve over time or differ with age, and are interrupted by dying, we stay intertwined with one another. We turn out to be as a lot the keepers of others’ tales as we’re of our personal.

“As I learn by means of all of Judith’s papers, checked out all her pictures and scrapbooks and report playing cards — every part she had seen match to save lots of — I used to be desirous about how, as soon as we’re gone, our lives turn out to be tales, as a result of that’s all that’s left. I used to be desirous about that means, about meaningfulness, and the way that doesn’t need to, shouldn’t, stop after a dying. So long as there’s somebody left to ponder and inform, to do their greatest to make sense of it, to hold it with them for the remainder of their life. To cross it alongside, and alongside once more.”

If You Say So contains moments of pure pleasure alongside deep grief, fear, and loneliness. All through, Herman’s sturdy, humorous, and distinctive voice serves because the reader’s information, highlighting the significance of self-discovery, even when later in life, and appreciating the wonder discovered within the complexities of {our relationships} with others.