I’m 54. I Still Got Sucked Into The Summer I Turned Pretty

A Partial Series Finale Recap, and Also, A Personal Soul Retrieval

This past week, I fell into the rabbit hole that was the final episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty (TSITP). This 3-season long show, based on author Jenny Han’s bestselling coming of age series about Belly Conklin and her love triangle with the Fisher brothers, had me hooked at the very end.

As I watched the series finale yet again, I wondered if this was age appropriate behavior. I’m 54. As my best friend from college teasingly reminded me, these characters, who are in their early twenties, are young enough to be my children.

When I look at the older Fisher brother Conrad, played by Christopher Briney, I can see the appeal. But I don’t want to ravish him; more than anything I want to take him to get a haircut and trim his bangs so he can see better. My best friend, who has a son close to Conrad’s age, tells me that this is how young men wear their hair these days.

As someone who spent my middle school years pilfering through my Godmother’s stash of romance novels—she read a lot of historical love stories where the woman falls for a handsome, seemingly inappropriate man; he ends up becoming the love of her life and also turns out to be a Duke—I couldn’t help but get drawn into this 21st century version of true love conquers all. Even if this is the type of story that caused me to develop unrealistic ideas about love when I was growing up. Even if, in TSITP’s world this meant Belly would first have to get engaged to Conrad’s brother Jeremiah before she can reunite with Conrad for good—something they later will undoubtedly have to work through in family therapy.

But it wasn’t just nostalgia for the romance genre that had me hooked. What was it?

The Summer I Turned Pretty (Screenshot of AmazonPrime)

As Conrad and Belly proceeded to dry hump each other in the back of an Uber, and then passionately make out their way up a set of winding stairs to her Parisian apartment, I was riveted.

At this point in my life, the last thing I would want is for my husband—or, if I was single, for anyone else—to sensually devastate me anywhere in public. And don’t get me started on the risk of joint injury that could happen these days if I were to lean backward onto any banister while in the throes of ecstasy.

Why was I so mesmerized?

Maybe I was having some kind of midlife crisis and longing to be younger again… oh, wait, I did that already—and you can read all about it in my memoir when I sell and publish it.

But years before then, At 22, I would jump onto the back of my Spanish lover’s Kawasaki and speed across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge with my arms tightly wrapped around him. The summer before, when I interned in DC, I stayed out all night with a guy I liked. We held hands as we walked from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. We stopped in front of all of the landmarks in between and made out. We walked and kissed until the sun rose.

Those were youthfully sexy and exuberant times. But not all of my choices back then were always the smartest. I didn’t injure myself while on that motorcycle, but to no one else’s surprise that boy would eventually leave me with a broken heart. He would not be my last questionable choice when it came to romance.

There were other decisions I made in my twenties and thirties having nothing to do with men that I eventually regretted—not necessarily in the doing of them but in their execution. Like when I followed my passions and gave up my six-figure job to chase my acting dream in Hollywood and went broke.

At some point, I didn’t want to be that girl anymore, the one who sometimes got herself into not so good trouble. I disowned that version of me and sent her into exile. What the hell were you thinking, young lady?

But back to TSITP. After a night of foreplay culminating in passionate love making—filmed for the series to benefit the female gaze—Belly sends Conrad away. He loves her and she has always loved him. But so what, she challenges him, after all the heartbreak they’ve caused—especially to her ex-fiance/his brother Jeremiah. And what if they only love each other because his mother, who died too young, told them they should? Conrad tearily exits her pied-à-terre and heads for the train station.

It is only once Belly sends Conrad away and she sees a photo of her younger self—the version of her that has loved him since childhood, and who she tried to flee from to Paris—that she realizes: she is still that girl, she will always love Conrad, and even with all of her mistakes she is worthy of love. She chooses to forgive and embrace herself fully, and she chooses Conrad.

As I cheered Belly running to catch up with Conrad before his train leaves—in flats, not heels (smart girl, your feet will thank you later in life)— I finally recognized what had reeled me into this fictional world of much younger people. This wasn’t just a love story. It was a tale of reclamation for Belly—the kind that I was long overdue for.

A soul retrieval allows for the reclamation & reintegration of lost fragments of the self.

In vowing to never be that hot mess of a girl I sometimes was, I forgot how much there was to love about her, too. Like Belly, I’ve always followed my desires and chased my dreams even when convention and practicality would suggest otherwise—and, yes, sometimes to my detriment. But over the years, I’ve learned to keep doing both without devastating my heart or my life. All it took was time, lessons learned, and growing older—and what’s so wrong about that?

Without that younger me, I would never have evolved into the woman I am today. Watching The Summer I Turned Pretty was a reminder to embrace every version of myself I’ve ever been, and say Thank You.

Curious if you have your own “reclamation of self” story? Or any other thoughts you might have about The Summer I Turned Pretty . . . Feel free to share in the comments.