Hello Brooklyn, Goodbye
At 52, seeking love and freedom across two states. Why not?
Amid Life is, at its heart, about resilience. I post weekly about my career and personal midlife reinvention, and I invite other writers to share their stories using a simple prompt
Tell us about a moment when everything changed.
Today’s moment-of-change story comes from
. I met Nina the first night of my MFA program. From the row in front of me, this vivacious blonde turned and pointed. I looked over my shoulder—she’d been waving and hugging everyone who walked in the room. “No, you,” she mouthed. “You.”We’d never met before, but her big smile and warm, weird welcome set this anxious 57-year-old new student immediately at ease. I’m delighted to share Nina’s writing here. She is a master of making things happen, including her new memoir!
Body: My Life in Parts (Vine Leaves Press) is out now. Go order it, then come back and read Nina’s essay about a moment when everything changed.
We were done. As in finished, no longer a couple. Sayonara, baby. Maybe there was a “fuck off!” If so, I repressed the ugly memory.
My life was taking a 180, and I was determined to reinvent myself, not spiral into apathy and depression. Go with the flow, Nina. Things happen for a reason. I was moving to New York!
In 2016, I had moved to Maine from a comfy Connecticut suburb. My 21-year marriage ended five years before, and I had co-parented three sons through high school. I was free and beyond thrilled to follow my partner Tony, who was newly retired and eager to start his third chapter in the state where he was born.
It was a sweet homecoming “from away” toward a simpler life in the north. In Maine, with its mere one million inhabitants, cars stop when you approach the curb, and when people say hello, they wait for you to respond, and while the winters are long, the summers are all the more glorious.
A blissful new relationship turned volatile
My ex-husband was often absent, both in mind and body. He was typically late, preoccupied, or aloof. Tony, on the other hand, was always engaged, enthusiastically supportive, interested, and invested. This was what I fell in love with; I finally felt seen and respected.
When it was good, it was perfect. When it was bad, it was the worst I had ever experienced. As a Gen X latch-key kid in my childhood home in Oslo, Norway, and as an American wife with an absentee husband, I became used to a lot of freedom. With Tony, I sometimes felt I was suffocating, which became a source of our fights.
I needed more space; he needed more together. We both tended to catastrophize and before we knew what hit us, our spats devolved into a radical existential crisis. And so, I found myself in a big-ass UHAUL, packed to the gills, en route from quaint and quiet Maine to hip and happening Brooklyn.
Welcome to New York
I feverishly nested in my new Brooklyn abode—a 1920s sunny, top-floor one-bedroom apartment with tall ceilings, original parquet floors, and “original” kitchen and bathroom that worked well enough, and, of course, Mr. & Mrs. Roach and their plentiful offspring.
It felt surreal arranging an apartment that was mine alone: I painted the bathroom pink, the kitchen orange, and rolled out a purple shag rug in the bedroom. I inhaled my newfound independence despite the acrid smell after the exterminators’ monthly visits.
I was on Bumble for a hot minute, an eye-opening experience. However, I never ventured beyond sliding left on photos of middle-aged men on golf courses, sailboats, or suggestively straddling Harleys. Mostly, I said, “Ewww,” at the same time noticing a tug—a longing for the body of a lover I knew so well. Tony.
What about us
As I familiarized myself with my new neighborhood, frequenting the corner bodega, bagel shop, and laundromat, the odors of urine, pot, fried foods, and subway steam, combined with the raucous sounds of the big city, made me miss Maine. Still, I was committed to forging ahead despite the big adjustments. I wanted to be strong and resilient. I wanted to embrace the unknown, I stubbornly told myself.
Before we broke up, Tony and I had attended a few couples therapy sessions to get help with our propensities toward reactivity, but the therapist talked too much about the vagus nerve and not enough about how we could improve “us.”
Tony’s name frequently flashed across my iPhone screen, but I was determined not to pick up. I didn’t want to fight, or negotiate, or listen to what surely would be pleas for me to return to Maine. There were emails, too.
He urged me to “come home” and suggested we return to therapy. “We can work this out,” he said. “I want to grow with you and embrace the process of becoming better together.”
As much as I tried to ignore it, the hard, icy lump in my core, that I had nursed to help me remain resolute in my quest for freedom and space, began to soften.
Here was Tony, practically yelling that he was willing to do the hard work of forgiveness and repair, so who was I to resist? I have always prided myself on embracing growth and change, so how could I deny ”us” this opportunity to grow and hopefully become improved versions of ourselves along the way?
Tony came to Brooklyn. It felt good to be in each other’s embrace again. We spoke about how to transition back into a relationship that would give me room and honor his daily desire for closeness. Then COVID hit.
New York was the last place it made sense to be when we had Maine, where the healthcare system was not as overloaded, and there was ample space for everyone to spread out. Finding a subletter for the apartment was easy, and my life in Maine with Tony turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
We found a therapist who specialized in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, helping us learn to respond to our triggers in healthier ways. Though not always easy, we remained committed to our “us.”
When the restrictions of COVID eased, and my three-year Brooklyn lease was up, I packed another moving truck and headed north for my own sweet homecoming “from away.”
The Brooklyn chapter remains as a parenthesis in our story, a detour in my mid-life that turned out to be as necessary as it was painful, as revelatory as it was rewarding. One week after I moved back to Maine—no longer with one foot out the door, as the Brooklyn apartment had come to signify for Tony—we got married at the Portland City Hall.
Nina B. Lichtenstein is a native of Oslo, Norway, and a recovering academic. She has a PhD in French literature from University of Connecticut and an MFA in creative nonfiction from University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Program. Nina’s essays have appeared in many publications and anthologies, and her book Sephardic Women’s Voices: Out of North Africa (Gaon Books) was published in 2017. Her new memoir, Body: My Life in Parts (Vine Leaves Press) came out in May 2025.
Nina is the founder and director of Maine Writers Studio and the co-founder/co-editor of the literary e-zine In a Flash. Nina is the mother of three adult sons and lives in Maine (which reminds her of Norway) with her husband. You can find out more about Nina’s work HERE.
Work hard. Be brave. Believe.
Catherine
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Great essay, Nina! Very relatable!
Fantastic! A terrific read and I’m eager to read more! Thank you the introduction to Nina!