Modern Love miniatures: readers on new beginnings and care

"Modern Love in miniature, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words," published Jan. 1, 2026, collects four brief first-person vignettes about midlife change, family and tenderness. In "Finding Lightness," Vanessa Gordon writes from Tuscany on her first trip post-divorce, asking, "Am I too old to experience butterflies?" She recalls marrying at 18 to a man 13 years her senior, feeling unsteady, and rejecting the idea of giving up her own happiness; a friend joked she was about to sleep with a man half her age, but Gordon says she was "ready to walk a new path" and "took a deep breath." "The Beautiful Sound of Breaking Glass," by Sally James, describes a plaque her friend gave during pregnancy — "Cleaning the house while children are growing is like shoveling the walk while it is snowing" — which her son breaks while twirling his daughter on Christmas.

He apologizes, and she writes that she is not sorry, that the cracks make it more perfect: "May chaos always buzz in my home." In "Rupture to Revive," Meredith Callan says she came out at 34 when meeting Emily ruptured her heart; she describes collecting her collapsed heart, presenting it "with blood on my hands," and Emily gently reviving it, noting that when someone resurrects your heart "there's no need for bravery.

Key Topics

Culture, Modern Love, Vanessa Gordon, Tuscany, Sally James, Meredith Callan