I’m thinking about clothes right now. And that does not make me a shallow person.

I haven’t been able to write. Not since what happened. Orlando has been too big to process. I’m not ready. I’m not an expert. I didn’t lose…

I haven’t been able to write. Not since what happened. Orlando has been too big to process. I’m not ready. I’m not an expert. I didn’t lose a loved one, and I have skin in the game only as an American (very scared about the next election) and a supporter of LGBT rights, as the mother of the child who I want to grow up with the freedom to be whatever he wants to be. I’ve looked at the mothers on TV crying for lost sons. And I’ve understood that if I watch too much I won’t get out of bed.

And then in short order, we lost a family member too soon. At 50, he left behind a wife of decades and two children who will soldier on but who sure as hell don’t deserve it. And so I haven’t been able to write.

Especially because my real expertise is clothes. I work in style. I love style. I read about style. And somehow it all seems frivolous when things like this happen. The things that I want to write about on Medium are things like fashion and style of women over 40 and the humor and the fun in it. None of these things seems important right now. I haven’t been having fun. But when I look back at my life and especially the challenging times, I realize that sometimes fashion is what gets me through.

1. Fashion is escape. The brain is so protective. It won’t let you process when it’s too soon. Instead it creates this little cocoon of delay, keeping the pieces of the pain from coming together right at the start. Allowing us a laugh about a person who has been lost, a funny shared memory that keeps a little cloud of happiness there. Fashion and style can be woven into this cocoon. When an escapist book is too much to process, when escapist television is too numbing, I go to my closet. The routine of thinking about what to wear tomorrow, which at other times is fun, in these times is sustaining. In this simple act (a chore for some), I use my hands, I awaken my senses, I see possibilities, I get away for a moment, and I feel a little uplifted just remembering that there is a tomorrow to get dressed for.

2. Fashion is therapy. When your heart is shredded, when you’re crying like an animal, you retreat into the most hibernative clothing. Soft clothes. Big wooly hand me down sweaters. Sweatpants your dad wore in college. Comfort. Talismans. Unlike looking through an album, the warmth is tactile and instant; it comes in the simple act of putting these clothes on your body, a kind of cameraderie that makes you feel you’re not alone. And after a period of mourning, getting yourself out of the soft comforting clothes and into something real-life ready, is a therapeutic, self-asserting moment; it tells you and the world — it’s time. You can’t hold me down. I’m meeting this head on. Fuck you, terrorists. If you thought you’d keep me in bed, you were wrong. It’s in these moments of fashion-fueled strength that I do things, even small things, like donate to GLAAD or feel empowered to stop a cruel joke in its tracks.

3. Fashion is authenticity. What you wear is one of the few wordless ways you have to express a bit of yourself to every person you encounter. And to yourself. I think about this the most in a context of a friend of ours who transitioned a couple years ago, about how gleeful she has been to explore the clothes of the woman she was meant to be. Usually I wear wildly expressive and bold things. On the day of the memorial for our family member, I put aside my playful style to zip into a respectful black sheath. It was that moment that somehow got me ready to be able to grieve. And in wearing it at work for the half day leading up to the service, I was literally wearing my heart on my sleeve. The severe black dress allowed friends an opening to ask if I was ok and comfort me. And less-close coworkers to give me space to be sad. Slowly I’m processing now — it was the black dress that forced me to confront the reality, to let myself really cry, to get the space I needed to be what I really felt inside.

4. Fashion is promise. On my most down days, I look in my closet and I see hope. There’s the hugely expensive (but worth it) jacket with the strongest shoulders I’ve ever seen, a miracle in that putting it on makes me feel instantly in control, ready to take on anything, to own a room. There’s the black motorcycle jacket with the oversized metal zipper that makes me feel tough and bad ass, like a 1950s gang leader, shrugging it on over a T-shirt gives me a day full of swagger and persuasion. There’s a bright green handbag I saved forever for, a trophy to my hard work and financial independence, it represents the promise that I can go after anything I want and always, always take care of myself. I see every color, ready for me to pick up and paint with. Moments of creativity just waiting on me. And while I’m not ready to wear a vintage linen skirt with red cabbage roses all over it, I know I will be. Everything blooms again.