Dear Judy Blume, 

When I was maybe 8 or 9 years old, my family was watching an episode of Roseanne where Darlene got her period. I asked my mom what that meant. She said we weren’t talking about it, and changed the channel.  A year or so later, my friend told me that I had to read this book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. It would explain all the questions our mothers wouldn’t answer. As soon as it became the hot book of 4th grade, it mysteriously disappeared from the classroom library.  But we had learned just enough to answer our questions and maybe inspire a few more. 

Some 35 years later, I found myself on the couch trying to get a 15-minute nap before having to do all the stuff: start dinner, clean up the papers and whatever else the kids brought home from school, the start of my second job. My husband came  home from work early and asked, “What’s wrong with you? Why are you so tired?” 

I said, “I went to work at 6:30 am, and I got my period.”

“Great,” he said. “And don’t say that word out loud.”

Seriously? 35 years later and we’re still not talking about this?  

So since in some ways, I feel like I’m almost in the same place I was when I was 9, I decided to re-read Margaret for my first letter about your books.  Plus, I wanted to watch the movie. 

Margaret was the first young adult book of yours I read, but admittedly, was not the book of yours I came back to again and again. That would be Just As Long as We’re Together. But as soon as I started re-reading Margaret, all the memories came back. I could still see the brown cover of the book in my mind. The chapter that most brought back the memories? The introduction of The Club which meets at Nancy Wheeler’s house after the first day of school.  

One thing that I always loved about your books was that they didn’t preach to us. They were just life. And reading about Margaret, Nancy, Janie and Gretchen starting a club complete with a name and random rules, all centered around a teenage world they didn’t yet inhabit, memories of my best friends from elementary school doing similar things came back. In fact, one of my best friends even took on the bust-enhancing exercises, charting her progress on graph paper. She’s probably a CEO or something now. 

The club scenes are a great example of how you didn’t preach to us; you just saw us. The club and all of Margaret’s interactions with her friends aren’t a lesson in resisting peer pressure. They aren’t a “very special” chapter from Judy Blume, like the sitcom episodes that made up most of a 1980s kid’s childhood; they just are. By the end of the book, Margaret is questioning her relationship with Nancy; she’s questioning how she treated Laura, but there isn’t a point where Margaret’s inner thoughts patronize the reader. Much like life, there isn’t a definitive answer to Margaret’s questions. She’s just like us: trying to figure things out. 

I finished Are You There God in a sitting, and then it was on to the movie. There’s this quote by young adult writer Jason Reynolds from the documentary about you: “ I don’t think Judy Blume wrote her books to be timeless. I think she wrote her books to be timely, and they were so timely that they became timeless.”  I love how this quality was reflected in the movie. From the costumes, to the sets, to the props, the film clearly takes place in the 1970s, just like the novel. Trying to thrust an iphone into Margaret’s hands and giving Nancy Wheeler a TikTok (because you know she’d have one) just wouldn’t work. But the filmmakers do a beautiful job of making a timeless timely film. 

Now a mother myself, another thing I loved about the film was the shape it gave to Margaret’s mother. She’s definitely there in the novel, writing the letter to her estranged parents, trying to balance raising her child without religion when society and family says to do otherwise, sneaking the pads into Maragaret’s summer camp luggage and calmly guiding her through her first period at the end of the book. But the writing and Rachel McAdams’s wonderful acting give us a more nuanced look at what it means to try and find your voice as a mother, wife and as a woman. In the film, we see Maragaret’s mom not only take on the challenges described in the book, but because the film lets us step out of Maragret’s eyes more, we see Barbara Simon navigating the unwritten social rules of the PTA, trying to figure out home decor, cooking, and other domestic expectations, and trying to rediscover her voice through her art. 

Since Rachel McAdams is a year older than me, chances are she might have discovered Margaret just like I did. Maybe it was one day mysteriously gone from her classroom library too, and maybe those experiences helped her bring this character to life and made this timely book come to life on screen in a timeless way. 

My daughters are 8 and 5 (or 5 and three-quarters, as the youngest will tell you). I am doing my best to give them space to find themselves and the knowledge they need to be those individuals, just like Margaret’s mom. We will say the word period, and read all about Margaret. They’ll have their own copies, just in case a copy goes missing from their school library, and we’ll watch the movie too. So I thank you for Margaret Simon and letting me into her mind, letting me read her questions that helped me answer some of my own