What I Learned About Living From Cookie Mueller

Last week, while sitting beside a pool in Lefkada, Greece, on a girls’ holiday, I started reading Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black by Cookie Mueller. I picked it up at a time when I felt unusually uncertain about where my life was heading. After one of the most turbulent years I have experienced, I found myself questioning everything: my family, my relationships, my ambitions, and the person I was trying so hard to be.

I realised something uncomfortable about myself while reading this book: how much of my life has been shaped by wanting to be seen. I want to be perceived as successful, as the overachiever, as pretty, as interesting, as someone people talk about and admire. And while those qualities are genuinely part of me, I hope. I started to wonder how much energy I had spent performing a version of myself rather than simply living.

Cookie Mueller’s writing arrived at exactly the right moment.

Mueller lived a life that seemed almost impossible to imagine: chaotic, painful, colourful, hilarious, and completely her own. She endured enormous adversity; surviving sexual violence, navigating motherhood, raising her son, losing countless friends to AIDS, and witnessing some of the darkest moments of 1980s New York, yet she approached life with curiosity, humour, and a remarkable sense of freedom. She didn’t seem interested in being polished or perfect. She was interested in being alive.

That was perhaps the biggest lesson I took from this book: a full life is not necessarily a flawless one.

The collection brings together Mueller’s essays, memoirs, stories, and columns, including pieces from her famous advice column Ask Dr. Mueller. Her voice is unforgettable — sharp, funny, wise, fearless, and completely unfiltered. She writes about art, culture, love, friendship, sex, loss, and survival with a rare honesty. Reading her felt like meeting someone who had experienced the extremes of human existence and still chose optimism.

One of my favourite parts of the book was her writing about New York, especially the art world and the East Village. Her descriptions of that era made me nostalgic for a place and time I never actually experienced. Her stories about Italy had the same effect; they made me wonder whether those authentic, slightly chaotic, artistic corners of the world still exist, or whether they have been replaced by tourism and the search for something more curated and commercial.

Oddly, one of the stories that resonated with me most was her account of Divine lifting a bus they were on that had crashed. It felt almost mythical, the kind of story that blurs the line between truth and legend, but that's exactly what I loved about it. Cookie wrote about the people around her with such affection that they became larger than life. It made me realise that the stories we tell about the people we love aren't always about factual accuracy, they're about capturing their spirit. Everyone in her world seemed to exist in vivid technicolour, and it made me wonder whether living a remarkable life is less about achieving remarkable things and more about becoming someone whose stories are worth retelling.

The strongest pieces for me were her columns and personal essays. There was a story about Mueller sailing with three men who were completely unprepared for the journey they were attempting, and it was genuinely suspenseful; a perfect example of her ability to turn everyday experiences into unforgettable adventures. Her real-life stories had a wildness and honesty that made them impossible to put down.

What stayed with me most was the contrast between everything she had lost and everything she still embraced. She experienced grief, illness, violence, and heartbreak, yet she remained curious, funny, sensual, and open to the world. She didn’t spend her life trying to appear perfect; she spent it experiencing everything.

Reading this book in Lefkada, surrounded by sunshine and friendship, made me reflect on what I actually want from my own life. Maybe it is not to constantly prove that I am impressive. Maybe it is not to always be admired, talked about, or seen as “fabulous.” Maybe it is to be present, to love deeply, to experience things fully, and to accept that a meaningful life includes both beauty and mess.

Cookie Mueller’s writing is a reminder that the most interesting people are not those who have avoided hardship, but those who have lived through it and still managed to find colour.

A brilliant, strange, funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately life-affirming book.