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Follow your bliss! At age 61, I never thought I’d be living these famous words by Joseph Campbell. But when I realize that I’m doing the work I love from my home in the hills above a beautiful lake in New Hampshire, and that I’m sharing my life with a wonderful man - well, to me that’s bliss!
As a first-time author, I guess you could say that my whole life, and certainly the last 13 years in particular, have set the stage for the point that I’ve now reached. It hasn’t been easy that’s for sure. And there were times when I wondered what the heck I was doing. But I kept going. Persistence pays off, so they say, and I know first-hand that’s true.
Now, let’s take a short trip down memory lane to see what led up to my writing Learning Later, Living Greater.
I married my high school sweetheart and by the time we were both 33 years old, our family was complete (one son and three daughters). Over the next 15 years we raised our children in one of Boston’s wonderful neighborhoods, and made plans for the future.
How does that old maxim go? Life is what happens when you’re making other plans, or something like that. Well, our plans for the future came to an abrupt halt early on a warm August morning in 1993, when I found my 48 year-old husband dead of a heart attack.
The shock and grief kept me in a kind of fog for the next two years. Thank goodness I still managed to go to work, but when I think back to that time it seems like I was on automatic pilot for most of it.
I tried all the usual routes for coming to terms with his death – grief therapy, life counseling, immersing myself in work, but nothing seemed to help put the pieces of my life back together or really help me wrestle with the idea of no longer being a wife, part of a twosome. As someone who was raised to believe that a woman’s primary role in life was being a wife and mother, the loss of my role as a wife was a huge adjustment and one that did not come easy.
Slowly, however, the fog began to lift, which is what the passage of time can do if you give yourself half a chance. As I struggled for a way out of my grief I slowly gravitated toward the support of other women, a very new thing for me. I began attending workshops, support groups, conferences and week-end getaways, all run by and for women.
I fully expected that this would be my life from now on, and I threw myself completely into this wonderfully creative and supportive environment. The work I’ve done over the years with women’s groups has been a powerful cathartic for me.
Then, early in 1996 I found myself thinking about travel. What I had noticed, much to my chagrin, was that ads for travel and vacations all placed heavy emphasis on “couple-hood.” It was very off-putting, to say the least, especially for someone who was still trying to come to terms with her new status as a single woman.
Then one day I came across an ad in a women’s newspaper for educational travel programs – programs where single women could feel safe and included. It sounded very interesting, and I sent for literature.
A short time later a large envelope of material arrived from Interhostel, an organization that ran educational travel programs for adults over 50. They were based at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
I spent hours pouring over all the program offerings and finally decided on a trip to the Austrian and Italian Alps. Why? I think because I loved the story of Heidi as a child. And, this particular program did not have a “single supplement,” that unfair charge assessed to single travelers.
Now I had never traveled alone anywhere, much less outside the U.S. I didn’t even have a passport! So this decision was, for me, a very big step outside my comfort zone. Little did I know at the time where taking that one step would lead. Today, I look back and can easily see that it was the start of my new life.
I'll talk more, at a later date, as to where this new adventure led me.
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