I started writing for Retrospect in July, 2018. John Zussman found a post I had written on another site and asked if he could use it. Then he asked if I wanted to write for Retrospect. I loved the format and, as a woman looking at her 70th birthday in the rearview mirror, I could definitely think back. I had retired from my career as director of Cherry Preschool in May of 2013, so this was the perfect time for me to share my stories forward.
"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it" -- Goethe
I have seen many endings in my life: The loss of loved ones, changes in jobs, retirement, and writing opportunities that were in a constant state of flux. Rather than viewing these as endings, I have chosen to follow the wisdom of Fred Rogers, one of my great heroes:
Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.
My life journey has been filled with so many new beginnings. Getting married, starting a teaching career, raising three kids, going back to work as a preschool teacher (a far cry from teaching high school English pre-kids), and deciding to learn about what I was actually doing by getting a Masters in early childhood education. Becoming a preschool director just fell into my lap. Founding Cherry Preschool evolved from having to leave the old one. Most of my new beginnings happened with little planning. Serendipity.
Kids leaving home evolved into new beginnings for them as they married and later had their own children. Grandkids. That was an amazing new beginning for me. And then I bumped into a really tough ending, retirement. Determined not to spend the rest of my life babysitting my grandchildren, taking classes, participating in a book club, and meeting friends for lunch, all activities I enjoyed, I was also searching for a new beginning just for me. At that point, I was feeling what my friend Marcia wisely called the “Loss of the Boss” syndrome. I felt at the mercy of others who didn’t want to open their doors for me. What I learned after many breakfast meetings and collaborations with Marcia was that I never needed to have anyone open any doors. I just needed to create a new path for myself.
I’ve always loved to write, so when a friend suggested I give blogging a try, I thought, why not? As a newbie blogger for ChicagoNow, I struggled to learn the ins and outs of writing short, blog-worthy pieces, doing Internet research, trying to get comfortable with WordPress, setting up a Facebook page, and writing an emailed newsletter. I came to love it. Sometimes my posts were well-read and other times almost ignored. Sometimes folks made complimentary comments and other times not so much. But I learned to enjoy this new path for the sheer joy writing brought to me.
Having grandchildren with special needs and young grandkids just entering preschool and elementary school combined with my career as an educator to provide the fuel for many of my initial posts. There was just so much that needed fixing in education. I soon discovered I had a multitude of other interests outside of education. I developed a strong need to share how I felt about a wide range of topics, including generational shifts, aging, retirement, pop culture, politics, healthcare, genealogy, parenting, and grandparenting. More and more, my posts fell under the category of “life style opinion.”
My mother’s death in 2015 marked a huge turning point in my life. I was now an orphan and about to turn seventy. I was truly in desperate need of a new beginning, so I decided to write a book. Why not? My mother was my biggest fan who thought everything I wrote was brilliant and worth sharing with her lady friends. While I wrote Terribly Strange and Wonderfully Real, I was haunted by Paul Simon’s lyric, “How terribly strange to be seventy” (Old Friends/Bookends). I really wrote the book to honor my mother and to create another new beginning in my life to cope with that huge loss.
In addition to working on the book, I kept blogging. Opportunities came and vanished. My editor at Alternet left. Huffington Post changed its format and my editor there also left. Once again, I sought new beginnings for my work. Debbie Galant from Midcentury Modern Magazine saw something I had written and asked if I wanted to write for her via Medium. That lasted until she ended her blog. And then there was Retrospect.
When I learned that Retrospect was ending I was heartbroken. I loved the concept of thinking back to share forward. I enjoyed the challenge of writing to a weekly prompt, and I was just starting to make virtual friends through the comments we made on each other’s posts. Then I discovered that Suzy Underwood, Marian Hirsch, and Barb Buckles were looking for another partner-in-crime to keep the site alive. I again thought, why not? Almost 300 stories later, I still hope to write under the new, prompt-less format. I also spend countless hours revise my own website to include stories that were lost when prior blogging sites folded.
My dear cartoonist friend and collaborator Marcia, drew the images at the top ad end of this post for things I wrote. I especially love her incorporating the Goethe quote in the featured image,
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
Here’s to dreaming big, being bold, and to a finding the seeds of new beginnings in the end of yet another part of my life.
Laurie LevyBoomer. Educator. Advocate. Eclectic topics: grandkids, special needs, values, aging, loss, & whatever. Author: Terribly Strange and Wonderfully Real.
