What wondrous stories women have to tell!

Climbing mountains both external and internal; dreaming great dreams and bringing them into the world to help others; honoring even the mundane aspects of women’s lives as teachers.

I have learned something unexpected from my own mother this year. For more than 20 years she has been a single woman. Increasingly over the past ten years, since a job injury forced her into retirement, she has been a woman alone. Very reserved, even a bit shy, focused around work and family all her life, my mother never had a community of peers. Her main hobby was gardening, which she did alone. The rest of her time was spent cleaning her house, worrying about one daughter or the other, or her youngest son, or their respective families. She didn’t date; she didn’t go to the community center for cards or gossip or have lunch dates with close girlfriends.

Then Ray came into her life. They are both in their 70’s; have high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Mom couldn’t imagine the point of having a new relationship at this time of her life. “Neither one of us is going to live much longer,” she lamented. But he persisted. His wife, hospitalized for several years with Alzheimers, had recently died. He was free now and didn’t want to waste any time! After a year of long-distance courtship, mom finally decided to at least put her house on the market, fully expecting that it would take six months to a year in the depressed market where she lived. It took five days! Ray and one of her brothers came to help sell, give away and pack up her lifetime accumulation of things. In the past few months she has had to face several traumas, including the death of one beloved brother. Ray has been at her side through it all.

What I’ve learned from this is not that it’s “never too late” to get a man (although several of my single friends have taken this lesson from my mother’s experience!) but that it’s never too late to take a risk. It’s never too late to change your life. It’s never too late to trust that even if you get only one good day from it, allowing love and friendship into your life is always worth it.