Once upon a time I had a dream about the life I would live….
This isn’t it.
Yet through the life experiences I have had, I have come to appreciate that the things we want and the things we get are often quite disparate, in strange and wonderful ways. In my 40′s now and retired from the U. S. Navy, I am finding that life does not always lead where we thought it might, but the journey is still fascinating and rich and sometimes a little painful.
In my very first post I wrote this:
I am a middle-aged, middle-income, middle child of two middle children; between careers, not working much, not retired.
Nowhere.
Or perhaps not precisely nowhere, but certainly between were I was when last I stood on solid ground and where I am going – some unknown destination. And captive here for some undetermined timeframe.
Since that time, my retired life has taken slightly firmer form. I have taken on some data analysis work that I find interesting and challenging. I have come to better accept my role as the vigil-stander as my mother continues to fade away. I have banded with a group of really wonderful women to form a non-profit organization (Veterans PetReach, Inc.).
In forming those relationships I have come to realize that it is not in the certainty of career, address, income that help us build relationships, but it is in being open to relationships that we overcome the uncertainty of career, address and income.
This blog is registered on Says Her.




4 comments
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April 20, 2009 at 11:40 PM
Susan
You are indeed brave!! This is the first blog I have ever read and am enjoying it!! I know you have had a very interesting life and I look forward to hearing about your experiences!!
April 21, 2009 at 7:54 AM
ecoyne
Hope you will still be enoying it sometime down the road.
November 8, 2009 at 10:29 PM
Lance
ellen,
Read your posting on the 7th WRT to the shooting at Ft Hood. You are “spot on”
I also read your comments about taking care of your mother. I can relate as I help take care of both my parents, one with onset parkinsons and the other having suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. My physical presence has allowed them to remain in their home and not in a nursing home. Fortuneatly, neither has suffered from dimentia….yet.
As difficult as it can be sometimes, I would not trade these times I have with them after being gone SO many years with the military.
November 9, 2009 at 9:54 AM
Ellen
Lance, Good to reconnect. Am so sorry about your folks. They are lucky to have you.
Ellen