From being a retired person shuffling from day to day with no particular agenda, I became an energized, enthusiastic person with a mission to be of service to others.
I had tears streaming down my face as my wheelchair was pushed, at breakneck speed, down the corridor of the hospital towards the emergency room. After what I thought was an exemplary non-smoking life, filled with exercise, good nutrition, stress management, and glowing reports from my doctors on my great low blood pressure and fine cholesterol readings, I was nevertheless having a heart attack.
“My life as I know it is over,” I thought, “This can’t be me.” But it was.
I had experienced this same sense of disorientation and loss of identity before, when, at the age of 27, I had stopped being a ballet dancer and gone to college. My mind felt it was a wise decision; my heart was broken. Who was I to be?
How could I communicate with people when the medium I had used since childhood was lost to me? Who would love me now?
It took me years to find answers to these questions, during which I acquired an education, became a psychology instructor, and eventually developed classes in the Psychology of Stress and Shyness and Self Esteem, all based on the experiences and challenges I had faced in my previous incarnation.
Now it seemed that all my experience had failed me in dealing with this new and very unexpected event. I dragged myself around wearily, assuming that this physical, and yes, mental, fatigue was due to disease and age. The more I noticed every little defect – naps in the afternoon, unwillingness to exert myself physically, the more I saw them as proof of my failing health.
Then, one evening, on a whim, I Googled my name and found that a used copy of a textbook I had written for my stress class was on sale for what seemed like a huge sum of money. I told a friend, and next day she told me she had googled my name and found a copy of the same book for twice as much as the first one. Never mind that I wouldn’t participate in the sale; in fact, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would pay that much for the book.
But the thought that someone somewhere even remembered the book and thought that someone somewhere else would be interested in it ignited a warm glow that started in the center of my body and radiated to every corner. I began to think seriously about doing some writing again – what about exploring self esteem for people who had had the same kind of life-altering event I had?
Soon I was meeting on a monthly basis with a group of women writers to discuss writing, publishing, and all the headaches and joys associated with those activities.
It felt good to have a place to dress up and go to once a month, to hold conversations with enthusiastic people on a variety of topics. My fatigue started to fade. Sometimes, after our luncheon, I felt so exhilarated that I could hardly calm down to go to sleep at night.
Short articles that I felt could become chapters in a new book started pouring out of me.
Pretty soon I realized that my original book had formerly been accompanied by my personal presence as a teacher. So it was that I enrolled in a program to become a certified coach for people who had had the same life-altering, heart-stopping event.
And that event no longer seemed like a disaster, but rather an incredible piece of good luck.
What did I gain?
From being a retired person shuffling from day to day with no particular agenda, I became an energized, enthusiastic person with a mission to be of service to others once again with my speaking, teaching, writing and coaching business, Creative Life Changes. I had a website: www.CreativeLifeChanges.com! And a blog attached to it, on which I could pour out what I had learned. And finally, I was accepted into the WomenHeart Science & Leadership Symposium at the Mayo Clinic to be trained as a community leader for women's cardiac health. Like Peter Pan, I wanted to crow.
The empathy I developed as a result of this “disaster” was so far beyond the “sympathy” I had previously had for others that I discovered a whole new relationship to other human beings, and they with me. Increasing numbers of incredibly creative, supportive and warm people have come, and continue to come, into my life. Never before have I felt so appreciated and secure. Amazing!
What’s more, against all current assumptions about older women, I frequently encounter men who look at me with appreciation, initiate conversations, and make admiring comments. Truly amazing!
So much life left to live! And all that time in which to do it!
After all, I’m only seventy-two.