From my father’s viewpoint (as I understood)—until my sixties, I was not successful in the world. He felt concerned that I couldn't take care of myself, telling me he couldn’t die until he knew I was safe.
I studied French at a university and taught one year, but by twenty-three, French had failed me as a career.
In my thirties, I found creative writing and wrote weekly with the Amherst Writers & Artists group for eight years, revealing my ability with metaphor and sensory detail in poetry. One evening, Pat Schneider, the founder, handed me an envelope that, opened, presented her suggestion that I begin a “Creative Writing Support Group.” I felt quietly astonished, but wildly happy.
In my forties, for four years, I enjoyed my own writing community. Then I moved and, next, in my fifties, became an ordained Alliance of Divine Love minister, finding ability as an intuitive counselor for emotional health. Although retired by sixty-nine, when I finished writing A Flower for God, a book of my spiritual journey, I had by then, fully uncovered the truth—I thrived at the work of writing.
Years ago, I heard—and have remembered—a New York City school teacher on National Public Radio say that every child has a gift but when each opens that gift is not known.
I have moments of missing my parents being here to see how, as I opened each of my gifts over the years, I did come to know that I could take care of myself—even though that occurred toward the end of my life, rather than at the beginning when they were expecting it.
My realization is “When we see each one as an expression of God, remembering there’s a gift within—primed for its own appointed opening—we can offer confidence and faith.