Welcome to my new blog.  Any blog with this title should probably start at the beginning, so I guess that means me.  If you’re reading this, chances are you already know me, so I’ll make it brief.

Me – your average, run-of-the-mill 60-something woman with four dogs and one cat.  (Oh no, you’re thinking – she’s a nut job.) That’s maybe not far from the truth, but as the saying goes, it is what it is.  After a good, solid Midwestern upbringing and more decades than I care to count spent in New England, I am now happily at home in the mountains of Western North Carolina.  It’s beautiful here and I love it, but try to keep that to yourself – there’s been a huge influx of new people in the last years and it’s starting to get a bit crowded (yes, my husband and I were among that number) but in the time-honored tradition of newcomers everywhere, we’re itching to pull up the drawbridge behind us.

Life here is good – hiking, gardening, reading, cooking, making art – all of those things that 60-something women tend to do – many of which I swore I would never even get close to – (so much for certainty and self-awareness…) Life here is also challenging now in a very different way, as my husband died and I now find myself negotiating widowhood (does “widow” seem like an ugly word to you, or is that just me being overly sensitive?).  It is a path that one can imagine, and while some of those imaginings are true, there is much of it that is unexpected and carries the power to bring you to your knees in record time. It is a new road, a new chapter, a new life – a road that one travels with sadness, freedom, tenderness, fear and nostalgia.  But travel it I must, and with the help of friends and my mutts, I’m managing to negotiate this new territory.