I was raised on a tree-lined street in a suburb of Minneapolis until I was nine. By that time, I’d learned to swim, roller and ice skate, was a menace with a snowball, and had left a strip of my tongue on the frozen-front porch railing. Occasionally I wonder if relics of my childhood are still buried beneath the sand box in the back yard. Our house that was thirty feet square, is still there. White with blue shutters. I miss the rich scent of my mother’s lilacs, the sour crab apples that gave me more than one belly ache. Winters? Not so much.

I don’t know why we left Minneapolis so abruptly, but I learned to love horses and ride the year I was ten and we lived in Midland, Texas. My sisters, five and six years older, were angry-at-being-uprooted teenagers that considered me an un-feathered albatross and Midland the middle of nowhere.

By fifth grade I’d been enrolled in Hohokam, a grade school in Scottsdale, Arizona. I soon developed a healthy respect for things that had spines, spikes and walked, ran or slithered through the surrounding desert. Oh, and let’s not forget the Cholla cactus. It jumps. I tried frying an egg on the sidewalk in July. It worked. Sunny-side up and solid.

I’d managed to avoid being snake bit or stung by a scorpion by the time I graduated high school, so figured I must be charmed. Three weeks after graduation I married the second boy I’d ever dated. At eighteen he worked hard, was in his second year at Arizona State, had a quiet confidence that defined masculinity. He made a buck forty and hour and I became a secretary at a local realty firm. It was tight, but we managed.

Deeply in love I was ready for more adventure than I bargained for over the next forty-seven and a half years we’d be together, build a business, raise a family. I didn’t know our marriage formed a high functioning branch of a narcissistic family tree, firmly rooted in dysfunction. The best part of me thrived with my sons and grandchildren. The rest became a consequence of adaptation.

When I finally left my husband I couldn’t, didn’t want to erase my past; three sons, grandchildren, and extended family are treasures. Those rascals of mine are grown men now, who shepherd my grandchildren. The swarm of them are unforgettably priceless, but I won’t whitewash the adventures of three boys within three years of each other. We’re all survivors.

Almost all. We lost my father to a sudden heart attack, the morning of my mother’s sixty-ninth birthday. Eleven years later cancer took my oldest sister. When I held my mother’s hand as she slipped away, I lost the one person I and everyone who knew her idealized. It was a defining moment that brought focus, clarity and with it, the realization that there is more to life and love than surviving it. Had to be. And I intended to damn well find out.

If I were used car, a few years ago you’d have found me in the salvage yard, partly because I’m not a quitter, largely because I’d yanked the blindfold of love so tight I couldn’t blink. Once I mustered the courage to leave, I scoured and climbed hills that loomed in every direction, but I also began to evolve. My salvage maneuver meant I had to take myself seriously. Scrape off the rust, dirt and dust and buff up. Determination is both grit and polish.

It took a while for our divorce to be final, but the day I left my husband to his current fling, I was no longer his wife. I didn’t join the dating scene for nearly a year and my first encounter shocked the hell out of me. It inspired me to write a book about the hazards of late date dating, but my book developer pried the “where did I come from, why did I leave home, where was I going” out of me to share the focus of Leaving You…for me. I hope she was right. The adventure of blind dates, first dates and first nights with someone new after being monogamous and married for over forty-seven years is challenging but shallow. I was different now, my sense of self had shifted to be the reflection of what other saw and expected from me. My past still had a grip on me in those first years, but wounds heal.

Here I am, forty-nine years later. Two years after I left my home and husband I’m no longer Mrs. Anybody, just me, and my new smile. It’s exhilarating, genuine and hard won. I waded through puddles of tears and processed enough adrenaline to fuel a jet. I’ve also trembled to the touch of tenderness and rush of passion I’d have missed in this lifetime, if I’d stayed.

These days I wake with anticipation. Lay still and wonder what the future will bring, then remind myself to embrace the moment as I stretch in a tangle of soft sheets spritzed with the scent of lavender. It’s not a long moment, because it can’t compete with the toasty aroma of a steaming cup of coffee that awaits.

I work hard, play at many paces, push myself to try new things, and risk untried adventures. My new life is a jumble of quirks, imperfections, incredible friends, a still growing family, new surroundings, joys, triumphs and I love the adventure of it all, even if it is a little dangerous once in a while.

I hope you find what comforts, awakens or helps you somehow within the pages of my book and the articles on this site. It will make the hours at the keyboard more than a catharsis. A true reward.