My forthcoming book, Travels without Charley: A Marriage Sabbatical, tells the story of a lingering dream and its fulfillment. My particular dream – of combining global travel with meaningful service – was born in my early twenties after a magical summer teaching English in Hong Kong through my university. I considered joining the Peace Corps after college. However, fear, guilt and conflicts around attachment and separation made this ambition too hard and I set the dream aside. Nagging regrets continued to surround this missed opportunity long after I had forgiven myself for most other errors of omission or commission. Four decades later, long married and with two recently launched children, I revisited my long-ago desire. But this time I discovered I possessed the courage, the time, the resources and the opportunity to live out my lingering dream. All that stood in my way was the social convention that long married couples in satisfactory relationships don’t leave one another for a year at a time.
My book is an account of my relationship with my husband, myself, and with my desire to fulfill an important dream while it was still possible. I hope you enjoy the book. But in addition, I sincerely hope it sparks a conversation among individuals and couples of a certain age. I believe my story will convince readers “if she can do it, so can I!” I hope my story jogs your emotional memory so that you recall your own important desire and lingering dreams. They won’t be the same as mine; they will be your own.
Please join the conversation! Respond to this blog by describing a goal you once had, a desire or dream. Let’s put our heads together about how you might realize the essence of that desire in a way that is compatible with the realities of your current circumstances: physical, financial, and relational.
My original dream was to serve in the Peace Corps after college. As a married sixty-one year old, it wasn’t realistic for me to leave my husband, my elderly mother or my two young adult children for more than two years to be a Peace Corps volunteer. My husband did not share my dream and he was not in a position to leave the country for a year or more. So, I needed to find another way to live out the essence of my dream. It necessitated careful and respectful negotiation with my husband, complex eldercare arrangements to attend to a mother with dementia, and various other accommodations to emotional, situational and physical circumstances.
Let’s hear from you. Please tell us about your enduring dream, your ideas about how to realize it and any current obstacles. Let us support you in exploring ways in which you might be able to fulfill some aspect of your heart’s desire, perhaps in a creatively modified or surprising way.
WELCOME TO THE CONVERSATION!
