Seventy Thoughts on Being Seventy

Becoming Bi-Regional: Having it All in My Seventies

This coming Friday, June 28, I am going to get into my car, back out of my garage in Glendive, Montana, hop onto I-94 East and drive to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. On this solo road trip, I will drive through Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and the entire state of Pennsylvania. 1800 miles. Not sure yet whether I will do it in four or five days, nor whether I will take some time to sight see or remain laser-focused on arriving at my new home.

The sweet townhome in a lovely community within walking distance of downtown Bryn Mawr won't be my only home. I am not abandoning my life in Montana which has afforded me some of the richest, transformative inner experiences I have ever had. Rather, I am seeking balance. It's time for me to reconnect with others, share some of my gifts, and have an engaged and engaging outer life.

One year ago, I made the decision to move to Eastern Montana when I sold my home and business in Santa Fe. For a long time, Michael had been wanting to spend some time in the land of his ancestors where he still has family He's working on several creative projects that are either set here or are connected to this region's history. So it made perfect sense for him. Me, not so much. But I decided to go along for the adventure. I mean seriously -- how many Northeast Philly girls get to have a literal "home on the range?"

Together we have established a home filled with music, art, film and stories. It has been and remains a warm creative space and we've each done good work on our respective writing and artistic projects. We went to rodeos, state fairs, bucking horse sales, local crafts fairs. We've explored the nearby badlands of Makoshika State Park, visited national landmarks like Little Big Horn and took nightly walks to watch the sunset along the banks of the Yellowstone River.

We even enjoyed the long cold winter, because it was always warm inside our house and we had so much to do, so many movies to watch and tons to talk about.

I came to appreciate this small town. I'd never lived in a place like Glendive and I was amazed to see the amount of volunteer work people do here. I discovered an impressive recycling center run strictly by senior volunteers, a world class historical museum of the frontier ( also run by volunteers) as well as an art gallery, organized as a non profit collective. And we had a very encouraging evening at a fundraiser for Dawson County Democrats, where we met primary candidates for the House of Representatives. It was very positive and promising, especially in these contentious times.

What I couldn't do was make any friends.

Hard as I tried, I couldn't find a way to connect to the people here. I had a couple of things working against me. First, while I didn't experience any anti-Semitism, I only met one other Jewish person. He told me that the nearest synagogue was in Billings, three hours west on the interstate. One woman I met said she was always open to having new good Christian friends. She friended me on Facebook but the invitation to hike with her and her friends never came. ( Was it something I posted?)

If I had come here when I was younger and looking for a job, I know I would have been able to meet people at work, perhaps at the local high school or community college. I did try a few things, though. I attended a local book group at the public library and I took a crochet class at a local yarn store. I felt like an intruder in both settings. Everything about me from my clothes to my voice seemed to scream "outsider!" Only one woman in the book group was friendly and the women in the crochet class ignored me completely.

Despite the many things I loved about my life here, I began to get depressed. Being new in a small rural town which has had its ups and downs, especially one which is recovering from the end of the latest oil boom, is hard. With limited public resources and fewer and fewer businesses, I can see where people would need to circle the wagons and be wary of newcomers like myself. People in Eastern Montana are very concerned about what's been happening in Western Montana with the influx of wealthy outsiders and they want to make sure the same thing will not happen here.

Two things ( other than Michael!) made life better for me here: Amazon and Zoom. Amazon allowed me to order all of the items I couldn't buy locally, while Zoom connected me to people and ideas a communities not in my reach here.

But, I also started to lose a sense of myself and my own purpose. I was becoming invisible. Not seen by others, it became increasingly harder for me to see myself. It was as if I'd dropped the red thread which had always connected me not only to myself but to my purpose for being in this world. Plus, my mother, siblings, children and grandchildren all live in Philadelphia or Boston -- not to mention my high school girlfriends, my network of colleagues and hundreds of beloved former students and acquaintances.

So on my last visit East, I requested email updates about possible condos or townhouses for sale on the Main Line and Bam! The perfect one showed up on a Thursday and I made the offer on a Friday.

It's mine now. And I am about to head east to begin setting it up as a second home. So while I'm not bi-coastal nor even a "snow bird" ( more conventional reasons people have two homes) I am about to become bi-regional.

At first, I was a little embarrassed to be returning "home." When I left Philadelphia in 2014 to create a new chapter of my life in Santa Fe, I was filled with hope and possibilities. New Mexico can be a magic place for some -- known as The Land of Enchantment. It's one of earth's "thin places" where the veil between the material and spiritual worlds is practically non-existent. It can call to you, draw you in and reward you with spiritual abundance. It was like that for me for my first seven years. In Santa Fe, doors opened, incredible people appeared, synchronicities abounded. I became a business woman, a filmmaker, a published writer, a performer of a one woman show, a director of collaborative theater, a songwriter and a member of several writing and artistic communities.

When Covid hit, all that fell apart and as time went on, I became convinced that Santa Fe was telling me it was time to go.

Returning to Philly was out of the question for me at that time. I was afraid I'd be viewed as a "failure." Truth be told, I guess I viewed myself as a failure. The move to Montana did not fit the "failure in Santa Fe" narrative. It was more in keeping with the "life is a grand adventure" narrative I'd written for myself post mid-life.

Covid time aged me. Many of us Boomers deteriorated physically and spiritually more in those two years than we had in the ten years before. There was a hidden gift in the aging, though it took a while to understand it. My outlook on life was maturing. Essentially, I had moved from my third act into my fourth and final one- or in Erik Erikson's schema of psychological development, I'd advanced from the seventh stage of the crossroads between generativity and stagnation to the final stage of adult development - the crossroads between wholeness and despair.

Wholeness, integrity and completion are the hallmarks of a healthy old age. A healthy older adult needs to forge a sense of ego identity and integrity in order to fend off the despair that can come with physical deterioration. Being able to live in both Montana and Philadelphia, Glendive and Bryn Mawr, I will have the opportunity to weave the disparate parts of my gloriously complex and exciting life into a new tapestry.

And I have found a new way of looking at my return. I think it's pretty significant that I am driving east on this journey. So much of the myth of America has been about going West, opening new frontiers. And I've loved living in the Southwest and West. But the sun rises in the east. It's a place of birth and beginnings.

Suddenly T.S. Elliot's words from Little Gidding are called up from my memory:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Maybe my life is being shaped by the archetypal energy of the heroine's journey. According to Maureen Murdock whose seminal work, "The Heroine's Journey" changed the way so many woman get to see our lives, "the heroine returns home with inner wholeness and power.

I'm not saying I'm there yet. I have a ways to go to get to that place of inner wholeness. But I can see it now - a beacon on the road eastward, forward into the beginning.

My grandkids taught me a word for times like this. Whenever they are about to start something new, I ask them how they are feeling and they say they are "nervcited."

That's how I am feeling at this juncture in my life. Nervous and excited about what lies ahead.

But the overwhelming emotion I am feeling is gratitude.

To my friends in Philly -- see you soon! Let's go to the theater! Let's visit museums! Let's plan a trip to New York to see a Broadway show! Let's create a workshop or a conference or a writing retreat!

Maybe you'd even like to visit me one day in Glendive!