Personal Essay / About Me Stories
About Me — Candy Kennedy
The sum of my experiences
I am a watercolor fusion of diverse experiences. I appreciate art and nature, so I describe myself in these brushstroke terms without hesitation.
I am fortunate to have lived a dreamy childhood and received a fine education, which included exposure to a broad spectrum of literature and extensive travel. A happy family life gave me grand expectations for my future through lofty goals and aspirations.
With the too-early death of my spouse over two and a half years ago, I am only now left to contemplate who I am at this point in my life, and I have done so by writing about my emotional journey.
No, I am not new to Medium. I have spent the last two years figuring out how and why life unfolded as it did and reacting to both expected and unanticipated changes. I first committed to a blog, then challenged myself to write with variety, attempting poetry and responding to prompts from various publications. The journey has significantly enriched and inspired me as a person and writer.
The Early Years
Northeastern US-born, I was raised as a coastal child. Before I could walk, the ocean was my playground, and my sandbox was the beaches and sandbars. Those summers, spent in a 1700s farmhouse we perceived as borrowed from the animals, were magical. I credit my imagination to the wondrous gift of unstructured time and freedom to roam and dream. The beauty bewitched me and left me with a visual potpourri of memories that romanticized my expectations of life.
Books and Education
From early on, literature captivated me. Our home housed bookcase upon bookcase of books, augmented by many trips to the library. In the summer, we had no television to distract from time spent reading, playing board games, or assembling puzzles.
The summer before starting private high school, I was expected to read many of the classics and did so with great zeal, enjoying authors from Steinbeck to Twain, Austin to Alcott. I weathered the challenging reads like Hamlet and The Grapes of Wrath and reveled in Jane Eyre and Kidnapped. Completing over forty books that summer taught me the value of words, description, history, and persuasive writing.
In high school, I enjoyed small group classes in Russian Literature, Poetry, Transcendentalism, Native American Religions, Middle Eastern Faith, and Great American Female Authors, which shaped my understanding of the human condition. Henry David Thoreau, a favorite author, continues to influence my life greatly.
My love of English led me to focus on studying French and Spanish in high school and college, reading many of the great contemporary and archaic authors in their native language. Believe me when I say that much is lost in the translation of Don Quixote!
Travel
My grandparents moved to Holland when I was in middle school, which allowed my family to travel to several European countries on an affordable basis. That love of travel eventually led me to apply to a summer exchange program in France between high school and college. Later, I explored Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina through early work opportunities and family vacations. I was fortunate to be shaped by these experiences, which opened my eyes to possibility and adventure.
Family
I grew up with my extended family nearby and benefitted greatly from the time my sister and I spent with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I met an amazing, loving man in college. We lived an exceptionally beautiful married life for nearly forty-one years, resulting in two children and a grandchild. His loss over two years ago rocked my world. In an effort to make some sense of what happened, I was led to my writing journey on Medium.
Service
I came of age in a family who believed in and practiced service to others. I am no different in my adult life. When you take the time to minister to others, you are less apt to complain about your walk through life, no matter the circumstances. Whether it be committee work, cancer research fundraising, college scholarship or annual fund organization, or food pantry volunteering, I am continually enriched by the selfless individuals encountered and the gratitude expressed by those less fortunate.
The Little Things
What do I enjoy during my free time? I am blessed with a wide group of friends with whom I socialize regularly. We have a Pickleball infatuation that plays out once or twice weekly. I enjoy walking, biking, exploring parks, and “beaching” whenever possible.
Relishing learning more about my past has prompted me to detour from my travels to explore family history for my Ancestry research. In fact, I have recently written about a detour that involved an ancestor and the Civil War. Suffice it to say that I rarely say no to a learning opportunity, whether music, art, or a lecture.
In Summary
Lucky, yes; however, life has a way of challenging us to re-evaluate occasionally. The death of my beloved husband singularly altered me. My life was not void of insult, injury, or sadness, but his loss caused me to learn a new way of seeing the world. I now hold fast to my faith and special girlfriends, attempting to see the light in the world surrounding me. I try to spread that uplifting message as I write and live daily.
Joining a community of writers and exploring their journeys in family, faith, love, or work teaches me more than I can articulate. The more I journal, the more I receive support, guidance, and understanding from fellow writers and readers.
If I have the opportunity to influence one person by sharing my story, it is a gift; to affect or motivate others is profoundly inspiring. I may have a memoir in me someday, but for now, writing on this platform to help myself and others is enough.
Thank you to medium@aboutmestories for the opportunity to share my story.
Please read the following selections to learn more about my writing style and motivation. I hope to inspire you to share your story.
My motivation for writing began with a blog, and this was the first selection:
This was far and away my most-read piece. Surprisingly, I had never written poetry.
