MEMOIR
A Black Leather Jacket, a Piercing, and a Special Tattoo
A guide for coping with life’s challenges
I just celebrated my 75th birthday and for those of you who are also in my camp, you know how bittersweet turning 75 can be.
It’s sweet because of the cherished memories we made along the way and the treasured relationships we formed with family and friends.
It’s bitter because of the reality that this good life won’t last forever, and dreams may remain dreams never to become experiences.
Closing the chapters of one's life can be challenging. We can pine away for the past when our parents were still alive and our kids were babies, or we can fear the future wondering and worrying about what's going to happen to us, or we can meet our challenges head-on.
Some people give up. Some forge ahead, stronger than ever. Some accept their fate, yet some rally against God and the world. I decided to meet these challenges head-on, although I wasn’t sure how. I looked at my past coping skills and realized that I did things during times of stress that I would never do otherwise.
Some of my coping skills came out of nowhere and didn’t even make sense to me, but they helped, if only for a moment in time.
