My story

by Sharol
(Dearborn, MI)

Dear New Friend,

Hi my name is Sharol and I’m 67. I am starting on my second year of retirement and I hate it. I have cleaned out and donated all my teacher items and filled my first year with reading and writing. Now for the first time in 30 years my basement book area had empty shelves ha, ha! During that cleaning frenzy I found a box full of old dairies and journals starting with my teenage years.

I had goals when I retired my first was to spend more time with my mom who is 93 and take her to visit relatives we hadn’t seen in years. However for a variety of reasons we’ve only been on two trips.

Another goal was to read and boy did I achieve that I have read over 100 novels and of course I read all the dairies and journals I found. These were a nice break from the sci-fi, fantasies and love stories I had been reading. But they were filled with the good, the bad and the ugly times of my life and everything I had kept bottled up inside for years.

An additional goal was to finish the novels I had started writing over the years. So I achieved that by finishing 6 books I had started and wrote 6 more (although I will never publish any of them).

Last year I watched my grandchildren and helped them with their homework. As a teacher I always had things to do and was very involved with my school and my students. But when I tried to going back to my school and help I got really depressed so I quit. My friends are all teachers and most of them are younger. My retired friends are married and we do lunch once every two months or so. So I’m seeking out friends to write too.

This summer I decided to become more active and get out of the house. I even made my ‘Bucket List’ and started exercising. But every time I went somewhere my mom made me feel guilty although she won’t go with me. Now it’s October and I am not watching my grandsons anymore so I have even more time.

On September 19th I had a medical procedure, complications set in so now I’m mostly sitting again. My doctor tells me it will take longer to recovery because I’m older. In the meantime I am lonely and find I’m not interested in reading or writing any more.

I need help to understand how I can balance my life so I can do what I would like to do without feeling guilty. I’m getting stronger everyday physically but would really like to have a friend to write too.
If you would like to write or have some advice I would love to hear from you. Your friend Sharol

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