I'm a retired regional home & garden magazine publisher. Never met a women who didn't think it was a dream career or a man it didn't scare silly. Except my wonderful husband who loved me for me. I'm so blessed to have found the one man in Texas (the world?) who was a great family man, successful in a business he loved and supportive of mine. Notice, I said he supported my efforts, not my business - it had to sink or swim on it's own - but we supported each other on whatever the other wanted to undertake. Amazingly , the kids turned out great and are fantastic parents. What's wrong with this idylic picture is that my sweet husband was felled by a single heart attack at 61. There are a million or so things that we put off until retirement and another million thoughts about what I could have done differently. I hate being a widow and it remains a struggle to see and feel life with the clarity and optimism that we had together. Everything that we were spared before has crashed into my world since. Cancer, crashing economies, a world gone amuck.

This, too, is a work in progress.

How did you get to where you are now?

Well, there are physical and emotional places. City girl that I am, I got to the ranch in far West Texas because my husband loved the land and I loved him. But here I am six years after his death; our partly build adobe dream house melting; my new house in town unfinished, and all I want to do is run away. And, I would if I could figure out where I wanted to run to. 

How do you see yourself differently now than you did 10 years ago?

Like we aren't even related. More to come...