“…it’s never too late to reinvent yourself, to learn something new or to change your own story.”

My grandmother was a writer. Growing up, I was aware she wrote the real estate column for her city’s newspaper. I remember her witty quotes and captions. She always had the punniest titles to her stories. Real estate bored me at the time (if only I knew how obsessed I would become with Zillow and Redfin in my late 20s…) but even despite my lack of interest in the subject matter, I still admired and appreciated her work.

What’s important is that my grandmother wasn’t always a writer. She married my grandfather relatively young, dropped out of college to assist the war effort and then stayed home to raise my dad and uncle.

Unfortunately, my grandfather was better at being a dad and grandpa than he was at being a loyal husband, and their marriage fell apart while my dad and uncle were away at school.

Sort of fun fact: did you know PO Boxes were key to having affairs in the days before cell phones? There must be a lot of empty PO boxes now.

She wasn’t shy about being depressed after he left. Did she wallow in it? Maybe, for a short while. But then, she did something amazing that few women in their 50s were doing in the late 1970s: she went back to school to finish what she started before WWII.

She also started running marathons which she continued to do into her 80s, but I’m not trying to put us all to shame so let’s stay focused on the writing part.

She worked her way through school and got her degree in journalism. She started her career as a 50-something divorcee some 40+ years ago. It wasn’t until I reached adulthood that I realized how truly exceptional she was, and so ahead of her time. Her life was an example that it’s never too late to reinvent yourself, to learn something new or to change your own story.

Growing up, she was always encouraging me to write. The summer I was 10 years old, we moved and I had no friends, so I took her advice and created my own friends. I started writing a novel, which was over 100 pages typed. I had a lot of time on my hands.

Once I made friends and my social calendar filled up like a 10-year-old’s should, I lost interest in writing the book. My grandma had a printed copy which she kept for years, but it got lost somewhere along the way. What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on 10-year-old me’s novel!

After the novel, I didn’t write anything else, other than papers for school, until now. My grandmother passed away a few months ago, just before the birth of my son. It’s cathartic, writing this blog. It feels like reconnecting with an old friend. Maybe it’s 10-year-old me, maybe it’s my grandma. Maybe it’s both.

What do you do for you?