Love Endures When Life Narrows

On Aging, Longing, and Staying Open

My Essay Is Now Published in Modern Women on Medium

My personal essay about my dear friend Shirley has been published in Modern Women on Medium.

This essay is personal and hopefully honors her legacy and the way she loved.

Watching her relationship in her later years reshaped something in me. She showed me that caring for someone is not grand or dramatic. It’s showing up. It’s warmth. It’s playfulness. It’s devotion chosen again and again.

She showed me that love can happen at any age and still feel new, girlish, and even hopeful.

Hardships can dampen our faith in love. Life can bruise us. But they don’t have to extinguish hope. Shirley lived as proof that tenderness doesn’t expire and that there is always more to feel hopeful about.

As a therapist, I sit with people who worry they’ve missed their chance — that love is behind them. That hope is behind them. This story offers another possibility.

You can read the full piece here:

If it moves you, I’d love for you to share it with someone who believes in enduring love — or someone who needs to.