Went to my 45th Wheelock College reunion last weekend—an abbreviated, spend a few hours on Saturday version.
Beside the fact that I live just miles from my alma mater (so going on a Duck Tour is not going to be the highlight of my reunion), my reasons for this abbreviated version are complicated and not worth going into here.
What, courtesy of the Internet, I would like to share is this:
Spending time listening to other women talk about their lives is fascinating. (Until it becomes so overwhelming that I gratefully hop on the T and go home!)
This year, I had two opportunities to listen: my class’s traditional, post-luncheon get-together, when the twenty or so of us go around the circle and share. And I also attended a workshop on “Transitions,” open to anyone attending her respective reunion, so the chance to listen to younger and older women was especially rich.
Because I want to respect privacy and confidentiality, I’m going to be a little elliptical: One woman talked about an incredibly difficult situation in her family and then said, in effect: “I, of course, would not have wished for this nightmare. But this horror has allowed me to be fully alive; a fully present participant in what is really the human condition.”
See why I went?