Chick, Version 2

It’s been just over 4 months since my husband passed away from Alzheimer’s and I’ve been in the process of figuring out who I am now and how I move forward in what has become a different world for me.  It’s been a wild ride so far, and I expect there’s a whole lot more to come.

Some of it has come naturally, some of it comes with healing activities, but most of it comes flying out of nowhere as I experience this new world of mine.

It’s been a couple years since I adopted my teenage nickname (Chick) and signed up with Alice to be part of the 50-state ride for Clearview Works.  So, now I’m working on Version 2 of “Chick.”  Version 1 was a naive, gangly teenager who didn’t have a clue.  I grew up in a small town in northern Minnesota during the 60’s and early 70’s. It was a pretty sheltered existence at the time and when I ventured out into the world, I learned a lot.  Mostly the hard way.

I lost my way for awhile in alcohol and men. By my early twenties, I was getting sober and started figuring out how to actually live life a little more successfully and less painfully.  The first five years of my sobriety included a lot more life lessons as I worked through turning away from being a victim into a woman who chose what she was going to participate in or note. That was really the beginning of my spiritual and emotional growth.

I landed a job that started my corporate career, fell in love and re-engaged in being a mother and started navigating my new-found life.  It’s been an amazing trip through the last 40+ years.  I grew a lot, learned a lot, made choices (mostly good, I think) which enabled me to be successful at what I was doing.

I got shook up a bit when I was laid off at the age of 55.  My career was a big part of what defined me and though I was nearing the end of that career and actually had plans to retire within two years, it was a huge hit to my ego and self-confidence.  It took about six months or so before I really settled into my new reality of being retired.  My husband had been retired for around three years at that time and the opportunity to get to spend more time together was a blast for many years until back injuries, cancer, and Alzheimer’s changed our world once again.

Enter Alice into my life.  We both believe that our meeting up in the nail salon that day was the inevitable intersection of our lives providing us the opportunity to work together for a greater purpose in our lives.  Eventually, the names Chick and Alice were conceived during conversations about how we were going to approach going on the road.  There’s a lot around that, but the simple version for me was it suddenly became clear to me that I wanted to revive my old nickname for the road.

It has now become so much more than just a road name.  The last three and a half years have left their mark.  Being a caregiver for a spouse with dementia profoundly changes who you are as your partner is still there, but no longer able to actually be the partner you’ve had and becomes someone you  take care of because you love them.  I had to go into a whole different mode of operation focused on caring for him. Since he’s been gone, I’ve needed to figure out who I really am now. I’m no longer a wife, I’m no longer a caretaker, and most of what has defined me has gone by the wayside or changed significantly. During this time I have also been actively working with Alice, getting ready for our ride which really became my purpose for moving forward after he was gone.  As I started getting more involved, I started introducing myself as Chick, so people would get the connection to who I was when Chick and Alice hit the road.  Over the past few months my name “Chick” has morphed into a symbol of the massive changes in my life and who I am going to be in the next part of my life’s journey.  It’s who I’m becoming as I’m figuring out exactly what that is.  I’m still getting used to the name, though.  More than once, I have failed to recognize that someone is actually talking to me when they say “Hey, Chick.”  I like where I’m going with this, so I’m really embracing it.

Through a minor mishap on black ice this winter I destroyed the license plate on my truck and needed new license plates.  I had been toying with the idea of personalized license plates and decided on 57Chick, indicating my year of birth and my name.  It was also just a bit of a play on the similarity to the 57Chevy, but it was going on a Ford.  A bit weird, maybe, but it made sense to me.  I wanted to do something similar for my motorcycle too.  For a personalized motorcycle plate, you can only have 6 characters.  When I checked with the DMV, Chick and Chick1 were already taken.  So, I went with Chick2.  It made sense to me because this was my second run at being “Chick.”

Figuring out who Chick is can be a bit scary at times. But I am looking forward to who I’m becoming at this point in my life and quite excited about my journey as Chick and “Chick and Alice.”

Stay tuned…

Love and Peace,

Chick