Mental illness is a transformative experience; it either wakes you up or breaks you. With me, the jury is still out, I imagine, I’m not the one who gets to decide.

I was speaking to a professional woman I admire recently; she is one of those women who has moved bravely and with compassion into territory held exclusively by men for centuries. She does so with grace and integrity.

She has become a friend, I think, we connect and talk easily and openly. She has worked long and hard to get where she is – she is much younger than I am. She tells me I am easy to talk to, not something I always hear.

She startled me when we last talked by saying her ambition in life is to retire as early as possible and go wherever her daughter is and help her take care of her grandchildren. She hoped there would be more than one.

She never felt cared for as a child and fantasized about being there for her daughter, who is still quite young.

She saw I was surprised and asked me what I thought.

I said I was somewhat disappointed to hear her say that at so young an age – late 40’s, the early ’50s maybe – she would put all of her hard and good work aside and devote herself to the life of someone else’s children, even her own granddaughter.

People are often telling me as they reach for the cell phone photos that having a grandchild was the best thing that had ever happened to them. I am the freak.

You are an example to me, I said, I can only imagine what she might mean to younger women figuring out what to do with their lives. Was being an older kind of housewife and caretaker the dream, the point?

It’s okay if it is, there is surely nothing wrong with it, but it puzzled me and troubled me.

I told her I felt the conversation was curious,  a sign of the times, an older man urging a successful professional woman not to give up her work, and retire early to take care of a grandchild. I’ve read so many books by women lamenting the choices they never had.

She had worked so hard to break so much new ground.

I am shy about advising because of my chaotic life; I am no one to tell other people how to live.

I feel I live with a broken compass, and somethings think the correct thing for me to do is move to New York City any way I can and enter the life of my daughter and granddaughter, my surviving family apart from Maria.

I would love to be a help to them.

I feel guilty I am so far out of the life of my only grandchild.

Now she was startled.

“I have a granddaughter,” I said, ” and I love her very much and powerfully. But I would never want to move to Brooklyn and give up my life to help Emma care for her, and Emma has never asked me to do that and would not.”

My wish for my daughter was to be happy and independent, not to take care of me or live with  me intruding into the middle of her own experience.”

I told my friend that I wondered why, if she decided to retire from work she loved, she wouldn’t find some new work of her own to be passionate about.

Couldn’t that also be a great gift and inspiration to her daughter and grandchild? She is brilliant, skilled, and accomplished. Perhaps her daughter could take good care of herself.

It was her life, I said, it wasn’t for me to tell her what to want.

She seemed interested in my reaction, she was certainly not offended or upset. She wanted to talk about this idea of passion later in life. I have a love for my granddaughter, and even more for my daughter, I said, but I also have a passion for my own life:

For Maria, for the farm, for my blog and writing, for the dogs and animals, for the few friends, I have managed to make and keep on my hero journey.

I don’t want to give up my passion for life, not for someone who is already loved and well cared for.

My life is full, and for all of its ups and downs, it is my life, a precious thing. I want to do cherishing it. It’s not for everybody, and nobody else needs to make my choices. I know the vast majority of people make different choices than me.

And I see that life is much more complicated for women than it is for men.

I left my ordinary world and came to the country when I was 58 years old. That decision ended a marriage of 35 years.  The farm I bought to live in and write about was the first farm I have ever set foot in my life, other than to cover a fire or murder.

I raised Emma to be independent and strong-willed, and she is, and that means I don’t get to make her the focus of my life and enmesh myself with her and Robin and take care of her and be an integral presence in her life.

It doesn’t work like that, not for me, not for her.

To me, that would mean a giving up of myself and my life for someone else, and it just doesn’t feel right to me. And why would I presume that is what Emma or Robin would want?

I have no disrespect or contempt for men or women who adore their grandchildren and choose to help raise them and be near them. It seems like a beautiful thing to me; I have wished that for myself more than once.

But this is the life I chose, and this is the life I fought for, and this is the life I have, and I will honor it by living it as well and as long as I possibly can.

I think growing up is, in part, the realization that I can’t have everything and the challenge is to find grace in the things I lose or give up.

I told my friend her my openness was a mark of respect and affection, not judgment or worry.

She said this was the first time she had ever heard anyone talk about the passion in her life that way; she thanked me for it.  I said thanks,  to tell the truth, I was proud to be the first person to raise it.

I told her I doubted I would be around to see her choice about how to live her life, but whatever she did, I hope she ended up as happy as I am.

(Photo is of my granddaughter Robin in the snow in New York today, courtesy of Emma Span. She was throwing a snowball at me.)