Maggie's Farm

Ben-David ... I think you are wise. My first husband died after we had been married for two years. Being widowed at the age of 25 is in some ways a weird experience. One is not long out of the parental nest oneself. and yet one has to deal with grief and a sense of alienation from others of one's own age who are still untried children. You feel isolated, and impatient because you don't belong to any particular group. Briefly, I went into therapy, and after seven months, freed myself from it. The therapist told me that I needed more counseling "to deal with my issues." But I had the offer of a good job [for a woman in those days] as a magazine editor, and I decided that I would rather supervise my own healing process than have it in the hands of a man I didn't particularly trust or like.

I'm glad I did that. Being a person who loves to research, I read widely, in writings of such wise persons as Rollo May, Karen Horney and others too numerous to list. I came to the conclusion that their seemingly simple advice, to "act brave and you will be braver,' "to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield," as the poet says in Ulysses, to knuckle down and keep at it, as my father advised me, was better than baring my soul to a stranger for an hour twice a week.

Reading is a great teacher, if you'll let it be. Reading and then carefully putting into practice what you have learned and mulled over until it makes sense, is the best solution for many of us. Like grains of sand and snowflakes, we are each one of us different from all others. But we can each of us love and learn from one another.

I've been doing that for 82 years now, and I still don't know everything I should. I wonder if I ever will.

Marianne