A Different Life

This morning I thought about how much things have changed — how much I’ve changed. This picture is a bit terrifying to me — but it is the reality. I grew up before cell phones, before computers, before any social media. I didn’t have TV until I was 10. Life was simple back then. We talked to each other at the dinner table, and in restaurants. When I was seventeen I drove alone from Michigan to Pennsylvania. No cell phone.

I graduated from high school and went to two years of college. I married. I was part of the hippy generation — listened to rock music, smoked dope, dropped acid, did mescaline. My generation protested and stopped the Vietnam war. My life was full of good and bad things. The bad came to a head when my husband and I divorced. The good was LIFE — which included my children, my animals, of which there were many — meaningful relationships, art, school — reading, listening to music.

I was depressed and had to work though some stuff. Therapy was different back then —we didn’t have Prozac or Zoloft. Being depressed was part of life and led us to answers. It wasn’t something to avoid unless it got way out of control. Primal scream, Gestalt (Fritz Perls), Jungian and dream analysis were available, as was psychoanalysis. We had group therapy which cost much less and sometimes no money was exchanged. There were not names for all the things that ailed us.