reinventing oneself?

I had to reinvent myself in my 40s and after I was 50 too. The first shock to survive was a divorce when I was in my mid 40s. This was unthinkable for me at the time to emotionally survive. However, I have always tended to be a survivor mostly because I come from Pioneer stock of people who came to the U.S. around 1725. My great grandfather was a captain in the northern Army from Kansas in the Civil war and after the war built a pharmacy that originally came from medicines from a local Native American Tribe to where he lived in Kansas. So, there is this capacity to reinvent yourself genetically in my bones. My Great Grandfather sold his pharmacy in 1925 and continued to live into the 1940s even though he was born in the 1840s in Kansas I believe.

So, even though during my 1990s divorce I didn't really see a way forward for me still I found a way to move forward through all of this mostly because of my children. Because even though the oldest was at least 20 at that point the youngest was only 5 years old. So, I remarried and had another daughter with my new wife by 1995 and reinvented myself once again. Then in 1998 I suffered a heart virus and nearly died from September of 1998 until May of 1999. Finally in May my cardiologist told me that I likely wasn't going to die and that they had finally found what was wrong with me through the process of elimination which was that I had almost died of a heart virus. IN fall of 1998 I was forced to retire by my health and my wife because she didn't want me to die on her and because we then had a 2 1/2 year old daughter who is now all grown up today in 2022. But, remember this is 1998 when I was 50 years old. Though I have had various brushes with death in my life I tend to be a survivor too like my forebears and so I have always found a way forward somehow like my pioneer ancestors here in the U.S.

It hasn't always been easy but it has been necessary that I stay alive for my children and my present wife and friends so I have always refused to die even when others likely would have given up and died.

By God's Grace