Strong and Inspiring Stories of Lakeside Women

  My story begins, of course, when I was born in Denver as an only child and grew into an outdoors, tomboy girl who preferred to play cars with the kids next door. My parents liked to fish and often we would go to a cabin up in the mountains where they caught suckerfish, which they would throw up on the bank. I would build little dams filled with water, trying to keep them alive. The outdoors and nature have always been a part of my life; this is how I was brought up, but my home wasn’t a happy one.      My father was a practicing, abusive alcoholic, and one time I even witnessed him attack my mother and it was a very painful thing for this young child to try and process. When I was around eight or ten, he left our home, but he came back to get his gun. Later that day, he committed suicide. While I was relieved the drama was over, my mother was left alone and not happy being left to raise me.      But then s...

It was the 1960s, and I had graduated from college with a BSN; I had a job;  now I wanted an apartment! But my mother said, "No, you have to live at home until you get married. Just like your cousins!" Had my mother agreed, I probably would have been visiting more looking for a nice home-cooked meal! There was no point in arguing with my mother; I said nothing further. At that time, only 25% of nursing graduates were BSN's, and I had graduated and was working in a hospital.  But the search for BSN's was on, and I was receiving recruitment brochures from each of the military branches and large hospitals. I realized that if I took an offer from a New York, Boston, or another big city hospital, that my parents would harangue me until I came home. But I also knew that they could not do anything to undo my enlistment with the military. Remember 1968? Viet Nam? The TET Offensive? In the middle of that,  I came home one day and announced to my father and mother, "Meet L...

  My name is Queen D. Michele. My 27-year career as an elementary and middle school educator spanned across the US: Michigan, Nevada and Georgia. I retired in 2015 at the age of 52. Shortly after, I began working jobs to supplement my very small pension. it quickly became apparent that my pension was going to cover the rent, and the rent only. There was still the car note, insurance, cell phone, electricity, gas, water, trash, cable and grocery bills to cover monthly. I feared always having to work to supplement my pension until my mind and body wouldn't let me anymore. I feared having to live sub-standardly because of what it would cost me for healthcare insurance. I feared being a burden on my kids. I began visualizing being 70 years old saying, "Welcome to Walmart." We've all seen them in our local neighborhoods, supermarkets, restaurants, movie theaters and airports. Middle-aged women bagging, cashiering, taking orders and greeting. While living in fear and visual...

  What happens when a four-year-old little girl falls in love with a beautifully rendered still life oil painting and her father, a devotee of modern jazz and modern art, will not buy it for her? She throws a crying fit, of course! That is how my love of art began and it has been my lifelong passion. This is one of my earliest memories and certainly my earliest recollection about art. The family had gone to an all-city art exhibit in Los Angeles, where I grew up. I wasn’t in the habit of demanding my parents buy me things but I was so transfixed by this painting. I was only four years old but there was something about it that really spoke to me. A year or so later I was in kindergarten and we made Easter baskets out of clay to take home to our mothers. This was my first time working with clay and I made a nice tidy little basket that I was proud of. We were told to put our initials on the bottom. When our baskets were finished and it was time to take them home, Jeff Mann, who had t...

  Sometimes, particularly when the hand of destiny is at play, our lives can change on a dime. Such was the case when I first visited Ajijic in the winter of 2018 and within 6 months had sold my house, my car, and nearly all of my possessions and became a full-time resident of this newly designated “Pueblo Magico”. I felt captivated by the magic, the energy, the beauty of the region the very first day I arrived, like so many others. It’s interesting to ponder the twists and turns of our lives and how we end up living in places we had never even heard of before, over a few years even months later. While living in Chicago, where I had a private practice as a psychotherapist, I had traveled to Puerto Vallarta for winter vacations over a span of a couple decades and loved the Mexican people, culture, and language, which I decided to begin learning at 55. Somewhere in the back of my head, I had the thought that I might retire in Puerto Vallarta one day but I pretty much dismissed it as ...