Choose to be in the “driver’s seat”
Excerpted from act 2: my new life by Susan Sulich
F
or Karen Kanter, 66, of New York City, the end of her marriage was the beginning of her new life. In 2000, when her husband of 20 years said he wanted a divorce,
Karen was initially surprised and upset. But on the trip from Colorado (where her husband broke the news and stayed behind) to New York, Karen did a lot of thinking. When her plane landed, she rented a car and began driving to their home in a rural area upstate. “Suddenly, I started singing while I was driving,” she says, laughing. “I couldn’t figure out why I was singing, but then it hit me. I was in the driver’s seat – literally and figuratively!” After two decades of being a wife and a mom, she realized that she could now do whatever she wanted. “I’d dreamed of living in Manhattan,” she says. So Karen made the move, but knew that she’d need more than her teacher’s pension to fund a big-city life. “I didn’t want another career,” she says. Part-time personal
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