Maybe the life you imagined for yourself was supposed to happen by now. That is the part we don't always say out loud. You thought you would hav
Maybe the life you imagined for yourself was supposed to happen by now.
That is the part we don’t always say out loud.
You thought you would have written the book by now. Started the business. Finished school. Traveled. Made the art. Fallen in love. Found your people. Built the home. Learned the thing you kept promising yourself you would learn.
Maybe you thought you would feel more settled inside yourself.
Then life happened. And life does not politely ask whether it is interrupting your plans.
Sometimes we spend years surviving things we never put on the calendar. We care for children. We care for parents. We work jobs because somebody has to pay the light bill. We recover from relationships. We grieve. We start over. We make practical choices. We lose confidence. We get tired.
And then one morning, you look around and wonder:
Did I miss my life?
I want to tell you about Annie Frances Lee. You may not immediately recognize her name, but there is a good chance you have seen her work.
Lee created Blue Monday, that unforgettable image of a weary Black woman sitting on the edge of her bed in a white nightgown, one slipper on, gathering herself to face another Monday. There is a reason that woman looks so familiar.
Annie Lee knew her. In many ways, she was her.
Lee had loved art since childhood. She won an art competition when she was only ten and was later offered a scholarship to Northwestern University. But she married and raised a family instead. It wasn’t until age 40 that she decided to seriously pursue a career as an artist.
Forty. And even then, life did not suddenly clear the road for her.
She worked as a clerk for the railroad while going to school at night. For eight years, she worked and studied until she eventually earned a master’s degree from Loyola University. That working life followed her right into her art.
Blue Monday was inspired by her railroad job. Her grandson later said that Lee considered it her only self-portrait. She knew what it was to wake early, travel through Chicago winters on public transportation and report to work when her body would rather have remained underneath the covers.
The years that could have looked like a detour became material. The tired mornings became art. The job became art. The woman who had to get up anyway became art.
And Annie Lee was 50 years old when she had her first gallery show.
Her work would eventually appear on the sets of The Cosby Show and A Different World. She opened her own gallery, Annie Lee and Friends Gallery, and expanded her distinctive artwork into figurines, dolls, housewares and other pieces.
There is something here for those of us who keep measuring our lives against the clock. Your life may not arrive in the order you expected. Some dreams come back wearing different clothes.
Perhaps you won’t become the thing you imagined becoming at 22. Maybe at 47 you will discover something that the 22-year-old version of you couldn’t possibly have created because she hadn’t lived enough yet.
Perhaps the business begins after the children grow up. Perhaps you return to school after decades away. Perhaps the relationship you thought would last forever ends, and somewhere beyond the grief you discover interests that belonged to you before you belonged to everybody else. Perhaps the dream itself changes.
We can become so attached to the original picture that we fail to recognize our own life when it finally comes knocking. There is no rule saying fulfillment must resemble the fantasy you had when you were younger. And for Survivors especially, I want to make room for another truth. Survival and healing take time.
Years spent getting through something were still years of your life. They were not proof that you failed to launch. You were living, learning, noticing, adapting, gathering knowledge and becoming someone.
You do not have to pretend those years were wonderful. Some years take more than they give. But they don’t get to own every year that comes afterward. Annie Lee’s story doesn’t tell us that everybody who begins at 40 will become famous. That’s not the promise.
The better promise is smaller and much more useful:
You can still begin.
You can begin without knowing where it will lead.
You can begin while working another job.
You can begin imperfectly.
You can begin after grief.
You can begin after raising everybody else.
You can begin when your knees hurt and you need your reading glasses.
You can begin when somebody younger than you is already ten years ahead.
And you don’t have to chase their life.
You still have yours.
Maybe the beautiful thing you create at 50 could only have been created by the woman who lived through 20, 30 and 40.
Maybe you aren’t standing at the end of the road looking backward.
Maybe you’re carrying supplies.
Survivor Affirmations
I am not required to complete my life according to somebody else’s timetable.
I am allowed to discover new dreams at an old age.
I can grieve the time I lost without surrendering the time I still have.
My next chapter does not have to resemble the chapter I imagined years ago.
I do not have to become famous for something to become meaningful.
There are things I know now that my younger self could not have known.
I am allowed to begin with what I have, where I am.
I am not too late for my own life.
