Five months earlier, Beth stumbled upon an announcement from a historic cooking school. They were offering a three-day French pastry course, and when she checked the listing, there was just one seat left.
The timing gave her pause. Her brother and sister-in-law had mentioned they would be on the East Coast around the same dates. The last time they had been nearby, they had brushed her off. Should she wait around again, reshuffling her own life in case they stopped in? Or should she claim the opportunity in front of her?
Beth chose the seat.
At the time, it seemed like a straightforward decision: not waiting on someone else’s “maybe.” What she didn’t know was how much it would matter. In the months that followed, she and her husband were offered an unexpected opening in a retirement community that would allow them to better manage their aging needs. They quickly sold their family home of forty years and moved in a whirlwind two-month stretch that left Beth exhausted.
By the time the pastry class finally arrived, it wasn’t just a cooking school experience. It was a lifeline — a chance to re-center herself after weeks of upheaval.
Lesson: Resilience often begins in advance, with the choice to live fully now rather than postpone life for a “maybe.”