Sue Garland is a Licensed Master of Social Work and a “retired” medical social worker, with a masters degree in business administration. While still in college, she set aside her fledgling career as a human-interest reporter to focus on — and adopt as her own — the dreams of her aspiring-surgeon husband. She welcomed their three children into the world, joined him in private practice as his surgery technologist, and counted herself among the blessed. Her life, she knew, was very full and very satisfying.
But 20 years later, with a fourth child in preschool and the other three nearing adulthood, Sue was forced to face the fact that the marriage that she had thought was “her life” was over. Like so many others in similar circumstances, she felt discarded and without value.
Women of her generation had no model for facing “middle age” alone with any kind of dignity, much less for re-inventing their lives. But for Sue, there was a voice inside that refused to shut up, demanding that she pay attention. She eventually recognized it as her “lost” self and began getting re-acquainted! She re-discovered her own dreams, and she gradually learned how to value her true self and nurture her own talents and gifts.
Today, Sue enjoys two careers: life coaching and medical practice management consulting. She is active in a non-denominational church which supports and feeds her spiritually. Her children are all married and living their own dreams, demonstrating self-realization for their own children. She and her husband, Bruce, live in Houston.
