Journey to hope

By Trudy Chiswell

“Great vision sees brightness through the shadows.”

The Thread is the true story of one woman’s journey from dependency and poor self-image to an independent confident adventurer following the thread of knowledge as a mature student and became a new person. At middle age, when her friends were settling down to crafts and bridge parties, she returned to school to get a Grade 12 diploma at 42. Later, to her great surprise, she would also go on to get a college degree at 49. At 60, when those same bridge-playing friends were thinking of retiring, grandchildren and a rocking chair, she started her first business. In the 22 years since graduating from school, she has become a confident solo traveler who relishes in the adventure of meeting new people. It is not just the mountaintop experiences, but the valleys in between where the growth happened. That is where the rubber meets the road!

That woman is me. I have chosen to be a lifelong learner and to encourage others to reach out and grasp their dreams — a champion to help others reach their potential!  I hope to inspire you to recognize that you are never too old to dream or to accomplish anything you set yourself on the path to achieve. You are never too old to go to school, to travel, to start a new career or to start a new life. Life has not passed you by. The first step is to believe! Walt Disney said, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Tenacity is the key!

Fear prevented me from doing many things in the first half of my life. It made me choose the easy way too many times. I married at 18 to the first person who asked. I enjoyed cooking and wanted to entertain, but the fear of not getting everything perfect had my stomach in knots and my head aching by the time my guests arrived.

When I was 17, I travelled, terror-filled, to Hamilton, Ontario to go to nursing school. In those days it was a soot-filled, smelly industrial city of steel mills, half an hour from my childhood home of Merritton, a small town that was also smelly – with the sulphur from paper mills. Living at the downtown YWCA, I had to wipe the soot off the window sill every few days to avoid getting soot on my uniform. I trained as a Registered Nursing Assistant (equivalent to today’s Licenced Practical Nurses - LPN’s). The year-long program was open to anyone who had completed Grade 10, which I had – barely. After training I had wanted to move to Western Canada, but never pursued the dream because of fear. It all sounds so silly now, but then it was debilitating!

My quest to conquer fear began when I was 42. It started quite by accident. Working in a bookstore I saw the need to develop my accounting skills, so I enrolled in a night class. I hadn’t attended school in 27 years, and school had been a terrible experience. I’m not sure to this day what possessed me to go voluntarily as an adult. The first night was terrifying!

The class was filled with high school students. I was the only adult in the room, aside from the teacher. Not yet knowing I had learning disabilities, I struggled to keep up with the lectures and to complete tests at the same pace as students more than half my age. I learned to read well ahead, to essentially over prepare. When I finished with 95 per cent in the class, I was amazed! It gave me courage; I thought maybe I should try another class. That was the first door in an incredible journey to hope. It inspired me to open the next door, and then the next. Each accomplishment was another brick in the foundation of self-confidence, the ultimate antidote to fear.

This is my journey of discovery.