Author Offers Encouragement To Late-Blooming Women

By Nancy K. Crevier

For women to become doctors, lawyers, business CEOs, writers, or politicians is not so unusual today. But it is unusual for women to begin these careers in middle age when others in their 40s and beyond have years of experience behind them and are looking forward to slowing down.

Prill Boyle reveals the heart of what drives special women to follow their dreams, no matter what their chronological age, and how all women are capable of opening up their later years to a time of power and happiness in her book, Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women.

At the C.H. Booth Library on Wednesday evening, October 5, Ms Boyle captured the attention of two dozen women and men who gathered there to hear Ms Boyle speak about her personal journey that led to the exploration of the lives of other “late-blooming” women, the subjects of her book.

In honor of the day and because of its aptness to her subject, Ms Boyle started the evening with an excerpt from what she called “a sort of prayer for Rosh Hashanah.”

“I have remained enchained too often to less than what I am,” she read. “But the day has come to take an accounting of my life.”

Continuing in her own words, “We all have gifts, potentials that are not yet realized,” said Ms Boyle. “I never imagined I’d be a writer, I didn’t think of myself that way.”

At the age of 46, in the year 2000, Prill Boyle was teaching writing at Norwalk Community College. Already somewhat of a late-bloomer, having graduated from college in her 30s, she thought that she had reached her potential, and that she would go down in history as a wife, mother, and teacher.

It was an assignment she gave her class that January, a chance remark, and a prophetic dream that opened her world to new possibilities.

“I asked my class to ‘imagine you’re 90. What kind of life would you have lived?’” she explained. “I asked them to think what they would like their obituary to read like.”

As a teacher, she went on, she often modeled assignments by doing one herself and sharing it with her class. Her own “obituary” started out encapsulating her life as it truly was to that date. Then she began to have fun with it. She saw herself as having lived an adventurous life, on safari even, then paused to ask herself what else this 90-year-old Prill had accomplished. She typed into her headline: Priscilla Boyle: Teacher and Writer, and gave herself a New York Times best-selling book.

“I had never written a thing at that time,” she laughed, but was surprised to feel the comfortable fit of her fictional self.

In modeling the assignment and sharing that bit with her class, a student whose name she will never forget, “Shayne Flaherty,” quipped from the back of the room, “Don’t you think you should get started?”

She reflected on that comment and that night dreamed of flying high above her home, and the awe she inspired in her friends and neighbors below, who soon took to the air as well.

“I’m going to write stories about people who don’t give up on their dreams; they persist, persist, persist. I want to provide role models for people who don’t know how to fly and for people who do know how to fly, but don’t know how to get out there,” she thought.

Even so, it was a year from the book’s conception to first putting pen to paper, she said. Audience members tittered as this vibrant, witty woman admitted, “I was even afraid to call people to interview them.”

She filled out her application to become a full-time instructor at Norwalk Community College in 2001, having shelved the idea of her book. Standing in the office, moments from handing in the application, Shayne Flaherty appeared in an eerie bit of serendipity, and asked, “Professor Boyle? Are you applying for that job? You shouldn’t. You have something larger in you.”

She quit her job that day. Defying Gravity was underway.

The women Ms Boyle selected for her stories came from all parts of the country, from all walks of life, from all ways of thinking. Some were rich, some were poor.

All of them were past the age our society deems young, but all of them retained dreams from their youth. Wini Yunker fulfilled her dream of joining the Peace Corps — at age 65, having first obtained a college degree and master’s in her late 50s. Evelyn Gregory became a Mesa Airlines flight attendant at the age of 71, prodded by her dreams and the support of friends and family. When Linda Bach became a physician at age 50, many of her women peers were already looking forward to retirement.

“There were two common denominators these women shared,” said Ms Boyle in response to an audience question. “First, they got to a point in their life that they didn’t care what other people thought of them. Second, they were able to turn a deaf ear to self-doubt.” While the visions may have been different for each of them, including herself, she went on to say, another quality they all shared was that of persistence. “Most people,” she said, “give up too soon.”

As evidence, she offered that even with an agent, Defying Gravity generated no less than 14 rejections. She continued to believe in her vision, though, and in 2004 Emmis Books in Ohio accepted the book.

In responding to the observation of an audience member that many of the women who pursue their goals do so in a time of crisis, Ms Boyle said, “Openness is important. These women are in transition and may not even be aware of it. Timing, perception, and openness are essential.”

The more people Ms Boyle interviewed, including several older men whom she hopes to write about in the future, the more she became aware that “50, 60, 70, 80, 90 is not so old.” If we think of how long many people live today, she said, “we no longer feel that we are too old to start something new.”

Defy gravity, she urged the group. “Try to do a bold thing every day.”

And find your own Shayne Flaherty.

(Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women is available at most Barnes & Noble locations, Borders and online at Amazon.com)