In Search of a Second Act: A Conversation with Susan Pohlman
Susan Pohlman is a writer and host of the Phoenix Writers Network who knows firsthand the power of travel to inspire and heal. She’s the author of Halfway to Each Other, a memoir that recounts the marriage-saving year her family spent in Italy. Her new memoir, A Time to Seek, takes her back to Florence as she’s struggling to find a second act in midlife. The trip ultimately brings her closer to her daughter, her faith, and most importantly, herself. Today we talk about finding one’s purpose, the gift of aging, how travel can inspire change, and the importance of connecting with readers and an artistic community.
Undomesticated: The premise of this book — seeking, yearning to find one’s purpose — could suggest that we need to have a path or a purpose, but you don’t seem to believe that, at least by the end of the book. You write, “Being lost is the beginning of the journey to being found.” Would you say that you never could have found the most meaningful things in your life if you hadn’t been lost first?
Susan Pohlman: This is an interesting question. Let’s first define what I mean by being lost. There are periods of life when we find ourselves stagnant or floundering. If great change has been thrust upon us, i.e. illness, death of loved one, divorce, bankruptcy etc., it can cause us to lose our bearings. Things we once took as truth or solid ground fail us. It can be quite disorienting. Sometimes these periods are brief, and we move on with our lives. Other times, we are shaken to our cores and find ourselves at a loss. These extreme periods can push us to personal awakenings and challenge us in ways that, ultimately, produce much fruit. As I age, I have learned to see these gray periods as opportunities for growth. So, in that sense, yes. Dark periods of life have led me to the most meaningful realizations.
Undomesticated: Faith is a large part of this book. You didn’t take this trip simply to find yourself but also to reconnect with something bigger than yourself. I’m particularly fond of the Teilhard de Chardin quote you included: “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” Tell me more about that.
Pohlman: Let’s face it, American life is a busy, check-it-off-the-list life. All of the movement, the routine, the constant striving. The abundance. For some reason we have come to tie achievement to movement. Regardless of organized religion, we are spiritual beings. Feeding the soul is often a quiet endeavor. I often need to take a break from life, designate quiet time in my day, in order to address my spiritual growth. We are all part body, part soul. Without the soul, the body is nothing more than flesh and bones. It is the soul that enables us to endure, that yearns and seeks, that recognizes and receives the graces from the divine.
Undomesticated: In your previous memoir, Halfway to Each Other, you recount the year your family spent living in Italy. You and your husband were on the verge of divorce, but instead of breaking up, you decided to move to Italy, an adventure you hoped would bring you closer. Before you left, your own therapist said you were just running away, that your problems would follow you, and with all the challenges of a new country piled on. But you and your husband felt deeply that you had to take that chance in order to find your way back to each other. Do you think there’s any way for someone to know the difference between running away and following their heart?
Pohlman: I love this question. And I don’t think there is an easy answer. We all know that problems don’t just disappear. However, my husband and I had tried counseling, and it wasn’t working. Throwing our emotional guts onto the coffee table between us for 50-minute intervals in a sterile environment only seemed to fuel our anger toward each other. Neither one of us wanted a divorce, but we were miserable. Looking around, we saw only one answer to the problem — separate and go our separate ways. Culture showed us only one solution. But such is the problem with the self-imposed boundaries of culture. There are ways of life beyond one’s own cultural restraints.
When this idea presented itself, I tried to dismiss it as ridiculous. But I felt a strong momentum toward it and, as recounted in the book, the path to it (school for the kids, a furnished apartment overlooking the sea that would be available immediately) laid itself before us in an almost bizarre way. I didn’t see this as running away, I saw it as an opportunity to take a break, remove ourselves from our overcrowded and overstimulated life, and see if we could find clarity. I knew it could have been a disaster, but I felt such a deep spiritual pull that I decided to go for it. If we came home two months later and called it quits, then so be it. We were headed that way to begin with.
As the year unfolded, we were able to slowly, naturally, work out differences and forgive hurts in our own time. The key to healing, however, was the ability to experience a grand adventure as a couple and as a family—creating new, happy memories to lay over the old hurtful ones. That helped us build bridges back to each other in a way that a counselor’s efforts never could.
The difference between running away and following your heart lies in the details and motivations that spur the decision. Maybe we were doing a little bit of both.
Undomesticated: Eighteen years later, you’re still together and happy. I’m sure your therapist was never happier to be wrong about something! But when you turned 50, you felt restless and unsettled and were trying to let go and accept that you were aging, so you turned to travel to work through that. But you didn’t go there with a plan. You went because “travel is a magical way to seek, and adventure is a powerful and compelling teacher.” This wasn’t just an escape, there wasn’t something specific you wanted to experience or gain, you just went there with an open mind to see what might happen and what you might learn. That’s so refreshing in a hyper-planned world where people are looking for concrete answers to their problems, but that open-ended waiting for provenance also seems like its own kind of pressure. Did you feel that this trip had to bear fruit, to teach you something? Did you ever find yourself walking around in Italy thinking, “What am I going to learn, where is that lesson, is this where I’ll find the answer?” Or were you able to accept that it might just be a nice trip and you’d return home without any growth?
Pohlman: Because of the powerful experience of our previous year abroad, I understood and trusted the process that pilgrimage travel offers. The old adage, “Let the trip take you,” is truly the key. I did not put any pressure on myself to discover anything grand, I simply granted myself the gift of letting each day evolve without my steering it — the gift of wandering through the day with a heightened sense of awareness. Being present in the moment is a tiny miracle. You notice details or have serendipitous conversations with strangers that trigger thoughts, emotions, and what-ifs. The key is to sit and journal about your experiences. Assign words to your feelings. As the week goes on, your subconscious offers up all of the hopes and fears that you have kept locked away. Spending time exploring those feelings and fears on the page is what helps you pivot and choose your next chapter according to your needs at that time of your life. Stepping out of your everyday bubble and routine allows the emotional space and solitude necessary to imagine new possibilities and changes in perspective.
Undomesticated: Searching for “purpose in the next chapter of your life” is huge! One of the things you were struggling with was the idea that you had to create “one great thing” with your life, to die knowing that you “took risks to achieve something great.” You were frustrated with yourself for not having that thing, fearing that your life’s path had not been the right one. But eventually, you come to realize that every decision you’d made was right at the time; you’d just outgrown those choices. “God calls us to a variety of roles along the way, each skillset building upon the last. Maybe there is no ‘one thing.’ Maybe there is just the ‘next thing.’” That probably comes as a relief to many readers because it can be stressful to think there’s one thing you’re meant to spend your whole life doing. Are you still satisfied that there isn’t one great thing, or has it been harder to sustain that feeling and apply it after returning to normal life?
Pohlman: Yes! It was a great relief! It feels good to embrace a chapter of life with the understanding that this is a good choice for now. It is fulfilling to know that you are using your talents and life experience in ways that lift others. A gift of aging is the ability to look backwards and see how the chapters of your life have built one upon the other. Each laying a foundation for the next.
Undomesticated: There is a poignant moment in the book where you recall reading somewhere that a person should be buried in a place where the earth knows them. You write, “That sentence made my mouth go dry, my stomach clench into a mass of granite. I didn’t have a place that knew me.”
You’d moved so often you said, “My soul was homeless. I wondered if I should include a clause in my will that provided for a moving van to pick up my casket and move it every three years.” Between my own career and my husband’s Air Force career, I deeply relate to this! Many travelers I speak with also have a complicated relationship with the idea of “home.” In the time since you wrote that scene, have you found any answers or grown to think of home any differently?
Pohlman: This question is a tough one and still perplexes me. I was lucky to have grown up in one town, in one house, until I graduated college. After that time, life moved me from one place to the next every few years. For a long time, the word “home” always conjured images of my childhood home. Even today, I will automatically connect back to that time —that feeling of love and permanence.
But, when we started a family of our own, home also became the place we created for ourselves and our children. Because my husband and I have moved houses so often, “home” lost its connection to a physical place. Home, now, is the place family gathers. We are home when we are together, wherever that may be.
There is a sort of duality: the home of my childhood and the home I have created for my own family. Both are places to rest.
Undomesticated: When we’re not coming to it with an open heart, even the most stunning art can simply be something to admire or even acquire. You visit Saint Peter’s Basilica without realizing it’s Saturday night and mass is about to start. You’re startled when the choir starts singing Gregorian chants for 100 or so parishioners. You kneel and join the service, surprised that you can even worship in this place. These mighty, opulent churches with their awe-inspiring architecture always seemed there just to glorify god, but you realize that “this building would mean nothing without the interaction of human beings.” Although this book doesn’t pointedly draw attention to travel as a way to connect with others, it's full of connecting with people, often on an intimate emotional level. Along with faith, this communing is the heart of the story. Back home in Phoenix, you host the Phoenix Writer’s Network and are known as a connector. Participants are there to learn about writing, but maybe the group itself is really the point. Whether or not a book is ever published, or a work of art hung in a gallery, its real meaning is only in how it connects with other humans. Is that part of why you write memoir? And do you have any advice for writers on helping their work connect?
Pohlman: Meaningful connection is a deep human need. Connection helps us feel vital and alive. Stories, both fiction and nonfiction, bring meaning to our lives, connect generations, share wisdom and adventure. We learn through stories and are emotionally fed in a way that helps us feel less alone on our human journey.
The writing community is a vast, eclectic, group of people. We love to connect, to share our artist’s journey with each other. Writing is both joyful and difficult. The art of writing must be studied and practiced like any other craft. When I meet another person who says, “I’m a writer too!” there is an instant bond. We smile and nod, suddenly knowing we share something really special. And for some, that experience of belonging and sharing is enough. Art is art, and whether we publish or not, we are still enjoying the creative endeavor.
Writing is all about connecting souls. Memoir, especially, is sacred writing. Any time we are given entrance into another’s soul is an honor. It allows us to chew on what it means to be human—warts and all.
The key to writing memoir is to understand the genre. It is not autobiography; it is not a tell-all story about how one has been wronged by another. Its purpose is not historical, it is literary. The writer takes a period of life where they were transformed in some important way, and crafts it with language that lifts it to the literary. It is written using the same literary elements employed in fiction.
If you are feeling called to share a personal journey, you must take the time to study the art of memoir first. Then find a unique entrance to your story and go for it! Enjoy the journey wherever it may lead.
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