Now she looks around at her life and the pain of regret bubbles up from deep inside of her. She knows she has been running on empty for too long. She has given the best years of her life to doing what she was expected to do and daring not ask for more. She loved her children and did all she could to bring them up right. She encouraged their dreams and taught them to work towards creating a life of their choosing. She pretended to know what she was talking about without revealing the painful truth that she had not been strong enough to follow her own dreams. She had given them up because she had fooled around and fell in love. She exchanged her want to be life because a boy had told her he loved her. At the time, she thought she had to choose between him and her wanting to be so much more.
She listens to the song and then another. The melodies transports her back to that younger woman, she knew so well. Tears fall down her cheeks and she wonders if she has the courage and energy to find that part of herself again.