Craggy Pinnacle, near Asheville, NC
About Me
On December 30th, 2022, thirty-six years after arriving in Los Angeles from the east coast to find myself, I said goodbye to the life I made there and headed to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina for a new beginning. During the decades I spent in California, I found not only myself, but also two husbands, two children (now grown), one late-in-life thriving career as a therapist, and friends who became my family. I lost things too: the aforementioned husbands, a few homes, and most of my money (see: aforementioned husbands). But, I consoled myself; these casualties were the price of becoming the woman I am instead of the one I thought I was supposed to be. And that meant starting over, at 60, in a place that reflects my own ethos of connection, healing, and creativity.
About My Writing
When I turned seven, my mother handed me a little black notebook to record my stories, and I’ve been writing ever since.
To date, Granta, The Paris Review, and The New Yorker have not seen fit to publish “The Great Woods Mistrey,” but I’m still hoping. Spoiler alert: the mystery ends with Jonny and Nancy giving their mother the $10,000 — which, inexplicably, turns out to be repayment of a loan she had given her elementary-school-aged children, so the story is a mystery within a mystery — they found inside a mummy case in a “dark and gloomy castle.” So you can see who my target audience was. Clearly, I was angling for an increase in my allowance.
Before I became a therapist, I wrote film and TV scripts, two of which were produced, penned personal essays for the Los Angeles Times and Salon, and churned out pieces on women’s issues for print and online magazines. I blogged (anonymously) through my 40s and 50s, wrote a column (not anonymously) for the now defunct HuffPost Divorce, published a self-help book for people navigating divorce, and peppered the Internet with articles on mental health and divorce.
About This Newsletter
James Taylor inspired the title with the lyrics to his song, Carolina In My Mind. My newsletter is a collection of personal essays, a starting-over saga featuring a plucky woman of a certain age. I chronicle my exodus from the spiritually arid City of Angels to my third act in the psychically fertile mountains of Asheville, North Carolina.
About Asheville
Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Asheville is a spiritual vortex. What is a spiritual vortex, you ask? Google calls it a “swirling center of energy that is conducive to healing, meditation, and self-exploration.” There are only two other vortices in the United States: Sedona, Arizona and Mt. Shasta, California. I didn’t know this about Asheville when I decided to move. I just knew I felt more vibrant, and more promise, when I was here.
Asheville Botanical Gardens
Why Subscribe?
If you’re middle-aged or beyond and want to read about issues that matter when you’re on the other side of 50. If you love a good starting-over story. If you believe in the power of community and a connection to something bigger than yourself. In this newsletter, I promise to be concise, irreverent, and dependable. My posts will arrive in your inbox every Thursday at 8 a.m. Eastern time.
Wanna Connect?
E-mail: upandgonetocarolina@gmail.com
Twitter: upandgonetonc
Post: virginiagilbert
