Mary Richards and Me

Meet Mary, my blog muse

Posted on 1/22/2010 at 2:00:04 PM

You may never have seen or even remember the popular 1970s TV sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” starring, of course, Mary Tyler Moore. But maybe you’ve run across the iconic photo of Mary tossing her hat in the air while standing in the middle of the street with a huge smile and a look of pure delight on her face. That’s Mary Richards, a young single woman who moves to the great big city of Minneapolis after ending a two-year relationship with a pathetically self-absorbed, non-committal guy. She’s not a worldly woman by any stretch of the imagination, but she’s also not naïve. She’s smart, spunky, genuinely sweet, and relatively confident in her ability to start fresh with a new home, a new job, and new friends. She’s reached the next stage of her life and is trying to figure herself out – who she is, what she wants, and where she’s going.  And even though the theme song, “Love is All Around,” says she’s “all alone” trying to “make it on [her] own,” Mary surrounds herself with wonderfully caring friends who help her “make it after all.”

Sound familiar? If not, that’s okay. But I have chosen Mary Richards as my inspiration for this blog – my muse, if you will – because, in many ways, I can identify with her character. Finally out of college, I find myself stepping across a kind of threshold from one stage of my life into the next and needing to rediscover who I am amidst all the goals and plans I’ve made for myself. I’m hoping that this blog will help push me along (at least a little) in my quest and maybe even help others who are at a similar point in their lives. That may be too much to expect from this humble project of self-discovery. If so, then I’m happy just to have the space in which to be myself. This blog is me tossing my hat in the air.

Love ya, Mary! I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship…