by Joan Anderson

A friendship begins with A Walk on the Beach of Cape Cod and ends up with a hike on the Inca Trail in Peru.  Joan Anderson finds a friend and mentor while walking the beach in Cape Cod.  She had fled there to find herself.  “One of the most significant gifts the beach has given me was Joan Erikson, an elderly woman whom I met accidentally on a foggy February day.  She was to prod me to find myself again, even when I thought all was lost.”  Ms. Erikson turned out to be the wife and collaborator of Erik Erikson, a leading psychoanalyst whose stages of human development influenced the field of contemporary psychology.  “There I was in a midlife crisis, when I met the person whose husband coined the term ‘identity crisis’!”  The relationship that grew from this chance meeting by the sea was one of mutual gain to both parties.

Ms. Erikson even at 90 was a very active person, so the situations these two got into were amazing at times.  It was fun to go along on their journey together.  Eye opening in places, but also entertaining along the way.