New Beginnings Never End
by Jill Duff-Hoppes
When Marilyn Frazer says she has worn many hats over the years, she’s not exaggerating.
The Orlando resident is an award-winning nonfiction author, watercolor artist, mother to three adult children, and grandmother to six grandkids. Marilyn has also been an elementary educator, meditation teacher, and real-estate broker. Besides Florida, she has lived in Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, Arizona, and Mexico – where she became fluent in Spanish.
“I’ve had to start life all over again a number of times,” says Marilyn, who moved to Central Florida in December 2017 to be closer to family. “In my life, I’ve had a lot of new beginnings.”
Marilyn, who resides in a senior-living community in the Dr. Phillips area, thrives on staying busy and hasn’t let the COVID-19 pandemic slow her down. In late 2021, a solo exhibit of her watercolor and ink paintings was featured at the Orange County Library System’s Southwest Branch. Many of the featured pieces were painted in a flurry of creativity when Marilyn was confined to her apartment during the lockdown of 2020. Her diverse subject matter includes still-life paintings, landscapes, and a more abstract series she refers to as cosmic explosions.
“The art poured out of me,” Marilyn wrote on her website’s blog. “It was important to me to paint happy pictures, ones to make me feel good as well as make others feel good. Something good can come out of a pandemic.”
In addition to being a prolific artist, Marilyn became a published author more than a decade ago with the release of her first book,
The Relationship Trap: Women Who Ignored the Warning Signs That Said... This Guy’s Not for You! She has also penned When Angels Call Your Name – a collection of true-life, inspirational stories with a touched-by-an-angel theme – and its sequel, Angel by Your Side.
Born in Pennsylvania, Marilyn moved with her family at age seven to Brooklyn, New York, where she spent the rest of her childhood and teen years. She earned an undergraduate degree in early-childhood education and art at Hunter College in Manhattan, married at age 21, and worked as a schoolteacher in New York, North Carolina, Mexico City, and Arizona.
Art Blooms in the Desert
Although Marilyn has enjoyed art since childhood, it wasn’t until after she moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1990 that she started painting in earnest. For about a decade, she also honed her artistic skills by studying watercolor at the renowned Chautauqua Institution in New York during the summers. Now, she is a member of the Florida Watercolor Society and has also shown her artwork at her independent-living community.
Marilyn’s daughter, Dr. Karen Wolman – who also lives in the Dr. Phillips area – has a house filled with her mother’s artwork.
“She absolutely loves painting,” says Karen, a licensed clinical psychologist. “It’s her solace; it’s her therapy. My mother’s got a lot of energy, and she does a lot of stuff. She’s a talented lady, and she’s very smart.”
While living in Arizona, Marilyn remarried and checked two more items off her roster of things to accomplish. She earned a master’s degree in marriage and family counseling in 2000 from Ottawa University and had a later-in-life bat mitzvah. The joyful ceremony was held in 2010 at a temple in Sedona with friends and family in attendance.
“For a long time, I had been feeling something had been missing in my life – namely a bat mitzvah,” says Marilyn, who says learning Hebrew for the occasion was even more challenging than learning Spanish. “There was something nagging at me, and it filled the void. The theme of my bat mitzvah speech was new beginnings.”
These days, Marilyn continues to actively paint and already has an idea in mind for her next book. She also journals regularly and is a member of the Scottsdale Society of Women Writers, a group she attends via virtual meetings.
The Renaissance woman’s approach to life is perhaps best reflected in the last lines of one of her favorite poems – Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. The telltale phrase: “And miles to go before I sleep.”
“I’m not finished yet,” says Marilyn with a smile. “It’s as if I’m discovering myself for the first time.”