There’s a cultural story we’re told about aging.
It’s subtle, but persistent.
At a certain point, you’re supposed to settle.
Step back.
Consume quietly.
Be grateful for what was.
What no one tells you is that sometimes—after a full career, after decades of responsibility—something else becomes possible.
Not ambition.
Not reinvention for reinvention’s sake.
But return.
I first found Osher at the University of Utah’s Continuing Education Department in my early sixties, around the time I retired from my University career. I came as a student—hungry again in a way I hadn’t been for years.
I came for the learning.
I stayed for the community.
Osher offered something rare: education without pressure, curiosity without comparison, and classrooms filled with people who had lived full lives and were still deeply engaged with becoming.
I took classes.
I met new people.
I made new friends.
And quietly, without fanfare, something reawakened in me.
Years later, in my early seventies—an age when many people are told to wind things down—I felt a deeper pull. Not just to learn, but to serve. To bring together everything I had lived, studied, and embodied.
So I went back to school.
I enrolled in an intensive life-coach training program at the Levin Life Coach Academy. It was rigorous, humbling, and deeply affirming. I wasn’t chasing a second career. I was answering a call to integrity.
At 75 years old, I started my own business.
And then—full circle—something extraordinary happened.
Osher offered me the opportunity to teach.
Today, I teach Second Act Experience—a workshop devoted to conscious reinvention, purpose, and possibility in the later chapters of life.
The very place where I once came simply to sit and listen became the place where I now facilitate reflection, conversation, and courageous re-imagining. Not as an expert with answers, but as someone walking alongside others who are asking real questions about what comes next.
Teaching at Osher has been one of the great gifts of my later life.
Each quarter, I meet people who are thoughtful, curious, and awake to their own becoming. People who understand that a second act isn’t about starting over—it’s about claiming what’s essential.
Out of gratitude, I became an Ambassador.
Out of gratitude, I now teach the new-member class each year—welcoming others into this remarkable community that gave me so much long before I ever gave anything back.
At 78, I am still learning.
I am still teaching.
I am still becoming.
And I am profoundly grateful.
Grateful for an institution that honors experience without freezing people in the past.
Grateful for a community that believes growth has no expiration date.
Grateful for the reminder that it is never too late to step forward when something true calls your name.
Sometimes life doesn’t announce itself.
Sometimes it simply offers a classroom, a community, a conversation—and waits to see who will say yes.
