The tortoise crossed the finish line.

I spent 32 years in the corporate world before I made a major life pivot into counseling — and looking back, it feels less like a detour and more like the universe realigning me with a path I'd stepped off of early in college, when I originally desired to be a psychiatrist.

Instead, I went into IT consulting and the corporate world. I built a career and a reputation, often as one of the few women in the room, even in recent years.

Then came what I've come to call my “flame out” period — a hard stretch that forced me to actually take stock of what I wanted, and to admit that it wasn't more of what I already had. That burnout brought me back to my original interest: mental health. So I went back to grad school, and for ten years I paralleled my corporate job with counseling studies, clinical training, and client work. The tortoise crossed the finish line: I retired from corporate life and stepped fully into counseling as my encore career.

My own therapy has been part of that transformation, and it still is. I don't think I'll ever be a finished, fully complete person — no one ever is. Yet I desire more richness in my soul in this second half of my life.

I've never been able to curb my desire to learn and experience new things.

Over the years that's meant learning golf, salsa dancing, being mom to three wonderful dogs, traveling to more than twenty countries, a couple of literal cliff jumps, languages, and as much exposure to different cultures as I could get. These days, serenity is more appealing to me — time with the people I love, walks in the woods with my dog, Pilates, a vegetable garden, my spiritual life, and daring to do a silent retreat, which was awesome.