So glad you found my blog page. Occasionally, I will post articles and thoughts about coaching and life in general. It is meant to be just food for thought. Feel free to send me your comments through the contact form. I will be happy to answer.

From Label to Fulfillment 2/1/26

Repurposing is not about starting over. It’s about starting from what matters. For many people, retirement — or any major life transition — arrives quietly and then all at once. One day you are moving through the world with a clear answer to the question, “What do you do?” And then, suddenly, that answer no longer fits.

Our culture places enormous value on labels. You do X, therefore you are Y. Teacher. Executive. Nurse. Lawyer. Caregiver. Parent. Those labels often serve us well — for decades. They offer structure, identity, purpose, and social shorthand. But after 40+ years of working, raising families, meeting responsibilities, and putting others first, something shifts. The title changes. Or disappears entirely. And then comes the harder question: Who am I now — without the label?

Many people experience retirement as an ending because they’ve been taught to see it that way. The conclusion of productivity. The loss of relevance. The quiet fade-out after a long career. But that framing misses something essential. Retirement — and other critical junctures in life — is not the end of a journey. It is the beginning of a different kind of one.

For the first time in years — sometimes ever — you are invited to define yourself from the inside out. Not by what you produce, but by what you value. Not by what you’ve been called, but by what you care about now. Not by someone else’s expectations, but by your own emerging sense of meaning. This is where repurposing begins.

Repurposing isn’t about finding a new title to replace the old one. In fact, the need for a neat, conventional identity often gets in the way. When we rush to say “I am a…” again, we risk recreating the same constraints we’ve just stepped out of. Instead, repurposing asks a different set of questions: What values have always mattered to me — but didn’t have room before? What parts of myself were postponed, sidelined, or left unexplored? What kind of contribution feels authentic now? What do I want my days to stand for, not just be filled with?

This work can feel unsettling at first. For years, the labels were given. The structure was external. The definition came ready-made. Now, the definition must come from within — and that takes time, patience, and courage. But here’s the truth most people don’t hear often enough: Your worth was never dependent on the label.

Repurposing is not a performance for others. It’s not about explaining yourself at dinner parties or proving you’re still “doing enough.” It’s a deeply personal process of alignment — between who you’ve been, who you are becoming, and what you want the next chapter to express. When you allow yourself that freedom — when you stop trying to fit your life into a familiar box and instead let it take a shape that reflects your values — the result can be extraordinary

Not louder. Not busier. But richer. More intentional. More alive. Repurposing takes time. And when you get there, it can be glorious.

Kindness: A Relational Act of Presence. 2.1.26

Kindness is often described as a soft skill—gentle, optional, a polite add-on to life. But in my world, kindness has never been soft. It has been structural. It has held systems together. It has transformed rooms. It has been the quiet force that changes a hospital waiting area, a classroom, a coaching conversation, and the fragile interior of a human heart. I learned early—through the layered inheritance of family stories and through witnessing how people show up when life cracks them open—that kindness is not an act. It is a way of being.

At Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, when Michelle Seligson and I first began shaping Bringing Yourself to Work, kindness was embedded in the question: What happens when adults are emotionally present for young people? We discovered that real learning—real connection—begins not with curriculum, but with who we choose to be in relationship with. The adult who sits a little closer, who remembers a child’s name, who dignifies their own emotions instead of correcting or hiding them—that person becomes a lifeline. Kindness is the learning.

Years later, inside the heightened, sacred spaces of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, I saw kindness in its most distilled form. A volunteer offering a blanket without speaking. A patient looking up and asking a stranger how they are doing. A hand placed gently on the shoulder of someone waiting for news that might rearrange their life forever. Kindness was not a gesture there—it was oxygen. It moved through the institution silently, like a pulse. It made vulnerability survivable.

And now, in coaching, I see kindness as one of the bravest acts I can choose. Kindness asks us to stay—when our instinct is to fix. To witness—when the story is uncomfortable. To believe in someone’s wholeness—even when they forget it themselves.

Kindness is not niceness. Niceness avoids discomfort; kindness enters it. Niceness glosses over; kindness notices. Niceness says, “How are you?” and moves on. Kindness waits for the real answer.

The more I work—whether writing, supporting someone navigating retirement, or sitting across from a client on Zoom—the more I know this: kindness is relational intelligence in motion. It is seeing the human being in front of you not as a role, a diagnosis, a life stage, or a résumé—but as a story still being written.

Thank you for all the kindnesses I have received this year. They are precious and sustaining.

Women Aren’t Meant to Disappear — Aging Is an Invitation to Take Up Space. 2.1.26

The story of women’s bodies, for some, begins long before we ever look in a mirror. It starts as young girls watching other women tug at their dresses and whisper apologies for eating dessert. By the time we reach adolescence, many of us already understand that our bodies are public currency—evaluated, graded, and compared. Then, midlife arrives, and we are blindsided once again. Hormones shift. Weight settles differently. A body that once felt familiar begins to feel like a stranger. Aging can feel like betrayal, as if time is something we should have been able to outsmart.

But what if we are asking the wrong question? For decades, my professional life centered around emotional intelligence in human spaces—first in educational settings, and later as Director of Volunteer Services & Patient Programs at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I spent my days in a place where the body was not a billboard of worth, but a vessel of survival. I watched patients celebrate the privilege of breathing. No one asked, “Do I look thin?” They asked, “Will I continue to be?”

That experience, and now my work as a life transition coach, has taught me this: our culture has confused appearance with value. Aging exposes that confusion with painful clarity. Women in midlife and beyond are expected to manage careers, care for aging parents, raise children, lead communities, and more. Yet we are simultaneously shamed for the physical evidence of having lived it all. We are praised for discipline when we shrink, warned when we expand, and offered constant “solutions” to reclaim youth. This relentless pressure is not superficial; it is theft. It steals the possibility of standing fully in ourselves.

Aging can be a reclamation. A return to the truth that our bodies are not problems to be solved, but archives of everything we have survived and offered. The women I coach today often arrive with a familiar refrain: “I don’t recognize myself anymore.” My answer is always the same—of course not. You are new. You have changed. And you are allowed to grow into the space your life has created".

Taking up space is a radical act in a world that asks women to compress. To age with visibility and self-compassion is defiant. It is political. We need a cultural shift that honors the bodies of women not for how little they occupy, but for the lives they carry. We need to speak honestly about the silent grief of body change and the profound relief of release.

If I learned one truth from cancer patients, it is this: beauty is not youth. Beauty is presence. So to every woman looking in the mirror and feeling unrecognizable: you are not disappearing. You are arriving. Your body is evidence. Your body is a story. Take up your earned space.