With a high school education only, I was married at twenty-two and gratefully started a family within a year of being married. Over the next six years, we were blessed with three healthy sons, all grown men at this stage of my life. I was a stay at home mom for nine years so I was in my mid-thirties before entering the workforce. This was only on a part-time basis as my children were still young. Within a few years of working part-time, I knew I needed to upgrade my skills to compete for the kind of job I wanted.

I completed a challenging two-year diploma program through distance education in health information management. Opportunities were coming my way because I was taking action. Within a few more years I realized again I needed more education in order to reach for the types of roles I was interested in. I had my sights set on leadership positions. I looked into an undergrad program but I was not sure if this was too much for me. Now in my forties, I worried about my ability to balance my family time, my brain smarts, and my ability to accomplish such a lofty goal of earning a degree. I waded in tentatively with a single course and then another and finally weighed in full scale with a commitment to earn this degree. Five courses in I was offered a management role and now had 60 staff reporting to me. This was a major addition to my workload but I managed to continue to do night school and online courses to attain my dream of having this degree.

A few years later, a new opportunity came my way. This was a full time teaching role and the program coordinator for a brand new program in my field of expertise. I accepted the position and was very nervous that first year. After all, I had never taught before and did I mention I was very uncomfortable with public speaking? It seems this was my forte though and four years into that teaching role, I graduated with an undergrad degree at age forty-nine. Not without a huge hiccup at the end of it though, when I suffered from a pulmonary embolism, a life-threatening condition for many. So now I had a dilemma. How would I tell my family I wanted to start right away on my graduate degree? My husband was very encouraging and two years later I graduated with my Master of Arts in Adult Education at age fifty-one.

A year later the college hired another full-time faculty and I was her mentor. We shared plans for the program and got on well together. She was married in that first year and on the first day of school after summer vacation I got a call that she would not be returning to the college and was in fact going home from the hospital on palliative care. I was devastated and went to visit her every week for the seven weeks she lived. A week before her death she gave me a card stating she wished we had met sooner. She encouraged me to consider something bigger for myself from my current teaching role stating I had so much to share with the world. For nine years, I had endured a one hour daily commute each way and I was getting more and more early classes meaning I had to leave for work in the dark. My entrepreneurial spirit was also pushing me from deep within. So, one year after Linda’s passing, I gave my notice and left my coveted role at the college. Another opportunity had presented itself which gave me the chance to work from home four days a week, lose the two-hour daily commute, and have an extra day to work on my book and other entrepreneurial goals.

In 2015, I flew to California from Toronto, Canada and completed an Infinite Possibilities Training program delivered by Mike Dooley himself. In 2016, I completed a four year journey in writing a book for midlife women. ‘Transforming Venus: How to Get Unstuck and Let Your Inner Goddess out to Play’ was published in May 2017. Yes, at each step of my journey I was dreaming about success and new opportunities and the Universe was conspiring on my behalf for me to achieve these milestones. So, I encourage you to dream it and achieve it because the Universe has your back too!