What do you do when the vehicle for your dream disappears, but the purpose behind the dream remains?
In 2019, at fifty-two years old, I packed up my life in Maine and moved over a thousand miles away to Indiana. Most people my age were thinking about retirement accounts, grandchildren, and the final chapters of their careers. I was preparing to become a student again. I wasn't running away from something. I was running toward something—a dream I had carried for years. I wanted to study philanthropy at the highest level. I wanted to contribute to the field I loved. I wanted to earn a PhD.
Leaving Maine meant leaving the place that had shaped me. It meant leaving friends, professional networks, familiar roads, and a career I had spent years building. But I believed the sacrifice would be worth it. My motivation was much bigger than earning a degree.
I wanted to pass on what I had learned. I wanted to help shape the next generation of philanthropic leaders. I wanted to use my experience to advance equity and community-led philanthropy. I wanted my work and knowledge to have a broader impact.
The PhD was never the ultimate goal. The PhD was the path I believed would allow me to fulfill that mission. By the time I applied to the doctoral program, I had already built a successful career in philanthropy. I wasn't looking for a new profession. I was looking for a new way to contribute. After nearly two decades in foundation work, I saw how grantmaking decisions affected communities. I had watched foundations struggle with issues of power, equity, and accountability. I had witnessed both the promise and the limitations of philanthropy. I wanted to help future leaders understand those lessons before they inherited positions of influence. I imagined myself in a college classroom, sharing not only theories and research but also the hard-earned wisdom that comes from practice.
At fifty-two years old, I believed I was beginning the next chapter of my professional life. I didn't know it then, but the move to Indiana would become the most consequential decision of my life. I thought I was moving toward the career I had always wanted. I had no idea how much of myself I would lose—and eventually have to rebuild—along the way.
Some would say I just need to rediscover myself, but I can’t go back to the person who left Maine in August, 2019. That woman had a thriving career, had financial stability, had confidence in her professional trajectory, believed a PhD would open doors, and hadn't yet experienced the disappointments and losses that followed. I can't rediscover her because she no longer exists.
But I can rebuild. Rebuilding is different. Rebuilding acknowledges the damage. Rebuilding acknowledges the loss. Rebuilding acknowledges that some things cannot be restored exactly as they were. And it also suggests that something new can be constructed from what remains.
Not failure and redemption. Not falling and rising. Rebuilding. Rebuilding is messy. It's slow. It's uncertain. Most days, I’m not even sure what I’m building toward. When I think of where I am now, and what I lost career-wise, I realize I am not a woman trying to rediscover myself, but a woman who once again is standing amidst the rubble, trying to figure out what materials are left.
At 52, I left a successful career in Maine to pursue a dream. By 58, I have a second master's degree instead of a PhD, significant debt, grief over what happened, and a job that pays the bills but isn't where I expected to be. Most days I feel like stopping it here and calling it a tragedy. But deep in my heart, I know the story isn’t over. The question is: How do I rebuild a life when the blueprint I spent years following no longer works?
So maybe this isn't just about a failed PhD after all. Perhaps it's about what happens when a woman in her fifties takes an enormous risk, loses far more than she expected, and then has to decide whether she will spend the rest of her life mourning the dream or building something new from the pieces that remain. The rebuilding is far from complete. I am still in the middle of it. Maybe my story isn’t just about what happened in the PhD program - the conflict, the comprehensive exams, or even the degree itself. Maybe it's the experience of having a life plan collapse in my late fifties and having to build a new one while carrying grief, debt, disappointment, and uncertainty.
The woman who left Maine wasn't foolish or naïve. She was courageous, had a successful career, a respected reputation, and a comfortable life. She chose to risk those things because she believed she could contribute more—to students, to the philanthropy sector, and to the cause of advancing equity.
