My house was struck by lightning, my father died suddenly, and my mother moved away back to her hometown.<\/p>\n
That December, still in the throes of grief, we were all struggling. I told the kids, \u201cIt\u2019s been a tough year, but you know what? 2020 is our year. This is the year everything gets better.\u201d I might as well have been speaking to myself.<\/p>\n
As it did for all of us, everything changed again.<\/p>\n
Experiencing the pandemic in Baton Rouge was too much for me. We moved to Austin to quarantine with a friend. Everything felt fresh there. No one was telling me they missed my dad. I enjoyed my outdoor dinners, sitting six feet away from people that felt exciting, not sad, as everyone was new.<\/p>\n
I explored new trails and swam in new lakes. Nothing reminded me of my past. It was fantastic, like I had run away from home, and life was great.<\/p>\n
My company was running with very little of my time, and I entered an online Graduate program in Philosophy at St. John\u2019s College. I was making art, enjoying my newfound relationship with a man, embracing 50, and sending my son off to college. Despite the pandemic, life was good.<\/p>\n
My relationship in Austin evaporated or boiled over. In any case, it was over, and my kids were off on their own. My work was remote, so it was time to pack up again. I didn\u2019t need to stay in Austin.<\/p>\n
I decided I wanted and needed to find a new home, a new life, and a new purpose. When I was deciding where to live next, my friend Beth said something that really stuck with me: \u201cI hear lots of reasons why you\u2019re running away from home, but I don\u2019t hear what you\u2019re running towards.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pointed out that it didn\u2019t necessarily need to be a geographic change. She challenged me to figure out what \u201cgreener\u201d meant to me, not just what was wrong with the life I was living. She explained that running away from home doesn\u2019t give you purpose or vision, and running away from work problems doesn\u2019t bring peace of mind.<\/p>\n
Because she knows how to get me to actually hear her, she quoted Socrates in his response to why someone wasn\u2019t happier when they moved away, saying, \u201cWell, of course not, he brought himself with him.\u201d Even Socrates knew that you couldn\u2019t aimlessly run away to escape the self. The goal, she assured me, was to shed the parts of myself that I didn\u2019t like and not bring them with me.<\/p>\n
Whatever I run towards, I need to make sure I\u2019m not bringing the same old version of myself along. Easy enough, right?<\/p>\n
This was my room. My dorm room.<\/p>\n
I was 50. And moving into a dorm room at St. John\u2019s College in Santa Fe for the summer. It was practical–$2,241 for a single room for 8 weeks. Each week would be approximately the cost of one night in an Air B&B.<\/p>\n
Two months in Santa Fe living in a dorm room. My Master of Arts in Liberal Arts program was $45,000 all-in for a two-year program. For less than the cost of one year of my daughter\u2019s undergraduate program, I would finally complete the degree I had started when I was interrupted by her birth 25 years before.<\/p>\n
Mary, who ran the mailroom, became my friend for the first few days as I borrowed her mail cart to lug the boxes of luxuries I had ordered to make my room something out of House Beautiful<\/em>. A rug, 9-inch mattress topper, curtains, picture hangers for framed artwork, big poof ball beanbag chair to read on, and matching bedding that would make all the undergrad moms know I wasn\u2019t here just for the academics. I was here for the aesthetics, too.<\/p>\n St. John\u2019s isn\u2019t just like going back to college. It\u2019s a deep, philosophical journey following Alice into Wonderland, where Tutors lead classes. We don\u2019t call them professors because they don\u2019t profess to know the truth. They are scholars alongside us (no matter how many PhDs they might hold).<\/p>\n The only textbooks are the real \u201cGreat Books<\/em>\u201d of ancient Greece and the enlightenment and Shakespeare. A curriculum and style of learning that truly engages your mind, regardless of your age.<\/p>\n My dormmates in the Graduate Institute dorm included men and women between 23 and 68. We ate three meals a day together, went to class together, discussed Augustine, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Montaigne\u2019s Essays. Each of us at a different stage of life, discovering the meaning of life together.<\/p>\n We went on excursions to Taos to see the Pueblo built some 5,000+ years before and Ojo Caliente, the hot springs where Doc Holliday tried to treat his consumption, museums, art galleries, hiking. And lots of deep, deep discussions.<\/p>\n One night, we realized we had a representative raised in each of the world\u2019s religious traditions \u2013 Hindu, Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, New Age, Jewish, Buddhist. There were 10 of us in the room. And we were discussing the fall of man from Genesis, the origin of sin and the serpent in the Garden of Eden.<\/p>\n This was it. This was heaven.<\/p>\n The next night was the Trump-Biden debate. We watched it together and discussed it all day. Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats, Green Party, Communists and Apolitical non-voters. We listened to each other. We asked questions of one another. We pulled out our copies of the Constitution and read to get to a deeper meaning. We referenced Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire as we had a civil discussion during a time of echo chambers and thought bubbles.<\/p>\n It is a rare thing in this world to find a tribe of people who are seeking truth and finding it in their own ways. St. John\u2019s encourages discourse to better understand, not debate to prove a point.<\/p>\n I thought I was coming to Santa Fe for the summer to retreat from life in Austin while I figured out what was next. Now I live here permanently. Every day I hike, read for class, sketch the sunset with colored pencils, and write a poem.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve kept the friends from home who matter, and they come out for a little sanctuary and visit from time to time.<\/p>\n Some friends are a little jealous. Some think I\u2019ve lost my marbles.<\/p>\n One woman’s story of finding a new passion later in life <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16135,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201,203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summer-2025","category-spring-summer-2025-columns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16133"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16385,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16133\/revisions\/16385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What did it take to get here:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n
Stafford Wood<\/a> graduated from St. John\u2019s College, May 2025, in liberal arts and entered the Eastern Classics the Eastern Classics program to study Chinese, Japanese, and Indian philosophy and learn Sanskrit. While she is not officially retired, she refers to this as her \u201cpreferment\u201d where she only does what she prefers to do–paint, read, and walk her dog Ajax.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"