Who knew that retirement could be a time for transformation? And that one badly needed to make a shift in one’s life?

Somehow I had missed America’s Civil Rights movement. But when I landed here at Friends House, the Diversity Committee was sponsoring a 2-3 month study group that presented me with what it felt like to grow up Black in America. The non-Black participants talked openly about their challenges in having to counter the impulse to take charge, or think they knew better than the Black person they were accompanying. We all learned from the Black participants what it felt like to be dissed and to carry the burden of slavery.

I found this dialogue opened me up to question the America I had grown up in with its norm of White men being in charge and the expectation of a hierarchical system where some were on top, some were on the bottom.

As I started to wonder where exactly I was as an Asian American in all of this, I began to understand my own status as a minority in America. And in that process began to shift to an appreciation of communities that were not based on hierarchy with their winners and losers.

The Native American community was one such model. My Quaker Meeting another one. And now Friends House has become such a place of support and acceptance where I can risk growth.

And so transformation continues as I grab hold of this final chapter of my life to finally learn how to slow down and deepen with my community. The goal is not perfection but being human. We are in this together. Richness lies ahead.