Second Acts

I just came across an inspiring Forbes.com feature story titled "Second Acts" profiling seven men and women who managed to switch tracks in midlife and "find fulfillment along the way."

Here's what one of the seven, Emmy-winning actress Kathryn Joosten, who plays the nosy neighbor on Desperate Housewives, has to say about herself:

Some people in Hollywood think of me as a model for dramatic midlife transitions: suburban housewife to Emmy-winning actress. But I never plotted out a master plan for following my dreams. My career arc seemed perfectly normal to me as it evolved over time. Each phase just seemed to grow naturally out of the one before.


I started out as a nurse. As a teenager growing up in Chicago in the 1950s, I worked part time at a local hospital, where I spent my off hours hanging around the pediatrics unit with a friendly nurse. She inspired me to go into the profession. After graduating from high school and completing a training program, I landed a job at the Psychiatric Institute at Michael Reese Hospital. I was there nine years, eventually rising to head nurse of the largest psychiatric unit. Then I married one of the staff psychiatrists and gave up nursing for a new life as a housewife in suburban Lake Forest.

Ten years later, he got the mistress and I got the children. . . .

To read more, click here.

Note: I took the above photo of Kathryn Joosten from the Forbes.com site.