Lordy lordy, life changed at 40: How getting laid off pushed me in just the right way

It was a few weeks before my 40th birthday and I got called into my boss's office. I could tell by the look on her face that it was going to be a "close the door" type of meeting.

Sure enough, in a matter of minutes, I had been laid off.

I left work and sat in my car and felt overwhelming shame and embarrassment. Not because I was suddenly unemployed but because I had worked hard for so many years and had nothing to show for it.

I didn't own my own home. I'd never paid into a pension fund, and I had little savings. I did, however, have personal debt and the feeling that I had wasted nearly two decades of my life.

In that moment, I knew I had to make a change. It wasn't about wanting more. It was about wanting something anything.

I had wanted to go back to school for years but had been too scared to make the leap. How would I pay my bills? Did I even remember how to be a student?

Whatever the answers, I knew I had little choice.

So, like more and more Canadians over 40, I decided to go back to school and to retool my entire life. I enrolled in the journalism program at College of the North Atlantic. It was a program I had wanted to do for a long time.

A bump in the road

I spent the next few weeks buying binders and loose leaf, making sure to have duotangs and pens for every assignment. Those were the supplies I used the last time I was in school, nearly 17 years earlier.

I would learn that students had become considerably more high-tech over the years. It was a now a world of laptops and smartboards, where nothing is actually passed in on paper but rather sent to a cloud.

An entirely new student world had developed. It was a world, however, I almost didn't actually get to see.

About two weeks before classes began, my dad, at 75 years old, suffered a major heart attack. All life plans were instantly put on hold, replaced now by dye test results and heart monitors.

It was a now a world of laptops andsmartboards,where nothing is actually passed in on paper but rather sent to a cloud.

I figured school would have to wait as my main job would now be getting my family, and myself, through this ordeal.

I remember telling my parents of my plans to postpone my semester. It was a plan that was instantly met with anger from them.

They made me promise that whatever happened with my dad, I would return to school on schedule.

So, in between hospital visits and making sure my mom was eating, I poured everything I had into my classes.

A few weeks later, my dad would undergo a quintuple bypass. Caring for him became a full-time job. I learned to quickly balance it with my school work. A social life became a memory.

It's strange to admit, but it all became a blessing for me because it forced me to focus on what needed to be done in the most efficient way possible. It also gave me the chance to strengthen my bond with my dad.

My life with CBC

I completed the post-diploma journalism program at CNA. As part of it, I was lucky to be selected for a CBC student internship.

It was a goal I had focused on since the first day of the program. The internshipwas an intense five weeks but it gave me the chance to report and write, and even appear on Here & Now, a show I had grown up watching.

Now, a year and a half later, I've been able tofulfila lifelong dream of hosting a CBC Radio One show Newfoundland Morning, with my co-host Bernice Hillier.

I have tremendous pride in the work I do with CBC.

For the first time in nearly two decades, I have a sense of pride in myself,too.

I've met many other people whomade big changes when they turned 40.

Some were fuelled by the need for more money. Some because the changing job markets had made them obsolete.

For me, it was the need to never feel like I did that day, when I got laid off, and I knew I needed to change everything.

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