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Richmond Coach Takes a New Approach to Aging

Richmond coach takes new approach to aging
By Sally Pollak, Free Press Staff Writer
October 27, 2006

Melita DeBellis was 40 when she left Washington, D.C., and a career as a lawyer and human resources executive. She moved to Vermont, where she had gone to college. She reassessed her life.

"In a sense, it was the start of my own personal transformation," said DeBellis, 50, of Richmond. "I realized that I wasn't making the right choices for myself and I was looking for a different direction."

Eventually, she became a life coach, helping other find new and fulfilling directions in their personal and professional lives. Her primary interest is in a stage of life that is sometimes called the "third age."

"The third age is a reference to an emerging life stage made possible by extended longevity," DeBellis said. "It's a time in our lives when we can start looking more inward as to what our definitions of success are and what we want for our lives."

It is often marked by nearing the end of a phase that has involved meeting other people's needs and expectations, and their ideas of what we should and shouldn't do, DeBellis said.

"It's a time for experiencing growth and renewal as a result of beginning to make different choices for yourself that are rooted in an inward sense of what's important for you," she said.

One factor that sets that this stage apart from others is that years and decades after 50 are sometimes not approached with relish or excitement. In helping people think about their 50s and 60s, it might require helping them understand aging in a different way, according to DeBellis.

"The pictures, the images, the cultural imprints don't exactly draw you forward," she said. "It's changing the image of what aging means and redefining what success is. It's not really about aging, but about fully becoming all these pieces of yourself that have been left undeveloped over the years."

In working with clients, DeBellis helps them recognize what's important to them and identify a direction they'd like to head. She then assists them in taking steps toward that personal shift.

Some clients are interested in a new career after many years in a certain profession. Others are nearing retirement and don't want to approach it in traditional ways. Some people are seeking a "more mindful" path and want to turn their focus to something with "heart and meaning," DeBellis said. In her own journey, a sometime zig-zaggy path from lawyer to human resources executive to personal coach, it has taken time for the transformation to feel real and complete. This is because it involves letting go of one identity, one that is perhaps decades in the making, and embracing one that is appropriate and suitable to this emerging time of life.

"Third Age is about being able to shift our focus from external expectations to making decisions based on our individual, internal sense of what is important, satisfying, and fulfilling and by doing so, experiencing a remarkable period of second growth and renewal that traditionally might not have been expected at this time of life," DeBellis wrote in an e-mail. "But because we are living longer, we have a longer period to direct our focus inward and experience the benefits of doing so."

Since she moved to Vermont, DeBellis has changed her profession, gotten married and become a stepmother to two sons.