I did not plan on getting old. Yet, in December of 2025, I turned 87. For much of my life, I thought of aging as something that happened to others. I would look at people I called "old," never imagining how quickly time would bring me to this very season. And then all at once, I found myself standing here as an elder. I know the science of aging-the ways the body slows, the memory shifts, and the senses change. But to live through it is different than reading about it. I feel it in small but unmistakable ways. I am no longer as strong, quick, or agile as I once was.

More than 47 years ago at age 40, Burt Nordstrand began his recovery from compulsive overeating and alcoholism. He was a successful entrepreneur who transformed the self-service gasoline and convenience store industry and, in 2016, sold his company SSG Corporation, for more than $50 million. Over the years, he also developed, owned and operated multiple commercial real estate development properties. In 2011, Norstrand created COR Retreat, an affordabe residential, 12-Step recovery program for food addicts and, by 2025, COR had served more than 2,300 people from around the United States and the world. At age 87, Nordstrand reflects on the challenges-and gifts-of aging in this honest and practical account that anyone will find inspiring.

Carol Pine has been a professional writer and business journalist for 50 years. She has written 48 corporate history and business biographies and authored prize-winning business columns for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press newspaper and Corporate Report magazine. She started her career as a weekly newspaper editor in suburban Minneapolis. For 15 years, she served as an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism, her alma mater. Carol is in long-term recovery from alcoholism and lives full time in Savannah, Georgia where she co-founded a nonprofit: the Interfaith Addiction and Recovery Coalition.