The Self-Help Podcast with Deepali Nagrani · Deepali

Age is just a number- Starting over at 31, 42 and 50 with Zulma Williams

November 24, 2025·56 min·5 clips

Tupali opens by framing Zulma’s story as a moment of breaking open rather than a tidy success story. Zulma Williams shares how she was born and raised in Argentina before immigrating to the United States at 31. The move is described as a full reset in adulthood, not an easy restart. She later earned her Bachelor of Social Work at 42. At 50, she completed her master’s degree. After that, she became fully licensed and founded Dragonfly Therapy Services. The conversation connects those milestones to a longer process of surviving and rebuilding. Zulma speaks from both lived experience and professional training. Her work centers on trauma, anxiety, and depression. Tupali keeps the exchange grounded in the emotional work beneath the credentials. They talk about the kind of shock that forces a person to choose a direction. Zulma describes that choice in blunt terms: stay down or get up and fight. Mindset becomes a central thread. The discussion pushes on the habit of asking why something bad happened and whether life has finally singled someone out. It also points to the false comfort of thinking terrible things happen somewhere else, until they do not. From there, the story shifts toward what a person does with what has happened. Zulma says she learned to move herself from the bottom of her list to the top. Tupali links that shift to the pressure many women feel to put everyone else first. The conversation treats that change as a form of unlearning, not selfishness. It closes with a gentle call to be brave, be gentle, and keep coming home to yourself. The whole episode stays close to testimony, reflection, and practical meaning-making.

As heard by us

A late-start life story that treats reinvention as work, not magic.

Zulma Williams's path makes reinvention feel earned, not inspirational in the glossy sense. Born and raised in Argentina, she immigrated to the U.S. at 31, finished her BSW at 42, her master's at 50, became fully licensed, and built Dragonfly Therapy Services.

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Why you'd press play

You need proof that starting over at 31 can still lead somewhere real.

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