Retirement. Ten Observations After Seven Years.

By Karen and Erica

Retirement happened to us like a bolt out of the blue—even though we knew it was coming. We fell in headfirst. We went through the first phases—astonishment, consternation, sadness, loss, rejection—in a state of some confusion. Then we pulled up our sequined tights and got to work.

Now it has been seven years, to our great surprise. We are enjoying our status, and we have new perspectives as we have gone through later phases of retirement. Here are the top ten.

1. Our beloved jobs are now history. We loved our work, and our firms, and our colleagues and communities. But we have moved on. We have figured out how to have purpose in our post-career lives, and we have greatly expanded our horizons. We have met amazing women—and men—whose paths we would never have crossed in our prior careers. We love what we are doing now. That is the best surprise of all.

2. Employment needs to be redefined. We don’t want our old jobs back but we do want to have employment opportunities. COVID caused a great deal of workplace rethinking, but one key reality has been generally ignored. People are living a lot longer than they did in the 1950s. Most of us will be physically and mentally sound for decades. All of us have valuable experience that comes only with time. We are an asset the should not be wasted. We need to change the perception that people who have worked for decades suddenly become potted plants when they retire.

3. Gaining control over our time never gets old. It remains a new experience, even now. At first, we rested and had fun. We still do that, but we have also found purpose. Our time is not open-ended and vast, it folds around obligations we have taken on, as well as obligations we already had, like family and friends. There is more of it to shape for ourselves, but it is no longer overwhelming. No more panic in the afternoon.

4. A workweek rhythm is important. We are tempted to sleep in, many days. But we also want to stay connected to the wider world. And we don’t want to work weekends. So we keep (more or less) to the schedule observed by the working world—though we go to the office more than some people we know! Maintaining that cadence keeps us connected.

5. We have new identities. Not entirely new. We lived and worked for decades before we retired, and those years made us who we are today. But we have developed new personas away from our jobs. Those new personas are still dependent on our work, but not to the degree they were when we worked 24/7.

6. New passions can have more of our time. We have time to get involved in different ways. We both are politically involved, and we are also involved in organizations serving missions about which we are passionate—ending childhood poverty, increasing civic awareness, health initiatives for women. But we can do more than contribute in different ways—though non-profits, like corporate America, still can’t seem to rethink their org charts. If they could be a little more creative they would derive greater benefit from the experience of this cohort.

7. We have become comfortable saying we’re retired. For a while there we just would not use any of the “R” words. Too dangerous and debilitating. Now we do—a little. We say we are retired from the practice of law but have founded a company and are advocating for retired career women. That always starts a productive conversation and avoids the blank gazes we used to get when we simply said we had retired. But we are, and always will be, retired, and we feel it devalues what we achieved if we feel squeamish about the fact that we had careers. Amusingly, we are sometimes asked if we are working or retired, and we say both. That flummoxes everyone!

8. Our economic power remains unknown. After we retired we learned that Boomer women are among the wealthiest cohorts in the United States (though some of us are among the poorest.) We also learned that marketers see us only as consumers in decline, interested in bladder control products and little else. That is of course absurdly counter-factual, but it means commercial images of us are inauthentic and degrading. We need to keep pressing marketers to understand our economic power as a group so they will offer products we want and show us as we really are—vital and vigorous.

9. Reinventing clothes is fun. It took us a while to figure out what to wear—and of course COVID was a curve ball. Now that we’re out and about again we dress better than we did during lockdown, but seldom the way we used to. We can be more free. Suits are not mandatory. Lots of dresses and skirts in summer. Patterned pants in winter. Vivid colors. But few designers seem to have us in mind. So we wing it, which can be very creative. Maybe we’ll start a Lustre clothing line! Could be a fun next step.

10. We could move. We’re still living where we lived pre-retirement. But we find it rather liberating to think about the possibility of relocating somewhere exotic for a month. Or a year. We know lots of people making really big changes. Maybe we will too.

If you are at the beginning of this journey, and you find yourself unsettled, that’s normal. It may take a while, but you are in great company and in a wonderful new phase of life.

Wherever you are on the journey, do let us know what you are doing, and share what you have learned along the way.