Shout Out To All Retired Baby Boomer Women!
I always like to support other baby boomer women. So when Roxanne Jones came to me to ask to share her new book project about what retirement is really like, I said “yes.” She is looking for retired baby boomer women to share their insights. If you fit the bill read on. If not, perhaps share this post with a female friend who is retired.
About Roxanne
Roxanne is an award-winning freelance copywriter specializing in health and medicine, and blogger at Boomer Haiku (now on hiatus). She turned 65 in 2018 and is on a glide path (versus a hard stop) toward retirement as she figures out what it’ll look like for her. She lives in Cumberland Foreside, Maine, with her husband and cat (who are both retired).
A Guest Post From Roxanne Jones
We baby boomer women fought hard to claim our rightful place in the working world, blazing a trail for the generations that followed. Now that thousands of us are turning 65 every day and transitioning away from our careers, we’re also charting new territory when it comes to retirement.
A book now in development promises to be a guidebook for this journey.
Entitled Voices from the Other Side…of Retirement, it will contain insights on what retirement is really like from women who’ve already left the working world. But unlike most retirement resources that focus on financial planning, Voices will speak to the humanside of this transition, addressing the emotional, physical, spiritual, relationship, and everyday joys and challenges that this stage of life can present.
And if you’re a retired woman, you can help shape its content.
My co-author Leslie Inman and I are inviting retired women to add their voices to this book by sharing the story of what their retirement experience looks and feels like, what they’ve learned—and what they wish they’d known before they stepped away from work.
If you’d like to be part of this project and share your hard-earned insights about retirement, simply go to www.retirementvoices.com and complete our online questionnaire. Submission deadline is April 30, 2019. If your submission is accepted (in whole or in part), you’ll receive a free copy of Voices when it’s published.
I became a yoga instructor after I retired early from my corporate career.
Based on the responses we’ve received to date, there are as many approaches to retirement as there are individual women—but common themes are emerging, too. They include:
♥ Time management—Finding the right balance between total freedom and tightly structured time can be a challenge. Some women delight in tossing their to-do list and having a calendar free from commitments. Others feel that they need more structure to their day, and struggle to find the right balance between “enough” and over-committing. Most are telling us that this can be an ongoing challenge.
♥ Relationships—Many women say that they were surprised when their work friendships fell by the wayside post-retirement. Others tell of the desire to cut draining or superficial relationships out of their life, and forge new, more enriching affiliations (and how they’re doing this). Renegotiating boundaries or expectations with a spouse or partner is often mentioned (which we think will make for very interesting reading!).
♥ Finding purpose—Some of the most compelling responses address how women have sought to stay engaged in a meaningful way, and continue to feel relevant when their career is no longer front and center.
The concept behind the Voices project is that of women supporting women. We have been truly moved by each respondent’s willingness to share what she’s learned with other women who have yet to retire—and to do so with such candor, humor, self-awareness and insightfulness.
The more retired women we hear from, the more powerful and enlightening this book will be. We hope we can count you among the women who will help light the way for others by sharing your retirement story!
