By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
Were you ready for retirement when you moved into that part of your life? Not just financially – but physically, emotionally, spiritually?
Are you facing that transition and find yourself with more questions than answers?
Wherever you are in this phase of life, are you looking for some realistic guidance?
Local authors Patricia Peters Martin, M.S., PhD and Helene De Montreux Houston, M.S. APRN, may have the advice you are looking for in their latest book, “Well-Come to Retirement: Thriving in Your Third Act.”
Next month the authors will be sharing insights from their book as keynote speakers at the Baystate Health Senior Class Autumn Festival, slated for Sept. 14 at the Baystate Health Education Center in Holyoke, MA.
Inspired by the real-life questions of clients in Martin’s practice – and the pair’s interactions with people they call “successful agers” – “Well-Come to Retirement” offers the real-life stories of 40 retirees, presenting insight and information designed to help readers “create a third act filled with purpose and meaning.”
As Martin shared with WGBY Connecting Point host Carrie Saldo during a December 2018 interview about their book, “In my clinical practice as a psychologist, I have heard more and more people say, ‘When do I retire?’ ‘Why do I retire?’ “What am I going to do with those 40 extra hours a week? So Helen and I, being in our 60s and 70s, decided it was time to write this book.”
The facts don’t lie
It’s an unprecedented time in American society. According to statistics from AARP 10,000 individuals turn 65 – the traditional age of retirement – every day, a trend that is expected to continue until 2030. The Baby Boom is rapidly turning into a retirement boom, and Martin and Houston said they saw a need to help this tsunami of soon-to-become Third Agers prepare for what come next.
“For the first time [in history] there will be more Baby Boomers than people under the age of 65,” Martin told Prime during a recent interview about the book. “How are we going to help [these individuals] see this as an exciting time in life?”
They also saw a need for a new approach to the concept of retirement planning. When the pair took a look at the plethora of retirement advice available in print and online, Martin said they found a wealth of information on, well, preparing your wealth so individuals would be financially secure in their later years.
What was missing, they said, was information that addressed the questions that kept coming up with their clients approaching retirement – “What am I going to do now? How am I going to have purpose and meaning in my life if I retire?”
A holistic approach to the next phase
“Wellness is a concept we talk about throughout life,” Martin said, referring to the book’s use of “Well-Come” in the title. “And what we found is [that] it’s not really something that’s put out there as looking at holistic wellness as we age.”
But it was an approach the pair saw merit in exploring. Houston said she and Martin were both aware, personally, of people who – despite society’s notion of what aging should be – seemed to be thriving in their later years.
“I had just met so many inspiring people who had such interesting lives later in life, and I thought that could be represented,” Houston told Saldo during the Connecting Point interview.
They were also aware through their practices, the pair told Prime, of those who had not done as well, and slipped into depression when faced with retirement. Intrigued by the individuals they called “positive agers” the two set out to discover what made the difference, and how they came to thrive after retirement.
“What makes it so that they do so well? Houston asked. “What is it about their lives and the way they live their lives that make their Third Act, so to speak, more satisfying than other people?”
Houston – who at 70, calls herself a “continuer” because she still works one day a week – said she and Martin thought the best way to discover how and why some individuals seemed to be thriving in retirement was to go to the source and get their personal stories. So they approached individuals they knew, and those who agreed to work with them were asked to answer a specific set of questions. The two then used each individual’s answers to tell their retirement tales.
All contributors had the opportunity to approve their story before publication. Among those who shared their stories were longtime WGBY host Jim Madigan – whose retirement was precipitated by a surprise diagnosis and who passed away three weeks after approving his story – and longtime Republican columnist and nonagenarian Barbara Bernard.
“Well-Come to Retirement” wasn’t the first time the authors had used this approach in researching a book. Listening to patients’ stories also inspired their initial offering, “The Other Side of the Couch.”
For this book, the authors also used a structure called the “Eight Dimensions of Wellness” – defined as emotional, financial, social, spiritual, occupational, physical, intellectual and environmental – to organize the information, grouping it so there were a quartet of stories to represent each concept. Martin noted the categories and their definitions were originally developed at the University of California Davis for use helping college students learn to balance their school and personal lives, but the holistic overview they present “does have applications throughout life.”
Houston said in addition to looking at the different types of retirement – from mandatory to surprise, perhaps because of illness or a layoff – to voluntary to elective – they also examined the unexpected situations, such as the death of a spouse, and the myriad adjustments that retirement brings, through the stories in the book.
Martin said recurring themes, such as the importance of maintaining social connections, discovering some kind of purpose in your Third Act, staying well physically and the opportunity to discover – or rediscover – your creativity seemed to echo through may of the stories in the book.
“Research at the University of San Diego notes that social engagement is the greatest predictor of longevity as any of the factors,” Houston said during the Connecting Point interview.
Another factor in a successful Third Act, according to the pair, is continuing to work if you find it satisfying, and transitioning from careers to volunteer work if that better fits your new lifestyle.
“Who says you have to retire at 65 or 66, especially if your lifespan now is 90?” Martin said.
As she emphasized during the pair’s December Connecting Point interview, “Just because we age doesn’t mean we have to get old.”
Craft your own retirement ‘plan’
The authors said they heard a spectrum of opinions about the meaning – and reality – of retirement from the individuals they interviewed. Some who were hesitant to leave their careers found they loved the chance to try and do new things, while others, like Bernard, who still pens a regular newspaper column at 90-plus, advised “Don’t retire!”
However you choose to spend your Third Act, Martin and Houston advise that you plan it with care, and take a holistic wellness approach.
“The word retirement…comes from the French word retirer, which means to withdraw,” Martin said. “We say don’t do that, engage, stay active, stay vital, find something that has meaning for you. It might be that you spend a lot of time with your grandchildren, it doesn’t mean you have to find a new job.”
Connect with the authors
Martin and Houston will be the keynote speakers at this years’ Baystate Health Senior Class Autumn Festival on Sept. 14. The event, which runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., will take place at the Baystate Health Education Center, 361 Whitney Ave, Holyoke, MA. Susan Fontaine, Loyalty Programs senior coordinator said Martin and Houston would be taking the stage at 10:45 a.m. for the keynote address.
“Then we’ll serve lunch followed by a Q&A session with the presenters and some free screenings and flu shots,” she added.
Fontaine said she met Houston at a prior event, and learned about her book, ‘Well-Come to Retirement: Thriving in Your Third Act” at that time. When she and some colleagues reviewed the book, the information in it seemed a perfect fit for this year’s fall event.
“We’re calling our Autumn Festival “Wellness in the Third Act,” Fontaine shared. “Our audience is 55 and older – people thinking about retirement or retired, [and] they have relatable takeaways [in their book], real concrete things that people can use when they are retired or planning to retire.”
To register for the Sept. 14 Autumn Festival, visit www.baystatehealth.org\senior-class or call 794-5200.
