Creative Aging Rethinking Retirement and Non-Retirement in a Changing World [Hardcover]

Discover Your Unique Gift

Creative aging is a choice&. If we remember that transition always begins with endings, moves on to a wilderness period of testing and trying, and only then do we reach the beginning of something new, then we can embrace this encore period of life with hope and curiosity, remembering always that it is our true nature to be creative, to be always birthing new ways of sharing our planet together.
from the Epilogue

In a practical and useful way, Marjory Zoet Bankson explores the spiritual dimensions of retirement and aging. She offers creative ways for you to share your gifts and experience, particularly when retirement leaves you questioning who you are when you are no longer defined by your career.

Drawing on stories of people who have reinvented their lives in their older years, Bankson explores the issues you need to address as you move into this generative period of life:

• Release: Letting go of the vocational identity associated with your career or primary work
• Resistance: Feeling stuck, stagnant, resisting change
• Reclaiming: Drawing energy from the past, discovering unused gifts
• Revelation: Forming a new vision of the future
• Crossing Point: Moving from stagnation to generativity
• Risk: Stepping out into the world with new hope
• Relating: Finding or creating new structures for a new kind of work

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Making the Extra Years Count 1

1.WHAT NOW?
Rethinking Aging 7

2. RELEASE
The Inner Work of Leaving 23

3. RESISTANCE
Moving Beyond Security 41

4. RECLAIMING
Riches from the Past 55

5. REVELATION
Where Does Newness Come From? 71

6. CROSSING POINT
Joining Inner and Outer Worlds 87