Category: Aging

2/1/19

On March 12th I will close the office door on my forty-five year career as a clinical social worker. What a privilege it’s been.  I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to be in a helping relationship with so many courageous people who entrusted me to help them solve problems, to deal with the challenges of mental illnesses, to navigate life’s twists and turns, to make better lives for themselves and their families. I’ve learned so much from them and from the exceptional colleagues I’ve been fortune to associate with in each practice setting.

I’m ready for this change. I’m tired and want to use my energy for different things now. Yet the process is proving harder than I’d expected, more emotional, with more anxiety.  It feels very strange, sometimes scary to apply the “R” word to myself.  Retirement. What’s that going to look like?

I am standing in liminal space.  Liminal derives from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold. Liminal spaces can be physical, like  a door way, a stairway, a crossroads; a crossing over space.  But my liminal space is an emotional, psychological  in between place that is a transition time, a passage from one  status to another. I am in the process of leaving something behind but I am not yet in the something new .

Leavings and letting go are not my strongest suit. I form strong attachments. I feel emotionally vulnerable in this liminal space. This quote from Sarah A. Allen captures  my experience and reassures me.

“She understood that the hardest times in life to go through were when you were transitioning from one version of yourself to another.”

By the time one is nearly 70, there have been many of those times, I remind myself.

This liminal time, and the next which will be when I close that office door for good, are also openings, opportunities for  my spiritual growth. Recently I’ve been exploring what it means to surrender. This time is certainly an invitation to that practice, an invitation to trust the process, to let go of role and identity based on work, on doing. It feels uncertain, disorienting like time in the wee hours of the morning when one rests in between sleep and wakefulness, when  nothing feels solid.  I want to be fully present in this time, to “Honor the space between no longer and not yet”, as Nancy Levin writes. This is a time and space where something new can emerge if I can allow myself to stand still with faith and trust that the process will unfold as it is meant to do.

If you’re standing in liminal space, too, this meditation by John O’Donahue  may speak you as it does to me.

 

February 7, 2018
On Friday last Dale and I headed for our local Social Security office. Since he is retiring on 2/9/18, his employer provided Blue Cross will become secondary to Medicare as our primary insurance carrier. We each signed up for Medicare Part A when we hit 65 but didn’t need Part B. Now we do.

Since starting my professional career in 1974 I’ve almost always had insurance through my employers.There was a brief time, when I was at home for three years raising young children, when my now ex-husband
provided my insurance through his work. When we separated it was very important to me to get a job with health insurance and other good benefits.

When Dale started talking with me about the possibility that he could put me on his insurance as his domestic partner, at his expense, it meant a lot to me. This was a generous offer that further and tangibly reflected the nature of our relationship. Practically speaking, it also means that after
retirement I will continue to have Blue Cross insurance. I won’t have to purchase a secondary insurance on the open market. My employer of 30 years does not offer this benefit to retirees. I still remember when, as a much younger person, I realized that fact with dismay and shock. Ironically, I am employed by a large health care system.

At the same time I registered a little anxiety at the idea of giving up my own insurance. In November, when it was time for me to select benefits for 2018, I nervously asked Dale more than once if he was sure it had gone through, that I would really be covered on his plan. Despite reassurances I didn’t relax until I saw the print out of his benefit selections. I still don’t have my own insurance card. It feels weird to be carrying a copy of a card with his name on it but it’s worked so far when I’ve had to use it.

I’ve also been surprised to realize that the idea that Medicare will be my primary insurance come March doesn’t feel very good. I’m trying to understand this. On the one hand I’m very grateful for Medicare, for myself, other older adults and for people with disabilities like many of my clients. On the other hand, I think I must have some ego wrapped up in having  had excellent insurance connected with my work. I’ve never used Medicare Part A, never had to pull out that card in a doctor’s office like other senior
citizens do. I’ll be sixty nine next month but I feel far younger. I know I’m aging. I can feel it, but I guess I don’t want to be looked at as “old”.  What being “old” means to me  warrants lots of investigation. Medicare is challenging my denial, darn it!

Like many of the projects that excite me but go on the back burner “for now”, my blog barely began before it was neglected. Initially, I thought that I had to wait for my son to design my website so I kept putting it off. Since his paid work comes first, I still don’t have the website despite his best intentions and generous heart. Then other things took my time and attention; life happened.

I’m still working, writing this on lunch break. It seems a good time to embrace my original plan. Things are changing. My fiancée has decided to retire next month. A number of things came together for him and he is ready. I’m very happy for him, that he is making this happen. Honestly, I’m envious, too. That’s probably not my best-self reacting but my humanity showing up. I’m getting past it but there was an initial phase I had to work through when I thought “Wait a minute….I’m older and was supposed to retire first!” We had talked about me retiring in 2019 while he continued working part time for another year. That plan needed to change and my thoughts and feelings along with it.

The end of March 2019 is the retirement date I’m aiming for, a little more than a year away. This seems a good time to blog, to prepare, to reflect, to explore. An acquaintance decided on her 50th birthday to try (at least) one new thing each month. This idea appeals to me. I plan to focus my choices within the framework of preparing to retire in the broadest sense.

My activity for January (and one Saturday morning a month through April) will be attending a gallery education class (the Dr. Dave Gallery Group) with two friends, at the nearby Toledo Museum of Art. We meet for the first session on 1/20/18. I’m excited! Learning in an art museum seems to be the perfect way of engaging both the left and right brain hemispheres in one activity.

I’ve read that as we age the two halves of our brains communicate more with one another than they do when we are young, perhaps helping to compensate for some negative effects of aging. Science Daily reported on 9/17/17 that a Duke University Dept. of Neurology study tested “some controversial ideas about how the brain reorganizes as we age.” Simon Davis, Ph.D., stated that the results suggest that “the aging brain maintains healthy cognitive function by increasing bilateral communication.”

I’m all for that! I want my brain to be as healthy and functional as possible now and during my “golden years”. If Dr. Dave’s class can help with that at the same time I’m having fun with friends and nurturing my soul by viewing beautiful creations, who could ask for anything more?