Your Calling Doesn't Retire

I’m being bombarded with news and information about retirement. 

Social media has targeted me. The culture has decided that it’s time for me to slink off into the night, even though I set my work up 30 years ago, so that retirement wouldn’t be my end-goal.  I created work that I’d enjoy that I could do – for the rest of my life.

Who asks _______________ to retire?  The blank should contain the name of a woman who is well into her eighties, who no one is asking to retire - like Mick Jagger. Unfortunately, women have very few role models for older women, who haven’t slinked off into the night, and who are sharing their voices. Long deceased Mother Theresa? Jane Fonda? Oprah Winfrey? Hazel McCallium?   

Unless you’re from Ontario, you probably don’t know Hazel McCallium. She served 12 consecutive terms as the longest running mayor of Mississauga, Ontario. She retired from being a mayor, when she was 93 and went on to write a memoir, become an advisor to various companies and Universities and the Chancellor at a college before she died! That’s renewal, not retirement. 

We, women come into our own power in our third act. We don’t need to retire from life now – we need to renew our lives, use our voices, show up! 

This is the time when you can create a beautiful life AND meaningful work. 

Your calling doesn’t retire. It keeps calling. The call is to renew, not retire. 

Find a new purpose, create new meaning. Take your foot off the pedal. Decide what you really want and need for your third act. 

REWRITE your story – create a new outcome. 

Now is your opportunity to get out of the box that this culture has put you in – as a woman. As a Black woman this feels like a clarion call for me. 

And your voice is needed. Your heart and your wisdom and your strength is needed in the world, now. 

Let's change the whole conversation. Let's support each-other and make our third act our best act. Because your life is just beginning as a 50+ or a 60+ or a 70+ woman. Now's the time to create what your soul has been nudging you towards for a life-time.

A magical third act. A beautiful life AND meaningful work.

Big love, 

Bev