Your Identity? You’re Still You. Just More So.

By Karen and Erica

Our identities, like yours, are drawn from many sources.

We are both wives and mothers, and for four decades we were lawyers. Other elements contributed to our identities, but these were the big ones.

How we were viewed by our children changed over time. First we were essential, then we were central, then we got clueless and sidelined (until some drama occurred or money was needed) and then we regained our wits and achieved an adult relationship with our children. These child-driven pivots were unsettling to our identities–were we really so dumb all of a sudden? But eventually we realized that although our relationships changed, our identities remained were the same.

Our relationships with our careers were different. When our careers were over, they were done. There would be no next phase. After our careers concluded, there was no going back.Or forward. This element of our identities was gone. Not completely, of course. We will never lose what we learned during the decades we worked. And we now know that this body of learning formed the foundation for our next phase. But until we figured out what that would be, we were in a bit of a fog. We had spent our lives moving forward. We absolutely did not wish to say we had been lawyers. But what was there to say about our post-retirement identities? Even Ulysses S. Grant wondered.

After leaving the highest office in the land, former President Ulysses S. Grant found himself grappling with the challenges of adjusting to civilian life. As he candidly confided in a letter to a close friend, “I am now simply Ulysses S. Grant, and I am trying to get used to it.”

We know that post-career identity uncertainty is felt by many of our members—though not all. We have heard numerous comments to suggest it is sad that we so identified with our jobs, and we should just get over it. We congratulate those who have a seamless transition, but we disagree. We spent many of our waking hours at work, and we loved our jobs, We think it would be odd if we had not been left a little—or a lot—adrift after those jobs ended, overnight. And since we chose our careers at a time when we had to overcome all kinds of obstacles to get those jobs in the first place, and remained in those jobs only by overcoming even more obstacles, we think it would be sad, and weird, if we did not identify with our careers.

Some also think that anyone who feels as we do must have had shriveled lives. Again, we disagree. Our careers involved all kinds of people who greatly enriched us, and intellectual tests that we loved and that kept us nimble. And our careers were not separate from our personal lives. We made friends of our colleagues, and we brought our families into our jobs when it seemed interesting or useful. Our lives were integrated. We had no concept of work/life balance. So the loss of identity is to be expected. And mourned.

Amid these transitions, people often experience a sense of detachment from their sense of self — an encounter known as identity loss. Irrespective of the degree of wealth or prestige achieved in one’s career, anyone can encounter the same sentiment as Grant did, mourning the individual they once were prior to retirement.

But for us the loss, though disorienting, was fleeting. Our careers were done, but we came to understand that we were not. We were still the same people we had been before we retired. Our identities had been formed through our lives, including by our careers, and that would not change. We had learned that work brings purpose, and joy, so we knew that’s what we needed to find in order to create one element of our post-career identities. It was not obvious at first how we might accomplish that objective. No-one seemed interested in offering us work that made sense. The path forward was challenging. But no more challenging than when we were first entering the workforce, when it was assumed we were playacting as lawyers while we looked for husbands. After we retired  \we were assumed to be looking for busywork because that’s all we could do, before we either ascended to heaven or descended into some mental abyss. Equally off base.

We kept working at the challenge, and ultimately came up with Lustre. But long before we had a concrete vision, we developed some ideas about the structure of the future. We knew our lives would involve work and purpose–different from the all-encompassing nature of our careers, but challenging and fun. As soon as we understood that, our post-career identities, built on our decades of life, began to take shape.

If you chose a career you loved, and then worked for decades, you know how to move forward,. The shock of retirement is real, and will take a toll. There is tangible loss, and sadness, and uncertainty. But that’s life, right? Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, as Alfred, Lord Tennyson put it. Same with your career. It was great, you loved it, it is over, and what you learned will guide you to the next step.

We like the way Richard Branson puts it—life is not a journey to retirement,  It is a journey, with fits and starts and turns along the way. Retirement is a big pivot—but not the death of identity. Just a turning point toward a renewed identity—one that you started building decades ago. When you get your footing back, you will begin to enjoy the journey, and when that happens, your identity will coalesce in a wonderful new way that will bring you joy.