by Erica and Karen

The book is The Little Blue Book On Retirement: By Women, For Women, now available on Amazon. The store is about the message: Not invisible. Not done.

What is the book? Why did we write it? Who is it for?

When we retired from our high powered jobs we found no guideposts for what to do next. Instead, we found barriers and stereotypes. So we decided to figure out what was going on, and then to change the picture.

After five years of experience, we have some perspectives we wish we’d had at the beginning. For example, we now know retirement has stages—abject terror, hopelessness, identity loss, annoyance, defiance, progress, a new paradigm, joy. So even in the darker days you can anticipate something cool ahead.

We decided to put what we have learned into a little book. Not one of those heavy tomes that tells you to figure out your strengths and weaknesses so you can come up with a hobby to fill your days. Those books don’t speak to the new dynamic. This is a light book that goes to the essence of the transition that is retirement—what happens, what to say about your status, how to step toward the new you. And since, for women especially, retirement is viewed as a proxy for aging out, how to assert your continuing connection to the larger world, now and in the decades ahead.

Our book is small in stature but serious in ideas. Keep it in your purse for those days you feel lost. Give it to your best friend, so she doesn’t have to go through retirement without a guide. Even offer it to one of your men friends. For them it will be a revelation.

We hope you will buy the book, we hope you will like it, and we hope you might say nice things about it. 

And for a more public way to signify you are part of the movement--to show the world you're not done, not invisible--we are have launched an online store for tops and totes that will inspire everyone to support the Lustre mission.

All of you have been our inspiration. Thanks!