By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
Whatever you call it, the lengthening period of life between a traditional retirement age and death are a somewhat uncharted territory for the 10,000 people who will reach that milestone every day through 2030 – not to mention those already busy navigating these years.
Though improved health care has given the majority of aging Americans more active years between 65 and 80 – or 90, or 100 – how to plan for and use those years presents questions that relatively few in previous generations have had to confront.
Questions like: how should I use this time? What are my goals, and purpose in this stage of life? And the most dreaded question of all – how can I confront and prepare for my eventual death?
“With all of these new options come new challenges, because we’re going through something that our parents were never afforded,” said 57-year old Kendren White, dean of Community Services at Holyoke Community College and co-founder of the college’s Living Fully at 55+ program, now in its second year. “[We have] longer lifespan, better healthcare and all these other options for housing and for doing something that you always wanted to do but didn’t have the opportunity.”
Holyoke Community College’s (HCC) “Living Fully at 55+” isn’t the first program to try and address some of these new challenges. AARP launched its traveling “Life Reimagined” single-session seminar to help individuals begin to envision their retirement a year or so back, and local senior centers and libraries have offered lectures on such timely life stage topics as estate planning, living wills and understanding hospice on an ongoing basis.
But “Living Fully” is the first local program to offer a slate of seminars – some in a one-day format, others in multi-day meetings – that let attendees begin to explore a few of these new questions at their own pace.
Seminars slated for the spring 2017 semester include: “Exploring Your Legacy” (March 21); Hearing Loss: What You Need to Know Regarding Treatment Options” (March 29), “Aging In Place” (April 19); “Memory, Dementia and Alzheimer’s” (April 18); “Don’t Downsize Your Life. Right Size it!” (May 2); “Elder Law & Estate Planning” (May 15 to June 5); “Being Mortal: Talking About Your Advance Directives” (May 23) and “Why Not do What You Love?” – taught by Living Fully at 55+ co-founder Martha Johnson (April 25 to May 9). Most programs meet in the early afternoon. Registration fees, which range from $19 to $85, are determined by seminar content. For more information call 413-552-2123 or email vsemyrog@hcc.edu.
White said the idea to offer these types of seminars and “get people in their 50s, 60s, even 70s” back on the college campus to talk about this next stage of life sprang from the pitch Johnson made to him about two years ago.
“She was proposing to do a class on [her book] “Why Not Do What You Love?” focused on retirement, pre-retirement, post-retirement,” he said, adding that beyond exploring the challenges of longevity and purpose, the book – and proposed class – also touched upon how “many folks identities change” when work or career is no longer the driving focus of their lives.
“This age group is expecting so much more,” White continued. “But they have, sometimes, a difficult time sorting out how to accomplish all that they want to do, and how … to take on their new role.”
Johnson – who is now 74 – said the impetus behind her book and the related seminar she now teaches, stemmed from the life-changing experience of being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at age 57.
“I suffered significant losses – my mother, my health, my identity, my future, my livelihood, my business,” said Johnson, who prior to her diagnosis had operated a management consulting and leadership coaching business in Washington, D.C.
Experiencing these changes well ahead of her peers Johnson, who relocated to her hometown of South Hadley, Massachusetts, spent the “next 10 years sorting things out,” eventually attending one of the first seminars in the area that addressed some of these third-stage questions, run by John Berkowitz.
“They were all asking the questions I’d already dealt with: where am I going to live, how am I going to support myself, how will I deal with the loss of a spouse, how do I care for aging parents … how do I bring fulfillment to my life after retirement,” Johnson said. “I came home and I said, gosh, they are talking about aging and its all the things I’ve already done.”
Her book “Why Not Do What You Love,” published in 2010, was ultimately written, she said, in an effort to “clarify some of these questions” for herself.
In the second year of HCC’s “Living Fully” program, White calls Johnson the “driving force” behind the slate of offerings, responsible for “getting the best speakers to come and talk with students.”
He also sees the need to offer these kinds of educational opportunities outside of the traditional senior center setting, noting that both of his parents, who are now in their 80s, are among a growing cohort who won’t set foot in a building called a “senior center.”
Johnson also sees the “Living Fully” program as a chance for individuals facing some of those big “Third Chapter” questions to come together for mutual support and ideas.
“When you turn 60, it’s ‘what am I going to do with my life?’” Johnson said. “At 70, when you are experiencing changes in your body, in your outlook ” and it becomes about what she calls three concurrent questions.
“How am I going to live fully through all these changes, how am I going to manage my health through my decline [and] age gracefully, [and] how am I going to die well?” she said.
Ultimately, Johnson and White hope the seminars in the “Living Fully at 55+” program can offer attendees some clarity.
To request a brochure that fully explains all the seminars in the spring the program, call 413-552-2745.
