Lee Gale Gruen - Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years: Find Joy, Excitement, and Purpose After You Retire

Also by Lee Gale Gruen

Memoir: Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughters Journey Through a Senior Acting Class

Books/Speaker Website: LeeGaleGruen.com

Blog: Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years (link: LeeGaleGruen.wordpress.com)

Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years

Copyright 2020 Lee Gale Gruen

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner without the express permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-7358481-0-5

Published by

Lafayette, California
www.bighatpress.com

Cover Design by Milos Rocenovic

For All Retirees Who Have Struggled

Retire from work, but not from life. - M.K. Soni

For 37 years I always looked forward to teaching my developmental psychology course until, that is, the last three weeks of each semester. The class began with the miracle of birth and advanced through the stages of infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood, an accelerating curve revealing new human skills and capabilities at every turn. Then came trouble, the gerontology segment.

The scholarly literature about the last phase of life was mostly dispiriting, detailing multiple, often forced transitions into decline and loss of status. Opportunities for productivity and personal fulfillment narrowed, only to be replaced by physical complications and cultural obstacles. To end the course on such a downer note was difficult for my young students and for me as well, especially as I approached that milestone called retirement.

Once retired, of course, one realizes that along with the pitfalls associated with getting older are choices to be made. Today, the choices are more varied and interesting, partially fueled by technological advances and the recognition that todays older population is a formidable consumer base worthy of being catered to.

In Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years, Lee Gale Gruen offers two distinct tools to assist in making those critical life choices. The first eight chapters set the stage for postretirement and offer a myriad of activities that are wide open for seniors, most of which offer new ways to discover fulfillment, pleasure, and purpose. The last chapter is a long one, consisting of a collection of remarkable short essays from her online blog, Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years.

Often presenting an experience plucked from Gruens own life, it turns to also be about you. These stories are best described as an interplay between you and the author and should be contemplated and savored before moving on to the next entry. You will have much to learn about yourself, and you will be the better for it.

Patricia Keith-Spiegel, Ph.D. Recipient of the California State University Trustees Award for Outstanding Professor and The Distinguished Professor Award by the American Psychological Foundation.

After completing my first book, a memoir, Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughters Journey Through a Senior Acting Class, I found a small, boutique publishing company, Author Mike Ink Publishing (now AM Ink Publishing), interested in publishing it. Working with the publisher, his editor, and his book cover designer was another new learning experience. That day in 2013 that I received a copy of my memoir made me feel like I had birthed a childso precious, so amazing, so unbelievable.

I thought my book writing job was finished and that my publisher would handle marketing it. Not true! I quickly learned authors are expected to promote their own books. Suddenly, I was a salesperson hawking a product. I developed a website to promote the book: LeeGaleGruen.com. I had killed off my stage fright by becoming a professional actress in my senior years, so I found that I loved speaking to groups. My natural aversion to self-promotion was disappearing, too. The more I did it, the easier it became. I contacted various clubs, organizations, libraries, and senior programs, and soon I had bookings for author talk/book signing events. I appeared on writing panels and was interviewed by radio and podcast hosts.

So many retirees, baby boomers and seniors I encountered during my talks told me that they were lost and depressed. I understood those feelings because I once had them, too. I came through it and lived to tell my story, and so can you. The takeaway is that we can stand up to the forces that beat us down: society, peers, media, significant individuals, and on and on. We can triumph and reinvent ourselves at any time in our lives, even in our later years.

I received many inquiries about how I had gotten to where I was in my life, and I realized that I had a message that was inspiring to others. So, in 2013, soon after the book was published, I started writing a free, online blog, Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years, as a way of passing along what I have learneda giving back. It is composed of my thoughts, observations, and experiences which I think are universal to my own age demographicthat of retiree and senior. My blog postings from over six years are printed in Chapter 10. My blog can be accessed online at: LeeGaleGruen.wordpress.com.

I, then, began to receive invitations to speak on the subject of retirement and healthy/successful aging. I developed a lecture titled the same as my blog, Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years. I have been a guest speaker at clubs, organizations, health agencies, senior communities, wellness fairs, colleges, and other places where retirees, baby boomers, and seniors congregate. The link to my guest speaker webpage is: LeeGaleGruen.com/guest-speaker.html.

Audience members asked if I had a book based on my speech that they could purchase. That was my motivation for writing this book. I have tried to present a down-to-earth discussion of what it means to retire: the fears, the pitfalls, the closing of a door on your life up to that time. This is an honest view of what most people facing retirement worry about and how to address those worries. I examine what life is like after retirement and how to find your own niche in this puzzling, new world. Then, I offer an in-depth look at what is available for retirees including activities, pursuits, and even employment. However, it doesnt just stop there with a final message of get a life as so many similar books do. I gently take the reader by the hand in a step-by-step journey on how to identify what might even be of interest to them and how to go about finding activities to tap into those interestshow to reinvent themselves. The latter part of the book is composed of the blog posts I have written for more than six years on my free, online blog, Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years.

My goal with this book, my public talks, and my blog is to help and inspire baby boomers, seniors, retirees, and those about to retire to find joy, excitement, and purpose in their lives during retirement. I believe that starts with finding a passion which will motivate you to want to get up in the morning, get dressed, get out of the house, and embrace life. Im going to show you how you can reinvent yourself after retiring just like I did.