From Career Woman to Crippled and Beyond

This book is a way of us making sense of and hopefully helping others to make sense of female retirement; not planned retirement but retirement forced upon women way before they planned it. There have been many books written on the loss of identity men experience when they retire but little is known about what retirement means for career women. Bottom line we are dependent on others and having been extremely independent women the impact of this cannot be overstated. We went from changing the world with a million plans to make a difference one day to feeing redundant the next. The crash was monumental. Our hope in writing this book is that others having this experience will feel less alone and maybe discover new coping strategies or how to identify and use the ones that are tried and true in their own lives. For any academics who read this, treat it as a phenomenological description. There are no references - these are our stories. Part One gives some background on how we learned to be the women we became. Part Two illuminates how our earlier socialization was confirmed by our lives and careers. Part Three describes the confronting and DISabling experience of knowing something is not right. Part Four discloses the gut-wrenching pain of losing yourself - or at least the self you believed you were. Part Five explains how we found ourselves again - or at least some sense of self and being worthwhile.