Writing: A Life of Work

Then lo and behold, when I was 64, and still working very hard and with
the traditional age of retirement only a year away, I was offered a new
job. My writing went on hold, while I became the founding regional
coordinator for the Mountain and Plains Partnership, which developed an
online master’s degree program for nurse practitioners, certified
nurse-midwives, and physician assistants in rural and urban underserved
communities in Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, and New Mexico.

It was in that program that I found my next writing partner and
co-author, Fay Whitney. We had done some research together and had
become good friends. I knew that she had the credibility to write the
health chapter of the book about the “third third” of life that I
planned to write. But I was shocked when I learned that my previous
publisher was not interested in publishing such a book. I eventually
found a new publisher.

We immediately began our interviews and analysis, and for the next two
years, we were in a writing mode. No longer my shadow career, writing
had become my main career. My consulting work continued, as the book
took shape. The title became A Time of Our Own: In Celebration of Women
Over Sixty (2008), since the decade of my 60s was already long gone!
The book was published in 2008, and as of this writing, it has been on
the Denver Post’s best-seller list twice!

After that, I began to write blogs and articles for Silver Planet.
Since January, we have been working on the “Transitions Without Walls”
project and developing the Silver Ambassadors component of the Web
site, with some funding from the Rose Community Foundation.

Writing has now become my main career activity. For many years, writing
has functioned as a transition enabler, a bridge to the next stage of
my life. By studying adult development, working in adult learning and
education, and writing about adult life and change, I have been able to
weave my professional and community interests with my personal
development and aging.

I am very grateful that I learned to write. Writing has truly been “the
work of a life, and a life of work.” For more than 50 years, language
and writing have been at the center of my personal life and my careers.
Writing has helped me to understand myself, my family, my peers, my
students, and the world around me. It is no longer in the shadows.