Finding My People in Retirement

Everybody needs their people. We need people who get us, who have shared laughs and traumas with us, who make us better than we are without them. As I’ve shared before, I am ridiculously blessed with such people. You know who you are.

As HH and I relocate in a few weeks from The Queen City to a new city (albeit the place where we raised our family) we will need some new people. Some of the people we knew before have moved away. Some have died. Some are former parishioners and our roles have changed. Some are old friends who will once again be close enough to meet for coffee.

Over the weekend, I was blessed with a delicious sample of what being with my people might look like in the coming years. I took a short road trip for the purpose of enjoying three meals:

• A lunch with five brilliant retired women who are definitely my people, two of whom I’ve known for years.
• A dinner with about sixty exceptionally gifted people, most of whom were college seniors or graduate students – my people for many reasons including the fact that we all know the words to “Hark the Sound.”
• A brunch with three funny and smart longtime friends I first met in Chicago with whom I share clergy life.

With every conversation it felt like I was in the presence of greatness. And even though I’m not even a month into retirement, it’s clear that we are profoundly blessed if we 1) can find our people in this life and 2) can serve in meaningful ways while earning enough money to live.

Retirement offers time to stare into space and think about things like – in my case – why billionaires exist, whether or not song birds will eat from a feeder on the seventh floor and if it’s true that all great novels reveal something about the meaning of life. And retirement is also a time to sit and talk about random things over multiple meals with our people.

So far, I love retirement. But I miss my work people.

And yet, those connections will always exist. And there will be new people if we are curious.

Image of a group of women I observed last summer in what will be our new neighborhood in late May. I want to be the one with gray hair and her face resting on her hand.