Transitions

Last year I wrote to my friend Heather, an Australian psychologist, telling her about my planned retirement year:

“I forgot to tell you my news. I’ve become Convenor of the Women’s Studies Assn (NZ) which is probably just about a two days a week unpaid job, and so have handed in my notice of retirement, working fulltime till end of January and 2 days a week for another three months. I plan to take a year off paid work to get through my oldies research and start writing my Naomi Mitchison book. Way behind on these projects but the WSA opportunity was too good to miss. So, will be living on Waiheke fulltime. A year of big changes for me, but now I’m at the other end of the transition I knew I was going through – just couldn’t see how it would turn out!”

She replied, with typical Aussie forthrightness, as well as psychological acumen: “I like the way you say you are retiring and then say you’re taking a year off paid work – so maybe the transition hasn’t run its course just yet, in your head at least!”

That brought me up short, because the undercurrents of change that I’d been feeling – and acting on – over the last year had moved me from a sense that something ill-defined was happening to me, towards a clear plan that I’d put into action. That was the transition, wasn’t it?

Last year I had put together a workshop on women psychologists and our identity as we grow older, for one of our occasional Aussie-Kiwi women and psychology get togethers. In my personal intro, I noted, “I’m going through a transition period in my life which has to do with getting older and also involves a bit of identity trouble and threat.” In preparing, I had taken a look at the literature on transition, and had come across something Heather had put together with her colleagues, for the Australian Psychological Society, which contained a useful definition: “Transitions are major life changes which are lasting in their effects, take place over a relatively short period of time, and affect the assumptions that individuals hold about the world and their place in it.” That seemed to fit the bill for me, so when I wrote to Heather after our conference, told her my plan of action and declared my transition over, I was startled at her response. After all, it was she who had defined transitions as taking place over a relatively short period of time, and I knew my transition had been going on for up to a year before I decided to retire.

But she was right, it’s not over at all. One transition follows another. What I was grappling with last year was an emerging decision about the future that welled up from the depths, alongside an increasing focus on how to put it together and what it would mean for me personally and professionally. Now, the decision to “retire for a year” taken, the plan is being realised, and that involves huge changes in lifestyle at psychological, practical, professional and financial levels. This blog is a way to record and deal with these transitions – and I’m increasingly recognising that they’re plural. Heather may have been right about the “relatively short period of time” in her definition, but then one transition leads to another and they blend into one another, making for some kind of sequential churn. I think it’s called life!

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