Life Reimagined : Retirement as a Spiritual Journey / Marilyn Sewell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sewell, Marilyn, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Retirement--Psychological aspects.

Retirement.

Self-realization in old age.

Unitarian Universalists.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (232 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Distribution:

New York : Bloomsbury Publishing (US), 2025.

Place of Publication:

New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2025.

System Details:

text file HTML

Summary:

When Marilyn Sewell retired after seventeen years as senior minister of one of the nation's largest Unitarian Universalist churches, she expected to excel at this next chapter as she had in every other. Instead, nothing prepared her for the emptiness, loneliness, lack of purpose, and the loss of the community that she experienced when she hung up her robe, turned over the keys, and walked out the door of her beloved church. Adrift, she found herself awash in profound questions of being: Who am I, without my identity as the minister of First Unitarian? Where will I find community that holds me? What, if anything, could life possibly hold for me now? Searching for signs and solutions, she discovers practical advice for retirement but little to soothe the grief that has invaded her body and spirit. Unmoored, with a deep sense of loss and crippling anxiety, she is pushed to go deeper than she yet has gone, deeper than she wants to go, to get at the roots of her despair. She spends seven years wandering through the thicket, examining the family history that brought her to this place, looking at what has driven her lifelong frantic work ethic. The writing itself begins to reveal the answers she is seeking. Ultimately, Marilyn realizes that she must radically change. She still has gifts to give, revealed only when she stops her fanatical drive to produce, when she learns to get quiet, to breathe, to listen, to be present to the nanosecond that life is, to respond to the moment-to embrace and live out a second calling.

Contents:

I. ARRIVING 1. Clearing Out 2. What's It All About, Alfie? 3. Leaving Church 4. Breaking Free 5. Surrender 6. Starr King 7. Searching 8. Finding 9. Coming into My Own II. FALLING 10. Losing 11. Growing Up Days 12. Grieving 13. Looking for Home 14. Surprised by Joy 15. Too Much, Too Soon 16. My Body, My Self 17. Falling into Despair III. SEARCHING 18. Looking for Answers 19. Involuntary Job Loss 20. Males Are More Vulnerable 21. Some Age Out 22. Some Continue to Work 23. Work Ethic in my Family 24. Taking Care of Business 25. Who Are My People Now? 26. Letting Go 27. Creating a New Narrative IV: REFLECTING 28. The More That Haunts Our Days 29. Dreams Change 30. What Must I Do to Be Saved? 31. Where Does the Light Lead? 32. When Less Becomes More 33. The Season of Loss 34. What Gifts Are Ours to Give? 35. Bestowing a Blessing V: BECOMING 36. A Great Cloud of Witnesses 37. Do the Right Thing 38. Continuing to Minister 39. Ministry of the Word 40. A Journal of the Plague Years 41. What Goes, What Stays 42. Living in Love 43. Choosing Mercy over Judgment 44. The Scream of a Whistle 45. Nothing, No Matter How Precious, Can Be Kept 46. The Order of Things

ISBN:

9798765157862

OCLC:

1535979314