August 1, 2025, will mark my one-year anniversary of retirement, and what an amazing journey it has been! While I am still adjusting to this developing chapter in my life, the most salient takeaway for me at this time is learning to let go.
What does this concept mean? I can only speak for myself, and it means “letting go” of who I was (or perhaps who I thought I was) and how others view me. This does not mean denying my previous pre-retirement life in the field of education, but it does mean that I no longer regard that identity as who I presently am. Since retiring, I have had several opportunities to teach education classes. While I was grateful for such opportunities, it was a very easy decision to say a firm “no.” There was no hesitation. My response initially surprised me as I always heard, “Once a teacher, always a teacher,” and plenty of colleagues I know teach as adjunct professors in their retirement, but this situation just didn’t resonate with me. I am still not quite sure why because I loved my career, but I just knew deep in my soul, I wanted to move on to new ventures. I also knew it was the right path because I also let go of the feeling of having to know why!
Other ways in which the lesson of letting go has been liberating in retirement include doing away with impossible-to-achieve to-do lists, which left me feeling dejected and frustrated when I worked. I started to address this issue before retiring and did so by being very careful as to which items actually made it onto the list in the morning. In short, I don’t feel compelled to always “be doing” or constantly active or busy. Letting go also reinforced another lesson I started cultivating pre-retirement, and that was saying “no” without guilt or remorse. This was a particularly difficult habit to learn, especially pre-tenure, but one that enabled me to survive and eventually navigate the incredibly busy existence one has as a Berea College student, staff or faculty member.
Because retirement has enabled me to be really discerning when saying “yes,” I have much more space and time to embrace and lean into new opportunities and adventures, particularly ones that I would ordinarily not have partaken while working. One activity I particularly enjoy is reading books on topics with which I am absolutely unfamiliar and felt I didn’t have the time to read. For example, a few science fiction books by PM Press (see picture) I read echoed enough of reality to fascinate and terrify me both. Another joy of retirement reading is pursuing a lifelong interest that I felt I could not pursue pre-retirement: my fascination with astrology and the occult. Now with ample time and freedom to immerse myself in any type of reading and learning, I am engaging with ideas that are tremendously exciting, sometimes uncomfortable and unapologetically bold. Besides a plethora of books on these topics, two of my favorite podcasts are https://www.youtube.com/c/EmilioOrtiz hosted by a Gen Z future leader and https://www.youtube.com/c/SoulfulRevolution hosted by a wise spiritual womyn.
I just knew deep in my soul, I wanted to move on to new ventures. I also knew it was the right path because I also let go of the feeling of having to know why!
Penelope Wong
While being retired certainly helps in engaging in the kind of “letting go” I just described, I also realize that I wish I had done more of it in my pre-retirement not simply to prepare for retirement but also to improve my working life. Each individual’s situation is unique, but for me, being much more intentional in emotionally, psychically, spiritually, physically and intellectually preparing myself made the two years preceding my retirement the most pleasant of my career. By engaging in the above-mentioned activities (i.e., having strong boundaries of saying “no,” letting go, having at-home work days where I didn’t commute to campus, etc.) within the context and constraints of Berea College life, I was much happier and a more engaged professor. In short, learning to let go in a variety of ways, a little at a time, not only improved my work life but also eased my transition through and into retirement.
