Something has been bothering me and I finally figured out what it is
We're waiting for familiar. But what if familiar isn't coming back?
We Didn’t Retire Into the Same America Our Parents Did
For the longest time, I thought I was still carrying around outdated ideas about retirement because that’s what I watched my parents do.
You know the picture.
Work for forty years. Retire. Travel a little. See the grandkids. Play golf. Join a church committee. Settle into a slower life that looked remarkably similar to the one you’d already been living.
Lately I’ve begun to wonder if we’ve been asking the wrong question.
Maybe the reason retirement feels so different isn’t simply because we inherited old expectations.
Maybe it’s because we didn’t retire into the same America our parents did.
I’m not talking about whether today’s changes are good or bad. People have strong opinions about that, and they differ widely.
I’m talking about something almost everyone can feel.
The ground keeps moving.
When we were growing up, there was an underlying sense of stability. We knew what institutions were. We trusted that tomorrow would look a lot like yesterday. Families tended to stay put. Neighborhoods felt familiar. The rules of adulthood were relatively clear. You got a job, built a career, raised a family, retired.
Today almost every one of those assumptions has shifted.
Technology changes faster than most of us can absorb. Artificial intelligence is transforming work and daily life before our eyes. Social media has rewired how we relate to one another — and how we argue. News arrives by the second instead of once a day, and most of it is designed to alarm rather than inform. The political ground moves constantly. Institutions that people spent lifetimes trusting are being questioned, dismantled, or reinvented in real time. Even our own children often live hundreds or thousands of miles away, in cities and lives that look nothing like the ones we raised them in.
Whether you think these changes are necessary or catastrophic, welcome or terrifying — that’s not what this piece is about.
What this piece is about is the feeling underneath all of it.
The ground keeps moving. And most of us were never taught how to stand on moving ground.
Many of us quietly compare our lives to the retirement our parents experienced, wondering why ours feels so different.
Why can’t I relax?
Why do I feel untethered?
Why does it seem harder to imagine the future?
Maybe because we’re trying to retire into a country that no longer exists in the way we remember it.
Not because America has disappeared.
Because the assumptions we built our adult lives upon have changed.
I think that’s why so many retired women find themselves wanting to shut the blinds, close the curtains, stay home, and wait for things to settle down.
We’re waiting for familiar.
But what if familiar isn’t coming back?
That isn’t meant to be depressing.
Oddly enough, I find it liberating.
Because if the world isn’t going back to what it was, then I don’t have to spend my retirement trying to recreate a life that belonged to another generation.
I get to build one that belongs to me.
Maybe that’s why I’ve become less interested in trying to predict what’s going to happen out there.
The truth is, I don’t know. Nobody does.
Instead, I’ve become deeply interested in what happens in here.
Can I create enough inner steadiness that I don’t need the world to feel steady before I can enjoy my life?
That’s not a small question. For most of our lives, we outsourced our sense of stability to external things — a job, a routine, a neighborhood, a set of institutions we trusted to hold. Now the invitation is to find it somewhere else entirely.
Can I stay curious instead of fearful?
Can I continue making art, writing, learning, laughing, and connecting with people, even while the culture continues to reinvent itself?
I think that’s the real retirement challenge for our generation.
Not figuring out how to stop working.
Figuring out how to feel at home in a world that refuses to stop changing.
Our parents retired into familiarity.
We are retiring into uncertainty.
Perhaps that isn’t our burden.
Perhaps it’s our invitation.
If this piece resonated with you — if you felt the ground moving and wondered why retirement feels so different than you expected — I wrote something that speaks directly to that moment.
It’s called Refoundation: Rebuilding a Life That Can Hold You Now. It’s available on Gumroad for $17.
Or — become a paid member of The Daily RE-Wire today and I’ll send it to you personally at no additional cost. After you join shoot me an email at monica@monirosesoul.com and I will send your free copy by returen email.
Two ways in. One destination.
Get Refoundation on Gumroad — $17
Become a paid member and receive it free + 10% off
Not only did we retire into a financial and economic “WTF?” But the grind culture that raised us to be what we turned into…many of us… it takes a bit of dedication to unwrap that mindset. A bit of rather dedicated, soulful work…🩵
Monica,
Your headline about waiting for familiarity & what if it’s not coming back took me into somewhere quite different than what your piece was actually about.
I did read the whole thing & as an Aussie I’m not sure sure we’re any different in thinking, expecting & planning retirement - unconsciously - in the same way as you; in a conditioned & programmed way.
And I see now that what you’re talking about in your article & where my mind first went are also not so different.
At 60 I find myself a mother of 2, grandmother of 6, living on welfare, minimally employed in a brand new job, my belongings in storage, no fixed address or home base & house-sitting with certainty only until near the end of September. This has been my life for only the past 3mths.
I can’t afford to retire, can’t afford to rent privately, am chewing through my savings with day to day expenses (a recent bombshell realisation) & trying to conserve them for the legal fees to obtain a fair & just financial settlement from my ex-de facto partner of 5yrs. Reality has well & truly bitten!
And yet… I do not want to return to the familiar repeating patterns of past relationships & jobs that have sucked the life, love & kindness out of me. Only now do I understand that familiar meant narcissistic. Familiar meant self-abandonment. Familiar meant rationalising away my intuition in favour of obeying.
Familiar sucks!!
And so does comfortable… but only surface level comfortable.
Deep, true, Soul level comfort is waiting for me in the unfamiliar but true; true for me. Not the lies I’ve been told about the life I have to live. The lies I believed because I was so well trained to disown my intuition and what I knew - KNEW - somewhere deep inside.
The lifelong tension between knowing and obeying is excruciating.
So the old ideas about retirement are dying along with a whole heap of other things that also need to die.
May they never come back!