“In her debut, a hybrid work between memoir and self-help, Milliken deftly addresses the complexities and emotions of choosing to retire from full-time work… Milliken’s expertise as a psychotherapist is evident both in the introspective way that she chronicles her journey and in her wise and measured words—words that will strike a chord with readers contemplating their own next acts… Anyone with mixed feelings on the precipice of retirement will gain insight and comfort from this wise account.”
Booklife by Publishers Weekly
“Retire? Why in the world would you want to do that? Are you serious?“
And if you do, what in the world will you do once you’ve let go of so much?
These were the bewildered questions I faced at every turn when I finally admitted to myself and others that I was ready to take the leap and give up my longtime career as a psychotherapist. The truth is, I shared the bewilderment of my friends, colleagues and family. Why was I doing this? It wasn’t that I was tired of working or burnt out, and I didn’t have a new passion or purpose in mind. In fact, I didn’t have a clue as to what I would do afterward. All I knew was that I didn’t want to do what I had been doing anymore. Instead I wanted to find out what else there was to do in life beyond a thirty year career.
This is a memoir about the unanticipated journey that retirement became for me – what turned into a deliberate process of changing many aspects of the way I lived my life. I didn’t intend to engage in such a process. But it has felt inevitable, necessary and insistent. And in the end, the leap I dared to take and its results have been profound, enlivening and liberating.
This memoir is my way of addressing the questions that I and so many ask at a certain point in life:
Retire? Why in the world would you want to do that? How could you?
And if you do, what in the world will you do once you’ve let go of so much?
In Gaining Altitude, Rebecca Milliken tells the saga of her odyssey of retirement after she had turned 60, an odyssey that included changing much more in her life than she had anticipated. She invites us to accompany her in this memoir as she recounts the highs and lows of getting ready to retire, making the leap and then finding her way to what lay beyond.
Have you thought about what your life might look like after retirement?
Read this book and it might spark your imagination …. or at the very least make you curious…
Buy the book!
Rebecca Milliken 