My Retirement Chapter Isn't What I Expected
Demands and obligations don't stop; in fact, they can increase
This essay is part of the Between Chapters project, inspired by the book. What chapters are you between? How did you get from one chapter to another? Share your story here.
What Chapter Are You…
Leaving:
Private school business owner.
In:
Retirement (sort of!)
Entering:
I honestly do not know.
I officially retired in November 2018 and set out on a journey that felt exciting, almost decadent. We had sold our family business for more than we could have ever imagined, and we were determined to enjoy doing all the things we had fantasized about as “working people.”
To some degree, we did. We traveled a bit. I had time to write a book and become a guest speaker for mothers’ groups, parenting groups, and women’s business organizations. I promoted my book in a niche that I had not realized would have a following outside of the schools we owned for twenty-five years.
Retirement was looking easy, enjoyable, and meaningful in all the indulgent ways I could only have imagined. However, I soon found out that my time became fair game for everyone else to claim. When I was working, I always had a built-in excuse when family or friends asked me to do something. After all, I had a business to run. But now, apparently, I had no excuse. My book and speaking engagements didn’t seem to count.
For my entire working career, I could make my own schedule around, or in spite of, my work life. I could book once-a-month hair appointments for six months out and tailor my business schedule to be there. No more. I have had to cancel so many appointments, not only with the salon, but also with friends for lunch, even trips with my husband. Family obligations keep coming up and the assumption seems to be that Kay can take care of that.
So as not to appear selfish, I did, and still do, take care of those things, no matter what they sometimes cost me. Many obligations have involved aging relatives. There comes a time for so many of us, if we are lucky enough to still have parents as we become senior citizens ourselves, when we face both the obligation and the joy of caring for them. In fact, six years into retirement, some of those family obligations have diminished because of inevitable, sad endings. And with time, the rescheduled hair appointments and missed lunches have lost the luster they once held.
But how do you tell yourself, in the middle of what feels like such a heavy lift, that you may one day miss the very reason for the unwanted obligations? I still think a balance can and should be struck, even when it seems impossible.
Retirement does not always mean travel and extravagance. It does not always mean searching for a new purpose. Sometimes it just means standing between two realities: being young and healthy enough to enjoy the retirement years while also becoming the person others rely on for help, care, health decisions, and even convenience. To be at everyone’s beck and call? Well, I suppose to some extent that is what having family means: obligations and joys alike. Ongoing.
It’s up to us, in our own senior-years-chapter, to find the wisdom necessary to enjoy the demands and delights. Like previous chapters of my life, I’m meeting the challenge head on, or at least, I’m trying to.
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