Reflections on the First Year of Retirement

If there were one word to weave through this whole enchanted year, it would be INTEGRATION. Not a tidy, tie-it-with-a-bow kind of word — but a slow, sacred alchemy. The kind where one self doesn’t vanish so another can appear, but instead the two sit down together over coffee and become something new entirely.

For more than 40 years, I wore many hats, and wore them well: educator, leader, administrator, business owner, curriculum creator, equity director, and — perhaps my favorite title of all — a good friend, colleague, and co-worker. Those hats didn’t disappear this year. They got folded into a trunk, blessed, and tucked beneath a cloak I didn’t yet know I owned.

Because this year, I began becoming someone new: a gifted Oracle-Crone-Priestess — one who holds space for empathic healers, mentors, and counselors to fall back in love with their passion projects, so they can live their soul’s purpose, their heart’s desires, and their spirit’s delicious whims.

The Gala That Started It All

The transformation had a beginning, and it was glorious: my Enchanted Gala, where I stepped fully into the robes of Oracle-Crone-Priestess Extraordinaire, surrounded by a circle of friends who witnessed the crowning. There was magic in that room. There always is, when the people who love you watch you become more yourself.

Then, the Great BEING

After the gala came the harder spell to cast: BEING.

From the outside, my being looked suspiciously like busyness. But underneath it was something quieter and truer — being with the grandbabies, being with the trees, being with the forests, being with the water and the waterfalls that don’t ask you to hurry. It has been AHMAZING.

I’ve learned this year that integration needs room to breathe. You cannot rush the alchemy. So alongside the being, I’ve also been nurturing and cultivating Roots & Wings, tending it the way you’d tend a garden you know will bloom in its own time.

Expect wonderful things from this integration. Because here’s the secret the forests and waterfalls kept whispering to me all year:

When we take the time to simply BE… the Universe responds.

And oh, has the Universe been responding to me.

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Con un pan y cafecito,
Seguimos adelante. 🌿✨

Zulmara Maria