The Hidden Side of Retirement: Cheryl Fimbel on Identity, Purpose, and Starting a New Chapter

hello everyone and welcome back to telling my story the podcast where we explore real life journeys personal growth career transitions and the experience that shape who we become today we are talking about a major life transition that many people prepared for financially but may not prepare for emotionally retirement my guest is cheryl fimble a 45 year healthcare leadership after decades of leadership in healthcare Cheryl experienced an unexpected job loss just one year before her planned retirement. Shortly after losing her mother, that experience led her to explore something many retirement conversations overlook. Identity, purpose, structure, anxiety, and the emotional journey that follows a career. We are going to talk about what happens when the job title disappears, how people can rebuild purpose, and why the first 90 days of retirement may be less about reinventing yourself and more about simply finding your footing. Cheryl, welcome to Telling My Story. I'm so glad to have you here with us today.

Thank you, Henry. I'm glad to be here.

All right, Cheryl. Your journey into retirement was very different from what you expected. Can you take us back to the period and tell us what really happened?

Yes. I was one year before I had planned to retire. And so it was at a time that the children are out of the home. And so it was just my husband and me. And so I was, you know, putting away as much money as I could towards retirement, you know, that last year. because my plan for a retirement was to be able to travel. You know, we love to cruise. So to be able to cruise, my son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren live in Austria. So I wanted to be able, you know, to fly over there a couple of times a year to visit with them and that sort of thing. So I, you know, needed that extra money so that I would be able to do all of that. Well, it was a difficult year. At the beginning of the year, my mother had COVID over Christmas and then she passed. It was like three days before her 99th birthday at the end of March. And, you know, even though she lived a long life, you know, I loved my mother dearly and I still miss her a lot. But, you know, it was a very hard time. So two weeks after we buried her, I got a call from my boss stating that they had eliminated my position. So I had this was on a Tuesday and Friday would be my last day. And Friday was a holiday. So actually, Thursday was my last day. So I just had, you know, three days to clean everything out and to notify the people that, you know, I worked with very closely, give them instructions, you know, on what you know, they may be able to take on, you know, when I left, that sort of thing. But it was a very hard time for me because, you know, I'd lost my mother. I was really grieving about that. And then I lost my job. And there is actually, there are actually studies out there that show that when you do lose your job like that, that, you know, in your brain, It sees that as grief also. And it's almost to the level of losing, you know, losing someone, even though it's a completely different thing than that. So here I had two big major things happen to me at one time. And I can honestly say I became