(p. A11) Dr. Gladys McGarey, 103, continues to consult, give talks and podcast interviews after nearly eight decades in the medical field. She started an Instagram account that has nearly 47,000 followers.
“If you burn out, relight the fire,” says McGarey. She ran a clinic while raising six children and had to start a new one when her husband and clinic partner left her when she was 69 and married one of their colleagues.
. . .
Not everyone wants to work in their later years, says Dr. Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
“It’s not burnout. It’s just ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ ” says Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a longitudinal study on how people thrive.
As people get older, they are better at discerning what really matters, he says, and what they can let go of. The goal isn’t necessarily an 80-year career, but finding purpose in whatever we chose to do in our 80s and beyond, whether that is taking care of a grandchild, playing the piano, or joining a community theater.
For many, there is passion, purpose and love in the work.
. . .
Like others who have remained engaged in their careers in their later years, she says the secret is to find things that make life important and our “hearts sing.”
For the full commentary, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date December 29, 2023, and has the title “TURNING POINTS; How to Work—and Love It—Into Your 80s and Beyond.”)
The memoir by McGarey mentioned above is:
McGarey, Gladys. The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year-Old Doctor’s Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age. New York: Atria Books, 2023.