Why I Am Not Retiring
I recently turned 64.
Several of my friends are retiring. They ask me when I'm going to slow down, and when I tell them I have no plans to retire anytime soon, they look a little puzzled.
The truth is, I'm not very good at sitting still.
But it goes deeper than that.
I still feel like I have something left to build.
I still wake up excited about what is possible. I still believe my work matters. And I am not sure I am finished creating the thing I was put here to create.
Part of that comes from a story that has lived with me for more than fifty years.
When I was twelve years old, my brother was killed in a car accident.
That morning, my mother asked if I wanted to go with them to Okotoks to collect eggs from my uncle. I was at my grandmother's house with my nose buried in a book and perfectly content to stay where I was.
I've replayed that decision more times than I can count.
What if I had gone?
Would anything have changed?
Of course, there is no answer to that question.
The accident happened in the early 1970s. Seatbelts were rarely worn. A tire blew while they were driving around a bend beside a gully. My mother survived only because she was thrown across the car as it rolled. She grabbed onto my sister and my brother's friend and held on to them as the vehicle tumbled.
My brother had been lying stretched across the back seat.
Mom later told me that just before the tire blew, she had asked him to roll up the window. He smiled and said he liked the wind blowing through his hair.
When the car finally came to rest, he was trapped beneath it.
There were no emergency response teams rushing to the scene (they didn’t exist at that time). No rescue crews. My mother, badly injured herself, tried to lift the car off him.
The survivors were eventually transported to Calgary hospitals in a funeral hearse.
Nothing about our family was ever quite the same after that day.
For many years, I carried the weight of the "what ifs."
What if I had been there?
What if something had happened differently?
What if?
But as I've gotten older, I have come to understand that those questions don't have answers.
What I do have is the life that followed.
And perhaps that is why purpose has always mattered so much to me.
When you lose someone that young, you become aware that time is not guaranteed. You learn that every year is a gift and every decade is borrowed time.
So while many people are choosing retirement, I find myself wanting to lean in.
Not because I need to work.
Because I need to contribute.
Because I want to leave something behind.
For me, that legacy has become photography.
More specifically, photographing women.
I can't fully explain what happens when a woman steps in front of my camera and begins to see herself differently. I've watched women arrive carrying decades of self-doubt, criticism, loss, responsibility, and sacrifice.
Then something shifts.
They stand a little taller.
They smile differently.
They remember who they are.
For a moment, they stop apologizing for taking up space.
They become the art in their own story.
I have the privilege of witnessing that transformation over and over again.
And that's why I'm not done yet.
At this point, my goal is to make it to 75.
And between now and then, I want to photograph as many women as I possibly can.
I want future daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters to have proof that these women were here.
Proof of their strength.
Proof of their beauty.
Proof of the lives they lived.
A portrait is more than a photograph.
It is evidence of a life.
A declaration that someone mattered.
A legacy that can outlive us all.
Perhaps that's what I've been searching for all these years.
Not a way to answer the "what ifs."
But a way to honour the years I was given.
And to help other women honour theirs.
I don't know exactly what legacy I will leave behind. But if, years from now, a granddaughter opens a portrait box and sees the strength, beauty, and spirit of the woman who came before her, I will know I spent my years well.
