An introduction to the thinking behind ThriveSpan
The question of how we live between 60 and 80 has been with me for around seven years. Long before it had a name, I was already thinking about what I have always called the “young-old” years, not as a neat category, but as a distinct stretch of life with its own psychological terrain.
That curiosity first surfaced as I prepared for my doctoral research. Formally, my study had to focus more narrowly on retirement and the workplace. Informally, my attention kept returning to a much broader landscape: what happens once the central organising structures of work begin to loosen, and people find themselves navigating identity, meaning, rhythm, and relationship in different ways.
I never stopped reading across this terrain. I never stopped reflecting on career theory, ageing research, and the lived realities people described to me in conversation. What brings meaning, fulfilment, and joy in later life is not simply an extension of earlier adulthood. It is shaped by different constraints, different freedoms, and a different relationship to time.
Over time, that sustained attention became a framework.
There has been an unexpected gift in developing ThriveSpan in my late sixties. I have had the space to think slowly, to notice patterns across years rather than moments, and to resist the pressure to turn insight into instant solutions. This has not been a rush to package an idea, but a gradual process of listening, observing, and refining.
ThriveSpan rests on three intertwined strands:
- doctoral-level academic research and ongoing engagement with contemporary scholarship
- decades of work with clients, alongside hundreds of conversations with people in later life about what is working, what feels fragile, and what occupies their inner world
- my own lived experience, not just as a researcher of later life, but as someone actively living it
I will be 70 next year. I now describe myself as old, not as a provocation or a loss statement, but deliberately. I want younger people to see older lives clearly, without fear or distortion, and to recognise that ageing is not something to brace against, but something to inhabit.
Over the Christmas break, I finally brought together years of notes, reflections, and analysis into a single academic paper. It is currently available to read while I navigate the slow and uncertain process of journal submission and review.
If you are interested, you can access my research paper here
The ThriveSpan Framework: a way of seeing later life
ThriveSpan emerged in response to a gap I kept encountering. Much of what is written about the 60–80 life phase falls into one of two camps: upbeat prescriptions for “successful ageing”, or deficit-based narratives that quietly assume decline. Neither reflects the complexity people actually describe.
ThriveSpan offers a different lens. It recognises both the possibilities and the constraints of later life, without collapsing one into the other. It also accepts that there is no single right way to live these years, and that thriving is neither constant nor uniform.
The framework is organised around three interwoven paths, each made up of distinct but connected areas of attention. These paths are not stages to be completed, nor categories to be scored. They are ways of noticing what matters, and how different aspects of life come into view at different moments.
One path attends to the inner foundations of later life: physical and emotional wellbeing, autonomy and agency, and the reflective inner life that supports rhythm, steadiness, and alignment as familiar structures loosen or fall away.
Another path centres on connection and contribution: belonging, relationships, contribution and service, and the ways meaning and legacy emerge through presence, creativity, and shared life rather than status, productivity, or formal achievement.
The third path concerns engagement with life as it is now: purpose, growth, and becoming, creativity and expression, and joy and playfulness, including how people use their time, express themselves, adapt to change, and live well within the realities and limits of everyday life.
What distinguishes ThriveSpan is its refusal to prescribe. It does not assume that everyone should be busy, socially expansive, physically vigorous, or visibly productive. It allows for seasons of activity and seasons of withdrawal, for deep engagement and deliberate simplicity. Thriving, in this view, is not a fixed state but a shifting relationship with one’s own life.
Continuing the work
In the full essay, I go on to explore the theoretical roots of ThriveSpan in more depth, including how lifespan development theory, socioemotional selectivity, and later-life psychosocial research inform this framework. I also reflect on how decades of lived experience and conversation shaped the work, and where this thinking is leading next.
If you would like to continue reading, the complete piece is available on Substack here:
https://ageingreimagined.substack.com/p/seven-years-in-the-making-introducing
