Everyone is around the table, catching up. Your daughter talks about a project at work. Someone else has a story about a difficult customer or a busy week. Then someone turns to you.

“What’s new with you?”

You smile and say, “Oh, I’m retired.” And now you feel embarassed.

There’s a brief pause, everyone looks around the table and then the conversation moves on.

Nobody was trying to hurt you. You know that. But you still feel the pause, and it can stay with you long after dinner is over.

Why that little pause can hurt so much

For years, work gave you an easy answer to “What’s new?” You had people you saw every day, problems you were helping solve, and stories that practically told themselves.

Now your days may look different. You might be enjoying parts of retirement and still find yourself searching for an answer when the attention turns your way.

That can bring up a painful question: Do people still want to hear about my life if I’m not working?

Of course they do. But it may take a while for both you and the people around you to learn how to have these conversations in a new way.

Psychologists interviewed by Parade describe how leaving a career can affect a person’s sense of identity and mattering, the feeling that their presence makes a difference. If you’ve felt that loss, you’re not alone.

You don’t have to excuse the hurt

It’s tempting to tell yourself you’re being too sensitive. After all, it was only a pause. Your family loves you.

Both things can be true: they love you, and that moment hurt.

They may not realize how much you miss being asked for your opinion, telling a story from your day, or simply having someone curious about what you’re thinking. You may not have had the words to tell them, either.

For some people, that feeling began before retirement. If you were talked over or left out of decisions in your final years at work, a quiet dinner conversation can bring back more than anyone at the table knows. AARP’s research shows that age bias is a real experience for many older workers, though it can’t tell us what any particular family member meant in one conversation.

Give them something to ask about

You don’t need to fill every hour of retirement just to have an answer ready for dinner. Your life is interesting because you are special with values and experience, plus it’s your life, whether or not it comes with a deadline or a job title.

Still, if “I’m retired” keeps ending the conversation, you might try opening the door a little wider. Until you figure out that you are actually the answer to, "What's new with you?", try this answer on for size:

“Honestly, I’m still figuring out what this chapter of my life looks like.”

That’s a real answer. It gives someone who cares about you a chance to ask more.

You deserve conversations that go deeper

This feeling can show up beyond the dinner table: after church, at the gym, or when an old coworker group chat grows quiet. What you may miss is the easy connection that once came with seeing the same people and sharing the same work.

Meaningful relationships matter throughout life. Mayo Clinic Press highlights the value of social connection as we age. But connection takes more than being in a room with people. It grows when we share what’s actually happening in our lives and make room to hear one another. Mayo Clinic Press

The next time the conversation moves past you, I hope you won’t take that moment as proof that you’ve become less important. You are still someone with stories, opinions, hopes, and years of experience worth hearing.

And if the people who love you haven’t quite learned how to ask about this part of your life yet, it’s okay to help them, just recognize you might need to become their teacher.