A new start after 60: I baked a pie every day for a year

When Vickie Hardin Woods retired at 61 she set herself a plan: bake a pie every day for a year, using fresh ingredients local to her home in Salem, Oregon, and give each pie away. The year before she had been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment and wanted something to keep her connected and creative.

"I was worried about losing my carefully crafted identity as a professional. I was looking for something to carry me through that time … What else can I be?" she recalled, and the project provided a routine so she wouldn’t be isolated. Hardin Woods made a list of recipients and, on the first day of retirement, flew to California to stay with her brother and baked a lemon meringue in his kitchen for her 88-year-old aunt, Carolyn.

She had moved in with that aunt and uncle as a teenager when her mother became ill, and giving the first pie to Carolyn felt right.

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