The smiley guy with the bowtie

For four decades, Derrick made his living in creative communications. He was a partner of one of the UK's leading creative marketing communications agencies, and spent a career helping other people say what they meant and mean what they said. The bowtie was always there. So was the smile. People remembered both.

Then the music stopped. Retirement arrived, and with it a question he had never thought to prepare for. Not what will I do, but who am I now? The role that had shaped his days for forty years was suddenly gone, and the ground felt strangely unfamiliar. Soon after came a cancer diagnosis. Slowly, honestly, and with a good deal of trial and error, he found his way back to himself.

What struck him along the way was how ordinary his experience was. Retirement, redundancy, bereavement, a diagnosis, a relationship ending. The same identity gap opens up for enormous numbers of people, and almost nobody warns them it is coming. Derrick had worked out a method that helped him through it. So he wrote it down, and now he shares it, on the page and from the stage.