to the climbing ivy she’s let overtake the bay window. “But I’ve grown fond of chaos.” When Louis died of a heart attack at 62, Patricia assumed solitude would feel like a punishment. Instead, it became a revelation. She replaced their matching recliners with a velvet chaise for reading, turned his “no dogs on the couch” rule into Sprinkle’s favorite napping spot, and converted his old study into a sunlit studio where she paints watercolors of the overgrown garden. “I loved him,” she says, “I still do! But I didn’t realize how much of myself I’d folded up and put away.” Patricia’s story is far from unique. Across the country, women over 65 are rewriting the script of solitude— not as a consolation, but as a catalyst. “There is a growing trend of women choosing to stay single,” says Madeline Rice, a Philadelphia-based therapist with over 30 years of experience and founder of a women's mental health practice called Madeline Rice & Associates. “Marriage has historically been an arrangement of financial protection for women. However, more and more women no longer need men for financial security.” For Patricia, this rings true. Though Louis handled their investments, she’d quietly taken over the finances after his death, discovering an aptitude for stock trading she now half-jokingly calls her “retirement hobby.”
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