A new start after 60: I embraced being single and became an international pet-sitter
When Bernadine Swale’s marriage ended after 36 years, when she was 57, her first instinct – once she had recovered from the shock – was that she couldn’t manage alone. “The standard, cookiecutter way you have to be in your 60s is man and woman, and you travel together,” she says. It took her a few years to realise: “Actually, no.”
Now 68, Swale, a retired pharmacist, travels the world as a pet-sitter. Last year, she spent only 23 nights in her own bed, in a loft that looks out over downtown Denver. Pet-sitting stops have included London, New York,
Athens, Botswana, Tokyo and New Zealand. “I absolutely love my life,” she says. “I have the best retirement there ever was.”
Swale had always wanted to travel. She had grown up in Maun, Botswana, between the Okavango delta and the Kalahari desert, where her father was a doctor. The family moved to England when she was 10. She went to university in Yorkshire, where she met her future husband. After they married and had three children, they moved to the US for his work. “I was in my mid-30s and I’d already lived in three continents,” she says.
“Life gets busy just raising your kids as best you can, giving them a stable base. You put all those travel wishes on the back burner. They are still there, but you bury them with everyday life, because that’s the best thing for your family.”
When Swale was first divorced, “I couldn’t function; I couldn’t even talk”. But by the time she was 63, having had another serious relationship, she had reached a different understanding of herself: “I don’t need a man. That’s not what brings me the most joy in life.”
She had continued to work and had kept the family home. “But it was just me rattling around in it. And work was increasingly pressured. I suddenly thought: ‘Why am I doing this?’ Then I had a brilliant plan.”
The spousal maintenance she received was roughly the same as the social security she would receive when she retired. “So I thought: I’ll rent the house out for a year, do some pet-sitting and see if I can live on the alimony. And if I can, I don’t ever have to go back to work. I’m good from now on.”
The first pet-sitting job was half an hour from home. “I loved animals. But I thought: you don’t know whose house you’re going into, what reception you’ll