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Every stop on the North American leg of her “Celebrating Our Years Together� Tour will be a last and while it hasn’t quite hit her yet, she’s ready to embrace the finality of it all.

“If it was two years ago when I was on tour planning my last tour, it would be more real,� Ian said during a phone call from her Tampa Bay, Florida, home last month. “But with the two-year gap because of COVID, everything about this tour has taken on this slightly unreal (twist).�

Ian, who kicked off the tour with four shows in Santa Fe, New Mexico, last week, is celebrating a career that started with 1966’s controversial song “Society’s Child� when she was 14 and ends with her months-old album “A Light At the End of the Line� 56 years later.

The album is the folk singer’s farewell, 11 songs recorded in a single take that is as close to perfect as she could get, she said.

“When I look at the album, what I see … is a love song over and over and over again,� Ian said. “A love song to other women who have stood up. A love song to older women like myself who are standing up. A love song to gay people, transgender people, to whatever, but mostly it’s about the title: ‘The Light At the End of the Line.’ It’s OK to say I’m finishing this phase and move on.�

Ian’s next chapter will find her doing something she has never quite had time to do until now: write.

“I’ve been saying for years I want to write, I want to write, I want to write. Now I get to do it,� she said.

There’s the first draft of a book that is one chapter away from being finished. Songs, of course, and maybe a collection of short fiction. She’d also like to do a book festival like the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Festival of Books, which she did in 2010 with her friend and ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ suspense writer J.A. Jance.

“I would really like to spend a month off email. I would like to spend a month offline. I would like to walk on the beach without a phone,� she mused aloud of what retirement could look like. “And I would like to not have so many responsibilities.�

A makeup artist friend who worked on Cher’s farewell tour — and the six or seven versions of that tour that followed — asked Ian if this was the first of the last for her, as well.

“They said are you going to come back in two years? And I said no. This is my last North American tour,� said Ian, who turns 71 on April 7. “I’m not going to rule out the possibility of a festival and I’m talking to a couple of schools that want me to come out and teach. But in terms of going on tour, doing regular gigs, this is it.�

Ian plans to take the final tour to Europe and the UK in 2023.