Loving Later Life

In today's episode I talk a little bit about grief + some jaw-dropping stories of "hearing" from people who have died.

Grief is not linear, and we all grieve differently and on our own timelines. Brene Brown was asked how long true grief lasts, and her answer was, "As long as it takes."

I believe that love in a relationship continues once someone is gone and I have witnessed this by receiving what I believe are 'signs' from the other side. I share unexplainable events that have happened to me after losing people I love, and also stories from others. Skeptics may think what they want, and I challenge any of them to explain how these things could have happened. We are energy, and our energy doesn't die.

One of my missions with this podcast is to talk about the stuff people won't or don't want to talk about. That's bound to increase the number of listeners, don't ya think?! Seriously, let's talk about all the elephants in the room! Are ya with me?

78 year-old Eugenia Zukerman is an internationally renowned flutist having played with major orchestras all over the world. The Boston Globe exclaimed, "One of the finest flutists of our time." She was also the arts correspondent on CBS Sunday Morning for more than 25 years, is a published author, mother, grandmother and wife, where she and her husband Dick Novik make their home in upstate New York.

Eugenia was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in November of 2018. I had the honor of talking with her and her husband Dick who lobs words to Eugenia when she can't quite grasp them. You will be moved by her courage, her upbeat mindset, and poems from the book she wrote after receiving her diagnosis entitled, "Like Falling Through a Cloud." Eugenia shares her story openly, happily, and vulnerably. She literally brought me to tears not from sadness, but from her uplifting comforting acceptance and determination to do what brings her joy for as long as she possibly can. Please, join us.

Dating after 50 in later life can have its 'opportunities.' Do you think it's ok to talk about your prior relationships while dating? Apparently, there are many different answers to this question depending on who you ask! What if your date asks you too many questions? Or what if they don't ask any questions about you at all? Hear how the TV show The View inspired me for this episode. I will be sharing my thoughts in a way that satisfies a couple of my fantasies, so I hope you'll take some time to enjoy my view! Come join me!!

Emotions run at funerals. For some very high, and for some, low…to no emotion at all. For many of us it can cause us to think of our own mortality. What would be said about us, how many or how few people would attend. For some, the reality of the shortness of life is so in your face that they rethink priorities and choices. My emotional experience with this funeral was very varied. I was thinking about it, and I decided that I could categorize most of the feelings into 4 categories.

I hope you'll come with me while I share what unexpected feelings I experienced (and why) and the realization it gave me about myself and others as we go through this time of our lives.

I had another episode planned for this week, and I've decided to postpone it. Instead, I'm pausing for a life and a death.

For those of you who may not have seen my post on social media, my mom's husband of almost 30 years passed away on Monday, September 26th. I just didn't feel it was right to move forward with business as usual without taking a pause from the schedule. This is an impromptu shortcast as I pause out of respect and reflection. I hope you will join me.

Aging. Try and avoid it at all costs. This is basically the message the media tries to convey to women. They sell us on the fact that we are not as beautiful, and not as sexy as we would be if we erased, plumped, lifted, and enhanced our aging selves. They tell us that looking younger is sexier. It's all about fighting aging instead of embracing it. They drill into our psyche that it's a bad thing to look older. In an infomercial I saw recently, the main point being rubbed into our brain was that we should us their cream to erase our wrinkles, erase the crepiness in our skin, erase, erase erase. We can embrace aging despite the media.

Please join me as I look at how this can affect our sense of worth and value. In this episode I push my comfort level of vulnerability in sharing some of what has been said and done to me when I have dared to go without make-up and as I have gotten older. Quotes from Maria Shriver and Glennon Doyle help me express my message to all of us women of a certain age: embracing aging can empower us to feel sexy and beautiful while accepting all parts of us.

Is quitting really a bad thing? The definition of quitting has changed over the years, and not in a good way in my opinion. Join me in what may prove to be a controversial after-party discussion.

In this episode I have a lot of fun sharing some of my past experiences living my dream working in television which was made possible because of my decision to quit something else…which was not a popular decision at the time amongst my village of people.

I take an opportunity to shout out to my favorite acting teacher and Casting Director Mark Teschner for whom I will be eternally grateful. I still have my Emmy award winning speech prepared, and still believe that it's not too late! On that, I am not giving up!

I wasn't sure what I wanted to talk about this week until I saw a post from Mel Robbins online. If you're not familiar with her she's a lawyer, TV host, author, and motivational speaker.

Her post said, "8 important signs that mean you're growing." When I saw that, I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about.

I have been experiencing a lot of growth of late, and it has definitely been like throwing a rock in a lake and seeing the ripple effect. Some great, some not so great.

In this episode, I reflect on her 8 signs of growing and how they relate to my life. How growing has affected my relationships, the fear around growth and change for many of us, asking the question if it is also possible for someone to grow and not necessarily change, and so much more. Come with me!

Happy September everyone. I can't believe we're turning the corner to Fall and then the holidays already, again. The seasons we are falling into, pardon the pun, are of things dying annnnd recognizing the beauty that also surrounds it.

Finding beauty in dying is usually challenging. For most of my life I had total fear around it, which I think began when I was 13 when my great uncle passed away. It was my first experience with someone I was close with dying. He was bigger than life and everybody loved Uncle Sam. My family flew to Chicago to go to his funeral and we stayed in his home, which really spooked me at the time because all his things and medicine were in place as if he were still there. At the funeral they had his casket open and I'll never forget how scared I was as I saw him under this red-ish light that was hanging above, and my grandfather loudly crying over his brother. It was the only time I had seen my grandpa cry.

Needless to say that left quite the impression on me with regard to death and dying. And not a good one.

Last year I happened to watch a TEDx talk on this topic with Dr. Martha Jo Atkins from 2013, which has over a million views. And when I heard her say, "When we educate families and the patient about the experiences of dying, there is less fear. And my goodness, we need less fear around death and dying" I grabbed my computer and wrote to ask her to be my guest on Loving Later Life. And I am so thrilled to tell you that she said yes!

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins, is a dog-loving, (Ph.D.) end-of-life licensed professional counselor and counselor supervisor (LPC-S), coach, speaker , doula and author. Dr. Atkins has a thirty-year career helping children and adults negotiate end-of-life and grief.

She is the founder of the Children's Bereavement Center of South Texas, served as Executive Director of Abode Contemplative Care for the Dying in San Antonio, and is the author of the book Signposts of Dying. She is the founder of Dying School, designed to build community while deepening conversations around end-of-life + aliveness.

Now don't touch that dial! I can't wait to share this conversation with you and I do believe that it will have you thinking a little differently about death and dying. And I really want to have her back because there is so much more I want to talk about with her that we just didn't have time for.

So get comfy, and let's let Martha Jo help us think about and talk about dying…

This episode is a follow up to a story that began in Episode 2 of Loving Later Life. It's the one about how I reached out to a jazz band about singing with them.

As I was getting my thoughts together about how best to share the experience of what happened, my mind went off on a creative tangent in a very different direction. This episode has turned into something that wasn't at all planned and I decided why the hell not. So here it is! I've had so much fun putting this together and I think it'll make you smile. Come join me!