Midlife Mixtape

“Make room for something new”: Surprise! Creator and host Nancy Davis Kho on why it’s time to “sunset” the show after almost five years, plus Eight Big Life Lessons from the Midlife Mixtape Podcast.

The funniest skit I’ve ever seen. Apply medicinally when you are feeling low.

The post Ep 111 The Final Midlife Mixtape Podcast Episode appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

“Stretch the rubber band”: Stanford Center for Longevity’s researcher Ken Smith and co-author Karen Breslau, on conclusions from SCL’s new study that seeks to radically redefine how to live better, when we’re living longer.

This is the OLD map. But a damn good song.

Ken Smith 00:00

What is the thing that makes me want to get up in the morning, and how can I actually orient my life more towards that direction as I get older?

Nancy Davis Kho 00:09

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:33

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[MUSIC]

Hi everyone. I’m Nancy Davis Kho, the host and creator of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, and I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Especially compared to Thanksgiving 2020 where the four of us were all huddled at home already, everyone just came out of the bedroom again for dinner, this year was wonderful. Our older daughter had a friend in for a visit, and our younger daughter had to actually come home from college to spend the holiday with us, which is a beautiful thing. We headed over to my high school friend’s house for a big gathering, the highlight of which to me was when her son asked me in front of the crowd to share a crazy story of his mom from high school. Oh, I had to crack my knuckles! The possibilities… went with the hydroplaning one. Thank you science, thank you vaccines, thank you booster shots and rapid tests. And as always, don’t take any of it for granted. You never know what’s coming next.

So we’re heading into the last month of the year and I know that makes many of us feel contemplative about what’s to come. I recently bought my niece a candle for her 30th birthday that says, “Smells like high hopes and low expectations” which I think is probably the right energy for 2022. That is by the way from Anecdote Candles. This is not an ad for them, but their candles crack me up. They smell great. They are really beautiful. So, high hopes and low expectations.

But in all seriousness, a writer friend of mine here in Oakland, Karen Breslau, mentioned to me during the fall that she was busy working on the final report for a brand new research study from the Stanford Center on Longevity, called The New Map of Life. Here’s the deal: in the United States, as many as half of today’s 5-year-olds can expect to live to the age of 100, and this once unattainable milestone may become the norm for newborns by 2050. Yet, the social institutions, norms and policies that await these future centenarians evolved when lives were only half as long and they need updating. In 2018, The Stanford Center on Longevity launched an initiative called The New Map of Life, believing that one of the most profound transformations of the human experience calls for equally momentous and creative changes in the ways we lead these 100-year lives, at every stage.

I thought that would be a really good backdrop for the kind of planning and thinking you might be doing around your personal goals in 2022. So I invited Karen and Senior Research Scholar at the center, Ken Smith, to join me to talk about this study, which only came out last week! It is poppin’ fresh. Let me tell you a bit about Karen and Ken.

Karen Breslau is the founder of Feature Well Stories, a narrative strategy agency in Oakland, California and a co-author of “The New Map of Life” with the Stanford Center on Longevity. She served as foreign, diplomatic and White House correspondent for Newsweek magazine, and was a producer and reporter for NPR. Karen also worked as a speechwriter and communications strategist, and is co-author with Janet Napolitano of “How Safe are We? Homeland Security Since 9/11.”

Ken Smith joined the Stanford Center on Longevity in 2009 and is the Senior Research Scholar and Director of Academic and Research Support, as well as the Center’s Mobility Division. He brings a broad background of over 20 years of management and engineering experience to his role, including positions in the computing, aerospace, and solar energy industries. Ken developed a special expertise in working closely with university faculty to develop projects while at Intel, where he was deeply involved in the creation and management of their network of university research labs.

So let’s join these cartographers of The New Map of Life and see where they’re leading us.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 05:10

I’m so pleased to be here today with Ken Smith, the senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on Longevity and Karen Breslau, who is the co-author of the Stanford’s new study, The New Map of Life. Welcome to the show, Karen and Ken.

Karen 05:25

Thank you, Nancy.

Ken 05:26

Glad to be here.

Nancy 05:27

I’m glad you’re here as well and you know, obviously, a key question when it comes to discussing The New Map of Life: hey, what was your first concert and what were the circumstances? I think that’s an important point on everybody’s roadmap of life. So Ken, I’m going to put you on the spot first. Tell us about your first concert.

Ken 05:45

Sure. By the way, I love that question. It’s like a social carbon-14 dating process.

Nancy 05:50

Okay, wait. What? I was more of a business major. I don’t know what you just said.

Ken 05:54

Oh, it’s a method that scientists often use to date things like fossils by how much of this carbon 14 remains in the material.

Nancy 05:59

Oh, sure.

Ken 06:00

This is just a social version of that. It tells you a lot about sort of where you came from and when you came from at that time.

Nancy 06:10

Yes, of course! All of a sudden, I dialed back to high school science classes, which is the last time I took one. So yeah, sorry. Yeah, listeners, I don’t know much about science, but let’s hear about Ken’s concert.

Ken 06:20

So my first concert was I saw the Doobie Brothers at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin in 1979.

Nancy 06:26

Nice.

Ken 06:27

I think it was probably a celebration of freedom of driver’s license. I went with a group of high school friends. That was back in the day where you were at the DMV on the day of your birthday.

Nancy 06:36

Right.

Ken 06:37

So the first thing we had to do was go to a concert together without the parents, without getting dropped off, so it was kind of a first freedom.

Nancy 06:45

That is an amazing way to celebrate stepping into that new phase of life. I mean, holy smokes, who didn’t want to be 16 and get their license if that was on the other side of it. Was it a good show?

Ken 06:56

It was a great show. I still remember.

Nancy 06:58

Aright, Karen. What about you?

Karen 07:00

I wish I had something as cool to report and I did have another concert in mind… and then this grainy newsreel …the sprocket sound came very sharp …

Nancy 07:15

You suddenly had a film strip of your life.

Karen 07:20

Yes, I wish it were otherwise, but: Glen Campbell at Houston Astrodome. Rhinestone Cowboy.

Nancy 07:29

I don’t think that’s anything to apologize for. First of all, oftentimes, I will have people on the show who say well, this is the FIRST show, but the one I want to talk about is… if you want to throw in the one that really meant something to you, the first one where you paid for a ticket with your own money. But look, I love Glen Campbell. I think you should hold your head high on that.

Karen 07:48

I was very into sideburns and the fringe. I thought it was crazy cool at the time.

Nancy 07:59

I can’t wait to check out your author picture. I hope you’ve got sideburns and fringe. You should consider getting one made.

Karen 08:05

As a woman at this age, that can occur.

Nancy 08:15

Speaking of the New Map of Life, I always drop a music video into the show notes, and now I’m thinking what Glen Campbell song could I include?

Karen 08:23

Rhinestone Cowboy. Check it out.

Nancy 08:25

Yeah, I think he’s got other ones though that are… okay. Well, thanks for the invitation to go to the Glen Campbell rabbit hole.

So I wanted to have you on because I’m thrilled to be talking with you about this brand new study from the Stanford Center on Longevity called The New Map of Life, and my first question is to you as the cartographers: What made the Stanford Center decide that they wanted to do this study, at this time?

Ken 08:51

Really, it’s the culmination of the kind of work that the center has been doing for 12 years – we are really based on the premise that life has expanded over time. I mean, if we look at the last 100 years, the average life expectancy at birth has almost doubled. It’s gone from 47 to somewhere around 80.

But we still live in this world that anchors all of the kind of social things that we do to the world 100 years ago. We still go to school for the same number of years. At the same time, we still think about retiring at 65 and really, as we keep getting longer and longer lives, we tend to think about just adding them on to the end. I don’t think when you pull people and you say where would you want to add more years in your life, that you would say, “Old age, that’s where I’m going!”

So what we thought about is, if you take a white sheet of paper, or a map in this case, and you think about the road that you take, where would you put those extra years, what would you do differently? How would you lay out life if from the beginning you thought you were going to live to be 100? There’s a number of demographers now that are predicting that as many as half of today’s five year olds can expect to live to be 100. That just changes the dynamics and the distribution of society so that we’re really living in a time where we have a different breakup of younger people, older people, middle life people than we ever had before.

We thought this was really something that we needed to undertake. We’ve been doing work in this area for, as I said, about 12 years. But this time, we said it’s time to take a step back, start with a white sheet of paper and say, what are the kinds of things we would do?

Nancy 10:25

Who’s the intended audience for this study? What are you hoping that the impact is going to be?

Ken 10:31

Well, I was just going to say, I think the goal is impact. The audience for this, I would say if I’m tiering it from top to bottom, would be influencers at the top, people in government. I don’t just mean federal government. This is the kind of stuff that I think you could use as a mayor, or as a councilman, right?

We think people who run corporations and make decisions about what their workforces look like, and how that all goes, nonprofits, we’re trying to think about this as sort of a filter for those people.

It’s not so much that we want to tell them, here are the five things that you need to do. I think what we want to say is, “Here’s what we have learned about what leads to a long and positive life outcome. And as you start thinking about your own policies and your own decisions, are you making those decisions with that future in mind, or are you making those decisions based on maybe what you thought about in the past?”

Nancy 11:21

Can you summarize some of the most important findings of this study because we’ve been talking about it so generally? I want listeners to be oriented to what the real conclusions were that your team drew.

Ken 11:33

Sure. It might be worth just saying a few words about how we got to these conclusions, because it’ll make a little more sense about how I couch those.

Nancy 11:39

Perfect.

Ken 11:40

When we thought about how do we go about studying this – because you’re sort of saying, you’re trying to study life, right? So let’s try to do this without boiling the ocean.

We got together a group of 50, 60 experts from sort of all points of the compass. We had economists and pediatricians and engineers and educators together and said, “Where are the places that we actually have an opportunity to make some impact?” For example, one of the best predictors of how long people will live, any individual, is the zip code they’re born in, but you really can’t do much about that. So there’s not much that we think we can make an impact there.

So we ended up landing on nine different domains. If it doesn’t take too long, I’ll just I’ll go through them so you know what I’m talking about.

Nancy 12:21

Please.

Ken 12:22

They are: education, fitness and lifestyle, early childhood influences, intergenerational behaviors, health care, financial security, the built environment, work, and climate.

We thought, these are domains in which there are opportunities to make impact, and so we went out and we hired, for each of those domains, a postdoctoral research scholar at Stanford, and they spent the last two years researching what’s known about the relationship between what goes on in these domains, and how that plays out over a lifetime in terms of outcomes.

For example, what do we know about how obesity in childhood plays out in terms of long term health? What do we know about what the long term effects of somebody who lives in a house with lead paint, for example? Over those two years, they learned what was known about those relationships. They looked into what had been tried, what worked, what didn’t work, and then really closed by saying, “Okay, based on everything I’ve learned, here’s a list of recommendations for things that we might do going forward that better align us in terms of the lifespan, and society and the way we do things.” So that’s the basis of the report.

I think in terms of what’s come out of it – and some of the findings, some of them or maybe the ones you might know about: for example, I think if I told you that exercise, when implemented at any point in the lifespan, helps. It’s good for you to get an education.

But there were some results that were maybe a little more surprising, I think. It’s things like – in early childhood, I was expecting our early childhood person to come out and talk about childcare and things like that, which they did, and the value of that is very high.

But one of his conclusions was children now, even though we have longer lives – our kids are essentially older at the same age than they were decades ago. For example, they’re reaching puberty earlier, they’re experiencing obesity earlier, curriculums in schools have been advanced so the kindergarten looks like more like first grade. One of his conclusions is that might not make sense. We need to spend more time letting our kids be kids and to play and be creative. That’s a route we could take, because we have the opportunity to really stretch out this longer life.

Nancy 14:36

Right. You make the distinction between health spans and life spans. Can you talk a little bit about how those two are separate?

Ken 14:44

Sure. That’s a great question and something that gets confused a lot. When I say lifespans, I’m literally talking about how long you live, birth to death. That’s the easy one to measure so it kind of gets used for everything. Health span is how long your life extends in a way that you can remain independent, that you can continue to do the things you want to do. It’s really the quality of life and obviously, the goal would be that those two are equivalent, that you were perfectly healthy right up till the very end.

Nancy 15:14

I know that’s my plan. That’s what I’ve signed up for.

Ken 15:17

You walk back in off the beach in Hawaii and topple over.

Karen 15:21

Or the Chinese proverb, “Live long, die fast.”

Ken 15:25

Exactly. Right now another one of the conclusions is that we believe that we need to develop a really good measure of health span, such that it can be used as the thing that we hold up our policy choices against. When we choose to invest in health care, we should be doing it in the interest of health span probably more than lifespan.

Nancy 15:46

Talking a little bit more deeply about some of the points on the map here I love – one of them is that age diversity is a net positive. I love that because as someone in my 50s, I work with clients who are in their 20s and 30s. Yesterday I had a client who was in her 70s and I think there’s so much richness in bringing different viewpoints to the table in a work environment. I think that that holds true whether you’re talking about an organization or a government, whatever it is that there’s a real benefit to having a range of ages involved. So can you talk a little bit about that one in particular?

Karen 16:29

That to me was actually one of the most interesting areas of this entire study, I would say the narrative around aging that the Center has really worked on is the Grey Tsunami. There is this great wave of pensioners about to wash over humanity and wipe away wealth and productivity, and coolness.

What we found, and what the research fellows found in just about every aspect of work, life, culture, is that age diversity creates tremendous value. Whether it is in the workplace, where your 50 plus workers have higher levels of productivity, lower levels of absenteeism, that they contribute, that age diverse workforces actually have higher retention and higher productivity.

It’s been quite interesting because diversity is regarded as this value, as bringing social and economic value. We think in terms of racial, cultural, gender, geographic diversity, and yet age diversity just gets left off the table in terms of measurements and reporting – let’s just say, if a company is publicly traded. But there’s this tremendous untapped resource. There’s these vast reserves of wisdom of experience, of emotional intelligence of working smarter. Now, a 50 plus worker may not be able to continue working the pile driver for decades, but that person also can have just enormous reserves of institutional knowledge of experience that can be transmitted. And so knowledge transfer, so much of it just goes untapped. There’s tremendous wealth to be had.

Nancy 18:25

Well, it’s funny I had a conversation with my husband this week, who’s almost 60, and he has a team of people working for him, who he calls them the kids. I think they’re in their 40s. They’re definitely younger than us. But I don’t know that they’re kids.

But he was making the point the other day – he’s a banker, and he said, “The kids can do these Excel spreadsheets that I don’t even know how they create them. They’re so complex, and they’re so good and they can do all these tricks.” But he said, when it comes to putting together a memo that has to communicate a very complex topic, they come to him. And I said, “That’s because you’ve been in the field for 30 years. You know how to communicate something, because you’ve done it for so long. You shouldn’t feel bad. That’s why there’s a team. They do the Excel piece, you do the writing piece, and it all works together.” When I read this study, I was like, well, there’s the validation I was looking for.

Karen 19:23

There is an incredible complementarity of skills that people of different ages bring to the workplace. And when we step aside from the stereotypes about older workers can’t figure out technology, it may or may not be true. But most people in the workplace can use the technology needed to do their jobs, and then some exactly how your husband described it. Everybody brings a piece of the task to the table, and that should be regarded as a net plus.

Ken 19:56

I was just to say, even from sort of a physical perspective or a psychological perspective, the diversity is good. You have younger people that – their brains actually do work faster and they tend to be more kind of expansive in their thinking. But older people have a lot more emotional regulation, for example. So when crises hit, they typically are going to be in a better position to handle those. But at the same time, working with younger people who will crank out that work and probably be able to do that a little bit quicker.

Karen 20:24

I’ve been in workplaces where somebody has come in and I’ll say, “Did X happen, or did you hear back from so and so?” “Oh, no, they never responded to my email.” And I point to the large plastic box on the desk and I’m like, “Did you call them?”

Nancy 20:41

WHAT.

Karen 20:42

I think there is just a whole spectrum of communication tools right now for workplaces, and to know which one to use, and how and how to let’s say, escalate the communication if needed, and as needed. That’s a skill that I think a more experienced worker can really share with younger workers, and I’ve seen that in my own experience.

Ken 21:05

There’s a generational component to this whole technological divide, too. We are now seeing what we’re considering “older people” becoming the people who actually dealt with the beginning of the computer age. When I started using a computer, I had to use MS DOS, for gosh sake.

Nancy 21:20

Did you have to walk across campus to the computer center? Because that’s how I started to use the Lisa computer.

Ken 21:28

I did, actually. We had to sign up to get time on the mainframe. I remember walking over at two in the morning, because that was the only time I could get time on the mainframe.

Karen 21:35

Yeah, I remember doing a master’s thesis in the same way Ken did, in a data center where I signed up. And I used up half an hour of my time trying to load that paper, with the little perforations on the side.

Nancy 21:47

I thought I had it made in grad school because my roommate had an electronic typewriter. I was like, “Woo-hoo! No more drudgery for me. I live with Pam and I’m going to borrow her typewriter.” My kids don’t even know what any of that sentence means.

There was another finding that really fascinated me, and I wondered how much of it was influenced by the fact that much of this research took place during a pandemic: “Work more years and more flexibly.”

So the thesis being that, yeah, if we’re going to have those 30 extra years, why not have them during our productive workspan, lifespan and give ourselves breaks? So that you could maybe take time off and be home with your small kids, or take time off to take care of your parents. And as a person in midlife, that is so appealing to me, because I don’t really foresee a need to stop working. I still feel productive. I love what I do, all of it. But it would be nice to be able to take six weeks off here or a year off there for some other priority that takes precedence at that point. Talk a little bit about that finding.

Ken 22:53

Well, I think that’s been a very core finding of the center for a long time, the idea that if we think about making a longer life…my metaphor for this is, rather than adding that life on the end, it’s a rubber band. If you stretch the rubber band out, all parts of that rubber band sort of stretch the same amount.

Also, we are going to end up working longer, even for financial reasons. Like you say, because people get a lot out of their jobs beyond just the financial. So if we’re going to work, 50 year careers or 50, 60 year careers, it just doesn’t make sense that they have to be worked at the same intensity that you work if you’re working a 20 or 30 year career. I think a lot of people would really like to be taking that time off with their kids or for other reasons.

But we have these social norms that somebody drops out of the workforce for a number of years, it’s hard to get back in. I think we find out over and over and over again, when it comes to education, when it comes to work, that everything comes down to flexibility. This metaphor works great because we had the social norm of a very straight road that you went down, you went to school, you got your job, you worked, you retired.

Now it’s going to be a lot more about off ramps and on ramps. We have a much more complex picture, where we expect people to have three or four careers during their lifetime, that we expect people to be taking time off to do other things. I think over and over again, we find that what people really want is flexibility and we need to find ways to build that in

Karen 24:25

One way to think of it might be extending work span, as we do with health span, with exactly the tools that Ken mentioned.

Nancy 24:36

I feel like I’ve had more conversations in the past couple of months with people who are trying to figure out…The pandemic has obviously forced a lot of us to re-examine how we were living up till March of 2020. Did we want that commute? Did we want that really high pressure job? Did we want to live that far away from family? I feel like I know so many people who are getting ready to make changes or have already started making changes.

The minister at my church did this just brilliant sermon a couple weeks ago, which unfortunately, they did not videotape. So I can’t share it because I would have otherwise. But he talked about how it’s a helpful construct to think of your life in chapters, and to try to identify what chapter are you in right now. Remember that this chapter is not your whole book. And what chapters do you still want to write? He was talking about it in the context of interpersonal relationships, and how you have to remember that the person across the way is also in their own chapter, and maybe your chapters aren’t matching up right now for a reason.

But I really liked that notion of chapters. And when I was reading The New Map of Life, it came back to me because I thought, if you could have a five year span where your chapter is that you’re really focused on career, and then you’re going to take a chapter to take care of your young kids, and then another chapter, I feel like people would just be so much happier. I feel like they would just be able to prioritize what’s important, and recognize that none of it is forever.

Karen 26:09

It is a way to live with a lot more self-compassion and compassion for others.

Ken 26:15

I don’t think it’s a problem of convincing the population that this is what they want. I think, like you say, everybody wants that. It’s just okay, if everybody wants that, how do we design a world that accommodates it?

Nancy 26:25

Well, so here’s the question. First of all, where can people find this study to read it for themselves, and whatever is about to be said, I’m going to include that link in the show notes. But for those of you who are just listening and can’t jot it down, what’s the best place to go to find The New Map of Life?

Ken 26:40

I think the easiest place is to go to the Center on Longevity’s website at longevity.stanford.edu, and it’s linked right off the top banner.

Nancy 26:48

Great. Then the next question: how do we make sure that the people who are setting policy and making decisions are aware of this? What can we do to amplify it and sort of say, “Hey, this aligns with what I’d like to see for my future and for the future of my children and grandkids?” What do you need us to do to signal boost this report? Besides printing it off and dropping it in your company’s anonymous suggestion box.

Karen 27:13

I think getting the word out is as you are, Nancy, is a tremendous help, because as people read The New Map of Life, and it resonates with everybody on many levels. You have to see it, and then you have to build it. And the building, it is a whole of society, it’s all hands on deck, it’s public sector, it’s private sector, it’s individual action, it’s collective action, it’s individual health, it’s public health. These are all investments, even the infrastructure investments – that trillion dollars of infrastructure, you can build for climate resilience, you can build for economic productivity, you can build for longevity readiness, but the same dollars.

So if there is awareness, and we can optimize all of the investments, the choices and help people learn about and become more familiar with this concept: we can draw a new map of life. And that awareness leads to action. There are a number of great examples that we share in the report of places and programs that work.

Ken 28:31

Yeah, I think it’s worth saying, first thing is: read the report and internalize it. The reason that we worked with a great writer like Karen is because we knew, as a bunch of academics ,that we were not going to put something out that was compelling enough to get people to read through it, and to really tell that story in a way that is easy to internalize. I think Karen’s done just such a fantastic job with that.

As you internalize those ideas, it’s really, take those to the places where you have influence in life, and where you are making decisions, kind of hold it up to the light of that report and say, “Are we pushing things in the direction of something that supports 100 year life, or are we holding that vision back?”

Nancy 29:09

Alright. We’re going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor, but when we come back, we’re going to ask Ken Smith and Karen Breslau about The New Map of Life as it relates to us in the years between being hips… between “can’t say my own tagline” – “between being hip and breaking one.”

I wanted to tell you about a new book that will be coming out next spring and is available now for preorder. It’s called Bomb Shelter, and it’s by my dear friend and past podcast guest, Mary Laura Philpott.

You guys, I received an early copy of Bomb Shelter from the publisher and I read it in like, three sittings. I finished it up on Thanksgiving morning and I’m telling you, this one is exquisite. As she did with her first book, which is called I Miss You When I Blink, Mary Laura is tackling life’s harder questions with humor, compassion, and wisdom. She started off as an essayist and she has always been so funny and insightful, even while baring her sole about her struggles to reconcile worry with joy, to love without trying to control, and the contemplation of her mortality, her kid’s mortality, her parent’s mortality.

It sounds like a dark read. It’s not. I have to tell you it was the most humanistic relatable book and I just loved it. The storytelling, the structure, the language, and the heart Mary Laura puts in this book combine for a truly memorable read. I’m going to be thinking about this for years to come. You can pre order Bomb Shelter now at your local bookseller. Make sure you tell them to stock a whole bunch or you can order it online for pre order and just think: some day in April 2022, a really great book is going to pop up in the mail box or your bookseller will call and say, “Come on down!” Just look for Mary Laura’s reptilian friend, Frank the box turtle, on the cover of her book – you’ll want to get your hands on this one. And if you want to check out my past interview with Mary Laura, check out episode, I think 52? I’ll put a link in the show notes. It’s in the fifties. That much I know!

[MUSIC]

Nancy 31:04

Alright. We’re back with Ken Smith and Karen Breslau from the Stanford Center on Longevity talking about their report, The New Map of Life. So if we’re already in midlife, if we’re in the years between being hip and breaking one, we are halfway through your map, if not more. What I’m wondering is what lessons we can draw from The New Map of Life that would be helpful for us to start doing or to stop doing NOW? I know a lot of these conclusions you draw are for broader application or at the societal level, but just looking at the research, is there stuff that you could – say maybe three things that all of us listening should start doing immediately, or stop doing immediately?

Karen 31:44

I’ll take a…

Nancy 31:46

Take a stab at that.

Karen 31:47

Take a stab at it. That’s not a very longevity-imbued phrase, “take a stab.”

First of all, it’s such a pleasure to work with Ken and the incredible scientists and giant brains at the Center. Such an incredible learning experience and it did help me think a lot about my own life and things that I was stumbling around in the dark with. They were illuminated by two facts. One was being able to work with this very talented scientific team. The other, Nancy, is the wrenching, forced experiment we’re put through over the past year and a half, nearly two years now.

For me, the notion that transitions are a feature, not a bug, was really helpful – to know that we are all taking the U turns and the clover leafs and the on ramps and off ramps, and oops! There’s a cul de sac and that’s okay. That is life.

The other is the incredible importance of intergenerational relationships. We live in a very age-segregated society, which was eye opening part of this research. For me, that extended the age segregation, and there is just tremendous, untapped value in relationships with people of all ages. I am very close friends with a 92-year-old neighbor and one of the things I was thinking about is he’s always got time for me. And I have friendships with younger people and relationships, and they’re deeply enriching in so many ways.

To elevate that in our own lives and also, as a collective, to build neighborhoods and communities that allow and foster this kind of spontaneous intergenerational connection that used to happen in villages and farms, that’s really faded away from our modern lives. Over the course of 100 year lives, you need a lot of allies, you need a lot of people to lateral to. Those were my two big takeaways.

Nancy 34:05

Safe to say you’re not moving to a senior living community for your golden years.

Karen 34:10

That’s unlikely to happen. I like diversity, I love age diversity, and so that wouldn’t work for me. I know it would work for others, but not for me.

Nancy 34:22

Ken, what about you? Was there anything in your own behavior that you re-examined in light of the study? You’ve worked in the field for a long time. Was there anything that surprised you about the study?

Ken 34:32

There was. One thing that that pops out is the importance of social connections. We talk a lot about health and diet and exercise and all those kinds of things, but paying attention to your social network is really important.

One of the facts that jumps out at me is that people who report themselves as lonely, and that’s self-reported as lonely, so they have to feel that they’re lonely, have roughly the same sort of hazard profile as smoking. So you can put those two kind of on a par in terms of negative impact on your life.

I think for me, part of it is reawakening the idea that I need to pay more attention to my social network. I live in the Silicon Valley, which tends to be a very work centric place, and you can lose track of those friendships and those relationships over time. So I think that’s definitely one.

Another is to think a little bit more about purpose as you look forward. One trend that we see is that people, as they get older, really want what they’re doing – whether it’s their work or their hobbies – to have more purpose for them, and it kind of forces you to look inward, and to ask: what does purpose mean to me? What is the thing that makes me want to get up in the morning, and how can I actually orient my life more towards that direction as I get older?

Like you say, I think retirement in its current form goes away, so what do I want my future to look like, if I’m not working in my current form, if I want to have more purpose, if I maybe want to have more flexibility? And it’s made me really kind of rethink how I want to set up my future, and it’s also made me realize how long that future is. We have this idea that we live to be somewhere around 80, for example, but that’s life expectancy at birth. If I make it to 65, that 80 moves to something like, 86 or 87. That’s like an added an additional 50% more life than you think about if you’re still anchored on that earlier term. So there’s really more out there.

Nancy 36:19

I always think of my dad who retired – I realized this yesterday, he retired at my age. He took early retirement from Kodak, and then I think the next day, he woke up – and he’d been involved in our local volunteer fire department, and he had been very involved in this Y Camp that my family has close ties to, we’re campers there, and we go to the family camp… From that day forward, my dad woke up every morning like, “Well, those two organizations are going to fall to the ground if I’m not involved today.”

So he had another 25 years, he died just north of 80, and he worked just as hard as when he had a full time job. But he loved it and it was his choice and it brought him so much energy and I think my siblings and I have all looked at that example. That’s what we’d like to do. This idea of getting the flexibility maybe I don’t want to work forever. But that doesn’t mean I want to sit home and read romance novels and eat bonbons every day. Some days I will. Believe you me.

Karen 37:22

There are so many ways to generate wealth and value and purpose and serve.

Nancy 37:30

Now more than ever – I think this idea of coming through the past year and a half, where we’ve all maybe had the reminder that some of the stuff we value before it doesn’t actually matter all that much, and other things do.

I’m going to ask you both the last question that we always ask on this podcast, which is: what one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself? Karen, I’ll put you on the spot first this time.

Karen 37:57

I would say to myself, trust your gut. That intuition is just an innate force. It’s an antenna that we have -so much of our socializing, so many of our institutions kind of train us to override our intuition, and to do what is expected of us at a particular time in our lives, if we’re students, if we’re workers, if we’re parents, if we’re partners, if we’re retirees. My intuition told me for a great part of my life, break the mold, and I didn’t know how. So I ran along in channels, and I’m much happier out of those channels.

Nancy 38:38

That’s a great piece of advice. I think that trust in ourselves, in our own judgment, comes with time.

Karen 38:43

Absolutely.

Nancy 38:44

I love the idea of telling ourselves to trust your instinct, but there is some truth to the fact that you develop that ability over time as you make good decisions, or as you make bad decisions because you overrode your instinct.

Alright, Ken, what about you? What would you tell young Ken, or what would you tell the young people in the world around you?

Ken 39:04

I think I might talk about risk taking.

I grew up as the child of Depression era parents, and so the most important thing was always have that job, always get that paycheck right away. I think I would say, especially when you’re younger, and you don’t have the responsibilities of family and so forth, is to be willing to take more risk. You’re going to have a chance to remake yourself multiple times over your lifetime. Errors that you make when you’re younger almost always can be corrected. Relax a little bit and take those risks, go after the things you really want, and don’t let the fear override that desire and that risk taking.

Nancy 39:45

Remember that your life is chapters. So you’re allowed to have one chapter that’s not the best chapter, that you just try something different. Take a risk and see what happens. Right?

Ken 39:54

Exactly.

Nancy 39:55

Alright. I just came up with the perfect song to put with this show notes. Have you ever heard a song by The Godfathers called “Birth, School, Work, Death”? That’s it. That’s the chant. That’s the old roadmap, people. You need to read The New Map of Life. We’re going to rewrite that song, but it is great song.

Karen 40:17

Ken you need a theme song. We’ve got to work on that next.

Ken 40:19

I have to go find that one.

Nancy 40:21

Believe me, I’ll have it in your inbox in seconds after we get off because now we have to go look at it.

Alright. Ken Smith and Karen Breslau co-authors of the Stanford Center on Longevity’s brand new, The New Map of Life. I’m going to leave a link to it. I really encourage you guys to take a look at it and as Ken said, internalize it. Make sure that that’s part of your thinking as you’re moving forward in places where you have some influence, and thank you so much to both of you for being on the show today.

Karen 40:48

Thank you, Nancy. It was great.

Ken 40:50

Thank you for having me, Nancy. This was fun.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 40:55

All this talk about next chapters and purpose work and all that stuff got me thinking. So I went over to Facebook and I asked you what your next chapters would be, if you could write your story, which I believe you can. What a cool bunch of listeners I have. Here are some of the things you’ll be thinking about as the next waypoints on your own maps.

Maitreya says, “Peaceful puttering with loads of creative projects.” Lots of alliteration in her next chapter. Jill says, “I feel like I’m living the ‘next chapter’ I dreamed of for so long, since retirement. But if I were to refine it, make it even better, I’d dream of really finding success with my writing, create a true commercially successful bestseller.” Keep going, Jill. Keep writing.

Lara says, “A leisurely mix of volunteering, travel, socializing, consuming” and she delineates books, TV, podcasts, movies, NPR and food, crafty projects just for fun and some cute little low-stress hobby job to “’keep me out of the stores’ as my Aunt Ruthy says. I have no interest in achieving or accomplishing anything. This is a total pipe dream, however, I’m going to have to work until it kills me.” Okay, Lara. C’mon! That’s dramatic. We have to figure out a way for you to make time for it all.

Lance says he is going to “write another book, traveling after we become empty nesters,” and of course, because it’s Lance, he is going to “rage against the machine calm like a bomb like a bull on parade.” Lance always rolls in style.

Okay. Vlad rides bikes with my husband and he loves to tease me and Vlad says his next chapter is pole dancing, and I’m just going to leave it here. I think that’s great, Vlad. I guess I’ll come see you perform. I don’t know.

Stewart says, “Full time writing, photography and film on key subjects (documentary and fiction), at least half time in an island location, the rest in another coastal location” I like that vision.

Burt says his next chapter is going to include “more self-love, self-care, self-compassion. The things that have gotten lost in the shuffle over the decades. “May it happen for you, Burt. I will keep you in my prayers.

Kellor says, “Sleep!” But she adds, “I’m not your typical midlife person The 13 year old takes a lot out of me!” Kellor, let me disabuse you have that fact. We’re all tired. We would all like to have more sleep. And then Lynn said, “Well, the thrill of looking forward to an empty nest and free weekends was quickly thwarted when we had my mom move in with us with quickly deteriorating dementia, so simple things like time outdoors, good food and a little travel while still active sounds divine.”

I love how tender you guys are with one another. Alexandra saw that comment and popped in and said, “We had the same, Lynn, and while I do not want to diminish what you’re saying at all, having to care for my mother in her dementia years turned out to be one of the most sweetly eye opening and heart awakening periods of my life.”

Alexandra was kind enough to share an essay that she wrote about this topic. In fact, she performed it. If you’ve ever heard of the wonderful, acclaimed Moth storytelling series, Alexander performed this as a read for the Moth. Well, she’s very humble. She didn’t mention when she was reaching out to Lynn with some support, but she’s actually the Moth’s Grand Slam storytelling champion. I’m going to drop Alexandra’s performance into the show notes, too. If you are anywhere in that sandwich generation dealing with a parent with dementia or an older relative dementia, I think you will maybe find a different lens to look through it. Yeah, thank you, Alexandra.

Now for her own part. Alexandra’s goal is going to be to get buff. She says, “I always wanted to be physically strong in some way. So she’s going to I guess work out until she is the 60 year old poster woman for buff.”

Thom Jennings says his next chapter is all about being a grandpa. He says, “I never thought being a grandparent could be so fulfilling, it’s the dividend from years of parenting.” He is a little further down the track than me and I see pictures of him on social media – Thom and I went to high school together -and I see pictures of him and his grandbaby and yeah, that looks like a happy grandpa right there.

My friend Liz says, “More travel for sure. I need some big adventure to balance out the (wonderful and stable) child-raising years.” She is not complaining, anybody, but she is ready for some adventure and travel of course with this crew is a big thing. Juanita  says, “Travel!! With writing on the side. My dogs on my side too. With hubby of course.” I like that you put the dogs before the hubby. You must have listened to episode 109. She says she wants time to think, create, love and write.

Cindi says, “This is a really good question. I’ve been really dreading my soon to be empty nest, worrying my house would become a tomb. I really had no view of what comes next, unlike all other periods of my life. And I am in a place I didn’t expect. My guess is that travel will play a major role, as will friendships—how to preserve old ones that may have us traveling in diff directions and make new ones—doing things that feed my soul and having more focus on my health, and while others may be looking at retirement, I have this bug for making money and being entrepreneurial and still growing professionally. I get to step back in with more focus. I figure this is my next 5-8 year window before grandkids take my focus.” No pressure on your kids, Cindi. Are you going to place with this and tell them what the time frame is?

Marie had something kind of similar. She said, “I did volunteer/philanthropy chapter already, so with empty nest, I’m ready to refocus on professional life and use the skills I have and build some new ones!” She says, “Grandkids in 5-10 years would be perfect!” So Cindi and Marie should connect and get that mapped out.

Christin also wants to do more meaningful work, while Marie says, “Starting my non-profit has been my huge next phase dream come true. And more travel would be great!” It’s kind of a hybrid. Deidre ] says she is going to use that travel to take the time to visit longtime friends, and have long meaningful conversations. Oh my goodness! That sounds really good.

Ann Imig, the godmother of the Listen To Your Mother Story Telling series says, “Getting back on stage and/or collaborating with incredible creative people and watching my husband get to design a home, or fulfill another big dream.” Because that’s right – for those with us who have partners, you kind of want to see them have an interesting chapter too. Don’t you?

Helene, who I knew formerly as Mrs. Moore because she was the computer lady at my kid’s elementary school says, “So since you asked, I’m still enjoying the space where we met, Joaquin Miller Elementary School. My way-past-empty-nest includes making ‘there’s no place like home’ exciting, stimulating, worthwhile and fun!”

A couple more. My friend Andrea says, “More surf adventure is finding the time and courage to learn to surf the real waves and really be in the lineup.” Yes, she is from California. She wants to learn to fly and get a pilot’s license so she and her husband can take a journey anytime they feel like it. And finally Glynis says she’s going to work on her five minutes for open mic night. She’s been working on her five minutes on my pandemic patio for the last year and a half and let me tell you, she’s going to kill when she finally gets up there behind the mic.

So many cool things to manifest so that we have more interesting markers than just “Birth, School, Work, Death.” Let’s hear what you thought of today’s show – and what YOUR next stop might be on your roadmap. Drop me a line at [email protected], or send me a message via Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @midlifemixtape.

Ok everybody, the next episode is the last of 2021 so make sure you tune in. You don’t want to miss this one on December 14th! I hope something wonderful happens for all of you today.

[“Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 110 “New Map of Life” Cartographers Ken Smith and Karen Breslau appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

“From accessory to center stage”: Mark Cushing, founder of the Animal Policy Group and author of “Pet Nation”, on the emotional, physical, and societal benefits of the human-animal bond at midlife and beyond.

New in November from the Grown Ass Lady Squad:

Here’s proof that GenX DOES have pets!

Thumbs up.

Mark Cushing 00:00

I don’t think there’s a time in your life that the companionship of a pet – by the way, it isn’t limited to dogs or cats – can’t make you feel better.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:11

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:35

The presenting sponsor of today’s episode is Kindra.

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[MUSIC]

Hi everyone and welcome to Episode 109 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast! I’m Nancy Davis Kho, and I’ve been running the show around here since 2017. That feels like a long time ago. Now one of the things I love about this podcast is that – and I’m paraphrasing Vanilla Ice here obviously – if there’s a topic, yo I’ll solve it, check out my guest while the DJ revolves it.

In other words, I was kind of curious about why every single person I see on the street is at the end of a dog leash, or has a cockatiel sitting on her shoulder, or is carrying a cat carrier. And I also sensed that adopting our rescue dog, Arlo, last summer was a good thing, net positive for my husband and me to do in midlife. So, thanks to having a podcast, I was able to find someone who can answer questions like that, and that’s the conversation I’m bringing to your ears today.

Now, if you are one of the 30% of Americans who don’t have pets – and sorry international listeners, I don’t know what the stats are internationally, but either way this holds for you. Don’t turn this off just because you don’t have a pet. One of the most interesting things I learned in this interview is how even NON-pet owners benefit when the people around them are pet-owners. So I hope you’ll stay tuned, and if you’re one of the many listeners who has sent in pictures of your pets in the past couple of weeks, first of all thank you, because that was a highlight of my day every day.

Second, listen all the way to the end of the interview to hear why I wanted that collection, and I’ll tell you where to find it.

Today’s guest is Mark Cushing, Founder & CEO of the Animal Policy Group, and author of the brand-new book Pet Nation, a book that tells the inside story of how companion animals are transforming our homes, culture, and economy. A long-time political strategist, government regulatory advisor, corporate executive and former litigator, since 2004, Mark has specialized in animal health, animal welfare, veterinary and veterinary educational issues and accreditation, developing a cutting-edge practice across these sectors. Mark currently leads several industry coalitions and initiatives and is a law school faculty member at Lincoln Memorial, Lewis & Clark and University of Oregon law schools.

Ok, sit. I said sit. Sit! Sit! Good girl. Good boy. Alright. Let’s see what Mark has to tell us.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 03:53

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Mark Cushing. It’s so good to have you here today.

Mark 03:58

What a great topic. And you’re in the Bay Area. It’s fun for me to connect with old haunts there. So thanks for having me on your show.

Nancy 04:05

We’ve already established that we may be interrupted at any time by one of two dogs, or one of two cats on both sides. So I think that is very fitting for the topic we’re covering today. Let’s hope so. Right?

Mark 04:18

They only improve every situation they join, right?

Nancy 04:22

Well, yes, that’s how I feel. Mark, before we get to the good stuff today about your new book, Pet Nation, I want to ask you the most important question, which is: what was your first concert and what were the circumstances? You must get asked this all the time talking about animal policy, right?

Mark 04:39

I want you to know that I actually gave this answer to somebody in June in a different forrm, so it’s fresh in mind.

My first concert was at the Armory in Salem, Oregon, a very boring state capitol town. The band was Eric Burdon and the Animals. I was asked back in June, “What’s my favorite all time song?” It’s “House of the Rising Sun”. People said to me, “Of all the songs in the world, why would that be your favorite song?”

Well, when I was in middle school- we called the junior high back then – I would always check with the band at a concert – not a big name band, but a local band at a concert- to see what was the song right before “House of the Rising Sun.” Because everybody played that song. Why would I do that? Because that was about an eight and a half minute long, slow dance. So it was important to be strategic.

This should maybe scare you away from this interview. But I needed to be strategic about my partner for that song.

So if I knew the one before it, I could kind of say, “Goodbye, nice dancing with you!” and shoot across the room to whoever was foolish enough to say yes, for an eight and a half minute dance with me. So, there you go.

Nancy 05:56

Mark in junior high playing all the angles. I love it. Mark, your first concert was Eric Burdon and the ANIMALS. Have you reflected upon that? Could that have set you upon your path?

Mark 06:09

Of course, I was hoping you’d pick that up.

Nancy 06:12

Yeah. Of course, I did.

Mark 06:14

They weren’t the Stones, Beatles, Cream level, but they were just below it.

Nancy 06:20

Do you have a favorite song about pets or animals? I’ll tell you why I’m asking this. I wrote a book that came out in 2019 called The Thank-You Project and each chapter had a playlist and one of the things I wrote about was – this whole book was about how I wrote gratitude letters to people who had helped shaped and inspired me over the course of this one year. At some point, I started writing letters to not-people, and I talked about writing a thank you note to your dog, to your cat, whatever four-legged or winged or scaled animal companion makes your life better. With the playlist for that chapter, I wanted to include a song about pets and I had a really hard time coming up with one. I ended up using a boygenius song called “Me and My Dog” which is just a beautiful song, but there was not a lot to choose from.

Mark 07:11

As you asked me, the only things that came to mind were the theme song for TV shows or movies that have animals on them. This will date me but the theme song to Old Yeller. “Come back Yeller, best doggone dog in the West.” I’ve lived most of my life in the West… not all of it. I grew up outside Portland and went to Stanford and was back east, and the south, and came back to the west. And I would substitute the name of my dog for Yeller and sometimes, sing it to him: “Best doggone dog in the West.” I can’t remember a single lyric of the song beyond that, but Yeller, like Lassie, was a pretty serious dog.

Nancy 07:57

Lassie figures large in your book. I learned many facts so let’s just dive into Pet Nation. The book has just come out. It’s called Pet Nation: The inside Story of How Companion Animals Are Transforming Our HOMES, CULTURE, and ECONOMY.

One stat jumped right out as a measure of what that change looks and feels like. “Since 1998,” you wrote, “The pet population in the US has almost doubled. About two thirds of the country now owns a pet.” That’s just since 1998. So that’s a major change. Mark, what is going on? Can you give us a brief overview of what the reasons are behind that transformation, behind that expansion of pet ownership in the country?

Mark 08:43

Well, it’s more than just the number, but the numbers are staggering. Now, we’re close to 70% of households have a pet.

Nancy 08:51

I was just going to jump in for one second to say, all you non-pet owners who are listening, hang in there. Because we are going to talk a little bit about the benefits of other people owning pets to you, because that was something I hadn’t thought about. Sorry, go ahead.

Mark 09:06

You have the sheer number growing dramatically faster than the human population. That’s number one, and we’ll talk about that.

But the thesis of the book, which I believe is anchored in the reality of the last 30 years: pets went from being an accessory or kind of a sideshow, often in the backyard, little time in the house, but just as I say, kind of an accessory to life to center stage. They came inside.

The secret sauce is that term that’s used, called the human-animal bond. That’s a term that psychologists and veterinarians coined back in the 70s and 60s, with the idea that there’s something that goes on between people and an animal beyond just, “Isn’t my puppy cute? Isn’t my cat a darling?” It’s a chemical fact and at first, it was treated almost like your grandmother’s flu remedy. “Yeah, right. I’m sure that’s not science.”

Now, Purdue University Veterinary College Library has 31,000 entries related to the human-animal bond, many of those peer reviewed studies. What they found out: engaging with a pet causes a person’s – and by the way, the same thing for the pet – a person’s oxytocin level to go up. Ad oxytocin is the agent of happiness, calm, relaxation in your brain. Basically, you’re happy, your cortisol level goes down. Cortisol is a source of stress, worry, anxiety.

I don’t think people studied this in a library and ran home and said, “Let’s go get a dog or a cat.” But they discovered it when pets came inside. They began to engage more, they just felt better, and that began to kind of permeate what I call the childhood of Baby Boomers, the early years of Baby Boomers. Then we watched the show that we’ve already referred to religiously on Sunday evenings: Lassie, the greatest dog in the history of the universe. Loyal, friendly, playful.

Nancy 11:15

What’s up with Timmy? Timmy needed to just get himself organized and calm down. Why so much peril, Timmy?

Mark 11:21

Tim didn’t know what was behind the tree. It wasn’t a cute little kitty. It was a cougar or a robber or a thug or whomever it might be. Interestingly, to push us way back in time, the author that created Lassie was a friend of Charles Dickens, so she knew something a long time ago.

But that confluence of pets inside, people experiencing and enjoying the human-animal bond and then seeing in the media – now all of a sudden pets, Scooby Doo, Peanuts, that series, Old Yeller, Rin Tin Tin, cartoons galore – I mean, they begin to see pets, and what were they always dong? Having fun, they were funny, they were cool. You just want to hang with them.

So those two cultural events in my study merged, and they were best captured… I mention this a lot, because I can remember watching this going, “I can’t believe what I’m seeing.” It was Subaru and Nissan, two Japanese car manufacturers in the same time period, with brilliant agencies that thought this idea up. They created commercials for their cars as follows. Car going down a California Coastal Highway, Golden Retriever in the front seat, window down, hair flowing, smiling. You weren’t told anything about the car, you weren’t told anything about the engine, about the price. Nothing. I can imagine the CEO turning to the ad agency saying, “When are you going to finish the ad? What are we doing here?” They said, “No, that is the ad. We just want them to connect a happy dog with your brand.”

That is the essence of Pet Nation. This notion that’s just associating with a dog in this case brought goodwill. And the sales for those two companies tracked almost to the month in that ad campaign.

Nancy 13:19

Wow.

Mark 13:20

Now you see that you can barely turn on TV – I watch a lot of ballgames and you can’t go very long, I think almost every other ad has an animal in it in some fashion, not the star but always just there. Because they know what that does – AT&T now has in an ad a bearded dragon and the line is “There’s no dogs so I got this pet.” Those things, the combination of media with the human-animal bond and then what took it over the top was the creation of social media through smartphones.

Nancy 13:57

The facet of how technology and the resulting isolation that we all have experienced, when we’re buried in our phones and separate from one another… The fact that that had an impact of increasing our need, our connection to the pets in our lives was fascinating to me.

Mark 14:15

Well, you know what happened? I remember early on with the big clunker smartphones, we didn’t call them smartphones, you used to see people show your babies. And you had to be nice and say, “Oh, that’s a cute baby.”

Nancy 14:27

“Ya gotta see the baby!”

Mark 14:29

Yeah, exactly. I have 5 children, so I’m all for that. But all of a sudden, kids got pushed off the screen because everybody became their own film editor and director, and what do people want to see? “Yeah, you had a baby. Great. Show me you holding your new granddaughter one time. Thank you. Oh, you’ve got a Shih Tzu? Could you every day supply a video of what your Shih Tzu is doing?”

Nancy 14:54

“I need a feed of the Shih Tzu. Thank you.”

Mark 14:57

There you go. All those forces change and the most visible impact of what I call Pet Nation, this culture of pets, became when dog owners – figuratively now, but it really captures it – marched right out the front door with their dogs and are taking their dogs everywhere in America, to places people never could imagine.

I mean, let me give you two examples. They’re my favorites. Most prominently is hospitals. Alright. In my childhood, if you saw a dog in a hospital, you would also see an orderly or a nurse running down the hallway to get that dog outside. Now, in Oakland, try to find a hospital that doesn’t have an animal assisted therapy dog, multiple animal assisted therapy dogs, where the dogs actually are part of the treatment of the patient. Who would’ve thought that? If you told me that as a kid, I would have laughed and said, “Not happening.”

The other one was hotels. For most of us, just go back 20 years, walk into a hotel lobby with a dog and you’ll be told, “Excuse me. Outside.” If you got past the bellman to the front desk and try to get a room, they’d look at you and say, “Is the dog with you?” “Yes.” “Outside. We don’t have room for dogs.”

Now, the Kimpton Group, which began in San Francisco, and they discovered Wolfgang Puck, and it’s a great chain, often named names other than Kimpton but they’re all over the country, very hip hotels; they now have floors for non-pet owners. How about that? We’ve reached the point where it’s like, “Okay, you can have floor number four. Either you’re allergic or you just don’t like pets, and we won’t bother you. But understand that everywhere else in this hotel, you’re going to run into a dog.”

Nancy 16:50

I love that they bring them on campus during finals. That’s one of my favorite places to see them where the kids can come out and get a little snuggle as a study break. What a wonderful thing for college students!

Mark 17:02

That’s a long, long answer. And there’s one other element, which is I think very important right now in America. It’s not just the human-animal bond for the individual pet owner or pet parent, but it’s the social capital of pets. What do I mean by that? What pets do to a community.

A study was done in Perth, Australia, which is a lot like San Diego, it’s on the Indian Ocean, western side of Australia. It was a blind study. It wasn’t trying to prove anything about pets, but it was trying to figure out, “What’s the most powerful force that makes a community comfortable, less violent, more trustworthy, more engaged?” Schools, churches, sports, politics (I wouldn’t think so).

But the point is, they looked at every factor, and what was number one? Pets. People were just skeptical. I was part of a group that redid this study in San Diego, Portland, Oregon, and Nashville, which is Bible Belt – you might think churches might have won. All three cities. Same result.

Nancy 18:04

Why is it?

Mark 18:05

The key factor is, you and I are walking down a sidewalk opposite and we cross paths, we’ve never met. We probably won’t even look each other in the eye. There’s almost a sense of respecting the privacy or the awkwardness of it. Sometimes you have to think about, “Am I going to look at the person and say hello? I don’t know them.” Chances are you don’t.

You and I walking with a dog on a leash? We stop. We don’t know each other. You don’t say to me, “How much money do you make?” I don’t say to you, “What kind of car do you drive? Where’d you go to school?” None of that. “What’s her name? What does she like to eat? What does she like to play with? Where’d you get her that?” We have a 15, 20 minute conversation, we’re now friends. As I said in the book, not “have each other to dinner” friends. We’re just friends because of our dogs and that’s this common element.

That’s what the name Nation means. Not to pick on the Raiders, but you would say Raider Nation. If two people in the Starbucks were wearing Raiders gear, a cap or a sweatshirt or something, they’d have a conversation. But it wouldn’t be about anything except that team and it’s a communizing…. It doesn’t matter your wealth or anything. That breaks down tensions.

It also makes people feel better and that’s called the human-animal bond. You walk to a park, dogs are playing together, you go to a dog park, and you just feel better, you’re in a better mood, you’re chatting with neighbors. Now this place you live isn’t full of 5000 strangers, and some good restaurants and a supermarket. It’s full of people that you’ve met, and you’re comfortable. You don’t have to become best friends and you don’t have to turn into an extrovert. If you’re an introvert, you don’t have to do that. It’s just made safer and better. And that combination was sort of to me the ultimate value of pets and it’s why it’s not a fad.

So anybody who doesn’t like pets and thinks that this is going to go the way of Beanie Babies, sorry, let me give you the news. Millennials and Gen Z’s own 60% of the pets in this country now. They were the kids that always had a pet in their houses, do you think their kids aren’t going to make sure the first thing they do after school is grab two pets? That’s a lot of what happened in the pandemic, is that existing pet owners, millennial kids – not kids, young adults – got a second dog, they got a first cat, they got a second cat, they expanded there because they wanted playmates for their pets, as well as others got their first time. So I’m sure we can talk about that.

Nancy 20:35

Well, you make a rather surprising point to me that we’re going to run out of pets.

I mean, you kind of make the argument that we need to figure out where all the pets are going to come from, because the Millennials and the Gen Z’s are so accustomed to pet ownership, they’re likely to continue that and maybe double up, triple up with whatever it is they have.

Thank you, Sarah McLaughlin. We’ve done such a good job of spaying and neutering so many pets that we’re facing a shortage.

This is my excuse to talk about my dog, Arlo. It was going to come out at some point. But we started thinking about adopting a pandemic dog last year in 2020, and it took until June 2021 till one of the applications I sent in actually landed us a dog, because the dogs were hitting the shelter and right out the door again the next day. Thank God, I didn’t get anybody but Arlo – I mean, there was a reason we had to wait. But I experienced it personally, that’s just really darn hard to get a new pet.

Mark 21:43

Well, the study that was done, that I convinced a group to fund, it was two studies together. It was back in 2015, so five years before COVID. Let me tell you what prompted that.

I travel – not anymore, but I would travel weekly in my practice, which I’m lucky to represent companies across the country. My daughter, who was in law school at University of Washington, Seattle, to get a little stress relief would volunteer at shelters in Seattle and Seattle Humane Society, it’s a great organization. We began to notice that if you didn’t get to a shelter about noon on Friday, if you’re trying to find a pet – and I mean an adoptable dog, there are dogs that because of medical or behavioral reasons are in shelters, but they’re not capable of being adopted out yet and maybe never. Okay, well, if you didn’t get there by Friday noon, certainly early morning, Saturday, I mean, early morning, like 6am, and there’s lines out the door, you’re out of luck.

So I started to look into that going. Is that just one place? Well, no, I talked to shelter leaders across the country and if you take the Mason Dixon Line, which I always say kind of goes from the Bay Area across the Baltimore, Maryland – all the northern shelters, most of their dogs come from the south or the southwest. Portland Oregon Humane Society gets their dogs from LA, Animal Control in Bakersfield. Dogs in El Paso go up to Denver and dogs from Mississippi go up to Minnesota. Dogs from East Tennessee go to Buffalo and Alabama sends their dogs in New Jersey and so forth.

It was funny. I said, “So they’re not local strays.” These are dogs coming from shelters that don’t have staff, don’t have the resources in communities, that aren’t spaying and neutering as fast as other areas, and they would come up and it was a beautiful system. I call it the Canine Freedom Train. They would take the dogs who were on the verge of being euthanized and give them a life for somebody who lives in Boston. I joked that the dogs either had a drawl or they spoke Spanish. They were just from different parts of the country.

That got me thinking and I started to talk to animal welfare executives, I’ll leave names as anonymous, back in 2014 and I said, “The combination of spay and neutering the demand for dogs, how does anybody know that we have enough dogs and what are the sources of the dogs if we have a shortfall?”

People began to say to me, “Mark, I’m not sure we don’t have a shortage.” I said, “Well, let’s just find out. Let’s do a study. Let’s go see what the facts are.”

It turned out that we were looking potentially at around 2 million dogs a year shortfall. Well, half of that’s made up from dogs that come from foreign sources, not just overseas, but from Mexico or from Canada. The CDC recently said that numbers about 1.1 million a year, and they don’t have medical records. They don’t have vaccine records or veterinary records. Fewer than 3% of these dogs do.

We had this very sketchy system and the truth is COVID just took the covers off and people went, “Good God, that shelter is empty.” It’s not like people are running back, taking Sparky to the shelter now that they’re going back to work saying, “I loved you for the last year, you changed my life. But here, good luck.” Not going to do that.

We don’t have an organized system. One of the reasons we don’t is a political issue, and it’s a powerful political issue. It’s a term that you and your listeners have heard before, called puppy mills. The idea of commercial breeding has been stigmatized by the term “puppy mills.” We don’t encourage people to go into business of breeding dogs at scale for fear that they’re going to turn into factories and their conditions are going to be inhumane and so forth. There are certainly breeders like that around the country. I’m not saying they’re not.

But the idea that anyone who has a lot of dogs in that business is always unsanitary, inhumane and doesn’t care about the animals can’t be proven either. But they don’t talk to each other. It’d be as tough as negotiating peace between Israel and Palestine, I swear, as getting animal welfare groups and breeders in the same room to figure out.

So absent that, you have to ask yourself, do we have a shortage prices? Period. Or availability as you found. If you’re trying to get a dog from a shelter, you have an application, you’re on a waiting list, and that list can be as long as a year. If you try to get a dog from a breeder, there’s some breeds that you’re talking about a three year wait. In the West, a golden doodle puppy now can cost $4,500.

Nancy 26:39

Yeah, that seems to be the going rate for a purebred.

Mark 26:42

Guess what? That’s a luxury item. One of the points I make all the time in talking to industry group is, “This isn’t going to work, folks, if dogs become a luxury item. They’re not meant to be, they shouldn’t be. We can produce as many dogs as we need. Money should not be a barrier to owning a dog, or a cat. But there’s political forces in place.” So it’s a challenge.

The other shortage we face, and it’s acute in the Bay Area, is a shortage of veterinarians. I did an interview with the ABC affiliate in San Francisco and it’s all driven by people that have friends whose dogs died, because they couldn’t get into emergency clinic. They literally couldn’t get in over a 48 hour period. With your dog hit by a car, it doesn’t work to say, “In two days, we’ll take a look and see how he’s doing.” I hate to use such a sad image. But we’re at a tough point right now.

So shortages, which often occur in industries where there’s a burst of success and growth – and I’ll tell you, the pet world, the animal health world, the veterinary world was not ready for the demand, and the scale of service people want right now. My day job is involved in trying to address that shortage in any way we can.

Nancy 28:02

The book is full of really interesting discussions of topics like that, stuff I hadn’t thought about before. It also – Mark, I have to say, as a fellow writer, your footnote game is impeccable. So Mark drops all of these trivia bombs throughout the book, and I’m going to read the one on page 42 because I let out a squawk. “At the age of 17 before inventing the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell taught his Skye Terrier Trouvé to say, ‘How are you grandma?”

What? Mark? We need receipts for that. How did he teach his dog to talk? What are you talking about?

Mark 28:40

You know what? We ran that down and it happened. I have no clue. Of course, the records aren’t around to just sit and listen to the lesson, like a podcast series on how to teach your dog to say your name, or speak French, whatever. And it is interesting how far back in time some great animal stories go. You know the Papillon. The Papillon puppy that was Antoinette’s dog that she handed to one of her servants just before her head was chopped off in the French Revolution. It apparently lived a long life but it wasn’t living in the palace.

Nancy 29:21

It never ate cake again.

Mark 29:23

Never ate cake again.

Nancy 29:24

My sister in law is convinced that she taught her dog to say, “I love you, Mom” and we’re all just like, “Okay, Shelley, that’s what I hear too.” I mean, what are you going to say? Like, I think he just has gas. I’m not sure about it.

We’re going to come back in a minute and talk with Mark Cushing, author of Pet Nation and how to be animal policy group about midlife and dogs. But first a word from our sponsor.

Back in September, I was honored to have my book, The Thank-You Project, selected for its monthly Book Club by Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement. Scarlett Lewis founded the nonprofit Choose Love Movement after her son Jesse was murdered during the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in December 2012.  After his death, Scarlett became part of the solution to the issues that we’re seeing in our society and those that also cause the tragedy. She created the Movement and became an advocate for social and emotional learning (SEL) and character development that teaches children how to manage their emotions, feel connected, and have healthy relationships. Speaking across the US and internationally to diverse audiences, Scarlett urges everyone to become part of the solution. My Zoom meeting with the Choose Love Book Club was one of my favorite events this year – such thoughtful questions and of course, gratitude is a big part of Scarlett’s message of healing and connection inspired by the loss of her son. She’s just an amazing person.

Now, she has a book out. It’s called From Sandy Hook to the World and explores how Scarlett Lewis started Choose Love Movement in the wake of her Jess’s murder.  Learn how Jesse’s final chalkboard message of “Nurturing Healing Love” inspired Lewis to create the simple yet profound Choose Love Formula and become a leader in character social and emotional development. It includes stories of how the Choose Love programs have transformed educators, students, parents, communities, and workplaces, how people in the US and around the world have embraced the Movement and are helping to create a culture of love and connection. The Movement serves more than 2 million children in over 10,000 schools, in every state, and over 100 countries and it’s growing every year. You can order From Sandy Hook to the World in your favorite indie bookstores and online. I’ll leave a link in the show notes to make it easy for you to get your hands on this beautiful new book.

I also wanted to make sure you’ve checked out all the great new stuff this month from fellow members of the Grown Ass Lady Squad. That’s GALS to you and me. There’s a great piece on TueNight.com by Jo Piazza called Are Women’s Lives Just Someone Else’s Business Model? I loved this line: “Many of us have become nonstop content shops, whether we are creating a business around ourselves or simply laying claim to the women we are or want to claim to be. Our vital need to brand ourselves as a successful author and attentive mother, or a loving wife or a doting daughter simply lets the scroll of sales continue. And through it all, we are their free programming.” Oh my God, why do you have to be so right, Jo? So that’s over on TueNight.

Jumble and Flow has a story called How I quit the diet cycle and refocused on what really matters in life. And Revel’s got an essay called The Secret to a Happy Life? Friendship!  I second that. I want to make sure to give a shout out to Dame Magazine – that’s DameMagazine.com – which is a 100% independent, women-led, reader-funded newsroom. They’re covering stories that matter to woman and men that might otherwise fall under the radar. I hope you’ll check out DameMagazine.com and consider becoming a member to support their important work.

And finally, check out the Modern Gen X Woman podcast, all about business and career with lots of life lessons. I’ll leave links to all Modern Gen X Woman Podcast these in the show notes so you can see what’s up the Grown Ass Lady Squad!

[MUSIC]

Nancy 32:54

So we’re back with Mark Cushing who’s talking about his new book, Pet Nation. Mark, I’m going to ask, what particular place do you think that pets have for people at midlife, for what we call “the years between being hip and breaking one”? In what ways can pets make our midlife better, easier, more fulfilling?

Mark 33:16

I don’t think there’s a time in your life that the companionship of a pet – by the way, isn’t limited to dogs or cats – can’t make you feel better, can’t cause you to, in the case of a dog, exercise more which is good for everybody. So there’s no time. I think in midlife, particularly when children have gone off to college if you had kids, and you miss their companionship daily – nothing approaches, not a good CD to use an old fashioned phrase for music –  I mean, not a good movie, nothing replaces that daily, steady, unconditional relationship you have with the pet.

Nancy 33:57

Which is also the argument for getting them when you still have crabby teenagers at home too. I’m going to butcher the quote but somebody said, “If you want somebody to be happy to see you when you get home when your kids are teenagers, get a dog.”

Mark 34:09

Yeah, absolutely true.

I’ll push ahead a little bit into kind of midlife to when in your 70s or 80s. There was predictions that Baby Boomers who kicked this whole thing off and forever have had the most pets of any group replaced now by Millennials – well, if their pet passes away, they’re not going to get another one because of fears that they can’t take care of it.

Fortunately, the Amazon’s, the Chewy’s, the telemedicine, the direct consumer service delivery apparatus that pervades our life, has solved that problem. You could basically have a pet and a modest income and almost never have to take it anywhere to get something or do something, if that’s an issue. For many people, it is – people that don’t have cars, and most public transport still not pet friendly. It’s something I’m working on. But the solution is not handy yet.

I tell people, there’s no better time than the last 20 years of your life to enjoy the company of pets and there’s even a wonderful program that was started in Portland, Oregon called Pets Peace of Mind. It’s a nonprofit, and I’m on their board. They’re national now and they’ve trained human hospices, where people go for their last month or last two or three months, that allow you to have your pet with you in your lap. Think about that. They train the staff to deal with it, and arrange for the adoption of your pet so you don’t have to worry.

A lot of people have that fear. It’s like, “I don’t want to get another cat or dog because if I pass away, what’s going to happen to Fluffy?” Well, the answer is there’s solutions there. The service economy surrounding pets is not finished in its development and its specialization, and it’s customizing care and services for people, whatever their situation might be.

I’d say particularly, if you aren’t getting enough exercise – sorry, cat owners, cats don’t really like to be on leashes – get a dog. Just that simple act of a walk around the block half a mile, a quarter mile, it might add up to a mile or two, you’re going to do better physically, you’re going to do better medically.

Nancy 36:33

Not to mention emotionally. The cats, the lizards, the turtles, they’re all great for that.

Mark 36:38

In my book, just a quick highlight. A tremendous specialist veterinarian that lives in the Keys, in Florida, had all sorts of pets, and he talked about the human-animal bond with the fish in his aquarium.

To this day, he’s still crushed at the fact he could not move his entire aquarium apparatus out of his house as he raced out of the Keys to get up to Miami when that last hurricane that just blew through and destroyed the Keys came through. And he said when he came back and his fish died…he said every day when he came home, he saw their eyes and they saw his eyes and so there’s even different pets for different people too. Enjoy an aquarium if you don’t think you can take care of a dog or a cat.

Nancy 37:28

Right. Alright, so Mark, I do this for most nonfiction books that come my way for the podcast. I flipped to the appendix because I’m like, “Oh, he’s talking about Millennial dog ownership, he’s talking about Gen Z,” and I started alphabetically. And sure enough, there’s a reference to Baby Boomers in the appendix and I get to G, and there’s Generation Z.

You didn’t even mention Generation X in your book. So I did a little further digging and I found out according to Statista that sure enough, Millennials own 32% of pets, Boomers own 27% of pets, and Gen X has a paltry 24% of pets. But I think that’s because we’re the smallest cohort.

So what I would love the animal policy group to do – just saying – is a study on per capita, per…if you correct the size of our generation, I bet we were pretty high! Because we were latchkey kids, we loved our dogs and cats that were there for us when our parents weren’t.

Mark 38:23

My wife is Gen X, okay? I’m reminded often in a very articulate manner that every aspect of society and culture seems to skip from Boomers to Millennials, as if there wasn’t anything in between, and you’re right. It’s only a function of the number of Gen Xers, period.

Nancy 38:44

Tell your wife I just gave her a silent fist bump.

Then just to make sure that we are represented, I have invited listeners of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast to send me pictures of their pets. And when this episode airs, there is going to be a slideshow of the most -I’m going to say the cutest pets of all the generations accrue to us in Generation X. I’ve been pulling this slideshow together over the past days and it is a delight.

So make sure you check out the show notes and see a slideshow of Midlife Mixtape listeners’ pets. They’re so cute. As my daughter said to me last night in talking about our dog, “I think God peaked with this one.”

Mark 39:23

I stand humbled and admonished.

Nancy 39:28

Oh, it’s just the Gen X snark coming through. But the one other thing I saw was that, and I think this came from the book, as you said that the 55 and over age group has become the largest proportion of pet owners across all pet types and this goes back to your earlier point. Gen X is hitting that number. So I think probably there will be a groundswell as we experience empty nesting and that need for more emotional and physical connection with a pet.

The last question we always ask on the show: what one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish I could go back and tell yourself?

Mark 40:02

That has to do with pets of course, right? It doesn’t have to do with failed sports teams that you grow allegiance to and suffer from.

Nancy 40:10

You can throw that in on the way by if you want to.

Mark 40:13

There’s no time in your life you couldn’t and wouldn’t enjoy a pet and it wouldn’t improve you in terms of your mood, your humanity, your sensibilities, your empathy, and so forth.

My mom did not like cats or dogs in the house. So I had a childhood that really didn’t have pets. One, Prince, my collie who was smashed over the head with a milk bottle by a milk delivery guy.

Anyway, I would say get a pet. And particularly…it’s often men, but I don’t want to stereotype too much, but there seems to be some truth to it. There’s this myth that somehow guys are supposed to have dogs and women can have dogs and cats, and I’m telling you cats are amazing animals. The phrase that I love taht a veterinarian shared with me is that “dogs have owners and cats have staff.” It’s so true. Cats are so fun. They’re like, “Please come here and pet me. Stop petting me.”

Nancy 41:14

They’re the puzzle you can never solve.

Mark 41:17

I am so happy that we have both two cats, as it turns out, and a dog. It is really fun to watch those species interact. It drives my puppy crazy and makes me laugh with a belly laugh to watch him just watch these cats jump up six feet onto a ledge, go under a couch and he’s like, “Where are you? How did you do that? Get down here. You’re not supposed to be up there. I can’t get up there!” and it’s fun.

So I just think there’s not a time in your life when pets don’t make things better, more entertaining. I like to laugh. I’m a bit of a smart aleck, you can probably tell and pets just feed that. Now that you can take them so many places and we have so many services available, try them both. Don’t typecast yourself as dogs only if you haven’t tried a cat or vice versa.

Nancy 42:06

That’s great advice. Mark, this has been really fun. The book is called Pet Nation: The Inside Story of How Companion Animals Are Transforming Our HOMES, CULTURE, and ECONOMY. Super fascinating. I learned a lot and grateful for you making the time to be on the show today.

Mark 42:20

Thanks so much and I can’t wait to see the photos.

Nancy 42:23

Come back and see our slideshow. I’m loving these pictures that are everybody’s been sending in.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 42:32

Okay. Circling back to my question to Mark about great songs about pets, I couldn’t have timed this any better. Last week, Jenny Lewis, who is one of my very favorite performers dropped a new single called “Puppy and a Truck” and that’s the video I’m going to include in today’s show notes. My favorite line of the song:

If you feel like giving up

Jenny is always right. Alright, let me know what you thought of today’s show. I’m going to be putting that slideshow up on social media on the very infrequently visited Midlife Mixtape YouTube channel. Don’t spend a lot of time there. There’s not much, but I will put the slideshow there. Drop me a line at [email protected], or send me a message via Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @midlifemixtape to let me know what you thought.

May today make you as happy as a dog who’s just found an unguarded ham sandwich! See you next time!

[“Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 109 Animal Policy Expert Mark Cushing appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

“A spirit of curiosity”: Megan Zesati and Holly Sprague, founders of the DryTogether alcohol-free living community for midlife moms, on the benefits of teaming up to cut back on booze, the media messages that boost our consumption, and living AF(AF.)

Freedom to make the best choices for yourself at midlife, and to worship George Michael.

Holly Sprague 00:01

In my life right now, I’ve got so much going on up there that I need some space, and I need some area that is not consumed with how much I drank last night or how much I’m going to drink tonight.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:16

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

00:26

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:40

The presenting sponsor of today’s episode of Midlife Mixtape is Kindra. Kindra is a health and wellness company that is revolutionizing menopause. Their products help women navigate the most disruptive signs of the change, like hot flashes, brain fog, restless sleep, dryness, and more. That’s the cafeteria menu you want none of. Kindra is science backed and it’s made for women and by women, and yeah, I’ll go ahead and say I think it’s probably better to get your menopause support products developed by people who have also whipped off a cardigan sweater and shoved their hair into a messy bun in the middle of a meeting, while fanning themselves off with a sheaf of paper.

Kindra makes it easy to get personalized product recommendations and educational content with their online quiz. It just takes 5 minutes. Isn’t it time we started talking about the change and embracing it?

You can head to ourkindra.com – that’s OURKINDRA.COM and use code MIXTAPE20 – all caps – to get 20% off your first order or subscription. That’s ourkindra.com and the code is MIXTAPE20 to get 20% off!

[MUSIC]

Nancy 01:48

Hello to all of you who know exactly who will be there wanting some when you try new soft and juicy Bubble Yum… I’m going to give you a minute… It’s the Flavor Fiend.

Hi, it’s Nancy Davis Kho. I’m the host and creator of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. I have considered doing an episode where I just have you guys all record yourselves singing your favorite 70s or 80s ad jingles, but that would create earworms that might actually be fatal to us at our ages. Who wears short shorts? I’m not even going to give you an answer to that.

Actually, I do have an ask for you, before we get to today’s episode. We’re going to be talking soon about pets and midlife in an upcoming show and I want you to send me pictures of yours – the pandemic puppies, the covid cats, friends from the more exotic aisles in the pet store. I’m going to put together a slideshow of the pets that make the lives of Midlife Mixtape listeners better, and I want to make your furry, or winged, or scaled buddy to be included. Just send the pic to [email protected] before November 11th. That’s it. Send me some cute animals’ pics, please. Make my day.

So, I got pitched by today’s guests a few months back, and I was immediately intrigued. Megan Barnes Zesati and Holly Sprague are the founders DryTogether, which is an alcohol-free community for midlife moms that brings together women ages 35-60 years old from around the country. Through virtual events and a robust member-only online forum, the DryTogether community facilitates a safe space for mothers to connect and explore this stage in life – without alcohol.

I will cop to being one of the 41% of women who increased her drinking during the pandemic. The RAND did a study and it’s cited in a Harvard business review story on the topic and I’m going to include in the show notes if you want to check it out. I’ve always enjoyed my daily beer, and since college, with a few memorable exceptions, I’ve always been able to stop when I’ve had enough. I guess this is true confessions time for you. Hope you’re ready for this. But when the pandemic started, and especially as it dragged on and the grief and losses piled up, I definitely allowed myself to drink more than I normally would. Studies and anecdotal evidence will tell you that drinking more is common response to dealing with stress, and I ain’t special. I’m pretty common.

But recently, my friend Maria and I talked about how women seem to be drinking all the time, way more than our moms and grandmas did. That was even before the pandemic started. The same Harvard article bears out the theory that Maria and I had. Between 2001 and 2013, there was a 16% increase in the proportion of women who drink alcohol, a 58% increase in women’s heavy drinking (versus a rise of 16% in men), and an 84% increase in women’s one-year prevalence of an alcohol use disorder (versus 35% in men). So, basically, women have been drinking more since this was measured in 2001 across the board. I think that’s been influenced a lot by the media we consume that makes drinking seem like the behavioral baseline.

I present to you myself as Exhibit A: have you read the Outlander series? Okay. If you haven’t read this yet or if you haven’t seen the show on Starz: it’s basically Scottish Kilt Porn. There’s Time Travel and there are Highlanders, and at all times one of four things is happening in this book series: someone is bleeding, someone is plotting, someone is making love, and someone is drinking whiskey.

I started reading the series during the pandemic and let me say: I love these books. I will read them forever. I want to read about Jamie and Clare’s generous and steamy nonagenarian sex life someday.  I’ve read10,000 pages of this series since March 2020. They’re literary comfort food to me. But I find when I read them: I want to drink more. BECAUSE EVERYONE IN THIS BOOK IS DRINKING WHISKEY ALL THE TIME. And TONS of whiskey.

I can tell when I’m reading them, I’m like, “I think I’ll have a beer while I read!” so I know I get impacted by what I’m reading, watching, and consuming. Then when you see that level of drinking on TV, and in ads, and in everybody’s memes and on Instagram: Mommy drinks to cope, it’s time for Mommy juice, you’ve earned your drink, you start thinking: maybe 2 drinks a night is normal? Maybe 3 is? I don’t know what normal is anymore.

I don’t know if you guys are into horoscopes – I am thanks to Aunt Noonie. I am an April baby so my sign is Taurus. It’s the sign of the zodiac that can be really sybaritic – very self-indulgent, with a tendency to overdo all the earthly luxuries like good food and good drink and cashmere on sale at Garnet Hill. So believe me, I’m the last person to judge anyone else about how you’ve handled the past year and a half, what your preferences are. I am not judging.

But I found that for myself by summer of this year 2021, I was getting sick of it. I was feeling really bored of relying on the second drink more often than not, and since then I’ve been working really hard to cut back to my regular baseline of a single daily beer with a goal someday even to get below that. It’s not been easy. It’s amazing how quickly that became habitual.

I sometimes wonder if just not drinking altogether would be a better option for me at this stage of life. I think it would be hard because it IS so enmeshed in the culture, and that’s why I invited Holly and Megan on today, and that’s what the conversation is that I have with them. I hope will be of service to you, whoever you are and whatever amount you find yourself about thinking and drinking at midlife.

Let’s put on the teakettle and sit down with Holly and Megan of DryTogether.

Nancy Davis Kho 07:14

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, the cofounders of DryTogether, Holly Sprague and Megan Zesati. We’re so happy to have you here today.

Holly Sprague 07:22

Hi, thank you so much for having us.

Nancy 07:24

Of course, I need to know before we get down to business, and I’m always curious when I have two people on the show whether you know this about each other. Holly, what was your first concert and what were the circumstances? And Megan, you know this question is come in for you next so think it over.

Holly 07:39

My first concert was Cyndi Lauper. Yes, I’m a midlife mother right now. My father took me. He was really into getting me into music. That was like one of the good ways that we did bond because after that, he took me to Michael Jackson. So, come on.

Nancy 07:56

Wow. And he stayed in the concert venue with you?

Holly 07:59

Yeah, he did.

Nancy 08:01

He was a trendsetter, because sometimes my guests and I talk about the fact that our parents were the ones who drove us to Syracuse or to Rockport or wherever to go to the show, and then they sat in their car with the newspaper and read that until the concert was over. But as parents ourselves, we go in with the kids. So your dad was kind of cutting edge.

Holly 08:18

That’s right. I guess so. I think he really just likes music and he wanted to hear it.

Nancy 08:23

Megan, what was your first concert and what were the circumstances?

Megan Zesati 08:27

Okay, seventh grade. George Michael, Freedom, Reunion Arena in Dallas, and my friend’s very cool mother brought the two of us.

Nancy 08:39

You must be young Gen Xers. That’s what I think, because us old Gen Xers, the older sisters, our parents never stuck around. But your mom would have been crazy to leave a George Michael show.

Megan 08:52

Right.

Nancy 08:53

Was it everything you dreamed of and more as a seventh grader?

Megan 08:55

It really was. It was like a highlight, and I’ve got a string of those that just kicked off a few great music experiences.

Nancy 09:03

What would you follow it up with, Megan?

Megan 09:05

Oh, Paul Simon was another just life altering experience, and that was a few years down the road, also like a big mega concert.

Nancy 09:15

So many good shows, never enough time!

Let’s start by talking a bit about what DryTogether is. I gave a very quick intro on the way in, but why don’t you guys tell me, not just what it is, but the moment where you decided to start it. I want to hear the origin story. Who’s going to take that, Holly or Megan?

Holly 09:33

Either one. Megan, do you want to go, or you want me to?

Megan 09:36

I don’t know if there was a single moment when we decided to start it. It’s like it decided to start and in some ways we started with an experiment, an idea and we have been following it, evolving. What we did initially decide to start began in January of this year, in 2021, and we started with the shared challenge of doing a dry month together for anyone who wanted to do that experiment, for any reason at all.

Nancy 10:07

I’m going to ask a lot of questions just so everybody’s clear on this. Complete abstinence from alcohol for a month? That was what the challenge was.

Megan 10:16

It was the intention to abstain from alcohol with the larger purpose, and this is really more of the spirit of it, is to see kind of what you learn about yourself and your relationship with alcohol, by stepping away from it. It’s not really an accountability group, nobody got dinged or in trouble if they drank during that time. Truly, nobody was checking. The spirit of it is less about restriction and taking something away, and more about seeing what you learned about yourself by stepping away.

Nancy 10:48

And you guys knew each other how? I’m curious to know why you two came together over this issue.

Holly 10:55

Yeah, we were college roommates. We’re both from Dallas, and then we met at the University of Texas in Austin, and we’re very good friends and stayed in touch throughout the years. That was, what? 25 plus years ago. I live in Boulder, Colorado, and have lived here for about 20 years now. Megan’s in Austin, and we’ve kept in touch along the way, obviously, shared our lives with each other.

Then just recently, in the last two years, we really found out that both of us were alcohol free and that we had stopped drinking for our own reasons, kind of on our own. We were sharing a lot about that with each other, in terms of how it impacted our lives being alcohol free in a very alcohol-soaked society, and a lot of people around us were still drinking, and we were trying not to and what did that look like. So, we kind of started talking a lot about that. What got us to DryTogether is kind of a continuation of those conversations.

Nancy 12:01

I have to just interject here and say that the AF all over the DryTogether website stands for alcohol free, not what Nancy thought. When I first thought I was like, oh, okay. Alright. They’re a little edgy with the AF and then I’m like, oh, I think that means alcohol free.

Holly 12:16

Well, we tried to be a little edgy actually.

Nancy 12:19

Okay.

Megan 12:20

Because we are also midlife AF.

Nancy 12:22

Right. Perfect.

Megan 12:23

So we are an alcohol free community for mothers in midlife, and that’s really what this community is about. It is the place where you can come if you are a mother at this age and stage in life.

Nancy 12:39

What is it about midlife mothers and drinking, or not drinking AF as the case may be, that is uniquely challenging?

Megan 12:47

This is a pandemic project. The way that it came about is that during the pandemic, the messaging to women and to mothers coming at us from a number of sources, and also just how we speak with each other, was definitely like, “We’re going to need to drink to power through this experience.” That was where Holly and my conversations and idea for doing this dry month together would give us just a different experience of trying to cope and connect during what were pretty dark days in the pandemic.

Nancy 13:23

But I feel like it even started before the pandemic, and I’m curious, since you work in this space, if you would agree with me, or if you’ve seen research to bear this out. I feel like the media and especially social media make it seem like everybody’s drinking all the time, and especially moms are. I have to tell you this whole trope of “Mommy juice!” on a wine glass, or “Mommy drinking blah, blah, blah” – it makes me crazy. I think that is different from our parents’ generation, our mother’s generation, our grandmother’s generation, I wonder if you’ve ever seen research that shows that to be the case?

Holly 13:55

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve seen research come out of the pandemic that shows 41% of women were binge drinking during the pandemic, and that’s a pretty high number. I think for so long, it was our generations’ way of coping and this was how you can stay young, and this is how you can get through things. It was just a message we were given, that that was the really best way to go about doing it.

Nancy 14:23

I hadn’t thought about that, but it makes sense to me that it’s one of the ways that you present to the world that you’re young: you can still go out and get smashed and have fun at a bar or whatever, even if you’re in your 40s and in your 50s. But we all know we don’t recover like we used to when we were in college.

So at some point, you have to think about recalibrating your relationship to alcohol and what you use it for and what looks like healthy, sane consumption.

Holly 14:51

Right. I think we question a lot in midlife and I think especially, our generation and my friends and I think, “Oh okay, let’s give up gluten. Let’s try going dairy free. Let’s try this new exercise regime.” But it seems like alcohol is one of the last things to question and to look at and analyze. And whether that means you give it up all together or you continue on in a healthier way, even to stop and look at it feels taboo, in a way. So we’re just trying to open that door and make it a little bit more normal to think about it and talk about it.

Nancy 15:29

If we go through that DryTogether open door, what does it involve? What am I signing up to do if I decide I’m going to do dry together for a month?

Megan 15:37

We began as just the dry month together. But it has evolved to become an online community where there are multiple opportunities to connect with people. We have a private paid community platform like Facebook, but with not Facebook, where members have access to one another, and we share articles and resources. On there, we also host events that happen mostly over zoom.

So we’ve got a book club, we’ve got a mind body workshop, usually neuro Pilates, and we have a guest speaker series. Again, we’re really looking at this intersection of midlife issues, including this “I can’t drink the way I used to, and maybe I should reconsider what this is doing to my body,” and the DryTogether dry month is one of the offerings that we have.

But at this point, it’s really evolved into just a community that doesn’t revolve around alcohol that is for mothers in midlife. There’s something specific about this age and stage where we’re wanting to deepen and be more intentional and purposeful about how we’re spending our time, kind of “the anti-scrolling,” and so this is a place for that to happen where alcohol is not the centerpiece. It’s not the thing between us as we attempt to connect. We have other purposes here other than to drink together.

Nancy 17:03

Well, it’s interesting to me that the emphasis is on community, because if you think about – not that we’ve been able to be out social drinking for a year and a half – but when that time, fully returns, or maybe it has for some of you who are listening, it’s hard to be the odd man out who’s not drinking at a party. It’s hard to be the only person at book club who doesn’t have a glass of wine in front of her.

And so this idea of having strength in numbers, and maybe knowing ahead of time with another friend, “I’m going to bring something non-alcoholic to drink, will you do that with me as well?” I imagine there’s a lot of strength that comes from that. I’m only imagining it, because with my friend group, it’s pretty rare. But it would feel less difficult if I knew I was approaching that with someone else, or with two or three other people.

Holly 17:53

I think that’s one of the best things about the community. As it’s growing and evolving, these women are coming together from all over the country. I mean, we’ve got women from all across the country, and so you log on and you see how people are handling the work event, the work happy hour where you are the only one turning down the glass of wine, or a date night and your husband still drinks and you’re trying to cut back. Or book club.

There’s plenty of instances where these women are the only ones who are turning down the glass of wine and what does that look like? If you know that other women are dealing with that in Boston, or Atlanta, or wherever, and you kind of feel not quite as alone and isolated in that.

Megan 18:37

I mean, certainly my story is that giving up drinking has just really not been hard. It’s been a choice that keeps making itself because I just feel better in all the ways.

Nancy 18:48

I’m curious about that. Can you talk a little bit about both the personal health benefits that you’ve seen, and maybe if you’ve got any kind of studies or research around this, particularly as it pertains to women in midlife?

Megan 19:01

I don’t have studies or research right now about that. But my experience has been that when I was 42, honestly, around my early 40s, I just started noticing that there was this layer of preoccupation around my drinking. I might wake up at two in the morning and I’d be thinking, “Gosh, why am I up? Did I overdo it? What’s going on? Why can’t I sleep like I used to?” When I ultimately decided to do a dry period, I never intended it for it to be – now coming on my fourth year, fifth year. It was like, well, let me just see how things clear up. Let me see what gets better in my life if I can focus more, if I can sleep better.

That’s the spirit that I entered with, and I’ve never tried to hang a label on it or tell myself forever. I continue to choose it every day and that aspect is really important to me. So I found it relatively simple to not drink.

But what is complicated and has been difficult has been the social aspect that you mentioned. Even though Holly and I didn’t really start talking about our experiences doing this until I was a couple years in, it became all the more important, I think, because my experience was that I didn’t go through an addiction recovery model. And that’s not what DryTogether is, either.

But I felt a little in between a normal space that revolves around alcohol, and a sobriety community, which is not what I was needing. But I was wanting more community around simply being a non-drinker in a drinking world, and I think Holly and I connected around those topics, honestly, on the phone during the pandemic. And then we thought, “Well, what will happen if we try to expand this conversation? Surely, we’re not the only ones.”

So, we started pulling in women who are alcohol free for all kinds of reasons. Some are engaging DryTogether as part of a larger recovery effort. But others are people who alcohol has just never really been their thing, or some people have an allergy to it, it makes them feel bad. Some people have had children and wanted to be more responsible, and others have become alcohol free for health reasons, others just to be a higher and best version of themselves, more of an optimization. Others are training for an event.

We come at it from all different kinds of reasons, and if we can break out of this binary, where if you’re not drinking, then that means you have a problem or you’re an alcoholic, or you’re out of control or powerless over it, or even the word sober is so sobering, not fun. Right? I think this community is really an attempt to meet an in-between space, and because of that, it gets hard to sometimes define. Holly and I are constantly talking about, “Who is this for exactly?”

Nancy 22:08

That was my question, because I’m somebody who – I like my five o’clock beer and then I pretty much stop after that. But there are times where I’d like to maybe take a week off or something and then, I don’t know, I just think, well, it’s not really a problem, so I don’t need to stop.

And especially during the pandemic, when so many of us just were trying to get through what was an incredibly painful time, the one would become two once in a while. I know I’m not alcoholic, but maybe I just would do better at being able to pause it, or stop it entirely, if I was in a community of people who could relate to that.

Megan 22:48

Yes, exactly. I think that that kind of natural curiosity that you’re expressing is something that just gets kind of shut down. There’s no place to go, to really explore those questions further especially, because the first thing you confront is this question of, “Well, what does that mean? Does that mean I’m an alcoholic? Or why am I doing this?” Or if you feel relatively unconflicted about asking those questions of yourself, then as soon as you start telling people that you’re not drinking, you are confronted with having to answer those questions for other people.

Nancy 23:21

It occurs to me for those of us who know and love sober alcoholics that the more people out there in the world who maybe aren’t alcoholic but still are alcohol free and can say “I’m just not drinking right now,” it makes it easier for them too. Because they’re not the only one standing there with the with the soda water in the slice of lime. It makes things a little easier for our friends in that community.

Megan 23:43

That’s right. In the end, it’s an inclusivity issue and we want alcohol free to be a choice that is included, not sent off to its own kind of siloed place.

Nancy 23:56

I do notice there’s more product on store shelves like fancy non-alcoholic beverages so you don’t feel like you’re missing out on the experience of having a nice cocktail. Is that what you’ve seen as well?

Holly 24:06

There’s so much, and so much that launched during the pandemic in fact. It was kind of already a rising market, the non-alcoholic spirits market and beer and wine. But even during the pandemic, it’s been crazy to watch how many new companies and brands are out there. Since you like to talk about music and stuff… the Dead and Company, the Grateful Dead version is in town, right?

Nancy 24:29

I’m familiar.

Holly 24:30

Okay. They’re in town in Boulder right now at Red Rocks and I went last night and I’m going tonight. They have Heineken 0.0 at the venue, and it’s really a treat for me to have my beer, and have something that I can drink and have fun with, and it is nice to see more options out there slowly but surely, I’ll say. I think that as midlife mothers we want to see them more in the places we’re going, like restaurants with our families. But yes, there’s many options out there now, but it’s a matter of how we get ahold of them.

Nancy 25:05

What would you say are the biggest obstacles to people joining in or completing the DryTogether challenge?

Megan 25:12

I think the biggest obstacle is this people wondering if they are a fit, or feeling like they have to have more clarity at the outset before even engaging about what is their relationship with alcohol, or what would they like it to be.

Nancy 25:27

Can you talk a little bit more about what that means?

Megan 25:29

People worry that in order to join, a barrier might be “I have to make a decision for forever or even for this month, that I’m not going to do this before engaging, or will I belong? Is this a group of people that share my values that we’re all find commonality and connection? Will they get me?

Is this a recovery community or not?” These are some of the barriers that we face.

To that, the answer is it’s a place of self-inquiry, community and exploration. The spirit is of curiosity, and it’s not a downer to be in there. It’s fun, it’s inspiring. We’re really empowering one another, we’re not sitting around telling our rock bottom stories. That’s not the spirit of it. It’s all about what we are learning about this emerging aspect of ourselves as it’s happening, and we’re trying to figure it out, and you don’t have to have the answers and we’re just sharing from that place.

Holly 26:31

Compare it to the new mom groups that I had when my kids were babies, or preschoolers. That toddler stage where I really relied on my new mom friends, and “How are you doing this?” and sharing resources and bonding over that critical time in your lives. And we see this midlife time period as just as critical and valuable and kind of bonding with other women, when you feel this sense of wanting female relationships and deepening that kind of sisterhood feeling is important.

Nancy 27:06

You talk about the self-exploration. What are some common themes that people find out as they’re going through this month with you?

Megan 27:12

People realize their why’s for drinking.

Nancy 27:18

That’s “their WHY’S” not “they’re WISE.”

Megan 27:21

Why do I drink? By taking that away, you realize what your motivations are. Are they social? I think a lot of us learn that we are drinking to perhaps power through situations that maybe we would be better off saying no to, or to feel young, or to feel rebellious, to feel temporarily free of responsibility. Or to market transition between evening. Like a five o’clock beer.

Nancy 27:49

Are you talking about my beer right now? You’re 100% right.

Megan 27:54

Because was my wine, and it was the thing that I could drink to mark that transition while I didn’t actually mark the transition, while I continued to prepare food for my family or to not stop. And so then the conversation becomes about “Okay, so if this is why we’re doing it, what do we need to do instead?” Those are some of the things that I think people come away with, and then I think, really realize they feel much better.

Holly 28:24

They feel better. That’s kind of where I was going, and then the brain space. I always like to talk about the brain space.

Nancy 28:31

Talk about the brain space. We’re into it.

Holly 28:33

People realize, after you cut back on drinking, or stop or whatever, really start to look at it, you realize how much brain space it takes up. Are you going to get the wine for five o’clock? Are you going to have it at dinner? How much are you going to drink, and how much did you drink yesterday? The amount of energy that goes into thinking about it is, all of a sudden, really open and free.

In my life right now, I’ve got so much going on up there that I need some space, and I need some area that is not consumed with how much I drank last night, or how much I’m going to drink tonight, and what does that mean, and analyzing what that means if I drank and I said I wasn’t going to, or I had two drinks and I wanted to have one, and it was light beer or t it wasn’t… There’s just so many things that if you free that space up…

Nancy 29:29

You could learn French! You could do anything.

Holly 29:32

Now let’s not go crazy.

Nancy 29:35

Bien sur, Holly, bien sur.

Holly 29:40

No, because honestly, I did kind of put that pressure on myself. “Well, now I have all this space. What am I going to do with it?”

Megan 29:47

That’s an important part: from there, we have to be careful not to then just stay with that productivity model of like, “Oh, now that I’ve got this time, I’ve got to fill it!” Because I think in midlife, we really need rest a lot more often.

Nancy 30:01

Oh, my God. Preaching to the choir here. Yeah, I think we’re terrible at taking downtime, especially moms, TBH. Maybe that’s part of where the drinking and everything else comes in, is you’ve got to get so much done, because you’re telling yourself you have to, and it’s a way to get through.

Okay, so for listeners who are interested in cutting back and starting in on exploring this AF lifestyle, what’s your advice for getting started, besides going to visit the website, which is DryTogether.org – I’ll leave links in the show notes to that as well.

Megan 30:35

To approach it with curiosity and no labels. Resist the urge to label yourself or what it means that you’re thinking about not drinking, or you’re experimenting with it. To really approach it with the spirit of discovery and what you’re going to learn about yourself.

Nancy 30:54

That’s good advice for nearly every new endeavor, by the way. I think we should just take that with you wherever you’re going to go. Spirit of curiosity.

Megan 31:03

You don’t have to know and you really don’t even have to commit. This is only for you. Nobody else. So you don’t need to even form rules around it. That’s what I would add, and that it is quite simple, in many ways, just to stop drinking. But it’s really amazing to join a community and to be part of a community where this is a shared conversation.

Holly 31:26

Then I would say in some ways, it’s almost rebellious. Because like we said, it’s kind of taboo to question it. But if you do take that step to even question your drinking and how it may have changed right now and what does it look like, a lot becomes clear. For me, at least, it puts me on the right path and, like Megan, I still don’t say forever, and I don’t label. But right now it feels like it’s helping with some clarity that is much needed in this time in my life.

Nancy 31:57

We can all use a little more midlife clarity, I think. In a minute, we’re going to come back with Holly and Megan from DryTogether. But first I want to tell you guys about a really cool new podcast.

Last month, I was a speaker at She Podcasts Live in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is a wonderful event connecting and uplifting women who podcast. I crossed paths with a delightful new entrant to podcasting world – Lori A. Harris. Lori recently launched the Unlock Your Life Podcast, and I think you should check it out!

Unlock Your Life is the podcast for highly successful, visionary, heart-centered women of color who want more out of life! If you’ve done all the things….got the degrees, the fancy job, the family but still feel like something is missing then this is the podcast for you.  Break free from the white picket prison!

Join your host Lori A. Harris as she shares the mindfulness tools you need to finally put yourself first and design a purpose-driven life that you love.

The Unlock Your Life Podcast is designed to help you uncover your deepest desires in all areas of your life and become radically honest with yourself. Each episode will leave you feeling empowered, enlightened, and free from the confines of society’s expectations.

Lori is giving away a hoodie to someone who leaves a review of her show on Apple Podcasts right now so if you listen to Unlock Your Life and you love it, show a new podcaster a little love and leave a review. You might get a hoodie out of it! Welcome to the Midlife Podcasting family, Lori A. Harris!

[MUSIC]

We’re back with the cofounders of DryTogether, which is an online community with a one-month sort of – I don’t want to say challenge because that doesn’t feel like the right word after talking with you, but an opportunity to examine your relationship with alcohol. I’ve got Holly and Megan here. So I wanted to ask you, and I’ll put this one to you, Holly, what has surprised you most about starting this community? It’s not even a year old.

Holly 33:47

No, we’re still very new, but it has grown quickly.

What surprised me most is that there is a big need out there for women in your late 30s, 40s, and 50s to share about our experiences and to just come together kind of and have a forum where we can talk about what is affecting us at this stage in life. The pandemic definitely had a part in that, because we all were isolated in a new kind of way, and we needed that connection more than ever.

But I also think that women feel this naturally, just biologically, at this time in our lives, and I think that that has been surprising how much women out there in my age range really want to come together and be together and share about our stories and our lifestyles and what can we learn from each other.

Nancy 34:41

Megan, anything to add to that?

Megan 34:43

I would just add that one of the surprises for me was the experience meeting new people just how cool it is to meet new women from all over the country. So often I’m kind of hooked into maybe a work or a school circle. So, it was just this whole new circle during a time that was really isolating, and that was definitely an unexpected perk.

Just to echo what Holly said, I mean, this is an age and stage in life where women are so rarely acknowledged, much less empowered, and that’s what this community has really been about.

Nancy 35:21

Not on Midlife Mixtape. We acknowledge the SHIT out of you midlife women. That’s what we’re doing all day, every day.

So what’s next for DryTogether? Are you guys going to do in person events? Are you going to open this up to men, to non-moms? Because certainly moms need it, a lot of midlife moms. But boy, there’s a broader need. What’s your big goal?

Megan 35:43

We are in a period of reflection and visioning for the next year precisely about that. I am hoping to be able to do more in person gatherings. We did one of them in Washington, DC in August, and then the Delta variant shut down our plans.

Nancy 36:04

The good old days, in pandemic terms.

Megan 36:07

Yes, we do talk about expanding it beyond midlife mothers. Because we are so focused on keeping the community meaningful, and just connecting women as quickly as possible, because their time is so precious in delivering value, we are staying focused on keeping it small and limited to women in midlife right now. But certainly, you’ve got your finger on something that we are talking about and dreaming about beyond this year.

Nancy 36:39

It definitely feels like a time of recalibration and goal setting. We’re in the fall of 2021. I think we can all hope that next year will look like what we hoped 2021 might look like. So it’s a good time to take a step back and figure out for all of us where we’re heading.

I mentioned the website, DryTogether.org. Do you guys want to let listeners know where else they can find you on social media?

Holly 37:06

We’re on all the social media: Instagram…

Nancy 37:10

All the socials.

Holly 37:40

All of it. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, we even have a LinkedIn page now.

Nancy 37:15

@DryTogether. Is that the right place to go?

Holly 37:19

Yeah, it’s all @DryTogether.

Nancy 37:20

Awesome.

So this is the last question, and Megan, I’m going to give you this one first. What one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Megan 37:30

I would go back and I guess the part of myself that thought about stopping drinking before I did, that younger version of myself, I would say, “Don’t worry so much. It’s so much easier than you think.” And of my friends, I haven’t lost friendships over this decision.

Nancy 37:48

Did you worry that you would?

Megan 37:49

I did at the time. Yeah, I thought, gosh, everything revolves around this and maybe I won’t get included in the same ways. What is true is I don’t always want to go in the same ways, or I’ll leave sooner. But my friends want me happy, whether that’s with alcohol or not.

Nancy 38:09

That’s actually so interesting, because if you lose friends over this, those were terrible friends, right? I mean, it’s a kind of a good litmus test if you’re testing things out. If anybody dropped me over this, I’d be like, good riddance, and goodbye. Start doing it when you feel like it might be the right time.

Megan 38:27

Yes, and it’s hard to hear it when you’re on the other side – but it’s truly not deprivation. It opened so many doors in so many ways for me that that was the big shock, and what I wish I could impart on my younger self.

Nancy 38:44

Are you talking about the kind of brain space that Holly was alluding to, or in other ways that it opens doors for you?

Megan 38:51

The brain space, and in terms of what felt possible in my life. I mean, we didn’t even go into this, but for me, this dovetailed with our family taking a year abroad and lived abroad for a year. That was one of the ways that my life really opened up.

Nancy 39:08

Yeah. Where’d you live? Can I ask?

Megan 39:10

We lived in Costa Rica.

Nancy 39:12

Oh, cool.

Megan 39:13

For a year, and did some traveling as well to Southeast Asia. It was wonderful. But it was something that I couldn’t get my head above water or have the brain space to even really envision, clearly. Then from there, really, it’s just one change leads to another.

Nancy 39:29

And the next thing you’re heading a whole community for people to help them.

Megan 39:32

Exactly.

Nancy 39:34

Alright. Holly, what one piece of advice do you have for younger people, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Holly 39:40

I would say, “Be a little bit braver, Holly.” Young Holly.

Nancy 39:47

Young sweet, Holly. “And stockpile toilet paper. You don’t ask me why. Stockpile toilet paper and hand san.”

Holly 39:56

Exactly. But just be a little bit braver about joining a community or group. I didn’t really do that before. I had never really done anything, for sure, online groups, or groups in person, or any of these retreats or anything. And there’s so much value there and seeing how other people are experiencing issues that you’re thinking about and facing. To me, that’s been one of the best things about this and just seeing and that shared experiences and resources and how much we can help each other.

I did it alone for so long, and I didn’t have to.

Nancy 40:35

That’s great advice. I think we’re always stronger in community, right? I mean, that’s why the pandemic was so awful. We were not meant to be isolated.

Holly 40:42

Absolutely.

Nancy 40:43

Holly and Megan from DryTogether, thank you so much for coming on and sharing the story of your AF lifestyle AF. I hope you guys will check out DryTogether.org, and thank you so much for being with us today.

Holly 40:59

Thank you.

Megan 40:59

It’s been great. Thank you so much.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 41:05

Alright. So, I’m curious to hear your thoughts about today’s episode. Was it just me who needed to talk that through or did it resonate for you too?

I’m keeping it real for you guys. I have not yet stopped with my daily beer. But I am trying to pay a little bit more attention to why I need to drink it when I do and what my emotions are around it, and I’d be curious if any of you are in the same boat. I’m going to not read Outlander 7 for a little while. I think I’m going to hold off on that until I get this in the bag. Anyways, drop me a line at [email protected] or send me a message via Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You’ll find me @midlifemixtape.

And remember! I need your pet pictures. Send me photos of those cute GenX pets to [email protected].

The Flavor Fiend and I wish you a wonderful week!

[“Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 108 DryTogether Founders Megan Zesati and Holly Sprague appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

“Who’s Slash?”: Listeners – and Nancy – share stories of their memorable Gen X Halloweens past, from decidedly non-sexy costume strategies, to 7th graders on the cusp, to home bat invasions.

Happy Halloween, you grown up goths.

Wendi Aarons 00:00

We learned our lesson that is probably not a great idea to dress like a ‘60s burnout named Touch Me Don’t Touch Me when we’re trying to get some action at a fraternity party.

00:11

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

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The books out now from Bamboo Dart Press –  you can find it at www.BambooDartPress.com – look for Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender (or how I became a punk rock lawyer) .

[MUSIC]

Nancy 02.58

Hi there and welcome to this special Halloween Edition of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho, your host, the creator of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast and the author of the book, The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. Midlife Halloween has its own kind of terror because what is scarier than waking up and seeing your own parents looking back at you from the mirror? It’s absolutely terrifying.

So I put out a call on social media and the blog for your GenX Halloween stories. My theory was that GenX never took itself too seriously and would have some fun with the prompt – as exemplified by the story Erin sent in:

She wrote,

My most unsexy costume was when I dressed as a porta-potty for my department’s Halloween group theme. We were a bunch of Austin City Limits Music Festival survivors. This contest was during the early 00s, so the fest wasn’t quite the well-oiled machine it is today. The costume consisted of many large boxes and a halved broom handle stuck in the middle that I could hold onto to carry that sucker while inside. There was also tons of blue paint and two eyeholes. My porta-potty addition didn’t secure the gold. We came in second place to the Beetlejuice folks. But heck, they deserved it.

As someone whose favorite all time Halloween costume was the mailbox my dad built me out of cardboard when I was in 5th grade, I totally respect the Porta Potty game Erin is playing here. By the way, the mailbox design was perfect for late October in Upstate NY because you could put your park on underneath it, and it included a curved top that repelled water in case it jumped above 32 degrees on Halloween night. Which wasn’t often.

Because – you guys know this – back then most of us weren’t so worried about being Sexy Nurse or Sexy Ladybug or Sexy PortaPotty. Here’s Susan Rietano Davey, the career reentry expert and one of the co-founders of Prepare to Launch U who I interviewed back in Episode 47:

Susan Rietano Davey 03:10

Hi Nancy – It’s Susan here in Connecticut, and I’m calling in with my Halloween story. When I was a freshman in high school about 40 years ago, I was desperate to become cool. And my dear friend Karen was much closer to that than I. So through her, we got an invitation to Ellen’s the Halloween party.

Now Ellen was a junior, and the coolest of cool, the top of the heap. And we were so excited to knock her socks off with great Halloween costumes. So we rummaged through Karen’s father’s closet – he was an Army veteran – and we found two perfectly intact army uniforms. So that’s what we dressed up as. And we pulled our hair back severely and we greased it down so it stay under the hats and we even painted bushy mustaches and bushy eyebrows on each other.

We showed up on Halloween night at Ellen’s house and we rang the doorbell. She answered it dressed as Scarlett O’Hara. And as we entered her foyer, we saw that all of Ellen’s cool, beautiful friends were dressed as Cinderella, or Snow White, or Charlie’s Angels, and there we were, as two infantry men.

Suffice it to say we did not advance our coolness that night. We were never invited back to Ellen’s future parties, but we cemented our friendship that night for sure. And it has lasted all these years later.

Nancy 04:30

Was there something in the water for people who would eventually grow up to become Midlife Mixtape listeners? Humor writer Wendi Aarons definitely got the non-sexy memo.

Wendi Aarons 04:38

Hi, this is Wendi Aarons and my favorite Halloween memory is from freshman year of college at University of Oregon.

My best friend Megan and I were looking for a costume to go to one of the fraternity parties. Those are the big bashes and we were so excited, because it was our first time being at what we thought was a real adult party. We talked and talked about what costume we should wear and finally landed on something that was very genius:  dressing up like one of the guys who got to Eugene, Oregon, sometime in the ‘70s by following the Grateful Dead, and never left. He just sat on a bench on campus and yelled  “Touch Me Don’t Touch Me.” So we thought it’d be a great idea to dress up like Touch Me Don’t Touch Me.

We went to Goodwill and just bought a whole bunch of random giant shirts and pants. And we dressed in those and then we dressed in everything that our dorm mates would give us. And basically we looked like that episode of Friends where Joey puts on all of Chandler’s clothes and walks around. We were like sumo wrestlers or something.

So we get to the fraternity party and quickly realized that we didn’t get the memo that everybody else did. All the other girls were Sexy Something – not to the extent they are now, where you have, like, a Sexy Tooth Cavity. But everybody was Sexy Kitten or Sexy Genie Dancer or Sexy what have you. And here we roll in, dressed in approximately 500 layers of clothing and sweating our little butts off. And then we actually stood there and were surprised that not even any of the horny fraternity guys would come up and talk to us; we were that repellent.

So the next year we took off a few more layers. We never quite got down to the sexy costume level. But we learned our lesson that is probably not a great idea to dress like a ‘60s burnout named Touch Me Don’t Touch Me when we’re trying to get some action at a fraternity party.

Nancy 06:52

By the way, did you see Wendi’s latest essay in McSweeney’s called The Perfect Cocktails for Your Perimenopause Party? I’ll put that link in the show notes, right after I mix myself up a “Chin Hair of the Dog.”

But of course the exception that proves the rule – we’ve got Carrie from San Francisco who remembers, “When we first moved to Noe Valley” – that’s a neighborhood in San Francisco for those who don’t live near me – Carrie says, “When we first moved to Noe Valley, I dressed up as a goth French maid and dressed up my husband as Captain Jack Morgan and we went around bars and offered to buy anyone a shot of Captain Jack if they let me draw the red lipstick mustache on them.” She says it was the Wet and Wild .99 cent brand that doesn’t wash off. She says, “Had Instagram existed then I might have racked up some serious advertising influencer points. We bought a lot of shots that night.”

Carrie’s always been a bit of a trendsetter. Her story reminds me of the time in college, I thought I was going dressed as a woman from the Renaissance period. And then everyone thought I was the St. Pauli Girl, so I just went with that.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 07:52

I just loved this sweet story from Ann Imig.

Ann Imig 07:54

It was Halloween, probably 1987, maybe ‘86. We’re in seventh grade and at our first/boy girl Halloween party. And as you can imagine, we were going insane with our hormones and our volume and our activity in a uniquely Middle School pitch. And as a result, my best friend at the time, Megan, went flying into the plate glass window by the doorway, in an attempt to avoid some boy chasing her.

So this starts out as a minor tragedy because she did need to go to the ER – she was okay.

But as a result, on Trick or Treat night, the next night, she had her hand in a splint and couldn’t do much and it was raining. And it ended up just to be the two of us trick or treating. And as much as I was so sad for her injury, I was secretly really pleased to have Megan all to myself, because she was very popular and normally would have wanted to be where the action was. But as a result, we just pulled some old clothing out of my parents closet and went as Sue Ellen and JR, I think? and trick or treated. I still remember this corny little song we made up along the way, just being totally goofy, and back to our little girl selves. Thanks, Nancy.

Nancy 09:09

And then, as I’m putting this episode together, record scratch: Facebook and Instagram went down.

You know, to be candid, my first reaction was please please please let them stay down and may Twitter be felled by the same outage. Because even though there are aspects of social media that I adore, like seeing all your cute pandemic pets and watching kids who I’ve never met hit milestones like fifth grade graduation, and then high school graduation and more, I do think social media networks have contributed to the great coarsening of American culture and maybe we’d all be a bit better off if we took a long break from it.

But my second reaction was shared by creatives of all types: oh shizzle. How am I going to let my readers/listeners/followers know when there’s something new they may want to check out? I know a LOT of listeners find out about new episodes when I post about them on FB and IG. That’s great but…what if those go away? How do we stay in touch?

Back in the olden days I had a blog – and technically I still have it, at MidlifeMixtape.com. I used to write essays aka blog posts twice a week, religiously, back in 2011 when I first started it. And people who subscribed to the blog got an email from me whenever there was a new post. Now they only get a notice twice a month that a new podcast episode is available, along with all the juicy show notes I’m always referring to in the episodes themselves.

Anyway ALL that writing I’ve is still at MidlifeMixtape.com, buried under years of other writing, and then writing and podcast episodes on top of that.

So it occurred to me that I might go over to the blog and excavate a few of my OWN stories from the blog archive about Halloween, and fall, and other Halloween-adjacent topics, and share them with you.

Like this one from 2011. All you need to know here is that our dog at the time was a hunting dog, a German Shorthaired pointer named Achilles.

This one is called My Office is Not Your Belfry.

In the middle of a bright, sunny weekday earlier this month, a bat flew into my small home office. The thoughts that followed riffled past like so many index cards in a library file cabinet, I thought I might just share the journey.

Thought 1: That’s a really big moth…batbaTbAT BAT! BAT! Ohmygod that’s a BAT! BAT! BAT! IT JUST HIT ME IN THE BACK! IT JUST DID IT AGAIN! AGGGGH!

(Note: the bat never once touched me, being fully engaged with battering itself against my “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster. It was the zipper of my jacket flapping against my back as I tore out of my office towards the upstairs at a pace that would have left Usain Bolt eating my dust.)

Thought 2: Where is my dog and why isn’t he addressing this? He’s a hunting dog, fer chrissakes, he chases rolling clods of dirt and he’s going to ignore a bat? Where is Achilles?

My adrenaline-fueled sprint enabled me to reach the living room upstairs and catch Achilles unawares where he was napping on the good couch in the living room. Allow me to translate his response: “Oh, uh, hey lady. I’m probably not supposed to be on the couch, right? I love you. Hi! I love you.”

Thought 3: Of course my husband is out of town. He’s ALWAYS out of town when there’s an Urban Wildlife Interface Incident. The redtailed hawk immolating itself on the power line behind the house and starting a brush fire; the time that two rat traps were sprung simultaneously in the spooky back storage area; the time a herd of turkeys walked regally through the front yard and caused Achilles, on the other side of the living room window, to suffer a permanent mental breakdown.

What was the movie on your flight to St. Louis, dear? Sorry about the message I left on your cell phone while you were watching it.

Thought 4: Who else’s husband can I borrow? I thought of all the dads in the ‘hood with home offices and remembered that two of the three now have to work in their corporate location due to work pressure – Thanks For Nothing, Recession! [Remember I wrote this in 2011. Little did we know, right?] The third was probably traveling and, let’s be frank, would have been more horrified by the bat than I was.

Thought 5: If I don’t take care of this, we will never set foot on the lower floor again. Besides my home office, we have our laundry room, second bathroom, and our one TV down there. Clearly I was going to have to address this before the girls came home from school, or we’d never wear clean clothes, have a moment’s peace in the bathroom, or watch Glee again. [Again, it’s a 2011 post.]

Thought 6: I am not scared of bats. It’s true; of all the pests, bats are the least frightening to me. They eat bugs and have built-in senses to avoid flying into me. At camp, I love watching them swoop in the twilight, and the bats are definitely the most bad-ass creatures at the Oakland Zoo. Frankly, I’m more scared of birds. I can do this.

Thought 7: Rabies. Must protect myself. I went to the garage for a pair of gardening gloves. Because nothing says business to a bat like a pair of floral elbow length gloves tipped with geranium dirt.

Thus prepared, I crept back down to the office and peered behind the door I’d hastily slammed behind me during my retreat. There, clinging upside down to the curtain of a closed window, was a 3-inch-long brown bat, smaller than the palm of my hand.

In order to free it, I had to somehow maneuver around the bat to remove the window screen and open the window behind it. At first I held my breath, waiting for it to fly at me in another panic. But it was so still, it looked like part of the pattern on the curtain. The window screen stuck and I had to tug at it with increasing vigor. The bat still didn’t move. When my elbow shot out and hit the curtain, and the bat continued to remain still, I felt bolder. I even shook the curtain a bit, covering my face with my gardening glove just in case. Nothing. That’s when I realized it was a Teenager Bat whose mother probably has to use an airhorn to get it moving in the morning.

With that, I stood RIGHT NEXT TO the bat, my face just inches away from it,  and gave the screen a pop. Then, wielding the screen in a shield-like manner I learned from watching Game of Thrones, I gave the curtain a big push and popped the bat, entirely unharmed, through the open window and watched it flit off into the trees.

Thought 8: I am She-Ra, protector of my home and of small innocent creatures. Bow down.

Thought 9: Some days this blog just writes itself.

By the way we never figured out how that bat got into this office. It could happen again. But this time I’m ready.

Here’s another one that was sitting under a sheen of dust, called Domestic Horrors:

With Halloween only days away, perhaps it was fitting that I woke my husband up from a dead sleep last night with shrieks of horror. “It’s ok, it’s ok,” he whispered at me, “you’re just having a bad dream.” He patted me on the back twice and fell immediately back to sleep, satisfied he’d scared off whatever monsters had woken his wife up in the middle of the night.

He was too sleepy to notice that I had recovered and was actually now lying in bed laughing at myself. The nightmare?

I dreamed I was in my own kitchen, cleaning off the dinner table after a meal. My arms were laden with dirty dishes from wrist to shoulder, and the hot water was running in the sink, the microwave was beeping, and I was trying to open the dishwasher with my foot. Sitting in their respective seats at our kitchen table, my youngest daughter had her nose buried in a National Geographic Kids magazine, my older daughter concentrated on a book, and my husband was playing long distance Scrabble with his sister on the iPad.

“Hello? A little help here?” I said in the dream, the dishes clinking precariously in my arms. “Hello? Anyone notice that I need some help cleaning up?” They just kept reading as I hopped on one foot, kicking at the dishwasher door with the other. Finally, desperate to get them to put down their reading and notice me, I screamed like a B list actress, waking myself and my husband up in the process.

Forget some masked maniac at Camp WannaPeePee chasing me down with a silver butcher knife as I try to run uphill through maple syrup without shoes. I’ve become much more constricted in my fears. Evidently having to clean my actual kitchen by myself while my actual family relaxes in front of me is the real nightmare.

With this in mind I thought I’d revisit some beloved slasher movie killers and decide what I’d probably nag them about, you know, apart from the homicides.

Here’s an essay, and an embarrassing story, I’d totally forgotten about called Financial Priorities. This one is a little unique because this is the only essay I ever wrote at the request from my husband:

I married a banker. We met at business school, and on paper I have the same base knowledge of subjects like finance and accounting that he does. But the truth is, the second he Put a Ring on It, I heaved a great sigh of relief and thought, “I’ll never have to calculate a tip again.” I pay all the bills, because I’m good at organizing and deadlines. But when he comes home from work and says, “We need to refinance the mortgage because the interest rate dropped and if I calculate the closing costs against the annual savings we’ll net it out within three years,” I hear, “We need to money talk blahblahblah” and then I nod and smile and say, “That sounds like a good idea.”

It’s worked for 22 years. He handles the big picture, I pay the bills, and even if I couldn’t tell you just how the whole house of cards is put together, financially speaking, we do ok.

So when he came home a few months back and said, “We need to think about paying for college soon, and I think we should get a home equity line of credit now because they’re making a special employee offer that expires at the end of the month,” I said, “Sounds like a good idea.” I had to gather a lot of financial documents in pursuit of this endeavor, and I happily went along getting things copied and digging out tax statements. But – and I can tell you this, because we’re friends – I didn’t really know what a home equity line of credit was. It seemed like a lot of work to Google it.

Finally, the night before we were supposed to sign all the documents, my husband kindly said to me, “Do you understand what we’re doing? It’s like a giant credit card, against the value of the house. We can borrow from the line of credit and then we pay it back. Just like you do with the credit card every month. Only with much bigger stakes.”

LIGHTBULB. Got it! I’m back on board here. This is Serious Money, the apex of all our parenting hopes and dreams, enabling us to pay for our children’s secondary education. We’ll use the line of credit for college tuition payments when those big sums are due, then, as my husband says in his sexy, bankerly way, “We’ll cashflow it.” Got it.

In a completely unrelated matter, the debit card I use for our regular checking account expired while I was back east last weekend. As is her wont, my mom pressed a $20 on me when I left, so I had money to pay for airport coffee and donuts. But boy, was I relieved to walk into my house from the airport and see an envelope from the bank where my husband works. It held not one but two new debit cards. And these were fancy, gold with a big key embossed on the front.

“Must be because he just had his five year anniversary there,” I thought, shredding my old debit card with the kitchen scissors before tossing it into the garbage and tucking my fancy gold card into my wallet. Then I headed out on a few errands, which included buying myself lunch. I was starved after all the time I’d spent on the plane that day.

That evening I pointed out the remaining gold card on the kitchen table to my husband. “There’s your new debit card!” I said. He looked at me strangely.

“Did you read the letter that came with these?” he asked. Well, duh. NO. That’s his job.

“These are the cards we use to pay for things from the Home Equity account. Did you notice these don’t look like your old debit card?”

And that is the story of how I used our children’s college fund to buy myself a turkey sandwich.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 20:58

And let me just add – Happy 29th Anniversary this week, Andrew, we’ve made it 7 more years and I have managed to not spend the home equity loan on a pack of gum or toilet paper! Not even during the pandemic! Yay me!

In summary – I’m so grateful that you listen to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, but if you ever want to check out more of my older writing on all the tracks that make up our lives in the middle stage, from career to parenting to relationships to good old-fashioned nostalgia, Midlife Mixtape.com is the place to find it.

Head over to MidlifeMixtape.com and subscribe – there’s a box right at the top right hand side of the page where you can drop your email address in. For now, you’ll probably only get two emails each month: each time there’s a new podcast episode to hear. In the months to come I may be mixing things up a bit, because I do want to get more writing in my life again.

And because we are who we are #GenX, listeners, I made you a mixtape. I will send everyone who signs up at MidlifeMixtape.com by the end of October a mixtape – 2021 style, so it’s actually a Spotify playlist – but I will send you something to play your way into the late fall.

And I want to leave you with one last listener Halloween story. This one is meant to remind you that even now at midlife, you can be creating some choice Gen X memories, or as listener Matt proves, at least you can be educating the next generation.

Matt 22:11

Hey Nancy, Matt Fogelson here. This is my sad Halloween story.

So I was at a Halloween party several years ago dressed, as I always am, as Slash of Guns N’ Roses. My wife goes is Axl so, you know, makes a nice pair. So I’m at this party standing around a buffet table dressed as Slash and you know, got the full wig going with the top hat bobby pinned to it and the tuxedo shirt and vest, you know, dressed to the nines.

And there’s this sullen teenager type milling around. not wearing a costume because he’s way too cool for costumes. Costumes are for lame people like me. And he’s got earbuds in, and I don’t know what inspired me, but I decided I’d ask him what he’s listening to. And I kid you not: he says, “I’m listening to this band called Guns N’ Roses.” As if there’s no way I could’ve ever heard of that band.

I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me. You know who I’m dressed?” And he says, “No.”  I say, “Slash.” He says, “Who’s Slash?”

I suppress the urge to dunk his head in the bobbing for apples bin and drown the kid and I say, “Slash is the lead guitarist for the band that you’re listening to.” He’s like, “Oh, cool.”

So anyway, it’s a very sad story that he has no idea – with the demise of albums and even CDs – what any of these artists look like; it’s kind of a sad thing.

The even worse coda to this story is that I then go out on East Capitol street, living in DC at the time. And some guy comes up to me and says, “Hey, love your Howard Stern costume.” Ugh. The final indignity.

Nancy 23:52

Big thanks to everyone who shared your GenX Halloween stories. I hope something wonderful happens to all of you today and that your favorite Halloween candy is on clearance this weekend. Happy Halloween!

[“Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 107 Listeners’ Halloween Stories appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

“Something besides yourself to love”: Austin music legend Bob Schneider on his latest album, “In a Roomful of Blood With a Sleeping Tiger”, non-autobiographical songs written with autobiographical emotion, and why he shouldn’t rule the world.

Since we talked about his ’99 song “2002” so much in our convo…here  it is:

***This is a rough transcription of Episode 106 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on October 5, 2021. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email [email protected] ***

Bob Schneider 00:01

I want to be Will Rogers at some point in my life, where there’s nobody on earth that’s not a friend of mine.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:08

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

00:32

Hey there and welcome to Episode 106 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, where we have so much going on today. I’m Nancy Davis Kho, and I’m the host and creator of the podcast, and there are two things I want to tell you quickly and then I promise we are getting right into the interview.

First! We have another Listeners’ Stories episode coming up next time and I need your stories! You know how this works. I give you a topic, you guys write in, record yourselves, drop me a comment, and whatever prompt I give you, and this time it is: GenX Halloween. I KNOW you have something to say: your ‘70s, ‘80s, and ’90s Halloween memories. The kind of stories that our Gen Z kids and our Boomer older siblings just couldn’t relate to. Maybe it was the smell of those plastic masks that your parents bought you at the drugstore. Remember those in the cellophane boxes? Maybe it was the lady around the corner that everybody knew put razor blades in apples. Why would she spend time doing that? She was watching General Hospital. She wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. Maybe you went dressed as a mailbox, because back then being clever or weird was better than being sexy. There were no sexy mail boxes. That was maybe just me. I don’t know.

Whatever the prompt GenX Halloween brings to mind, we all want to hear it! So you know the drill. You can leave me a voice mail right from your computer! You just go to https://www.speakpipe.com/MidlifeMixtape and you can start recording there with one click. I LOVE when people do this, because then I can incorporate the actual voice of our listeners in the episode. There’s a 90 second limit on these recordings, and you can re-record it as many times as you want. If you’ve got a longer story, just record that into your phone as a voice memo and email it to me. The email is [email protected] and again, I love hearing these stories in your actual voice.

You can send me an email with your story typed out to [email protected] and I’ll share it in the episode, or you can always send me a Facebook message, a tweet or an Instagram comment. I’m @midlifemixtape

So, I need those by October 12th, please, and I’ve already gotten some great ones in, including one that actually took place recently, but it was such a perfect Get Off My Lawn, Gen Z moment that it fits right into the theme. So, Gen X Halloween: what have you got?

Second thing I wanted to just say briefly is that this is the time of the year when lots of people start thinking about gratitude, in the run up to Thanksgiving, and I’ve been doing a bunch of virtual and live events about my book, The Thank-You Project. But I still have room for a few more, and I love doing this. Do you have an organization, a club, a class, maybe your work colleagues, just a group that could benefit by knowing more about the power of gratitude letters? Hit me up at [email protected] and we’ll get the ball rolling.

I just did one with an organization called The Choose Love Movement. This is a group founded by the mom of one of the Sandy Hook victims, and it was such an honor to connect with Choose Love and its monthly book club. I love doing it. So, if you have a group and you want to talk about gratitude and thank you letters, I’m your man. Your woman.

So, here’s the deal. About 10 years ago I joined a gang. It was a gang of lady humor writers and our main weaponry is the cutting remark, but a bunch of them are based in Austin and told me back then, “You have GOT to check out this musician, Bob Schneider. He’s an amazing performer based in Austin.” So, I did and I’ve been a fan of Bob ever since. Is his music funk, R&B, Latin, Americana? Yes! That and more. It’s everything, and it’s all done with such a great sense of humor, and I’ve had the chance to see Bob play live a whole slew of times in the Bay Area over the past decade.

But of course, with the pandemic, concert going ground to a halt. Luckily, I am connected to this concert promoter in San Francisco named KC Turner. You can find KC at KCTurnerPresents.com and at KC Turner Presents on social. And you should, because he is always bringing great acts to the Bay Area. Anyway, I got an email from KC earlier this year saying that he was doing a backyard concert series with different artists and these were really small, like 30 people, everybody had to be fully vaccinated. And one day the email came that one of the artists he was bringing to town was Bob Schneider.

I JUMPED at the chance to hear Bob in such an intimate setting, and so did my friends, and long story short: Bob Schneider played a backyard show for a bunch of us here in Oakland at the end of July, and if you go over to my Instagram @midlifemixtape, you can see some of the pics from that day. It was magical, and I finally met Bob in person for the first time, and I’m so glad he agreed to come visit us on the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. Let me tell you a little about him.

Bob is as mentioned based in Austin, Texas. He is a singer-songwriter and former front man of The Ugly Americans and The Scabs. He has become one of the most celebrated musicians in the live music capital. Drawing from a range of diverse musicals styles, Schneider’s talent has defied genres. Combining elements of funk, country, rock, and folk with the more traditional singer/songwriter aesthetic, Schneider draws inspiration from the ’70s but with a modern twist.

He has won more than 59 Austin Music Awards including Best Album, Best Songwriter, Best Musician, and Best Male Vocals making him the most decorated artist in Austin music history. If you have ever been to Austin, you know what kind of a music city that is. So, that’s quite an accomplishment.

But Schneider’s fan base reaches far beyond the city limits of Austin. He started gaining national recognition when he released 2001’s Lonelyland, his major-label debut for Universal Records, and since then he’s released more than a dozen albums, written over 1,000 songs, he is a published author, he is an avid painter and collage artist, and he’s not planning on slowing down anytime soon.

Bob’s newest record is called In A Roomful Of Blood with A Sleeping Tiger. It came out in August 2021, and we’re going to hear some tracks from it today. I love it!

So, let’s go with the flow with Bob Schneider.

[MUSIC]

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Bob Schneider. I’m so happy to have you here today.

Bob 06:22

You sound so professional.

Nancy 06:24

Thank you. I think it’s the sound of the dog licking himself in the background that really sells it because he waits until he knows I’ve hit record and then he’s like, “You know what I need to do? Clean up house.”

Bob 06:35

Wow. That’s a good visual that I’ve got now.

Nancy 06:38

Yeah, well, that’s Arlo. Welcome to the show. It’s me and Arlo Kho.

Bob, I’ve got a question for you. What was your first concert, and what were the circumstances?

Bob 06:49

Well, the first concert that I paid to go see was Earth, Wind & Fire, and I think the year was 1981, if I’m correct, and they were touring, like they had all their hits. It was the most amazing concert I think I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Now, I was raised by a musician, my dad.

Nancy 07:11

He’s an opera singer, right?

Bob 07:12

He’s an opera singer, but he would also moonlight in a cover band, and he worked his way through college playing in cover bands, and I know I was at many of those shows before I was even born, and then when I was 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.  So I watched him play a lot of shows. But the first official one that I take responsibility for was Earth, Wind & Fire.

Nancy 07:36

And where was it?

Bob 07:37

It was in Germany.

Nancy 07:39

Okay.

Bob 07:40

It was in Bremen, Germany.

Nancy 07:42

So, I did not realize you were raised in Germany. I saw that in a bio when I was doing my research this week. I also lived in Germany and Bob: I saw Earth, Wind & Fire play while I lived in Germany.

Bob 07:52

What year was it?

Nancy 07:53

It was not ’81. It would have been at ‘88 or ‘89, and what I remember about it, Bob, is that I went with my American friend Kristen, and we stood up and danced. And the Germans, I don’t know if this was your experience in Bremen – nobody was dancing, they are an orderly people, they sat still. And somebody fired a beer can at my head because I was obstructing their view.

Bob 08:14

They are very orderly. But they also…

Nancy 08:16

But how do you sit down at an Earth, Wind & Fire concert? That’s not normal human behavior.

Bob 08:24

Well, if you’re German, you are very… it’s called Pünktlichkeit and Ordnung. I think it’s that or something, I don’t know. I might have made up that word.

But here’s what I know about Germans. They’re very chill at concerts unless they get upset, and then, they’re super quick to start firing beer cans at whatever they don’t like. I saw the Rolling Stones also in ’81 not long after that, and there were three bands. Man, I’m spacing on the first band. What’s the band that did “My Angel is a Centerfold”?

Nancy 09:02

Oh, J. Geils.

Bob 09:04

The J. Geils Band were the first band. They were amazing. One of the best bands I’ve ever seen.

Nancy 09:07

Okay.

Bob 09:08

Then another a guy named Peter Maffay, he was like the German Kris Kristofferson.

Nancy 09:13

Oh sure. I remember that guy’s name.

Bob 09:17

Yeah, yeah. So, he gets up there and he’s got an acoustic guitar and he’s singing in German [Bob imitates some guttural fake German], and the Germans, en masse, start throwing, not cans, but beer bottles onto the stage trying to hit him. He had to leave after the second song.

Nancy 09:34

Oh my God.

Bob 09:35

Yeah, they don’t mess around. But here’s the crazy thing. So, I went to all these concerts in Germany, and I feel like when the concert was going on, people were very respectful. They would politely clap after every song. They would listen, and if they liked what you did, they didn’t tell you with beer bottles. Now, I go to the States and the first concert I see there is U2, the Rattle and Hum Concert.

Nancy 10:01

Okay.

Bob 10:02

And I get in the audience, and everybody in the audience is losing their minds. They’re going crazy. They’re up on your feet, they’re shouting, they’re screaming, and it’s the concert where they had the light that they would shine into the audience.

Nancy 10:17

Right.

Bob 10:18

And whenever they would shine the light on the audience, people would…

Nancy 10:22

Go ballistic.

Bob 10:23

…act like they just won $10 million, and I was like, “They are just shining an annoying light in your face, what is wrong with all this?” It was such a culture shock coming from Germany to the United States.

Nancy 10:36

How old were you when you lived in Germany? What were your years there?

Bob 10:39

I moved there when I was two, and then I did spend four years in El Paso from third grade through seventh grade. But other than that, I was over there until I was 20.

Nancy 10:48

Wow, okay.

Bob 10:49

So, I went to college over there and I went to high school, which, by the way, if you’re going to be a teenager, Germany was the best place to be a teenager. Because the drinking age was 13. You couldn’t drive, you couldn’t even get a license until you’re 18. But then it was thousands of dollars to get a license, which I didn’t have. But the public transportation system is great.

Nancy 11:08

It’s awesome.

Bob 11:09

And it’s really safe.

Nancy 11:10

Yeah.

Bob 11:11

So, I had a wonderful time kind of partying as a teenager.

Nancy 11:16

Well, first of all your song “2002” makes a lot more sense to me now, because there’s a little riff in there about how you went back to Germany. Whenever I hear that I wonder what that’s about. I get it.

Bob 11:26

I will interrupt you and tell you that that entire song is made up.

Nancy 11:30

Okay. Well, yeah, hopefully. HOPEFULLY.

Bob 11:35

Yeah, because it mentions that I was addicted to heroin when I wrote it.

Nancy 11:37

He’s kind of a pathetic guy. A lovable guy, but…

Bob 11:41

Well, see I wrote that song in 1998 after – I wouldn’t say a breakup, I was dating a girl who I was madly in love with, and we only dated for a few weeks. But I feel like the most intense love is that under-two- months kind of unrequited love.

Nancy 11:59

Right. Because you don’t have time to figure out the flaws. It’s just perfect all the way through, for the two weeks.

Bob 12:04

Yeah, they never become a real person. They’re kind of this idealized version of a person, and you think, “Oh, this is the thing that’s going to make me happy.” And then oh, they’re gone, and it’s so hard to deal with. Anyway, I wrote this song knowing oh, by the time 2002 rolls around, I’ll be over this lovely lady, and so I wrote the song. And then 2002 has come and gone and now people are like, “Oh, that’s an autobiographical song that happened in 2002.”

Nancy 12:34

You heard it on the record here. No, it ain’t. No, it ain’t.

I have to tell you my decision to just… we’ll leave Germany at some point, listeners. We won’t always be talking about Germany, but I do love talking to anybody who lived there, because I had such formative few years there after college.

One of the biggest factors in my decision to move home was one night in Munich and listen – it’s a really safe country and I really appreciated that as a young woman who liked her beer. So, I was walking home from a tavern, pub, whatever it was, at like 2am listening to my Walkman, and there’s no traffic. It’s the middle of the night. And I jaywalked in Germany. And two drunk men across the street who were so drunk, that they were teepeeing against each other. They were holding each other up in an A frame situation in their leder hosen. They started yelling at me and they said in German, “Don’t walk against the light. You have to be an example to the children.”

And I’m like, if you can be that drunk and still a rule follower and still yelling at other people, this is not a country for me anymore. I just want to go home where jaywalking on an empty street, that’s just common sense.

Bob 13:51

That’s the thing I love the most about Germany. I love rules. I really do. No, I love rules, and I love following rules and I love people who follow rules. I went to Mexico with my wife and she had a wonderful time. We went Tulum and there were no rules and I was like…

Nancy 14:08

Were you itchy the whole time?

Bob 14:11

Oh, I had my first like, full blown panic attack when I was there, because I’m like, if there are no rules, what do I …

Nancy 14:20

What does anything mean?

Bob 14:22

I mean, human beings are wild, dangerous, insane animals, without rules. I mean, it’s scary.

Nancy 14:32

Oh, Mexico is the inverse of Germany. If you took everything about Germany and flipped it upside down, you would create Mexico and vice versa. So, I could see where that would be a difficult transition.

Bob 14:46

I love being on time. I love knowing what the speed limit is and abiding by it, but like four miles over the speed limit.

Nancy 14:55

Would you jaywalk on an empty street if you thought no one was watching in the middle of the night?

Bob 15:02

Of course. That is ridiculous.

Nancy 15:04

Okay. Thank you. Alright. We have to talk about your album, or we’re just going to talk about why you should move to Germany. Or not.

You have a new album out called In A Roomful Of Blood with A Sleeping Tiger. It came out at the end of August, and we’re going to get to hear a couple of tracks from that today. I wanted to start by asking you, when you started working on it, and whether the studio process was different because of the pandemic than what you usually do?

Bob 15:29

Well, it was. I didn’t really do anything different than I’ve done on the four or five records before that. I’ve used the same producer, same studio. Generally, the same group of musicians. But yeah, we were supposed to go in and start recording in March of 2020, and everything got shut down.

So, we had to postpone it and, like, literally, we didn’t know if we were going to be able to record it. I started making plans to do everything kind of remotely. I was hiring people that could record the parts at home in their studios, and then at some point later in the year, I think it was August, we were like, “Well, let’s just go into the studio and take our chances.”

Nancy 16:16

So August 2020.

Bob 16:17

August 2020 is when we went in and did it, and everybody was a little nervous. But we all knew each other, and there wasn’t a lot of COVID in Austin, at that time. I mean, there probably was, but none of us got it, and we went and recorded the record.

Nancy 16:37

So, I always approach this question really gingerly when I have a musician on the show, because I don’t know if it makes me sound foolish to ask it.

But is there a particular theme you had in mind as you were going into the writing process, or did you have some songs half-written, mostly written and you just thought, “These are going to sound good together”? I think, as a listener, a lot of us try to find the meaning, the central theme of an album, and I know from interviewing musicians for this show that sometimes that’s just not how it works.

So, what is the process for you? What was the goal for you with the songs?

Bob 17:14

Alright. Well, let me start by being like that mean magician that tells you how everything is done.

Nancy 17:19

Awesome.

Bob 17:20

And then the other magicians get really mad at them.

So, anybody that tells you that there’s some overarching theme, that they went in and this event happened, and they wrote all these songs about this one thing: that’s just them bullshitting 100%.

What I do is I force myself to write a song every week. I’ve been doing that for 20 years. I used to do a song every day or every other day, or every three days. And for the last 10 or 12 years, I’ve written one about once a week.

And what I do when it comes time to going into the studio and recording a real record is I look through all the songs that I haven’t recorded in the studio yet and try to find the best ones and put those together. Now, I will say, I have a lot of songs I haven’t recorded in the studio. I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of songs. Maybe 1000 songs that I haven’t recorded. But there’s a reason why I haven’t recorded most of those songs. They’re not that good.

But I probably I had 100 songs that I thought were contenders for this album, and I narrowed it down to about 30, and I picked 12 to 15. They were my favorite. But then I put the other 15 in a folder, and then I let my wife listen to them. I let the producer listen to them, and then they all weighed in on what songs they liked.

And then I just did the songs that my wife told me to do.

Nancy 18:50

That was smart. That’s good strategy.

Bob 18:53

Now, I did kind of have a nice run a couple years ago of writing some songs, and I think it had a lot to do with the fact that my daughter was around three at the time – and I noticed this happening with my son. He’s 16. My daughter is six. Around that time is when I really started getting to know who my kids were. Before that they were like babies and they’re cute, and all that but you don’t know who they are.

Nancy 19:19

Right. The personality starts to emerge when they’re about two or three.

Bob 19:23

Right. As soon as they can start talking, you realize, “Oh, this is who they are!” Because they’re stamped with their personalities. If you have a kid, you know what that means. As soon as they start speaking and talking, you realize, “Oh, this is who they’ve been for the last three years. They just weren’t able to communicate it.”

Nancy 19:38

Right.

Bob 19:39

I look back at my son who’s 16 now and he’s always been the same guy when he was eight, when he was two, when he was zero. He was just who he is.

So, around three is usually – with both my son and my daughter, it’s really when I just fell in love with them in a deep way. Obviously with my son, it was very unexpected because I hadn’t gone through it before, and when he was one or two, I was like, “Man, am I weird? Do I have Asperger’s, or am I a sociopath? Why am I not feeling all the things that people say you’re supposed to feel about your kids?”

But I really didn’t feel it until I got to know who he was, and then once I understood who he was, I knew a love there that I’d never known before. And the same thing happened with my daughter, and I wrote a lot of great songs kind of about that relationship. Because when my son was around that age, I was writing the songs that were on Lovely Creatures. I was also going through divorce, and even though that was such a painful time in my life, I was writing all these, I don’t know, just these beautiful love songs, and I was like, “What’s going on?”

And then I realized, oh, well, it was this mixed bag of feeling. So, I mean, on Lovely Creatures, there’s some really sad songs, and there’s some really happy songs. The sadness was the divorce that I was going through, and the happiness was this love I was feeling for my son.

I think the same thing happened on this album with my daughter, and also, I was pretty newly married. Me and my wife had been married for six years, but we were married for three years at the time. So, there’s a lot of joy and love and expressing that through music, which is always fun, and I don’t know, this is probably the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I’m the most at peace. I’m not really chasing anything. I think, earlier in my life, there was this idea, “Oh, at some point, if I become famous or successful, or I’m in the perfect relationship or have the right things around me that somehow that’s going to make everything better, and then I’ll be fine.” You know what I mean?

Nancy 22:06

Yeah.

Bob 22:07

I don’t believe in that anymore. I just I feel pretty happy.

Nancy 22:10

It sounds like you’re at peace.

Bob 22:13

It does sound like I’m at peace. But trust me, that’s not the case. But I’m the most at peace that I’ve ever been in my life.

Nancy 22:23

Well, you’ve teed up the song that I want to play for our audience perfectly, because those standout song to me on this album is “American Jesus”. So when you did this concert for us in July, you said to the audience, “Who has been married for a long time? Because that shit is hard.”

And we all laughed, because yeah, it is – I’m about to round the bend on my 29th anniversary. So, I can tell you, yes, it’s really hard, and this song is all about what it takes to stay happy in a marriage and to not rely on the other person so much for your happiness but to be there to support them instead. Am I characterizing it the right way? Maybe we should just play it and then the listeners can decide. So, I’m going to play “American Jesus” off Bob Schneider’s new album, In A Roomful Of Blood with A Sleeping Tiger.

23:39

[MUSIC: “American Jesus”, from In A Roomful of Blood With a Sleeping Tiger by Bob Schneider]

I can’t be Your American Jesus

And I can’t be

Your exciting career

I know you’ve never

Asked me for either

but I know somehow

I’ve let you down my dear

Oh and I know well

The sound of your laughter

I’ve made a map

Of all your fears

And I’ll take you home

When the party’s over

I’ll take you home

After all these years

I lay beside you

As you lay there sleeping

While the wolves pile up

Outside on the lawn

And when the stars

seek you out

So far from heaven

Well I’ll be here for you

Long after they are gone

Whoa I know well

Your need for solace

What hides in the embers

Under all your tears

And I’ll take you home

When the party’s over

I’ll still take you home

After all these years

Oh time and love

Aren’t set in stone

They’re only borrowed

Or freely given

And they’re both so heavy

They’ll break your heart

Til you don’t know

If you can go on living

Oh I can’t be the thing

That makes you happy

Maybe once I could

But not anymore

I can only be

Who I am

Waiting here for you

When you come through the door

Oh I know well

The tides of your affection

The way they wax and wane

And I’ll take you home

When the party’s over

Well I’ll always take you

Back home again

Nancy 27:29

Okay. So, I love your earlier songs that are about falling in love and like “2002” when you don’t really know the person all that well and look at if you play “Tiger and the Lamb” everybody in the room is going to ovulate. But there is something so midlife-romantic about a song that talks about somebody who sees you and understands you, and will give you a ride home so you don’t have to call Uber. I love that song.

Bob 27:56

Yeah, I do, too. I’m a very sentimental, romantic person and to me, that’s a very romantic, sentimental song about what it is to truly be in a relationship where all of the glitz and glamour is gone.

Nancy 28:15

Right.

Bob 28:15

I don’t care who you are. I mean, there’s a chemical thing that stops happening after three years. There’s a chemical thing that your brain starts creating these chemicals when you meet somebody, and it’s a trick to get you to procreate with that person and have babies. And then that goes away, and when that goes away, you’re just looking at the person like, “Hey, where’s my drugs? Where’s the drugs person that was making me euphoric and happy?”

That’s gone. Now you’re just left with a person, and not some fantasy person, but a person who has all the faults and all the things that frustrate you. You’re still the same person that you were, they’re not going to save you, they’re not going to make you happy, they’re just going to be who they are. But if you realize that, but then still care enough or admire the person enough or respect the person enough that you want to be with them just because of who they are, well then that something I think that’s incredibly special.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but there are these two couples and these fairies sprinkle stuff on these people and they get them to fall in love with people magically, and then at the end, they take that fairy dust off. And then these people are like, “Huh, what do we do now?” My character, by the way, in which I played it in college, I played the part of Lysander -they never take the stuff off him. So he’s left being in love with this woman and he probably doesn’t care about. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. I’m digressing.

Nancy 30:01

No, but I think your point’s well taken. I mean, there’s got to be something – and it’s actually a perfect topic for this show about “the years between being hip and breaking one”, because a lot of us either are in long term marriages, or we’re starting again in a new partnership. And this idea of being older, wiser, and maybe a little bit more cynical in a way that… See, I don’t think cynicism is necessarily a bad trait. I think it helps us cope with hardship, because we don’t always get our expectations out of whack with what real life is going to look like. And just having that realization that yeah, I am responsible for making myself happy, and it’s not fair for me to put that on my partner, because they’re working on their own thing. And of course, mutual support… But if you’re not happy, you’ve got to figure that out for yourself.

Bob 30:53

Right. And we live in a society that’s showing us all these models of all these relationships that look good on the surface. And when you hang out with your friends who are married, everybody’s on their best behavior, everybody’s pretending to be pretty happy, and like, “Everything’s great!” blah, blah, blah, blah. Then you go home, and you’re like, “Did you see that couple? They were so happy, and you and me just hate each other.”

Nancy 31:14

Yeah, but I also recommend you find the friends who will let you peek behind the curtain. Because they need those friends too, believe me.

Bob 31:20

Yeah, for sure. Well, the other thing that I know for a fact is all the things that frustrate me about my wife, all of the things that I don’t like are the things that if she didn’t have those qualities, or those traits, I would not be attracted to her or in love with her. Because they represent the same frustrations and problems that I had as a child when I was hanging out with my parents, and those are the only types of people that I’m going to be attracted to.

So, even if things don’t work out with my wife, the next person that I’m with is going to be a very similar person. I’ve been with people who weren’t as frustrating, or as complicated as my wife, and I was not in love with them.

Nancy 32:10

It’s a little boring. A little complexity can keep you hooked, I think.

Bob 32:15

I mean, I’m using very kind words when I say “ complex” and “frustrating,” trust me.

Nancy 32:21

I want to ask you as a songwriter: do you think songwriting helps you work out real life issues? And I ask this because I know that when I write, sometimes I do it in order to understand how I feel about a subject. I can’t figure it out until I’ve put it down, edited it, kind of wrapped it up, and I’m like, “Well, that’s my opinion about that. Who knew?” And I wondered if it works the same way for songwriting.

Bob 32:45

I think you can work out some stuff with your writing. That’s not the reason I do it. I do it to kind of dissociate.

For me writing a song, it’s like doing the crossword, it’s like solving a puzzle, and it keeps my mind off my anxieties, it keeps my mind off all my worries. So, I enjoy the process of trying to solve this equation, which is a song. For instance, for years, I would always tell everybody why I never write anything autobiographical, because I make everything up. Like that song “2002,” everything in that song is pretty much made up. It’s about the future.

Now, what I have discovered over the year, is that even though the actual events are fictitious, the emotion is actually very autobiographical. So, whatever the emotional tone of the song is, that’s actually happening to me at the time.

Like when I was writing all those love songs, while I was going through this terrible divorce, that emotional quality in like a song like 40 Dogs, which is beautiful love song – it’s the way I was feeling about my son. But I mean, a lot of people write songs were like, “Oh, I love my son, I love my daughter, they’re so sweet, look, they made a poo-poo” or whatever the fuck it is.

I hate that kind of songwriting. It’s my least favorite. When somebody is telling me how they feel and like what they’re going through, I’m like, “I don’t care. Make it interesting.” That’s all I care about. Make it clever. Make it arty. I want to be moved. I want to feel connected to something bigger and deeper. I don’t care what you’re feeling or what you’re going through, and so I’m trying to write songs that are interesting. But at the same time, when you’re doing that, you can’t help but mind whatever emotional content that’s inside you at the time that you’re doing it.

Nancy 34:48

You obviously have a great sense of humor. I’m sure, listeners, you’ve sorted that out for yourselves at this point in the interview. So, there’s a line in the song on the new album about Thor, the god of thunder, and he works in an office and he cooks dinner at night and his wife washes the dishes. And the line where you say he is part owner of the Green Bay Packers… that was my husband hooting at the concert in July because that was really funny to Andrew. I don’t know why he couldn’t get over it.

But I wondered how humor helps you cope both with real life, pandemic life, songwriting. How important is it to you that your music has a sense of humor?

Bob 35:33

I mean, if music doesn’t have a sense of humor, I’m out.

I’m always shocked by people who have zero need to be funny, and there are people that are completely earnest, that will just speak their truth, and to say what they’re going to say very seriously and very succinctly without ever trying to make a joke, and I find, by the way, those people are the most successful people in the world.

Nancy 36:06

I was just going to say, those are the people…

Bob 36:08

They are the people that rule the world, because if you act like a clown, people will treat you like a clown. And if you just take yourself seriously, and don’t make any jokes, people will go, “Well, that guy’s real serious,” and take you seriously. But at the same time, they are so deadly boring, and I can’t understand it. I can’t. Who cares? If you rule the world, who a) who wants to rule the world? Me, I do. Of course, I want it, 100%.

Nancy 36:40

But with my sense of humor intact. Thank you very much.

Bob 36:43

By the way, I want to rule the world. And just know this, if you’re listening…

Nancy 36:48

And you have power to appoint him as world ruler.

Bob 36:51

Thank God that I’m not the ruler of the world, because I would be horrible, and if there was actually was a ruler of the world, they would be horrible. I’ve done the math on it. You are the ruler of the world, I don’t care who you are. You can make the Dalai Lama, the ruler of the world and in five years, he will be the most evil person on the planet. You just can’t…

Nancy 37:16

That’s what the algorithm spit out for Dalai Lama. He’s got a five-year plan.

Bob 37:19

I mean, no. I mean, luckily, the Dalai Lama has a very limited amount of power. The problem with ultimate power like that, it will definitely corrupt you. I read about the Mormons –  I don’t know if you know a lot…

Nancy 37:34

Oh, we’re fascinated by the Mormons in this household. Everybody who read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, who isn’t fascinated by Mormons?

Bob 37:42

Well, I found out that if you are in this select group, you get your own planet. And I like thought exercises. I was like, “What would I do if I was the ruler of my own planet?” It would not go well for a lot of people.

Nancy 38:01

Why? What would the characteristics of your planet be?

Bob 38:04

I would be a murderer for sure.

Nancy 38:07

Where’s that anger coming from? What are you, German at a concert? Come on!

Bob 38:12

Like after a while, I’d be like, “Oh, that guy’s annoying.”

Nancy 38:17

“Kill him.”

Bob 38:18

Oh, my God, I would be terrible.

Nancy 38:23

Alright. Let’s all agree when that ballot comes in the mail about who is going to be ruler of the world, don’t put down Bob Schneider, because homicides are a fundamental organizing principle to his future culture.

Bob 38:34

Here’s the thing. I am a good person. I’m a nice person. I would never murder anyone, unless I was the ruler of the world and there were no consequences, then I’m sure that I would. And I’m sure everybody would. I don’t care who you are. Anyways, I know that’s controversial for some.

Nancy 38:54

For some. For others, that’s fine. For others, they’re like, “Yeah, I’d vote for that. Sure.”

Bob 38:59

Well, do seven years of group therapy, and you’ll figure it out eventually. You’ll get down to the root of who you are.

Nancy 39:05

Alright, Bob, this is dealer’s choice. I’m going to have you pick another track to play off your new album. What’s the song that’s particularly meaningful to you and why?

Bob 39:15

I will say this about the record, there’s not a song on the record I’m not proud of and now, that’s only true of one other album I put out. I put out an album called Lonely Land, which was my first record. Every album I put out since, there’s at least one or two songs that, if I re-recorded the record, I wouldn’t put those songs on the album. I love every song on the record, and they’re all very personal. Again, everything’s made up.

But “Thor”, for instance, seems very autobiographical – I’m remarried, I have a daughter, and a lot of the ideas in that song ring true in my life. For instance, I’m sober alcoholic, I’ve been sober for 26 years and the character Thor is the god of thunder and he gets in this fender bender with this guy and he could just kill him, but he doesn’t want to kill him because he doesn’t want to do that anymore. It wasn’t working for him, and he talks about maybe people can change.

And I don’t think I can fundamentally change who I am that’s why I can’t drink. If I were to try to drink right now, I’d still wouldn’t be able to drink successfully even after 26 years. But I don’t have to drink, so a lot of the things in the song kind of ring true in my life. Maybe we should listen to that one.

Nancy 40:38

I’d love to.

40:39

[MUSIC: “Thor” from In A Roomful of Blood With a Sleeping Tiger by Bob Schneider]

Thor is the god of thunder

But he’s also a family man

Settled down in Milwaukee and

He’s got himself a wife and daughter

He works for the Bank of America

He does it all for love

At night he likes to go to the karaoke

bar

Sing his favorite songs by his very

favorite bands

He’s got a minor drinking problem he’s

not addressed

He really does his best

but it’s getting out of hand

Thor likes the Green Bay Packers

They’re his home team

He’s an owner too

And one day while he was driving

He got into a fender bender

It took all his patience not to kill the other guy

All he really had to do was let

his hammer fly

But that rage and destruction stuff had really

lost its charm

So he put it all behind him forever

Thor is the son of Odin

But that’s not all he is

Oh no and

Cause maybe people can change

Not who they are

But maybe their ways

Thor is the god of thunder

And his  wife is

An underwear

Model

So he does the cooking

She does the dishes

After he goes off to bed

Bob 43:13

I wrote that line in the song about the Green Bay Packers. My ex-wife, her whole family, are Green Bay Packers’ fans –  she’s from Madison, Wisconsin. And now of course, I’m a Green Bay Packers fan because my son is. And I’ve only gotten into football because my son got into football when he was five or six.

And I thought that line was so funny and I couldn’t wait to go to Milwaukee and Madison and play the song for those people, play it for my in laws, play it for all those Green Bay Packer fans, because I thought they’d think it was so funny. People, everywhere I play it, think that line is funny. Except for one place.

Wisconsin! Because they don’t get the joke.

Nancy 43:59

Oh yeah, I guess they might be too close to it.

Bob 44:02

Well, I mean, they like being Green Bay Packers’ owners, but it’s funny.

Nancy 44:07

Yeah, it is. It’s empirically funny.

So Bob, you are not just a singer/songwriter. You’re actually one of the most prolific creatives I’ve ever come across, because you paint, you write poetry, you’ve got your own podcast, and I’m curious how that creative process may have been impacted during the pandemic. I know for instance, you also had to become your daughter’s art teacher, because she was studying from home.

Bob 44:33

I did. My wife doesn’t like to get up early in the morning, so I had my daughter from 6:30, 7, whenever time she woke up until noon. That was our agreement, and so I was kind of like the homeschooling person. It made me really appreciate teachers in the job they do. Good God. That was hard for me. I mean, like I said, I love my kids with all my heart, but I’m not good for hours at a time.

Nancy 45:06

I could never. My kids are in their 20s, thank God.

Bob 45:11

Yeah, I’m good for a few minutes at a time, and I like asking some questions, getting some answers. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like hearing my children laughing in the distance. That’s a beautiful sound to me.

But actually having to engage with them, it’s tough. It’s real hard for me. It’s hard for me to engage with adults, with real people, let alone little children. So it was…

Nancy 45:42

Yeah, you became an art teacher – because if you guys go see Bob on tour, please take notice of his jewelry, which is a necklace that his daughter made him in the pandemic. It’s a lovely thing. Actually, you’re wearing it in your streaming concerts, too, I noticed during the pandemic.

Bob 45:57

Well, ever since we made it, I haven’t taken it off, and I figured eventually, it would fall apart. It just hasn’t fallen apart yet in the last year and a half. But I find that it’s easier to do art projects than it is to actually just have a conversation or something. So I did try to figure out some stuff we could do together to get to the noon deadline where I could then do my own thing.

Nancy 46:21

But you’re still doing your painting and your poetry and actually – let people know where they can find your podcast.

Bob 46:27

So, I have a podcast called I’m OK You’re OK, I’m Not OK You’re Not OK that I do with a very good friend of mine, Clint Wells, which I am very proud of that podcast. We talk about really just the human experience, mainly, but we joke around, have a good time.

And then I also have another podcast that’s kind of linked into my Patreon. It’s called The Song Club, and basically, what I do is, I have a Patreon. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s sort of a monthly subscription service, and what I do is I release eight of these demo songs that I’ve written every month, and I’ve been doing that now for about three and a half years.Because I write the songs every week, and I’ve been doing that for 20 years.

So, I have thousands of songs on my computer that nobody will ever hear, and so I thought this would be a great way to let my fans have some of this material and get it out to the public, and so I have a podcast where I talk about those songs, writing those songs, and just whatever else comes into my head, and that’s called The Song Club.

Nancy 47:35

And you’re back to doing live performances again. So, you’ve got a residency at The Saxon Pub on Monday nights, a longtime residency in Austin. If you’re lucky enough to live there, you can go check Bob out. I’m sure you know that because Bob’s a living legend in Austin.

Does it feel different being back with a live crowd having had the reset?

Bob 47:56

Yes, it does. After taking all that time off, it really does make you appreciate playing live.

For the year that we had, I mean, it was literally a year where I didn’t play a live gig. I was doing live streams from my studio at home once a week to kind of in lieu of doing that Saxon Pub residency, and it kind of just gave my life a little bit of structure, thank God.

But once I got back out and actually started playing live again, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to do it. Now, I had lost perspective as to even what I was doing when I was playing live, because I was playing so many shows a year, it was just kind of like, you’re just going, you’re playing the same song to different people, but you’re like, “What am I doing? What does this even mean? Like, why are people even here?” And then when you haven’t done it for a while, you understand kind of what it is because it’s new to you again.

Nancy 48:56

Right.

Bob 48:57

And there is something really kind of wonderful and magical. I don’t know, it’s like seeing a stand-up comedian or watching a play or you’re being told a story and it’s making you feel all these things and you’re together with people and I don’t know, it’s something I think we need as human beings. We need to get together and share experiences. I don’t know why.

Nancy 49:23

It’s that collective effervescence. It’s that idea of seeing people you don’t know around you enjoying the same thing that you do and like bouncing that energy off each other and making it bigger in the process.

Bob 49:36

Yeah, there’s something about it that’s very comforting, and it’s got to come from our evolution. At one point, I mean… imagine if you’re alone 50,000 or 100,000 years ago, you probably weren’t going to have a very good go of it. And I think at a certain point if you got enough people together, if you got a group of like 40 or 50 people together, you might be able to make it, you might be able to defend yourself against other groups of 40 or 50 people, you might be able to collect enough firewood. You know what I mean?

Nancy 50:11

Yeah, there’s strength in numbers, to a certain level.

Bob 50:12

Yeah, there’s something in our heads, something in our evolution that when we get together with groups of people, it’s comforting. And I think the pandemic was really hard, not being able to do that. I think it probably tapped into something in our subconscious where we really needed it, and because we weren’t getting it…

I know, for me, I have a lot of anxiety. There was a lot of fear, and usually, when you have a lot of anxiety and fear, I mean, it does manifest as anxiety. But fear usually manifests itself as anger. So, you just walk around and run into somebody, and everybody’s just mad, and you’re like, “Why is everybody so mad? “It’s because everybody’s so scared, because we’re not doing these things that comfort us.

Nancy 51:01

Right.

Bob 51:02

Like getting together in groups, like even going to eat. You go to eat dinner, and you’re surrounded by people, and there’s something about that that makes you feel safer, I don’t know.

Nancy 51:13

Everybody get your vaccine so we can all let go of the anger. Please go get your vaccine.

Bob 51:17

Well, so I did these backyard concerts, and how lovely were those? Those were so fun.

Nancy 51:25

I mean. I will say that was my best day of the summer. I’m going to get a little teary. There was something so magical about seeing this – because there’s only 30 people. I knew 29 of them. Just being there with my friends and seeing them be happy and having Bob Schneider – Bob Fucking Schneider – playing in the backyard…That was my best day this summer. And it had been a long time since I had a best day.

Bob 51:56

Yeah, it was…

Nancy 51:59

And then the dog jumped put up on her hind legs and ate the hors d’oeuvres and Bob had to stop the show and say, “Someone might want to get that dog because she’s going to town on that food.”

Bob 52:10

That dog was going…

Nancy 52:12

That wasn’t my dog, by the way. That was Kerryn’s dog.

Bob 52:15

That was like a Marmaduke dog. That dog was getting busy on that table.

Nancy 52:22

Oh my god. Alright, so I could talk to you for two more hours. But I’m guessing you’re busy. You probably have an art class to conduct.

Actually, let me ask you first, where’s the best place for people to go to find out about your upcoming performances, check out your music, check out your art, check out your Merch? Because actually I said to Maddy yesterday, “I’m finally going to get myself one of those FAYM hoodies. It’s been years that I’ve wanted one, this might be the week to do it.”

Bob 52:46

Well, if you go to bobschneider.com it has everything that you need to know. You can follow me on Instagram, bob_schneider_music or I don’t know. But if you just go to bobschneider.com it’s all there.

Nancy 52:57

And you’ll find the Patreon with the Song Club so you can get access to those unreleased songs too. So check it out.

Last question, Bob, what one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Bob 53:11

That is a good question. When people ask me about the music business, I always tell them, “Do anything else. Not that.” It’s so difficult to make a living doing it.

But I will say, I think the most important thing to do, and I think this is true with any creative endeavor, whether it’s writing a book, writing a play, making a movie, building a coffee table, whatever it is that you’re doing, I think it’s really important that you are thinking about satisfying one person and one person only. And that’s Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Nancy 53:58

Oh I thought you’d say Bob Schneider.

Bob 53:59

I’m the ruler of the world.

Nancy 54:04

“What would the ruler of the world want in this exact situation?”

Bob 54:07

Just make sure that I like it. Otherwise, you’re going in the trash heap.

Nancy 54:13

Bob will strangle you with his bare hands.

Bob 54:16

No, I think that you should only do it, not for fame or fortune or for any other reason other than… no, I take back everything I just said, and I will tell you this thing that this very strange billionaire told me when I was very young, and I don’t think I’ve heeded it.

Nancy 54:38

How many billionaires were you hanging out with when you were young?

Bob 54:43

I don’t know. When you’re young and good looking, you meet billionaires all the time.

But I was in Houston, Texas and this billionaire who’s real intense. Real intense. I’m sure he’s been canceled at some point for who knows what. But he was friends with a friend of mine, and he came up to me and he just grabbed my hand. I’d never met the guy, and he was holding my hand like to say hi, shake your hand, and just looked at me real intensely, and he said, “You’ve got to ask yourself one question. What would you do with your life if you could not fail?”

Nancy 55:21

Had he read that off a mug at Spencer Gifts? I mean, he didn’t make that up. I’m going to tell you that.

Bob 55:27

Well, I had never heard it before, and I was like, “That’s a good question.”

Now, I don’t think I did that for many years, but I did do that at a certain point. When I was around 30 years old, I made Lonelyland and I made that record with the sole purpose of doing something that I would like. I wasn’t making it for a record company, I wasn’t making for an audience, I was just making it for me. I wanted to make something that I found interesting, and that I was proud of, and that’s all. I only made it for me, and I think it’s the most successful thing I’ve done to date.

And I do think a lot of people do stuff for money, and they make excuses for why they’re not doing the thing that they want to do. “Well, I have to do it. But once I make a certain amount of money, then I’m going to stop doing this thing, and I’m going to do the thing I really want to do.”

I do think the other question besides what would you do if you couldn’t fail, the question I asked myself is, “If you had all the money in the world, what would you do?”

And if I had all the money in the world, I would do exactly what I’m doing, I would just pay my employees more, I would pay the guys that I work with more, I would travel in greater luxury. But I would still do exactly what I’m doing. I love what I do, and so I think that’s what you need to do. Everybody knows what they want to do. So, just figure out what you want to do, what you love to do, and then just do that.

And you might not make any money. I mean, I’ve had times in my life, where I had like $0.11, and no way of making any money. Like there was no money coming in and I had $0.11. There have been times in my life where I’ve drank flour mixed with water, because I had nothing else to eat, and there were years where I was living in abject poverty, but I was doing what I love. So, I think that is the thing. Just ask yourself, what is it that I really love? What is it that I really want to do? And then do that.

Most people won’t. Most people are like, “Well, I’ve got to make that mortgage payment, my kids are in school.” Whatever it is, yeah, there’s a million excuses.

Nancy 57:51

Right.

Bob 57:52

And you have this limited amount of time on the planet.

Nancy 57:57

That’s what I think is cool about being at midlife, Bob, because I think you have a much more concrete sense of your mortality, and you realize you only have X number of years to do the thing that you love to do. So, even if this is not a younger person listening to this advice, hopefully, the people who are tuned in because they are in midlife, just remember, like, you don’t have that much time to dick around. If you want to do something, today’s the day.

Bob 58:24

Right. But you might have to sell your house, you might have to live in a tiny apartment, I don’t know. That’s the other thing, too.

Nancy 58:31

But there’s all kinds of tradeoffs you can make, right? I mean, you might have to do that, but maybe just sign up for a class for the thing that you want. You don’t have to throw everything in the garbage heap all at once. Give it a try. At least take one step.

Bob 58:45

I’d say throw it all in.

Nancy 58:46

I know you do. I’m trying to give the other view of it. “Or start a podcast!”

Bob 58:54

My cousin is a very successful anesthesiologist. He’s a brilliant guy, he’s my age, he’s in his mid-50s, but he loves art and he’s like, “I just want to quit all this doctor BS and just do art.” I’m like, “Well, do it.”

Nancy

Yeah.

Bob

“Now, you won’t be able to just travel anywhere you want in the world, you won’t have any money, you’re not going to be making any money, but do art.” And he’s like, “Maybe I’ll do it on the weekends.”

Nancy 59:28

Well, but if he starts on the weekend, then maybe at some point he has grown the flame, the interest, the passion enough that he’s ready to make the leap. I’m just saying there’s many points on this spectrum between Bob’s and mine. Okay? Choose the one that feels right for you.

Bob 59:46

Hey, at the end of the day, I really don’t know if any of it matters. I think the only thing that truly matters is finding something besides yourself to love, and giving… Alright, I’m going to take everything back.

Nancy 1:00:11

To what point?

Bob 1:00:11

I’m taking it all back.

Nancy 1:00:12

If I have to go in and edit this, I don’t even know where to…

Bob 1:00:14

No, don’t edit any of it at, please, for God’s sake.

Nancy 1:00:16

We’re leaving it all in.

Bob 1:00:17

Leave it all in, please.

Nancy 1:00:18

Yeah, gonna.

Bob 1:00:20

But I will say this, the only thing that truly makes me happy is loving. Period.

Not being loved. I’ve been loved, my parents loved me, my kids love me, my fans love me. None of that matters. I say it matters, but it truly doesn’t. The only thing that matters is me loving. Now, it’s really easy for me to love my kids, for whatever reason. I love them more than I love myself. It’s harder for me to love people. But the more people I can love – I think we had this conversation…

Nancy 1:01:00

Well, I was just going to ask. I didn’t want to bring it up unless you did. But you told me something really interesting that I’ve thought a lot about since after that show, about how you manifest that for people who are very hard to love. Would you talk about what you do there? Because I’ve been trying to do it.

Bob 1:01:17

So for years, and I learned this in AA, but for years, if I have a problem with somebody, if there’s somebody I really dislike, that’s really causing me a lot of frustration, for whatever reason, I include them in my prayers.

Now, even just saying the word prayers, people are going to be like, “Oh.” They’re going to say whatever. Now, I only pray because I was told to do so in AA, and I’ve done it, and I don’t know, I get results from it. I don’t know why, but probably some kind of subconscious thing or whatever.

But what I’ve found in the past is when I first got sober, I really hated this one guy, because I was dating a girl and he swooped in, took her, and they ended up getting married. And I would just despise this guy. Like, every time I’d think about him, I was like, “Oh, I hate that guy, I hate that guy.” And then I was told, “You need to put that guy in your prayers every day and say, ‘Oh, I hope something wonderful happens for him today.’”

Nancy 1:02:24

That’s the phrase.

Bob 1:02:26

And so I would do it. So every day, even though I hated the guy I’d be like, “Alright. I hope something wonderful happens for him today.”

And I would say it every day, and after about a week or two of it, I ran into that guy, and I never ran into him ever back in those days, and when I ran into him, I didn’t really have any animosity towards him. I was just like, “Hey, what’s up?” and he was like, “Hey, what’s up?”

And since then, I’ve become pretty good friends with him, and I really like him. And all of that anger that I had towards him, it wasn’t hurting him. It wasn’t doing anything to him, it was only hurting myself. It was disallowing me from feeling, I don’t know, the sunlight of the soul, or whatever you want to call it, I don’t know. But as soon as I was able to channel that into good feelings towards him, I immediately felt some relief. I just felt better, and so my goal always is if there’s somebody that I don’t like, I put them in my prayers.

And there’s somebody that you and me both have a really hard time with and that’s what we talked about. No need to mention the person’s name.

Nancy 1:03:45

It’s The Former Guy.

Bob 1:03:48

But people are so bent out of shape about this guy, and I’m like, “Well, I’ve been putting this guy in my prayers for like years now,” and I just don’t expend any energy towards that person.

Nancy 1:04:04

Right.

Bob 1:04:05

Because all of that energy doesn’t do anything. Like, if that energy worked at somehow harming that person, then maybe I would say, “Well, let’s all get together and harm that person.” But the only person that’s getting harmed is me.

And so I want to be Will Rogers at some point in my life, where there’s nobody on Earth that’s not a friend of mine. Like the Buddha. Everybody on earth supports the Buddha, or at least the Buddha feels that way, and I would like to get there.

So, it really doesn’t matter if you’re doing a job you hate or like or you’re doing it because you need to make a certain amount of money or you’re doing that sort of thing, I don’t think that really affects your overall serenity. I think how your relationship to the world and how much you can accept the world for what it is and love it, that is the most important thing that you can do for yourself in life.

Nancy 1:05:06

And scene.

Bob 1:05:07

Man, that was a lot of talking.

Nancy 1:05:09

That was really great. Lots for us to think about and I hope something wonderful happens to him, her, them, today. I’m telling you I have really incorporated that, so thank you for that piece of advice, and now more people can do that too.

Because instead of making you feel subject to that person, it gives you a little bit of agency over how that person makes you feel. I think that’s part of it, too, is that it hands you the controls of saying, “I get to choose whether this is someone who’s going to make me unhappy or if I can find a different way to be with them,” so it’s important.

Bob Schneider, thank you so much for coming on the Midlife Mixtape Podcast.

Bob 1:05:55

Well, it was nice chatting with you. I had a really fun time chatting with you before and again, it was just such a pleasure. You’re so smart and nice. I just loved it.

Nancy 1:06:11

Alright. You’re my permanent guest from now on. It’s just going to be Bob coming on the show.

You guys, check out Bob Schneider’s new album, In A Roomful Of Blood with A Sleeping Tiger. I’ve got the vinyl butter bean version, yo, but you can get it on Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you get your music. You can also go see him in concert, and you should get some of that collective effervescence. So Bob, thanks again for making the time to talk to me today.

Bob 1:06:36

You’re welcome. Thank you. It was fun.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 1:06:41

By the way that “Collective Effervescence” I kept talking about, so that term came from really great essay that I read in the New York Times in July this year by Adam Grant who is a professor at UPenn-  woop! Alma mater! And it talks about this very specific type of joy we were missing out during the pandemic, and that is joy shared with strangers. He called this type of bliss “Collective Effervescence” and it really stuck with me as the perfect term for the energy you feel at a concert. Anyway, I’m dropping that essay into the show notes in case you’d like to check it out for yourself and figure out collective effervescence looks like and feels like for you.

Remember! I need your GenX Halloween stories by October 12th! Don’t disappoint me, I know we can gather up a pillowcase full of tricks, treats, and fright night antics that would really confuse our kids.

You can email me your stories to [email protected] or get in touch via social media on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @midlifemixtape.

You know what? I hope something wonderful happens to all of you today.

See you next time!

[“Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 106 Singer/Songwriter Bob Schneider appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

“Stop, Look, Go”: Kristi Nelson, author of “Wake Up Grateful,” on transforming her Stage IV cancer survival into a lifetime practice of more grateful living, midlife carpe diem, and an unusual way to embrace that middle-of-the-night restiveness.

Live from Budokan, it’s…

Kristi Nelson 00:01

At this stage in life, so many of us have had wake-up calls. So many of the difficult experiences of life actually make it more possible to connect with feeling grateful.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:14

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:38

I just want to make sure that you have all checked out the great new September content from fellow members of the G.A.L.S squad. That’s –  plug your ears little one – G.A.L.S, as in Grown Ass Ladies. Over on tuenight.com, there’s a great essay by my pal, Wendi Aarons, about the joys of going to a movie theater solo. I would actually just love to go to a movie theater. I haven’t done that in a year and a half. Going solo, that would be the icing on top. Jumbleandflow.com has a piece on finding your flow with tarot card readings. Damemagazine.com asks, “Do we have the space to grieve anymore?” That is a dang good question. That’s damemagazine.com. And heyperry.com, that’s H-E-Y-P-E-R-R-Y.C-O-M has the ever popular topic “Perimenopause periods: WTF is happening?” Make sure to check out all these sites designed for people in the years between being hip and breaking one. The G.A.L.S. always have great new stuff coming out.

[MUSIC]

Welcome to Episode 105 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast! I’m Nancy Davis Kho, host and creatress of the show, and I’m really glad you’re tuning in today. September 21st happens to be World Gratitude Day, a topic I know a little bit about…but I thought that for a refreshing change of pace, instead of talking to you about Gratitude Letters and the book I wrote, The Thank-You Project, I’d bring in a guest who could share a different perspective on incorporating more gratefulness and grateful living into our lives.

That seemed especially important in a week where two different friends have said to me, “You know what? Relatively speaking, I don’t have anything to feel down about.” And they are kind of kicking themselves for feeling low and I was like, “You are now the human embodiment of that cartoon dog in the fedora sitting with his coffee as the flames rise up around him.” NO ONE IS OK. EVERYBODY HAS SOMETHING TO FEEL DOWN ABOUT AFTER 18 MONTHS OF THIS PANDEMIC – and I recently read that 1 in 3 Americans has been affected by a weather disaster made worse by climate change. It’s ok, and it’s normal, to not be ok.

Speaking of the climate change thing, have you checked out sciencemoms.com yet? Go back to Episode 102 for all the details on that.

Anyway, goes for me, too. Ever since my mom’s memorial service in August, I have to say I have been feeling a lot more subdued and frankly, a little hopeless, moreso than at any other time during the past 18 months. So today’s guest, and her reminder of how these wake-up calls in our lives can enrich them if we look at them from the right perspective, seems especially timely.

Kristi Nelson is the Executive Director of A Network for Grateful Living, and the author of Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted. Imagine that?! Kristi’s life’s work in the non-profit sector has focused on leading, inspiring, and strengthening organizations committed to progressive social and spiritual change. Being a long-time stage IV cancer survivor moves her every day to support others in living and loving with great fullness of heart.

In 2001 – after five years leading a regional Women’s Fund – Kristi founded a values-based fundraising consulting and coaching company, and in this capacity, she has worked with organizations like Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Wisdom 2.0, and The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, among others. She has also been founding Director of Soul of Money Institute with Lynne Twist, Director of Development at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, and Director of Development and Community Relations for the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society.

So take a deep calming breath, and join me as I talk with gratefulness guru, Kristi Nelson.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 04:16

I want to welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Kristi Nelson. Thanks so much for being on the show today.

Kristi 04:22

I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Nancy 04:25

Well, it’s a special day today because the day this episode drops is World Gratitude Day. So I wanted to have somebody on who could provide a different lens into the topic of gratefulness and gratitude, and I’m excited to talk about your book, Wake Up Grateful. But first, Kristi, obviously, we have to ask you this question, which is what was your first concert and what were the circumstances?

Kristi 04:47

This has caused me to do research and verification.

Nancy 04:51

Oh. I love giving a guest homework. That’s fabulous.

Kristi 04:54

Actually, it was so great. I believe … because you know now that I’m in my 60s, it’s actually long term memory issues. So I believe that it was Cheap Trick.

Nancy 05:07

Really?

Kristi 05:08

It was 1976 and I couldn’t find their tour dates to confirm, but it was somewhere I think either Springfield Massachusetts or somewhere in the close environs and this is just the funniest thing. Their song that I loved and used to sing at the top of my possible voice spectrum, I’d sing, “I want you to want me, I need you to need me. I’d love you to love me.”

Nancy 05:32

Sure.

Kristi 05:33

That’s like their big song.

Nancy 05:35

And you were what? Nine years old, singing that? No, I’m kidding.

Kristi 05:38

No. Yeah, that’s funny. I was 16, and it was probably one of those things that it was a celebration of my 16th birthday and passing to some kind of new level of trustworthiness that I could go off and I’m sure I wasn’t worthy of it at all.

Nancy 05:53

In the 70s, the bar for trustworthiness in kids was awfully low compared to where it is now. We hear these stories over and over on this show of people doing stuff that they would never let their kids do now.

Kristi 06:05

Yeah, so true.

Nancy 06:06

So I love that concert for you. I’m trying to remember which Cheap Trick song it was… my friend and I were getting coffee at a coffee shop one day and it came on over the Muzak. She and I started singing both sides of it at each other, really aggressively, and the poor coffee girl who was a Millennial just looked at us in absolute horror. Appropriately so. Cheap Trick, you’ve got to sing along. It’s very much a sing along kind of a band.

I wondered if there is a way that music plays into your efforts to live gratefully, playing a song that makes you feel grateful, or amplifying your mood or anything like that. Is there a way that music plays a role for you?

Kristi 06:43

Hugely, I would say. And it’s interesting, because I always say that gratitude waits for something good to happen and gratefulness actually waits for us to just be awake. So for me, what that means when I’m awake is awake and tuned in to what I can create for experiences that bring about more grateful awareness, and so that helps shift my perspective. That’s what I’m a big believer in. So I use music a lot to enhance my perspective. When I come home, and I’m tired at the end of the day, or I’ve done a lot of things that have been exhausting at a particular level mentally or physically, if I put on music, Pharrell William’s, “Happy”…

Nancy 07:26

Sure. The theme song.

Kristi 07:27

It is absolutely irresistible, right? So there’s so many songs like that, that energize me and completely shift my mood and music has an unparalleled ability to do that in my life.

Nancy 07:41

I agree so much. At some point during the pandemic, last year, I made a playlist on my phone called the AAA playlist, and it is only songs that make me get a little shiver when they come on, like I go, “Oh my god, I love this song too.” If it doesn’t elicit that response, I take it off the playlist.

We were driving recently – My husband and I drove down to LA to drop our daughter off at school and it’s been a pandemic, it’s been 18 months of difficult things and we were coming back and I was like, “You know what? I need to listen that playlist right now, because I’m feeling…” I was missing my daughter already. There’re just any number of things that are hard and I knew if I just put this on, oh, it’s so good. I wish you could all listen to my AAA playlist.

But I think the better thing is for everybody to make an AAA playlist that is personal to you, that gives you that little jolt. Because it works exactly like you’re saying. It just kind of puts you in a better space. And that’s something to be grateful for.

Kristi 08:38

You got that. Thank you. I love that and I love that you’ve just assigned us more homework.

Nancy 08:43

Yes, go make your playlist. Report back. Tell me what’s on it.

I mentioned today is World Gratitude Day and anybody who’s listened to this podcast has heard me talk ad infinitum about gratitude letters, which is the tool that I used back in 2016 to kind of acknowledge all the good people around me, all the things that I had to be thankful for up to that point in my life. It was a benchmark birthday and I was really trying to think deliberately about the helpers who had come along the way. And I swear by gratitude letters still, I know how powerful they are and I know from readers who have bought and read my book, The Thank-You Project that they work really well.

But, 18 months into this pandemic, Kristi, I need some backup. I feel like I need more arrows in my gratitude quiver and I think part of this today is going to be like a therapy session for me. I’m just being honest with you and with the listeners: I feel really flat sometimes these days and I’m worn out of working so hard to stay healthy and I’m worn out of watching friends who have suffered and I’m worn out of looking at the bigger world around me and feeling so overwhelmed some days.

And it’s part of why I do this podcast, because I’m always connecting with people every two weeks, who have a different, a dynamic way of looking at the world around them, and that’s one of the things that helps me so much. But you have written this book called Wake Up Grateful, where you talk about how we can have grateful living and you just mentioned the difference between gratitude and gratefulness. Talk a little bit more about that. How do you see them as different things?

Kristi 10:24

Sure. Well, I’m super excited to be here and talk about this and I also want you to know that all of us, I think, are struggling through this time in ways that we didn’t anticipate and could have never imagined, and so it’s all new again, and here we are.

The most important thing I think that helps me is admitting it, and connecting with people around it, feeling the normalcy of it, and how this is the new normal for a lot of us is working through these experiences of feeling more separate from each other. So admitting it is the first part and making a space to really own that this, too, is part of living gratefully…actually acknowledging that having these emotions points us to the things that we’re most grateful for, that we’ve lost touch with. For me to be able to feel strong emotions, is something I’m thankful for, actually. Sometimes that’s grief and sometimes I think – this is the time of great grief actually.

Grief and gratitude are close kin with one another, in my experience. We can always be pointed back to those things which have enriched our lives and which we can connect with in other more creative ways that draws on resourcefulness. I mean, I think we really need to pull out of the bottom of our quiver. It’s not just grabbing the arrows that we’re used to grabbing, it’s reaching for different things.

So gratefulness and grateful living, I think are really important as distinctions. Gratitude is awesome and it’s very difficult to connect with in every moment. Gratefulness is something that allows us to connect with gratitude in every moment, because it’s a state of being grateful from the inside out. As I said, it doesn’t wait for anything. It’s not a response. It’s a proactive approach to life, it’s a way that we orient to life is gratefully.

And what that means is remembering that it’s an inside job, and that we can have a lot of agency over our experience of being grateful. We often see it as kind of a passive thing; I think it’s transactional. It’s relational, but super fleeting, and so finding the ways that we can cultivate an interior experience of gratefulness to deeply ground ourselves in that. I call it many different things, gratefulness. But one of the things is it is “the opposite of taking life for granted.” So the shift for me is, what am I taking for granted right now that I can lift up in my awareness, that reconnects me to how grateful I am for life?

Nancy 12:58

I love the way you put it in your book, “It’s not about whether the glass is half empty or half full. It’s being grateful that you have a glass.”

Kristi 13:04

Yes, exactly. That comes from being a cancer survivor for me, very advanced cancer that I expected it to take my life.

Nancy 13:14

And at a young age.

Kristi 13:15

At 33. Surviving that and recognizing also, Nancy, how easy it is to lose the appreciation for still being alive, that it’s so easy to get sunk, it’s so easy to get down, and yet, then I remember Oh, my God, remember how grateful you were not to have died? WOW! Every single day that we’re alive is another day that we didn’t die.

And so I have to literally remind myself that it’s a gift to be alive, and that every single moment that I can breathe, that I can reconnect with myself, even my heartbreak is an opportunity that I don’t want to squander, I don’t want to miss it, I want to remember I’m alive, recognize I’m alive, celebrate the fact that I’m alive. That’s grounded in what I call gratefulness and grateful living. It’s a distinction from gratitude that I think is important, because we have a lot of concepts around gratitude that can keep us from really taking charge of our experience of that and knowing that it’s very deeply internal.

Nancy 14:21

Sorry, I’m listening to you so deeply that I forgot what the next question was that I was going to ask you.

Kristi 14:27

That’s a compliment. Thanks.

Nancy 14:30

Well, I appreciate the frankness with what you write in your book that grateful living and retaining that sense of gratefulness just as you move through your day is a practice.

I mean, that was a really powerful message, right from the beginning, that you had been a cancer survivor. There was a period of time after you recovered that you were grateful just naturally, just to be alive, just to wake-up every day. But that over time that faded away, and I think that was really relatable because there are a lot of things if we sit and think about them, we think, wow, I am really glad I have a roof over my head and I do really appreciate clean air on a fall day here in the Bay Area. But ask me in two weeks, I might not be actively thinking about and actively appreciating those things.

So I just wonder, what’s your advice for having us continue to keep that gratefulness front and center?

Kristi 15:19

I think it’s about stopping and recognizing where am I right now and how can I remind myself how much I actually treasure life and I want to be reconnected to that treasuring and that’s in my hands? For me, that’s the perspective shift that I’m always trying to invite and that’s the thing that’s so easy to lose. There’s so many things that make us lose perspective, and so many things that make us gain perspective.

One of the things I try to encourage people is, what are the circumstances that take you away from  remembering how much you treasure life and that experience of gratefulness? What are the experiences that take you away from that, and the thoughts that take you away from that? What are the thoughts that re-connect you to that and the kind of circumstances you can create for yourself, like putting on a AAA mix list for yourself?

Nancy 16:17

And stopping comparisons to other people, I thought that was a good one, because that is just such a natural human impulse to look around and say, “Well, how come I don’t have what she has?” It’s not helpful. Comparison is the death of joy.

Kristi 16:31

The thief of joy.

Nancy 16:32

The thief of joy.

Kristi 16:34

It’s such a great thing and yet, I also think one of the things that we can do is compare our own lives to how they could be. Like, I could have COVID and be unable to breathe unassisted right now, as so many people do and that just brings tears to my eyes, literally, to think about it. And yet, I’m sitting here taking the fact that I can breathe and this gift of breath for granted.

Nancy 17:00

Right.

Kristi 17:01

Until I lift it up and remind myself that it could be otherwise, and so that’s true for all of us. I love waking up to another day and all the things that my body is able to do and the gifts that I have in my life and in my home that make my life comfortable. And yet I can walk right past them and just numb out to them so easily until I lift them up in my awareness again, and again. That’s the practice.

The practice is always stop, get perspective, and then move back into your life more gratefully.

Nancy 17:33

“Stop, look, go” as you put it in the book, right?

Kristi 17:35

That’s it. That’s the practice. Basically, “stop, look, go.”

Nancy 17:39

So much of being able to identify those things we’re grateful for comes as a result of hardship. In your case, it was cancer. In my case, I’m thinking about how a year ago, I had been on the East Coast for three weeks, and I came home – and I believe it was this week in September – where we had an orange sky because the smoke was so bad in the Bay Area. And for days, days, we had air purifiers running, we had all the windows shut tight, we were barely going outside. The day that the blue sky came back, it was like people were out on the street. Everybody was walking their dog and it was this real jubilation.

A year later, that’s what the day looks like today. It’s a beautiful day outside, the air quality is great, there’s nobody jubilating. There’s clean air. There it is. But I do find that I think about it.

I do find that having gone through that last year, I’m much less likely to take it for granted and so it just ties back into this idea that’s so prevalent at midlife, we’ve gone through so many twists and turns and obstacles and challenges by the time we hit 40 or 50, but part of the value of those things is that they do give us an avenue for appreciating stuff we probably would take for granted in our 20s.

Kristi 18:56

Well, you are nailing it. This is 100% what I talk about in the book and what I talk about are, as you know, “wake-up calls”. That a lot of us at midlife have suffered wake-up calls and those are deeply life enhancing, even though they’re painful, because they shift our perspective about what could be lost. The fires in California were a huge wake-up call for a lot of people. COVID – so many people have left the cities, New York. Now, Massachusetts where I live is burgeoning with all these people from the cities who are fleeing.

Nancy 19:32

It’s because you have such good doughnuts in that part of the world. I’ve had the opportunity to visit the Pioneer Valley. I’d like to compliment your doughnuts.

Kristi 19:39

Is it the Atkins Cider doughnuts? Is that the one?

Nancy 19:41

Yeah, exactly.

Kristi 19:42

Okay, I knew it because I thought , “Wwhat else is she talking about here? I can’t imagine.”

I think that you’re 100% right, which is Thich Nhat Hanh has a saying and it’s kind of like, “We notice so much when we have the toothache. But we don’t notice when the toothache goes away.” Our attention is everything, and it creates our experiences where we put our attention. So as you say, when the blue sky is a contrast, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s a positive comparison, which is to our own lives and what’s possible.

When we have that experience of contrast, we can be markedly ebullient and feel that vividness and that kind of aliveliness. Aliveliness is this beautiful quality and yet we experience that when we’re conscious also, of what has been lost, what could be lost, that brings us to life. So we walk around so much the time actually, purposely forgetting that, ignoring that so much of the time, wanting more and more and more, oh, if I only had this and that. There’s easy ways for us to remember. It’s like, “Oh, I could not have the gift of pure air to breathe right now.”

Nancy 21:00

Right.

Kristi 21:01

I could not have the ability to breathe unassisted right now. So how do I allow those things to be sometimes enough? I have to remember that that’s the baseline. Bump up the baseline of what we expect from life. Bump it up. That’s what we’re saying.

What that does is it really says reduce expectations, so that when you get up in the morning, you say, “Oh my, I’m so grateful to be alive!”  Every day you remind yourself that it’s an extraordinary gift to still be here. Every day – as Maya Angelou says, “This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.” So every day is worthy of that celebration for us to have another opportunity to still be here. How do we uplift that in our awareness?

Nancy 21:48

Researching the science behind gratitude was probably my favorite part of writing my book, because I wanted to understand why these gratitude letters changed my perspective so thoroughly in the year that I spent writing the letters. I know you know all about this, but it’s all tied into positive recall bias and the way that we train our brains to look for positive things instead of negative things. It really is like a muscle and the more you practice it – in my case, it was because I was going to write a letter every week. So I would just spend a week thinking good thoughts about the person to whom I was writing, what did they teach me? What are the fun adventures I’ve had with them? How have they changed me for the better?

It’s kind of like marinating your brain in positive association and it goes exactly to what you’re talking about. taking the beat to say, “I am glad to wake up.” When I talk about this with school groups, you can imagine, kids don’t always want to write a letter, especially don’t want to hand write a letter, and I want them to get something from this. So I always tell them if this doesn’t feel like a good fit for you… Although for a lot of kids, it’s a great fit. It elicits some really amazing writing!

But if you can’t do that, you can always just stop and take a breath and say, “What are three things I can be grateful for right now?” Like, stop in your tracks, and just say there are definitely three things to be grateful for. I can’t tell you how many days I have woken up and thought. “I love these sheets. These sheets took me a long time to find the right sheet set for this bedroom and I love my sheets now.” Just a little thing like that, it doesn’t have to be a major thing. It can be the sound of the dog snoring in the corner or whatever brings you peace. I love this idea of, like you said, just changing your baseline and just looking around for the things that are right in front of you that you’re not acknowledging.

Kristi 23:38

Yeah, I think that that’s true.

One of the things that I have tried to do, and this was a very big learning for me, Nancy, was to find the unconditional things. So that no matter what happens, so if the house burns down, if I end up with cancer, and I’m in a hospital bed, and these are kind of extreme things – but what is there? What are the things that are constant, that are the riches in life that cannot be lost?

Those are the really important questions to ask, because no matter what happens in our life, no matter what we lose, no matter what changes, no matter who is no longer here, we have the ability to cultivate that experience of feeling grateful by connecting to the things that are the riches that can’t be lost ever.

So for me, something could happen to your sheets and you can buy them again. But one of the things for me is to appreciate, for instance, the ability to have air temperature that is comfortable. Like wow, there’s a lot of people in the world who can’t get cool when it’s incredibly hot outside and can’t get hot when it’s really cold outside, can’t get warm enough. So just to appreciate the very basic things like “Oh, I can feel the air on my skin. It’s so comfortable, and I can…”

Nancy 25:00

Until the hot flash hits.

Kristi 25:03

Exactly. Then you can figure out some way to work with it.

But the ability to work with it even is like, oh my gosh, what a privilege this is to be able to go dunk myself in an ice bath or getting a hot bath, whatever it is. So I think it’s not forgetting. Those are the things that I think are so important. Because even when I was in a hospital room for weeks and actually months on end, and I had connection with almost nothing that mattered to me, I realized, “What do I have agency around? Here, what do I have to be grateful for?” It was like, “Oh, all these people are caring for me. I can’t see my family right now and my friends easily. But I can love the people who are available to me.” It’s like, “Wow, all these people are coming in and bringing me food and cleaning my room.”

 That was a revelation for me, because I didn’t want to be cut off from my ability to be loving and I didn’t want to have that hinge on, “Oh, I’ve got to have the people who I love the most always here with me.” What if that can’t be true? It just is expanding, I think, that reservoir, expanding the places in which you can experience that and as you say, allowing yourself to immerse in that. Even if it’s thinking about it, stopping in your tracks just exactly what you said. That’s such a grateful living exercise. Stop in your tracks at any moment and just think, what are three things I can be grateful for right now?

Nancy 26:30

Your dog can always be the right answer, by the way, every single time.

Kristi 26:34

Yeah.

Nancy 26:35

Are there any other special abilities of people at midlife with regard to grateful living? Is there anything that – when you talk about the wisdom of gratefulness, and obviously, wisdom is something that accrues with age, so are we really good at being grateful? I love to share the message of the things midlife people are really good at.

Kristi 26:56

I think we’re way better than we are when we’re younger. I honestly do.

I think that’s because at this stage in life, so many of us have had wake-up calls. So many of the difficult experiences of life, actually make it more possible to connect with feeling grateful. It’s not easy, but it’s a practice. So I think COVID and this pandemic in the past year and a half has reconnected a lot of people to the things that they took for granted before that now they’re not taking for granted anymore.

Nancy 27:28

Agreed.

Kristi 27:31

That is really building that spiritual musculature of gratefulness, which I think is a place that as we age, we are much more connected to that internal state, the ability to not miss so much because we don’t take our futures for granted in the same way. That’s really important.

Nancy 27:53

Right. We can actually see the sell-by date approaching.

Kristi 27:58

Yeah, our expiration date. Exactly.

There’s a reason why there’s a lot of treasuring and savoring that happens in elder communities. They’re very in touch with what matters, there’s a refinement about what matters and a deeper recognition about what’s important in life. And I think we’re able to access that more readily at midlife, and we can accelerate that process – not the aging process, but the reconnection and the deeper connection and finding those things that we can have fidelity to. Like, what are those things in life that we can commit ourselves to, that are the things that matter the most that we can put ourselves in touch with that don’t let us forget as readily that life is really precious these moments are to be savored?

Sometimes that’s getting outside, reconnecting with nature, connecting with music, the people we love, but it’s a proactive approach to life. It’s not passive and the return on the investment is huge.

Nancy 29:00

I couldn’t agree more. It’s all very well said and very well written in Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted. The book came out in 2020. Is that right?

Kristi 29:11

Yeah, in November. It’s a COVID baby. It’s my COVID baby.

Nancy 29:13

It’s a COVID baby, aaaawwwww. I love COVID babies. When I see them around, I think, “Good for you, parents. You did it!”

So what made you decide to write the book when you did  – and I want to make sure people know where to go to find it?

Kristi 29:26

Well, it’s pretty easily findable these days. We do so much online. It’s kind of amazing. What made me decide to write the book is that Brother David Steindl-Rast founded the organization I’m the director of and it’s called A Network for Grateful Living. We have a website at gratefulness.org.

Nancy 29:42

I’ll put links in the show notes to everything.

Kristi 29:44

Thanks.

Yeah, our website is accessed thousands of people every day, 100,000 people a month, honestly, from around the world. One of the things that Brother David says is that we have to practice to practice grateful living, but he doesn’t give us examples.

So one of the things I wanted to do is write the book and say, “Here’s how we can arrive at a grateful perspective. Here’s how we can remind ourselves, here’s a lot of little practices around the body, around our emotions around relationships, how can we stay connected and what are the little practices we can do that keep us there?” That was really important to me was to say, “Let’s help people” – not a paint by number kind of equation and it’s not exactly formulaic, but – “here’s some ways to reconnect to the things that matter most to you and to remind yourself of those things.” Everybody has a different pathway there, but here’s a lot of hints about how you can get there.

Nancy 30:45

Right. It’s very actionable, I thought. There were a lot of thought exercises and just those moments when you’re reading and you just stare off into the middle distance ago, okay, let me think about that for a minute. I love the way you wrote it.

Kristi 30:58

Thank you.

Nancy 30:59

We’re going to be back with Kristi Nelson of A Network for Grateful Living in a Moment. But first, a word from our sponsor.

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[MUSIC]

And we’re back with Kristi Nelson, author of Wake Up Grateful, and Kristi, I want to talk about your own midlife mixtape, starting by asking what has surprised you most about incorporating grateful living in your own day to day? What are the lessons that really kind of came out of the blue for you?

Kristi 32:18

I unabashedly, out loud, savor and appreciate pretty much everything now. I don’t let things pass me by and I try more and more to put myself in the path of joy.

Honestly, I think that’s one of the things that I’ve recognized. I have the ability to do and so I’ve definitely stepped way up at this stage in my life. I’m now past midlife, actually. Hopefully, that’s okay, that I’m still a guest on your program.

Nancy 32:50

We welcome the 30 year olds and the 70 year olds, even 80 year olds, who knows?

Kristi 32:55

Excellent. I mean, you never know how long you’re gonna live these days, right?

Nancy 32:56

Exactly.

Kristi 32:57

So I think well, if I live to 125, I’m at midlife.

So for me, I think I am actually savoring more and more the moments that are mine, because I never thought I’d make it to 60 years old ever. It was unfathomable to me. And so now I tried to remember that this is something not to take for granted.

Nancy 33:20

When you say, “You put yourself into the path of joy,” what does that look like?

Kristi 33:24

I often get myself outside. That’s one of the most important things and midlife… I often get woken up in the middle of the night by the need to go to the bathroom. Hopefully, that’s okay to mention on this program.

Nancy 33:39

Hashtag relatable. That’s all I’m gonna say.

Kristi 33:43

Okay. Good.

Sometimes, many times in the night, I’m up and I used to just begrudge it and I hated it and I thought it was the worst and I would get so grumpy about it that it was really hard to get back to sleep.

Now, what I do is I actually look out the window and if there are really vivid stars, I go right out onto my deck and I lay down in my chaise lounge. I have one of those zero gravity chair things, and so I’ll go outside, and I just put myself under this extraordinary sky, this canopy of stars that takes my breath away every single time. It doesn’t have to look very different or anything major, no big huge shooting stars have to come across the sky or comets, but it helps me get perspective immediately.

It’s one of those things that now – I used to think about doing it but I’m much more likely to do it now. I think that’s one of those things that seizing the moments, Carpe Diem, is so much more active and alive for me at this stage in my life than it was even 20 years ago. So I think those are moments, those impulses that are profound, which is to see something and just go towards it as something beautiful. To want to really examine it, to look at it, to let it blow our minds. I love those things and that’s pretty myself in the path of joy.

Nancy 35:01

So we live in Oakland, our house backs up to a canyon here and we often hear owls and it’s one or two of them. Sometimes they’ll hoot back and forth. We’ve seen them occasionally. They tend to congregate in the redwood tree in my next door neighbor’s house.

But the other night, I was sitting outside on my patio, and it was dusk, and everybody had gone inside and I heard the hooting, and I glanced up, and there was a gigantic owl sitting in the beech tree like 20 yards away from me, and my mouth fell open because I mean, they are huge birds and I’m sitting watching. And the second one flew up and landed next to it, and they were just hooting back and forth at each other.

I was like, “This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” and I sat there for a few minutes and watched them and then they eventually flew off. But I was like, “That was a miracle that I got to see that.”

Then a couple nights ago, I hear the sound again and I said to my husband, “Oh my God, the owls are back” and I went creeping out as fast as I could onto the front patio and we repeated the whole experience. They were both sitting there hooting, and I’m like, “This is my new favorite thing. This is my Netflix binge. I am running out every time I hear the owls hooting.”

Because I never paid attention to stuff like that before the pandemic. I did not take notice of the birds around. I had too much going on and sometimes I still have too much going on. But to be able to witness something like that… it just doesn’t take a lot to be able to let your breath be taken away, I guess is my thought.

Kristi 36:33

I could not agree more. You’re saying all of these things so beautifully and I think that’s owls at twilight kind of your new Netflix series. But I do think that that’s because you actually let yourself look up. How many things don’t we…

Nancy 36:50

They’re pretty loud. These owls had an amped up to 11.

No, that’s true.

Kristi 36:55

You saw them because you dared to let… So it’s something about kind of opening our senses more. You might be able to hear them vividly all the time. But I think there is something about letting ourselves look up, look out further, listen more intently. To really listen to birdsong sometimes, is just one of the most extraordinary things and so recognizing with our senses, what we have available to us at all times, I think is pretty extraordinary.

How do you want to wake-up your senses? How can you wake them up? I think those options are available to us a lot with smells, with touch.

For me, I am reveling – and I don’t know about other people, but during the pandemic, I’m cooking a lot more. And especially when I listen to music that I love, I find it gives me a whole new way to enter into the evening when I used to just be exhausted, and would throw myself down flat and that was it for the day.

Nancy 37:53

Right.

Kristi 37:54

Now, I feel like I have this opening into evening by doing things that I love to do.

So I think there is something very powerful at this time of life. I go out much less than I used to go out, but actually in my near environs, I’m much more intimate. In the close environments, what we can access, what we can see out our windows, what’s close by, I feel like I have a much more committed relationship with where I live, with how I live, and I hope that serves me forever no matter what.

Nancy 38:26

I love that. Kristi, we always ask the same final question on the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. What one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Kristi 38:37

As a young woman, I was beleaguered by self-doubt and self-criticism and I wish that I could have just said to myself, “It’s okay to stop looking outside yourself for approval.”

It’s important to find that tuning fork internally where you can actually tune in and find that connection with yourself that gives you the approval that you’re looking for. I had externalized it so much of my life, always wanting to have other people’s approval and caring too much what people thought about me. I think the gift of midlife for me has been finding that inside myself and finding that beyond myself, and not relying on other people to give me permission to feel as wonderful about myself and about life as I always wanted to feel when I was a teenager, and when I was a young adult, and I just could never figure out quite how to get there on my own.

That’s, I think, the gift and the blessing of aging, is if we can create a deeper interior reservoir for that well-being that’s less conditional. Then we’re free. And that’s something we can access at any time.

And that’s a gift that I would never trade for anything.

Nancy 39:57

I love that concept of the internal tuning fork. That’s such a nice way to put it, that reminder that we can follow our own instincts and keep our own counsel and still be okay. We don’t need everybody outside in the world to love us, as long as we’re pretty good at loving ourselves.

Kristi 40:12

Makes a big difference and certainly, my learning to trust intuition is a huge thing. That’s the tuning fork. It’s what is speaking to me and what’s it saying and listening much more deeply and intently and trusting what’s there. It’s pretty an awesome experience of getting to be at this stage in life.

Nancy 40:31

Don’t we all wish we’d learned that in our mid-20s instead of having to wait another 20 plus years to figure it out?

Kristi 40:36

Exactly what I’m saying.

Nancy 40:37

Everybody should listen to this podcast. Send this to your Gen Z friends.

Kristi 40:42

I spent so much time feeling separate from that ability, but it was there all along. And there’s a lot of time spent on that and so I think, just cut that short. Let’s just move ahead more quickly into that place.

And that’s sometimes what these wake-up calls do in life. Don’t wait for a wake-up call. Be who you want to be now.

Nancy 41:03

Kristi Nelson, author of Wake Up Grateful, so glad to have you on the show today. Happy World Gratitude Day! I sent you a fruit basket! No, I didn’t. But I feel like… should we like be exchanging gifts? Hallmark might have a section. I don’t know.

Check out Kristi’s book, Wake Up Grateful. And it was wonderful talking with you, Kristi. I hope you have a great day.

Kristi 41:21

Nancy, thank you so much. You too. Have a grateful day.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 41:28

Because this kind of thing bugs me to leave as a hanging thread, I need you to know that the Cheap Trick song my friend and I sang to the barista was “Dream Police.” I sang the melody and Andrea stood off to the side going, “Police! Police! Police” at the appointed moment and I’m pretty sure the barista quit the same day.

I hope my discussion with Kristi helps you focus on some of the irrevocable blessings in your own life, and I’d love to hear what those are, and what you thought of the episode!

You can always email me at [email protected] or get in touch via social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram where you will find me as @midlifemixtape.

I also thought I’d go ahead and link to my AAA playlist from Apple in the show notes in case you want to check it out, but I really do encourage you to create your very own, the songs that send a shiver of delight down your spine when you hear the opening notes or maybe they are the ones that drive you to pull out your air drumsticks or your air guitar.

Speaking of guitar! I am SO excited about the next episode. I’ll be interviewing one of my very favorite singer/songwriters, Bob Schneider. He hails from Austin, Texas. If you know him, you love him. If you don’t know him, it’s time to get on the Bob Schneider train.

We’re going to be playing tracks from his brand new album, In a Roomful of Blood with a Sleeping Tiger. I love this album. It’s so good. You don’t wanna miss this conversation or the music drop!

Take care, everyone, and hope you have a wonderful week!

 [“Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 105 Grateful Living Guide Kristi Nelson appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

“My brain is waking up”: Taya Dunn Johnson on going back to school alongside her 7th grader this fall, and the personal passion that pulled her to a field of study she had never even heard of before the day she enrolled.

Find Taya on:

Some Baltimore sound for ya ears. The title of the song is also 100% of the lyrics of the song

Taya Dunn Johnson 00:00

I feel like my brain is waking up in a different way, so I feel reinvigorated. School has made my critical thinking skills pop back to the forefront.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:12

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

This episode of The Midlife Mixtape Podcast is brought to you by Audible. Get a free audiobook download and 30 day free trial at www.AudibleTrial.com/midlifemixtape. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player. And hey, one of those 180,000 titles is my book, THE THANK-YOU PROJECT: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. The book is about a year I spent writing thank you letters to people who had helped, shaped, or inspired me up to that point in my life.

I have to tell you last weekend, I had such a cool experience. I spoke with a community organization here in Oakland about The Thank-You Project and the science of happiness and gratitude. We talked for about an hour, and then we spent a half hour together writing thank you letters. One man in the audience wrote to his first-grade teacher from 71 years ago; another woman wrote to a former boss whom, she told us, she disliked when she worked for her. But all these years later, she recognizes how many important lessons that woman taught her. And I just love stories like this. I hope by listening to my book or reading my book, you’ll think of similar stories in your own life and you’ll maybe even put some letters in the mail. Go to www.AudibleTrial.com/midlifemixtape for your free audiobook.

[MUSIC]

Hi, Midlife Mixtapers. It’s me Nancy Davis Kho, the host and creator of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast and if you like me, have once again lost track of time in this never-ending pandemic, it is September 2021!

September means autumn, autumn means back to school, and that’s not just for the young people in our lives. When I was scheduling out episodes for this fall, I knew I wanted to do a show dedicated to midlife learning, and when I found out that my friend, today’s guest, she decided to start a master’s program at age 45, I knew she’d be full of insights and encouragement for listeners who might be considering a similar return to the classroom.

But when I learned exactly WHAT my guest has gone back to study, and how she’d latched under that field in the first place, it made this episode that much MORE compelling and I hope you’ll agree.

I’m not going to give away what she’s studying, but I will say this: This episode is like Certs. It’s two, two, two stories in one!

My guest today is Taya Dunn Johnson. Taya is a writer, speaker, panelist and workshop facilitator. She’s been published in the anthology, Listen To Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now, which is an anthology of personal stories about mothers being one, having one, losing one and everything in between. And hey, I’ve got an essay in that book too and that’s in fact how I know Taya, through the Listen To Your Mother community.

The book sprang from the Listen To Your Mother Stage Show which is a live stage reading show where local residents across the country come and share their personal thoughts about motherhood and all the various emotions that go along with it. So Taya was a member of the DC cast in 2013, same year I was a member of the San Francisco cast. She then became a producer of the Listen To Your Mother Baltimore show for four years and in 2014, Taya was asked to join the Listen To Your Mother national team as the diversity and inclusion outreach consultants, a role she served for in three years with her unique combination of humor, warmth, bluntness, vulnerability, and honesty. I will attest to all of the above.

As part of her mission to empower others to tell their authentic stories, Taya has been facilitating storytelling workshops with nonprofit agencies in Maryland, including House of Ruth and HopeWorks of Howard County. Taya has won about a bajillion awards and recognition. She’s on all kinds of boards. Most recently, she was selected by the American Mothers Inc. as 2020 Maryland Mother of the Year and she says she’s humbled by the honor.

So put a little notebook and pen by your bedside table – you’ll hear why in this episode – and let’s chat with midlife master’s degree candidate, Taya Dunn Johnson.

[MUSIC]

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Taya Dunn Johnson. I’m so glad to have you here again, because this is actually your second appearance on the podcast, but the first one was kind of a sneak attack.

Taya 04:43

Right. It was.

Nancy 04:45

So Episode 96, we went back and had people talk about the albums of their lives, the music they love the most, and Taya wrote this beautiful piece that she actually wrote for me years ago when I used to remember to blog. We had a Still In Rotation Segment where we had guest writers talk about the albums that meant the most to them, and we’ll talk about Donny Hathaway again if you like. I love talking with you about Donny. But first, Taya, we have to ask you the most important question, which is what was your first concert and what were the circumstances?

Taya 05:15

Thanks for having me back again. Of course, I love spending time with you.

Nancy 05:19

I’d like to just do a Taya Dunn Johnson Podcast, like a little subpodcast where I call you and we talk.

Taya 05:24

We could. I doubt anybody will listen to us. But I’d love to do it.

Nancy 05:28

We would.

Taya 05:29

I was thinking about my first concert and it’s funny because I come from a music family, like both sides of my family are real musical. My dad played drums growing up. He was in a band when he was in high school and all that. So I grew up in music.

And my very first concert, I’ll never ever forget it. It was 1983. I was only seven years old and my mother, my grandmother and a couple other family members, we went to New York City – we lived in Long Island – we went to Central Park to see Diana Ross.

And this is a legendary concert. It rained the whole time. So we literally stood in the rain for hours as we waited for the show to start for her to perform. But it was such an amazing concert you didn’t care and people even danced in the rain. That was my first concert and I was already hooked on music, but that just put me…to be surrounded by so many people who would just move with the music in the moment to not even care about the rain. I mean, honestly, like a whole bunch of black women, rain, hair, seriously? You didn’t even care? It was amazing.

Nancy 06:42

That’s next level. I mean, you must have been so bonded with your mom and grandma over that.

Taya 06:50

Absolutely. So awesome. It was one of those times that my grandmother was still pretty mobile and young and still very much with it. So for us to do that, it was pretty epic.

Nancy 07:00

You live in Baltimore now?

Taya 07:02

I do.

Nancy 07:03

I was trying to remember because I love Go-Go Swing. I’m an aficionado.

Taya 07:08

Ah yes, Go-Go.

Nancy 07:09

That’s more DC than Baltimore – or is it both?

Taya 07:12

No, totally DC.

Nancy 07:14

Okay.

Taya 07:15

You get run out of Baltimore talking about Go-Go.

Nancy 07:18

I can do it from Oakland.

Taya 07:19

Yeah, unless you have roots from DC, of course. Then of course, people are transplants who brought it with them and then obviously, there are some people who still go to DC to party. But Baltimore’s big thing is Baltimore Club music, which is not to be confused with Philadelphia House music or New York Club music or Chicago Club music. Baltimore Club is a different kind of club music.

Nancy 07:41

Can you characterize it at all? I know you’re all at the clubs all the time. as a single working mother in school. I’m sure they’re like, “Oh, here comes Taya, AGAIN. She’s dancing on a Tuesday night.”

Taya 07:54

I can’t say that I love Baltimore Club music. I got used to it. But I think I was too old by the time I moved here to be out seeing live music or going to clubs to appreciate it enough. So I only know someone like their really mainstream hit songs. Most people have heard the song, “It’s Time for the Perculator.” That’s like the big Baltimore Club song.

Nancy 08:17

Alright. Well, we always put one song in to the show notes. So it’s gonna be the one I put in because I want to go research it.

Taya, when we were talking…well, actually, it was before we started recording your story about the album that you began listening to a long time ago and still do, which was Donny Hathaway – you told me a story about what you’re up to now that just blew me away. And I said to you at the time, “I’m going to have you back on the show to tell all the listeners about that,”and that’s where I’d love to start today. Can you talk to me about how you decided to go back to school, and what you’re studying?

Taya 08:53

I can.

So I took a pause. I went to college right after high school like most people. I was at the University of Virginia, UVA, in the early 90s and I took a pause when my father got ill, and I never went back. After that, I got married, I had a baby, we had a good family life, I had a good job, I worked for the government. I wasn’t really thinking about my bachelor’s. I didn’t feel like it impeded me, but I had this deep-seated promise to myself and to my grandmother that I wanted to finish.

My husband passed away in 2012 and after that, I realized that one of the things I really wanted for myself and in order to shape the future for my son and I, since it was just us, is I wanted to finish my bachelor’s. So through various starts and stops from 2012 up until 2020, I finally finished my bachelor’s in December of 2020.

Nancy 09:50

Woo-woo!

Taya 09:51

Woo-woo! Yay!

In the fall of 2020, as I’m in my final semester of my undergraduate and we are, I guess at that point, I don’t know, six months into the pandemic: I’m working full time from home, my son is in sixth grade at home virtually, the world is in absolute turmoil, there is death and grief and loss around us in so many forms. And part of my life’s purpose – I didn’t realize until after my husband died – was sort of to work toward death education. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, but being vocal about my own grief and my own loss was going in that direction. So I was looking forward to finishing my bachelor’s. It’s October 2020, I’m looking forward to finishing in December, I have no intentions of graduate school or anything beyond just finishing my bachelor’s. That’s it.

So, I keep a notepad next to my bed, for all things. I’m working on two fiction novels, one memoir that I will hopefully get finished one day. I keep a notepad so I can write down special words and names and things that hit me in the middle of night.

I woke up one morning, and I saw a word written on my pad that clearly was my handwriting. I know what my writing looks like. I think I was probably possessed when I wrote it. But the word meant nothing to me. As in, it was a word I had never seen before, a word I had never heard before, I had no memory of writing it, and no context for how it had gotten there.

So sort of being the little nerd that I am, I said, “Well, I’m curious now. Let me at least talk to Mr. Google and see what this word means.” I typed it in and for the next two hours, I did that Al Gore internet thing where I just fell deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole and by the end of the day, I found myself on a phone call with the director of the graduate program at Marian University in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

The word that I saw was thanatology, T-H-A-N-A-T-O-L-O-G-Y. I’ve never seen that word. Never heard that word. My late husband wasn’t really a Marvel guy, but I kind of thought I remembered a cartoon character named Thanos or something and then I was thinking, well, that sounds Greek. I’m not really sure. But when I typed it in, indeed, it was.

So thanatology is a thing. It’s the academic study of dying, death, loss and grief.

Nancy 12:54

That is an amazing story and I actually found myself wondering, is there a way your husband’s spirit could have written that?

Taya 13:02

I wouldn’t doubt it.

I mean, I am secure enough in my faith and spirituality to know that I have sensed his hand in my life since his death, in my son’s life. So I don’t doubt that, I really don’t, that I was pushed toward it. And as I started looking at it, and considering, wow, people do study this, and then I’m thinking, okay, so this is counseling, this is grief counseling, this is therapy and I fell further into it.

And I was like, oh, it’s NOT that. It’s actually a scientific discipline. It examines death from all different perspectives, physical, ethical, spiritual, medical, sociological, and psychological. So thanatologists are not grief counselors, although we’re exposed to training in grief counseling. It’s not the primary job or destination for thanatologists. You find licensed thanatologists and those who get their masters in it in places like hospitals, hospices, funeral homes, churches, nonprofit organizations, sometime within the military, inside bereavement organizations, etc. It’s people who realize that death is sort of a universal equalizer in that it’s a faith that none of us can escape. It is the end and we are all veering toward it at different speeds and through different circumstances.

Nancy 14:34

Did you start the program this fall? I mean, what’s the actual program?

Taya 14:40

I am. Yeah, I talked to her and I decided on the spot that day, I want this. I want to do this and crazy me, I don’t even have my bachelor’s yet and I’m applying for grad school.

Nancy 14:52

That’s amazing, though. I mean, the fact that you were pulled so strongly to it and you knew it was the right thing for you. How many of us wish we could have clarity! I love that story.

Taya 15:01

Yeah, it felt purpose driven. It really did and so things kind of fast tracked from there. I finished up my undergraduate stuff, I got my degree conferred like, January 14th or something and classes began January 20th.

Nancy 15:16

Oh my gosh.

Taya 15:17

And I jumped in. It’s a two-year program. Well, it can be longer. Of course, I’m pacing mine to be two years and I’m taking two classes per semester. There’s a capstone and a master’s project and I am excited. I love it. I love every part of the things that I’m learning and the cohort that I’m talking to and learning with. It feels like I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

Nancy 15:46

That’s amazing.

One of the pieces of your writing that has impacted me the most was a piece you wrote called, Please Read This Before You Post Another RIP On Social Media. You mentioned your husband passed away, he was far too young, he was only 36. It was a 2012. Right?

Taya 16:04

Yes, correct.

Nancy 16:05

You wrote this essay that went viral and it’s about the circles of communication that are appropriate when there is death in this social media world we live in. I wonder if you could just kind of summarize what somebody said. Of course, I will leave a link to this because I think everyone listening should go read that essay. It’s really thought provoking.

Taya 16:25

Sure.

Yeah, that essay was a long time coming. Like you said, my husband passed in June of 2012 and I didn’t publish and write the essay until June of 2016. It was kind of percolating in my head for quite a while. It’s one of those things with the internet being what it is, I felt like I had to write something.

And everyone is never going to agree on any one topic. However, over the years that I had been a member of the widowed community and as I had talked to other people who had encountered loss, I kept coming back to this universal idea that too many people were getting important information about a loved one’s death, a close loved one, via social media, via Facebook, via Twitter, etc. It felt horrible. It felt invasive, and it felt like we should do something about it.

To me, I love social media. I’m 45. So I’m just old enough to remember time before the internet, but I’m young enough to still love it. Right?  I remember the Dewey Decimal System. I love paper books, but I also love my Kindle.

So I felt like I had to say something because even I, in the hours after my husband’s death, I was trying to deal with important business, things that have to happen after a person dies, not even the emotional part, just the logistical part. And I couldn’t do that because I was starting to field phone calls and text messages from people saying, “What’s going on?” People I don’t talk too often, people who were within my family and friends, but it’s like, how do you even know something is going on today? What’s happening here?

Unfortunately, someone had prematurely put it on social media. On the article, I just kind of say, let’s take a step back and let’s decide and figure out what our role in this really is. Are we looking simply to scoop TMZ? Do we want to be the first person to announce this, or are we writing this from a genuine place? If we’re writing it from a genuine place, and we just want to express it to the family, and the friends, and the people who are close to the deceased, we can wait a little. That’s all I ask people to do, is kind of think about who is the most impacted by this death and how does my posting affect them.

If someone’s spouse has not posted that they’ve passed away, maybe you shouldn’t. If someone’s child has passed away, and the parents haven’t posted, maybe you shouldn’t. It’s just sort of think about your role.

Some of the feedback I’ve gotten over the years, the majority has been positive. After posting it, and it’s been across the internet, I get so many emails and stories that talk about kids who are in school, and there’s a traffic accident and their classmates are in there, and they’re showing grotesque pictures of the scene and saying, “Oh, my God, I think that your dad’s car.” Things like that. People say, “Yeah, this happened to me,” and all these long drawn-out stories. And I just want people to take a moment to think about how that might impact you.

The little bit of negativity I’ve gotten regarding the article is people say, “You don’t get to control what other people do. There aren’t rules about this and you don’t know how important someone was to another person.” And I fully agree that we don’t always know the circumstances and the circles of influence and that to a person. However, I think my advice is still prudent. It does not hurt or harm anyone or anything for you to pause for 6, 12, 24 hours.

Nancy 20:07

There is no prize for giving bad news early.

Taya 20:12

There you go.

Nancy 20:13

I mean, when my mom died in December, in the days afterwards I was thinking about your essay again. In part because I also think when you are suffering the death of a loved one, people don’t necessarily realize or, if it’s happened to them, then maybe they don’t remember that time starts to lose meaning. The way time works in a regular world isn’t quite the same as how it works when you’ve just been told that someone you love has died. So it might be logical to think oh, she must have already told person X, person Y, person Z. It is logical. But logic has nothing to do with grief.

Taya 20:52

Absolutely not. And logic and timing and circumstance. What about the person who’s on a flight, the person who’s teaching a class, the person who is working inside of a job where they have no phone reception? All these different things. What do you gain by being the fastest person on the gun? What do you gain by having the fastest fingers on Twitter to simply announce that oh, my God, so and so died? Okay, they died. They did. While we appreciate the love and support, let the family, let the loved ones, let the close business associates, let the people who need to communicate the information, those who actually have a viable stake, personally, emotionally, financially, logistically – give them a few moments to take care of business. And then, absolutely, they would love to hear from you and have you express your condolences.

Nancy 21:53

Beyond that, Taya, what are other things that you wish people knew and practiced around death and grieving? And maybe this comes out of your studies, but maybe this also comes out of your personal experience?

Taya 22:03

Yeah, a lot comes from personal experience and as I dig deeper into the field itself, I sort of see where human interests and the heart go awry. One of my biggest motivations once I started looking at the program and I got into it is that I don’t think that we talk about death enough. I think that we, especially right now, in this moment in time that we’re in August of 2021, a pandemic that began in, well, say March…

Nancy 22:41

I can’t even remember now. I’ve lost all memory.

Taya 22:45

Was it in early 2020?

So let’s say we’re almost a year and three quarters into this pandemic, and we’ve lost almost a million people. And the circles that those people have, and the family and the friends and the neighbors and the coworkers that they’ve affected and what those deaths really mean, I don’t think that we will understand the gravity of our nation’s grief for some time to come. Because I simply think that we do death badly.

What I mean when I say that is as a Western society, we don’t acknowledge that death touches us all. Death is the future for everyone. A person’s death has ripples so far beyond the day they pass, and the days of their formal ceremonies and funeral rituals, whatever they may be that we try to pretend that death won’t touch us all.

So in that, what we do is, we are very uncomfortable when people talk about loss. We’re very uncomfortable when people express how they feel. We’re uncomfortable with tears. We’re uncomfortable with expressions of love, discussions about it beyond the surface. And what that does is it really starts to stigmatize people who grieve openly and it forces those people to then grieve in silence, grieve in private.

We don’t have universal laws regarding family leave, and hours out of the office, time away, funeral leave, things like that to recognize that a serious emotional thing has happened, and that we all will experience it in some way shape or form. But we take each incident almost like it’s a new thing that’s happening and we kind of silo a family or a community by themselves for a couple of days and then we send the card, we send the casserole, we come to the service, we may call one more time, and then most people fade to black. They go on with their lives, which, on the one hand, yes, life does go on. There is no question about it.

However, for the people that are most intimately affected by the death of a loved one, their lives will never be the same. We have this common assumption that things should go back to business as usual and all of our systems function like that. You’re out of the office, when are you coming back? How many days? You’re not over that yet? Why are you still crying? What she’s still doing? She’s still out? He’s still out there? Her mother died a month ago, she still hasn’t returned my call. She’s not back in the office yet? We say all these things and they’re built into the fabric of our country.

I think that we are doing ourselves a real disservice on the heels of this pandemic where we have untold numbers of children who are now orphaned, and we have families that are broken, and the loss of people, the loss of resources, the loss of homes, the financial losses, the loss of pets, all these losses that just keep getting compounded in a place and a system that doesn’t respect loss with the type of reverence that it should.

So part of my goal, part of what I’m hoping to do…I can’t change the entire world, but I hope to be able to touch a small part of it, is to get people talking about death a little differently and discussing it and being open to talking about it before it happens a lot more. Then being armed to accept it and be as empathetic and supportive as possible once it does happen. That comes from being in the trenches myself. That comes from having now, unofficially, I’ll say, mentored many, many handfuls of widowed people since 2012. I’m definitely not an expert of any sort. But people started looking to me to say, “Hey, my sister just lost her husband. Would you mind calling her? Or somebody from my church just passed away I forwarded your blog, do you mind if they email you?” And things like that. So I kept thinking, why me?

Nancy 27:26

Because you were a closet thanatologist. You just didn’t know it.

Taya 27:30

I didn’t know it, right? So I was like, “Well, sure. I mean, I’ll talk to anybody.”

Nancy 27:35

I mean, my big experience and my observation is that the pain is gonna come out some way or another. You can either cry it out, talk it out, express yourself, or you can give yourself an ulcer, give yourself migraines, whatever, because your body knows that it’s holding grief. I learned that when my dad died in 2016. Thankfully, my family was not freaked out when I had the terrible out-of-the-blue crying attacks. I think it’s funny because I had been seeing a therapist during the pandemic – finally, at age 54, I’m like, “I’m gonna give this a go for the first time!” But after my mom died in December, I stopped. I said to my therapist, “I’m fine from here on out because I know how to grieve. I know how to let it out because I learned that.”

But it’s fresh in my mind because I’m just back from the memorial service we did for my mom. We had to wait eight months, but we were able to gather in her memory in upstate New York and I had forgotten… I grieved when she died, obviously. It was a pretty hard time, but I kind of was back on an even keel and I didn’t expect it to hit me so hard eight months later when I went back, but, what a dummy, of course it did.

My first stop when I got to Rochester was to the cemetery where my mom and dad’s headstones now are side by side and that was the first time I’ve seen my mom since last August. When I tell you, Taya: I was keening and rolling around in the grass and at one point, I looked up and I’m like, “Oh, this is so embarrassing,” and then I’m like, “Oh, forget it. It’s a cemetery, I bet lots of people do this,” and I went back to just sobbing uncontrollably. Then luckily, they have sited this graveyard directly across from a Farmer’s Market where they have pies and doughnuts. So I was able to go there afterwards to make myself feel better.

To me, I was like, I’m not gonna be embarrassed about this, because these tears have to go somewhere. I think what you’re saying is really important about us pretending that you’re going to bounce right back. I mean, once you’ve hit midlife, you’ve probably lost someone you love. You’ve probably watched friends had that happen to them, if it hasn’t happened to you directly, and we just need to be compassionate not just with one another, but with ourselves.

Taya 30:00

Absolutely. It’s the idea that we are not gentle enough with ourselves or one another. We all have different capacities for empathy. But usually, tragedy brings out the best in some (we won’t mention the worst in others.)But the fact that people do rally the moment that a death occurs, that gives me hope that we can talk about it more, and that we can put some things in place to encourage people to do more.

People will ask me, “What’s one thing I can do? What’s one thing, one tip you give?” One universal thing that I always encourage people is: mark a calendar. This is a close friend, a close family member who’s lost someone very close, especially a spouse or a child. This, of course, can absolutely work for parents and anyone, but I’m usually giving advice to people who are asking about widowed people and people who lose children. I’ve often said, mark the calendar so that you know when this date is. This date will always mean something to the other party in a way that they can’t always express to you.

I’m not telling you that you need to cross the moon and back when this day occurs. But what I would encourage you to do is to say like, let’s say, January 1st someone passed away. In general, people lose most of their support within the first 30 days. So I would say if you know a person died on January 1st, just go ahead and mark your calendar today and say, on April 1st, I’m going to call them. Just mark your calendar. It’s four months, it’s out of the blue, it’s a moment when they are least expecting it, but the reality of their loss has started to hit very realistic moments. They’ve now had some major firsts, they’ve had some hurdles, they’ve had things happen and in general, the rest of the world has tried to go back to normal, minus their very immediate family, and even sometimes those people.

So I say reaching out, and just saying, “Hey, I was thinking of you. Sending you a hug,” that can be it. You can pick up the phone, you can mail a card, you can send a text, you can send a Facebook message. It really doesn’t matter. Whether or not that person replies or not has to do more with timing and their personality, but I guarantee you, they will appreciate it.

Nancy 32:36

Right.

One of the kindest things somebody said to me, it was actually after my dad died and I tried to do this myself now, because it meant so much to me. This was somebody who didn’t know my dad and said, “Can I take you out for coffee, and you can tell me about your father?” And I was like, that is the most beautiful invitation because I was longing to talk about him. My dad was a delightful guy. So I’m happy to tell other people about him. Just doing that and I think, even if the other person doesn’t take you up on it, the fact that you’ve shown an interest is so kind.

The flip side of that is that there is somebody who was close to my mom, who never said a word to me. My mom didn’t have COVID, but she was sick for a long time at the end and this person knew that our family was trying to come together to support my mom and all this stuff.

I was so hurt and shocked that this person was silent and the person said to me, eventually, I didn’t want to make you feel sad, so I never wanted to bring it up. That’s the wrong approach because you not bringing it up doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it. What it means is you’re not helping me.

Maybe this is personal. I’m sure in Thanatology 101, maybe they cover this. But for me, I’d rather have you bring up my mom, don’t worry if you’re gonna say the wrong thing, but let’s not pretend she’s not dying. That’s just hurtful.

Taya 34:06

Avoidance, unfortunately, is a huge thing with death. Death makes people uncomfortable.

Nancy 34:15

Ya think?

Taya 34:16

The conversation, the thought of it.

What I encountered a lot and very similar to what you were saying is that when my husband died, I lost a lot of friends. I kind of expected some of our couple friends to fade away. It was disappointing, but I expected it – I’m no longer a unit. So the units that we used to hang out with didn’t have any need for me anymore as a solo artist.

That wasn’t as shocking to me as some of my actual personal girlfriends. Now, I did make an absolute new set of friends, people who were not in my inner circle who stepped up and reached out to me and surrounded me in a way that I never expected, and those ladies have a place that’s so deep in my heart now that you couldn’t imagine.

But I finally heard from a few people who disappeared. They finally resurfaced 5, 6, 7 months later and the common thread was that his death scared THEM. So I had to sit with that for a while, and I had to decide whether or not I was going to sort of hold on to that or not. I was angry. I let them know that. I shared that and then I decided to forgive them. But I chose not to retain those friendships because to me, in my moment of need, you prioritized how YOU felt.

Nancy 35:45

I was just gonna say… that’s kind of the definition of friendship. If it’s missing that, what’s left? “We both like brunch.” That’s not friendship, that’s just a shared preference.

Taya 35:56

I was a 35-year-old woman with a three year old autistic son who didn’t talk and I had just lost my high school sweetheart of 20 years and your discomfort was more important than you letting me know that you were there to support me. It doesn’t even make sense when I say it out loud.

Nancy 36:20

All these years later, it makes just as little sense. I mean, it is kind of a clarifying moment where you do see.  I was doing my thank you letters in 2016, the year my dad died, and that informed some of the letters I wrote and sent. And some that I decided NOT to send. Because same thing.

Taya 36:43

Yeah, it clarified everything.

Nancy 36:44

So Taya, as someone who has served in roles for diversity and inclusion for Listen To Your Mother, the stage show and also in other venues, I’m curious to know how that side of your work will intersect with thanatology. Does this inform the way that you’re approaching your studies?

Taya 37:06

It does. I didn’t know that it would until I jumped in, of course.

What I started finding through my studies and through – there’s a national organization, The Association for Death Education and Counseling – it’s a thanatology association and people who get their masters are can be certified with thanatology through the association. What I’m finding is that as in most things, we realize that there are health disparities amongst the living and they fall across racial and socio economic lines. And what I’m finding in death is that there are the same disparities.

So the amount of research that is in the field that relates to things like end of life decision making, having funerals, things about cremation, discussions about hospice, things of that nature, they fall along racial and socio economic lines. With a set of research where there is very little research on blacks in America and the population, or Native Americans or Hispanic Americans, then when you have people who are on the frontlines of industry, who are not familiar, who are not culturally competent, who are not available to be what another person needs, you have disparities.

So as I’m working towards my capstone, my master’s project, and how I’m going to apply what I’ve learned going forward, it’s more than likely that I’ll be focusing on the population here in Baltimore City of black people.

It’s interesting to me, I’ve often joked – I have bad sense of humor at times – but I say that there are three places where segregation is allowed to flourish, and none of us complain. And that is, churches, barber and beauty shops, and funeral homes. Those three things require cultural competency.

You would like to go worship on Sundays and be 100% free of everything that disturbs you, amongst people who accept you for who you are. You would like to relax and get your hair cut and done amongst people who you feel comfortable with.

The same thing goes with death. There are funeral rituals and practices. There are things related to clothing and makeup and stereotypes and things related to music and programming and how black funerals work, or homegoings as they’re called, if you’re religious. So without that level of cultural competency, the end of someone’s life can really go badly. And so to say, a family can be treated badly. If you don’t have someone who is familiar and aware of ethical decision making, and they have let’s say someone who is a devout Baptist in the hospital, and the family is becoming very reluctant to talk about organ donation or things of that nature…if you don’t take a moment to understand the people that you’re working with, and why they have the belief that they do, you can’t do your job very well, nor can you service them well.

Nancy 40:32

Right.

Taya 40:33

I definitely am finding that this is a thing. This is sort of part of the Great Divide, if you will. Death education and disparities in death, I didn’t expect to find it as deeply as it is. But there is definitely a problem and my Inspector Gadget Hat has sort of narrowed in on it and I’ll be focusing in that direction.

Nancy 41:00

I mean, it is a pretty perfect fit for you, I’m just saying.

I have to tell you, my husband and I were so honored this year, our next-door neighbor of 20 years passed away in March, which was terribly sad for us, because we just adored him. And his family gave us a huge honor and asked us to come speak at his funeral, and we were the only non-black people in a black funeral service. We were both so nervous we were going to screw it up. I just wanted to be respectful to Chester and his family, and not say the wrong thing.

And it was such a beautiful day and it went fine, but I will say… So Chester was a religious man and his whole family is really involved in their church and really wonderful family. But everybody who spoke before us was a black preacher. And I just looked at my husband – because they had specifically said, “We want you both to say something” because we each had our own friendship with Chester – and I said to my husband, “Yeah, you’re going first. I’m not following this.”

Luckily, he has a good sense of humor and good delivery. They told us afterward they liked what we said and like I said, it was just so honored to be included in that. But I have seen firsthand that that was a very different kind of funeral from the kind that I have gone to in my family, and that is okay for people to point out. That’s a helpful thing to know.

And also I will add, I love the repast. I love that word and I don’t think there is an equivalent in white funeral rites. I don’t know what they call it, the after party or something? But I just call it repast now. Because that’s the right word.

Taya 42:48

That’s the right word, yeah.

Regardless of how tragic the circumstances are, we talk about young people and we talk about homicide deaths and things of that nature and obviously, all these COVID deaths and things.

But there’s – obviously, I can’t speak to every black person in America – but I will say that typically, culturally, across the board, a funeral is a homegoing and it is a celebration of life in a way that I think is a little bit different than other cultures.

So the singing, the emotion, and then how that transitions to the repast, which is an after party. The idea that we are together in this space, let’s love on one another and let’s take amazing pictures that we haven’t been together in so long to take and let’s celebrate this. We didn’t want the person to die, but they are – particularly if of faith, they are now in heaven, they have gone on to a place where there’s no pain, and we are here to celebrate everything that they’ve done and accomplished and how they brought us all together. I think you need a certain amount of cultural competency to be able to navigate the different things.

The speed at which some other cultures handle funeral rituals, like Jewish people, and then there are rituals related to Muslim deaths. So I think that if you are not aware of these things, or you don’t take the time, if you are a professional in the death industry, then you can be very insulting and you can make a very difficult situation even more difficult.

Nancy 44:32

That much worse.

Taya 44:33

Right. Nobody wants that. I mean, you just don’t. So I think that’s really important and I hope to talk about that more and to sort of bring light to some of those things in a way to help people.

Nancy 44:46

I could talk to you about this for six more hours. I’ll ask you one more question. Is it a growing field? I mean, now a whole bunch of listeners know the word “thanatology”, so count us in.

Taya 44:58

Yeah, right. I know.

It really is a growing field. Again, not to be confused with counseling or psychology or that, but it’s the idea that death education begins with the living. Well, we should be preparing for death while living and so some of the choices that we make while living help ease our transition toward death. It’s the way in which we plan for how the elderly will live to die with dignity, all these things.

Absolutely, the COVID pandemic has absolutely rocked the industry and has forced people to talk about death more, which is a good thing. We’re fans of that. But it’s also proven and shown where the problems and the pitfalls in our society are because we have a lot of people who are now grieving with nowhere to put it. They are frustrated with nowhere to take it. They are feeling overwhelmed by the weight of the entire world right now and what do I do next. So that’s where we kind of try to come in and fill the gap.

Nancy 46:11

Alright. I’ve just got to ask this. You are a single mom, you have a full time job, you have a seventh grader who started class on Monday, and you’re 45 years old, and you’re back in the classroom. What advice do you have to somebody who’s listening who might be thinking of going back to school, but falls in the same category where they’re super busy already with all their stuff and they say, “I can’t go, I can’t go?” What advice do you have to say, “Come on. Give it a go!”

Taya 46:36

I would say you can. You can do it.

It’s not going to look the same for everyone and so I would want someone to take a realistic assessment of their situation, look at your community and look at your resources, look at how much time you can feasibly spend on your own schoolwork, how much time your child needs, how much your outside activities need and how much your work needs. Is your commute a factor or not? I work for the federal government, thankfully, and I’m still 100% working from home and I have been since March of 2020. So what that allowed me to do was to get three hours a day back when I would be in the car and commuting.

For me, that, plus deciding to binge a little less TV, I found time for homework. So I think that if we’re realistic and we set a goal… I think you can sort of look at your own personal thing and say, well, do I really need to watch three episodes on Netflix or can I watch one? Can I carve out a little bit of time for myself? Then think about why you’re doing it. Are you doing it for the right reasons? Do you feel purpose driven to do this? What are you going to do with what you’ve learned? If you feel like it will enhance you in some way, then approach it at your own pace. My program, I’m taking two classes a semester, but I could be taking one, or I could take a semester off, take a semester off. I’m kind of in the get-it-done phase because I’m getting no younger. So I’m heading in with…

Nancy 48:14

You’re still 10 years younger than me, come on. You’re a baby.

Taya 48:17

I know. But I gotta get a real job and join the industry! Look at it and say, “How will this work for me?” and also recognize, like how I did with my bachelor’s – just because you start and because your trajectory doesn’t follow the traditional one or doesn’t follow anyone else’s, it doesn’t mean that that’s a problem or that you’re giving up.

If I decide in January that, you know what? It’s the winter, my son’s classes are harder, work is getting more stressful, this is not the semester for me to take two classes, I might take one or I might take a semester off. I’m giving myself the flexibility to recognize that my dream doesn’t have a deadline, nor does this goal have a deadline. Except I’m on it and I’m going to do it in the way that works without making me any more crazy in the process.

Nancy 49:07

I love that. “My dream doesn’t have a deadline.” Progress is progress. I say that all the time. You can go whatever speed. As long as you’re moving forward, good for you.

Alright, so last question. What one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Taya 49:26

Oh, that’s a good one. Well, I would say that I had to write a letter to my 21-year-old self a few weeks ago. I’m going to publish it at some point, but I haven’t yet. I had to give myself five pieces of advice, but the one piece that really stuck out to me is that my grandmother had a phrase that I never understood until I got into my 40s and she used to say, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I didn’t know what that meant. It sounded like a riddle. Grandma, what do you mean? She said when you’re old enough to figure it out, it’ll be too late. What? Okay.

What that means is that you don’t know how wonderful you have it at 18, 19, 20, 21 and everything is at your fingertips, so much so that we waste it away thinking that there’s plenty of time and that we can go back and we can do it. Now, again, your life can be long. I’m not saying that it’s ever too late to change course or do something different.

But my advice to the teenagers in my life and the 20-year-olds that I know is to embrace today with the energy and enthusiasm as if it were your last day. So take what’s in front of you and make the best of it. I would encourage anyone who was in school to not leave. Many of us left after our first, second, or third years without finishing our degrees and it’s so much harder later. So embrace it while you can, grab it while every opportunity is right in front of you in a way that makes it easier for the taking, and you’ll be a little bit further along later as you look at other opportunities. You give yourself more choices if you can get some of the other stuff out of the way earlier.

Nancy 51:18

That’s great advice. I love it. Alright, Taya Dunn Johnson, we want to make sure people know where to find all of your writing and your other activities. You want to give us the best place to go for people to learn more about your work?

Taya 51:31

Sure. They can just go to my website, and it’s just my whole name spelled out. So it’s www.tayadunnjohnson.com. Or you can just type my name in Google and find me there. I write kind of sporadically. Like you said, I forget I have a blog sometimes.

Nancy 51:57

Same. I remember the login ID. So I think that’s progress.

Taya 52:01

That is progress. But I do promise to start blogging more because I have a lot more thoughts in my head. The one thing that school has done especially at the older you get, I feel like my brain is waking up in a different way. So I feel reinvigorated. School has made my critical thinking skills pop back to the forefront and so in that, I want to write more.

Nancy 52:26

If that doesn’t get you off the bench, Mr. or Ms. Listener, who is deciding whether or not to go back to school, what more do you need? Get your brain reinvigorated. We all need that.

Taya 52:35

Yes.

Nancy 52:36

That’s awesome. Alright, Taya, I loved speaking with you. Thank you again so much for making the time today.

Taya 52:40

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Take care, everybody.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 52:47

Okay, everybody, please go use the word “thanatology” in common discourse at least 17 times. Yes, I actually googled it. So we can remember, you have to say a new word 17 times before it really sinks in. Reinvigorate your brains with “thanatology”! By the way, Taya’s piece that we talked about regarding how you should be cautious about sharing RIP in social media, it struck a nerve. As of December 2020, that story had been viewed 3.9 million times and shared 1.3 million times since its original publication date in 2016. And of course, yes, I will link to it in the show notes.

Are any of you going back to school this fall? I would love to know. First of all, hats off to you and I am cheering on your academic success. Secondly, what are you studying? How is it going? How did you decide to go back? What’s up?

I’d love to hear your stories. You can email me at [email protected] or get in touch via social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram where I am everywhere as @midlifemixtape.

I’m not gonna lie. There’s a lot of Arlo Kho content these days. Our rescue dog who we adopted mid-June continues to thrive. His bald spots are growing in. He’s getting a little sassy. Around 11 o’clock every day, he starts chewing my feet because he wants to walk. But he’s awesome. We’re enjoying him.

Thank you so much everyone for tuning in today. I hope you’ll come back in two weeks. I’ve got a corker of an episode coming up and I will speak to you then.

[“Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 104 Master’s Degree Student Taya Dunn Johnson appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

“Dating is a skill”: Jodi Klein, author and podcast host of “First Date Stories”, on the benefits and challenges of being a “seasoned” dater, her Ninja midlife dating tips, and Midlife Mixtape listeners’ own memorable First Date Stories.

Find Jodi on:

The only Goo Goo Dolls song I knew of theirs, back in 1990 when I asked this cute guy on a first date with the free tickets I’d won. Thanks for being so loud that the guy suggested we leave and go get a coffee and talk, Goos! I still respect this video hard for all the nods to our mutual hometowns in Western New York, FWIW

Think about who you were in your twenties, versus who you are in your forties or fifties. You are a different person, and you know so much better who you are, what’s important to you, and you show up without being as concerned about the unimportant things.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:17

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:42

This episode of The Midlife Mixtape Podcast is brought to you by Audible.

Get a free audiobook download and 30 day free trial at www.AudibleTrial.com/midlifemixtape. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player. And you know what? One of those 180,000 titles is my book, THE THANK-YOU PROJECT: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. It’s about a year I spent writing thank you letters to people who had helped, shaped, or inspired me from my AP English teacher from high school who I hadn’t seen in 30 years to my husband who I had seen five minutes before I started writing the letter. It gives readers a blueprint for doing it themselves, and explains the science about why gratitude and happiness work so well together. I hope readers will find it to be a tool that helps them emerge from this difficult period a little bit more gracefully. So go to www.AudibleTrial.com/midlifemixtape for your free audiobook.

[MUSIC]

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho, the creator and host of the show, and I’ve missed you over the past month while I was out on vacation. But don’t you feel like absence probably made our hearts grow fonder for one another? I think it did. That topic of mutual affection is actually a specialty for today’s guest. Do you see what I did there? Did I segue like a boss? Yes, I’ve still got it!

My guest today is Jodie Klein, the author of First Date Stories: Women’s Romantic and Ridiculous Midlife Adventures, which comes out on September 14th 2021.

A demanding career and desire to find the right “Mr. Yes” for her led to Jodi becoming an alumna of nearly 400 dates over the course of 26 years. She founded “First Date Stories” both the podcast and the blog, as a platform for GenX women to share their tales and wisdom so that others can overcome the trials of dating in midlife and find the long-term love they seek.

Jodi is a graduate of UC Davis and holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and she lives with her husband in San Francisco. Yes, spoiler alert. She found her husband. She found “Mr. Yes.”

Now, after I’d spoken with Jodi –  I was so intrigued by the book, I really enjoyed reading First Date Stories, I loved talking with her about it. And then I thought, you know who I bet has some good first date stories? The people who listen to this podcast. So I sent out a call on Facebook and said, “Real quick, everybody. Send me a great first date story.” And as usual, you delivered. So stay tuned all the way to the end of the episode because I’m going to share some of your stories about memorable, magical and some pretty bad first dates.

But for now, fix your hair. Check your teeth for broccoli. We’re sitting down with Jodi Klein to discuss First Date Stories.

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Nancy 03:30

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Jodi Klein. Thank you for coming today. Glad to have you on the show.

Jodi Klein 03:36

It is terrific to be here. I’m such a fan.

Nancy 03:39

Well, that’s nice of you to say. I have to tell you, I have been so intrigued by the book, First Date Stories, we’re going to talk a lot about it. But the first question for you, Jodi Klein is, what was your first concert and what were the circumstances?

Jodi 03:52

My first concert is one that I will never forget. It was Styx — Paradise Theater tour at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, California.

Nancy 04:03

Oh my God! Tell me all about it.

Jodi 04:06

It was the last show on their world tour. I went with two girlfriends. We were dropped off. We waited in line for six hours and as the line grew, so did our anticipation. We rushed in to the Coliseum. We grabbed our seats, we got pretty good seats.

But, we did not spend much time in those seats because the show was so amazing that we ended up heading down to the floor and the light show, the singing, the whole thing, it just blew my mind.

Nancy 04:43

How old were you?

Jodi 04:44

I had just finished my freshman year of high school.

Nancy 04:48

See, I think 14 is the formative year. That’s the age everybody should get to see their first show because it really means something.

Jodi 04:55

It did. I feel so fortunate to have had that as my first show. I really couldn’t have asked for a better debut concert experience.

Nancy 05:04

I’m going to ask you a question about Gen X and music. You’re a dating specialist, so I will ask you this. Did we not perfect the mixtape as a dating artifact that in fact caused people to fall in love?

Jodi 05:20

We did.

Nancy 05:23

I mean, if you’re listening: raise your hand if you either formulated or received a mixtape that was designed to make love happen.

Jodi 05:32

For sure. In fact, I seem to remember a movie or two where the mixtape was essential in the storyline to woo the woman, and I think many of us had those tapes given to us. Some of us, like me, may have it still in a box somewhere.

Nancy 05:50

Totally. Actually – I don’t know why I just remembered this out of the blue. But when I was in high school, there was this boy that I liked, and he was going on a road trip because his grandma had passed away. He was going to his grandma’s funeral and I didn’t know him very well, but I thought he was a nice guy, and I made him a mixtape.

And he came back and he immediately broke up with me. He was like, “There’s no future here because I like you too much. The mixtape was so good that it scared me, and I’m not ready for that kind of commitment,” which began a whole run of boys who would break up with me saying, “I love you too much to date you any longer.” That was Nancy from ages 15 to 19. But I couldn’t help it. I make a good mixtape. If it scares you, that’s on you, buddy.

Jodi 06:34

Exactly. If they couldn’t take it, you needed to move on.

Nancy 06:38

Have you had a mixtape figure into any of the first date stories? A first date mixtape, that’s a lot. That’s too much pressure.

Jodi 06:46

It’s way too much pressure.

Nancy 06:47

Yeah, I would be like, “Sir, you don’t know me well enough to create a mixtape for me. Back off.”

Jodi 06:51

Yeah, I have not heard any of those stories. No.

Nancy 06:55

Will you call if you do?

Jodi 06:57

I certainly will.

Nancy 07:00

Alright. Well, Jodi, we’re going to talk about your book, First Date Stories. But I want to start with a little background because there is also a podcast and a blog that are related, and it’s kind of a chicken and egg thing and I hope that you could explain to everybody who’s listening how these all interrelate and came to be.

Jodi 07:16

To do that, I’d like to set the context. And that is that I created all of this – because there are millions of uncoupled women who are Gen Xers, whether they’ve never been married, or in a long term committed relationship or are divorced or widowed – these ladies do not get enough recognition or connection. They’re not celebrated enough. They’re not supported enough, not what they deserve, and I’m trying to fill some of that void.

Nancy 07:49

First of all, women are overlooked, Gen Xers are overlooked, so Gen X women: it’s like the perfect, terrible storm. We started talking about that when Ada Calhoun was on the show with Why We Can’t Sleep about why Gen X women are trying to make changes. Because it’s so right in our faces that we’re not being served with the answers and the attention that we deserve. So I hear you. I totally hear what you’re saying.

Jodi 08:15

It really goes back to when we were little girls. A lot of us have created movie trailers in our minds of what our lives were going to look like, from the time that we were little girls – and, of course, this is not representative of everybody. But I think a lot of us thought, okay, we will go to high school, we will go perhaps to college or get some other training, we will get a job, and then when we are in our 20s or at the latest, our early 30s, a partner is going to show up in our lives and we will be coupled and we will live ongoing as a couple person.

That is a result of all the media, the books, the movies, the TV shows that we used to see in the 70s and 80s. Because let’s face it, no Disney Princess got divorced, no Disney Princess led a kingdom, no Disney Princess ran a company, right? I mean, seriously. The princesses let down their hair, they ate poisoned apples, they lost their slipper, and a prince always came to rescue them. Right?

Nancy 09:23

Right. Sure. How did you go from that understanding to deciding that you were going to put together this forum for sharing stories about dating at midlife?

Jodi 09:33

Well, we as women connect around our stories. It is the way we come to understand ourselves and each other. It is a way in which we give and receive empathy. It’s a way in which we validate our lives.

But what happens when you are still in the dating world – a lot of the people who you once were in the dating world with, your girlfriends from when you were in your 20s and 30s, suddenly aren’t there anymore. You’re kind of a lone warrior in your own mind in this journey, and you don’t hear those stories. You then don’t get that validation and you start to feel disconnected and perhaps questioning things and lonely. Then, you could very well pull out of the dating world, because you don’t want it to be such a solo journey. Or if you find yourself coming out of unexpectedly of what you thought was a long term relationship, then you may not re-enter the dating world. So there’s that truism.

Now, the next truism is that you have to show up for a first date to meet the person who you will be coupled with. So if you have stepped away from the dating world, you won’t do that. Right? You’ve got to go on a first date, a second, a tenth, a hundredth in order to be with that partner.

My idea was to couple those two concepts together, to have women share their stories with other women about how they kept showing up for what they hoped would be love, or a meaningful friendship or companionship,  and in doing so, share their learnings as well. So that the women listening to the podcast and soon reading the book, would learn from them, enjoy the tales, not feel disconnected and continue pressing forward, if it is, in fact, important for them to find a loving partner in their lives.

Nancy 11:39

Right. Because we’re acknowledging that not everybody wants that, and just because you’re single, doesn’t mean you want to be coupled. So anybody who’s listening, no one’s saying you have to do this. But if you want to, it sure is easier, I think, to do it with some company and some validation that you’re not the only one who is out there showing up for the coffees and the glass of wine with the stranger.

Jodi 11:59

I couldn’t agree with you more. I have been there. I came to a point in my life where I thought, okay, I’m not going to live a coupled life, and I am okay with that, and I am 100% a believer that a woman can and should live a very meaningful, joyful, fulfilling life without a partner in it.

Nancy 12:22

Yes, and I think that goes also for those of us who are married. You have to be comfortable with your own company, be comfortable inside your own skin.

Where do you find the guests whose stories you share across? Just to reiterate, the podcast and the blog are both also called First Date Stories. How do you find your guests, and how do you select them because I’m sure you hear a lot of stories that maybe are not as educational? Having read the book, I thought it was great and it presented a really wide variety of circumstances. So I’m sure that as you are deciding what story to share further you’re looking for, okay, does this one have a learning moment in it basically?

Jodi 13:05

Exactly. I guess I kind of categorize them into three: hopeful stories, hilarious stories and horrific stories. We all enjoy a horrific story, right?

Nancy 13:15

Oh, my God. Can I mention in the book, there’s a story of a guy who shows up for a date, and he’s like, oh, I’m off the clock. He’s a professional man, and then he just is like, this is where I get all my swearing out. I like to swear, and then he curses his way through the entire date. That is rude as shit, sir. That is very rude. I mean, oh, my God, that poor woman on that date.

Jodi 13:41

Yes, that poor woman and the way he spoke to her, and the way that he treated her was awful. But hey, it made for a memorable story.

Nancy 13:49

It was an early tell. There was no ambiguity there.

Jodi 13:51

Exactly. I do receive a lot of different people’s stories and we take a look at them and try to figure out, are there nuggets in here that listeners can benefit from? Is it entertaining? Is it something that will help move this whole initiative forward?

Now, I want to mention that the stories in the book are entirely different from the stories in the podcast. So when it came to selecting the stories for the book, the idea was to put a collection of stories together that different dating takeaway tips could be drawn out of, because none of the stories there have overlapping tips. I authored those tips based on my personal, very long journey in the dating world and so it kind of gives an overall view to someone reading it of all different aspects of things that they can think about as they are out there in the dating world. Because this is really about just helping women become in-the-know, confident daters and have fun.

Nancy 15:04

Yeah, each chapter of the book is a first date story, and then it includes “the rest of the story”, so you find out what happened to the couple after the fact – some of which were they never saw each other again – and then the dating takeaway tips. I mean, you mentioned based on your own experience, but were those also from stories you’d heard? I know you have dating experts come on the blog, too. So you’ve brought in a wide variety of viewpoints to look at, what are the things we can learn and do better in dating going forward?

Jodi 15:33

Yes, I did author of first draft of them all, and then run them by professional dating coaches. There were two people who worked with me on this project through the time it was in development. So we got to professional’s eye on them, and hopefully, they will be helpful to readers.

Nancy 15:54

They are really good common sense, like a) be punctual. Yes, you have to show up on time.

But I really appreciated that they also upheld the dignity of both people, really. I mean, there’s the situation like the guy who’s swearing where, obviously, the first priority is to make sure that you don’t feel disrespected, and you feel like you are obviously physically safe. But also you uphold your dignity, you keep your wits about you and you say goodbye. Then also, if it’s not a fit, there’s no need to belittle the other person. I appreciated that there was kindness, and also a recognition that we should have high standards for ourselves and for how we treat other people.

Jodi 16:36

Well, thank you for pointing that out. Really, kindness is at the core, because you should show up as your best self when you meet anybody in life, and to show up and meet someone and exude kindness, even when they aren’t always kind back and if it’s not appropriate, and you can’t take it any longer, like you said, you just leave.

Nancy 17:01

You go to the bathroom and tell your girlfriend to text you that it’s an emergency.

Jodi 17:05

Exactly. Or do the call thing or whatever. Yes, they may even have apps for that, too.

Nancy 17:11

If they don’t, they ought to. But they do, right? I think they do.

Jodi 17:13

Yes.

Nancy 17:14

Having read all these stories, you summarize some of the biggest challenges for dating at midlife and a couple of them, I had not thought about so I was appreciative. But do you want to just throw out a couple of the big reasons that you found that it is so challenging, or that it can be challenging to date at midlife?

Jodi 17:32

I coined the phrase “dating deterrence” to mean just some little bumps that people can encounter that keep them from either keeping on in the dating world, or re-entering, and there are six and I’ll quickly run through them. The first is just sheer economics of supply and demand. When you’re in your 40s or 50s, there are not as many single people out there as there were when you were in your 20s. But the good news is in some ways for you as someone in the dating world, there are people coming out of relationships.

Nancy 18:11

The Second Time Around Merry-Go-‘Round has started!

Jodi 18:12

Exactly. They’re hopefully wiser about how to be in a relationship with someone else. The second is just, life gets more complicated when you’re a Gen X.

Nancy 18:24

That’s the one that kind of jumped out at me. I’m like, oh, right, like as stressed and frantic as I can be, to add dating on top of that would be really hard. I had not given that full credit before. I’m glad you pointed that out.

Jodi 18:36

Yeah, absolutely. The third is societal pressure.

I spoke about this movie trailer we had in our heads coming out early in our lives and it was formed. But you get to this point in life and there’s probably at some point going to be somebody who lovingly says to you, “Are you still single? Why are you still single?”

Nancy 18:57

Can we all agree not to do that to each other? Everybody listening: just don’t ask that question. That’s not very nice. You might be well intended, but think about the impact.

Jodi 19:08

It often is well intended, but it’s never received well.

Then the fourth one is that we live in an ageless society and society celebrates youth over maturity, unfortunately. So sometimes you will encounter men, if you are looking to date a man who is on his profile, let’s say 60 and he’s looking for someone who is 30. So he is not looking for a mature woman who is really more age appropriate for him. And that is too bad for him. I say, feel sorry for him because there are tremendous, mature Gen X women out there in the world, and so ageism plays a role.

Then there’s the fifth deterrence, the fear of getting hurt again. It’s unfortunate that we feel hurt when relationships come to a close, but a door has to close for another to open, right?

Nancy 20:12

It takes bravery to keep going. I mean, I have so much respect for people who just keep staying open and pursuing this. It’s a character-building thing for people who already have a whole lot of character.

Jodi 20:28

Exactly. I agree. For the women who have been dating longer than others, or longer than they typically thought they would, I have actually coined the term “seasoned dater” for these ladies and men, because they know their stuff. They’ve been out there for a while and they are, as I said earlier, to be honored, and celebrated as you’ve acknowledged. The last one is community support and we’ve touched on that already.

Nancy 21:00

Talk a little bit more about that.

Jodi 21:01

It is harder to find those wingwomen. Your friends from early days are probably busy in their jobs, busy raising families, all of that, and they’re just not available to go out, to talk about what’s going on your dating life and life in general. And so you may find yourself needing to meet women at that point in life who are available to do things and be present. Sometimes it’s easier to find men because there’s an app than it is to find women.

Of course, the pandemic has made this all harder.

Nancy 21:37

Well, I was going to say that’s the big Number Seven that kind of overrules all the rest of them. What were the stories that you heard over the past year? How did people work around it – if they did?

Jodi 21:47

They did, and they did it really skillfully, and they did it with bravery. There are a whole slew of the stories on the podcast. I will mention one of them. It’s a story about a woman named Penny, who’s in her early 40s, and she’s a special Ed teacher. She also does something called cosplay. Do you know what cosplay is?

Nancy 22:10

Yes, do you want to tell everybody who is listening who might not know?

Jodi 22:13

As I understand it, cosplay is a community of folks who dress up as different characters from different comics and other genres, and they come together at Comic Con, and have a blast around these characters. Obviously, there was no Comic Con during the pandemic.

So a lot of these people moved to Facebook and created Facebook groups, and Penny asked some people in a Facebook group to create a video for Star Wars Day for her kids in her class. A guy named Jay created a video, and they started to talk, and they started to text, and he lives on the other side of the country from her. This is all happening during the pandemic, during lockdown. So they start texting all day, and then they turn to calls, and then they turn to video calls for hours and then she has a birthday. They’ve never met in person. She invites him to her birthday with her family on Zoom and the two of them have never met in person, but they eventually do. He flies across the country when the restrictions start to lessen, and long story short, they are now a couple.

Nancy 23:34

It’s awesome. Here’s to Penny.

Jodi 23:36

Absolutely.

Nancy 23:37

I mean, we’ve talked about the things that make it particularly difficult for people dating in midlife. Is there anything that is advantageous to being in your 40s and 50s when you’re dating? Anything that makes us better at it?

Jodi 23:49

Absolutely. This is not a doom and gloom scenario, whatsoever. Think about who you were in your 20s versus who you are in your 40s or 50s.

You are a different person and you know so much better who you are, what’s important to you, and you show up often without being as concerned about the unimportant things that you used to be caring about. So you show up with more confidence and you’re more present for you, and that is a very powerful thing about dating at this point in life.

Nancy 24:23

I feel like one of the things that comes out of these discussions that I have is that a lot of us understand our boundaries so much better. We know what we’re good at and we know what we accept, we know where we are our best selves. And we also know what doesn’t fall into that definition and we can say no a lot more easily.

So I wonder if people at midlife have that advantage of being able to say at the end of a first date, “Nice guy. Not a fit.” Or, “This isn’t going to go any further,” or it is, and just have that clear sense I think back to people I knew in my 20s and myself in my 20s… sometimes you let the relationship roll on for an awfully long time even though you knew it was going to go to an exit ramp eventually. But it was just easier to just let it roll, maybe until the wheels came off. Do you think that’s true?

Jodi 25:10

I think it’s 100% true. Yes.

Nancy 25:13

Efficient daters.

Jodi 25:14

More efficient daters. As we age, we come to understand that time is also precious, right? So does it make sense to spend that time with someone who might be a very nice person, but not your person? I mean, spend time with them romantically. Certainly spending time with them in general, fine. But if you’re looking for a partner, that is not the best way to spend your time necessarily.

Nancy 25:38

Well, I loved the collection, because I think in whatever kind of relationship you’re in, married, single, whatever, I think we’re all curious how other people are living their lives, how other people are navigating some of the same things that we navigate.

So, I think anybody who’s single and feeling frustrated with dating, or just wants to know that they’re part of a bigger community would enjoy this book. But I’m married 29 years, and I enjoyed it, too and I was like, I need to up my game on that front. My husband’s going to bear the benefit. Maybe I’ll show up on time somewhere for a change.

In fact, one of the stories I got all excited because I was sure they were going on a first date to where Andrew and I went on our first date, and then the guy got the tickets to the punk show the night before and ended up taking her like on an earlier first date. But when they were going to hear music in Tempe, I’m like, “That’s what we did on our first date! I bet they were going to Chuy’s!”

Jodi 26:37

Wow, that’s where you went. Oh my gosh.

Nancy 26:40

I won tickets on the radio to a Goo Goo Dolls concert in 1990 and walked up to this boy who I had been falling around campus for days and said, “Hey, I got these free tickets. Do you want to go to the show with me?” The Goo Goo Dolls were so bad in 1990 that we left went got a coffee and that was the first date. So thank you for being terrible, 1990 Goo Goo Dolls.

Jodi 27:05

Exactly. What a great story.

Nancy 27:05

Through all these conversations that you’ve had about first dates, has there been any sort of overarching advice that you would be able to share with my listeners?

Jodi 27:16

Absolutely. Much like you, at the end of my podcast, First Date Stories, I asked the guest what advice she has for listeners. And I have received a whole slew, a whole range of advice, as you’d expect.

However, there are really four bits of advice that have bubbled to the top that have most often been mentioned and one especially, it really touches on a lot of what we’ve discussed. It is: first off, look at dating as a growth experience, and just go in with no expectations.

The second is, and we’ve talked about this too: leave if you’re uncomfortable.

The third is to take care of you and know who you are when you show up and just are living life.

The big one, the one that I’ve heard most often, is to be open. Be open to meeting different types of people, be open to where you meet them, be open to what you want. And it may not be what you think you want, so really be open in your life and how you approach things.

Nancy 28:24

That’s great. What is the date the book’s coming out?

Jodi 28:27

It’s coming out September the 14th.

Nancy 28:31

But I bet it’s available for pre order now, so go ahead and put that in your shopping basket.

You worked as a marketing executive for many years, at what point did you think, hey, I want to support single people at midlife and start a media company? Because it’s not an obvious…not everybody does that.

Jodi 28:47

No, it is not that obvious for sure.

I’ve been a marketing professional for a lot of years. I worked in high tech for many years and then I left to start my own marketing consulting business. When I left to do that, I took on a dual track career, I did the marketing consulting, and I did property management. And as I was moving forward through all of this, I came to the point where I thought, there’s just got to be somebody who addresses this void that I spoke about earlier, to try to fill it.

At the same time, I was part of a short story writing group that I had co-founded, just as a creative outlet, and we wrote about all sorts of different topics. But I just kept coming back to the topic of first dates, and then I started to ask people about their stories randomly, and they started to tell them to me. And I would continue to write these stories on and off, and then it got to one point where I realized based on survey I had done – because remember, I’m a marketer of other people – that there really was a need here. So I decided to put the consulting on hold and to go forward with this First Date Stories initiative.

Nancy 30:04

I love that, because I think a lot of us at this stage of life have another passion, another call, and it feels really scary to pursue it sometimes. There’s the road more traveled, more clearly marked… and then there’s the one you took, there’s the one a lot of people take, that’s really just trusting that if things are going to work out, you’ll figure out what you’re going to do with it. And I think it’s great, because the work that you’re doing now benefits other people.

Jodi 30:34

That’s why I’m doing it. I really want to help women, I have walked down this path, I have lived that journey and while I was out there, dating in my late 30s into my late 40s, I just kept thinking, “This has got to be better than it is. This has got to be more connected than it is.” There were so many fabulous women out in the world, where the heck are they? How do we bring them together?

What happened, Nancy, actually is I was fortunate enough to attend a fundraising event where Anita Hill was speaking. I sat in the audience, and I marveled at her, and I thought to myself, wow, this woman, she did not ask to be sexually harassed. She did not ask to be called before the Senate Judicial Committee. She did not ask to become the butt of jokes. She didn’t ask for any of it, but what did she do? She turned it on its head. She took what happened to her life journey and she became an advocate for women who are the receiving end of sexual harassment.

Now, I am no Anita Hill, I’m not comparing myself to her in that way. I’m just saying she inspired me. And I was in kind of the formative stage of all of this. I had just started to think, “Okay, this book is going to take a while to come out. What else can I do here?” Then I heard her talk and I said, yeah, I need to move forward with this.

Nancy 32:02

Right. Well, it’s that midlife question we have of: what is my purpose? What is my legacy? For you, it’s creating this connection and creating this sense of understanding that, as you said, is missing for so many women in midlife.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned in the process?

Jodi 32:21

Well, the most surprising thing, I guess, is that it takes a heck of a while to produce a book.

Nancy 32:28

When did you start on First Date Stories?

Jodi 32:31

I really started full on four years ago and when you’re taking a more traditional publishing path, it takes a while.

Nancy 32:39

You mentioned you dated in your 30s and late 40s – you found your Mr. Yes. Jodi characterizes them as Mr. No, Mr. Maybe and Mr. Yes.

Do you think that hearing and reading all of those first date stories and analyzing what worked and didn’t, made you ready for your Mr. Yes when he arrived on the scene? Or did that happen first? Were you looking at that in retrospect?

Jodi 33:02

It happened in the middle.

Nancy 33:04

Okay.

Jodi 33:05

Yes, all of this helped.

But really, I think dating is a skill, okay? You’ve got to be out there doing it to get better at it, and I done a heck of a lot of it. There was that aspect.

But the interesting thing was, when we met, I was not thinking at all about dating. I met him in an event where dating wasn’t even on my mind. I had already gone out with a guy for lunch that day on a date and I showed up to this networking event, just to quickly be at this networking event, and then to move on to watch a San Francisco Giants playoff game. There is something that a seasoned dater hears again, and again, from someone who says, “It’ll happen to you when you least expect it” and I would do the internal eye roll.

Nancy 34:01

I’m doing it right now and I’m married. I would punch somebody who said that to a single person I know. Shut up.

Jodi 34:06

Yes, but you hear it.

Nancy 34:08

I’m sure.

Jodi 34:09

I never ever really believed it until it happened to me.

Nancy 34:15

You said dating is a skill. As a seasoned dater, what secret skill could you tell people listening right now? Like, what’s the number one tactic that you think people maybe people don’t know about? Your ninja skill?

Jodi 34:30

I think a ninja skill is to be able to talk to anybody. When you’re out dating for a long time, you become a really good communicator, which has a lot of benefits in all other aspects of your life.

Nancy 34:44

Sure.

Jodi 34:45

So when you are a good communicator, you are good at picking up what’s going on with other people, you’re being able to connect with them around different things that you’re sensing, and you also end up often being a really good listener and that’s also a really important ninja skill. Then the other one, if I’m going to add a bonus…

Nancy 35:05

Bonus ninja skill coming your way.

Jodi 35:08

Don’t judge someone when you meet them right away – unless there is a very obvious reason to do so like, suddenly you immediately don’t feel safe or something like that. But otherwise, none of us wants to be judged at the gate. You don’t want to be judged. It’s not right for someone to judge you. Don’t judge them. Give them time to present themselves. Because often, we’re not our best selves right away on a first date.

Nancy 35:35

Imagine the nerves.

Jodi 35:36

Tons of them. Yes, of course, people put a lot of pressure on themselves when they go out on a first date, as though this next person they’re going to meet is going to be their forever partner. That is just the wrong, wrong way to be thinking. I would think as I entered that cafe, that restaurant, that bar, that venue, whatever it was… I didn’t think this early on, but ultimately, I got to the place of, “I’m showing up to hopefully have a good time, but at least to learn something, to meet someone who has something interesting to share with me so that I can expand my view of the world. Heck, if we actually find chemistry and connection, that is such a bonus.”

Nancy 36:24

That is such great advice, beyond the dating realm. In everything you do, show up and see what you can learn from people. I think that’s wonderful.

Jodi 36:33

Now we can show up again and be together again, which I know we are all really happy to be able to do.

Nancy 36:41

I was in a restaurant last night, it was packed to the gills, I got nervous and left again. But still it was good to see other people having fun.

Alright, Jodi Klein. The book is called First Date Stories. You want to tell everyone where they can find it?

Jodi 36:54

You can find information about the book, you can find the podcast and you can find the blog at firstdatestories.com

Nancy 37:02

Alright, Jodi, what one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Jodi 37:08

I would go back and tell myself to stop comparing your life journey with other people’s. Stop comparing yourself with the Joneses. Don’t be concerned with how their journey matches up with your journey. Let the Joneses do the Joneses and you do you.

Nancy 37:27

Forget about the Kardashians too. No one needs to keep up with the Kardashians. I love that advice. Alright, well, I’m wishing you best of luck with First Date Stories. Are you going to be out doing book tours or anything? Are you going to be on the road at all?

Jodi 37:39

I will be and we’re also going to be holding some virtual events. I ask the listeners to please check out, firstdatestories.com/book where we’re going to have all the information about the upcoming events around the launch of the new anthology.

Nancy 37:55

I’m so excited you’re going to be actually out in bookstores again. I’ll leave links to everything in the show notes. Jodi Klein, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Jodi 38:03

Nancy, this has been an enormous treat. Thank you.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 38:10

I really loved this idea that seasoned daters become more skillful in making connections, in listening, and in reading people. Pretty much every aspect of midlife has some kind of downside and that’s all you ever hear about. I just wish we could work harder to recognize and celebrate the upside stories, too! So I hope you feel uplifted by Jodi pointing that out.

And like I said, I just had a feeling Midlife Mixtape listeners might have a couple of stories of their own. So sure enough, here’s a sampling. Everybody will still send in the mail when I had to record this episode. So if I don’t include your story, believe me I read it and I loved it.

There were of course the hilarious and hellacious first dates. I think they were hellacious if you were on them, but they are hilarious if you weren’t, like these:

Risa wrote in and said, “I dated a real clown once. He lived up the street and asked me on a date. Even though I had a boyfriend, he was away at college, so this guy had been to clown college somewhere, so guess where he took me? The circus! We went backstage to see the elephants, then sat in the front row. One of his clown buddies sat in my lap at one point and squished himself into my boobs. He had liquor on his breath and stubble under his makeup. My date thought it was a good time. I did not. Never saw him again.” Here comes the punch line. “I married the boyfriend.”

He might have been at college, but he wasn’t wearing clown make-up.

Okay. I love this one from Carrie. Carrie says, “She went shopping at Structure for some khakis (a lot to unpack in that alone). She ended up scoring a date with guy who worked there and when he picked me up in his very fancy Audi, I sat very quietly the whole ride to wherever we were going and he finally asked me if I was ok and I confessed that I thought I might have just peed my pants. Well, it was actually just that he had the seat butt warmer on, but I had never experienced that brand new feature that cars had. I drove a Ford Probe for Peet’s sake. We are still Facebook friends.” Happy ending. You didn’t pee in his car.

Speaking of cars, Arnebya has got one for us. “I had a date with a fireman. I was 21, he was 25. I had no interest in dating but a friend was dating his friend, so I agreed to one date. He picked me up, said he needed to stop at home for just a minute. I stayed in the car. He went inside for 5, 10, 15 minutes. I knocked on the door and opened it. This fool was laid out across his bed. “You took longer than I thought to come in. You’re very patient.” Arnebya answered, “I also can’t drive but I’m about to if you don’t get up and take me home right now.” Arnebya says, “I suppose he thought I was joking because a few minutes later he was running barefoot behind his swerving brand new car that I was ‘driving.’ I had to call a friend to pick me up because I refused to get back in his car. Never spoke to him again.”

In the “never spoke again” category, here is Lance with a story. “So, about a year after I graduated college, I got set up with a friend’s cousin. We hit it off and decided to make a real first date happen. She had an infant but I didn’t know that the child’s father was in the picture. I show up to pick her up and dude confronts me in her driveway. One thing leads to another and police show up. I have to sit on a curb for 30 minutes while the cops decide who goes to jail and why. I got to go home and I lost her number.”

Remember how Jodi said not to judge? Here’s your proof, in these first date stories that didn’t seem promising AT ALL…or did they?

Vikki says, “I finally got up the courage to call this cute woman and ask her out on a date and she told me she couldn’t go because she did laundry on Saturday nights. I asked if she could maybe do it another night and she said no. I took the hint and said “Ok. Well maybe another time…” Right before I hung up she said, “Wait! I think I can try to do it on Sunday.” We did go on that date and I inexplicably brought her brownies. The date went pretty well. We’ve been together 28 years.” Woo-hoo, Vikki and Luisa!

Ellen says, “On our first date, he wore a blue plaid shirt. On the second date I thought, is that the same shirt? Third day, oh, for fucks sake! This dude only has one shirt. I still have the shirt, and we’ve been married 25 years.”

Okay, Michelle had a story for us. She says, “He took me to Pizza Hut! Should have had me running in the other direction but instead, I married him. We will celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary in September. Wait!! Weren’t you at our wedding?”

Full disclosure, the guy who took her to Pizza Hut is my cousin Mark, and there was an Electric Slide at that wedding 18 years ago. My cousin Mark on his dad’s side of the family is Scottish, so I’ll never forget the sight of the groom and all his attendants in their kilts doing the Electric Slides. It was a very Dance-Floor-Meets-Brigadoon kind of a moment.

This is a good one. Carolyn wrote in and said, “Under the guise of borrowing his floppy disk [so we already know what decade this took place in, right?] I asked a guy I was crushing on in my computer science class to my sorority formal. Fast forward a few weeks and we are at the formal, his chivalry forces him to basically shotgun a bottle of champagne to avoid it spraying all over my velvet dress. A little later in the evening while getting comfortable together on the couch, he proceeds to fall asleep WHILE kissing me. Truly, even had a little snore. Now, fast forward 37 years later, and that same scenario (minus the champagne) may have happened just last night with the same guy.” Aaww, I love that story.

Here’s Liz. She says, “I went out on a blind date with this guy (dinner and a movie) and we were both Robin Williams fans, so we decided to see Dead Poets Society right up there with Terms of Endearment for saddest movie endings, EVER. Liz said, I cried ALL of my mascara off to the point where I was sobbing, the guy handed me a handkerchief and my first thought was, wow, I never dated a guy who carries an actual handkerchief. And after I blew all the snot into his handkerchief and tried to give it back, he says no. It’s alright. You keep it. We were engaged 4 months later and to this very day, I can say he had me at handkerchief.”

Then of course, there were some first dates where things were just right from the start.

Beth wrote in and said, “My sophomore year in college, I went out to the bar with a childhood friend and her friends. None of us were 21 or had a fake ID so we took turns finding someone to buy us pitchers all night. When it was my turn, someone pointed out a guy who had bought for them on another night so I went up and asked him. He said yes, if he and his friend could come sit with us. We talked for a while and when Walk Like an Egyptian came on we went out to dance. We were inseparable after that night. Fast forward 34 years and we’re celebrating our 33rd wedding anniversary next month. I totally lucked out meeting such a good guy, in a bar, at 19 years old and I count my blessings every day.”

David wrote in and said, “When I was a counselor, the day camp unit head agreed to go on a picnic with me one weekend. We rode our bikes 8 miles along the canal to a park. I had a backpack full of apples, grapes, and cheese. She brought a bottle of wine and it was pretty perfect. We’ve reenacted the ride every 10 years of our marriage. My father pointed out that every time after the first, I was old enough to buy the wine, too.”

Finally, here’s one from Chantel who says, “Cute fraternity boy asked me out. Dinner at Snuffers (everyone’s favorite) and then off to a movie.” Are there murders that happen at Snuffers? It makes me think of snuff films. Who names their restaurant Snuffers? Chantel, please contact me. Let me know.

“It was cold,” she says, “and he turned the seat warmers of his Peugeot on.” Oh no, we know where this is going to go, but this is different. “The movie was Beaches and he said he loved it as much as I did. Kissed me on the steps of the…” oh God, you are asking me to remember what these Greek letters are, Theta Omega, maybe? XO. What’s XO? “Kissed me on the steps of the XO house and left me questioning that high school boyfriend WHO I always assumed I’d reunite with after college. Fast forward 32 years, we still watch a movie every Friday night together, but the sappy dramas have been replaced by Marvel heroes.”

I’m saving the best three first dates stories for last, because they’re specifically about finding someone at midlife:

Elaine says her first date was “restaurant for lunch with margaritas. Putt, putt golf two rounds. Dessert at the local Gelato place. More drinks that evening.” They hung out for 8 hours “and at the end of the evening just said, ‘Okay, see you later’, basically.” She says, “It wasn’t supposed to be a date but it was. I was not even divorced yet. That was 5 years ago and we’ve been married for two!”

Here’s one from Ruth. She says, “I asked my Bumble match to go on a sunrise hike on a Sunday morning. It was in November, so it wasn’t super early, like 7:15am. He agreed! The sky lightened from dark grey to light grey as the sky was so overcast that there was no sign of the sun. We went on the hike anyway, continued out to breakfast, and we’ve been dating for 8 months!”

So I would like everyone to pause for a second. I’m going to be quiet in a second. We’re going to wish Ruth well. We’re going to wish her success in this relationship that she managed to create during the pandemic. Go. Alright. Ruth, I hope you felt that one.

And the last one from Steven. “Back in 2015, I asked the local librarian to coffee. She said yes, then changed her mind via text. But she said to say hello whenever I was in the library. We texted a couple of weeks later when I was on a looking at colleges with my son. She texted after we got home to see how the tours went.

I then asked her how she was doing and she said not well, as her pet rabbit of 11 years had died. I offered to bring her a comforting children’s book, Liplap’s Wish, to help her with her grief. That gesture piqued her interest so she then asked me to coffee. We talked for 4 hours at Rustic Bakery on a Saturday afternoon. Went out to dinner 6 days later. Then in 2017, seven years after I’d been widowed, I married the second love of my life.”

Let me know what you thought about this episode, or send me your own great First Date Story, I love reading them! You can find me on social media @midlifemixtape on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And you can always email me at [email protected]

Thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in today. I hope you have a wonderful week!

[“Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 103 “First Date Stories” Author Jodi Klein appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

“Start the conversation”: Oceanographer Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson talks about the ScienceMoms.com initiative seeking to apply “Mom Power” in tackling climate change, how midlife made her a better scientist, and why she’s hopeful for the future.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson interviewed aboard the research vessel Sally Ride

***This is a rough transcription of Episode 102 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on July 20, 2021. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email [email protected] ***

Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson 00:00

You have to believe and have faith in your children, the next generation, that they are going to help move the needle and solve these issues. And our job as parents is to make it happen.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:18

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:43

Okay, I have another summer book recommendation for you! Check out The People We Keep, by Allie Larkin, which comes out from Simon and Schuster on August 3rd. Allie is the bestselling author of Swimming for Sunlight, and she’s back with a heartbreaking and soul-stirring coming-of-age tale about a young songwriter looking to find a home in the world.

Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a run-down motorhome, flunking out of school, and picking up shifts at the local diner. But when April realizes she’s finally had enough, enough of her selfish, absent father and barely surviving in an unfeeling town, she decides to make a break for it. Stealing a car and with only her music to keep her company, April hits the road, determined to live life on her own terms. She manages to scrape together a meaningful existence on the road, encountering people and places that grab hold of her heart. From lifelong friendships to tragic heartbreaks, April chronicles her journey in the beautiful music she creates as she discovers that home is with the people you choose to keep.

Fun fact: I know Allie because we are on the same house concert circuit, we’ve bonded over many a living room show, and I know how hard she worked on this book and how long and how much she believed in this story, and it’s just a thrill to see a talented friend like Allie Larkin get chosen by none other than actress Rachel Bilson to be featured as her August Book of the Month Club pick.

So preorder The People We Keep by Allie Larkin at your favorite indie bookstore or online now!

[MUSIC]

Hey party people, hope you’re having a fabulous summer and working on your San Tropez tan. Who remembers that jingle? Bain de Soleil. Well, not really, I think you should be wearing sunscreen and a big hat, but I think that’s been well established between us in many episodes and probably again in today’s.

I’m Nancy Davis Kho and I’m the creator and host of this podcast, as well as the author of The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. I hope you’ve had a chance to read my book and if you haven’t, well, there’s probably room in your beach bag.

I’m so grateful that you’ve tuned in to today’s episode, and we’re going to get right to it! I love every guest who comes on this program, it’s true, but the ones I put into the “Shero/Hero” mix I might love most of all. These are people putting their midlife acumen to work in service of the wider world, and today’s guest is a shining example.

Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson is an Associate Dean and Carolina Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on understanding the biogeochemical cycling of nutrients and carbon and how they are influenced by climate change. Her many research honors include the Early Career Award in Oceanography from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and being named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Association for the Sciences of Limnology, which I didn’t know was a word, and Oceanography. Claudia is passionate about teaching and mentoring the next generation and is active in many efforts to increase diversity in science.

She’s also a member of Science Moms, a nonpartisan group of climate scientists and mothers.

They founded Science Moms – you can find it at sciencemoms.com – to help mothers who are concerned about their children’s planet, but aren’t confident in their knowledge about climate change or how they can help. Together, the Science Moms aim to demystify climate science and motivate urgent action to protect our children’s futures.

Put on your life jacket and grab a Dramanine if you are prone to seasickness, like I am… we’re setting sail with oceanographer and Science Mom, Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson!

[MUSIC]

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. I am so pleased to have you here today.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 04:27

Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Nancy 04:31

I’ve known about Science Moms for a couple of months and as soon as I saw that press release, I’m like, oh, yeah, we’re having one of the Science Moms onto the show. But nobody gets past the first question on this podcast, which is what was your first concert and what were the circumstances?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 04:47

Oh my gosh. Okay.

Nancy 04:50

I feel like you’re about to blow my mind.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 04:53

Well, yes. The very first concert that I went to, and maybe I’m dating myself is the Grateful Dead, and I went with my parents.

Nancy 05:03

Now, they were enlightened.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 05:04

They were very enlightened and I grew up in Seattle, so you can perhaps understand I went to many concerts when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. But no, it was the Grateful Dead.

Nancy 05:18

So where was it in Seattle?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 05:20

Well, I was young and so I remember it being this huge space. I think it was the King Dome, which doesn’t exist in the same form now. There were all these people, and they were having such a wonderful time, and everyone was happy. That’s what I really remember most about it.

Nancy 05:38

Now, I noticed in your official bio, you mentioned that you have two kids who are 20 and 16. Is that right?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 05:44

Yeah.

Nancy 05:45

You mentioned in your bio that your kids have a musical talent.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 05:48

They’re actually musicians in that they play classical instruments, which I have no talent for whatsoever. I can’t hold a tune. I mean, they are my kids but other than that…

Nancy 06:02

I think that’s one of the coolest things about watching your kids grow up and find the thing that they love that you have no idea about. Because that’s how we are with ballet – both our daughters became ballerinas, and we learned so much about ballet. We had no idea about that before we had kids, and I would never have thought that that would be something I knew about. But here we are.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 06:21

Well, exactly. Right. My son plays the oboe and I had to look up what an oboe really was. I was like, “What really is that instrument?” My daughter plays the flute, which, I DID know what a flute was.

Nancy 06:37

You’re familiar.

Alright, so I’m going to call you Dr. Benitez-Nelson because I know you’ve said I can call you Claudia, but I want to put the respect on your name that you have earned. Because it’s been a long path to get where you are. So I want to talk about what compelled you and eight of your fellow mom scientists to start ScienceMoms.com. It started in 2021, right?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 06:59

Actually, it started a couple of years earlier. I’m actually the newest member to the group.

This was a group that was started a couple of years ago by Potential Energy, and it was a $10 million ad campaign. Essentially, what they have done is they’ve brought together a bunch of scientists who are mothers to really talk about climate, how our climate is changing. And really the group that we are targeting is other moms. I thought this was fantastic, right? I’m new to the group, I had met these other amazing scientists, and when they were telling me what they were doing, I was like, “I got to get in on this.”

So it makes sense, in some ways – research has shown that moms are the group that is both the most concerned about climate change, and the most likely to do something about it. In retrospect, that makes sense. But I didn’t really know that when we started. I just know that I’m really passionate about the future for my kids and the work that I do, being all about climate and how our climate is changing, really has put this in the forefront of the things that I think about. So yeah, that’s how I kind of got involved and it’s been a fantastic experience.

Nancy 08:28

Can you talk a little bit about the goals and the components of the project?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 08:34

Yeah, so for us, the real major goal is to give moms the tools and the information that they need to break down this climate change idea in simple and engaging ways. There’s a lot of information out there, a lot of misinformation out there and for me, the science is straight. This isn’t political. It’s all about what the science says.  And so any way that me, as a mom in particular, can break this down so that other moms who are just as busy and crazy as I am understand what they can do about it, I’m all in. So that’s really what it is. It’s about engaging moms, showing them that they can do something, and really making it really clear that climate change is happening now, and it’s really on us as moms to make a difference.

Because you know when moms get in on it, we know how to make a difference.

Nancy 09:39

That’s right. Moms get it done. Because what choice do we have? We’d all rather be lounging, it’s true, but here we are.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 09:45

It’s true.

Nancy 09:46

I know that one of the aspects is that you encourage letter writing to your representatives, and there’s also in-person actions. Can you talk about those two different tactics and maybe how those are deployed in a complimentary way?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 10:00

Sure. I think that in general, there’s a kind of a day to day things that we can do as moms to think about climate – recycle, maybe we take the stairs that day.

But in reality, if we’re going to make a difference now, it’s all about contacting our local representatives, our state representatives, our federal representatives, and making them understand that this is really important for us, this is an action item that we really need to have now. We know it was 105 degrees in Seattle, like where I grew up.

Nancy 10:35

Right.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 09:36

Oh, my goodness.

Nancy 09:36

That’s not right.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 10:39

My poor family. I live in South Carolina now. I’m a little bit used to the heat. They were dying. Just not prepared, don’t have the air conditioning. So many people were really suffering. We’ve got to make things happen and we know that you get the government involved, you allow them to help them along and putting those resources in the right place. We can make some change immediately.

Nancy 11:06

I think what’s important for people to remember. This really landed for me during the 2020 election cycle when I was calling…somebody had given me the great suggestion to just program your representatives into your phone. In my case, it was Senator Harris, Senator Feinstein, and I have them all programmed in. So when I was sitting in the car it would say, “Call Senator Harris” and I would get her office, and I had it both for California and DC, and I just say, “Hi, I’m a constituent. This is important to me. I wish you would do this.”

Then in the next day or two, I’d be sitting in traffic and I would just do it again, because they do look at the volume of calls. They want to know what’s on the mind of their constituents. And importantly, if you have a representative who is tuned in on climate change and doing stuff about it, those calls still matter, because you’re telling them that yes, you’re on the right track, keep pushing for the changes that you’re making. I know a lot of us worry, “I’m in this bubble. Everybody who I’ve elected to office has the same general viewpoint than I do, how does this make a difference?” But the fact is, you are saying to them, yes, keep going, keep going. So whether you’re listening and you’re in a location where maybe your elected representatives are not taking action on this, or they are, either way the calls, the letters, all that stuff can make a difference.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 12:28

Oh, absolutely. I think it’s important to recognize that climate change is not a partisan issue, right?

Nancy

WELL.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson

It isn’t about what party you’re in. Here in South Carolina, we have Charleston, it is flooded. We have sunny day flooding: the beautiful day, high tide, that whole beautiful city is flooded. And a lot of people in my state, which is a red state, they think about this, we talk about it, and it’s just bringing it up to the forefront that, hey, you should be thinking about this, too, and take away this political component and let’s have that difficult conversation about why is Charleston flooding. And yeah, why is it October and we’re out here watching our kids play soccer and yet, yes, they have to take another break, because it’s so hot outside? And that does break down barriers.

Nancy 13:28

I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, I apologize. I was just going to say a lot of people have spent a lot of time in the past 15 months looking at facts in the face and saying they don’t exist. So do you have suggestions? I know there are lots of resources and facts on the Science Moms website to help us, but just to on a personal basis, I don’t want to fight with people about whether or not climate change exists. I just want to work with them together to end it.

What have you learned that would maybe help us have those difficult conversations in a way that’s not an attack and it’s more building solutions?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 14:04

Well, I think that’s the wonderful thing about moms and moms with kids. You’re sitting out there, your kids are playing in the playground, or they’re at the beach, they’re going to school. We share so much in common and for me, it’s all about having the conversation. I think sometimes you’re like, “I’m not going to have that conversation if it’s going to be a tough one. I don’t even want to bring it up.” For me, I think it’s just important to start the conversation, just talk about climate, talk about how things have changed, talk about how hot it is outside.

For us, we just had another tropical storm just go through South Carolina, and just lay out the information. Tell people where they can go and find it and talk about what it means if we don’t address this problem. Believe it or not, I do think that when you can take that politics away from it and just really talk about what’s happening, you’d be surprised about how many people, moms,  parents in particular are like, “Yeah, no, you’re right. This is something we’ve got to think about and really, what can we do and what is the process?” I’m very optimistic in that space.

You’ve got to have the conversations, you’ve got to talk to people, ask them their opinions, why they think that way, and then provide them with the resources to find out some different answers.

Nancy 15:38

So what are the impacts that Science Moms has seen from their initiatives so far?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 15:43

Well, for me, it’s been amazing how many people like you are seeing about Science Moms, are reading about it, reaching out to us and starting these conversations about climate change, about what do we do, how do we reach out to our senators letting them know that this is happening right now?

We’ve had a tremendous number of people, and I’m sorry, I should have just looked up the number for you who are writing in, they’re contacting us and telling us that they’re writing in, that they’re having conversations with their kids. Actually, they have conversations with their kids, and their kids are like, “Yeah, mom, and here’s all the reasons why we need to do better.” I’m like, “Yeah!” I’ve been overwhelmed at the really positive response from all sectors about people who really want to know more, they want to share their stories about their experiences about how they talk to their kids or their friends about climate. So, yeah, it’s been great.

Nancy 16:44

So you’re feeling encouraged by the impact so far?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 16:48

I am. It’s really easy to be discouraged, particularly when you go outside, you’re like, oh, it’s 107 degrees and I’m in Portland, or once again, we’ve got to batten down the hatches because we have another storm. So I really think that the conversation is getting out there.

I look at the number of people who are really interested in hybrid cars, electric vehicles. My daughter actually is like “Ah, the air conditioning is down a little bit, we need to turn that up a few degrees.” I was like, “Uh! Okay, yeah, let’s do it!” Even the littlest things – I think that’s huge.

Nancy 17:26

Well, I think climate change is the number one thing where I can easily feel overwhelmed and helpless. I talk a lot about that on this show about just taking a step like doing what you can in your own little sphere, don’t get overwhelmed, don’t lose hope, blah, blah, blah. I believe that.

But I will say that with climate change, it’s harder for me. I never went to see An Inconvenient Truth because I’m like, “I get it, I know it’s going to be terrible, I’m doing what I can.” I’ve been known to stand out in front of my compost bin sorting the garbage into the recycling and the regular garbage because I don’t feel like it was done at a level of granularity that is convenient for the recycling team there in Oakland. I’m trying to do what I can, but I sometimes think if I look at the big picture, I’ll give up.

So what do you say to an idiot like me? How do you tell someone like me – I know the answer. I don’t the luxury of giving up. But I think what I’m looking for is some sense of optimism, and maybe that’s unrealistic in 2021.

But a group of Science Moms gets together to start this…is there in your view, hope for progress, hope that people are going to get this, hope that we are going to be able to solve our way out of this?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 18:40

Oh, I’m so sorry that you feel so overwhelmed.

Nancy 18:45

I’m a person who reads the paper, how could you not? I’m a person who pays attention. We’ve lost so many chances – and listeners, plug your ears. I don’t want you to get more depressed.

But I think if you are a person walking around on the planet, who’s seen firsthand that impact of climate change, you know it’s a big challenge. So how do we stay positive and just keep sorting that garbage? We just found out today in California, we’re now supposed to cut 15% of our water use because of course the drought in the western states has gotten real again and I’m like, “We already have given up every plant that could drink anything.” So I don’t know where I’m going to get my next 15% from but don’t come too close, because it might be bathing. I don’t know.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 19:28

Well, I don’t want that to happen. First of all, let me just say, you’re right. There are a lot of misconceptions about climate change. It is complex. There are a lot of moving pieces to it and it can feel overwhelming.

Again, I would just encourage you to go to ScienceMoms.com, there are so many resources there. It just breaks it down into pretty straightforward facts and pieces that can help you internalize exactly what all of those moving parts are. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing I will say is we are incredibly creative and innovative, and the innovations that are coming out now about increasing battery life, solar power, moving away from fossil fuels, because let’s be honest, carbon dioxide, fossil fuels in the atmosphere, that’s really taken us out. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.

And so we can believe in our kids, and my students – because I’m too old. I’m not the innovator anymore, I just facilitate my students who are amazingly smart – and they really are going to solve the world’s problems. If we can help them, if we can really go to our senators, our state, local, federal governments and say “INVEST IN THIS SPACE.” If we can just take the amount of money that we spend to support looking for new oil and gas fields, that would be a tremendous increase in what we actually expend in terms of looking for new technologies so that we can kind of get off this horrible merry go round of being so dependent on fossil fuels. So we just need to invest and to move forward.

It’s amazing if you look at the private companies, they’re already doing it. They’re already making tremendous strides, and I feel like every day I look and I go, “Oh, that’s another battery. Oh, it’s increasing. Oh, yes. There’s more.” We’re the same people that can float satellites and do the internet, right? So why can’t we solve this problem? We’re sending people into space, right?

Nancy 21:51

Well, I’ll jump in with a mom brag for a second. Just to underline what Dr. Benitez-Nelson is saying, my older daughter (who graduated college from our garage during the pandemic) got a job as a mechanical engineer working for a solar tracker company, and her job is to help design these little devices that pivot solar panels minutely, so that they maximize the sun that they’re catching. It’s this little bitty thing that makes solar panels so much more efficient. Imagine that kind of invention times infinity, with these kids who have the will and the interest, and hopefully sometime, the funding to do these kinds of innovative technologies and inventions that will help us solve our way out of this.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 22:38

That’s it. Exactly. How cool is that? It’s a small thing.

Nancy 22:42

How cool that she has her own health insurance. What?! Off my plan.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 22:46

That’s the other thing. For me, going into oceanography, my parents were going, “Are you going to get a job?” I was like, “Yes, mom. I’m going to get a job.” I love my job. I have the best job ever, and I tell my students, don’t worry, you’re going to be fantastic, and you are going to go out and you’re going to make a difference. You know what? They are. Your daughter is a prime example of that. Who would have thought that this would be something that she would be doing, and yet we’d have such a huge impact on solar panels and their efficiency?

Nancy 23:27

I have a feeling sitting in your classroom, every student is so jazzed up to make a difference, just listening to you talk. Like, I’m going to go become an oceanographer just so I can be in your classroom. That’s the energy you’re bringing.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 23:39

Well, let me just tell you, they come in and my kids, too, they come in and they’re asking me questions like, “How come we can’t do this?” I’m like, “We haven’t quite figured out the technology,” and they’re like, “We should do that,” and I’m like, “Yes, we should.”

So they’re already thinking about this, they’re already being innovative and thinking about ways to solve problems, the problems that I kind of thought were problems, but they already know are the problems, and they’re already 10 steps ahead.

Again, I am incredibly optimistic. Yes, you can let these ideas of climate and you can think about how hard it is, and the drought and the forest fires really weigh you down, but you have to believe and have faith in your children, the next generation, that they are going to help move the needle and solve these issues. And our job as moms, as parents, is to make it happen. We’ve got to start making this happen now. We’ve got to set the stage, we’ve got to get the foundation ready so they can launch, and reverse and change this trajectory that we’re on.

This is not like tomorrow’s problem. This is number one. As you said, call your leaders, call them up, just say, “Hey, this is important to me. I want you to invest in this space. Just wanted you to know, hey, Charleston’s going underwater.” This is one of our major cities in South Carolina. We’ve got to resolve this issue. We have all these military bases that are right on the water. This is a major issue for us in terms of our national defense. There are many reasons why we need to get this resolved, and get it going now.

Nancy 25:28

I’m about 10 seconds away from lifting my lighter in the air. YEAAAAHHHHH! I was going to ask you, what actions can listeners take right now to help make a difference? But I think you’ve just said it: go to ScienceMoms.com, read up, take some action, write some letters, call your representatives. Anything I missed?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 25:49

No. If you go to Science Moms – sometimes you think, “I’m not really good at writing the letter” – they’ve got the templates for you! Hey, these are the things that you might want to say to your particular senator. Here’s their email address. There’s her phone number, go ahead, and we’ll help you make that happen.

Nancy 26:10

Alright. Well, we’re going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. When we come back, I want to ask Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson about her activism and whether that was baked in from the start.

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[MUSIC]

And I’m back with Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson, official Science Mom.

One of the most consistent lessons that has come out of the conversations I’ve had on Midlife Mixtape is that a lot of people come to activism in midlife with a real sense of purpose. “What’s my legacy going to be? I’m going to start giving back now. When I look back at my career, it’s all well and good, but I really want to make a difference. I really want to feel this larger purpose.”

I’m thinking from reading about you that you’ve been that way from the beginning, because I know you have worked not just in climate change activism, but you’ve done a lot to encourage diversity in STEM, and the inclusion of women and minorities in STEM has been a priority for you. Was this always a part of the way you looked at the world and your role in it?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 28:09

I think it has been something that has always been instilled in me since I was a kid.

My mom has always been about doing the right thing. “This is the right thing, this is what we do.” She, as you might imagine, having gone to a Grateful Dead concert, was very much into activism and doing the right thing and equal rights, and making sure that everyone was starting from the same playing field and there was equity.

So she just raised me with this sense of purpose and that everyone should be treated equal, everyone should have opportunities, and shouldn’t be treated differently based on where they come from, how much money they have, what they look like. So activism has always been a part of what I’ve been about.

I will say that being in oceanography, being a woman and a person of color – when I was starting out, there certainly weren’t as many women. Now, it has completely changed. There are still not as many people of color as I would like to see in my field, and so this has been a passion of mine. Oceanography, changing the climate, it hits us all. It is not just a specific group. In fact, it disproportionately impacts people of color, poor communities. And so I just think that this is so important that we give everybody the information they need and support to be successful and to find the joy in life, their passion.

For me, I love oceanography. I think you know this, right? I love what I do, and so if I can just show everyone else what you can do, what’s out there and how you can make a difference in people’s lives then I’m done. I’ve made my impact.

For me, though, for activism and climate change, this is kind of what I do, and I’ve always known the climate has been changing. But I think it’s really when my kids were starting to grow up and I was out there in the field, and really seeing the changes and feeling the temperature change, and looking around, and I’m like, “Oh, this is not a ‘we’re going to fix this in 20 years’,” and so that space, activism with regards to making a difference in climate change specifically, I think has really come much more to the forefront as I’ve hit my middle years.

Nancy 30:51

Your years between being hip and breaking one. That’s a very general term.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 30:56

So true, and I might be closer to breaking my hip.

Nancy 31:00

I mentioned when I was introducing you, that your research focuses on understanding the biogeochemical cycling of nutrients and carbon as they are influenced by climate change. I want to let you explain that in your own words, because I think I know a little bit of what that means. But I’d rather hear you tell me.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 31:16

Sure. One of the things that we’re doing is we’re burning all these fossil fuels, and we were releasing all of this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Well, some of that carbon dioxide doesn’t just go into the atmosphere, but it actually goes into the ocean. And one of the things that I’m really interested in is understanding how much of that carbon dioxide not only gets into the ocean, but then how is it transformed and how does it make its way maybe deeper into the ocean where it can be removed for kind of longer timescales: 500, thousands, millions of years?

So it’s kind of a mechanism of sucking CO2, that greenhouse gas into another system. That’s really what I’m really interested in: how much goes in to the ocean, and then what happens to that carbon dioxide? How is it transformed, and then how is it going to get its way down deeper into the ocean where it can be stored for a much longer period of time?

Nancy 32:23

Do you think that you approach that question differently at midlife? Given the experience and the wisdom that you’ve gained, do you think that there are ways you do your job better now “in the years between being hip and breaking one” more efficiently, maybe with a little less white noise, because you’ve been at it for a while?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 32:42

Oh, sure. I think when I started out I was very much into the very nitty gritty details about very specific –  I’m going to nerd out – chemical reactions that are happening. And as I’ve broadened and really thought bigger picture, I realize, now, it’s not about this little piece, but really about how does the whole ocean work? Not just about my piece to all of this, but rather, how can I work with others in trying to understand the oceans and how they work? Actually, I just was out at sea for about a month as part of this research campaign…

Nancy 33:25

I guess that would be part of your job. That makes sense, but here’s me being surprised: “WHAT? You were at sea? As an oceanographer?”

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 33:31

All these amazing people doing all these different things, and we were like this huge team coming together to really tackle these questions in ways that are just very different when it’s just me. I was like, the lone, long distance runner just pushing along, it’s all about me.

Now I’m in this huge team, where it’s not just a basketball team or soccer team. We are a football team, we have lines going in, and we’re all about focusing on this question. That’s how my research has really evolved and it has taught me to be such a better scientist. Talk to people who are doing things completely different than you do, and realizing that – we’re talking English, but I don’t understand a word coming out of your mouth!

Nancy 34:27

That’s so interesting, because so much of the reading I’ve done around how to thrive at midlife has talked about how it’s a shift in priorities from accomplishments and ambition to relationships. That’s exactly what you’ve just described – not to say that you were laser-focused on your accomplishments to the exclusion of having relationships with other scientists before. But certainly it sounds like the ability to cultivate those kinds of connections within the scientific community benefit the work that you’re doing at midlife.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 34:59

Well, absolutely. Those relationships have allowed me to be much more innovative, more creative, to look at problems from a completely different perspective than I had initially intended. So for all of us as we think about making a difference in terms of addressing this climate issue.

That’s why I’m so optimistic – you want to take it full circle – is because I’m like, “No, when we all work together in this space, and we bring everyone together and people from all different walks of life, perspectives, background, be it science, be it social science, be it history, I think we were going to tackle this and we’re going to win. If we invest now, and really put all of our brain power behind it, oh, absolutely, are we going to make a difference!”

Nancy 35:49

That’s awesome. I feel like the Science Moms will be the scientists who show up with the Capri Sun and the quartered oranges, so everybody stays hydrated.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 35:57

Oh, you bet. We’ll be cheering everyone on. We’ll be like, “GO GO GO!” We all are going to do this. You are 100%, right.

Nancy 36:06

Pom poms and all. So what’s next for Science Moms?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 36:09

Well, right now we’re continuing to get out the message. Our latest campaign is Using Your Voice, and when we say use your voice –  you know that Mom Voice?

Nancy 36:23

Do you mean this one, Claudia?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 36:24

Yeah, that’s right. “What did you do?”

Nancy 36:28

That one scared me. Like “oh, my God. I’ve got to come up with of an alibi.”

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 36:32

That’s exactly. “I thought it was the right…”

Nancy 36:37

“She did it! It was my sister!”

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 36:39

That’s right. “I was just standing by!”

Yeah, so it’s using that Mom Voice, and really using it to really call out our senators, our local, our regional people in power and government to just say, “Hey, time’s up. It’s time to get moving.” Use your Mom Voice and say, “Time to go.”

Nancy 37:00

There’s parallels in the gun violence movement, where Moms Demand Action has made huge strides. It doesn’t feel like it some days, but for sure they have made legislative changes. Because they’ve put their mom energy to the grindstone on behalf of getting rid of all the gun craziness, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t do it on behalf of climate change.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 37:21

It makes sense. Our number one job is to protect our kids. I never really thought that that would be me. But oh, yeah, it’s me. “Did you threaten my child?”

Nancy 37:36

“I’ve just taken off my earrings and put my hair back in a ponytail. So brace yourself.”

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 37:40

That’s right. We’re ferocious when it comes to our kids in any space. So this is just like gun violence, climate change is right there. This is a threat to all of our kids, and we’ve got to do something about it.

Nancy 37:55

But the good news is you’re optimistic that when we do that, there’s hope that there’s action that can be taken, and the next generation coming up is going to show us all how it’s done.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 38:05

Absolutely. We are doing it and you are, and I’ll just say all the moms out there, we are making a difference. It may not seem like it, but we are. And it is time to keep stepping it up. Don’t relax. Keep those phone calls, those emails, those letters coming. Because this is the time, and we can make a difference.

Nancy 38:25

I want everybody to check out ScienceMoms.com. Of course, I’ll leave a link to that site in the show notes, and I also am going to share a really great video featuring Dr. Benitez-Nelson onboard a ship. I loved it. So make sure you check the show notes.

We have one last question, and that is what one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 38:47

Well, besides always wear your sunscreen?

Nancy 38:48

No, that’s a good one. That’s legit. I actually gave that piece of advice in the last episode, in all seriousness

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 38:56

Be kind to yourself. I’m just going to be very honest with that. I think sometimes when we were younger, we were so focused, we’re like, “Oh, I’m so worried about making the team, getting the grade, getting into the right college,” we graduate from the college, getting the right job… and we sometimes forget that this is our life. We need to be kind to ourselves, and to experience the world that we have around us.

Nancy 39:23

I think that’s a gentle piece of advice that’s hard to take. So it’s good to have the reminder.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 39:28

It is and I’m guilty of it. I’m so laser-focused and thinking, gosh, I didn’t take advantage of some of the things that I really should have, because I wasn’t kind to myself.

Nancy 39:39

Everybody listen up and tell that to your kids and tell them that they are going to make a difference, too. You’re going to look at ScienceMoms.com and figure out exactly how your family can play a role in that.

Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson, I’m so honored to have you on today. I actually feel better. I actually feel optimistic and that is not how I went to this call.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 39:59

Yaay! Oh my God!

Nancy 40:00

I’m sending in my application to USC so I can sit in your classroom.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 40:04

I’d love to have you.

Nancy 40:05

“Hey, who’s the old lady in the back who has no idea what’s being talked about? That’s Nancy!”

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 40:11

That’d be great.

Nancy 40:12

Thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson 40:15

It was so fun being on. Thank you for having me.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 40:21

Honestly, I didn’t think there was a person alive who could make me feel optimistic about humankinds’ ability to tackle climate change, but when as accomplished and knowledgeable a scientist as Dr. Benitez-Nelson says there’s still hope, we have to believe her.

Of course, she also made it clear we all have a role to play on behalf of the next generation. So I do hope you’ll spend some time on ScienceMoms.com after this episode and figure out what steps YOU and your family can take to make positive change.

Let me know what you thought about this episode. You can email me at [email protected] or find me on social media Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @midlifemixtape.

Hey guys, this is the last Midlife Mixtape episode for a whole month. I am heading out on vacation and I’m going to try to stay off social media as much as possible when I go. I’ve packed Allie Larkin’s new book and I’ve got a road trip playlist as long as my arm, but we will pick up again at the end of August, so make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen so you don’t miss that first episode back! And don’t forget to share the Midlife Mixtape Podcast with your friends and family while I’m gone! Maybe they’ll want to catch up.

I’m so appreciative of all of you for listening. I really am so grateful for your time and for your support on the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. I wish you a wonderful August.

[“Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 102 “Science Mom” Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .