Twisting the Plot

Up until 50, most women have been going along following the rules and living their lives according to a preset roadmap.  We took our cues from families, social media, and cultural role models. Then we turn 50, and the roadmaps stop. The direction becomes vague, and the cues fade. 

We get hit with negative biases about aging, disdain for older bodies, and hints to our irrelevance.   We learn that we have lost our edge, our beauty, and our value.  Sometimes we even feel like we are losing ourselves.  We go invisible to the world and to ourselves.  

What’s complicated is that during this time of the fading self, a lot happens. Transitions are multifold.  Husbands leave, jobs end, career paths dim, loved ones get ill or die, some of us get ill, children leave, our appearance changes and menopause happens.   

This week we explore the impact feeling lost can have on our individual and collective stories. We explore how re-finding ourselves can be difficult, and sometimes painful. Listen as we share how to start the process of getting unlost.

Listen as Laura Dintino describes her surprise and shock when her husband of 29 years suddenly announced he was interested in a younger woman and ready to move on. It was a plot twist that turned the world she had built and the life she had known completely upside down. She had not only lost her partnership; she lost her identity. Who was she now?  How can a woman in her 60’s remake herself? 

Laura, a member of our 12 in 12 program, shares how she got reacquainted with herself. With the help of therapist, friends and family, she rediscovers her feisty, ambitious self and is channeling that energy into her new career. For her 12 in 12 project, Laura is working on creating a method that captures immigrants’ and refugees’ individual stories as well as their strengths, interests, and experience. Her goal is to use this information to help them find work in the community that better reflects their passions and abilities.  Laura’s own story of loss, acceptance and reinvention has fueled her commitment to help her students write a new chapter in their own stories. 

Recently, Laura left the house that she had shared with her ex-husband and moved into her own new home.  She’s back in the driver’s seat. Her strength and courage impressed her daughter who refers to her Mom as a badass.

Lets be clear, when you are a 60-something woman and called badass by a millennial, you have successfully twisted your plot.

Go forward Laura.   For all of us.

When Ana Maria Seligmann moved from Panama to Houston, Texas, she focused on helping her children acclimate to a new school and a different culture. When everyone was settled, she began thinking about her next challenge.  What new purpose would she seek in her new country?  For guidance, Ana turned to her religious practice and what came through loud and clear was her innate desire to help people.  Ana set out on a path of introspection and self-discovery.  She began to look at her life with fresh eyes and a new perspective.  She trained in integrative nutrition and now helps other women regain their energy and focus. 

Join us to hear more about how Ana discovered her new purpose and twisted her plot in a new country.

[email protected]

With my camera, I document the joy and the light of her last years of life – the ways that she circles back home, even as she is leaving.  Cheryle St. Onge in the New York Times, Sunday June 28, 2020. 

Photographer Cheryle St. Onge’s plot twisted when her mother was diagnosed with vascular dementia. Her mother began to disappear, and Cheryle grew increasingly depressed.  Her friends suggested that she make art instead of complain.  So she picked up her iPhone and took a picture of her mother. This led to an exquisite collection of photographs, Calling The Birds Home.  Cheryle describes the experience as “a silent conversation with her Mom in the process of making art.”  

Cheryle St. Onge was named one of the Top 50 Photographers in the country by TIME Magazine. Her work has been exhibited at London’s National Portrait Gallery, Princeton University, Griffin Museum, University of Rhode Island, Massachusetts College of Art, Rick Wester Fine Arts, and with the American Institute of Architects traveling exhibition. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Listen as Cheryle talks with us about the creative process with her mother and what she’s learned about herself, her art, aging, and living.

Click here to see her work at Cheryle St.Onge.com

Follow Cheryle St. Onge on Instagram

New York Times: Photographing the Beauty of My Mother's Decline 

As a little girl Charisse Brown would scoot across the floor on her belly to listen to the family stories told behind closed doors. Today, as an adult, she’s made a career of listening and holding the stories of others. 

Charisse is a professional actor and a teaching artist.  When she was 50 she started graduate school and became a drama therapist. She currently works with youth who are detained in the criminal justice system.  They are children in trouble, children who have witnessed and experienced violence, children who have been neglected and deprived.  

They are children whose stories often go unheard, and never told.

But Charisse hears them all.  She keeps them inside of her heart and alive on her tongue.  She has learned how to create safe spaces for the children to share what they know.  She is currently helping them create a time capsule to capture their lived experiences and unmet dreams.  The time capsule will hold the fragments of history that may otherwise be overlooked and misunderstood.    

Some people are born to be artists.  Some artists are chosen to bear truths most of us prefer to take distance from.  Some artists are then moved to share with the rest of us  and help us evolve.  Charisse Brown is overflowing with stories, and lots of feelings.  She will be performing a one-woman show as soon as our theaters reopen.

We can’t wait to sit in her audience to witness her wisdom and share some of her burden.  

Bring it on, Charisse.  We will listen.

Charisse's Email - [email protected]

Marianne Franzese reacted to the murder of George Floyd with horror, grief and sadness.  It literally made her cry.  When her grown children saw this, they called her out. 

“Stop crying.  What are you doing about it?” 

Indeed.

Most of us were raised to feel the feelings, have empathy, and care for others.  But we were not encouraged to get angry, speak out, or disrupt the status quo.

Luckily we still have time to grow.  But, we have to be willing to be called out by others, especially our children.

So this week we sat down with Marianne Franzese and her daughter Lili Chasen to have an inter-generational conversation about our role in the fight against racism.  

According to Lili, our number one task is to get uncomfortable.  This is not easy for us.  The pull for equilibrium and people pleasing is strong. But for too long we have been silent and complicit in a racial system that deprives and oppresses black men and women.  

As Lili states, “white silence kills.”

It’s time to grow a thicker skin, move past our social conditioning, and build stamina for disruption.  It’s time to have those difficult conversations.

Evolution is intergenerational.  We need to know our history and the history of our ancestors.  We have to be challenged on our present day perspectives by the generations that follow us.  And then we collectively step forward into a new future, with new leaders, new roles and new rules.  

Kids today.  They’ll save us all.

Twisting the plot.

The ideas and suggestions that Lili shares on this podcast are informed by the following black leaders:  

Ericka Hart

Monique Melton 

Rachel Cargle

Robin DiAngelo

Please follow them and educate yourselves.

La-Verna Fountain has spent decades listening.  She is a practitioner and teacher of Kingian and Gandhian methods for conflict resolution.  The one thing she knows for sure is that we all have answers inside of us.  On this week’s podcast, Hannah, Cecilia, La-Verna and Victoria Benitez, two black and two white sixty something women, talk.  La-Verna asks each of us to answer the question: What do you know?    

Then we consider what we still have to learn.

www.MeaningfulCommunicationsMatter.com

Maryann Plunkett is a woman in her sixties who is not invisible, although she regularly portrays women who are.  This past year, the Tony award-winning actor was seen in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and as Mrs. Rogers in A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood with Tom Hanks.

Originally, we wanted to talk to Maryann about her experience performing in the recent online production of What Do We Need To Talk About, produced by the Public Theatre in which the audience witnesses a Zoom call with the Apple family as they grapple with life during COVID-19.

We were hoping to hear Maryann’s thoughts about life during the pandemic, as well as the shutdown of live theater.  We were planning to discuss the importance of story, and contemplate the role of theatre in fostering a culture of growth.

As it turned out, our discussion took place just after the brutal murder of George Floyd. We hadn’t previously spoken together about how this might change our plan. As we started to talk, we hit the record button and decided to let it be what it is:  three white sixty something women engaged in a conversation about what has been happening in the world.  We ask ourselves, what is our role?  Should we shut up or do we speak up?  How do we move forward?  

In a 2016 New Yorker profile, Maryann is described as a “radiant everywoman.” What now for Maryann?  What now for all of us?

We don’t have answers. All we know is that we must listen.  We must learn.  And we must figure out how to serve.

Ok, listen up.  Our number one mission is to help women over 50 evolve by imagining who it is we can be, both as individuals and as a grand collective.  

One of the ways we do this by listening to a Gen Z influencer.

Why?

Because our futures require our creative participation and it starts with a loosening of our limited beliefs.  Things have to change in order to be new.

We begin by letting go of our ageist confines and freeing ourselves from identities that no longer serve or excite us.

This week, we start to imagine ourselves differently by talking to fashion designer and social activist Madeline Dintino.

Madeline, a 2020 fashion design graduate of Marist College, views fashion as an opportunity for radical empowerment and inclusivity.  She designs clothing that offers gender fluidity, playfulness and a witty glittery repurposing of norms.  Madeline uses her voice as a designer to deconstruct binaries and reconstruct clothing that inspires freedom and joy.

She also shares with us her honors thesis project, a zine she titled Modern Gender.  Her zine (think short magazine) is a resource for navigating modern gender terms and expressions. It’s a colorful, informative invitation to celebrate inclusivity. 

Madeline even encourages us to explore how fashion can expand our identities.  She suggests we stop hiding and celebrate our bodies and images.  Maybe, she declares, you could think additive, instead of covering up.  After all, she says, “You’ve spent years earning your looks.” 

There is so much to gain from intergenerational sharing.

Join us please.

Zine: 

Check out Modern Gender: Navigating the Fluid Revolution

Website:

Madeline Dintino Portfolio

For the Record Article: 

Read about Madeline Dintino in FOR THE RECORD

We love it when we connect with like-minded women who share our realization that women over 50 deserve attention.

When friends Marijo and April turned 50, things felt different. They had questions about their bodies, relationships, careers, and fashion. Not sure where to turn, they decided to take the bull by the horns and created HELLO 50 IT’S MY TIME a place dedicated to supporting women as they continue to learn, find purpose and get more empowered with every passing year. 

Listen as these fellow twisters talk how they are helping other women 50, 60, and beyond face life with joy, enthusiasm, and adventure. 

Click here to check out Hello50.com

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