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“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.

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The Thank-You Project – makes a great holiday present or 2022 project!
Drew Barrymore inducts The Go-Gos into the R&RHOF
Jimmie Wilson for Alameda County DA
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Fair Fight
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The amazing musician behind the podcast music on Midlife Mixtape – M. The Heir Apparent

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 .

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CommentsCongratulations on taking a well-earned break and I will be ... by EllenIn reply to Wendi Aarons. Thanks, pal. You've been part of it ... by Nancy Davis KhoWhat a great run! You're off to do even more great things. by Wendi AaronsRelated StoriesEp 110 “New Map of Life” Cartographers Ken Smith and Karen BreslauEp 109 Animal Policy Expert Mark CushingEp 108 DryTogether Founders Megan Zesati and Holly Sprague 

“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.)

DryTogether.org
Harvard Health Article on Women, Alcohol, and COVID-19
Outlander #1 –  your gateway read
Presenting sponsor Kindra – use the code MIXTAPE20 for 20% off your first order!
Unlock Your Life Podcast with Lori A. Harris

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

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 108 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on November 2, 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 dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

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?

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[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 dj@midlifemixtape.com 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 dj@midlifemixtape.com 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 dj@midlifemixtape.com .

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 .

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                Related StoriesEp 107 Listeners’ Halloween StoriesEp 106 Singer/Songwriter Bob SchneiderEp 105 Grateful Living Guide Kristi Nelson 

“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.

The Perfect Cocktails for Your Perimenopause Party  by Wendi Aarons, Gloria Fallon, and Marilyn Naron
Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender (or how I became a punk rock lawyer) by Juanita E. Mantz, Esq

Happy Halloween, you grown up goths.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 107 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on October 19, 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 dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

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.

Jason Voorhees, Friday the 13th: I swear to God, Jason, if I find your ski mask on the floor in the front hall again, I am THROWING IT OUT. Do you hear me? It’s your trademark? Well, if that were true I doubt you’d be so careless as to throw it on the floor where the dog will step on it.


Freddy Krueger, Nightmare on Elm Street: Those were brand new sheets, Frederick Allen Krueger. They still had the creases in them. If you were going to suck Johnny Depp down into a bed and expel him in liquid format, couldn’t you have just waited until the old blue sheets were on the bed? THINK next time, please.


Chucky, Child’s Play: Hammers, baseball bats, axes, air pumps. What do they have in common? These are all outdoor toys, young man. Take them back to the garage or yard where you found them, please.


Michael Myers, Halloween: Do you think it’s easy to get reliable babysitters who can drive and don’t have such active social lives that they are busy every Saturday night? And now I bet Laurie will warn her friends not to work for us either. Pat yourself on the back there, buddy, because now your parents will never get a date night again. And guess who’s going to suffer for that?


Ghostface, Scream: That’s what you’re wearing out to dinner? Again with the black tatters? What’s wrong with the jeans and button down shirt you just had me buy you at the Gap? Oh no, it’s fine. But I’ll remember this next time you tell me you need something new.

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 .

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                Related StoriesYour GenX Halloween StoriesEp 106 Singer/Songwriter Bob SchneiderEp 105 Grateful Living Guide Kristi Nelson 

It’s time for another Listeners’ Stories episode of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, and there’s a topic about which  I just KNOW you have something to say: your ‘70s, ‘80s, and ’90s Halloween memories. Maybe it was the smell of those plastic masks our parents bought us at the drugstore. Maybe it was the lady around the corner rumored to put razor blades in the apples. Side note: Why so many imaginary homicidal neighbors?  Maybe it was a really bad night in college where you went dressed as a tooth fairy and got your wings crushed on the dance floor during a particularly lively dance-off to Yaz’s “Don’t Go”. (Too specific?)

Whatever the story – I want to hear it! The tricks, the treats, the non-sexy costumes because those hadn’t become a thing yet. The stories from our “lightly-parented” youth that our own tweens and teens wouldn’t even believe.

As usual for our listener-contributed episodes, there are lots of ways to share your thoughts:

Leave me a voice mail right from your computer! Go to https://www.speakpipe.com/MidlifeMixtape you can start recording with one click. I would LOVE for people to do this so I can incorporate your actual voice on the episode! NOTE: There’s a 90 second limit on this, but you can re-record before sending if you need to.
Record a voice memo into your phone and email it to dj@midlifemixtape.com. Again, it would be so cool to hear and share your story in your actual voice, and no time limits there.
Share your GenX Halloween story in the comments below!
Email me your story to dj@midlifemixtape.com
Send me a Facebook message, tweet or Instagram comment @midlifemixtape

Start thinking about it and then send me your stories to me before October 12th! Then tune in on Tuesday, October 19th for our special Listener’s Story Halloween Episode!

The post Your GenX Halloween Stories appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                Related StoriesYour Favorite GenX Summer Childhood Memories?Ep 96 Listeners’ “Still in Rotation” AlbumsWhat Album is “Still in Rotation” for You? 

“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.

ScienceMoms.com website
Dr. Benitez-Nelson’s research lab website

Dr. Benitez-Nelson interviewed aboard the research vessel Sally Ride

What other song could I choose, given my late mom’s affinity for all things John Denver?Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

***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 dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

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.

Today’s episode of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast is brought to you by Uin Footwear. That’s Uin Footwear.

Originating in Toledo, Spain, UIN Footwear’s pairs are a testament to two passions — travel and art. They are super cute, super light canvas shoes for men, women, and kids, they’re perfect for throwing into your suitcase. They’ve got slippers, slides, flip flops and more, and I love all the fun design collections they have like “We love animals” and “Tropical Vibe”. I ordered a pair of the slides in the Blossom print and I’m definitely throwing them into the duffel bag for my travels in August. They work as slippers or if you needed to, you could definitely wear them out and about in a pinch, and they’re super comfortable, too.

For a limited time, Midlife Mixtape Podcast listeners can save $5 on their first pair of Uin Footwear shoes! Just go to Uin Footwear and put in the code NANCYUIN. That’s all caps. So NANCYUIN for $5 these fabulous, arty shoes!

[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 dj@midlifemixtape.com 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 .

                Related StoriesEp 101 Womaness Founders Sally Mueller and Michelle JacobsEp 100 Centennial CelebrationEp 99 RV Adventurer Michelle Fishburne 

via GIPHY

It snuck up on me. I guess I’ve been distracted by a few things, like 2021 in general. But I realized in the past month I’ve crossed over three big milestones:

4 years of The Midlife Mixtape Podcast
10 years of blogging at MidlifeMixtape.com
200,000+ downloads of the podcast

And I’m about to hit the 100th episode on June 22nd.

If that doesn’t call for a party I don’t know what does. Especially when all of us have earned the right to celebrate any and every success, including finding a good parking spot at the grocery story.

So in that spirit, Episode 100 is going to be a party, where I turn the interviewer seat over to YOU for a change.

Ask me anything. Send me your questions, about midlife, music, podcasting, gratitude, Oakland, writing, reading recs, Netflix shows, Outlander on Starz, hiking trips, whatEVER. As long as the question (and answer) is something I don’t mind my elderly relatives hearing, I promise I will answer it.

And if you send in a question, you’ll be entered to win one of THREE Midlife Mixtape 100th Episode Party Packs.

Pack 1: a bundle of books from past guests, including but not limited to The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell Antonia, Why We Can’t Sleep by Ada Calhoun, and I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott.
Pack 2: a bundle of my favorite music-themed books, including but not limited to All I Ever Wanted by FUTURE ROCK HALL OF FAMER Kathy Valentine (The Go-Gos), Good Booty by Ann Powers, and On Bowie by Rob Sheffield.
Pack 3: a Thank-You Project bundle, with a signed copy of my book and some other goodies thrown in there too.

I’ve loved getting to know you through your contributions to the Listeners’ Stories episodes – your teenage jobs, your first concerts, your pandemic grief and gratitude. Feels only fair to put myself in the hot seat for a change.

So leave your question in the comments or email dj@midlifemixtape.com or drop it into social media on Facebook, Twitter, and/or  Instagram. If you’re particularly interested in one of the prize packs feel free to mention it too. I’ll pick winners at random, to be announced in the 100th episode.

Now I need to research a signature cocktail, make sure we have enough ice, and start hanging the streamers for June 22nd. Can you believe it?!

The post Ask Me Anything appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                Related StoriesEp 98 Midlife Gap Year Advocate Lisette SmithEp 94 Geriatrician Dr. Leslie KernisanEp 88 “Life Is in the Transitions” Author Bruce Feiler 

“Time to regroup”: Lisette Smith, certified financial planner, on thinking of our work lives in chapters, the best ways to plan for a Midlife Gap Year, and why early retirement may not be as desirable as the occasional long pause.

Download the Midlife Gap Year guide here
Advisory Group SF
Pop Culture Preservation Society Podcast – Nancy riffing on The Early Days of MTV

Why worry?

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 98 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on May 25, 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 dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

Lisette Smith 00:00

When we see these people in their 70s that are still looking for things to do because they’ve retired, maybe we plan in a different way.

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]

00:34

This episode of The Midlife Mixtape Podcast is brought to you by a new podcast called Toddler Purgatory.

My friends Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson (hosts of the top-rated parenting podcast What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood) are launching their first ever spin-off podcast.

It’s called Toddler Purgatory and it is all the laughs and advice you’ve come to expect from What Fresh Hell, but all focused on topics for parents of kids under six.

Hosts Blaire Brooks and Molly Lloyd have kids aged 2 to 4 at home so they’ll be solving dilemmas like “How to get kids to sleep through the night” “How to handle your picky eaters” and so much more.

Now, some Midlife Mixtape Listeners don’t have little ones in our houses anymore, but that’s only because grandparenting approaches and you’re going to need to refresh on this stuff. Or maybe you know younger parents and you could point them to Toddler Purgatory instead of muttering, “you think you have problems NOW….”

Help a new podcast out: search “Toddler Purgatory” wherever you listen to podcasts, and hit subscribe or follow.

That’s Toddler Purgatory – for all things little kids.

[MUSIC]

Hi everyone – happy Tuesday and I hope you’re hanging in there! I’m Nancy Davis Kho, creator and host of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast and author of The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. Were you raised on a steady diet of Stouffers French Bread pizza and MTV? So were we all.

Actually that reminds me – you may know me as a podcast host but I also sit in the guest seat fairly often, usually talking about gratitude letters and my book. If you ever want to check out any of those appearances, head over to daviskho.com, click on the Speaking tab, and they’re all listed there. HOWEVER this week I was honored to be a guest on the Pop Culture Preservation Society Podcast – dedicated to preserving and elevating the unsung pop culture nuggets of the classic Gen X childhood. And what did Kristen, Carolyn, and Michelle want me to riff on? The early days of MTV.

You may not know that I not only was there as a 15-year-old for the Big Bang when the channel launched in 1981, but in my adulthood I’m a sucker for every oral history written on the channel. So I got to just blah blah blah about their business model, the most controversial moments, the worst videos made, Saint David Bowie…look I don’t know how listeners are enjoying it but it was cathartic for ME. Check out the Pop Culture Preservation Society podcast wherever you listen to your favorite shows!

We are approaching episode 100, folks, and I have something kind of special planned – a Very Special Episode, if you will – that’ll air on June 22. Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen so you don’t miss it!

Ok Midlife Gap Year: we all want one, especially once someone explains what it is…but it’s not the kind of thing you can snap your fingers and achieve. So I invited today’s guest to help us get there.

Lisette Smith is the Chief Operating Officer and a senior advisor to personal wealth clients at The Advisory Group of San Francisco, an independent financial advisory firm that manages $1BN in assets. A pioneer of the Midlife Gap Year concept as part of the financial planning process, Lisette authored the firm’s 16-page educational guide “The Midlife Gap Year: How to take a break and still feel financially secure”, to inspire business owners and leaders to take a long-term view of their career and life fulfillment. Her favorite part of her work is helping clients explore possibilities in their financial lives and then, over time, seeing the life-changing difference her advice inspired.

So blow off the dust that gathered on your calendar during the pandemic and let’s start figuring out how we add “Gap Year” to it, with Lisette Smith.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 04:36

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

Lisette 04:39

Thanks. I’m happy to be here.

Nancy 04:40

I am really excited to talk about Midlife Gap Year and what I’m hoping is you’ll do that Oprah thing where you say, “Look under your seat! You get a Gap Year! You get a Gap Year!” because we all want one. You don’t have to convince us that we want one.  I want to hear how we’re going to get one.

Lisette 04:55

Right. That’s the hard part.

Nancy 04:56

Yeah, so that’ll be most of what we talk about. But you know we cannot break the ice on this show without asking this very critical question that I’m sure you get in a lot of your financial interviews: What was your first concert, Lisette, and what were the circumstances?

Lisette 05:11

Oh, yes. I don’t get that question as often as you might think.

Nancy 05:13

Really? Weird.

Lisette 05:16

Well, I grew up in in Massachusetts, and my first concert was a James Taylor concert at Tanglewood which is in the Berkshires, and I was young-ish. I was like, eighth or ninth grade, too young to be going to a concert by myself and a friend. Her older brother drove, so I thought it was really, really cool.

Nancy 05:41

It is pretty cool to have the older brother as the gateway concert companion. I have heard magical things about Tanglewood. I’ve always wanted to go there.

Lisette 05:48

It’s a cool venue. I mean, I subsequently went to many concerts there. It has the lawn – well, I’m always on the lawn. I think there are seats. It’s a cool place.

Nancy 06:00

Once we can get back to concerts again, that would be a good trip. Just go around, go to all the different amphitheaters all over the country. Like, I’d love to go to Red Rocks. I’ve never been there. I just go to the Greek in Berkeley all the time.

Lisette 06:13

Me either. I would love to go to Red Rocks. I can’t wait.

Nancy 06:16

Someday. That’s my investment strategy we need to focus on today: how does Nancy get to all the outdoor arenas?

Lisette 06:23

Yes, that can be how you spend your Midlife Gap Year.

Nancy 06:26

I just fell under my desk. Okay, let’s get started talking about Midlife Gap Year. You are a certified financial planner, CFP, and you’ve taken it upon yourself to champion this idea of a Midlife Gap Year. So let’s just start with the basics. What is that?

Lisette 06:41

I think you’re probably more aware of it than most people, because there’s just so much going on at midlife. You’re dedicating your podcast to it so I don’t have to tell you that. But really the focus and what you’re doing in terms of responsibilities, your career or business, your family, even your parents may be demanding more attention. You also are at a point where you may be starting to have some resources and some success and you may own a home. There’s a lot going on. There’s just a big convergence of things that are happening.

At that same time, in general, the trajectory of people’s work lives and how we think about work and our lifespan is changing. Thinking about a Midlife Gap Year is to kind of change the way we think about your work life. This isn’t an idea that I came up with, because even though I did do a Midlife Gap Year before I kind of had labeled it that; in academic circles, people are studying this.

There’s a lot of books on successful aging, and I had seen Laura Carstensen, who heads the Stanford Center on Longevity, talk really about this new map of life and how everything’s bunched up in the middle. Even if your healthy life is extending, you don’t want to just tack on things to the end. We should be adjusting your lives for these longer work lives, but punctuate them with some breaks and some time to regroup and some time to think and do things while you’re still able to do them. Academia sometimes has a tenuous grip on applications and made me think, “That sounds great. But people need to have a way to do that. Not everyone’s going to be able to do that.”  So to make it more accessible.

Nancy 08:41

It sounds like there’s a couple different ways that we can define Gap Year. There’s the complete hiatus from work where you are seriously stepping away. What are the other ways that people can manifest their Midlife Gap Year?

Lisette 08:55

Oh, that’s a good way to say it. It is really specific to the people involved and that determines how it’s structured, because I think people think, maybe initially, “Okay, I’m just going to take a year off and travel and ride my bike around the world or ride a horse around the world or do something.”

Nancy

Scooter my way around the world, plugging in along the way.

Lisette

Exactly. That’s probably at one end, just giving things up for a year and going off with your family or by yourself, or how you would do that. But we try to break it down starting with, “What do you want to get out of this at the end of this period?”  Because it can’t go on forever.

But say it’s a year. What needs to have changed for you? If you do want to travel, how will that manifest itself when you get back? Then will you go back to your job? Do you want to do it so you can explore something else? Then there are scaled down versions of that. Honestly, a lot of people want to just take a break to spend more time with their families, although, as you may guess…

Nancy 10:04

Eventually, it won’t be 2021 anymore. Eventually. You guys WILL miss them again someday.

Lisette 10:11

I think we wrote this prior to 2020. We were thinking, “Oh, people are getting their Midlife Gap Year right now. They are staying home and regrouping.” But it really was, for a lot of people, a different kind of burnout.

In terms of the why, people just feel a little burned out at that stage of life. You may physically need to be away, you may just need to stay home and focus on you and your loved ones, and maybe you just feel like things have gotten away from you. Or you may want to be thinking about a career pivot, there may be something else you want to do. If you’re at midlife, you may have been doing the same thing since you got out of college or since you started your work life 20 years or more and maybe thinking, “Can I turn my avocation into a career? Could I get more training and do something else?”  So there are varieties, and what you want to get out of it determines how it might be structured.

Nancy 11:14

Lisette is referring to a guide that I’ll link to from the show notes that she wrote for The Advisory Board, but it’s a guide on how to achieve your Midlife Gap Year.

Lisette 11:23

Right.

Nancy 11:24

We’ll be talking about this guide and that’s got a lot more detail on all this stuff. You don’t have to convince me that we deserve it.

But when you mentioned all those things, we call it “the years between being hip and breaking one”-  all the stuff that we’re balancing our parents, our kids, and certainly the last 14 months have been excruciatingly difficult for so many of us. So yes, we all deserve a break. But what are the quantifiable benefits? You mentioned the academic research around this.

I was thinking about a friend of mine always talks about Meaningful Retirement. She’s hated being a lawyer since Day One of being a lawyer, but she never quit. So she talks about how she’s basically going to get her life satisfaction in her Meaningful Retirement and I’ve thought about that concept. But I like what I do. So the idea of never retiring isn’t horrible to me, but I would like a lot more flexibility eventually. I like this idea of taking breaks so that I can sustain the energy and enthusiasm to keep doing what I’m doing for a longer period of time.

Because the other thing is, I just got my Social Security statement. And if I don’t retire till I’m 70, we’re much better off.

Lisette 12:36

A lot of people, especially people in your position, which is kind of the ideal, is that people do enjoy what they’re doing and they do want to continue it. There’s certainly a lot more anecdotal evidence I can tell you from my clients, that people that enjoy what they’re doing are happy and capable of doing it into their 70s. That’s a lot of what the research is showing now, that there is benefit in the older workforce. To continue doing that it is good for your health as you age as well.

So that’s the ideal, that you have a job you like, and you find purpose in it. But this was brought up also as an antidote to people who wanted to retire early and didn’t love what they were doing. That is not that practical for a lot of people for the reason you just said, that it does make sense for Social Security, and just in terms of when you start drawing down your retirement savings, and the amount of time you’re able to save for you to work longer. You don’t want to do that if you don’t like what you’re doing.

I started as an advisor almost 30 years ago, and people targeted retiring at 55. That is really difficult. It’s really hard to work for 30 years and then be retired for 40. The math is really hard on that. This is more how do we spread that out. When you take the tradeoff of working longer, which is a common trade off when we do the math on this and run through different scenarios But people don’t mind it if they have either pivoted or they’ve taken a break to regroup and are then able to work longer, happier.

Nancy 14:25

Can you give me a for-instance, somebody you’ve worked with who’s done this and how it played out? What does it really look like?

Lisette 14:33

We have had people that are in their own business, which gives you a little more flexibility.

Nancy 14:41

Sure.

Lisette 14:42

But it does require some planning in most cases in cases we’ve had people have either business partners or other people to rely on and it does take some planning though. You can’t just go into your business partner or boss and say, “Great news! I have a plan, I’m taking a year off. This is what I plan to do!”

Nancy 15:03

“Happy Monday!”

Lisette 15:08

“Don’t worry. I have it all figured out!”

In the case I’m thinking of, there was really about two or three years of lead up, of really planning around what the business had to do to, because this person wanted to take a full year off, didn’t really want to be in touch. They actually ended up doing some work, which, that’s fine. But the plan was not to. So there was some lead up time, because to your point, you have to get things in order. You don’t want people resenting you when you return. So this person really did some travel with their kids within the United States and homeschooled for that period.

Nancy 15:57

Before homeschooling was like a life sentence.

Lisette 16:01

Exactly. Before everyone was doing that.

Part of the plan we try to do is the reentry plan too. This person knew they wanted to return to their business and so part of that was, “When you come back, first of all, will you do anything related to it while you’re away?” Which again, they ended up doing, but that wasn’t the plan. Also, in this case, will your partners or other people at the firm get the ability to do this themselves? Is this going to be something that you’ll champion and not just take for yourself?

I think in that case, their kids were not as on board initially and so some of it, you do have to sell it. You do have to get some people on board sometimes. This may be your dream, but it’s not going to work without other people really buying in, and that’s part of the thought process. That’s part of what we discussed with people who are really focused on the financial end of it. These people also were able to rent out their house while they were gone. That’s not that uncommon to be able to do that, to offset some of the costs.

Nancy 17:10

So two to three years, is that pretty typical for how far in advance you want people to start thinking about how to actually structure this?

Lisette 17:19

Kind of. The more time you have, the better. Again, it depends what you want to get out of it. You could probably do it in a year. But if you have a business or if you have a career where your clients or people are depending on you, it does make sense to have a little more of lead time.

Nancy 17:37

Let’s pretend that some of our listeners are not in a position to tell the people who work for them that this is what they’re going to do; they’re actually the employee and I would raise my hand along with the rest of you who have your hands up. In this scenario, how would I go about preparing my very lovely employer for the fact that, “Oh, yeah, I’m going to step back?” I get nervous asking them to take two weeks off. That feels indulgent to me.

So how do I prepare for that conversation around taking a whole year off? When you say “Midlife Gap Year”, I’m guessing you are also talking about a six month period or whatever ends up being the appropriate amount of time, but enough for a big break. More than two weeks.

Lisette 18:18

Exactly. It’s more the idea of taking a significant amount of time to regroup. It can be six months, it can be shorter, and I think there are alternatives.

Sometimes it’s really more thinking about restructuring – maybe it’s not taking that entire time off, but maybe it is paring back, working three days a week for a year, and figuring out if you can just so you feel like you have enough to replenish. That may mean to the financial aspect, like for your employer, it just means they pay you less, they pay you on a prorated basis. The important thing is that you feel like it’s enough time to achieve your goals.

Honestly, it could be just taking every Friday off and spending that with your family or doing things at home. The extreme of taking the year off and traveling… the other extreme is probably finding a way to restructure your work, not quit your job, not even take a year off from your job. But in a position where you’re afraid you might derail your lifestyle for a while if you step back, we can do some planning around that as well.

Nancy 19:29

A couple of episodes ago, I interviewed Jeff Harry who’s a play expert, Episode 92, and he talked about this idea that if you can have flow work, if you can have a part of your day where you’re just really happy and really lost in what you’re doing, that everything else benefits. And as you’re talking about maybe just taking one day off a week for a year, it occurs to me that the other four days you might be super productive, just because you’re going to be so much happier to have that extra time to yourself. I think probably you have to think about how you’re going to position this as a benefit to the employer and I would guess that that could be part of it.

Lisette 20:11

I think that’s a little bit of the benefit of middle age and having that perspective of how much time gets wasted in many work situations.

I think the more enlightened employers, or even less enlightened, they’re looking for outcomes. They’re looking for good work and productivity. Hopefully, this pandemic year has also shown us that doesn’t necessarily come with face time in the office and other things like that. So there is that perspective of saying, “I can be more valuable to you, I’m very torn right now and this is a net positive in terms of my concentration level, in terms of my creativity, in terms of that idea of flow. For those periods, I will be working and thinking and doing things if I know I have this other time.” And it is an education process. You have to prove that. Once an employer sees that, that should be what matters.

Nancy 21:16

Another angle I thought about is employee development.

Just a little backstory, we had a friend over to sit on the patio in masks and talk, of course, from six feet away. He heads up a nonprofit here in the Bay Area, and he’s about to leave on a nine week sabbatical. This is company policy that you can take, I think it’s seven weeks, and then he had extra vacation. So they’re gone for nine weeks.

He said, “There’s two really bad periods for me to leave the company. So I chose one of them.” Because, he said, “I wanted to make sure that the people who are covering for me get this opportunity” – the timing relates to their board meetings. He said, “This way, my team is the one presenting to the board, and they get face time with the board.” He said, “I told them, I’m not going to be available.” He’s doing all the prep work with them, of course. But once he’s gone, he’s gone.

And he sees it as a developmental opportunity for them, which I thought was an interesting way to look at it, and probably makes it more relatable to his team that he’s going to be gone during this crunch period.

Lisette 22:16

Actually, I didn’t mention that earlier when you’re asking about the time needed to plan. But with business owners and really with employees as well, that is part of the planning, prepping the people for when you’re away and doing little test runs of that, in terms of either client service or production or however your business is running. So that both you and they have a sense of confidence. The whole goal is that this becomes a positive experience for both. You don’t want to be derailing something. So that’s part of why that lead up is so important, so that you can kind of test things a little bit.

Nancy 22:56

And make sure you’re not leaving anybody in the lurch.

Do you see a growing push for a Midlife Gap Year or the concept of a Midlife Gap Year as we’ve kind of defined it? It can be a little bit midlife gap day, once a week, once a month. But just this idea of taking some breaks from your work while you’re still an active employee or an active business owner so that you don’t burn out when you’re 55 and wish that you could quit tomorrow. Are more people talking about it?

Lisette 23:24

Yeah, I think to the way you phrased it earlier – when we discuss with people who are not on board taking time off and I think it’s very relatable. There are always going to be some people that are just adventurers and would do this with or without a guide and are already thinking about their life in a nonlinear way and just kind of take what comes.

Nancy 23:46

I was going to say, I was just reading about a guy who’s kayaking from the Bay Area to Hawaii. Good luck. I’m not doing that.

Lisette 23:52

I read that too.

Nancy 23:53

It’s a nightmare.

Lisette 23:54

I was thinking that seems really hard. Not that much fun for me.

Nancy 24:00

I’ll be here on the couch watching your updates. Good luck.

Lisette 24:03

But that is his choice and good for him. Everyone likes the concept and there are some people that would do it anyway.

But I think there is some education needed. Because you do what you see, and your parents had retirement or a life where they worked for 40 years and then retired at 65 and then didn’t work at all. It’s gradual. I guess I would say people know that work is changing, that people don’t have one job for 40 years. But the implications of longer lifespan and healthier lifespans take a minute for people to realize. That means maybe they can change things or take a break.

In midlife the other reality is you’re worried if you take time off, can you get back on track?

Nancy 24:54

Some Gen Z is going to take your job. Skip right over the Millennials and go to the TikTok generation.

Lisette 25:01

No one wants that. There’s some risk involved and I think part of getting people more comfortable with this and getting people to understand that it’s a possibility.

It’s not that it’s without risk. It’s not that it’s without tradeoffs. But those may be risks that you’re willing to take, because almost certainly one of them is you may have to work longer. You have to be willing to accept that.

Nancy 25:27

But as you said, part of healthy aging, ironically – it seems to me and from everything I’ve read is working longer, or at least having something with purpose… I always look at this anecdotally with my parents. My dad retired at 55, which, I am almost his age, I cannot even imagine retiring. I don’t know what set of life circumstances would have to happen between now and my birthday on Friday for that to happen.

But he then got super involved in volunteer work and he did that for 30 more years. Then I see people who retire and don’t have that sense of purpose every day, the volunteer job or the second job, the Meaningful Retirement, and they seem to go downhill a lot faster.

So when I think about working longer, I just would like to encourage you guys to not see that necessarily as bad, if you’re choosing the work or if you’re happy with the work or if you have more flexibility.

For me, I’ll be a writer forever. I just want to be able to take a trip when I want to take a trip and not ask anybody’s permission. That’s my definition of happy retirement. I will work forever. When I say need to go somewhere, I want you to let me.

Lisette 26:35

That’s really an ideal overall, to make work optional, like, yes, I do want to work, but if I can’t, or don’t want to, I don’t want to have to.

Just in looking at clients I’ve had over the years, some people are bad at retirement. Some people who are really good at their job and really get a lot of satisfaction from their job, even if it’s not a job full of what other people might consider “purpose”, but they were good at it. That alone is very satisfying, and then when they don’t have that it’s not a good outcome. As you were saying – they go downhill in terms of just their mental faculties and trying to replace that.

The idea of building your life in chapters instead of taking these breaks along the way, I think it will become something more acceptable and just more traditional almost in the future. But right now, it’s in the middle of bridging what people consider traditional retirement and what people are actually experiencing once they hit their retirement age.

Nancy 27:45

We’ll leave it to GenX. We’ll make it popular. That’s what we do. We didn’t invent hip hop, but we perfected it. We didn’t invent music videos, but we perfected them. So we’ll work on this. Right, you guys? Everybody’s going to get together.

Lisette 27:56

Learn from the mistakes of Baby Boomers. I think there’s enough of them out there telling us what to do. I think when we see these people in their 70s that are still looking for things to do because they’ve retired… maybe we plan in a different way.

Nancy 28:12

Alright, Lisette Smith from The Advisory Group. We’re going to be back in a minute because I want to talk about your Midlife Gap Year. But first a word from our sponsor.

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Yes, that’s right, Midlife Mixtape has a sponsor specializing in music videos and if there were ever a more appropriate pairing my GenX listeners I do not know what that could be.

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And of course I had to rate everything I watched – is Sabotage by the Beastie Boys better than Work It by Missy Elliot? Do I agree with the Number One choice? Tell you what, I did last week, but I don’t today, because people are voting and things are in FLUX.

Get over to MusicVideosRanked.com, and make your votes heard! MusicVideosRanked.com – check it out!

[MUSIC]

Alright, we’re back with Lisette Smith of The Advisory Group talking about Midlife Gap Years and I wondered, Lisette, how is this personal to you? Have you taken a Midlife Gap Year? You mentioned that you did. Tell us all about it.

Lisette 29:26

I did take a midlife, oh, I’ll call it a Midlife Gap Year. It was a lot messier than the ones I’m trying to plan for other people now.

Nancy 29:36

That’s okay. It gives us permission to be messy. That’s good.

Lisette 29:38

When I was in my early mid-40s, I had a financial advisory practice with a partner and I’d really been an advisor for 20 years or more. I have one son, he was in middle school. My mother had just passed away. The story is all this time about midlife.

Nancy 30:01

Midlife, it’s so great.

Lisette 30:03

So I really was feeling burned out. We ended up selling our business. My business partner had two young children. So for other reasons, she felt burnt out, and we ended up selling that practice at the time.

In retrospect and as I’m dealing with other business owners now, I wonder if there would have been a way to solve that burnout and still keep the business. I’m happy with how it all played out I think. It all happened for a reason. But in retrospect, I wonder about that.

So what I did with my time is reassessing things: “Is this what I want to do for my whole life? I would like to spend more time with my son before he’s out of the house.” During my time off, we trained and became foster parents. Part of it was wanting to give back.

Nancy 30:58

Wow.

Lisette 30:59

My husband and I did that and that was very rewarding. It was hard and very challenging – not because of him, but because of the system. But it was a way we could give back and that’s something that other people like to do with their Gap Year or to help reassess. Then I also trained for a new career as a mediator.

I had been an arbitrator within the financial world and so I liked this idea of being a neutral party in helping people resolve conflict and I thought that would be very rewarding. And it was, but it was different than I thought it was going to be, in that I realized that I really enjoy longer term interactions. When you’re mediator, you’re parachuting when people are having conflict. So you see people at their worst, and then you see a lot of triage and then you extricate yourself.

Honestly, I just realized over this period that I was a better advisor than I was a mediator. I like guiding people, not really having them figure out what to do. That was a career change and the time off to regroup was a little over a year and then I had a different career for four or five years.

Nancy 32:20

We’re talking about the guide you’ve written. Where is the best place for people to go to get the Midlife Gap Year guide, and I will include a link in the show notes too. But in case somebody is just listening and doesn’t have a pen, where should they go?

Lisette 32:31

It’s at advisorygroupsf.com. So the SF is like in San Francisco and the guide is just on the homepage. You can request the guide.

Nancy 32:42

Great, and it’s got a lot of great information in it. I was telling Lisette before we started recording, it came across the transom from the journalism stuff that I do. At the time, I was like, “I am very interested in this. I have no idea what it is. I’m going to open it and read at some point,” and thank God, her PR person followed up and said, “Hey, do you want to talk to the author of that guide?” I’m like, “Yes, I do. I’ve been waiting to have time to connect to her.” So definitely a lot of good resources within.

Lisette 33:13

Thank you.

Nancy 33:14

Lisette, let me ask you, do you envision another Gap Year coming up? Do you have another Gap Year in use or something you would want to do to reset, retool, explore if you were given another chance to do it? Is your son out of the house now?

Lisette 33:28

He is.

Nancy 33:29

When I say out of the house, like, old enough to be out of the house. Everybody’s in the house. I know.

Lisette 33:33

Yes, he has graduated from college now. He is self-sufficient. Well, actually, our firm offers sabbaticals. So that is a way to regroup without having to plan a full year off. I’m not positive. I’m going to leave that an open question.

Nancy 33:54

How great though to have wide open landscapes to think about. I think now I know what your idea is, it’s to go to outdoor concert venues. That’s what your next sabbatical is going to be about.

Lisette 34:05

I am going to think about developing that…

Nancy 34:08

Call me as a focus group.

Lisette 34:11

We can see what we can do on that.

Nancy 34:12

“Andrew, I need to leave for a while. I’m going on a research trip with Lisette. I’ll be back in a year.” Alright, so we always close the podcast with one final question and maybe already answered this. But what one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Lisette 34:30

Oh, I think the best advice I have received and continue to receive – because I don’t take it that well –  is to worry less about things.

I think that is a little bit what this guide is about, is to try to get people to take risks without worrying about what will happen, kind of give them a little safety net about that. Because I know it is really not constructive to be a worrier, and it’s a big joy suck. But things are going to happen whether you’re worried or not. So I try to take that advice, and I try to help people worry less.

Nancy 35:05

It is such hard work to not worry.

Lisette 35:06

It really is.

Nancy 35:07

We’ve all told her friends that, we’ve all been told that by our friends at various times, right?

We all fall into this trap, if we are human and looking around us and halfway conscious of what’s going on, and especially if we have either older or younger loved ones who we’re concerned about. It’s so hard to not worry, but it is such a good goal to have. I would just leave it that way.

I always try to tell myself that whether or not I worry has NO impact on the outcome of this scenario. That’s the only thing that works for me, because that can shake me out if it: spend your time differently, because you’re not helping or hurting the situation sitting in the corner and worrying about it.

Lisette 35:47

Actually since we’re in the Midlife Mixtape, you probably know this old Dire Straits song called “Why Worry.”

Nancy 35:56

Love it.

Lisette 35:57

It’s really good.

Nancy 35:58

I always put a video with every episode. So thanks for just picking the video that will go with this one.

Lisette 36:04

Oh, good. I’m glad I could help. It’s great. It’s a good little something to listen to.

Nancy 36:10

Why worry? Spend your time daydreaming about your Midlife Gap Year, however, that’s going to look for you.

I think it’s a really great idea and I know a lot of us are not able to step away for a year from our responsibilities, but just thinking along the lines of, “How would I do it? What’s the thing that would help me get back in flow? What kind of temporary restructuring could I achieve so that I’m happy to keep working for as long as I’m probably going to have to work?” I think it’s worth thinking about and talking about with your family and talking about with your friends. Maybe we can brainstorm some interesting ways through this because we’re smart. We’re GenX, we figure shit out.

Alright, Lisette Smith from The Advisory Group, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your expertise. I hope everybody will go download the Midlife Gap Year guide. Let me know what you thought and Lisette, thanks so much for being here.

Lisette 37:02

Thank you, Nancy. I really enjoyed it.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 37:07

So just for kicks, I asked on the Midlife Mixtape Facebook page the other day what YOUR Gap Year plans would be. First off, NO, what we have just survived is NOT a Gap Year, even if it involved you spending days in your pajamas. We are talking about a real Gap Year like Lisette described – to reset, to regroup, to find our flow again.

When asked what you’d do for a Gap Year, by FAR and away, the number one goal is travel. Travel to ancestral homelands, like Elaine, travel to the sets for Downton Abbey, like Denise, travel to Iceland to do yoga and writing, like Mari. Jessica struck a nerve when she suggested travelling “to places where people make dinner for me, make my bed, and mix me martinis or buckets of coffee.” She’s now going to be doing that travel in a pack of at least 15 other Midlife Mixtapers. All in matching caftans.

There were also creative and altruistic goals, like Grenold who wants to put out an album, Val who wants to volunteer at marine reserves around the world, and Rachel, who wants to learn the pastry arts in Paris and Vienna – I told her I’m happy to come along as a taster.

And finally, a lot of us are just really, really tired and want to sleep, or finally organize our clutter or our mountain of photos or our kitchen cabinets. Thank you Representative GenXers for keeping it real.

So let me know if today’s episode gave you any ideas of how you could actually achieve your goals! Drop me a line at dj@midlifemixtape.com, or send me a message via Instagram, FB, and Twitter  @midlifemixtape.

Thanks so much for listening, everyone, and have a wonderful week!

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

The post Ep 98 Midlife Gap Year Advocate Lisette Smith appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

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Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 97 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on May 11, 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 dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

Christopher Dennis 00:01

You know what? Everybody needs to understand and have a little grace. So I try to exercise that in my work today. There are challenging moments, obviously…

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]

00:34

This episode of The Midlife Mixtape Podcast is brought to you by Audible.

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[MUSIC]

Hi there people of the dual cassette boom box! I’m Nancy Davis Kho, creator and host of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast and author of The Thank-You Project. If you used to wash down your Bubble Yum with a Tab, maybe flip through your Wacky Packs to see if you got the Free Toes card, this is the podcast for YOU.

I hope all of you who are moms had a wonderful Mother’s Day, and if it was a hard day for you for any reason, I’m sending you a big squeeze too. This is the first year I don’t have anyone to send a Mother’s Day card to and I knew it would be weird, and it was. Holidays, man. They’re complicated.

But I had today’s episode to look forward to and I’m so excited for you to hear it. Before I get to it I’m going make a request – if you happen to listen to this show via Apple podcasts, on your iPhone – would you consider writing a review? I haven’t had any new reviews up there in AGES so if you haven’t written one yet, I’m hoping you’ll consider it – makes it so much easier for potential listeners to join the party here.

Throughout the pandemic I’ve been fascinated by the ways in which this horrible awful no-good very bad time has supercharged innovation and sped up solutions to longstanding problems– whether in getting a vaccine into arms in record time, or moving homeless people into hotels, or making online learning more effective. And nowhere has that been more apparent than in the way performing arts organizations have pivoted and morphed.

My guest today knows a thing or two about pivoting – although in his world that’s referred to as “pirouetting”. Christopher Dennis is currently in his tenth season as the Production Director for the San Francisco Ballet, and has been working in the performing arts industry for over 20 years. Prior to his relocation to the Bay Area, he served as the Resident Lighting Designer and Lighting Coordinator at The National Ballet of Canada for 14 seasons.

As Production Director, Christopher sits on the Executive Team and manages 4 labor unions. In addition, he oversees all of the technical logistics on major tours both nationally and internationally to all parts of the world including, but not limited to, Copenhagen, New York, Italy, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai, Washington, D.C. and Sun Valley Idaho. Most recently he was Executive Producer for San Francisco Ballet’s 88th Virtual Gala Season and their 2021 Digital Season’s dance films COLOFROMS by Myles Thatcher and Wooden Dimes by Daniel Rowe.

Let’s turn down the houselights and tune in to what Christopher has to say.

[MUSIC]

Nancy

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Christopher Dennis! I’m so pleased to have you here today.

Christopher 04:16

Oh it’s my pleasure to be here. Thank you for asking.

Nancy 04:18

I know you’ve got a lot of wisdom to share with this audience of folks “in the years between being hip and breaking one”. So I’m excited to learn more about your work. But we always start the podcast with one critical question: Christopher, what was your first concert and what were the circumstances?

Christopher 04:33

My very first concert was The Jacksons and it wasn’t the Jackson 5,  but it was the Jacksons. At that time, I think it was all six brothers. I don’t even want to try to name them again.

Nancy

TITO!

Christopher

But it was Tito, Marlon, Randy, Jackie, Jermaine, and Michael.

Nancy 04:56

I think you got it.

Christopher 04:57

I got them all right. It was the Jacksons and it was the destiny tour that they did, which I don’t know if that’s the last tour they ever did together. But it was one of the biggest tours that they did together and that was my very, very first big tour. And circumstances? It’s hard to say. I was young.

Nancy 05:18

How young?

Christopher 05:19

I must have been in my early teens. I believe it was my aunt who got the tickets for myself and my brother and my cousin. I’m from Toronto, Canada so it was at the outdoor venue called the CNE Grandstand and for any of you Canadians who lived in Toronto at that time, the CNE Grandstand at the time was this very cool stage. But looking back, it was this portable stage that literally rolled out onto the baseball field.

Nancy 05:46

We all had lower expectations in the ‘70s, though. That kind of thing was still impressive.

Christopher 05:51

Yeah, it was very impressive. I just remember seeing that concert. Michael Jackson was in his heyday with his brothers. At that time, there wasn’t a lot of major black tours happening. They were one of the biggest at the time. As someone of color and living in Canada, and a tour of that nature rolled in with the headliner, Michael Jackson, the Jacksons, it was pretty special. Pretty impressive. It was fantastic.

Nancy 06:21

Do you think it had anything to do with you deciding to work in entertainment and working in such a creative field?

Christopher 06:28

Well, at that time, I was in my early DJing stage. I used to DJ a lot. So it was a great way to make income, go to parties, meet a lot of great people. My brother and I and some friends, we were DJs. My father was a DJ on a part time level. So music has always been an instrumental part of my life, and through DJing, and its technical aspects of audio and if you wanted to step it up, lighting, it was kind of my first introduction to sort of putting on as a DJ… especially in today’s world, these guys make millions of dollars compared to what was going on back in my day. But it was one of the stepping stones into the performing world, playing music and going to concerts and stuff like that.

Nancy 07:16

For those of you who don’t live in the Bay Area, you may not know that the San Francisco Ballet performs at the War Memorial Opera House, which is just a stunning piece of architecture directly across from our gold domed City Hall. It is a really special place to see ballet, of course, but it’s also an amazing place to see the rare rock concert because every once in a while, there’ll be an act that actually performs at this majestical symphony like hall.

I wondered, Christopher, did you get to go to those shows? In the Before Times, when there were shows, did you ever go to any of those? Or were you involved in them? I’m wondering if there are any that really stood out to you.

Christopher 07:57

No, I’ve been in the Bay Area just over 10 years now and the majority of my time spent in the Opera House is working on ballet. Then the few times that I went to the Opera House NOT to work on ballet was to go see an opera. Because when the ballet is not there, it’s the opera. So there’s very small windows at least in my time here for other bands or concerts or events to happen in there.

Nancy 08:26

I’m going to flex for a minute, Christopher because in 2008, I got to see David Byrne perform.* That was the first time I’d ever seen him perform and it was bonkers. It was a great, great show. It was so weird because you’re sitting there nicely dressed in these beautiful chairs and he’s up on stage. That’s what made it cool was just kind of the juxtaposition of the rock music in the hall. But at the end of this terrific, amazing show, the back doors open and from the lobby marches the Extra Action Marching Band, which is San Francisco’s own homegrown, kind of burlesque, kind of steampunk, very raunchy marching band, and they accompanied him on burning down the house. I’m pretty sure the Opera House levitated about six inches off of Van Ness Avenue in that moment.

Christopher 09:19

Well, that explains why it’s still kind of off kilter some days.

Nancy 09:23

That explains why they were like, “We don’t like concerts anymore. The Marching Band scared us.”

Well, talking about your work at the ballet, Christopher, let’s start by talking a little bit about what your role is as production director. What exactly do you do on a day-to-day basis?

Christopher 09:41

Well, I tell some people: on a day-to-day basis, I manage egos.

Nancy 09:46

How’s that go?

Christopher 09:49

I’m still writing a book on that. But in all seriousness, as the production director for the ballet, I work closely with the artistic department and I basically manage a department that is responsible for providing all of the production elements you see on stage: from sets, costumes, lighting, hair, makeup, pointe shoes that the dancers wear, their costumes, the floor they dance on. Anything technical that you see on stage falls under my purview.

With that, I have a fantastic team of individuals who help me manage all of those things. I oversee the whole project, or all of the ballets, from a production standpoint, but I work closely with the artistic director in ensuring the needs of the production. We’re kind of like a service department in that respect. I do tell people sometimes it’s like being a project manager. You’re told, “Here’s the ballet that we want to do,” and then I work with my team to manage all the expectations, from A to Z, to get us from the rehearsal to opening night performance.

Nancy 11:00

It seems to me that if you and your team do your job well, then we will never think of you. We will never have cause to notice anything but the art.

Christopher 11:08

Correct. It is one of those things that when the production itself runs flawlessly, which is what we aim for all the time, patrons leave there in awe, and it means we’ve transformed their world. We’ve provided something that was truly magical. And yes, if things don’t go right, you’ll definitely notice it.

Nancy 11:35

Right. You talked about how you got your early start as a DJ. Was this kind of the direction you always thought you would go to ballet in particular? I’m curious how you ended up in working in the ballet world.

Christopher 11:47

Well, it’s an interesting story. DJing was just a passion and love. But back in the day, especially in the early ‘80s, I never thought of DJing as a career. When I look at where DJs are today, clearly there’s a handful that are doing exceptional things. But it was a hobby. It was a way to make money and just like I said, my love for music.

But just as equally, or just as important was architecture. I had a real passion for drawing and architecture and so through school, especially in my early high school years, I was really focused on, “I want to become an architect, I want to design, I want to construct.” So I had a real affinity for that. I just loved the technicality of drawing and lettering, and the preciseness and the detail. So I thought, “I think I’d like to be an architect,” and then college was coming up.

Unfortunately, math wasn’t my strongest and it was one of those things that you needed to have a pretty strong background in math. But I enjoyed the artistry, and not so much the math around it. But it was still important.

To make a long story short, architectural school, at least at that time, seemed like a huge hurdle. I sort of pivoted to the world of theater, where I thought I could still take this passion of architecture, and performing and stuff like that, and design for the theater for stage and design sets. I thought there’s a real relationship there with architecture, and it’s not a permanent one, either because in architecture when you’re designing a building, it’s for…

Nancy 13:34

Hopefully, it’s going to stay up for a while. You want that.

Christopher 13:36

Yeah, whereas theater, it’s not permanent. It’s very temporary. I applied to theater school in Canada, more specifically, the technical theatre production program. I went to Ryerson University in Canada. That’s where I studied technical production and in doing so, like many courses that people take, whether it’s art, being a lawyer, or a doctor, or whatever it is, when you want to focus on something, you’re also introduced to a number of related subjects that sort of help and shape where it is you’re heading.

In going to theater school and wanting to design for scenery, I was introduced to stage management, prop building, carpentry, and lighting. So all of these different facets that helped put a production on and I went in there headstrong: “Set design is the only thing I want to do. I don’t care about props. I don’t care about costumes. I don’t care about anything. I just want to design sets.” As a student, you start to focus on the things that you want to do. I worked closely with the set design instructor, assisted him on many of the school productions.

But while working on set design and studying in school, lighting design was another one of the courses that I took, and I was really actually fascinated and also enjoyed it. It seemed to come natural. I actually ended up having to work harder in the profession of set design because there were things that I didn’t anticipate, just in terms of some of the research and stuff like that. Going back to taking the lighting design courses, and understanding light and color, and the impact that has, I remember doing an assignment where we had to listen to music, which, once again, going back to my DJ, I love.

Nancy 15:29

You were real sad about that assignment.

Christopher 15:33

Yeah, we had to listen to music. Then we had to pick colors and sort of create a mood with lighting that interpreted the music. I was just like, I love this exercise, right? It just was a natural thing. I didn’t work as hard and that’s not to say, oh, this was easy, but I just enjoyed it so much that it didn’t feel like hard work, as opposed to set design, which is what I really wanted to do.

All that to say, I did my lighting assignments, and I enjoyed it. I focused on my set design and in my graduating year, that was when the school puts together a production and the graduating students and other students from the different years come together. It’s a student based production. Doing all set design the whole time, I just assumed I’m going to design the set for the mainstage show, like, this is a no brainer. What else? Everybody knows, right? Because I said it. In the school, there’s a call board. It’s kind of like auditioning for a show to see what part you got and I look at the call board and it says, “Christopher Dennis- lighting design for choreographic dance works” and I went, “WHAT?”

Nancy 16:56

So Ryerson basically picked your career for you.

Christopher 17:00

I was like, “What is going on here?” I was so livid.

I marched upstairs to the production manager who was a faculty member who put the assignments together said, “Peter, what is going on here? Why am I not doing a set design? Why am I doing a lighting design?” He said, “Well, your instructor in lighting thought you’d be good at this and this is something that you should do.” I was like, “What?” Okay, well, I’m not happy about this but I’m going to do.

I was assigned the lighting design for the choreographic workshop, which entailed eight or nine different works choreographed by student choreographers. As I started to do the work and work with the choreographers – once again, in dance, the choreographers are inspired by a piece of music and then they create their choreography based on the music, or at least the music leads the steps. It’s a very abstract world. In going back to the assignment that I had with the music and the lighting, this still appeared to be like, Okay, I can do this. It wasn’t what I envisioned myself doing right now. I should have been designing a set but I can do this.

Nancy 18:23

I want to go back to Christopher of that year and go, “Just let it go with the set design. Move on.”

Christopher 18:29

Ultimately, I did let it go. I have to tell you, it was an amazing experience. I earned a whole other level of respect for dance. I actually just really embraced it and enjoyed it so much because of the artistic freedom that I had. As a lighting designer, you truly support and bring the visual support to the dance and that just really resonated with me in a way that I didn’t anticipate in my career.

Then literally my first job out of college was working for a small ballet company back home in Canada. I got my fair share. I was the technical director, set designer, lighting designer, prop. I did everything. It was jack of all trades because it was a small company and they couldn’t afford to have all the various people working in those disciplines. But the number one reason for actually working with the ballet company was because I knew I was going to design lighting and doing all the other elements of what they asked me to was just a means to an end. It was just like, I’m going to design dance. But if I design it, what do I need to do? Oh, you want me to stage manage, build the scenery, the props. I ended up having to do a number of different things, of course with other individuals, but I was responsible.

What’s interesting is my very first job out of college was a technical director for a small ballet company. It was like six or seven dancers where I had to manage all the different aspects of the company’s production. And now you fast forward to here we are today, many years later and I am now the production director of a major ballet company.

Nancy 20:10

It’s interesting having had that job, I assume in your 20s and now I also assume in your 40s, somewhere in that middle sector: how do you think you approach it differently as someone who is older and wiser?

Christopher 20:22

I think what it’s allowed me to do is be a little bit even more open and receptive and patient with people’s understanding of what they want to do. It’s also helped me bring them along in what they want to do. I have a much better understanding and appreciation as to the kinds of questions I need to ask in order to get them to where they want to be and also patience. Some days I fall short, but also a better understanding and patience for people’s learning curve.

I remember in my earlier lighting design years, I was the assistant for many productions, and then I was given an opportunity to design a show. Through this process, as an assistant, I was working with the top designers, assisting them, and they had the top crews. And then when I was given my opportunity as a lighting designer as the assistant, I wasn’t given the same level of crew. The individuals I was given, they weren’t as skilled and I was upset because they were making mistakes and I really kind of just blew up. When I say blow up, I don’t really get upset. But I felt like Hey, what’s going on? How come they can’t do what it is I’m asking?

The stage manager pulled me over and said, “Hey, they’re learning just like you are right now,” and I was just like, Alright. I had to be told because at that time, I was, like, I’m designing. They should know because I’ve watched their people know. That was a valuable lesson that to myself in my head, I was just like, You know what? Everybody needs to understand and have a little grace and so I try to exercise that in my work today. There are challenging moments, obviously, just because of the level at which we work at. There are expectations now that are much greater and for all the right reasons too.

Nancy 22:18

There is a kind of generosity that can come with having been through it yourself and looking back and saying, I remember how it felt in that role and I’m going to make it as easy for the person going through that as possible.

Christopher 22:31

By making it easy, it’s just not kind of turning a blind eye, but just making sure you’re asking the right questions and figuring out what is it that I need to support and just listening just to understand the fullness of everything. I think as a production director, and over my years of doing this work, because people look to you for the answers and sometimes in a very short amount of time, you’re making a lot of quick decisions. So it’s having that discerning eye, that discerning ear where you’re listening for specific things, you’re looking at specific things, and you’re making the decision on that spot.

Nancy 23:07

I have to tell you, there is no comparison in any world between this but it just reminded me… Our girls danced at Oakland Ballet School for 10 years and my husband volunteered backstage for the Nutcracker every year. He characterized it as “stretches of utter boredom punctuated with moments of extreme terror”. When the bear needed the bouquet to go on stage, if you don’t have that bouquet ready… and this was a commercial banker backstage just trying to do his best and try not to screw everything up for the kids. I always thought that was hilarious.

Christopher 23:43

That level of pressure actually becomes tenfold when you go on tour and you’re now given less than half the time you would normally be given to put a production onstage in a country where English is not the first language.

Nancy 23:58

Oh, my gosh.

Christopher 23:59

My career once again has taught me to figure out how to communicate so we can get what we need done.

Nancy 24:07

I can’t even imagine the challenge that comes with that, but exciting too, I suppose.

Christopher 24:10

Absolutely.

Nancy 24:14

We have to talk about how the pandemic has impacted SFB. Obviously, like many arts organizations, you could not do the thing that you were there to do, which is to entertain people in person. Can you talk a little bit about how San Francisco Ballet has adapted to be able to continue delivering beautiful ballet to its patrons? I’m really curious to know if there are things that you were kind of forced to do over the past 14 months that turned out to be something that you think will continue going forward. I think a lot of us are like, “Oh, I never would have started doing this thing had it not been for the pandemic and now I’m going to keep doing that.” Curious to know how that lands for you.

Christopher 24:55

The performing arts and the world of entertainment has really taken a hit with this, especially the live performances.

From the ballet’s perspective, once we understood COVID and of course, in learning about this, San Francisco Ballet was I believe one of the first arts organizations in the country to be shut down. Because we were opening night of a performance and all of a sudden boom, we were told this was our last performance, and the next day, there would be no show. At that time, when that information came down, and everybody was understanding, there’s this disease, there’s this pandemic, nobody anticipated the length of how long this was going to be. We thought, “Ah, we’ll be out for two weeks,” and then we thought, “Ah, maybe another two weeks.” And then two weeks turned into two months.

I guess when it became really abundantly clear was when all the shelter in place orders came in and we realized that nothing’s happening and it won’t be happening for a long time. Obviously, our development team kicked in and put together a huge fundraising efforts: the critical relief fund, so that we could keep people working, keep the doors open as we continue to try to figure out what our next steps were.

Knowing that revenue wasn’t going to come in, we wanted to keep the workforce happening. Still, it was just a real challenging time.

But I think once we understood, and it became clear what we needed to do, which was to somehow keep the dancers in shape, and keep them rehearsing so that if and when we’re called back to duty, so to speak, they’ll be ready to go. In doing so, one of the first things that we needed to actually get together was a sort of permission from the Department of Health to allow our dancers to rehearse. Because if the dancers aren’t rehearsing, we’re not going to be able to do anything.

Nancy 26:50

I was thinking about that because we talk a lot on this show about concerts and going to indie music venues, and all that stuff. Those artists can perform. Of course, it’s not the same thing. But they can stream a concert, but you cannot do a pas de deux by yourself. Can’t do that from home.

Christopher 27:04

You can’t. Of course, there were weeks where dancers were doing class, which is their conditioning as any athlete does. They would do their class in their kitchen or their bedroom, and it was all done through Zoom. We figured out how to get a teacher and a piano all through Zoom, and that people could log in from their home, and take ballet class so that they continue to stay in shape.

Although it was exciting and sort of innovative to figure out how to do this, it started to wear thin because athletes don’t train in their homes. They need to be in a facility that allows them to do the things they do: whether you play basketball, football, or whatever sport, and ballet is no exception. The dancers needed to be in their space.

So a taskforce was put together to figure it out. The first step was to get the dancers back into studios and so a lot of research was being done, some consultation. Then ultimately, we put together a proposal to the Department of Health using some of the guidelines and information from what professional teams were doing, and putting it together in a way that lends itself to what we do in the ballet world, and put together a proposal to the Department of Health so that the dancers could at least take class in the studios.

Nancy 28:36

When was that? When did you get that clearance at least?

Christopher 28:39

I want to say it was in August that we got clearance for them to do class together, or at least have class in the studio. Once we got approval for class – they were masked, all the protocols, temperature checking all of those things and we actually had to mark out the studio with like, I think it was 12-foot boxes. Basically, we couldn’t accommodate the full company the way we would normally do for a class. So we offered like a series of dance classes for the dances throughout the day, so that people could come in and actually physically be in a studio and be able to move and jump and do the things that they would normally do.

With those protocols, they literally had to come prepared in their ballet rehearsal outfits. They were given a section to put their bags down. They would take class, and they’d literally pick up their bags and they’d walk out the building. There was no locker rooms. There was no showers. There was nothing. They entered through one door exited throughout the other door.

So we started to put in these protocols just to get them in a position to at least condition and take class. As that was happening for a while, we realized that, “We’re not going to be able to perform for live audiences.” It became clear that we needed to offer a digital option. At that time, the word “pivot” was the cool word. I think when people hear it now they are like, If I hear that word one more time, I’m going to lose my mind. But at that time, the idea was to figure out how we can capture what we do. There was a combination of what can we capture and more importantly, what did we have in our vaults? What about the archives? What did we have that we could actually package in and start to distribute to the public so we can just stay relevant in people’s minds?

We’re very fortunate that we do a lot of archival captures, and those captures – as the word says, archives, they’re an archival capture of our performances that are used primarily for teaching purposes. So the captures are done really well, but they were never intended for public viewing.

But because we had a library of ballets that are archived and that were relatively new, like, had been done in the last two years… we had to get permission from our different unions, like musicians, dancers, crew, and even designers, special permission that we stream these videos just to stay relevant. We weren’t even charging people. The artistic director Helgi Tomasson curated, “Here are the videos I’d like for us to show at different times.” We would send that to our audiences.

Oh, I forgot to mention. I can’t believe I forgot this! Right after we were told that we weren’t able to perform anymore after our opening night of Midsummer –  not knowing how soon we were able to perform again, we all rallied together and we actually did a capture of Midsummer.

Nancy 32:01

Midsummer Night’s Dream, not the horror movie Midsommar that my family watched recently. That one doesn’t play so well in a ballet.

Christopher 32:09

That’s right. Everybody rallied together and through our partnership with the San Francisco Opera, they have a very lovely media suite that’s built into the Opera House, meaning there’s built in cameras, and a full editing suite, all the equipment was already there. We actually did, I think, an eight-camera capture of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Then we edited it and then we released it, probably like a week or so after we had been shut down. It was sent to those individuals who already were paying customers to see Midsummer.

That was actually our first sort of How do we do this? Everybody was on board because of what had happened and everybody wanted to do the right thing. But of course, at that time, we didn’t think what we were doing was going to be not only the right thing, but the ONLY thing we were going to be able to do for the unforeseen future. We knew that our season was approaching, and we did receive word that it doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to do Nutcracker. In knowing that, we just realized, well, if we’re not going to do Nutcracker, it’s highly unlikely we’re going to be performing for the rest of the season.

Nancy 33:29

The season runs from?

Christopher 33:31

January to May.

Nancy 33:32

That’s pandemic. That’s right in the middle of it.

Christopher 33:35

That was right in the middle of the pandemic. The planning team just got together and we started to think about, how are we going to do this, and what do we want to do? Ultimately, we had a capture of the Nutcracker that was shot with PBS in 2009, or something. The company did a really nice capture that we then used for streaming purposes for Nutcracker.

Nancy 34:03

Just to be clear, the audience could purchase. It’s just the same as streaming anything else. You can buy your ticket, and you can stream it onto your TV at home.

Christopher 34:18

Correct. There was a platform put together to do Nutcracker specifically. It was packaged lovely by the marketing department so that although you couldn’t come to the Opera House, we could bring the Nutcracker to your house. There was a whole marketing plan and packaging around that and while that was being prepared, we really started to plan about what the rest of our rep seasons going to look like.

Helgi Tomasson had two new ballets planned for the stage and so he thought it would be great to capture those two ballets instead, and they’ll be packaged with archives of other ballets that we had planned on doing live. We were going to package three new films alongside our existing archives. He talked to the choreographers, Danny Rowe who did Wooden Dimes, Myles Thatcher who did Colorforms and Cathy Marston, who did Mrs. Robinson, and they were all excited about the idea of filming their work. I wouldn’t say we struggled, but we had to go back and forth, like, “Are we capturing what they would normally do on stage? Or are we creating an essence of dance film?” Boy, did we learn a lot. Ultimately, we ended up creating dance films, and not just a stage capture, like what we did with Midsummer Night’s Dream when we were closing because of the pandemic.

Nancy 35:51

I love going to SFB, but it was not always easy to get there. The way the season is program. There’s programs one through what? Eight?

Christopher 36:01

Eight.

Nancy 36:02

Each program has usually three dances and if I made two programs, I felt like that was good. Coming over from Oakland, working, it wasn’t always easy. We have watched every digital program so far, and the ones that absolutely had me city bolt upright were the dance films. Because in Colorforms, you had dancers dancing around the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and outdoors, and Wooden Dimes, I thought it was so incredibly creative and innovative. I still love the ones where one of the captures, so it felt like you were sitting in the Opera House watching the ballet. But I just thought, WOW. I hope you’ll continue to do that because I may still never be able to come to every program in person. But I would love to have the option to watch some version of it digitally. I think it’s such a cool way to bring in a wider audience and an audience that’s beyond the Bay Area.

Christopher 37:00

Absolutely. I think once again, this is one of the takeaways, happy accidents, however you want to position it that we’ve now developed an audience base watching ballet through digital means. With that said, the priority of the ballet is still to get on stage and be live. I think there’s nothing that beats that. But with that said, we’ve learned so much and I think everyone has a new appreciation for it.

I still think in the ballet world, it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. People do want that sort of in person relationship, emotionally, physically with the art form. I do miss it as well as from its live standpoint. But what was really great about working on the dance films, and with the choreographers, for the organization, we brought these two worlds of the world of film and the world of live performing arts together and we both learned from one another. We learned how to work with directors and cinematographers. They learned how to work with dancers in our sort of world, bringing the two worlds together to really hone in and view the world of dance through a lens.

Because you’re now directing what people are going to see and feel through film versus you coming in and watching the full stage, and you’re in control of where your head’s directed and how you’re looking at it. But in film, we’re giving you that direction where we’re telling you, “Here’s what you’re going to look at now, here’s what you’re going to look at now.” It’s a different relationship. It creates a different feeling. There was also concern about the length of how long some of these films were going to be, because to sit and watch 15 minutes of dance on film is different than watching it live and how that story gets translated and how does that feel, and do people have the capacity or the discipline to sit and watch something for 15 minutes of dance? Unless you’re a true bona fide dance lover, and even then I think that can feel really long.

The magic of film really gave us as a ballet company the opportunity to think differently about how we want to present dance in the future. It’s been embraced by so many. I know we’d like to do more. I think some of it might be project based. Our priority is definitely to get onstage and perform. But in doing that, and knowing the world is starting to feel a little better, we still need to have a contingency in our pocket around how we might kind of do both still. We just don’t know what audience behavior is going to be like, and we may need to be prepared to offer some level of digital.

We haven’t talked about it and like we’re going to do it for sure. But we are talking about it in terms of how do we do both. It’s interesting – if you look at some of the big movie houses, like Warner Brothers, they’re releasing movies to both cinema and to home streaming services because they’ve realized that not everybody’s going to go there, but we want people to see our films. Ultimately, COVID has accelerated things that were inevitably going to happen. It just happened much sooner.

Nancy 40:19

As an aside, it’s been a boon for me. Because it would not be cool for me during an actual ballet in the Opera House to lean over to my very knowledgeable daughter and say, “Who’s the girl on the right? Did I see her dancing something else? Isn’t she married to that other guy?” Because I have a lot of questions, Christopher. She knows the answers and she’ll be like, “Okay. Pause. Mom!” I like being able to ask questions.

Christopher 40:42

Absolutely.

Nancy 40:44

Alright. Well, we are coming up to the end of our time, but we always like to close the podcast with one important question, 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?

Christopher 40:57

The one piece of advice would be to continue to stay true to yourself with your goals and your dreams and don’t let anybody try to derail that, and just really continue to strive for what it is and who you want to be.

I know there was a time in going to school I was questioned, like, “I don’t know if this is for you.” It wasn’t even about set or lighting. It was just about, “I don’t know if this is for you,” and I was just like, “Whoa whoa whoa. That’s not your call. That’s my call.” When that conversation happened early in my career, I was like, “No, no, no, I’m going to do what I need to do to do this. But if I’m going to decide that I’m not going to do this, that’s because it’s my decision and not someone else thinking, ‘I don’t think this is for you.’” I tell that to my kids today, just continue to stay true to who you are, and do what you have to do, so you could do what you want to do.

Nancy 41:49

That’s great advice. I appreciate you sharing it with us. I appreciate you sharing your experience of this crazy time for the ballet, and I will look forward to seeing it in person myself. I really am grateful for your time today.

Christopher 42:04

Yeah, thank you. I’m happy that I could do this. I’m glad you invited me. I do hope everybody gets an opportunity to come see us when we’re back on stage.

Nancy 42:15

I’ll see you the next time David Byrne plays the Opera House too. You have to come there. I’ll buy us tickets.

Christopher 42:21

I’m a big fan, so that would be great. Maybe we could do a collaboration with David Byrne and the ballet. I think that would actually be better.

Nancy 42:29

I would be under my chair. I’m not sure I would be able to go! Like the Prince/Misty Copeland collaboration! We need more ballet and pop performers working together.

Christopher 42:39

We want to make it accessible. We want to broaden our audience and if it takes David Byrne or whoever…

Nancy 42:45

If you have to work with David Byrne, I guess you’d make that sacrifice. Is that what you’re saying? You’re such a giver. You’re a giver.

Christopher 42:52

I’m a giver. Absolutely.

Nancy 42:51

Alright. Thanks so much, Christopher.

Christopher 42:55

Thank you.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 43:00

Alright everyone – let’s visualize a David Byrne/SFB collaboration, shall we? I think if we all close our eyes and chant “This Must Be the Place” ten times, we’ll manifest it. Click your heels 10 times for good measure.

There are still a few programs left in the San Francisco Ballet’s digital season – just go to https://www.sfballet.org/tickets/2021-season/. You can stream them right into the comfort of your home! Program 5 wraps up tomorrow, May 12th, and then they’re finishing out the season with two story ballets – Romeo & Juliet, and Swan Lake. I believe in baseball that’s called sending in the cleanup hitters.

Let me know what you thought of today’s show! I love hearing from listeners – you can drop me a line at dj@midlifemixtape.com, or send me a message via Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @midlifemixtape. I don’t know if you listened to Episode 96 where we were sharing stories of the albums of our lives but one of the listeners wrote me the greatest email and let me know that she too was in Vienna same semester as me probably also walking down the Danube listening to Peter Gabriel So. It was really cool to make that connection

Join me next time when I speak with someone whose specialty is coaching midlifers into taking some time OFF. Do I have your attention now? Have a great week and thank you thank you thank you for making Midlife Mixtape a part of your audio landscape!

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

*Upon editing this episode it came to me suddenly: I didn’t see David Byrne at the Opera House, it was a Davies Symphony Hall next door! Forehead smack. And yet…I would give anything to see David Byrne collaborate with SFB so I’m holding my ground on that. ~Nancy

The post Ep 97 Ballet Production Director Christopher Dennis appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                Related StoriesEp 93 Har Mar SuperstarEp 96 Listeners’ “Still in Rotation” AlbumsEp 95 Nonprofit/FinTech Founder Tracey Milligan 

“Shouldn’t take a miracle”: Tracey Milligan, whose foundation provides services for victims of domestic violence, on hard work, serendipity, and “angels” along the way, plus her recent pivot as groundbreaking founder in the financial tech field.

Find Tracey’s work online:

Website: TheMilliganFoundation.org

Twitter:  @milliganfound1

Company: Term Payments

Here’s Carlos Santana playing in a slightly larger park…

>Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 95 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on April 13, 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 dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

Tracey Milligan 00:00

So I decided, you know what? I’m going to solve this problem. I’m going to create an organization specifically to help victims of violence get to safe places, get to where they could be safe.

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

Happy April and happy book birthday to TWO new books from the Midlife Mixtape Inner Circle. First up is The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, by Jess Lahey. Jess was on the show in Episode 74 talking about her NYT bestselling parenting book “The Gift of Failure”. In her new book, Jess shares her own experience of addiction and long-term recovery, seamlessly weaving together rich storytelling with compassionate, evidence-based analysis. The result is a supportive, life-saving resource for parents and educators to understand the roots of substance abuse, identify who is most at risk, and employ the most effective prevention measures.

Born into a family of alcoholics and drug abusers, Jessica Lahey spent her early adulthood trying frantically to thwart that multi-generational genetic legacy. She ultimately failed; descending into alcoholism in her thirties, she didn’t find her way out until her early forties. After years in recovery, Lahey was determined to protect her two adolescent sons from their most dangerous inheritance.

Written from a place of compassion rather than shame or judgment, The Addiction Inoculation is a thoughtful and indispensable guide to understanding the roots of substance abuse. It helps identify who is most at risk for addiction and offers parents, educators, and other caregivers practical steps for prevention.

And another book birthday shout-out to Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, aka one of the most generous writers out there, for HER new book “Broken (In the Best Possible Way)”. Jenny is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Furiously Happy and Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, and her new book is deeply relatable book filled with humor and honesty about depression and anxiety.

As Jenny’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.

With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it. From the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tank to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way. And of course, Jenny’s long-suffering husband Victor―the Ricky to Jenny’s Lucille Ball―is present throughout.

Find The Addiction Inoculation and Broken at bookstores, online, and in audio format!

[MUSIC]

Hi Midlife Mixtapers! I’m Nancy Davis Kho, creator and host of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast and author of The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. If you had a preferred brand of audio cassette tape that you shopped for at the mall before swinging by The Limited for some more baggies, I think you’re gonna fit in here just fine.

Before we get to today’s interview, I want to invite you listen ALL the way to the end, because we’re gearing up for another episode where YOU do the talking. I’ve got a question for you to answer – via voicemail, email, or comments in social media – and I’ll compile all of those into our April 27th episode so stick around to hear the question!

I get guest ideas in lots of ways – sometimes I’m pitched by a PR rep, sometimes a listener suggests a person who they’d like to hear from; sometimes I’m the one inviting someone I don’t know onto the show. And every once in a while I think of someone I have known personally for a long time and say, “How has this person not been a guest yet? How have I not invited them on?!” And that’s the case with today’s guest, Tracey Milligan.

Tracey is the founder and Executive Director of The Milligan Foundation, an internationally recognized relocation resource for victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. Having helped over 800 people to free themselves from violence, she has proven herself to be a champion for people in need. Passionate about instilling social change and morality. She is a prolific non-profit representative.

She’s created a payment solution called Term that’s set to change the payment landscape and revolutionize the lives of those who aspire to have more.

[MUSIC]

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Tracey Milligan, I’m so glad you’re here with me today!

Tracey 04:45

I am glad to be having this conversation with you today.

Nancy 04:49

We have a lot of ground to cover because YOU cover so much ground! So we’re gonna have to move fast, but we always start the podcast with a critical question. What was your first concert, Tracey, and what were the circumstances?

Tracey 05:03

My first concert…I don’t know if this counts as a concert. I want to say I think it does. I am a true Bay Area native, grew up in San Francisco, right off the Castro/Mission/Dolores Park area and it just so happened to be the same neighborhood that Carlos Santana lived in.

Nancy 05:25

Oh, wow.

Tracey 05:26

So when I was a kid, Carlos would just play in the park sometimes. If he had a new song, he’d just be like, “Who in the neighborhood wants to hear? What do you guys think?” I remember summer days, “Carlos is in the park playing!” and you’d run out of the house and just go park on the grass and listen to Carlo’s hits.

Nancy 05:48

That is amazing. You should definitely count that as your first concert because it’s so unique.

Tracey 05:55

Well, I want to say that was probably my very first music experience. But my first real concert in stadium seats was a rap concert. My first concert, I actually got to see Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Whodini. That was my first real REAL concert.

Nancy 06:22

How cool is that?

You and I first met through your work with The Milligan Foundation. I don’t know if you remember this. You and I were at a get together for volunteers for a different fundraiser in Oakland.

Tracey 06:38

Yes, for Children’s Hospital.

Nancy 06:40

Yeah, that’s right. And I didn’t know a soul. We were at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland and I looked around the lobby and knew not a single person and I screwed up my courage and took my Dear Abby advice, like, “Find somebody else who looks like maybe they don’t know everybody, too!” And I’m like, “Look at that lady. She looks nice. I’m going to glom on to her!” And unfortunately for you, it was you.

You told me that night about your work with The Milligan Foundation and I was so impressed and I have followed your work ever since. I wanted to start this conversation by having you talk about this foundation that you started in 2011. Explain what it does and how The Milligan Foundation works?

Tracey 07:21

Sure. Well, The Milligan Foundation is a relocation service for victims of domestic violence and human trafficking and actually, April 6th, will be my 10 year anniversary for starting The Milligan Foundation . So it’s been 10 years…

Nancy 07:41

Congratulations!

Tracey 07:42

… of just so much. What The Milligan Foundation does is – basically, I jokingly say that we are the Secret Service to domestic violence. We move people quite literally anywhere in the world in order to be safe. We support any organization that even touches on domestic violence or person who may be facing life threatening harm from domestic violence. Any organization can reach out to us on behalf of a client that they have who’s facing danger and needs to move out of the area in order to be safe.

The core of what the foundation does is purchase airplane, bus, train tickets, gas, pay for motel rooms, hotel rooms, basically, anything that it takes for our person to be safe, to get from point A to point B. The last time we saw each other a few years ago, the organization had just started working internationally as well. In the 10 years’ time, I’ve helped people in Canada, in England, in Ireland, in Australia, in New Zealand, in Kenya, in Nigeria. Look, I got to keep thinking. In Zimbabwe….

Nancy 09:00

Just get a world map.

Tracey 09:01

…in Mexico, Yeah, it’s been all over. It’s been very rewarding and at times, heartbreaking, because people are coming to me when they’re in the most scared, the most dangerous time of their lives and they’re coming to me for help. So I’m just thankful that I can provide the service that I can do this.

I started doing this because I myself am a domestic violence survivor and I’m dealing with the issues that I ran into. When I left my violent relationship, I very naively thought that a woman escaping family violence would just automatically go into a shelter and start her life over again and that be that. But what I learned is that if you have somebody who’s dangerous in your life, shelters don’t always take you, especially if the shelter is in the area of your abuser. They won’t let you come there because you now become a risk or potential threat to that shelter if you have someone looking for you.

When I walked away from my violent relationship, my abuser was actively looking for me to cause me harm. So the shelters in my area wouldn’t take me in. That made me homeless on the street with a seven-year-old and a two month old baby, and I had nowhere to go, and no shelter would take me.

When I did finally end up at a shelter, when I finally did get to a shelter that was underground, specifically for high threat people like myself, listening to the other residents of the shelter at the stories of what it took for them to get to the shelter, I thought, “This is a ridiculous problem. It shouldn’t exist, it shouldn’t take a miracle or a set of random circumstances that would lead someone to be in a place of safety.” And so I decided, “You know what? I’m going to solve this problem, I’m going to create an organization specifically to help victims of violence get to safe places, get to where they could be safe.” Because oftentimes, when you are a person who is in family violence, you don’t have resources, you don’t have a car, you don’t have money, you don’t have a lot of things. But you’re forced to go if not across state, sometimes cross country and even out of the country.

So I’m just glad to be able to provide that service and I’ve done it for so long.

Nancy 11:35

Congratulations on the way that you are changing people’s lives.

Tracey 11:39

When I first started… my background is not nonprofit work. It’s not social work. This is purely passion for me. So I’ve had a pretty big learning curve to overcome.

A lot of it was just being naive and thinking, okay, well, I’m going to provide this service, and people are going to want it and that’s that. That’s what I thought when I first started and to go back to me sending out cold emails to organizations thinking, “Hey, I’m gonna help you with your clients and get people out of town if they need help,” and I sent out this email. I actually contacted the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and I asked them for a list of organizations and I sent out cold emails announcing The Milligan Foundation to about 500 organizations, and no one responded.

And I was like, “Why isn’t anyone responding?”

Nancy 12:41

“I want to help!”

Tracey 12:42

Yeah, exactly. I was like, “Why isn’t anyone responding?” That left me so dejected. I was like, “Does anybody even want this? Will anybody even use me? Will anybody even take my service seriously?”

But what ended up happening – because whenever I get interested in something, I want to learn as much as possible and that goes without saying with starting my organization. I had signed up for an event called the World Conference of Shelters and it literally happened two months after I decided to start this organization.

So I signed up to attend this conference. It was happening in Washington, DC, but I had second thoughts of going because nobody responded to my emails. Nobody would call me back, NOTHING. I booked my flight and I had a layover in Denver – a major hub. I had the layover in Denver and so I’m sitting there in Denver waiting for my connecting flight to go into DC and I’m sitting next to a nun.

And she asked me what time it is and I tell her. I’m sitting there and I said, “Yes. But I’m thinking about going home.” She said, “Well, why are you thinking about going home?” I said, “Well, I don’t know if where I’m going, I’m going to this conference of shelters in DC and I sent these people a bunch of emails, and no one responded.” She looked at me and said, “I’m going to that conference too.” I was like, “Really?” She said, “Yes, I started this conference” and I was like, “Really?” She was like, “Why are you second guessing yourself?”

So I told her what my organization does or what I was planning to do. Like I said, I was only two months into even implementing the idea. I was still learning.

Nancy 14:30

Right.

Tracey 14:31

I told her what I wanted to do, and I told her I was feeling that nobody wanted me because no one responded to my email. And she said, “If I had received your email, I wouldn’t have responded either.” She said, “We have so many abusers fishing, looking for who just left them and the service that you’re offering is so needed that it sounds like it’s too good to be true. What you’re offering is so good, it sounds unbelievable.”

She said, “But you sitting here talking to me now and I see that you’re a real person offering this very real service, of course, I want to use it. So no, you should absolutely be at this conference!”And I was like, “Okay!”

Nancy 15:16

I believe we filed that under the term Kismet. You were meant to be sitting next to her.

Tracey 15:23

Exactly.

Nancy 15:22

That’s amazing.

Tracey 15:24

So I get to the conference and within the first hour – I had spent some money putting together nice little presentation folders of my program of what I wanted to do – and within the first hour, I had given away all of my materials.And I was supposed to be there for a week.

Nancy 15:42

Oh, my gosh.

Tracey 15:43

But that was really the kickoff of yes, this is needed. Yes, I was actually going to be supported by other organizations and from that was where I really laid the foundation for my network.

Even though I didn’t start out of the gate working internationally, it was the relationships that I built from that conference, from the people that I met at that conference and then attending subsequent years with people following up saying, “No, when you’re ready to scale this outside of the United States, we want to be part of the network.”

Right off the bat, I want to say my first international case was in Ireland. When China established their first domestic violence shelter because they didn’t have it there, was no such thing there for a while, I consulted on that. When New Zealand implemented their violence against women policy mimicking that of the United States, I consulted on that. Just some really, really great relationships came from that and it’s just expanded over the years and I feel blessed to do this work.

Nancy 16:50

I know that during the pandemic, domestic violence rates have risen, because there’s no place for people to go – I’ve seen it referred to as “the pandemic inside the pandemic.” In one study I looked at the rates in 2020 had increased 18% in San Antonio 22%, in Portland, 10% in New York City and I’m sure this is true internationally as well.

Something that I hadn’t thought about is that it can be as bad or worse with same sex couples because the pandemic has hit same sex couples especially hard, with members of the LGBTQ community likelier to be employed in highly affected industries like education, restaurants, hospitals, and retail. So how has that impacted the work of The Milligan Foundation over the past 13 months?

Tracey 17:36

First, we had an influx of cases four years ago, because with all of the toxic masculinity that was put on a pedestal in the political climate, we saw hate crimes literally go up 1,000% in certain demographics.

But the other hate crimes that started was in the home. So domestic violence went up in the country. To give a specific number, actually it went up 36%, almost 37% nationally. Calls to my organization for help went up 200% and when the pandemic happened, it cranked it up even more. It’s been excruciatingly hard because I haven’t been able to serve people. The financial climate of this country has also changed. People’s giving habits have changed. My organization doesn’t receive cash grants because of the work that we do, so it’s heavily dependent on independent or individual donors.

Nancy 18:50

Why would you not be able to get cash grants?

Tracey 18:53

I don’t get cash grants because we help people at their most vulnerable times, because we also provide security services for really, really high threat clients = we will actually provide basically bodyguard services and because we’re getting someone and actually moving them. We do help anyone. It doesn’t matter how you identify: male, female, or whatever. But if someone has children and they haven’t gone to court yet, then somebody who’s well-resourced can say, “Oh, well, my children were kidnapped and this organization is party to kidnapping and you’ve given them funding. So I’m going to come after you too.”

So a lot of the big grant giving organizations or big corporate giving organizations would not touch The Milligan Foundation with a 20 foot pole to help us with the actual services. Now, we are very fortunate and blessed in technology, because I am here in the Bay Area. So I’m very, very well supported technology wise with tech companies. The Milligan Foundation currently runs six figures worth of technology which is really wonderful. Salesforce is our biggest supporter since day one; Twilio for our emergency numbers, and a few other services, our content, our platform that our website is managed on – all of that is donated, and I’m very thankful for that. But for as far as actual cash, no, we don’t.

Nancy 20:28

So how could listeners of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast get involved in helping The Milligan Foundation? Where should they go if they are moved by your story and want to donate in some way?

Tracey 20:40

They can actually donate on the website, of course, there’s a donation button on the website.

Nancy 20:46

Let’s give them the URL for that so anybody listening has it.

Tracey 20:49

It’s real simple. It’s just themilliganfoundation.org.

But another thing that I’m doing just because we’ve had such a major, major influx, and like you said yourself, that there’s so much need across the country now for people who are trying to get safe. I’m actually coming out with a new initiative, a micro grant program, where I’m providing $100 in emergency funds for someone to pay for transportation costs or if they’re on the street, to get them off the street, to get them like a bus, to get a train ticket, whatever, to get out of town.

I’m doing that using a virtual ATM network that is built on the Clover and Green Dot and basically the debit card system that makes it so that they can pick up this $100 emergency grant at a 7-11, a Walgreens, a Walmart, anything like that. They don’t actually have to go to a bank or wait for a check or anything. It’s literally an SMS text message that is confirmed in a cash register a POS system at a 711 and they’ll have funds dispersed to them that way.

Nancy 22:03

We’re going to talk about why you are so well versed in the world of FinTech in a second because that is the second part of this interview.

But I just want to make a really quick point here. If you guys look at themilliganfoundation.org and are feeling moved to donate, I want to make a point, which is that after I met Tracey… I should have looked it up. We’ve probably met 6, 7, 8, 43 years ago, I don’t know, and I invited her to come to my Giving Circle, which if you’ve listened to this podcast before, you may know that I’m part of a group of women here in Oakland who have met now, I think we’re on 15 years, we’ve kind of lost track.

But we met when we were moms of young elementary school students and over the years, we’ve met four times a year to pool our resources and donate it to a nonprofit that one of the members has presented. So Tracey was my guest when it was my meeting to present and of course, my group was really moved by this and made a donation. And I’m going to tell you guys right now, it was not a huge donation. I don’t know what the dollar amount was, but we don’t roll. We’re not millionaires. We’re just donating. We’ve always said it’s what you would have spent on a night out with your girlfriends getting drinks and dinner. So the average donation is probably $50, $30, I don’t know.

We made this donation to The Milligan Foundation, and you were able to leverage that into getting Salesforce’s attention for a donation that really made a difference, right? You’ve explained to me that that just enabled you to take that next step that you really needed to take.

Tracey 23:36

Yeah, you haven’t even heard that story and I love, love, love telling that story. I have to say that I can actually now tell that story because contractually, I couldn’t say anything for a few years about that donation, about that support that I got.

So what happened? I attended your Giving Circle, and you guys asked me what I wanted to use the donation for.

I told you that the donation that your Giving Circle was giving me wasn’t to provide services directly, but to establish the IDVC, which was the International Domestic Violence Community, which was an initiative that I was putting into place that created a network of all the shelters and other organizations and connections that I’ve made over the years, and turning it into a private community. So basically, the Underground Railroad for domestic violence, digitally done in the cloud. And even though I was a Salesforce grantee, one of their one-to-one grantees, just to have access for their platform and to build out this community, I would need my own cloud servers. That went beyond the scope of what Salesforce typically gives a nonprofit. To do that, I needed to pay for that private server space. So to go outside, once again, what they usually give to nonprofits.

So I said that I was going to use the money that you ladies gave me that evening to start that service, to have that architecture, so that I could create this private Underground Railroad network of domestic violence providers, to create this global safety net so that we can all collaborate under one place securely.

I took that donation and that did provide the framework for the IDVC to be made, and it was going great. The following year I built it up to a point and was ready to launch again at the international domestic violence shelter conference. But I needed to pay for the licensing again and I had started fundraising to pay for that licensing. Now that licensing was $5,000 and long story short, I could not raise the $5,000. I couldn’t get it and I called my account rep at Salesforce, Ben – his name is Benjamin, but I call him Ben for short.  I called him and I said, “The unthinkable has happened. I have not been able to raise this money to cover my licensing. What is the plan B, C, D, E, F?” Because me switching over to my own private servers or my own private cloud for this meant that I would have lost at that point, what would have been six years’ worth of work.

I was like, “What can we do? I can’t lose everything that I just spent all these years creating.”

I will never forget: his exact words to me were, “Tracey, the work that you were doing is too important and I cannot let this die.” And I said, “Okay.” He said, “Give me two weeks, and I will let you know what happens,” and I said, “Okay” and I’m on pins and needles, because I’m like, “Oh my God, am I going to lose my servers?”

The time goes by, and he calls me and he says, “I’ve got good news for you.” What he did was, he took information from my website, he took information from a company overview that I had sent him and he had made a presentation on my behalf of The Milligan Foundation to the Salesforce Foundation asking them to either give me a grant to cover that years’ licensing for my private network, or to grant me additional time, like an additional 90 days or something to give me more time to fundraise.

From that presentation, they said, “The work that she’s doing is incredible. We’re going to cover her licensing indefinitely… in perpetuity, for as long as her organization exists.”

Nancy 28:05

Alright. I just got goose bumps.

Tracey 28:06

There’s more. It actually keeps going.

Because I’m a huge believer in paying it forward and Ben doing that and telling me that I mean, it took me to my knees, right?

Nancy 28:19

Of course, I mean, how could it not?

Tracey 28:20

Like you said, you got goose bumps.? It took me to my knees. And I just kept thinking, “He is my angel. He is my angel.”

Now, every boss wants to know when they have a great employee. No matter how big your company is, you want to hear when you have an exceptional employee and that is being way above and beyond any account rep. It just so happened I had Marc Benioff’s personal email address because I knew one of his senior VPs. We used to go and hang out in bars in San Francisco.. and he was like, “Marc would love what you’re doing, email him. He needs to know what you’re doing. Just email him!”

But Imposter Syndrome kicked in. I’m like, “Well, what the heck am I gonna do emailing Marc? What the hell am I gonna say?” But when Ben did this, I was like, “I’ve got to tell Marc, I’ve got to let Marc know that he has an angel working for him,” and that’s what I did. I sent that email and that was the very first sentence in that email: “You have an angel working for you and I need you to know this.”

I proceeded to tell the story of what Ben did, and the fact that it would have –  because my network spans 36 different countries and some of those shelters that are represented in my network don’t exist anywhere else on the internet, because they’re so small, they can’t afford it. I said the IDVC can literally touch hundreds of thousands of lives and your employee just saved that resource.

Nancy 30:00

Wow.

Tracey 30:01

I sent that email off and a couple days later, Marc writes me back and he said, “I’ve looked into your organization and what you’re doing. Everything Salesforce has is now at your disposal.”

Nancy 30:15

Oh my God.

Tracey 30:16

“Build what you need free of charge, for ever.”

Nancy 30:20

Wow, that’s amazing.

Tracey 30:23

I could not breathe. I could not breathe.

Nancy 30:28

But I also give you credit for making that contact too, because Imposter Syndrome is real. A lot of people would have just said, “I would never reach out to him!” So good for you for recognizing that it was something worth his while. I think too often we are very quick to say, “Oh, I don’t want to bother that person,” and a lot of the time, it’s not a bother. It’s something they want to know.

Tracey 30:50

Yeah, that technology donation that Marc personally said to give me was the largest donation that he had ever done to Salesforce, to the point where they actually had to open up a new department just to manage what I had. Because I pulled out all the stops and bells and whistles to create that channel resource.

Nancy 31:16

Somebody makes an offer to you like that, you have to act on it right quick.

Tracey 31:20

You know – I’m a car woman and I love to use car analogies…

Nancy 31:23

You’re about to lose me, Tracey. I don’t even remember what car I’m driving while I’m driving it. But you go on, somebody in the audience will know.

Tracey 31:30

Somebody in the audience will know. You’ll know this much. It would be like from driving a VW Bug to being handed the keys of a Ferrari.

Nancy 31:38

Okay, even I got that!

It’s awesome. I had some sense of what went down but I didn’t realize that’s how it went. Guess what you guys – this is my point, you can make a big difference when you just get involved, see what you can do. I’m going to refer you back to Episode 54 of this show when I talked about exactly how to set up a Giving Circle. I interviewed somebody who had one who has a much bigger deal than our little homegrown Oakland, janky – we love it, but it is pretty home grown. But man, you can make a difference. It’s worth doing.

Tracey 32:12

Yes.

Nancy 32:12

Oh my gosh, we’re going to run out of time. But I’m not going to let us do that before we talk about your newest resume entry, which is that you are now a founder of a FinTech company called Term Payments, which is an online store where you can put items that you purchase on layaway. So when did you start this? I really want to talk about what it’s like to be a female, black, over-50 founder in an industry that is like, Fully Chad. It’s a ton of young white guys, right? What is that like?

Tracey 32:47

Just like you said, Fully Chad. That is hilarious. Yeah, it is.

Nancy 32:53

Tell everybody what Term Payments is first, and then I have a serious question. I do have serious questions, Tracey, I have a couple. But tell everybody what it does and then I’m gonna ask my question.

Tracey 33:02

So Term Payments actually started off as me wanting to bring good old fashioned layaway as a selectable option when making a purchase online.

Because there’s companies you know, like Affirm and Klarna and Afterpay. They’re the point-of-sale finance where you see make four payments interest free and you can have your item now as long as you make these four payments or six payments or what have you. But those companies are still micro credit, micro loan, you still have to have a credit card, you still have to have a bank account, and it’s still leaving people unable to shop. There’s still a certain section that people who are unable to use that service.

So I thought wouldn’t it be great to bring good old fashioned layaway online, where you just make a deposit, agree to make X amount of payments for X amount of months and receive your item and not have it be credit-based, because the store or the seller holds on to the item until you’re finished paying for it.

That was what Term was originally going to be and that is still part of what Term is going to offer. But in my desire to serve who the layaway customer, is which is a cash customer who is typically walking into a brick and mortar and paying cash and not using a card, I actually came up with a solution that allows people to shop online with cash. So in pitching to venture capitalists, trying to get them to invest in me to bring this idea to market, they would look at me and hear my story, hear my solution and say, “|Okay, we understand layaway. We understand this a huge market there because we all know that Klarna and the rest of them. They’ve all raised like over a billion dollars each just about.” They understand that market. But they said, “Wait a minute, slow your roll, Tracey.”

Nancy 34:54

“I don’t like doing that, fellas. Have you met me before? I’m Tracey Milligan.”

Tracey 34:59

Right. “You just said that you’re allowing people to shop online with cash?” Because the nut that people have been trying to break in the FinTech space is, how do you get people who are unbanked or under banked to participate in the online economy?

Nancy 35:15

Let’s just pause really quickly, I want to give a couple of definitions. FinTech is just basically new technology that is an alternative to traditional banking services and it is really helpful for what you’re calling under banked customers, folks who don’t necessarily have access.

I want to make this point very clear that that has to do with redlining. We have talked about this in past episodes. But that practice of banks closing off access to financial services in certain neighborhoods because of the racial makeup has perpetuated a situation where there are a lot of people in this world who can’t open a bank account, who are distrustful of bank accounts, who can’t access all the kinds of ways that some of us are lucky enough to have access to.

So FinTech is an effort to reach people who are either unbanked or under banked and by the way, a lot of those services are very expensive, like short term payday loans is a typical example.

Tracey 36:14

Huge. 300% interest on that.

Nancy 36:15

I just want to make sure everybody understands those terms FinTech unbanked, underbanked. But also, make sure you see the connection to redlining and systemic racism when you’re thinking about these things.

Tracey 36:26

Yes, absolutely.

So Term Payments actually solves that. Investors caught on to that. They were like, “Wait a minute, you’re solving this problem, you are giving these people this consumer base a way to participate in the online economy without having a bank account, without having a credit card. Without even having credit, you’re allowing them to make purchases where they are. You’re serving them where they are.”

So that is what Term Payments is actually bringing to market and so I’ve made that slight shift. Yes, I am still going to provide that service of enabling people to buy what they want, to look “on their terms.” But the big part of Term Payments now is actually the solution that that’s going to allow people to shop online with cash. I’m keeping my fingers crossed here – launch in approximately 90 days, maybe four months, where people can select Term Payments on quite literally any website where a payment needs to be collected, and can then walk into a physical location to finish that transaction with cash.

Nancy 37:41

I realized that my question isn’t so much a question, it’s a comment. So I am every presenter’s worst nightmare. “Hi, it’s not so much a question, it’s a comment and it’s a two-part comment.”

I just want to point out –  I hit the research hard today. Only 17% of FinTech companies have female founders, and women account for less than 30% of the sector’s overall workforce. That’s according to FinTech Magazine. My observation is that if you get a more diverse workforce, if you get more diverse group of founders, you’re going to have solutions that nobody’s thought of before because they’re coming from a different life experience, from a different place, from a different perspective and it’s also the good.

So I just think it’s fabulous that you are shaking things up. I hope you are scaring all the Chads. And I have a friend named Chad, so I hope he’s not listening. Not you, Chad.

Tracey 38:36

Chads don’t get it.

Nancy 38:38

Because they’ve never experienced it.

Tracey 38:40

Most of my time when I pitch certain VCs, I actually spend the majority of the conversation explaining how poor people think and what poor people want, because they don’t get it. I actually had one VC tell me,  “Why would someone want to shop someplace other than Walmart?”

Nancy 39:01

How hard did you grind your teeth in that moment? Did you crack a molar? Was it a molar cracker?

Tracey 39:08

Nancy, you know I can be blunt. And my response to him was if someone told me that the only place that I could shop for the rest of my life was Walmart, I’d want to shoot myself. I had another VC that I pitched to ask me, “Why would someone who doesn’t have a credit card want to shop?”

Nancy 39:32

Well, credit to you for not having a homicide record at this point. Thanks for coming on the show with your hands clean!

Before I let you go, we always close with this 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?

Tracey 39:48

Follow your heart.

Nancy 39:49

What’s that mean to you?

Tracey 39:50

It sounds so cliché, but I knew exactly who I was when I was 16 years old and the only reason I deviated from the path that I was on was because I listened to other people, and I thought that other people knew better than what I knew. But now that I look back at that, it’s like, “No, I’m still that same person. I should have stayed on that path and I probably would not have made some of those mistakes that I made if I hadn’t thought that someone else knew better than me what I wanted.”

Nancy 40:21

Follow your heart is great advice. Tracey, I’m so thrilled we got a chance to catch up again, I feel lucky. Check out what Tracey is doing. I’m so glad you’re on the show today. Take care. Stay well, and I hope to see you in person soon.

Tracey 40:36

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, Nancy, I appreciate it.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 40:42

I want to just mention a phone number here in case anyone listening needs it – 800.799.SAFE is the National Domestic Violence Hotline, that’s 800 799 7233. And please head over to the show notes to check out links to Term Payments and to The Milligan Foundation to learn more about Tracey’s work!

Our next episode is all about you! Here’s the question I’m asking:

What’s an album you bought a long time ago and still listen to now – and why did it stick with you?

Maybe it reminds you of a certain place, or time, or person. Maybe it’s comforting like a big schlubby sweater, or invigorates you back to energy levels you had before the gray hair and your kids’ tuition payments. Whatever the reason that particular album (vinyl, CD, 8-track tape) still takes us space in your soul, let us know what the album is, and why. I’ll collect up your stories and share this in a Listeners’ Still in Rotation podcast episode at the end of the month.

As usual for our listener-contributed episodes, there are lots of ways to share your thoughts:

Leave me a voice mail right from your computer! Go to www.MidlifeMixtape.com and you’ll see a blue button on the right hand side that says, “What album is Still in Rotation for you?” Just press it, and you can start recording with one click. I would LOVE for people to do this so I can incorporate your actual voice on the episode! NOTE: There’s a 90 second limit on this, but you can re-record before sending if you need to. Or press https://www.speakpipe.com/MidlifeMixtape and start recording!
Record a voice memo into your phone and email it to dj@midlifemixtape.com. Again, it would be so cool to hear and share your story in your actual voice.
Leave me a comment below!
Email me the story of your album that’s Still in Rotation to dj@midlifemixtape.com.
Send me a Facebook message, tweet or Instagram comment @midlifemixtape

Please send in your favorite albums and we’ll all take a nice musical walk down memory lane in Episode 96!

Thanks so much to all of you for listening and I’ll catch you and your favorite old albums next time!

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

 

The post Ep 95 Nonprofit/FinTech Founder Tracey Milligan appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

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