Deborah After 50 – An Interview w/ Deborah Bugeja

Neil Rerup (00:00.821)
something like that. We’ll see how it goes.

Deborah (00:04.238)
Okay.

Neil Rerup (00:07.701)
Welcome everybody. Today we have an interview with Deborah Bugeja. And I’m going to apologize right off the bat because I know I butchered that last name. Deborah has her own channel focused on style for people over 50. But it always sounds better coming from the person I talked to. So Deborah, why don’t you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?

Deborah (00:15.224)
The giant.

Deborah (00:33.71)
Sure. well I’m Deborah. I’m based in Melbourne, Australia. And I’m 58 years old. And I started my channel about five years ago, which was in the midst of COVID, when well in Melbourne we were the most locked down city in the whole world, so there was nothing to do. We couldn’t leave our house for more than one hour a day to exercise and we couldn’t go further than five kilometres. And I was working from home at the time as an accountant.

And I was putting in a lot of time and effort at work, but I didn’t have a creative output.

For anywhere because basically we’re locked up. So I started a YouTube channel because when I was looking at YouTube, which was the only form of entertainment that we had at the time, there was no one out there that I felt represented me as a mature woman that basically wasn’t retired, was still working at the time, but wasn’t a grandmother.

still enjoyed putting on makeup and getting dressed and experiencing life. And I had grown-up children, but they were still living at home. So I was sort of felt I was in in a mid-life, but I wasn’t an empty nestor, and I still had an interest in basically living and exploring life and seeing what else was available out there. And so Deborah after 50 evolved and I became a

Content creator, which I don’t come from a marketing background, I don’t come from an entertainment background. So for me, learning how to talk to a fixed camera and express myself is completely new and foreign. And also then the editing component was also extremely foreign and new to me. So I just I learned and that’s what kept me.

Deborah (02:27.925)
I suppose entertained during those two years of COVID. And then when we were released back into the world, I had actually developed a passion for exploring and experimenting and learning, and I thought I actually enjoyed this. So I basically resigned as an accountant for reasons that I won’t go into today, but and I went full into YouTube and creating and

What evolved as or what started out as basically a channel that was looking at fashion and beauty has evolved now into more talking about life as a 50 plus woman in the world. So and it’s basically from my perspective. So through being a ha a wife, mother,

And women going through at the moment menopause and the weight gains and through menopause, the hormonal imbo changes that growing up my mother never shared with me. So there was no

a certain gallery of information that I could go back to and say, my mum went through that. So everything that I’m going through, I’m kind of sharing life. And so that’s what my channel has become. It’s become more about seeing your average woman. I’m I’m not an actress, I’m not a nif like a a Kardashian. I don’t have access to you know millions of dollars to style myself, to feed myself. I’m just the average woman. And I

felt that that wasn’t represented in media. So I’m giving my perspective of this time in our lives so that other people like me don’t have to go through that uncertainty or that feeling of not being, not measuring up to what social media portrays as you know what women a certain age are supposed to look like and feel like and do.

Neil Rerup (04:24.341)
Hmm.

Neil Rerup (04:31.741)
Okay. So, it went from just fashion to life in general.

Deborah (04:37.877)
Yeah. Correct, yes.

Neil Rerup (04:42.293)
So how has life in general changed for you as a woman at your age compared to when you were in your 20s? What’s changed? What’s different?

Deborah (04:55.981)
a life experience. when I was 20, I was geared towards the funny thing is that when you get to a certain point in life, you realize that the amount of days that you have ahead of you are not as many as the days that you had behind you. And so you eventually realize hold on, A have I achieved everything that I want to achieve in my life leading up to now, and if my days are numbered.

as in not in a negative way, but what else do I want to achieve with the rest of my life? Where else do I want to go? Having achieved, you know, multiple and different career paths historically, having been a mother and brought up three, you know, well balanced, can I say, independent children that I contribute into society, I kind of feel that I’ve learned a fair bit.

that I can share, but I also have learned that okay, I’m at a stage in life where I’m not as needed as I used to be. So I can explore the world from a different perspective. When I was younger I was achieving, I was accumulating information, knowledge, you know

Career steps. I don’t feel I need to do that now, whereas now I feel like more I’d like to accumulate experiences, but in a healthy manner. So that how can I create an environment for myself, physically, mentally, and emotionally, that’s going to give me the best next 20, 30, 40 years of my life.

Neil Rerup (06:35.243)
You’re married right now, yes? How long have you been?

Deborah (06:39.435)
Yes, correct. I’ve been married for thirty one years now. I know.

Neil Rerup (06:43.765)
Whoa, congratulations. Thank you. So how has that evolved? Because as a woman, you’re part of a couple now for 30 plus years.

Deborah (06:54.615)
Correct. Majority of my life will be part of my a couple. and are are you married, Neil?

Neil Rerup (06:59.007)
Yeah.

I am. We’re now in our 41st year together. We’ve been married for 38 of those 41 years. And in Canada, I don’t know about Australia, we have something called common law. So basically, I’ve been married either legally or common law for at least 40 years.

Deborah (07:17.834)
Okay.

Deborah (07:24.595)
Okay. So you would know that marriage goes through ups and downs. and it changes. The person that you were, you know, forty years or thirty years ago for me is a completely different person to who I am now.

He’s a completely different person to the new mum that I was, or to the more mature mum, to the career woman that I was. And my partner has had to live and support me through all those different phases of my life. And you when you get married, you think it’s all gonna be a bed of roses. And if you’re lucky, it is. But in order to live in a bed of roses, you kind of have to pull out the weeds.

Once in a while, you have to mortar the lawn. it’s not a bed of roses because the roses go dormant sometimes and you have to prune them, you have to spray them for insects and pesticides. So you kind of have to marriage is not you know, you get married and that’s it. You don’t have to do anything to it. You have to cultivate it. And so that’s you know what I’ve learned over the last 30 years. That that marriage changed me.

Neil Rerup (08:28.992)
Yeah.

Deborah (08:38.121)
And it changed my husband and together we’ve we’ve become something that we didn’t expect we would become when we got married back, you know, 31 years ago.

Neil Rerup (08:50.655)
Hmm. Yeah, I saw this post a couple of weeks ago where it was a young man who had just recently gotten married. It was asking his grandfather who had been married for 60 years, how do you stay in love with the same woman for 60 years? And he said, I don’t because she’s not the same woman. She’s changed continuously throughout that entire time. And I thought that was.

Deborah (09:16.181)
Okay. And the husband is

Neil Rerup (09:20.191)
And I thought that was just.

Once you realize that you’re continuously changing and the relationship’s going to change, because when people change, the relationship changes, and you have to accept that.

Deborah (09:31.832)
Correct. Correct. Life changes and and not only does life change around you, life changes you because you go through willingly or unwillingly life is going to happen. And so you have to deal with that. You know, you have to go through

Pat family loss, you have to go through job losses, job changes, career changes, children come into the family and they change the relationship. so many things happen through a marriage that change who you are and also change in a way that if you hadn’t been with that person, you wouldn’t have changed.

the same way. So the person that I am today would not be the person that I am if Kevin, my husband, hadn’t been along with me for the ride for the last, you know, we made 95, so 31 years that we’ve been married, but like you, we’ve been together since 91. So 35 years we’ll be celebrating this. That’s it’s a long time.

Neil Rerup (10:37.995)
Yeah.

Deborah (10:38.205)
But thinking back, it doesn’t feel like a long time because your life’s been made up of day-by-day happenings of and and just suddenly you look back and you think, wow, it’s been that long. Exactly. Exactly.

Neil Rerup (10:50.837)
Where’d the time go? Where’s the time gone? Yeah. Yeah. What about, so when you mentioned menopause, it made me realize just at that moment that women go through so many physical changes during that lifespan. Whereas a guy, I’ll be honest, once we hit our adulthood, we physically really don’t change other than the body starts breaking down.

Deborah (11:01.078)
Yeah.

Neil Rerup (11:20.939)
normal age things. You’ve gone through pregnancy, multiple pregnancies. That changes you, your body. You’re going through menopause. That changes your body. That sort of thing. Those are things that I can’t relate to.

Deborah (11:25.151)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Deborah (11:33.163)
Mm.

Deborah (11:37.48)
Interesting, it does so women change physically, but I’d like to challenge your opinion about men and whether they also go through a change. And there are physiological changes that happen in men as well as they get older, but there are also, I think,

emotional changes that happen in men. And let me maybe prob that a little bit. For example, and I’m talking from my perspective as a wife to my husband, I think my husband, so I can speak of one test case, as a newlywed, he he and I were co-contributors to our well-being.

And then as we decided to start a family, he took on the responsibility of being the sole provider because he wanted to make sure that we combined were able to give our children a traditional and stable, what we thought traditional and stable environment and upbringing, and that would be created by be me being the stay-at-home mum. And for him, he took on the sole responsibility of maintaining and taking care of these.

five individuals really it ended up being and being able to provide for us in a way that he thought was to the standard that he wanted to provide for. Whilst the children grew up and we then I didn’t need to stay home to

be the stay-at-home mum. I was able to then decide that okay I want to go go back re-enter the workforce and see where I can continue career-wise. And I feel like at that stage my husband needed to reevaluate emotionally his contribution.

Deborah (13:34.924)
Because it was no longer that he was the primary provider. And so I feel he needed to go through a bit of a an a identity adjustment. I feel like men in general from my one case evaluation, he went through a a change there where he thought, okay, if I’m no longer the primary care provider, financial provider.

Neil Rerup (13:37.739)
Hmm.

Deborah (14:03.213)
What’s my role in the in the family unit, in the relationship? And he needed to sort of expand on that and realise actually I’m not just the financial provider, I’m also, you know, the entertainer when it came to our children, our our more of a carer, and also start thinking about well, where to from here.

for myself. So I had the the physical changes, but he had the emotional changes that were happening to him when our balance of power, I guess, in in financially changed. And I think that was that that’s from my perspective, that was a big change for him to accept that we were back to being co-contributors to our

Neil Rerup (14:54.239)
Yeah.

Deborah (14:55.657)
finances at the time. And then as he’s gotten older now and the children are now independent, he’s also starting to realise, okay, I, you know, we start seeing people around us our age that are, you know, are facing medical changes. Some have passed away younger than they anticipated. And it’s made him think about, where two from here, what do I want to

do for the rest of, you know, the foreseeable future? How do I want to enjoy life? And so he started then looking at new hobbies because our children no longer need us. So he’s also started exploring, okay, what are my passions outside of work and providing? Because I can look for that now.

Neil Rerup (15:44.235)
Hmm.

Deborah (15:44.458)
So I feel like it used to be that men used to go through that cliche of midlife crisis and then go and buy a sports car and you know maybe leave their wives and find a younger woman. I I feel like it’s not that extreme, but I feel like men also go through that stage in life where it’s like, okay, well, where to from here? What what’s my next half of my life going to look like?

Neil Rerup (15:50.581)
Midlife crisis, yeah.

Deborah (16:10.507)
So yeah, I I do challenge that men also go through that stage of I of looking at what else. Whereas for me, it was like, okay, well, menopause now is defining, I’m no longer able to have children. So that stage of my life is finished, but there are hormonal changes in a woman because of that, that change, that that

Neil Rerup (16:27.785)
Right?

Deborah (16:38.357)
I guess led me to start thinking differently about what’s next.

Neil Rerup (16:44.383)
Right. You said a number of times that your kids are independent. Are they still partially at home? Like I have two sons, both in their mid twenties. Half the time they’re here, half their time they’re out with their girlfriend, wherever that is. So.

Deborah (16:58.635)
Yeah. I I say they’re independent because they’re no longer financially financially dependent on us as even we don’t contribute to them financially. they’re all you know two of them are fully employed and my youngest is at uni and works part-time. So they’re all working and contributing to our tax system.

Neil Rerup (17:17.397)
Yeah.

Deborah (17:21.361)
it’s another story, but anyway. But they’re all living at home, so you know, don’t have to pay rent or board or anything like that. My eldest is about to get married in February next year, so I take my audience on a journey with me with all that that entails. so she’s gonna be the first one to leave the coop.

in you know when she gets married in February or earlier, once they buy a house. But otherwise the other two are quite content to live at home. with their home

when it suits them to sleep and eat when they want to. but then otherwise they’re out. I think I’ve introduced a a tradition that we have Sunday night family night dinner. So they’re all at home Sunday night with partners if they’ve got partners at the time and that’s it. That’s our that’s our tradition that I’ve started at Sunday night is family night and sometimes they cook, sometimes I cook, we take it in turns, and it’s just that time where we sort of

come back together as a family when the rest of the time you know we’re all dispersed in different places doing different things.

Neil Rerup (18:29.141)
Hmm. No, the reason why I asked that was what I’m, I’m going through the same thing, right? oldest has finished school working youngest is halfway through uni and then he’ll, he’s done, but he’s very independent himself. I’m, but there’s a period, the transition is simple, is takes longer than,

Deborah (18:34.956)
Yeah.

Deborah (18:46.741)
Mm.

Deborah (18:54.785)
Yeah.

Neil Rerup (18:57.481)
the nine months of pregnancy and getting yourself mentally ready for having a baby type thing. So you transition. I find most of the fights that I’ve ever had with my wife have been when there’s been a change, but a change that’s come on relatively sudden. I remember a fight early in our marriage with kids.

Deborah (19:17.857)
Yeah.

Neil Rerup (19:26.281)
when our oldest turned one and we’d never had a birthday party or thought about how we were going to celebrate our kids having a birthday. And I had specific thoughts and she had specific thoughts and there was that conflict, I think, because we hadn’t thought about it. Whereas now, because the kids are evolving out, it’s a more…

transitional change so it gives us a bit more time to understand how we are going to change as a married couple. Does that make sense?

Deborah (20:00.014)
It does, yeah. So so what yeah, so we have similar scenario with the parties. I tend to go in full in when it comes to parties, decorating, organizing. When it comes to that kind of thing, I’m like

Neil Rerup (20:03.135)
Yeah, I’m good.

Deborah (20:23.457)
The planner, let’s say I’m the planner of the family when it comes to birthday parties, and so I have a vision, I have a timeline that I work to, and then there are jobs that I delegate to mass when it’s okay, these are what you need to do, and the party starts at this time. Now I organize myself days in advance, and then the last couple of hours, I’m just sort like doing the finishing touches.

My husband on the other hand fifteen minutes before the party starts is racing inside and going to have a shower. And that’s where we clash because two hours before the party, I’m winding down.

Neil Rerup (20:57.395)
I can see where you’re going.

Deborah (21:12.277)
You know, I’m sort of checking everything’s fine. It is out there with the blowout, blowing off leaves, deciding at the last minute the hedges need to be trimmed. And I’m like, you knew this, you knew we were having a party. It’s not used to you. Why you leave this task to the last minute? But over the years, I’ve become more relaxed.

And kind of like, I know that that’s what he’s going to do.

So now I say to him, if you feel like you need to do this task, please do it yesterday because on the day I’m going to be attaching decorations to these windows that I know you’ll want to clean. You can’t do that on the day because then the alfresco is going to be wet and I’m going to have tablecloths set up the night before. So you can’t do that on the day. So it’s communication and understanding where the other person’s coming from.

Neil Rerup (22:08.326)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah (22:12.587)
That’s been an evolution over the 31 years. But the interesting thing is as we’ve evolved and become more understanding of each other’s strategies and working habits, our children are now individual adults that have their own opinions on how things should be done.

Neil Rerup (22:33.606)
Yeah?

Deborah (22:35.109)
When they were little, it would be mum and dad said this is how it’s going to be. Now they say, no, that doesn’t suit me. I don’t like that. That’s just, yeah, no, that’s not what I was thinking it was going to look like. So we have three metals.

Neil Rerup (22:52.587)
But you brought them up, you know what their characters are like, but also you’ve installed your values and your way of doing things into them as well. So I bet you when you look at them, you’re seeing some of those habits showing up and saying, I said that type thing.

Deborah (23:12.301)
It’s funny because my eldest daughter, when she was a teenager, we used to bite heads. And I would feel like, my god, I am such a horrible mother. I d I don’t know. I’ve lost the rancia. This is just I don’t know. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I can’t control this child anymore. And now ten years on, I hear her talk.

Neil Rerup (23:34.111)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah (23:39.718)
And when she’s at work and as she’s working from home, I I listen to her and I think, my God, I’m so proud of this young woman. Where did she come from? And yet the way she speaks and behaves.

Neil Rerup (23:51.509)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah (23:55.436)
People say, my god, she’s so much like you, Deborah. And I’m like, I know. I would never have thought that when she was 15. She hated me. The minute I’d look at her, her face would go. I was like the express.

Neil Rerup (24:14.059)
The thing, yeah, the thing is, one thing I learned a long time ago is the things we hate in other people are the things we hate in ourselves. So if you’re, this is just a thought. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. I’m just wondering whether the more two people are alike, the more they’re going to conflict. Like I have, I’ve had that with my oldest son because I’ve, while he was growing up, I was thinking, man, you’re just like me.

Deborah (24:24.182)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah (24:43.925)
Yeah.

Neil Rerup (24:44.039)
And there are times when we fight, we fight. Not like I fight with my youngest. And it’s probably because we are so similar and we’re seeing the same things that we don’t like in ourselves in the other person. Does that make sense?

Deborah (25:00.652)
Mm-hmm. Yes, it does. It’s very true. And I think as a father then or as a mother in my case, yeah, it’s hard to and I say this to my husband very often because he comes to me and he says, when he disagrees about something this son our son is doing, he says, So when I was his age, I never would have done that. I didn’t do that. And I turn and I say Kevin.

Neil Rerup (25:04.427)
Mm.

Deborah (25:28.758)
He did not have you and I as his parents. He did not grow up in the generation that we grew up. We gave them so many more opportunities than our parents gave us. He’s a completely different person from you because he he didn’t have he didn’t have your parents. He didn’t have

your upbringing. He didn’t go to your school. He went to a different school. He had different friends. It was just he’s a different person. He he might look like you and he might be going into the same industry as you went into.

And had the same challenges that you had, but his way of dealing with those challenges is completely different to how you, my husband Kevin, would have dealt with them. And it’s I guess it’s it took me a while to learn that because I I kept thinking that as a mother, as a parent, I’ve gone through life and I’ve learned so much that I want to instill all my 50 plus years of knowledge into this child, this young human being, expecting them.

not to make my mistakes but I had to understand that my mistakes were made because of my my my youth, my experience, my parents, the way I was brought up, where I’ve come from. Their experiences and their mistakes are different because they didn’t have what I had as in as in upbringing and and memories and

If I tried to wrap them up in cotton wool, that’s the worst thing thing that I can do because you learn that they need to make those mistakes because that’s how they learn to overcome difficulties in life, how to overcome challenges in life. And you can’t protect them because by protecting them, you’re actually inhibiting their learn, their learning abilities.

Neil Rerup (27:12.362)
Hmm.

Neil Rerup (27:29.355)
And you can’t tell them what to do because they’ll say, great, thanks for telling me that, Dad, now I resent you for telling me what to do. Yeah.

Deborah (27:39.008)
Yeah. And like even if you tell them at school, I did like I did chemistry and physics at school. So I’d say to them, I used to love chemistry. I did really well. I loved it. Mum, chemistry 30 years ago is different to chemistry now. And I’m like, I’m sorry, but chemistry is chemistry. No, no, no, no. It’s so much harder now. So

Even though you might be doing exactly the same subjects, you know, 30 years on, it’s different. It’s completely different. You can’t tell them.

Neil Rerup (28:10.731)
How’s the relationship between your husband, with you and your husband changing right now? like, your kids aren’t out of the house yet. So there’s still that dregs of having to be there for the kids still, even though you don’t need to be there, you’re still in the back of your mind, I gotta be there for the kids. I have to make something and put it aside for them for dinner in case they come home type thing. But you’re transitioning into that.

Deborah (28:35.341)
Well.

Neil Rerup (28:39.817)
You’re not there yet, that empty nester situation. How is your relationship changing?

Deborah (28:43.17)
Yeah. Yeah. it’s evolving now because we know okay, well when the kids were little, if we wanted to go on holidays, it would be the five of us would go on a holiday and Kevin and I would choose and with a little contribution. And then the kids became teenagers and then the decision that we would go was more

Not directed, but it was influenced by what the teenagers wanted to do. So we’ve been lucky enough that we’ve travelled a fair bit, especially to the States. And we used to go and we’d do the traditional things of a family. And then as the years the kids got older, they became like I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that. And you’re like, you don’t know how lucky you are because I never got the opportunity of doing the things that you don’t want to do.

Neil Rerup (29:35.563)
Yeah.

Deborah (29:36.546)
Now that they’re adults but still living at home, they travel and they do their own holidays. And my husband and I have only over the last couple of years realized

We can actually book our own holidays and go and leave them at home because once 20, once 24, once 26, they can manage. They can manage on their own. So now we book our holidays and we say, is anyone else going to be on holidays at the same time? Because Daddy and I are planning on doing this. So we just want to make sure there’s someone at home to look after the pets. Because we’ve got to find pets. But and my husband and I are now have the freedom after

Neil Rerup (29:51.915)
Yeah.

Neil Rerup (30:13.939)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Deborah (30:20.53)
a good 30 years of not or not, or 25 years, because our elders is 26, 26 years where we could only travel thinking about the the children’s ability to enjoy the holiday. Whereas now we’ve gone back to being able to travel for our enjoyment. What do we want to see in the world? What do we want to do when we’re there? You know, we went to Vali recently.

And my husband and I just went to sit by the pool and relax. Our kids were at home saying, what are you doing? Are you just sitting by the pool relaxing? Why? Why would you go do that? And we’re like, because it’s nice. I don’t have to do anything. I can order a drink. Yeah, I mean we did things one day.

Neil Rerup (31:01.055)
We don’t have the energy being at this age to go all these activities.

Deborah (31:10.254)
And then the other days we were quite content to just eat, drink, and relax. But we couldn’t do that with the kids because the kids would get bored. They’d need to be like, what are we doing for breakfast? What are we doing after breakfast? What are we doing for lunch? What are we doing after lunch? You know, it was like a constant agenda of activities that needed to be scheduled for them. Whereas now we’ve got the flexibility and the freedom of saying, we’ll just go away for the weekend. We just went away last weekend. It was nice. We just relaxed, did our thing.

Neil Rerup (31:41.164)
You also are rediscovering yourselves because it used to be just focused on the kids. to explain it to any new parents, how I viewed the relationship of the families is like a totem pole. You’ve seen totem poles, I’m assuming. And at the top, one A and one B were my kids. And then there was my wife. And then there was my work because

Deborah (31:44.248)
Well.

Deborah (31:58.999)
Okay.

Neil Rerup (32:09.747)
I had to work to support the wives. And then there was the dogs, because if they didn’t get fed, they were dead. And then there was everything else that had to be around here. And then it was me. And after that, if I had spare time, maybe I’d think about my parents or my extended family, that sort of thing. But they were way down there. And now with those kids gone, my wife gets more attention, though she doesn’t want it. And my

Deborah (32:20.994)
Yeah.

Deborah (32:36.698)
Yeah.

Neil Rerup (32:38.623)
You know, I’m now moving into those retirement years. So my work stuff is starting to go away. I’m starting to spend more time on myself. And I don’t know how to do that. And I’m having to rediscover myself as well.

Deborah (32:54.314)
Mm-hmm. What’s up my husband is that he’s reconnected with school friends.

who, like us, they had spent the last twenty, thirty years building a family and and and providing for their family. And now the kids are old, like ours. They’re independent. So it’s like, what do we do with ourselves? And they’ve all reconnected. So now they go out together and sometimes the wife joined, but sometimes like my husband’s made about cast and it’s, you know, in 30 years he hasn’t been able to convert me.

to be interested in cars. So he’s joined a number of car clubs and he goes out and he takes his car for a drive and you know he goes and puts his car on a show and is very excited about buffing it and cleaning it and doing all that, which is just it’s not me, never has been me, but he enjoys it. So he’s created this new social network and new interests.

that will sort of start filling in the spare time that is starting to, you know, open up for him.

Neil Rerup (33:56.78)
For me, doing that stuff after 25, 26 years of putting others first, I feel guilty for doing that sort of thing. How about for you as a woman though? So that’s your husband, he’s starting to go in those directions. You’re going in your own direction as well, or is there still that?

Deborah (34:08.536)
Yeah.

Neil Rerup (34:22.769)
linkage that was the way it used to be before the kids were born. Because if you remember back then, everything was together. You’re everywhere together. And now it feels like it’s two separate people, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Deborah (34:38.39)
Yeah, it does because you’ve grown. So now when we are together, it’s more of a conscious decision to do something together because we do have other options, you know, and realistically after 30 plus years with the same individuals, there are things that just sort of like trigger me.

Neil Rerup (34:48.693)
Yeah.

Deborah (34:59.68)
and trigger him. And so sometimes we kind of need to be able to go into our own separate corners and do our own things so that then when we come back together again, we’re re-energized and we’re able to talk about different things. Like one thing that I found very challenging when I was a stay at home mum and Kevin was working was that all I could bring to the conversation was, the kids did this today and you know

The kids did that and then we’re doing this after school. He was out there in the world, you know, wheeling and dealing and being busy. And then once the kids grew up and I was able to re find myself through work and YouTube and different activities, I feel like it’s better for us to be able to have separate hobbies because then when we are together, he can talk to me about cars.

Neil Rerup (35:26.197)
Yeah.

Deborah (35:50.584)
For as long as he likes, and then I can talk to him about I’ve learned something new here today on YouTube, or I’m talking to Neil about this opportunity, or I’m thinking of a new project to work on that I can introduce into YouTube and connect with different people to talk about it. And so those early years where we used to go off and work independently and then come back together again over dinner or over the weekend.

Has been replicated now by having our own separate interests. that I think will help because I I I don’t personally don’t want to become one of those couples where you sit at the table and have nothing to say to each other because you said it all. And you kind of need

Neil Rerup (36:26.411)
Hmm.

Neil Rerup (36:37.365)
Yeah.

Deborah (36:40.108)
Different experiences and different interests. And so, you know, we enjoy traveling, so we look at you know, where shall we go next and research it. we go away to explore different wineries because we’re all we’re both into wines and just look at different ways of filling our cup so that we can be more interesting with each other.

Neil Rerup (37:06.419)
Yeah, that’s actually that discovery phase that when we first got together, you were discovering each other. By being apart, you can learn stuff about yourself. And when you come back, it’s like rediscovering the person all over again.

Deborah (37:21.984)
Exactly, yes.

Neil Rerup (37:26.155)
how we change and everything. So how is this journey of yours into Deborah after 50? Sorry. How is that?

Deborah (37:28.812)
Yeah.

Deborah (37:36.91)
That’s the question.

Neil Rerup (37:44.684)
How’s that changed you? How have you learned and grown as a result of? Because I’ll tell you, with mine, I have learned so much over last six months with everything that I’ve been doing. I’m just wondering how you’ve changed.

Deborah (37:57.377)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah (38:01.844)
I guess for me, what made me sound what made me create a a channel as Deborah after 50, because I felt like 50, turning 50 was a defining moment in my life. growing up, you know, back in the 70s, 80s, if someone said to me, you know, I’m 50, I would have thought, my god, they’re old, you know.

What’s left after fifty, you know? But as you know, the older you get, the less you realize that you’re actually getting old. The only reason you realize you’re getting old is when you wake up in the morning and suddenly it’s like, gee, I didn’t realise I’ve got a stiff neck and you know if I’m working in the garden for more than a couple of hours now I start I can’t bend my neck, my back is sore. It’s just the physical changes that make you realise you’re getting old. Otherwise you’re

Neil Rerup (38:39.947)
Yeah.

Neil Rerup (38:53.195)
Hmm.

Deborah (38:58.728)
Enthusiasm for life doesn’t change. You know, the way you look in the mirror changes, but who you are inside hasn’t really changed much from the 20-year-old except that it’s got 30 years plus experience. So I created Deborah after 50 because for me, 50 was a defining moment.

and the way the last this channel has changed me is that it made me realize that there’s a whole community of women my age out there going through exactly the same thing that I am, but nobody’s actually sharing it. You know, all

Neil Rerup (39:35.786)
Yeah.

Deborah (39:36.062)
social media does is share you need to fix this you need to fix that you’ve got wrinkles you need to get Botox because you want to look like you were 20 years ago that’s like no what’s wrong with having frown lines it’s it’s something that so many people don’t get to experience because they’re gone right now I’ve got wrinkles and still live

a full life than to be frozen in space and I mean in time as a 20-year-old because I I had so many insecurities as a 20-year-old that I don’t have now as a 50 plus woman. And that’s that’s something that I’ve learned now because I was so busy as a new mum, as a new wife, just making it one day to the next that

You know, I wasn’t killing my children or harving them in any way, but I wasn’t really focusing on myself and the new person that I am now. And then if I was to go back in time and tell my 20-year-old, hey, when you hit 50, you’re actually going to realize that those are going to be the best years of your life because you’re gonna have so much wisdom accumulated, and yet you’ve still got so many years potentially touched wood ahead of you.

And that’s something that that’s not shared, I think, enough. I think so much of society tells you that.

Neil Rerup (40:59.413)
Yeah.

Deborah (41:02.86)
you’re not good enough, you know, if if you if you’re not a certain size, you know, y you’re not relatable. If you’re if you don’t you know, I let my hair grow out grey because I was sick and tired of A, wasting time at the salon two hours every four weeks, getting it to look a certain way. And B, society telling me that grey hair means I’m old and outdated and yeah, no longer relevant. And do you know how many compliments I get now with my grey hair?

That I never used to get after spending hundreds of dollars of you know every month to look a certain way with my hair. So many people are now saying

Neil Rerup (41:37.887)
We seem to have just lost your sound. for a second there, your sound went out, but you’re back now. You’re back now. Yeah.

Deborah (41:44.321)
that’s okay. So I was just saying that I get so many more compliments for my natural hair now than I used to when I used to spend hundreds of dollars at a song on every month.

Neil Rerup (41:52.47)
Yeah, I interviewed Dr. Michael Royzen from the Cleveland Clinic. Now Cleveland Clinic is a, here in North America is a well-known hospital system, hospital group. And they do a lot of research into various different things. And he was the lead researcher into a lot of the genetic side of things. And what he’s been saying is that over the next five, 10 years, they’re gonna be able to move the clock back

for 90 year olds so that they look and feel like they’re 45. So my dad, who’s 94, he’ll turn 95 this year, is going to, when we get to that age, we’re still gonna feel young and we’re gonna have those extra years built in. So this gray to me is a badge of honor that I’ve managed to survive.

Deborah (42:26.881)
Wow.

Deborah (42:47.96)
Nice.

Neil Rerup (42:50.451)
And I still have half my life to go. So how do I pass that on? At least that’s my thinking.

Deborah (42:53.409)
Yes.

Deborah (42:58.316)
And I guess also one thing that I’ve started doing a lot of research on or just started looking into is how do other cultures, not in the Western world, how do they deal with aging? And my son and I went to Japan early in the year and I realized how in the Japanese culture the elderly are respected a lot more than the Western culture. And

They also, the elderly, when I saw them in Japan, they’re riding bikes. I I I don’t remember the last time I saw an 80-year-old ride their bike down my street or anywhere near in Melbourne. They’re out there doing Tai Chi in the morning in the park. We don’t have that here. And they’re all fit and healthy, not because they’re like the gym peddling away, but because they’ve learned what food are good for them.

and they limit their food intake naturally, they exercise naturally, they spend so much more time outdoors and they’re also so much more involved in their community because their experience is valued.

Neil Rerup (44:08.927)
Yeah. I, one of my very first guests was Dr. Helen Levretsky from the UCLA Longevity Center. And she, her research is tied to the mental combination of the physical, mental and emotional altogether. Normal Western medicine is just physical. You look at the heart, you look at, you know, the liver, the individual components of the body, as opposed to

She’s looking at it holistically, like, how do you feel emotionally and how is that impacting your physical? And that sort of thing. And one of the things, and it’s been common across everybody I’ve talked to, that you have to have purpose when you’re in your retirement years so that you’re not looking at the end of life, you’re living your life.

Deborah (45:04.5)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you with that because without purpose, whether it’s created or inherent in what you do, you have no reason to get out of bed in the morning. Work gave us a purpose, you know. And the funny thing is a lot of people say, I can’t wait to retirement because I’m gonna have so much freedom. That freedom is actually overwhelming because how do you feel it? How how

The only reason we enjoy holidays is because we work. And so suddenly when we’re away on hold, it’s like, you can relax, you can enjoy life because the rest of the time you’re working hard on something. When you retire and you think, I’m I’m free now, I can just travel the whole time. It gets boring because you’ve got nothing else that kind of limits your time. So I feel that in a way

We need to create that by having a purpose, whether it be volunteering, whether it be starting a YouTube channel so that you can create content and you have a community that you know looks forward to spending you know half an hour with you once or twice a week. That’s something that you need. Like for me, the YouTube channel gave me.

like a purpose, a creative outlet, but also a purpose because I’m creating a community of like-minded women who through the comments share our experience that’s available to anyone else who’s interested in in moving and learning more about it.

Neil Rerup (46:39.189)
Yeah.

Yeah. And it’s, it, you don’t have to go searching for somebody because maybe you’re a group of people don’t have other people your age or going through the same sort of thing. You can find common people in the same situation.

Deborah (46:53.238)
Exactly. For the majority of my audience is Australian and I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Australia, but it’s a big country. And the population is Australia.

Neil Rerup (47:02.953)
No, it’s not. I’m in Canada. Australia is not big.

Deborah (47:07.63)
And when you’re out in the bush, there’s not many people out there. You’re working on the farm, you don’t have access to you know the big shopping centers, so you’re reliant on what you see on TV or

On YouTube that creates that friendship, that one-on-one connection where someone, in my case, me, shows a woman who’s in the middle of whoop-whoop, you know what the shops look like, how to look presentable, how to within your own time, your own environment, create purpose in your life by doing something that’s

not readily accessible perhaps. Now with the internet, we can access someone who’s in Canada, who’s in Europe, who’s in Australia, or by you know turning on a button. And I feel like that’s made the world smaller, but it’s also emphasized how different people are, but it’s giving us that connectivity because we can say, I

can actually I would never have met these people in the middle of the bush. But now we can connect through the comments. We’ve got common interests that we get together over and discuss and they can share their experiences that they may not be able to share in their local network because they may not have anyone around, you know, where they’re located.

Neil Rerup (48:35.563)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah (48:47.038)
But now through the connection that they’ve made on the my channel in my c community, they can share their experiences to other people and and they’ve they’ve grown their network, their friendship group through something so simple as, you know, starting a YouTube show.

Neil Rerup (49:03.157)
Yeah. No, that’s one of the pillars of TTN is global retirement perspectives to understand how other cultures are dealing with retirement in that aspect. And I’ve gone into the Europe. I still have to try and find contacts in the Asia area and into Africa and into the subcontinent areas as well, that sort of thing. So.

Well, we’re getting towards the end of the interview. At this point, I always ask my guests one very common question. If you were to give one piece of advice to the audience, it doesn’t matter who the audience is, what would it be?

Deborah (49:48.76)
Be open to learning because and don’t don’t actually, I just mentioned in a recent video, I tried something new and completely failed, and it is don’t be afraid of failing because when you fail, it means that you tried something new that you have no experience with and it didn’t work, but

In the not working, one you put yourself outside of your comfort zone, two, you actually learned what didn’t work, and it’s given you the next time an opportunity to try something different again to fix it. So if it had worked, great, but

sometimes feel like the fear of failing stops us from trying something new. But failing is actually like a stepping stone to growth because you always learn something new from failure. You may not want to, but you always learn something new.

Neil Rerup (50:48.746)
Yeah.

Neil Rerup (50:52.577)
That’s weird.

You said that with regards to when you were raising your kids. You have to let them fail. Let them make their mistakes. Same sort of thing. You have to let yourself make those mistakes. Yeah.

Deborah (51:06.828)
Yeah. And don’t stop doing that. You know, just because you get to a certain age and you might feel embarrassed. I was extremely embarrassing, you know, going on a line and there was no one there and I’m thinking, what does that mean about me? You know, no one likes me. you know but failing taught me that actually no, I hadn’t advertised it correctly, I hadn’t promoted it correctly, just the network wasn’t right. Just so many things that contributed to it, but it gave me now

Neil Rerup (51:21.162)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah (51:36.288)
roads, avenues to actually now okay let’s go fix that let’s go fix that and then I might fail again and you know all the most exactly and all the most successful people have failed multiple times in order to become successful. So don’t be afraid of failing and try something new.

Neil Rerup (51:43.123)
And it gets better and better and better.

Neil Rerup (51:56.171)
There’s a Michael Jordan, a basketball player at the NBA said he would never have been as successful if he hadn’t taken so many shots and missed. So it’s interesting. Well, Deborah, I really want to thank you for taking the time. I’m looking forward to a future relationship with TTN. For people that are watching this video.

Deborah (52:08.054)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah.

Neil Rerup (52:23.499)
There will be links in the description to Deborah’s channel and to anything else that Deborah wants to make sure you’re aware of. Deborah, thank you very much.

Deborah (52:36.61)
Thank you very much, Jill. It’s been a pleasure talking with you and yeah, sharing my perspective on life with you.

Neil Rerup (52:44.199)
It’s been very fun. Thank you.

Deborah (52:47.811)
Thank you. Bye.