From Probation Officer to Actress—Her Late-Life Transformation

speaker-0 (00:05.88)
Welcome everybody. Today we are speaking with Leigh Gail Gruen. Leigh Gail is her first name, by the way. I’ve learned that the hard way. She is an actress, a speaker, and an author. Leigh Gail, it’s always better if the person I’m talking to speaks to themselves and who they are and what they do. So why don’t you introduce yourself?

speaker-1 (00:34.24)
Right, well it’s nice to be here. Thank you, Neil. As Neil said, my name is Lea Gale Gruen. I worked for 37 years as a probation officer in Los Angeles County, California. And when I retired, I went on to become an actress. And then I wrote a book and then a second book. So I’m an author also.

And I imagine as we continue this interview, what I wrote in my books will come out.

speaker-0 (01:08.846)
Absolutely. So one of the reasons why I find it interesting to talk with Lee Gale is one of the things everybody struggles with is when they retire, it’s, what do I do now? Lee Gale, you weren’t an actress when you first retired. So tell us what happened when you retired and what happened before you started finding your passion.

speaker-1 (01:37.218)
When I retired after 37 years, I retired suddenly because I realized that I would be getting a pension that was, and it was significant enough that I was working for very little in effect. So I quickly decided to retire at the age of 60. And I had no plans on what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

as far as creativity, as far as my waking hours. I was, you know, bewildered. I was a little depressed. I had all these hours that I had put in working and early in earlier years being a mother and a wife. And now I had all this free time with nothing to do. It was devastating. So I went searching for material.

to read about what retirees do with themselves. And I’m not talking about your medical or your financial retirement. I’m talking about what do you do with the rest of your life to be a vital contributing human being? Well, there was very little material and I had to learn it the hard way. Very little material on what I was going to do with myself.

What I finally ended up doing, I started doing a few volunteer activities, going to coffee or lunch with friends, actually reading the newspaper from the beginning to the end, things like that.

speaker-0 (03:19.542)
Back when there were newspapers.

speaker-1 (03:21.558)
Back in the old days, right. These were nice activities, but they weren’t stimulating. They weren’t exciting to me. A friend finally told me about some classes for seniors offered by the local community college. So I went to check them out. And in looking through their schedule of classes, I saw something called a scene study class. I had no idea what that meant.

but it sounded like it had something to do with plays. And I always liked plays. And I figured maybe the class just went around the room and everybody maybe talked about some plays that they had seen, things like that. So I signed up and I walked in and that first day a man walked up to me and he handed me a few pieces of paper and said, here, you want to read this with me? And I said, no, well, all right, fine.

And he walks up to the head of the room, and the room was filled with people, absolutely filled. And everybody seemed to know each other. They’d been taking the class over and over again for several semesters. And I was the new kid on the block. Nobody talked to me. Nobody seemed to pay attention to me. It was a little intimidating. So the man walks up to the head of the class, and he says, well, you know, come on. And I said, where?

He said, well, up to the front of the class, we’re going to read this scene. Well, I had always had horrible stage fright talking in front of people, large groups. And I was really intimidated then. And I seriously considered leaving. I seriously considered walking out of that room. The only reason I didn’t was because I was a mature senior. How could I just slink out?

So I went up to the head of the room, very slowly dragging it out as long as I could. And I looked at the papers in my hand and it was the first scene from Death of a Salesman. Well, you talk about intimidated, I was devastated. That’s a very complex play.

speaker-1 (05:34.35)
Well, we started to read, everyone was staring at me and we started to read and I think my first line or two came out very low and squeaky, very nervous. But within just a few more lines, I became engrossed in the material and I completely forgot that a room full of people was staring at me and judging me. And I read for 10 minutes.

And when I was done, everyone clapped, and that’s the protocol, not that I was so terrific, but I was hooked. I was hooked on acting. I had forgotten about my stage fright. I forgot about my self-consciousness, all of that. And I just loved it. So I continued to go to the class, and a few weeks later, my mother, who had been very sick, finally died, and my father was devastated.

They’d been married for 60 years, 61 years. And I don’t know why, but I just blurted out, come with me to my acting class, Daddy. That’s what I said to him, just wanting to give him something. Nah, he didn’t want to come. And I kept pushing him. I think he agreed to come just to shut me up, actually.

And he came to the class. He’d always been a very outgoing, charismatic type of person. And we sat in that class. Finally, the teacher called on him to come up in front of the class with another student to do an improv exercise. And he went up. He was loving it, absolutely loving it. Well, on our way home, he said to me, so what time are you picking me up next week for our class?

And he and I continued to go to that class every week for the next three years. The class had acting class showcases where they invited the public for free and students would put on 10 minutes, 15 minute scenes. So my father and I were a team, but I couldn’t find any professional material that was appropriate for an 85 year old man. So I started writing my own scenes.

speaker-1 (07:57.59)
They were dad and daughter scenes based on things that my father actually had done or might have done in that situation. And I just exaggerated them. And they were very well received by the class, by the audiences. And we contend my father loved it. He just blossomed. And I grew as an actress. I started going out on auditions for real acting jobs. I got an agent.

I took headshots, that’s what we did back then, we had headshots, which I carried around to all my auditions and handed them to the director.

speaker-0 (08:38.22)
You’re in LA, right?

speaker-1 (08:40.064)
I was in LA. now living in the San Francisco Bay area. But this all happened in Los Angeles. Yes. And that’s Los Angeles is very conducive to going into an acting job or acting profession. Well, I started booking real acting jobs for money. And I did lots of they were small things, no big deal things. But I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And by that time, I’d lost my stage fright completely. So now you

Give me a place to talk. I’ll talk anywhere. And I started realizing that this idea of my father and myself attending this acting class together, this senior acting class, was unique or almost unique. Certainly for that class, we were the first father and daughter team that had ever attended that class. So I decided to write a memoir about it.

And it took me nine years from the time I thought of the idea to the time my book was published by a small publisher that I was able to obtain. I kept doubting myself, thinking, who am I to write a book? I had done a lot of writing in my job as a probation officer, but never creative writing. So I wrote the book eventually after doubting myself and putting it away from

long periods of time not thinking about it. One day I woke up at three o’clock in the morning not having thought about the book for a couple of years and I had the whole chapters, paragraphs, chapter headings written and I got up and found some paper, post-its in this case the only thing I could find and I started writing my book on a pack of post-its. And my book was finally published. Now what?

Now I’m an author and my book is published, now what do I do? So I realized I started researching that, I started going to writers’ groups and learning that I had to have book talks, give book talks, things like that. So I started giving book talks. And now that I no longer had stage fright, I was loving that. So I started learning how to promote myself.

speaker-1 (11:03.882)
And little by little I started giving lectures. People would come up to me at my book talks and tell me how devastated they were. They had just retired. They didn’t know what to do with themselves like I had experienced. And I realized that I ought to write a book, self-help book, to help people like me, like them, people who are getting ready to retire or who have just retired and are lost.

don’t know what to do. So I wrote a book called Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years by Joy, Excitement and Purpose After You Retire. Then I started a blog based on my book. And I’ve been writing my blog every two weeks for 14 years now. And I share with my audience, my blog followers.

my thoughts, observations, and experiences which I think are pertinent to my age demographic. And my blog is called Reinventing Yourself and Your Retirement Years, just like my book.

speaker-0 (12:14.24)
Interesting. And that’s the reason why I wanted to talk with you, is one of the pillars for the Transitions Network is identity and emotional reinvention. So many questions. Let me get to your thoughts on the reinvention side of things in a sec. I want to understand how you reinvented yourself first. you

speaker-1 (12:25.836)
Thanks.

speaker-0 (12:40.718)
tried a whole number of different things before you landed onto the acting side of things, correct? Why did the acting stick and the others not stick?

speaker-1 (12:45.718)
Yes, that’s correct.

speaker-1 (12:56.135)
The others didn’t stick because they weren’t stimulating enough. They were interesting, but they got kind of old pretty quick. The acting did a lot for me. It allowed me to express myself. It allowed me to overcome my stage fright, which I’d always had. Put that behind me. It allowed for creativity. I think…

That’s why it stuck because it was exciting and it was something that I could share with others and people appreciated what I was doing.

speaker-0 (13:33.528)
Is it still exciting?

speaker-1 (13:35.264)
It’s still exciting and I’m still, I’ve now moved away from Los Angeles. I live in the East San Francisco Bay area in a very large retirement community and I am very involved in our drama club and I’ve been in many plays for the drama club and we present our plays in front of an audience and they pay not much, but they do pay to come. So,

And I’ve been very much appreciated by the audience. And so it gives me lot of an ego boost also, but just the process of acting itself, I love, whether I’m paid or not.

speaker-0 (14:18.158)
Do you have an IMDB page? It just occurred to me to ask that question. Okay, so I will look that up and I will add that to the description of this video so people can go and take a look at yourself and some of the things that you’ve done.

speaker-1 (14:22.934)
Yes, I do.

speaker-1 (14:32.672)
Okay, now IMDB is for film and it is also from things that you have done that are legitimate film projects. So I have not contributed to IMDB in several years, but I’ve got several things up there so people can see it.

speaker-0 (15:00.078)
Okay, so you went from there, from the acting, into the writing of stage plays with your father.

speaker-1 (15:10.434)
Yes.

speaker-0 (15:12.97)
How is that transition? Because that seems like a natural transition from the acting. And I can see a progression from acting to writing of plays to writing of books. So there’s a natural progression there. How is that transition?

speaker-1 (15:31.062)
had been writing all my professional career as a probation officer. I would write sentencing reports for judges to help sentence criminal defendants. That was a major part of my job. So I had writing skills, but that was technical writing. It was not creative writing. So I had never done any creative writing. I didn’t even know if I could. My first creative writing was writing these scenes

that my father and I performed in the acting class showcases. When I gave it a try, I found that I had a natural bent for it, and I was pretty good at it. And my writing skills that I already had helped a lot with that. So that was my first stab at writing. When I wrote my memoir, and by the way, the name of the memoir is Adventures with Dad.

A father and daughter’s journey through a senior acting class. And both of my books, by the way, are available on Amazon.com.

When I wrote my book, and I told you it started at three o’clock in the morning on a pack of Post-its, I decided to put in all six scenes that I had written for my father and myself to perform on stage. all of my, and they’re short scenes, they were ran about four or five minutes each. So all of my scenes are in my book. And I’ve had several people tell me that they,

were in a play reading group or an acting class for seniors, something like that. And they bought my book just to use those little scenes in their classes. So that’s kind of interesting. I needed a subject to write about and my father was perfect fodder for that. He was, as I told you, of a very outgoing, charismatic.

speaker-1 (17:37.752)
man and he got himself into more situations. So I just exaggerated a lot of them and put them in the book. those things, though, back to your original question, how I transitioned, it was from my job, learning writing skills, into creative writing, first the scenes that my father and I performed, next into writing a book. And again, I was doubting myself.

think that’s something that I’ll talk about maybe a little later about people doubting themselves and that they should try anyway. You’re going to succeed if you don’t try.

speaker-0 (18:18.904)
Yeah.

Now you’ve moved from that into your book on retirement.

speaker-1 (18:27.864)
Yes.

speaker-0 (18:29.432)
Tell me about that.

speaker-1 (18:32.492)
That was motivated by people, as I mentioned earlier, coming up to me at book talks often, or just in general, and saying, I’m absolutely lost. I just don’t know what to do. I ran into so many people like that. And I realized, I’ve lived that. I made it. I’m over the hill. And I did it the hard way.

The trial and error way. I found a new life, a new purpose. And I have information to pass along to help people. There was hardly anything for me. And I think even now there’s hardly anything. You yourself mentioned that to me, that you had a hard time finding anything to tell you what to do with the rest of your life.

So I thought, you know, I have this information. I want to give back to the community. So not only did I write my book, I started doing research and I had my own personal experiences that I could put in the book and research and I interviewed people and came up with a book all about, you know,

why people are frightened to retire, what forces them to retire, or why they retire, what things they can do. I actually have a whole big section on lots of suggestions that you can do in your retirement, things that people may not have thought about. I’ll you one example that I use to help people figure out what they’d like to do, and that is…

think about what kind of newspaper articles, or in this case internet articles, or magazine articles that you always read. What are you always drawn to? And for myself, one of the early things that I tried, I realized I loved science. And I always read every science article that I found in magazines or papers, even though I wasn’t into science myself in my career.

speaker-1 (20:55.136)
So I thought I’d like to do something that has to do with science. And living in Los Angeles, I lived very close to something called the La Brea Tar Pits. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them. They’re very famous, world famous. And they trapped prehistoric animals. And the animal bones have been recovered and placed in a museum. And I contacted them. And sure enough, they had a docent program.

where I could lead docent tours around the museum. So I got involved in the docent program. They trained me and I led visitors around the museum, visitor groups. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. Tapped into my acting skills. I was able to perform in front of these groups. They loved it. They got so much out of it.

So that’s one thing that I did and that is how I found it by thinking what kind of things am I always drawn to reading about? So I hope that answers your question.

speaker-0 (22:07.242)
Absolutely. So you said something interesting. You said people are afraid to retire.

That’s the first time I’ve heard that statement. And I’ve been interviewing a lot of people for the last couple of months now. And that’s first time I’ve heard that statement. What are they afraid of? Just out of

speaker-1 (22:31.948)
You know, your job, your career, or if you’re a full-time homemaker or parent and don’t work at a job, that’s your job. And this is what they know. This is what they do, you know, eight hours a day, most of their waking, much of their waking hours. They don’t know anything else and they’re afraid to leave that. Take a job, for example, that gives you status.

that gives you purpose. If I leave my job, how am I going to get that? Where am I going to get that? So that’s one reason that people don’t want to retire. I have a cousin who used to have his own accounting firm. And he was an accountant all his life, head of his own firm. He didn’t retire until the age of 80 because he kept saying, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.

So that’s a big fear. What is out there? How do you find it? That’s another thing I mentioned in my book. How to find, say you identify something. Okay, I like science. Where am I gonna find something where I live that taps into science? And one thing I tell people is research it on the internet, put in a question into AI or into Google.

I live in such and such a city and state and country and where can I find something that has to do with, and in this case, the La Brea Tar Pits had to do with paleontology. Where can I find something that has to do with science or paleontology, if you want to be more specific, near where I live?

If you don’t, and then I tell people, if you are not internet savvy, if you’re not a techie like you are, go to the library. Ask the librarian to help you. There are resources. People don’t know where to find those resources. And when people retire and they’re depressed, the people who came up to me were depressed, they didn’t know what to do with themselves.

speaker-1 (24:53.026)
What I tell, I’ve had family members ask me, you know, my father is so depressed. He’s just retired. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. I’m trying to get him to go to the local senior community. I make suggestions and he doesn’t want to go. Well, I can understand that. It’s scary to walk into a place that you don’t know anyone.

Just like I walked into my acting class. I didn’t know anyone. Everybody knew each other. They were talking and no one was paying attention to me. That is intimidating. You know what I said to the daughter of that man? I said, go with him. Go with him to the senior center the first time or the second time or the 10th time. Go with him and be there and help him navigate it until he gets comfortable and can go on his own. Don’t just hand your loved one

a list, here’s places you can go, here’s things you can do, and expect them to do it if they’re depressed, if they’re intimidated.

That’s in my book also.

speaker-0 (25:59.438)
It’s funny, my father is still alive. He’s 94 turning 95 this year. And he’s just recently stopped doing what has been his passion for decades, which was genealogy. And I’m saying, dad, you really need to get out of the house. You need to go do something. And he said, what? And it’s like, you have to experiment. You have to try different things. But you’re right.

saying that to somebody and then expecting them to do it can be intimidating for them, regardless of the age. It’s almost, while you were talking, it reminded me of the first time a little kid is going to elementary school. That first day is going to be scary for them. And it’s like the first day that you go to high school, the first day that you go to university, first day you start

working. It’s a scary chain.

And relating back to those other firsts, those other transitions is very similar.

speaker-1 (27:12.692)
That’s exactly right. We’re always scared when we’re off balance, when something is new, when we don’t know anybody else. This is why so many people when they get together or when they try to get somebody to go with them, friends, let’s go together. I’m glad you shared that about your 94 year old father.

I can’t imagine a 94 year old man going out there and finding something. I think you would have to not just give him the suggestion, but maybe take him by the hand like a child in effect and go with him until he’s comfortable enough to go by himself. If you find something that grabs him and he likes it, and maybe another person there goes, come on and sit at our table.

whatever, then he might be comfortable enough to go by himself and find that person there and go, I’ll sit at your table again.

speaker-0 (28:21.482)
Do you see a common thread about through the things that people try? Something that’s common to you and into acting. Me, I’m into the podcasting side of things. My father for the longest time was doing genealogy for other people, other families, so on and so on and so on. A number of the people I’ve talked to, Carol Rosenstein.

speaker-1 (28:33.133)
Yes.

speaker-0 (28:50.286)
She started Music Men’s Minds for helping her husband who had Parkinson’s. But it was always reaching out. It was always outward focused, as opposed to inward focused. Is that a common thread?

speaker-1 (29:06.87)
You know something that’s actually something else I talk about in my book, the reinventing yourself in your retirement years. You need to be realistic about your personality type. Are you an outgoing person? Are you a in-going person? Are you uncomfortable in situations where you have to do a lot of talking?

You really need to know that and be realistic about that before you find what it is. For example, if you are going to take your father who is 94 years old, and I don’t know your father, but I’m going to, let’s use as an example. If he’s an in-going person, I’m not thinking of the right word for that, introverted.

If he’s an introverted person, you’re not going to take him to an acting class. So one thing, and I use examples in my book of people I know, I knew, it was a friend, her husband, was an introverted person. And he finally ended up with a volunteer position at the local museum of

of history. was the museum where they have the ancient animals. It wasn’t my museum, but it was a natural history. That’s what I’m trying to say. Museum of natural history. And you know what he was doing and he loved it? He was in the bone, what they called the bone room, where they had all kinds of bones and they were cataloging the bones. And it was an alone activity where he didn’t have to interact much with other people.

and he was cataloging ancient animal bones. And he loved it. It worked for him. Now, I don’t know that that would work for me, being kind of isolated from other people, because that’s not my personality type.

speaker-0 (31:23.342)
But it was something that gave him purpose.

speaker-1 (31:27.702)
Yes. It him purpose. It fit with his personality type. He was motivated on the days that he was going to go there to get to, and this is something else I mentioned in my book. You’ve got to have something that motivates you to want to get up in the morning, get out of bed, get dressed and get out of the house. It has to be something that really motivates you. Otherwise it just

speaker-0 (31:29.112)
So there’s.

speaker-1 (31:56.942)
too easy to spend your day walking around the house in your pajamas or nightgown or whatever else it is you wear to bed, not going out. Pretty soon people start to deteriorate in their hygiene. You want all kinds of ways. And you want to find something that really motivates you to get out of that house.

speaker-0 (32:28.949)
is

speaker-0 (32:32.396)
You were mentioned a number of people were coming up to you because they couldn’t find anything. They were retired and they were kind of lost.

Is there any trends that you saw with regards to how long it takes people to find that? Something for them to be involved in?

speaker-1 (32:51.0)
Some never find it. And you know, among the among seniors, and you wouldn’t think it, but there is a lot of alcoholism, a lot of drug use. It’s so with the general population. But you’d think that by the time someone is retired or a senior, that that would not be a part of their life. But that’s not so. There are many people who are very, very depressed after they retire.

Now they may have been depressed before. I’m sure there’s a certain amount of those also. But retirement can be a very depressing time if you don’t have a life. If you go that other route where you spend the majority of your time on the couch in front of the television set. It’s very important to know that there’s plenty out there for you to get involved in.

for you to do, you’re still worthwhile, you still have value. These are the things that people worry about when they’re ready to retire. Will anybody care about me anymore? Will I have value? Will anybody want to be with me? Won’t even talk to me. You know, in your job, you were kind of whatever you did, you you were.

speaker-0 (34:13.276)
Somebody would come up to you and ask or…

speaker-1 (34:16.118)
or you were an expert and people would talk to you and you discuss this. If you don’t have that to talk about, what are you going to talk about to people? So this is a major concern and it is possible to find life out there. One thing that I did when I first retired, I heard about a learning in retirement program in Los Angeles.

And it was affiliated with the local university, is UCLA in Los Angeles, University of California in Los Angeles.

It was a learning and retirement program for seniors and I checked it out and they had classes and they were called study discussion groups where the class focused on a certain topic and everybody in the class was assigned a subtopic to do a little research on and make a presentation on and then lead a discussion group about it on their given day. I loved that. I was in that group for six years and it was very exciting to me.

So I mentioned this in my book. This is something that a lot of people find exciting. Going back to school or taking some kind of classes. As I said, I have a whole chapter on ideas on what you might check out in your area that might interest you. Athletic activities, sports activities, things like that. Another thing I do that I love, I take hula dancing in my community.

And I just love it.

speaker-0 (35:53.71)
I could just see you in a grass skirt there, Lee Gale.

speaker-1 (35:57.912)
Don’t forget the coconuts. But we actually do perform. We perform in stages here in my retirement community, as well as outside of the community. We perform at local retirement homes, other centers that hire us. And they pay us, too, by the way. So not.

not a lot, enough for us to help buy our costumes or go out to lunch as a group once in a while. But it is so exciting and I love it.

speaker-0 (36:34.081)
No.

Is your father still with you?

speaker-1 (36:38.528)
No, he passed away several years ago.

speaker-0 (36:42.594)
That’s a common threat now that we’re getting up into these age ranges. How has that impacted your association with the outside world? And now I ask that because I lost my aunt a week and a half, two weeks ago. she passed at 97 and my dad said to me, I’m the last, I’m the last of his generation. And I could see it actually did have a bit of an impact to him.

speaker-1 (37:07.192)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (37:12.084)
It’s in the back of his mind now.

speaker-1 (37:14.401)
Of course.

speaker-0 (37:15.778)
But that happens as we lose people. How has that impacted everything that you’ve been doing?

speaker-1 (37:23.52)
I’m very well aware of that. I’ve had some relatives who have died. I’ve had friends who have died. It’s upsetting because you know that that’s what will happen to you eventually. But I tried not to focus on it. I think my most recent blog talks about not focusing on uncertainty. That was my most recent blog.

And rather than spending your time looking at that, I try to set that aside. Not that you can’t think about that. Of course, it’s part of our life. But set it aside and move on with your life and find the excitement, the purpose. I’m 84 and I’m still in pretty good health. I’m vital. I imagine a time will come when that is not so.

but I can’t let today be impacted by what might happen in the future. I have to, I use the term, I have to grab life. Life is very exciting to me. It can be exciting to other people too. If you can identify that thing that excites you, find that thing that excites you and it can be found. I go into stores like the local,

pharmacy store, drugstore. And I see people at the cash register who are my age. a lot of them are not working. Some may be working because they need the extra money to supplement whatever other income they have. But some are working because it’s vital to them. It excites them to get out there and still be productive in some way. So they’re behind a cash register. And who knows who that

man behind the cash register was in his earlier years. He may have been a CEO of a corporation. Who knows?

speaker-0 (39:28.674)
You also mentioned earlier a gentleman that was an accountant and didn’t retire until he was 80. Which I interviewed Dr. Catherine Rickwood last week. What she’s been doing is all her research and all her work has been around reimagining retirement. Because not everybody is ready to retire at 65, 67.

speaker-1 (39:34.776)
That’s right.

speaker-0 (39:53.48)
One of the things she’s suggested is that job sharing seems like an appropriate and underutilized tool where maybe somebody younger would be paired with somebody older and split the job so that there’s that transfer of knowledge.

speaker-1 (40:12.278)
You know, this is kind of funny. It wasn’t quite a younger, older situation. It was an older, older situation. It was my parents. My father wanted to go back to work, but not full time and not his old job, just something that he knew he could do. So he found a job as a secretary to a bank executive.

She only wanted a part-time help. So he worked, I think it was three days a week, might not have even been the full day, I don’t recall. And it was great, went on for a couple of years. And she finally said to him, you know, my job has progressed to the point where I need someone full-time. Will you come to work for me full-time?

And he said, no, I don’t really want to. retired. I don’t need to work full time. I don’t even need to work part time, but I want I wanted to. And he said, but you know, and he talked it over with my mother. He said, my wife worked as a secretary. What would you think if I worked three days and she worked two days? And that’s what happened. And they did that for years. They worked. And sometimes when when one of them couldn’t work,

one of their days, the other one would fill in. You know, it was great. And they, they got a vacation. They got a raise. I mean, it was adorable. The kids, their kids loved it.

speaker-0 (41:51.258)
It’s very similar to my wife where she, the kids are into their mid-20s and she’s like, what do do with myself? So she has her bachelor of science in chemistry. She has her MBA and she decided to become a stay at home mom when she was laid off from her last job. She was working for the BC government as a venture capitalist at the time.

But 20 years later, she said, you know what, I’m just going to take a job at a retail job. And she works three days a week and they keep wanting to push her up to four or five full time. And she’s like, my body can’t stand standing.

speaker-1 (42:34.806)
I it.

speaker-0 (42:37.23)
So, yeah.

speaker-1 (42:38.862)
Good for her. Good for her.

speaker-0 (42:41.256)
so you’ve written your book and you’re doing talks with that now.

speaker-1 (42:47.654)
I have for many years given talks. They’re actually lectures. I’ve lectured many times and one company for a while had me going to different large retirement homes that they own throughout the country. So they were flying me to different locations to give the talk. And the talk is about reinventing yourself in your retirement years. I actually wrote the book, I think,

I’m trying to remember which I wrote did first wrote the book or started the talks one way or another there there they coordinate with each other. The talks are basically the same information that is in the book but the book of course is much longer. The book also has the first half of my book is based on my lecture the second half of my book has all my blog posts from the first five years of my blog.

So that’s the contents of that book.

speaker-0 (43:48.91)
Okay. And is there another stage after the book and the lectures? Because you evolved from the actress to the stage playwright to the author to the lecturer. Is there a new stage coming?

speaker-1 (44:04.812)
Well, I’m thinking about a podcast. I’ve kind of started a podcast or the beginnings of one. It is online and it’s called, it’s not called reinventing yourself in your retirement years because you can’t have such a long title for a podcast. It’s called Retirement Made to Order.

speaker-1 (44:36.29)
Is that the, you know what? I think that’s the title. I’m gonna have to look it up. I haven’t revisited it for a while. I started it. I have some podcasts up and I haven’t, I kind of put it aside. It’s a lot of work. I hope to continue it, develop it. And that’s kind of where I am. I also hope to put out another book of more of my blog posts.

The, you know, it’s been, that book came out in 2020, the reinventing yourself in your retirement years. And it came out in 2020. So it has the first five years of my blog posts. Now I’ve got another six or seven. So I want to put them in book form. So I do hope to do that.

speaker-0 (45:27.438)
Okay. So just so everybody knows, Lee Gale and I are talking with regards to me helping her with her podcast. So bring her into the transitions network. That’s the reason why it’s called a network. Just as an aside, I had a conversation with a vendor, through email and she thought when I said network, I was talking like a computer network as opposed to a network of people. It’s interesting how people have different connotations.

speaker-1 (45:57.922)
Right.

speaker-0 (45:59.552)
So next steps, just out of curiosity.

You found your area and evolves and it shifts as we go along because the next thing comes up as a natural progression of the last thing.

speaker-1 (46:20.086)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (46:21.036)
That phase from trying to find something to finding your acting. From retirement to the acting. How long did that take you?

speaker-1 (46:36.576)
Well, a good couple of years at least, as I told you, I tried other things. I did two or three different volunteer positions, travel, I was traveling, know, getting together with friends, flopping around trying to find where, trying to find a good fit. each thing that

was fine but short-term and not didn’t didn’t sustain for too long another thing to consider by the way is what and i i do say this in the book trial lots of different things not just a few things because if you just try a few things and they don’t fit and you get discouraged doesn’t mean there isn’t something out there that will fit you try try

try lots of different things and try different things than you’re used to. I was never an actress. I was scared to death. Anybody had told me that I would have to get up in front of a group of people and perform a scene. No way, no way. I kind of fell into it. But because I did, was pure dumb luck, I found a whole new life. And a whole new life that I never would have dreamed of, I never would have sought out.

So try lots of different things. You might find something that you never realized that is exciting to you. On the other hand, you might try things that you do know. If you were a teacher, for example, you might try tutoring students. Maybe that is the thing that continues to excite you.

speaker-0 (48:28.27)
I interviewed Dr. Riley Moyne around a month ago, I guess. And he fell into the retirement side of things, the understanding what’s going on, just as you have. And what he did was he documented and wrote a book called The Four Phases of Retirement. The first phase is that vacation phase where you

retire and you get to do whatever you want. think it’s a great vacation. then six months to two years later, it’s like, is that it? And you go through a phase of loss and you realize you don’t know who you are anymore. You don’t know what, what to do. That desperation, that depression. That’s that loss phase. The reinvention phase is the third phase. And he went through 14, 15.

different things until he fell into his niche. And now he’s found his niche, just as you found your niche. So I think the message to people is you’re going to go through a lot of things until you find that one thing. You can’t let the fact that you’ve tried a lot of different things depress you. Just understand you’re trying to find what is you.

speaker-1 (49:51.66)
Yeah, that’s so true. I remember, this is a little simple example of something that can show you that there are other things out there that might excite you that you never even knew about. I had a class in the Plato Society, the learning and retirement program that I was in.

And we were, that particular class had to do with Antarctica. And the subtopics were passed out to everybody, pick out of a hat, you know. And one man picked something and he was very unhappy about it. I don’t know anything about this and I was blank, blank, blank in my career and that’s what I know about this. I don’t like this subject.

and no one was willing to trade with him. he, you know, left at the end of class, he grumbled his way out and blah, blah, blah. Well, when it was his turn to present, he was so excited about his subject that he had picked. He said, I never even knew about this. And this is so exciting. And he gave this whole wonderful talk and led this discussion group about it.

We don’t know what’s out there unless we check it out. And even something that you hear about, go, nah, that’s not for me. That’s what I would have done with acting if someone had suggested it.

It may be for you. You don’t know unless you try it. So I just I would strongly encourage people to try lots of different things. But again, consistent with your personality type. If you are an extrovert. Introverted type of activities just may never work for you and are a waste of time.

speaker-0 (52:04.074)
and vice versa.

speaker-1 (52:05.312)
and vice versa, of course. So that’s what I strongly suggest.

speaker-0 (52:12.32)
I think that’s a great piece of advice, which is what I always ask people at the end of the interviews. What’s that one piece of advice? And I think you just naturally progressed into that. Lee Gale, thank you very much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. For everybody, I will post links in the description for Lee Gale’s books. I will find her IMDB.

speaker-1 (52:23.182)
okay.

speaker-0 (52:41.198)
page and put that link in there as well, just so you can see a little bit more and your blog and look forward in the next few weeks to when Lee Gale can join the Transitions Network once she and I have had further discussions around this. Don’t forget to like and subscribe the video. It always helps to get more people aware of it and pass the information on to others. Remember.

speaker-1 (53:07.182)
I did forget one thing. I do have a website where people can read about my books, also see things about my acting. It’s LeeGaleGruin.com.

speaker-0 (53:20.386)
We’ll make sure that that is put into the description as well. Thank you. Thank you very much.

speaker-1 (53:25.922)
Thank you, it’s been a pleasure.