The Bonus Decades: What Happens After Midlife?

speaker-0 (00:04.526)
Welcome everybody. Thanks for coming back and joining us. Today we have Abigail Trafford. Now Abigail is an author and a columnist, but it always sounds better coming from the person that I’m talking to. So Abigail, thank you very much for joining us. And why don’t you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do.

speaker-1 (00:26.102)
who I am and what I do. I guess what you asked me that today it is I live fully. I have to say that this is, if I look at my life, this is one of the most creative and productive and loving times of my life. And I’m in my eighties. Now, what did I do to get here?

Well, I was a journalist. I worked for the US News and World Report and for many years, the Washington Post. And I was health editor at the Washington Post. And every year, people would ask, well, what’s the big story? And we had incredible advances in genes and surgery and this and that. But the biggest story that really was not covered was the longevity revolution. And by that, mean, it’s not just that we’ve added years on to the end of life.

we have created a whole, we call it health span, a sort of a new era into our lives. Now stick with me for a minute. know, adolescence, we didn’t know anything about adolescence until 1904 when that was coined. And by that time, life expectancy had drifted up to about 50 or so. But now, since we’ve extended that, we have a new stage in the life cycle, which is really after midlife, after traditional life.

But before what we think of as traditionally old age. And I call this new stage my time. Because in a sense, by the time we get to this stage, we’ve checked all the boxes. We’ve raised a family. We’ve loved spouses and friends. We’ve raised a family or not. We’ve done all the adult tasks. And then society says, well, go retire.

And my feeling is, retire that word, because you can’t retire. Because you have at least 20 or 30 more years of very productive life. Now I’m not going to minimize what happens in old age. we all understand, in a sense, the crises, both health and emotional, that come at the end, when we’re very old and at the end of life.

speaker-1 (02:44.206)
So I’m not gonna minimize that. But what’s forgotten is how rich this period is and how vital it is and what do you do with it? And I call it my time because there’s no script. You have to write it yourself. So what I did is I went around and I talked to people and say, know, what are you doing with your life? And I found individuals, people are so creative.

And people were doing wonderful things with their life, both professionally, I say that professionally, like, you know, what their purpose was, sort of outside of their family and their love life. But then I also found a revolution going on in people’s love lives. And in fact, when I wrote the first book, which was Heights in My Time, you know, How Did They Make the Most of My Time, I found that a lot of the questions were, well, what do we do about relationships?

What do we do about love when there’s no script? And so then I wrote the second book, which was as time goes by. And that was fascinating to see the incredible variety of people coming together. Because as one woman said, what our responsibility is at this age is to teach the young how to live, but to teach the young how to love. And that really stuck with me.

And I thought it’s an incredibly creative period in terms of relationships. And I end up with the concept of a team. It’s not really finding the perfect partner. It’s really having a team. And that is, this is really based on research that comes out of Stanford. I don’t know what that noise is doing.

speaker-0 (04:38.318)
deal with that. I’ll deal with that.

speaker-1 (04:40.558)
Okay, all of that, good. What I found was this creative period in relationships and the concept of a team, and this comes out of research in Stanford, and that is you really need eight to ten people and you define it as you cannot imagine your life without them. And you define it, you know, it could be a partner, could be a neighbor, it could be whatever.

And you need about eight to 10. And so that inner circle. And if you get down below three, you kind of get into trouble, you know, that you and I love that idea of the teen concept. And I have to say as a grandmother and as someone who cherishes my friends and my new friends, as well as the friends I’ve lost, I really understand that concept of a team. And so that that that really

in a nutshell is what my work is all about. And it’s really telling people’s stories and how people’s stories in a sense, illustrate the main points of what I’m saying. scientists have said, you know, we have gained 10 biological years. Now that doesn’t mean, you know, that 80 is the new 50, but it does mean that our whole concept of ourselves

speaker-0 (05:50.734)
You’re

speaker-1 (06:07.37)
needs to change because we are biologically in a different zone than our grandparents or great grandparents were. And this is the social revolution and it’s pretty global. I mean, I’m not going to talk about the top all the places in the world that are filled with war and disaster, but for countries like the United States, this is a golden era. It’s a golden era to be old. The trouble is

Society and the politicians don’t understand that.

speaker-0 (06:42.99)
There’s so many questions just. Yeah. Let’s start off with you had talking about the revolution with regards to relationships. What’s the change been in your mind? I understand you were talking about the eight being the magic number and everything. But.

speaker-1 (06:44.428)
That’s where I’m coming from.

speaker-0 (07:07.084)
That’s the number of people as opposed to the relationships themselves. How the relationships changed from what you can tell.

speaker-1 (07:15.406)
I think we’re better at love. know, practice, maybe never get to perfect, but practice really does help. And you know, we’re much wiser. And so I think we know, we know how to be, we know how to love someone. We know how to, how to give, how to bend, how to deal with crises. We know ourselves better. This is the other thing. You know, we go through a lot of life.

pretending that we’re someone that we think we ought to be and we’re not exactly that. Well, by the time you get to my time, you sort of say, here I am, you know, this is who I am, I know it, and this is who I’m presenting. And I think that’s great for relationships and there are different kinds of relationships. You’re not stuck in that teenage thing of, you know, a certain kind of marriage. You realize in a sense that

the plurality that comes in a relationship with different people and with a significant other, with a partner, with a husband. And I think that that’s one of the key things that people are much more themselves and more confident. And there are two things that can happen. We’ve all had heartbreak. You can’t get to this stage without knowing heartbreak and loss. But there are two things that can happen. If your heart breaks,

it also opens it up with new understanding. And so that makes you in a sense love better afterwards, because you know what real love is all about. So that’s part of it. And so I would go around and interview people, couples and also individuals, and what was their love life like? Who did they love? And the field is wide open. I I say,

I’m a doting granny. I love my grandchildren. it’s really, it’s, how can I say it’s, it’s not complicated. Maybe that’s one of the keys. It’s not complicated. If you say, I love you, that’s the bottom line. And you do that with friends and partners and family members and people who are in your lives. And so that puts it on a different tone.

speaker-1 (09:39.502)
And I think it’s quite glorious. And it’s sort of a forgotten aspect that this is a creative period for relationships. I mean, we’ve heard a lot and it’s true, it’s a creative period for new purpose. And that’s the other thing I sort of say, retire that word retire, because we all need purpose outside of ourselves. And so that was another component of the work I’ve done.

speaker-0 (10:05.176)
So I’m going to completely agree with you. You said something along the lines of retire that word retire.

How would you redefine this? Because quite honestly, I’m of the mind that the term retirement, the entire phase of retirement is just wrong. I remember, I’ve said this in previous videos, where back in the 90s, I read that we go through four different career changes in our life. I’m actually thinking that it’s not so much career changes as there are

changes in life.

speaker-1 (10:49.09)
Completely. mean, think if, you know, our quote careers or our work patterns, they certainly are chapters. When we start out, we’re learning. We have mentors, you know, we’re doing sometimes work we don’t like to do, but we do that in order to do other kinds of work. And then we move on and we find we’re leaders and we’re leading and we’re or not, or we’re doing something very particular. In other words, I think that if you look at your work life,

before sixty sixty five there are chat definite chapters even you change jobs you change places where you work you move around and you’re also going to changes in your your family dynamics all of that is constantly changing and so the idea that you hit a certain age and you say well i’m retired that all that stops is absurd

speaker-0 (11:26.744)
places you live.

speaker-1 (11:47.598)
And so in a way, this next phase, which I do call my time, also filled with chapters. one of the differences is that there’s much more responsibility on the self to create the work. That earlier in adulthood, we’re kind of programmed as to what we do. But now there’s no program. And this is both unsettling, but it’s also exciting.

to realize that we are the generation of pioneers that are rewriting the script of the life cycle. And so we do things. I think there are two ways to go. Some people do find a purpose that’s in line with what they were already doing. And other people say, I’m going to do something totally different. When I was in high school, I wanted to be in the theater. And so

You get a job, you know, working in a theater, just being part of a theater or joining a theater. I mean, that’s an extreme example. And I have examples in the book of people who totally regenerated with something different. know, other people take their savvy that they learned in the workplace and do it for nonprofits or another or a startup company or, in other words, you use the talents that you have very much in your sort of next chapter.

And again, to look at my time, not as just one block, but maybe in 10 year segments or five year segments, there’s a great deal of churn because, we’re healthy and we’re able to, we have sort of new life and no rules. Right now there are no rules. We’re the pioneers who are making the rules. And, but there still are no rules. And then I go back to society.

Society does not understand this. A workplace does not understand this. Capitalism does not understand this. And so we really have, in a sense, a lot of work to do as a generation to, in a sense, make my time an integral part of the life cycle. And it’s very creative. Here’s this resource. I mean, the country has this enormous resource of talented, experienced

speaker-1 (14:12.162)
And I’m going to say loving individuals. how can we make the world a better place? I guess you can see I’m of that 60s, 70s generation. We want to make the world a better place. I still want to make the world a better place.

speaker-0 (14:25.902)
It’s funny when you’re saying all that. I had a conversation with a old friend of mine. Her son is the same age as my son. And he’s now graduated and he’s saying to his mom. Where’s the work life balance at like 22 and I’m going, I’m sorry when I was 22 it was just work. There was no work life balance. Your.

My time, it used to be for us, work, retire, life. I’m wondering whether the two are starting to merge so it becomes work, life all the way through.

speaker-1 (15:09.494)
Well, that’s one of the gifts we could give to younger generations. I think that it’s sort of happening. Here’s the conflict. In order to make your mark in the workplace, you have to work terribly hard. And so that’s where it’s very hard to have workplace balance. But the reason I think it’s changing, and maybe I’m a woman, but I do think that the role of women

in the last 30 years has helped with that work-life balance and sort of say that we don’t want to burn out with the, you know, first life, the first chapters. We do want to have some balance, but I think that it’s difficult. However, part of what we can do in our My Time is to show younger people in a sense the how you can put together purpose,

and that would be earning a living. And this other part of life which is so essential. I you don’t want to burn out on life by the time you get to be 55, when you’re just so exhausted that, you really want to capture life. And it’s excitement. You can see I’m an optimist about what’s possible in life. And again, the people I interviewed, I often interviewed them in heartbreak.

I’m not saying that life is all happiness. It’s not. And I think that one of the things that age does give you is the ability to understand that the range that life offers and how to make the most of it. And again, I’m ending up as a mush because I think love is the most important thing we have going on the planet. And so if you can, in a sense, embrace that part of your life throughout your life, but certainly

Certainly when you’re doing your job or your purpose, but also have in a sense that essential thread that I’m a human being with fellow human beings and I’m going to embrace them because then they also embrace me and that’s what life is about. And I think it’s one of the challenges, but one of the messages that we older people can give to younger people.

speaker-1 (17:33.506)
who are so involved with their lives. mean, it’s, talk about the rat race. I mean, it really is hard today. I mean, work is hard, working for someone else, earning a living. We all have to earn a living. you know, capitalism is cruel. There’s nothing kind about the business world or working. And so, I think these other components that we can bring as older people, which is, we know heartbreak.

We can recover from heartbreak. We know the importance of having a team and giving of ourselves. I think that that’s a magic lesson that we can give out, and I hope that the country can take advantage of.

speaker-0 (18:22.51)
Let’s go back to that concept you mentioned of the team. One of things I’ve had to learn is that as I get older, more and more of the people that I’ve had around me have died, have passed on. My dad is 94. He’ll turn 95 in October. Last summer, early fall, he had a bit of an existential crisis because he was saying,

I’m the only one left. Everybody I knew is gone. My mother died like 10 years ago type thing. All his friends have died. relatives are gone.

That becomes hard.

speaker-1 (19:07.182)
It’s hard. It’s really hard. And I have to say I’m going through that. Not quite with you to the age of your father, but it’s so hard. And I’ll say this to my grown daughters. I’m feeling so bereft and it’s the loss of friends and in a sense, the slow loss of friends, people you’ve shared your life with childhood with. And I think that when we get to this stage, we sort of

We close the circle of beginnings and endings. So those who’ve been with us all our lives are incredibly important. And so I’ll say two things here. One of the things is I gather up the memories and I realize how rich my life has been with these friendships. And so in a sense, I keep them on my shoulder. And the other is you bond with new friends and new people. You’ve become

And you know how to be a friend. Anyway, that’s the gift of old friends is that, you know, caring about another person and sharing life is sort of the essence of connection. And so you’re able to do that with whoever you’re with at the moment. I think, I mean, I, I, I want to, I want to sort of not stress. I want to be clear that this is not all roses at this stage of life.

And it’s true that one’s risk of death goes down the older you get. However, there is an endpoint. And so you think about, know, this is it. This is it. And what have I seen? And what do I make of it all? Those philosophical questions are very important. And I think it’s very important to deal with. And sorrow and loss are actually an integral part of

daily life, but they’re not the only part of life. and I and I guess I’m for embracing all of it. You can’t keep it out the door. You have to embrace all of it. But somehow, you know, I think of the ones I have lost and then I got a call from my granddaughter. know, you know, who certainly wasn’t around when I made friends with the one I’ve lost. And so I think that’s

speaker-1 (21:32.544)
Again, I keep going back to the thread of love being essential.

speaker-0 (21:38.306)
I think it’s probably, based on all the conversations I’ve had, it sounds like it’s easier for women to find new relationships than it is for men. That men, their relationships were tied to their careers, but once they retire and they’re getting to their older age, they’re at home. Them going out, it becomes more difficult.

speaker-1 (22:01.762)
Yes, well, men, I have to say as a woman, men have always been difficult all my life, but I love men. And I do, love men. And I have to say I have great friends who men always have, like through the workplace or just in general. really, yes, I love men. I do think it’s hard. I think they’re getting a lot better. I think the generation coming up is better. And I’m going to say, God bless the women’s movement.

that men today have learned quite a lot about caring for other people and thinking about other people. But then I think men can use the same bonding techniques that you do on the job. There’s not, mean, having worked in journalism, I always think of it as my Washington Post family. They’re so close, the people I worked with. And I think you then transfer that to other groups. I think men are good, and you see it now, there are these men’s group popping up and they’re,

They call it something else, but and it’s getting together and, you know, talking about, you know, football or something. In other words, they’re not sort of holding hands and say, gee, this is so precious. They’re there. They’re You know, they’re starting to know what did they what did the Red Sox do last night? You know, but that’s bonding. That is reaching out and being with other people and sort of saying that you care. You share the universe with them and you’re connected.

I think one of the hard things, one of the risks actually, is isolation and attended depression. And I think that’s really hard and I think that men may be more vulnerable. We’re all vulnerable, but I think that perhaps men have to learn things that when they were kids in high school, they weren’t learning.

speaker-0 (23:54.606)
Yeah, that was, you’ve mentioned a couple of things, for example, the men’s groups, sort of thing. And I think back and that started, I’m the last year of Baby Boomers. You’re a Baby Boomer. Men’s groups, I’m not even sure they started for the millennials. I think maybe it was for the Gen Xs. I think they maybe started with the millennials, but that makes me realize different age groups have different approaches.

to aging. Do you see any trends going on right now?

speaker-0 (24:31.141)
Because, like I said, my dad, he was the silent generation. How I’m aging, how you’re aging, compared to how my dad aged, completely different. The next, that following generation, the millennials, the Gen Xs, completely different. I’m just wondering whether there’s a trend in a certain direction.

speaker-1 (24:54.11)
think that, let’s think about this, there may be a trend, and you mentioned work-life balance, that these chapters may not be so distinct for younger people because they’ve had to do it all along, whether they wanted to or not, and that also we see that people…

It used to be that people worked in one place for their whole working life. And now people don’t do that. And so there’s much more change. So I think that the millennials and the eugenics are much more used to change in their sort of life situation than say, certainly the silent generation or even, even us. So that may be helpful that by the time that they get to this stage,

They’ll say, we’ve been through this kind of thing before. so, and now people have gone before us and have shown us, you know, that we can’t just sit on the porch and drink. We have to really, you know, get out there and we have another life in front of us. And one of the issues is how do get the energy to go on? When you think of maybe our forefathers only had to get to 50, but we don’t have to get to 100. That’s another 50 years. Where’s our energy and our drive come from?

And I would say that that’s a challenge for us who are in it to figure out where the energy comes from. And now I’m going to circle back, and this may be very personal, because I’m a mush. And I believe it is in loving others and giving of yourself to others, other projects, and in a sense, not being afraid to be vulnerable and to get hurt or not being afraid to fail.

Well, let’s say you’re all excited about working for a certain nonprofit that’s going to deliver a special education, I don’t know, to a certain age group. And you jump in, and actually that group is snarled up with politics. The finances aren’t right. In other words, it turns out to be a disaster. Well, that’s OK. Because in a sense, we’ve been through workplaces

speaker-1 (27:07.246)
disasters like that. And so they think, okay, that didn’t work out, I will do something else. I do think there’s a trend among us of this quote, this sort of giving back. And I think that’s really important. I think that’s it. And that’s a major feature, I think of the American way is giving, giving back giving what you what you have to others. And that’s also part of this idea of giving to others, loving others.

And I’m using love writ large. I’m not talking about, you know, a loving sexual relationship. I’m talking about caring about other people, meeting someone on the street and just being nice about it.

speaker-0 (27:49.966)
Well that actually goes to, again, the different generations having different approaches. I would suggest that all you have to do is look at, for example, the divorce rates. And I’m not saying that from a negative or a positive, just baby boomers didn’t get divorced nearly as much as the Gen Xs, as the millennials have, that sort of thing.

speaker-1 (28:11.992)
Well, women did pretty well in the divorce thing. think in the 1980s, it really started going up. And then I did a book about divorce and sort of re recovery called Crazy Time. And that was in the 80s. And as a psychiatrist once said to me, know, saying till death do us part was fine when women died in childbirth and men went to see, you know, in other words,

And, and I know in talking to couples who have been married for 50 or 60 years, they will all say, yeah, we’ve been married to each other for that long, but we’ve had four or five different marriages in that time. And I think that that’s the key and wonderful if you can do it with the same person. Also wonderful if you can do it with another person, but that actually the norm for longevity

speaker-0 (28:57.677)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (29:12.654)
is that you have different sort of marital partnerships at different stages of life. The trouble is that divorce and breaking up is very painful.

speaker-0 (29:21.422)
Are yous- are

speaker-0 (29:27.886)
Do you still have the same partner?

speaker-1 (29:31.086)
Or do you have a partner? I went through divorce and I had two husbands. They’re no longer with us. have two wonderful men. The first marriage broke up, which is what stimulated me to do this. I think, you know, part of it was a structural timing problem and problem. And also, I think when people get married today, they know each other. Whereas I was still in that frame where. This is perfect. Let’s jump.

and not really, not knowing yourself, not knowing the other person, and then, you know, life unfolds. So I think actually marriage is probably stronger today than it was.

speaker-0 (30:14.222)
I’m just wondering, because of the conversation we were just having about four different marriages in the term of it, what can I look forward to in terms of changes to my relationship? Like I said, I’m 61 right now. That relationship’s going to change, guaranteed.

speaker-1 (30:37.966)
Absolutely. Absolutely. And there are different varieties of relationships. mean, they can imagine you work out, maybe each of you need more space. So a person goes off and does a, you know, does a fellowship somewhere. It really depends on how open and how much you like being together and what do you like to be together for and where your focus is. You know, what’s your, what kinds of

speaker-0 (30:48.11)
Hmm.

speaker-1 (31:08.216)
purpose do you have what kind of purposes your partner have do they align not or I mean the other thing is that there are no clear rules. There are no you know there’s no reason.

Having interviewed a lot of people, I could never figure out why some people broke apart or why some people stayed together. I mean, this is a very, it’s a, I think there are no rules on this, but I think one of the things that is a constant as you get older is really flexibility. And actually as you get more confidence in yourself, you have more confidence in the other person and you have more confidence in

how you interact with each other, both well or not so well. And you can figure that out better. I mean, I do think we get much better at love as we get older.

speaker-0 (32:06.29)
I think a lot of that is just the acceptance of the other person as opposed to the pigeon-holing of a

speaker-1 (32:15.002)
completely, completely, it’s accepting the other person, it’s accepting yourself, it’s and also I think that marriage or partnership, you’re not in isolation. In other words, it’s not also not just children. Again, it’s my idea of the team and then an outer circle, you’re engaged with other people. And I think that engagement, in a sense,

fosters strong relationships that are primary. yeah, so I’m sort of, think that, and people find really interesting ways to love each other as they get older because there are no rules. And sometimes people live apart from each other. Sometimes people, certainly people who are getting involved with new people.

often will keep their own abodes, their own houses. It’s just different, but it’s all of a package of being more confident, also sort of speaking up. And I think older people speak up, which is good. Now, again, I want to say that I sound so optimistic, and I am optimistic.

But I don’t want to sort of say that there’s not heartache and loneliness and like, what is it all about? And coming to terms with there is an endpoint here. And there are also terrible afflictions that are associated with age that we deal with. So I want to recognize that. But I do want to also talk about the possibility in this stage so that people will be happier when they think, gosh, I’m

I’m 70, that’s gonna be fun. Now I talked to, I interviewed a woman who was in her 90s at the time, and I must have been in my 60s at the time, and she turned to me and she said, looking back, my 80s were my best decade. I was so free, I was so content. Now at the time, I thought she was crazy, but I, you know, I took it down or whatever.

speaker-1 (34:37.055)
Now that I’m in my eighties, I see exactly what she means. That one of the things we have is you’re free. mean, the things you’re supposed to do, you already did, you know, decades ago. So you’re absolutely free. And there’s a contentment because you not only have this freedom, you also have a really rich store of memories.

And I’m finding that to be very, very emboldening. That as you get older, you really, you’ve got a big package that you can deliver into life. And I think that’s another aspect of getting older that we don’t recognize. We keep talking about what we lose, like hearing or eyesight, stuff like that. And we don’t talk about what we’ve

gained and how robust we are at what matters most, which is understanding life, understanding others, understanding self and putting it together and making music.

speaker-0 (35:52.428)
You mentioned giving back. entire concept this entire week, for those people that are watching, we’re recording this on a Friday morning. That has come up so many times this week of giving back or intergenerational relationships. Talk to me about that and what

you’re seeing and what has worked and hasn’t worked. Is the entire relationship between older and younger the way it used to be, or has that changed?

speaker-1 (36:31.042)
Well, I think it’s changed. But I think one of the things is we have we have a faulty image of the way quote it used to be, which was going visiting grandma or whatever, you know, Sunday lunch. And so. But actually, people didn’t have a lot of grandparents or not for long. mean, I was alone among my friends to have my grandmother’s alive when I got married. But usually it’s it’s it’s restricted.

to a very small age for children. And what’s changed is that children grow up, like for instance, my grandchildren are in their late 20s. And they’ve had me all their life. And so that has changed. That in a sense, just the connection between young and old is totally different now. And we have to sort of learn how, we haven’t really…

figured out how to, you know, sort of establish the rules of engagement that have to be so different than they were 100 years ago. So I think that’s, you know, that’s different. But I think we’re much more involved with younger generations, and also with with children who become old, as we’re old, you know, and and and

So I think that changes the dynamic, but it also offers the opportunity to be much closer. And you know, we are wiser. That’s true. I mean, they keep saying, well, know, older people are kind of losing it. Well, that’s not true. I mean, unless you have an illness. But when they do studies, younger people are much better at gathering information.

and remembering numbers. And in other words, if you say, here are 27 numbers, now repeat them back to me. Well, younger people are to be able to do that. Older people are not going to be able to do that. But what older people are able to do is to figure out what matters and how do you take all these different facts and create, in a sense, a truth. I I remember being editor. And this is when you move along in your career and be editor.

speaker-1 (38:54.414)
And I’d have young reporters come in and they’d be out on a story or whatever. And they come in and they tell me all these facts, all these different facts that they had found out and everything else. And then I would say, but what’s the story? What kind of story are you trying to tell? You know, what’s the lead going to be? What’s the conclusion going to be? And I think that that is what older people are brilliant at. Because you know, we’ve

We’ve been around. We’ve had some experience. We can make those kinds of conclusions. Now this is really important at a time, certainly in family issues, when there are all kinds of crises, in workplace all kinds of crises, politically as we’ve seen right now, all kinds of crises and upsets. But I think we older people need to come forward because we’re actually, we’re good at saying, well, what’s the real story here?

And how can we go forward? I feel that we older people are a resource for humanity. And if I have a quibble, is that younger people don’t listen to us enough.

That’s actually not true. We have they do listen But we’ve got to talk we’ve got to we’ve got to be the ones who tell them the story

speaker-0 (40:15.266)
Yeah, yeah.

speaker-0 (40:23.306)
is in your description of when we were growing up not really having grandparents or going to visit grandparents. But that was back with the single income family. Now there’s the two income family. The kids are often being looked after by the grandparents. So the relationships start early.

speaker-1 (40:44.59)
This is a really great new thing that’s happened when now both parents are working and who’s around and I have anecdotes that I describe of what’s my new life in my time? Where I’ve been working, I’m going to go and take care of the kids and loving that and absolutely, know, it’s sort of like and instead of it being kind of a responsibility or a burden or a tiring, it’s a thrill.

And I think a lot of grandparents are doing that. know summers when my grandchildren were small, they used to spend the summers with me. And their parents are one or the other would be coming in, no question. But that is incredibly bonding and wonderful. And I think also we demonstrate that people should not be afraid to grow old. That growing old is great.

It’s like other stages of life. There’s peril, but there’s also promise.

speaker-0 (41:48.428)
I think the entire definition of aging and older age is something from a hundred years ago. It’s not applicable now.

speaker-1 (41:57.198)
Throw it out. Absolutely throw it out. That’s why we do need to change language. And if we really want social change, you do have to change language. And certainly when it comes to aging, and there is a terrible ageist thing. mean, if you watch television, for instance, no one can be older than 40 unless they have sort of a crank role. And that’s absurd. That’s absurd. And also the idea that you stop

you know, how can I say investigating life, you never stop. And the same with people and the same with love. I mean, people fall in love with each other at all stages. And you can get your heart broken in romance in your seventies just the way you could when you were 16. But there’s life out there.

But I think a lot of people think I’m closing down and sort of get depressed. And I mean, there is that phenomenon of not greeting this stage with sort of enthusiasm, but with dread and feeling you’re pushed out. And very often in the workplace, you are pushed out. And nobody likes that. And so I think what you say, well, you pushed me out here, so I’m going to go there and watch me fly.

speaker-0 (43:21.482)
I think that itself is changing as well, simply because fewer people working, because the generation, there’s a shrinkage in the population, sort of thing. So I think that’s going to change as well. the entire, I think the entire adult age from when we get out of school to the end of life is going to change because it’s evolving simply because of how old the, how old.

how society itself is aging.

speaker-1 (43:55.02)
Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I love to see that society is aging and sort of keeping up with us who are the pioneers of redefining this stage of life. it’s a challenge. You you think, you know, I’ve worked hard all my life and everything else and now I’ve got to have a new stage that I’m to have to throw myself into. And the answer is yes.

speaker-0 (44:22.178)
Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-1 (44:23.374)
And there’s enormous creativity. think what I found in interviewing people that was both creative and as I also say, this wonderful deepening of relationships. And I think when you get older, you don’t have fear. You’re not afraid. You’re not afraid to fail because you’ve already failed and here you are doing fine. so whether that’s becoming an artist,

or saying, gonna, another couple said, well, we’re just gonna take time out. I’ve always wanted to get on a boat, be in a boat for six months. I do things that are crazy, know, when a younger age you say, well, I can’t do that. You know, some people will just do something like that. Now you can be foolish. I also interviewed people who were this new found saying, oh, I can fly, were foolish.

And that’s, know, so I’m not saying that you can’t make mistakes at 80 that you made at 18. You can. And it’s different. Just to go back to relationships and the team, I also found, I talked to two women who both widows, they became widows, and they decided to pool their resources and they bought a place together and

They had sort of separate living arrangements, but it was one place. And they made it a kind of, what can I say, a conference center. They would have people come and talk about doing yoga. They’d have people come and talk about Buddhist philosophy. They’d have people come and do whatever. In other words, you could say that they were partners and they traveled together, but it was, we would say it was unorthodox, but it was wonderful. And I think that it’s also…

a stage where people have unorthodox relationships that are very fulfilling.

speaker-0 (46:26.382)
and I could have this conversation.

speaker-1 (46:29.12)
I I love going out and talking to people about their lives and seeing the inventiveness of people’s lives.

speaker-0 (46:38.254)
That’s, I also just talk to people just so I can understand lessons that are coming down the pipe. It’s so much easier to learn from people when you talk to them, as opposed to reading in a book or watching a video on YouTube or something along those lines. This is the closest I can get. So, so, so we’re getting close towards the end of the interview. And I always ask my guests this one question.

If you were going to give one piece of advice to somebody, and it doesn’t matter who the audience is, something top of mind, what would that one piece of advice be?

speaker-1 (47:18.164)
Love. Do not be afraid to love and give of yourself.

because you get back much more.

speaker-0 (47:31.694)
It’s simple statement.

speaker-1 (47:33.838)
You know, and I’m a professional worker, so you would think that maybe I would say, you know, da da da da da da da, to further yourself in a professional way. But no, I, you call me mush.

speaker-0 (47:46.766)
Are you… are you still working?

speaker-1 (47:50.4)
Am I still, yes, hate that word still. No, still I’m writing, I write plays. I’ve had written four plays. My last one was just produced last week and it’s a musical. So I team up with a composer and write, you know, think of plays. And I also am writing some short stories. So I’ve been let loose as having to earn a living as a journalist and write books.

I now can say I’m free. I’ve got social security and I’m going to write a play. And I’m very lucky I belong to an amateur theater and they produced the play. It was a big success. And so I just keep writing and telling stories.

speaker-0 (48:39.33)
redefinition of the word WORK.

speaker-1 (48:42.574)
Yes, yes, yes, I have to write every day just the way I have to get a little exercise every day. It’s just what I have to have words coming out my fingers. now know who am I, that’s who I am.

speaker-0 (48:51.896)
quiet

Yeah, you found your purpose in life.

speaker-1 (48:57.356)
I did, yes. And that’s the thread all the way through. Perfect. Yeah, I go for it. But again, love, that’s the main thing.

speaker-0 (49:10.326)
Abigail, thank you very much. For everybody that’s watching this video, I will put Abigail’s information in touch points. For example, her links to her books. She has a website as well. So that will be in the description of this video. Feel free to go out and take a look at all the various different information about Abigail. Abigail, thank you very much.

speaker-1 (49:33.858)
Thank you so much. You can see I love talking about this.

speaker-0 (49:36.61)
Yeah. Well, it’s, an interesting conversation. Good. Thank you.

speaker-1 (49:41.88)
Thank you so much.