Hello and welcome to Boomer Banter, where we have real talk about aging. Well, my name is Wendy Green and I am your host. And every week on Boomer Banter, we talk about the challenges, the changes and the possibilities that come along with this, this season of life. And along with that, I'm wondering, are any of you confused by all of the advice you hear? Even maybe some that we share for trying to live well into your 60s, 70s, 8, 80s and beyond? Things like age well, be healthy, keep moving, drink more water, eat more protein, give up all meat, learn a new language, do crossword puzzles, no devices after before bed, drink red wine, drink no alcohol, take these supplements, get your vitamins from your food, meditate, get regular sleep, get vaccinated, eat more fiber, walk more, do strength training. Oh, my gosh, it can be overwhelming. So what we're going to do today is we're going to take a little break for the next 30 to 40 minutes and we're going to talk about play and self acceptance. We're going to let go of all the shoulds for a little while and have some fun because aging well can be fun. And my guest, Yvonne Marchesy will tell us how and why having fun and being playful can be so beneficial as we're aging. Yvonne Marchesy is all about helping people rediscover their spark. She hosts the Late Bloomer Living podcast, which you've heard me talk about over this last month. She co hosts the Salty Sisters livestream and leads the Age Agitators Club, a community for women who refuse to fade quietly into the background. She's also a photographer, speaker, and author of In Full Bloom, a Guide to Aging Playfully, which hit number nine on Amazon's Midlife bestseller list. When Yvonne is not behind the mic or the camera, you'll probably find her roller skating, paddle boarding, or dreaming up new ways to shake up age stereotypes. So help me welcome Yvonne to Boomer Banter. Thank you for the intro, Wendy.

As you were going through that list of, you know, advice for aging well and you got to, you know, drink wine, don't drink wine, I was thinking, you know, my favorite piece of advice is eat more dark chocolate.

There you go.

So I'm just gonna say that is my piece of advice. Eat more dark chocolate.

Why did I leave that one out? That is a good one. So. So, Yvonne, I, I want to kind of start at the beginning and as a younger person while you were still raising your kids, I know they recently just kind of flown the nest. What were your thoughts about growing older or about older people.

Wendy. I have always been more afraid of dying than. I have been more afraid of aging than dying. Like, I honestly, I. I think about death, and I'm. I'm not. I'm not really. It doesn't freak me out that much. Getting old used to really freak me out. I think it still does a little bit if I'm really honest, because. Because we are surrounded by negative talk about aging. It's like the water, we're. It's like we're goldfish swimming in the water of just aist ideas all around us. If you get together with anybody, any gathering, everybody's like, if they're of a certain age, they're talking about how hard it is to get old.

Right. Aging isn't for sissies. And my bones hurt. My leg, my. This hurts you.

Once you turn this age or once you turn that age, you know? And honestly, I had kids late. I had my first at 35. And so I was an older mom, and I. It was, you know, it was probably about the time that I had my second, I would think. So I'd say around the time I. I don't know, somewhere around 40, my 40s were just hard. I was looking in the mirror and I was like, who the heck is that? That's. That's not my body. That's not my face. What is going on here? It was just, you know, I did not like what I was seeing. I. I couldn't get my. My stomach, like, never went down from having babies. I called it the pooch, you know, and it stays.

It stays more after menopause, kind, you know.

Oh, my goodness. I was so hard on myself. So that's what was going on when I had young kids.

So tell me about the experience that, like, changed your perspective, or was there one experience about getting older?

It was a process, I would say, because I didn't realize that I was beating myself up over aging. I just didn't even. It didn't even occur to me.

So we didn't think about it then.

Right. As I, you know, as I got started getting closer to 50, I would say. And I don't think that that's necessarily important. It just sets the. The timeline. Yeah. I had just gone full time as a photographer. I didn't have a regular day job anymore, which for years had been my goal. So I thought that when that happened, yay, that's gonna be crossing the finish line. Everything's gonna be great then. Yes. And I was still really having a lot of trouble getting myself up in the morning. My kids were still pretty young at that point. And it was like getting up and I'd hit the snooze button over and over. And then I'd get up and I'd be running late, they'd be running late. And one day I was yelling at my kids because they're late. And I'm like, get your lunch bag, get your backpack. We're late, let's go. And we get in the car and I look in the rear view mirror and I see tears in my kid's eye. And I was like, what the heck is wrong with me? I am almost 50. I. I was like, having an adult temper tantrum, basically making my kid cry. And I felt terrible. And I came home and I was. I just. I told my husband, I was like, I feel like, like Wicked Witch of the west, you know? And he was like, well. And he knew I was, you know, struggling, and he said, you know, I just listened to this book by Mel Robbins, the Five Second Rule. You might like that, you know, why don't you give it a listen? And all right. And so I did. And I resonated with so many of the things she talked about, and one of them was breaking up with your snooze button. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna do that. I'm. I'm gonna set my alarm across the room. I'm gonna get up. It was an experiment. I was like, let's try this for 30 days. I'll get up an hour before the kids try to do a morning routine. Everybody talks about the morning routine. All the self help places say, right? So I'm like, okay, well, I'll try it. I'm not a morning. I thought this was going to be a big failure. But I got up and I meditated every morning, and I moved my body. Those were the two non negotiables. Up, meditate, move your body. And I started feeling better. Like after a couple of weeks, it was hard. Yeah. And I would say a month or two into it, I went to wake up my kid one morning and he said, you seem happier, Mom.

Oh, wow. Well, that's good reinforcement, huh?

Yeah, I had. I. They didn't know what I was doing.

Yeah.

This was not something they were aware of. So that was my big proof of concept. I was like, okay, Yvonne, you. You got to keep going with this.

Okay.

Working. Yeah. And as I started to feel better and better and I had more energy, and I was like, wow, I feel better now at almost 50. Then I felt all through my 40s. And that seemed so astonishing to me.

That.

And that's when I had the aha. I was like, why am I questioning that? Oh, oh, oh, oh. It's because I've been telling myself I'm too old, it's too late, I'm a failure. There's, you know, it's there. There's no chance for me to do this or that or the other because it's all too late.

Right. All those self defeating messages that you associated with getting older.

Yes, yes.

And so now you were finally like, look at almost 50. I'm getting better.

Yeah. Because what occurred to me was, wow, if I feel better now than I felt and I continue to feel better because I'm taking care of myself, I've always thought that I'm probably going to live to be an old, old lady, maybe to my 90s. I don't know. I don't know if that's true, but, but if I do, that means I've got another 20, 30 something year, 40 years ahead of me. That's a lifetime. What am I going to do with that? And that's when I started to get excited. So it all started to click for me that I was being ageist against myself, that I had a lot of limiting beliefs about myself that were just trash talk. It was just stories. And I wanted to, I was like, I can rewrite those stories. I can tell myself different things.

Yeah. And that's, that's a journey that all of us are on, I think now as we're moving into this next phase of our lives. So, so one of the things that you did was you found photography.

Yes, when I was 40 is when that happened. That was a big pivot for me. Yeah.

What brought you to podcasting?

Well, once I realized that this was the trash talk in my head, I started thinking, you know, that, that question that I asked myself in the car with my kid was, what's wrong with me? Why does everybody else seem to have it figured out? Why, why am, why is adulting so hard? And I was like, what if I'm not alone? What if I just think I'm alone? What if other people feel the same way I do and they think everybody else has it figured out? So. And what if they're telling themselves it's too late and they're too old? And that was the idea for the podcast. And I thought about it for like two years before I did anything about it. Because I was building my photography business, mom to two younger kids. I was like, I don't have time to do that. Who has time? And I don't know how to podcast and I don't have money to, to learn, to have somebody teach me to edit for me to do whatever. Like, all the reasons not to do it. That's what lived in my brain for two years until finally I got sick of myself. Because the, the voice to do the podcast was like, kept popping up in the back of my head like, hey, hey, I'm still here. And finally I just got so sick of myself. It was December of 2019 and I was like, I'm fine. And so I decided to out myself. I wrote a post on Facebook that I was drawing a line in the sand, that I'd had this idea for two years and this is my public declaration, I am gonna do it. And I got all these wonderful replies from friends. Like it was, you know, whatever. You get five likes on a post. And everybody was like, oh, congratulations, congratulations. And I'm like, oh, now you really.

Have to do it. Really have to do it.

So that was the beginning of the figuring it out and the looking things up.

And so when did you finally launch?

In June of 2020. Covid actually was a mixed blessing for me. I couldn't do photography, so I, my business was shut down and I was home with my kids. They were home doing school online and the whole thing. So while they were, I was very lucky, my kids were the age they were and not younger because they were pretty self sufficient.

Okay.

So I had like a. My husband was an essential worker, so he was out of the house and doing, you know, work every day. So I had the place, I had space and time to myself and I just dug in and for like nine to five every day I did research, I figured things out. I did YouTube videos, Google searches.

I know it's another learning journey. So now you're well into it, Yvonne, and you have, you have a whole ecosystem, I guess, around your late Bloomer living website. So it's not just a podcast. And you call yourself an age agitator and a play instigator. So I am really curious about what those words mean to you and why do you think those are so important?

Yeah, well, when I started the podcast, I will say that I was pretty focused on. Well, I was focused on telling other people's stories of how they had come up against it in midlife, in some way, shape or form. Things were going south and they found a way through it. And I definitely had that sense of self improvement, like somebody's gonna listen to this and they're gonna get inspired and they're gonna, you know, and that was, it was for me too. It was like I, I wanted the inspiration to keep improving myself, you know?

That's right.

And as time went on, I was like, I heard somebody say this, and I wish I could give them real credit that I would know their name, but they said reinvention, which is the whole idea of my podcast.

It's.

Reinvention at any age, you know, is. Reinvention isn't about changing yourself. It's about changing the way you think about yourself. And when I heard that, it was just an, A super big aha moment for me, that was like, oh, it's not, it's not about getting better. It's about changing the way I look at myself to begin with. It's. How do you find. It's the judo of finding, like self acceptance and still taking steps forward into new territory and what does that look like? And getting curious about it and leaning into the joy of it, not the self flagellation. And I need to fix this angle.

So is that what being an age agitator is?

Yes, yes. Mostly a play instigator. I mean, you were talking about that term living well, you know, all the advice for aging well, I should say. I do not like the term aging well. It. It has. So there's so many assumptions tied to it. Ableism, you know, you. If. So does it mean that if somebody is in a wheelchair or has physical limitations in their 60s, 70s, or 80s, does that mean they didn't age well?

No, it does not.

It doesn't. And it's very. Aging well has a lot of, A lot of judgment on it. How do you look? Are you achieving things still? What.

So that also is the way you're thinking about it. Okay. Because I use that term aging well, and I use it in the sense that you can be in a wheelchair, you can be 96, you can still be involved, feeling like you're making a difference, being like the guest I had on last week, you know, she's 105, being passionate about something in life. All of that can be aging well. So again, it's what we think.

How do you define it?

Right. Changing your thought because you, you see what you believe, right?

Absolutely.

So if you believe aging well is ableist, then for sure that's what you see.

Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people think of it that way. You see those. There's a lot of things out there about hacking, you know, hacking your age a Lot of it's about like, you know, try it. There's a certain focus on aging well in the wellness community, I will say, that focuses on how do you, how do you stay as young as you can as you get older. And that's, I think more what I'm referring to is that kind of that idea that says, you know, 60 is the new 40.

I hate that.

That. That's really what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, and I do see that, you know, so. But I had to, I had to stand up for my aging well people. So, so there is a saying that I know you love. It's by George Bernard Shaw and he says we don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. So give me some examples from people that you know in your community that are continuing to play as they grow older.

So first one that pops to my mind is my mother in law who is 97 years old and she goes and plays bridge with her friends two times a week at 97. I love that, I love that, you know, and, and really like I've met so many people on my podcast that are examples of that for me. And play, play is a state of mind. It's not an activity, it's not a particular thing. And I think that's where people might get a little bit confused about what play is. I like to roller skate. I love going paddleboarding. That feels very playful to me. But it may not be playful for somebody else. It may be just like they may have no interest or they may be like terrified of being on wheels. And that's Right, rightly so. I broke my arm recently, you know, but for me it's worthwhile. I get on my skates, time flies. Being behind a camera is the same feeling for me. I love being a photographer and I love doing sessions. And what I've been in an inquiry into is to how to get more playful with all the parts of my life. So as a photographer, I've got to send out contracts and do all the businessy things around being a photographer. And I really don't like that. But how can I, how can I bring more playfulness to it? So sometimes if there's something that just has to get done, I, I'm like, okay, well let's set a timer. How quick can I do this, you know, and turn it into a game? And then I feel like we just like, if we can access just a little more playfulness as often as we can through our days, we're at the grocery store, make a joke with the cashier. You know, do something.

Sometimes. Sometimes I'm bopping to the music in the grocery store.

One of our local grocery stores plays great music.

I know. You know, people are like, oh, there she goes again.

Exactly. And I think you mentioned people are like, what? There. You can limit yourself from doing things because of the way you think other people are looking at you, too. And then you keep yourself from having fun that otherwise you might have had the chance to have some fun. Yeah.

And there's lots of ways, you know, I mean, I'm not going to get on roller skates because I fell when I was 10 on roller skates, and I fell on when I was 11 and 12, and so that's not my thing.

Right.

But hiking, painting pumpkins, you know, dancing, singing along with the radio because I sound so good when I sing with the radio. Those are fun.

Exactly, exactly. I think the. The key is finding the thing that is playful to you. Stuart Brown wrote a great book called Play, and there's a great subtitle, too, which I can't think of right now. He also founded the National Institute for Play, which is actually a thing.

National Institute for Play.

Yes. There are eight different styles of play that you may or may not resonate with.

Really?

Yep. There's. Let's see if I can get all eight of them. There's the joker. That's the person who just likes to make every situation. That's my husband. If there's a chance to tell a joke or take, you know, take a serious situation and throw in a little joke bomb in the middle of it. That's him. There's the kinesthete, which is kind of me. I. If I'm moving my body, I'm pretty happy.

Yeah.

You know, that. That is a. An access point for me. There's the competitor. Competition can be a form of play. People who like to play bingo or Yahtzee or Scrabble or, you know, whatever.

Tennis or pickleball or.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that can feel playful to some people. Now, I can be competitive, but it doesn't feel playful to me.

I don't.

I'm like. I'm not much for board games, cards, any of that stuff, but I do, like, you know, I would like to learn how to play pickleball. That sounds like fun to me, but that is moving my body.

Sure, Right.

So that's. Right. Then you've got, like. Here's another one I don't really relate to. It's the director that's somebody who likes to bring together people and have a dinner party or pull, pull events together and make them happen. Produce things.

Okay.

That's a director. There's collectors, and that could be anybody who collects anything, including experiences. So let's say somebody's got a goal to get to all the national parks. They're kind of a collector.

Okay.

You know, interesting. And they're probably also an explorer. So the, the explorer likes to get out and explore the world. But they all might also explore ideas.

Okay.

So that's something that I also resonate with. I'm like, oh, I love to go down a good rabbit hole.

Yeah.

You know, I love to go someplace new. That's exciting for me. And on and on and on.

I mean, National Institute of Play, I'm gonna have to look that up.

There's even a quiz that you can find somewhere linked in there that'll, that'll take you.

So you can. What kind of player are you?

Yes, exactly. And it may be more than one. It probably is.

Probably is. Probably is an intersection. Yeah. Well, that's fun. So what, what do you think is holding people back from blooming? And you know, I mean, we talked about our thoughts a little bit, but.

Yeah. Well, what I don't know from what's holding people back from blooming? I don't know. That could be any number of things. I think what's holding people back from play is that we have been socialized as we age. I'd say starting from the time when we're in school. As kids, we are naturally hardwired for play. It's how we learned everything. It's how we learn to speak, it's how we learn to walk. It's experimentation. It's doing things without having any stress over whether or not it's to going gonna ever come together. It's not like we beat ourselves up as babies because we weren't walking.

You know, we did not judge ourselves then.

Exactly. We weren't judging ourselves. But you get to school and then you're surrounded by your peers and suddenly you've got really well meaning teachers and really well meaning parents who want to prepare you for the big bad world. And they are teaching you, you need to be responsible, you need to show up on time, you need to be a productive, you know, person who's contributing things to the world. And we start to get all of this. I. These ideas about our value, our self worth is tied then to our productivity. And I, I think too that when people retire, then they have nothing to say that I was an accountant. I used to be this, I used to be that. But what are you now?

Right, right. And they've lost an identity.

Right. And even if you're retired, you could still be doing something else. That is your new thing. Maybe it's not earning money, but it's still an exploration for you.

And that's a lot of the work that I do, you know, is to like help you find what's next. And I imagine in your age agitator club you must talk about things like that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Tell me more about that, what the age agitator club is about.

It's fun. We meet, we meet once a month on Zoom at this point and I usually come in with a topic for us to talk about. One of the first ones I did, I really enjoyed. It's one that stands out for me. I brought in a painting and I put it up for everybody to see. And it was an older woman and she had a ponytail and you could see her hand in the photo and. But she had this little very girlish ponytail. And we talked about what are you seeing here? What's the story that you bring to who this woman is? And you know, so just like a chance to reflect on what we think aging is and what we think, how old we think she is based on what we're looking at.

Okay.

And why and what kind of judgments go along with that. That was one of like the first ones I did. And then we've done storytelling, little fun things for Halloween. We told scary stories. You know, I, I try to bring playful things in. We, you know, we, we do all kinds of stuff. And, and I just am generally trying to shake people up and have them remind them that it's really all just stories. The, the ideas that we have about what it means to get older are stories.

It's true and it's true. So let me ask you what your new story is about getting older now that you've gone through all of this stuff with the late bloomer living.

I'm exploring it. I'm still figuring out what I'm going to be when I grow up.

And you have your mother in law. Is that a great example?

Exactly. And I'm, and I'm, I'm cool with that actually. Right now it's, I feel excited about almost in the not knowing that. It feels like, oh, well, maybe I'll try this, maybe I'll try that. I am in a place of inquiry right now. I feel like I'm, I feel like every few Years, I go through a change. We, we kind of talked about that a little bit before we hit the record button. And I feel like I'm going through another one of those moments. And sometimes you can get down on yourself in those moments because it's. Transition is hard. Transition is hard, and it's not a one and done. So I now know about myself that I am a serial pivoter. You know, I started off as an actor and then I became a photographer and then I became a podcaster. And I don't know what's next. I don't know. You know, it's one of the reasons I love doing the podcast is that it allows me. It's my job is to keep looking and keep asking the question and stay curious. And I think that's tied to play very closely. Curiosity and play, they go, they go hand in hand.

So do these things find you or do you ruminate about them for a while? Like, I'm going to be an actress, I'm going to be a photographer, I'm going to be a pun. Do they find you or how do you get there?

Well, let's see. So. So the actor thing was like, from the time I was six or seven, I knew that that's what I wanted to do. And that was my very driving focus for, for my life until I had kids and then I felt like I was done and then I didn't know what I was going to do. So for five years it was like, oh my gosh, who am I now? My whole identity was tied up in that.

You went to school for that and everything.

Everything. Moved to New York City, pursued an acting career. That's how I met my husband. And then we both did theater for years together before we got married. So when that was over and I didn't have something to replace it with, I was really lost. And then it was around the time I was 40, it was. I got laid off from my first time, going back to a full time job after I'd had kids. I had been there for four months. I'd been promoted. And then the 2008 recession happened. So I got laid off and I came home and I, I turned to John and I'm like, what am I going to be when I grow up? I. What am I doing?

Right?

What am I doing?

Yeah.

And he was like, just sleep on it. You're going to be fine. You're going to figure it out. And I went to bed and that, and I had an ahamo. I woke up in the morning, I Turned to him and I said, I'm going to be a photographer.

Had you been playing with cameras?

No, no. That one was really. I call it a Shazam moment. And I had been trying to take good pictures, kids, with my little point and shoot camera at the time, and failing desperately. And I knew what I wanted those photos to look like, and they were nowhere near it. And so I bought my first real camera. I enrolled in a study from home program for photography, and I took my big camera with me everywhere I went and. And just. And then I started doing it on the side once I got a real job and started slowly building up, you know, business and stuff and. Yeah, and it saved me because as an actor, you can only work when somebody gives you permission. There's gatekeepers at every step. But with photography, I could pick up my camera anytime I wanted to, and I could make a beautiful image or something I thought was interesting. And that was a revelation to me. And it felt very empowering. And it's. I think it's one of the keys that started me down towards this path of being a podcaster, because this is something I can. I do it all myself. I. There's no gatekeeper for this.

Right, right. And you can have fun with it just like you can have fun with photography.

Exactly, exactly.

That's fabulous. So I'm not going to ask you about aging well, which is usually my last question. How do you define aging well?

So I'm not gonna ask. No, you can ask me that because my definition is aging well is whatever.

You think it is.

You get to choose. That's the. That's.

That's what.

That's my definition of aging. Well, if we're going to talk about it, is you get to choose and it. And you got to do the work to figure out what that is. You got to get curious about yourself. And there's no shortcuts, there's no advice that I'm going to give you today or that Wendy's going to give you or that anybody's going to give you. That's going to be, you know, the thing that makes a difference. You got to take it and try it on and figure out your next step.

Absolutely. So where can you find Yvonne? Your website is. And that's where you'll find the podcast and you'll find the age Agitators Club. And you won't find your photography there, will you?

No, no, they're kind of separate. I need to figure out how to talk about both of them. But it's Yvonne Marchese photography. Yeah. Pretty easy to find.

Well, this has been a fun conversation, Yvonne. I, I thank you for that. And you know, I think it reminds us that life is really what we want to make it, what we can think about, what we can see as possibilities, and that we all have our own approach to it. Right? So we can do it like play. Like you said, we can all do our own form of play. Just keep playing. And instead of asking, what should I be doing, ask what feels right for me to be doing right now.

So I love that 100%. You just summed it up beautifully.

Thank you. Thank you. And for all of you listening today, if you will share this, because we want more playful people. We want everybody not just playful. We want everybody to feel that spark, that spark of what living life is brings to us. And so maybe try to find one small thing this week that brings you delight and do it. And let me just suggest one of those one small things might be taking the what's keeping you stuck Quiz. Why? Because who wants to stay stuck? Like Yvonne said, you know, sometimes when you go through those periods, it's hard. Transition is hard. So you want to be curious and engaged in life as we talked about today. And this quiz, what's keeping you stuck? Will give you insight into what's holding you back. But insight's not enough, is it? What are you going to do with that insight? Well, I have drafted five personalized emails for each stuck type. And the emails will share encouraging tips and powerful resources to help you step into the life you know you're meant for. The link to what's keeping you stuck is on the screen if you're watching live. It will be in the show notes for those of you listening. And one more thing. As Yvonne knows, because she's part of our Agewise collective, I like to promote somebody who is in that collective. And if you love to travel, listen to the only podcast dedicated to the boomer and beyond adventurer, the Ageless Traveler with host. With host Adrienne Berg. From travel, health to exotic locations, Adrian gives you the tools to never stop traveling. You can listen to the podcast and subscribe to her free newsletter Travel Tuesday@ageless traveler.com Yvonne, thank you so much for reminding us that playing Curiosity will help us bloom. Be sure to check out her podcast at late bloomer living.com or wherever you get podcasts. Right.

Right on. Right on. Thank you so much. And I can't wait to go take your quiz. Actually, it might be just what I need right now.

Oh, it's fun. It's fun. Good.

Yeah.

Check it out. And all of you, until next time, keep living fully and stay curious. I will see you next week. Thanks.