Hello and welcome to the hey Boomer Show.

This is the show for those of us who believe that we are never

too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.

My name is Wendy Green and I am your host for Hay

Boomer. And our guest today,

Melissa Davies, is the embodiment of my

favorite quote that you are never too old to set another goal

or dream a new dream. At the age of

65, Melissa was an executive at

a managed care facility or company, and she had no

desire to retire. But she also had this

nagging question in her mind about

what did I always want to do that I'm not going to get to

do if I don't try it soon?

So we never know how much time we

have left. And that's a question that comes up a lot when I'm talking to

people that are getting ready to retire or thinking about retirement,

and they're like, what am I going to do? And the question

is, what have you always wanted to do? But then there are those things that

stop us. We call them know, am I too

old? Other people are going to think I'm crazy.

I wouldn't even know where to start. So

we're going to talk to Melissa about some of this. But what she did

was she started out with making a list of some of the

things that she thought she would like to do that she had been putting

off. And then something happened.

The universe, I would say, intervened and

gave her that little extra push that she needed

to get started. So we're going to hear her story in

just a moment. But

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do all of that in the show notes and in

the takeaway clip that I will leave you with from the

show. But before I do

bring I want too bring melissa on and

tell you a little bit about her. Hello,

melissa. Hello, Wendy.

I'm so glad you're here. So let me tell your story because it's so

inspiring, and I think people are going to get a lot from this.

So melissa is a documentary filmmaker who

lives in valley forge, Pennsylvania. She's a wife,

a mother, a grandmother to three young boys, and she's a world

traveler and with a strong sense of curiosity.

Melissa retired after more than two decades from

GenX services, where she built and operated the

company's Social Security representation division.

GenX is the largest managed care case

management organization in the US. Prior to

that, melissa had almost 20 years of diversified experience in the

field of disability. She had held senior leadership

and management positions throughout her career.

Melissa's second act is fueled by a lifelong

passion for film and storytelling.

So we want to hear about that. Melissa, I teased a little

bit about how you came to this

reinvention idea of being a filmmaker, but would you fill in the gaps for us,

please? Yeah, sure. And thank you for having

me. It's always fun to get to chat with other

women you mentioned.

I was 65, and I was in my corporate career when

I had been in it for more than two decades at that

point. And it was great. It

was wonderful. It was one of the best jobs I've had, and I've

had three or four different iterations of myself in the working

world. But it was something

about turning 65, and it certainly wasn't

the company because they weren't ageist in any way. They

had a lot of people who were my age.

It was a very large national company.

And I was sitting at my desk and I was like, gosh, I wonder,

I really don't want to die at my desk. That used to be kind of

a joke with my colleagues. And they would be like, what

are you talking about? And they were just happy to keep moving

along. And there was piece of

dissatisfaction. And that surrounded

me taking a look and inventory at my life and saying,

have I really done all the things I want to do?

And I had done a lot. So I'd had different careers, I'd

had children, grandchildren, a

marriage, all the things that would fulfill

you. I traveled a lot, internationally as well as

in the country, and so it was a fulfilling

life. But when I really sat down and said, well, what

are all these things that if I made a checklist,

haven't I done that really, really want to do? And it was more

than just saying, oh, take a trip to istanbul or

whatever do at some point, whether I

was working or not. So I made the list, and

crazy things were on the list, like learn how to play a saxophone, and

I don't read music. So that one fell off the list pretty

quickly. But film was always I've always been

interested in film and storytelling. So it's like write a

book, make a movie. And they kept staying at

the top, tell stories.

And so I just started thinking about it. And then one

day, two things happened in the midst

of all this, and they happened simultaneously. And one was

the CEO that I reported to came to me and said, oh, we're being

bought again by private Equity.

Because that had happened a few times in my

Gen X. And he said, you know what that means? It means you're going to

have to sign up again for another commitment for five years.

Which normally I would just say, oh yeah, okay, that's great. But that's

when I was 65 and I saw that number, 70,

and I thought, oh yeah, will I be at the

desk at 70? And then what will be after that? Will

I wait and everything changes with yeah,

it does. So that was the seed. And that

was while I'm doing the list, I'm listening to this. This is happening.

I went to a meeting in DC. The meeting know, a congressional

meeting about Social Security. And I've been

going there for years, and it was like Groundhog Day

because the meeting never seemed to accomplish too

much. And I remember sitting there with a friend of mine saying,

I'm going to leave early today. I've had enough of this. We are not

moving forward in my lifetime on these issues that have

been at the forefront for 20 years. So I left and

I came home and I didn't go to work. It was still early in the

day. And I hooked up with a friend who I hadn't seen in a year

because I was so busy. And I took a ride with

her to pick up her daughter from school. And it's in

the country out here near Valley Forge. And

we were going up a dirt road to drop her daughter off at the horse

barn where she worked after school. And

she said, I come up here every day and I think they're

making a movie over there. Take a look. So we drove up

and dirt road, funny day. And I could

see the cameras and I could see the lights, and I was like, yeah, definitely

looks like a movie. So we dropped off Grace, her

daughter came back around, and we sat down

on the road in front of all this activity.

And I said, you know, I bet I know who it is because it's

creepy looking. It

was a creepy vibe. The day was creepy. The

trees were creepy, the lighting was wild,

and it's Pennsylvania, and it's Chester County,

Pennsylvania. And I thought, well, you know who makes movies here all the time?

M night Shyamalan So I whipped out my iPhone

and just put his name in. And sure enough,

up comes a picture of him saying, M. Night

Shyamalan's. Making a micro budget film in Chester

County, Pennsylvania. And when I looked at his website,

the picture on his website was where we were sitting.

And I had just taken a picture of this incredibly beautiful

but creepy view of this long driveway with all these

craggly trees and the dark sky and the sun hitting and

he had it on his website. So I said, well, it's definitely

him. And there was a little button that said Charity Buzz and I

didn't know what it was, so I hit it. And when I hit Charity

Buzz, I learned that he had an educational foundation

and it said Win a day on the set with M. Night Shyamalan

and all the proceeds that you would bet

would go to his foundation. So my girlfriend is like, you've got to

do it. This is like Kismet, you need to do this right.

So I did. Right while we were sitting there, I hit

the Charity Buzz red button and I started bidding.

It seemed that it was just me and a dentist

from New Jersey who kept oh my know, other people were

falling off and we just kept bidding. So short

story is, I was at work about a week later and I had my

phone up because I knew that I had kept bidding that

night before and that they were going to announce that day and they

announced that it was me that won the day on the set

with Mr. Shyamalan. So in the next two,

you know, after signing all the NDAs, there I was

with him behind the camera and the entire crew for 8 hours

in Philadelphia doing a scene for his film

The Visit. And wow at

that's

a message. That's a message that's like, you're on the right track.

This is here. Here's how you do it.

Yeah. And I thoroughly enjoyed the

experience so much. He was kind of

laughing about the fact that I was so excited about it. And he

really was very accommodating. He had me behind the camera telling

me what he was doing, asking me what I thought I was with the

crew. It was an amazing day.

And we sat together at lunch and he said,

I've never done Charity Buzz before and I'm so glad it was you and not

some person that showed up with a script in their hand for me to read.

And we were laughing about that. And he asked me what I

did for work and I tried to explain it to him quickly, which

isn't easy for somebody who's probably never heard

of insurance and managed care and Social Security.

And he looked at me really quizzically and he said,

oh, what do you really want to do? And I said

I said, I want your job. And he said, oh, you better hurry

up. And he was kidding. And it

hit me right in the middle of the stomach.

And I remember it was just such an

odd feeling because I knew that when he said that, he was

kidding. But it was exactly what I needed to hear

because he was right. I was 65 years old,

and if I'm going to do this, I think I

better seriously think about doing it now. So it was really at that

moment, and it sounds cavalier and I don't mean it to

that I said, I'm going to make a movie. I

don't know what it is yet, but I think I'm going to try this.

I'm going to do this. And by the time I got home that night, my

husband couldn't wait to hear what I had. He knew how excited I

was and he's like, so so what happened? How was it?

And I said, John, I am going to quit my job

and I am going to make a movie. And he just kind

of looked at me and,

you know, he knows I get excited about things. And the next

day, I did go to the CEO and say, I'm going to put in my

notice. It'll be a very long one because I wanted to make sure

that I left the organization and

the division that I was responsible for in good hands, so

I would need to mentor somebody. So I gave a year's notice and I

figured that would be a safe time for me to also begin this

film process. So that's how it got kick started.

That is such an amazing story

of things happening when they needed to happen and giving you

the push you needed. You said you

didn't know what you were going to make a movie about, right? You didn't have

any idea at that point. At that night when I went

to bed, I did think about it. I was like, Wait a minute.

I just said out loud to a couple of people, I'm going to make a

movie, so I do need to figure out what

that means. And I knew that I wasn't at a point to

write a script. That's not what I was ready

to do. And I knew what I was comfortable with, and that was

storytelling and hearing stories from people, that was part

of my life, part of my work. And so that was going to be

comfortable. And then it just hit me, I'm

65. Why not talk to other women

who are over the age of 60, who have great stories to tell,

to show people that they're still relevant, that

they are resilient people. They've had all kinds

of life experiences and their stories will

resonate with people and hopefully make people think about their own

stories and their own lives and maybe even prompt some people

to try something new. So that's when I decided,

I'm going to do interviews with women over the age of

60 and let's just see what happens. And that's how 2nd

60 was created.

Melissa so you gave a year's notice. Did

you have any trepidation during that

time, that year of, what am I thinking? I'm going to

leave this secure job and I'm going to go off into the wilderness and

make this movie, and I don't know how to make a movie.

I wasn't worried about learning something new

because at 65 and you've had a lot of jobs and

you've been real responsible for building

divisions and companies and whatnot. I was pretty

confident that even though I didn't know something,

that I could learn it and I could surround myself with the people

that I needed to make that happen. So that part wasn't

scary. The walking away from the security

of the money and the identity related to

that earning power was a

little bit nerve wracking. But giving myself that year

of still being paid while I was putting

this idea into play gave

me a certain sense of security. So I didn't just quit my

job and walk out the next day and sit at home and say,

okay, now what do I do? I

felt kind of almost like I was embraced to

do this. Like, okay, the CEO and all the people I

worked with knew I was doing this and they did embrace

me and they did know that I was on the side. I was

creating this movie process that I would walk

into the day that I finally left the company.

And it was that way. I had it set up that by the time

I walked out the door, I had already done the first three

interviews of the nine women and I was playing

with, what am I going to do with this? Is it going to be a

full fledged film? Is it going to be a short?

Somebody even said maybe it'd be a podcast with different women

that you would interview. But my hope was that it

would be a film and that's what I turned it

into. Watching the

movie, I had so many thoughts going through my head

about how did you decide,

I'm going to do a little clip here and a little clip there and a

little clip here, and the visuals that you

used, like the swimming and the

actress, how did you decide

to tie all of that together? I mean, that had to take a lot

of layout and thought and talking to

people. Yes. And I went out. The first

thing I did when I decided I was going to make this film was I

went out and I found a production company in Philadelphia

who was very interested in working with me on this. So

they were all in late twenty s to late thirty s and they

were my mentors. I was 65. They're showing me the

ropes of what needs to be done to get a film done. So

I use their camera people and I use their

lighting and their sound. And then we put this

together over a more than two and a half year period.

That's how long it took to complete almost three years

before it was out for viewing.

And I learned a lot in the process.

And when I would do each of the long interviews,

like nine women, they probably had six to 8 hours

of interview for each one. Actually, it was more

than that because I think I ended up with 80 hours of tape.

And it was trying to figure out, how do I get this to like, an

hour, hour and a half and really tell the

stories of each of these women? Because I think that they each had

a very important message to send.

It was trial and error and one thing that when I looked at

them, when they were full interviews altogether, it

was too much like talking heads. I thought I would lose people

in the process. So we did start to play

with let's just give a taste of Peggy in the

beginning and leave it at a cliffhanger. She was the one who was

kidnapped. And then let's give a taste of the

original voice of Siri and a taste of each one, and

then come back a couple of times during the filming

to round out their stories and end with a

message of sorts. Each one of them had some type of a

message to send. So it was trial and

error and learning as you go. So I see this

as my senior project. That's what I call. Yeah.

And curious. You know, when I started hey,

boomer, I started it as Facebook Live,

but it took me about a year before I was

comfortable with saying, oh, yeah, I'm a podcast host,

and I'm wondering if it took you some time to embrace that.

Oh, yeah, I'm a filmmaker. I'm a director. I'm a

producer. Yeah, it is a little funny

to not have a film out yet and say, I'm

a filmmaker. And so I did shy away from that, and

there were a couple of people that said, well, you're not a filmmaker yet. You

didn't make a film. I mean, people can be very

direct. So I was always careful with that, you know what I mean?

And then I realized, Wait a minute, I'm in the midst of

making this very complicated film, and I had a lot of

filmmakers and producers say to me, you are a

filmmaker. You are one. You are making a film whether it

does well or not. You're a filmmaker. This is what you're doing.

So say it out loud and shout it from the rooftops and be

proud as to what you're doing. So I did get more

comfortable with it. Yeah. It's

like when we graduate from college and we have our degree, okay, well, I'm a

computer scientist or I'm a writer accountant or whatever.

Right now we're making something up that.

We'Ve never done before. Exactly.

So it takes a while

for that shift to collide with

your confidence. And people shy away from

their confidence a lot of times because they're afraid that they're going to

sound like they're boasting or I don't

know. And sometimes you do draw the wrong

attention and some of the attention that you may receive

could be seen as negative. But

you have to let that go and you have to feel really good about whatever

it is that you're doing. Whether you're playing a trombone or

you're writing a book or you're making a film or you're doing a

podcast, you are doing that. You're in

the midst of it. Yeah, you

need to be confident about it. You do. You need to be confident

about it. I

have a quote here. There were a couple of women in the movie that said

age has given them permission to follow a dream

or to say no to things that they don't want to do.

So I'm wondering for you, did

age give you this permission to

other people might have said, well, you're not a filmmaker, but did age give you

permission to finally say, yeah, that's what I am? Yes,

there is this certain I mean, I always had confidence

in myself in what I was doing at the moment.

So whether I was in the nonprofit world or the for

profit world, my work, when I felt good

about it and I had learned what I needed to learn and I was always

learning, I had a certain confidence about

that. So too me. As you get older and you have all these

experiences in life. Not just work experiences, life

experiences. Marriages, divorces, children,

grandchildren, travel, speaking with

people, hearing stories, telling stories to people.

There is this certain level of confidence where you feel

good enough about yourself to say, hey, this is me.

And I am now ready to do the next thing. And

if people think that I'm not, well, let them think

that because where that would have bothered me

when I was younger. A couple of the comments that I received when I

started doing this, it really would have bothered me. But I just

thought, okay, they're looking at this with a completely different lens

than mine and all of my

chances and choices and decisions that I'm making are

mine. And if I fail, I'll learn from the failure and

move forward and do it a different way because that's the way

you live life. So there is this

confidence that comes with being older. And if

there are people out there that think, well, I'm 65 or

I'm 70 or whatever and I don't feel that confidence, maybe you

need to look a little deeper because it's probably there and

there are probably things that you have done in your life that somebody else

would say, wow, I never could do that. Exactly.

So it's just an age thing where you just and you're right. There

was a theme with all of the women in the film saying,

I can just say no. If I don't want to do it now, I can

do whatever I want. And they all feel very comfortable and

confident about that. Yeah, I think that was part of the

resilience that came through with a lot of their stories.

It was like we've all had

challenges, things to overcome. And I love that you said,

we've all done things that maybe we didn't look at as so brave

or courageous or whatever, but somebody else might have looked

at it and said, oh, my gosh, I can't believe you did that,

and so giving ourselves credit. And I

think the other thing, Melissa, and I'm sure you must have found this,

is surrounding yourself with people that support you, that

believe in know you have those naysayers,

but did you have a tribe of people, or at least a few

people that were like, melissa, you got this I know you can do.

And I and I have a number of friends know, at times

when I would feel anxious about it's not coming together the way I

want it to, they would just say, Give it time. You've got

whole, you have the view. It's just putting the puzzle

together. So not only the young people in the production company who were

wonderful, the crews that I worked with, my

dearest friends, my husband, who

I think was extremely skeptical in the very beginning,

he doesn't take willy nilly risks.

He's much more stable than I am that way, which

makes us probably a great couple. But he became a great

cheerleader, and he was a great listener, and

he knew that I was going to do this. He saw me

pushing through, and my children, my adult children, were

like, mom, you can do anything you want. This is

awesome. So you had enough of that around you

to make the naysayers. And there were only a couple of them, and

it wasn't bad. It was just like, you're not a

filmmaker. You can't say you're a filmmaker. You don't know how to

make a film. Now you do,

and you're making a second film, right?

Yes. Tell me about this second film.

Well, the second film is called Climbing Into Life, and it is the

life story of one woman instead of nine. I thought I bit

off more than I could chew the first time, so this time I decided

to stay a little more focused and do one woman

story. And her name is Deirdre Wallonik, and she

is the mother of Alex Honnold. And Alex Honoluld, if

people are watching this and have seen the documentary Free

Solo, that's her son that climbed El

Capitan with no ropes and no help,

nothing whatsoever, daunting the only one

that's ever done it. So she's the

mother. And she is a fascinating

individual, an intellect, an artist, a

musician, a professor, a linguist,

a writer. I mean, she has done just about everything,

but she was never an athlete. And she

decided, as she got a little bit older now, wait

a minute. And she has a daughter who's also a super

athlete, and she started looking at her kids and saying,

what am I missing here? Maybe I should

get into their world and understand them better. And

the short story is she asked her son Alex to teach

her how to climb rock climb. So this started in

her late 50s, early 60s, climbing in a gym.

And then eventually she became the oldest

woman to climb El Capitan in Yosemite, with

ropes, of course, but her son led her up.

And then on her 70th birthday, she did it with friends.

And so I went out there a year ago to film her

in Yosemite and at her home. And

her story is just remarkable and fascinating.

And it's with editors right now. We're going through the editor

process and hopefully in

late fall, I think. Did you have to climb with her to do

the filming? No, we didn't do the El

Capitan climb. She's already done those. So what we

did was we went with a climbing videographer. I

only had to climb up 1000ft to get to the point where she started

climbing. You have

no idea. We had a guide, my husband and I. He was doing some

still photography and I had to

sit down like every ten minutes on the way up. It was daunting.

So that was their climb in just to get to start climbing El

Cap. And it was amazing. So I had a climbing videographer

going with her to capture pictures of her climbing.

It was amazing. It was an amazing experience.

And being in Yosemite is just

unbelievable. And we had beautiful weather and it

was gorgeous. Yeah, good. So that's the next one. So stay

tuned, I hope. Late fall, people climbing into life.

Climbing into life. Okay, so

I'm curious as to how you get these out. Like, these

don't come into the big theaters, right? So how do

you get the word out and start to make some of the money back that

it costs to make the movie? Well, that's a whole different

story. That's the part that's not fun. That reminds me

of corporate work. There's a whole legal aspect to everything, and

insurance and all of that. Well, when 2nd 60

was finished and I did

the film festival circuit in 2018,

19, and then COVID

hit, and when COVID hit, everything stopped.

I really couldn't get it out there. So I started

talking with distributors about how it would get out onto the

different streaming platforms or who would buy it or what would

work. And their whole world

shrunk down during COVID as well. So finally,

by 2021, a distributor got in

touch with me and said, I want to help you with this. Let's get it

out. They got it on to Gravitas, who's a big

distributor, and they put it out onto all the platforms.

And as far as getting your money back as an independent filmmaker

in today's world, that's like way down the

road. So do I have small checks coming in now? Yes,

very. But and it is being seen by

tens of thousands of people. So that's making me happy. But you share,

obviously, the profits with agents and

distributors and the actual streaming platform itself,

and then you're the last person that gets the next little

check. But that goes on for the next 15 years.

So hopefully I'll still be kicking at that point.

The same thing. I will start talking with distributors

before it's finished and see what kind of interest there is

for a story like this. So you've had to

do everything. You had to figure out how to put together the

story, find the crews, be the director now, be the

producer. The business end of things, too.

Did you have any idea what you were taking on when you started

this? Sort of because

remember, I have built a division within a

huge corporation and worked with other even larger

corporations at a very granular level.

And I know how hard it is to do that. And I know what

it means to build teams of people that know more than you

do about certain things. So I kind of had an

idea. I knew what I didn't know, but I knew how

to find the people that would help me figure that out. So that

part wasn't really too bad. I think

the biggest eye opener is in the distribution of it.

It's very difficult. If it had been two years

earlier, I would have had the opportunity to go

to an Amazon or a Netflix and say, do you want to buy this film?

And that was back when they were saying, sure, here's $250,000, we'll take

it. Well, they haven't done that for a couple of years. They don't do that

anymore. So it is a daunting task to get it out

there. So I feel very fortunate that it

is available for everybody to see and that it is being

seen by lots of eyes. And I continue

over the years and months to get wonderful feedback from

people all over. People are seeing it on

airplanes now. That's always fun.

Well, it was easy to find. I went on YouTube, but

you told me it's on Amazon Prime and Apple Plus and

Voodoo. I mean, all these different places. And you can rent it or buy

it. I think it was 399 or something to rent it.

So everybody go and watch this beyond 60

movie and at least a little bit more money might trickle

in. Because it was very inspiring,

though, watching these women. I wonder,

when you did your interviews with them,

I love that you actually here. I'm going to change this question a little bit.

You brought in the young women at the end to talk to them

about how they saw themselves when they got older.

Where did you get that idea?

We actually did them bookends at the beginning and the very end.

And with the production company, I was like,

okay, there was something missing and I didn't

know what it was. And I just thought it would be nice to have

something other than just the women's stories. And

my first idea was to take the crew because

the crew was very young and it were men and women

on the crew and sit down and interview

them about how these stories impacted

them or did they and how did they feel about aging and did

their views of older women change by doing this?

The problem with that is crews changed and

we're talking an almost three year period and to try to

coordinate getting everybody sitting down in one

place at one time, it was almost impossible. So

one of the production guys that I was working with, Jim, he said, well,

why don't we just grab some young women, same idea

and see what they think? So then we started getting in touch with people in

Philadelphia and all of the young women that you see are

artists, know, just

creatives from the Philadelphia area. And

we got in touch with someone who set us up with these women

and we interviewed them to see how they felt about aging.

And I thought it was a nice juxtaposition

for the older women stories. Yeah, it was interesting.

So the other question that I was going to ask you is about

resiliency and how you

see yourself and those women and how resiliency has played

a part in your lives.

Some people will say it's an overused word, but I

have to tell you, for myself and for all these women that I

interviewed, it was in the forefront all the time.

And that resilience is gained through

having not a cushy life and a simple life,

but having a life that has allowed you to

experience so many different things and make so many different

mistakes. That you have this new

muscle that you build that's that resilience muscle

that allows you to just keep popping back all

the time and getting better at your next step.

And I've found that with myself. If we

had 12 hours to talk about all the mistakes I've made and all

the changes I've been through in my lifetime and the nine women

the same thing. And you? I'm sure we

go through these difficult times in life, and as

we get older, we look back and we realize, wow, we

really racked up a lot of experiences.

And those experiences and failures and

missteps or whatever they might be caused our resilience

muscle to just grow, which gives us this

power as we get older and this

interest and kind of intrigue about what else

can we do? And the resilience factor will be there to get

us through it. Even if we fail, even if I make a

mistake. And I remember when I was younger, when I would

make a mistake at work, I was crushed. And then

I look back and I'm like, oh, it was just a silly mistake. And I

learned from it and I moved forward. But why was I

crushed? Why isn't failure okay? Failure

is a part of growing and adding more to your

bucket. Yeah, and I think you're right.

That resilient muscle builds up because I think when we were young,

we all wanted to be recognized as

smart or capable or whatever, and we were afraid to make a mistake.

And now it's like, exactly, okay, so I screwed up, so let's move

on. I

always end up on my feet just like a cat, right,

exactly. And that's the beauty of getting

older. If you're lucky enough to have your

health and your mental acuity and

all of that is intact. It doesn't matter how

old you are, because the older you get, the more

experiences you've had and the more opportunities then there are

to learn some new that's. That makes

me really happy when I talk to other women and men

that talk about figuring that out in their

lifetime and trying now to cram in as many new things

as possible. Yeah. So, Melissa, if

somebody was to come up to you today and say, help,

I'm trying to figure out what my second act should be, could

be, I'm afraid, what kind of advice do you think you would give

them? Well, first I would ask them to make

a list of all the things that they're interested in

or have been interested in their lifetime, and then why didn't they

try any of those? What is the reasoning behind

why that list is there and it hasn't been acted

upon? And what is holding you back? And normally,

usually it's fear, the fear of the

unknown and the fear of

failure. And I think that's where there's so many

people you can talk to about that. There are podcasts that

talk about that. There are social workers,

therapists that talk to you about fear because getting through

that fear is amazing. It's just

amazing when you get through to the other side and you realize, okay,

that was really uncomfortable for about 20 minutes, and

then, okay, but I get it now, I can see the picture and

I'm going to move in that way. But people

seem to put themselves in boxes as well.

If you grew up and you were a scientist or you were a teacher or

you were a nurse or whatever it was that

identified you as an individual, that's not

all there is. There's this whole complex

person besides that job. So find

out what it is that you're interested in and then start

asking people for their assistance and guidance

and just discussion about, well, where would you go if you wanted to

do this? And the more people you ask, the more suggestions

they will have. A

caveat to that, I think. Make sure you ask the people

that are supportive, right? Not people that are going to say you're not

a filmmaker, but ask people that are going to be

supportive and

facing that fear. I mean, yes, it's hard and

uncomfortable and it is so worth it when you come out

the other side. It really is

is. And again, a lot of people look at me and they go, oh, she

probably knew about filmmaking, she probably went to school for it.

No, I really didn't know quite what I

was doing. And were there moments that I felt sick to my stomach?

Yes. Because I thought, am I doing this

right? Is it going to be right? But then it was like, stop asking and

just do until you figure it out

and you do come out the other side. And

as long as you have that support of people

who care about you and want to see you succeed,

that pumps you up to no end and absolutely, you can really do

whatever you want. Yeah. So let me tell

people where to find you. So you can go to Melissa's

website, beyond 60. Com. I'm sure there'll be another website

for climbing into life, but for right now

you can find beyond 60 dot where you can see where the

movie can be seen. You

can email Melissa at

melissajdavy?

Davey@verizon.net,

she is on Facebook. You can find

the Facebook page beyond 60 documentary

and she is on Instagram, which is the at

beyond 60 project. So lots of ways to connect with

her and follow what she's doing and be inspired by her

and add your inspiration to know all of us

who are in these putting ourselves out there

fields know, trying to be creative and helpful.

Certainly do appreciate the feedback and the

inspiration we get from people that are following. So, yes, we do.

Thank you for that, Melissa. Thank you. And

if you like some of what you are hearing,

gail says thank you. Melissa. If you like some of

what you're hearing on hey Boomer, I'd love to hear from you. You can

email me at wendy at Heyboomer biz.

Or you can leave a review on Apple podcast or

Spotify podcast. One of the recent reviews I

got said, quote, a great listen. Wendy's podcast

is full of information to help navigate midlife and beyond.

She's shining a light on Boomers and the issues that arise. So

that felt good. That was nice to hear.

And next week, we're going to focus on

brain health. My guest will be Dr. Crystal

Color. She's the founder of the Virtual Brain Health Center.

She's a doctor of behavioral health and holistic

brain health expert. She brings nearly two decades

of expertise in working with individuals, families,

providers and advocacy organizations

specializing in brain related diagnoses.

And she was referred to me by several friends of Hay Boomer.

So I'm very curious to find out what Dr.

Collar has to say about keeping our brains healthy for as

long as possible. And you know that I always

like to leave you with the belief that we can all live with

relevance, live with courage, and live with

curiosity. And as melissa and I both believe,

you are never too old to set another goal or

dream a new dream. Thank you so much, melissa.

Thank you. I will talk to you,