On Pluck and Pandemic America with Oral Storyteller Michelle Fishburne

Career and Money
Written By Season Two

Show Snapshot:

Meet Michelle Fishburne. After losing her job and home during the pandemic, Michelle packed up an RV to crisscross the US, filming ordinary Americans sharing their pandemic stories for a one-of-a-kind oral history project called Who We Are Now.

At age 57, the former lawyer and non-profit communications pro found herself "on the edge of a cliff" after her life dramatically changed during our COVID spring. Now, this real-life Nomadland traveler reveals what she learned about navigating the gulf between uncertainty and resiliency and shares stories from her trip across 32 states, tens of thousands of miles, and hundreds of conversations with Americans from all walks of life.

We also talk "ax throwing," RV maintenance, and how to be a better neighbor.

In This Episode We Cover:

1.    The pandemic job loss that pushed Michelle to her edge.

2.    How ageism impacts job hunting in midlife.

3.    Why Michelle recognized the need for an oral history of pandemic America.

4.    How grit, pluck and resilience are a narrative thread running through the stories Michelle heard on the road.

5.    After interviewing hundreds of ordinary Americans,  we hear which stories made the greatest impact on Michelle.

6. How looking at your life through the filter of “abundance versus scarcity” can help boost your spirits when life knocks you down.

7.    The inside skinny on RV life and why driving one is easier than you might think.

8.    How to be a better neighbor.

Quotable:

I did not understand how difficult it would be, at the age of 57, with a law degree and part of an MBA, and lots of years of experience. It never occurred to me that it would be hard to get a job.

I think about all these incredibly talented, experienced women, like me, who are being told no, we don’t want you in the workforce because you’re too experienced and too good at what you do. That doesn’t make sense to me.

Transcript:

Katie Fogarty (00:14):

Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women on life after 50, who are unafraid to age out loud. I’m your host Katie Fogarty.

You don’t need me to tell you that the pandemic set off a cascade of pink slips and job losses that have hit millions hard, especially women, who exited the workforce at four times the rate of men. One of those women is my guest today, Michelle Fishburne. After COVID upended her job hunt, Michelle made a pandemic pivot, packing up an RV to criss-cross the US, filming ordinary Americans sharing their pandemic stories for a one-of-a-kind oral history project called Who We Are Now.

Today, thousands of miles and hundreds of interviews later, she joins to me talk about resiliency, uncertainty, and navigating the gulf between the two. Welcome, Michelle.

Michelle Fishburne (01:02):

Thank you, Katie, happy to be here.

Katie (01:04):

Michelle, you have driven I think like 10,000 plus miles. I know you’ve visited upwards of 32 states. Can you start by telling us where exactly you are right now?

Michelle (01:15):

[laughs] I’m in the Florida Panhandle right now, and just avoided that nasty mess of storms that’s ripping across the United States, dropping tornadoes and hail everywhere.

Katie (01:27):

Oh, I hope you continue to avoid those storms. Where did you start your journey?

Michelle (01:32):

I started it in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in the middle of September.

Katie (01:37):
Okay, so do a little stage-setting. You started this trip because you were looking for work. What set you off on this journey?

Michelle (01:47):

Sure, sure. So, at the beginning of January 2020, I was loving life. I had a job I adored, I was the national PR and partnerships director for a national foundation and non-profit. I got to go wherever I wanted to, whenever I wanted to, fly to meet whoever I wanted to meet to do PR and partnerships, it was awesome.  

But due to COVID downsizing, when the foundation non-profit downsized in the spring, I was laid off. Now, I wasn’t really worried, I thought, no problem. I was gonna go to SXSW EDU, I’ve been there six times. There’s an education element to South By that precedes the big one. Anyway, I’d been that about six times because my daughter is a nationally known inventor, a kid inventor. So I was like, no problem I’ll go there and get a job. But of course, they didn’t have it, which was a wise move.

I did not understand how difficult it would be, at the age of 57, with a law degree and part of an MBA and lots of years of experience, it never occurred to me that it would be hard to get a job. But I submitted 86 customized cover letters between the middle of March and the middle of July and I had nada.

Katie (03:08):

Wow, okay that’s a lot of cover letters. Were you looking to stay in the non-profit space or return to law? What kind of work were you looking for?

Michelle (03:17):

I was looking to stay in the non-profit space, but I started to get very panicked and so I even applied to for-profit organizations. The panic really did set in. I’ve had a pretty easy life job-wise. I graduated from UVA Law School, a top 10 law school and life’s always been easy in terms of getting jobs. So, this was the first time that it wasn’t and I couldn’t figure out why. I couldn’t network because of COVID and I think if I had been able to network, I would have landed a job.

I was hoping to move from Chapel Hill to Washington DC because my youngest just went off to college this summer. So, in the middle of July, here I am with no job, the lease on my post-divorce house was up on July 31st, and my youngest was going to college. So, I had no job, no house, and no kid to take care of anymore.

Katie (04:18):

So, this is a crazy trifecta of changes. [Michelle laughs] That’s a lot to handle. What did you do next? Sounds like you put your stuff into an RV and headed across the country which is such a wonderful way, but was it hard to make that decision? How did you get there?

Michelle (04:37):

Well, I think when you’re standing at the edge of a cliff, [laughs] it’s not as hard as you would think. I was sitting in a parking lot at Target in the middle of July and I was like, okay Michelle, you just have to figure out where the movers are gonna put your stuff in 15 days.

Katie (04:55):

That’s a big decision.

Michelle (04:57):

Yeah. [laughs]

Katie (04:58):

I mean Michelle, I’m so amazed that you navigated this and really have this sort of pandemic pivot. I know that the pandemic pivot is something that people are either excited about or sick of being forced to make. Where did you land on that side of the coin? Were you excited about the opportunity to hit the open road or did it feel like something you had to do?

Michelle (05:23):

Well, I had to move into my 2006 motorhome. I homeschooled my kids and I road-schooled them for part of it. So, I thought well, the only place I can really live in my motorhome. So if I have the motorhome, what am I gonna do? Now, this comes to this, “of a certain age” issue. You know that saying that insanity is when you keep doing the same thing hoping for a different result?

Katie (05:47):

Yes, I’ve been there [both laugh] I know that phrase.

Michelle (05:53):

So, I said to myself that if I take the motorhome, even if I go park it by the beach, if I have to just continue submitting cover letters and trying to get consulting gigs, I am going to get terrified. And so I thought, dammit to hell, I’ll just go ahead and make my own project. If people can’t see that when you’re 57 and you have years and years of experience and skills and talents, you understand nuances, and they don’t want you because you’re too old, well, I’ll show them what I can do.

So, I took off on the road, headed out to Wyoming, got a website, got press coverage, and now about 12,000 miles later, hundreds of interviews later, I’m in good housekeeping this month in the print edition. I’ve been on ABC TV, I’ve been in major papers, and people are saying, “Oh, look at what this 57-year-old woman can do, she made this out of whole cloth.”

Katie (06:48):

You created your own magic, I absolutely love that. That is the theme of this show. I had in season one, this very dynamic duo on, Susan Colby and Kathy Sjogren, who kind of aged out of the ad industry, so what they did, they went and created their own creative shop. They just said I’m taking my talent and building my own damn thing. And it sounds like you did exactly that.

So tell me, many of us have been trapped at home in the past 11 months, but you have really seen much of the country in ways that others of us have not. Doing all of these hundreds of interviews, is there one particular one, one or two, that stick out in your mind?

Michelle (07:35):

Well, let me let my brain think about that for a second while I answer a question you haven’t asked. [laughs]

Katie (07:42):

Go for it.

Michelle (07:43):

Which is that, so a couple of themes have risen to the top, and then I can figure out from there which one to tell you. One is, everybody keeps talking about resilience and pivots. And some people have talked about American resiliency and I realized this is not an American trait, this is a human trait. And what I’m seeing most of all, all around the country, pivot or no pivot, what I’m seeing is pluck. P-L-U-C-K. It’s a very old word and it means spirited and determined courage.

Katie (08:19):

It’s a great word.

Michelle (08:19):

And that is the theme that I am seeing, and another thing, in terms of traveling the United States — if I had stayed in Chapel Hill this whole time, I would have thought our country was much different than the one I found. I thought our country was no longer the one I grew up in.

Katie (08:37):

How do you mean? How do you mean Michelle?

Michelle (08:37):

And I can’t tell you how many people of all different stripes and beliefs have said, you know what, can we just get back to being neighbors? I think the media has hyped us up, social media has hyped us up, and if we could just get rid of the media, let’s just go on and be neighbors again and live our lives.

Katie (08:59):

So, that was a theme that you were hearing from people?

Michelle (09:00):

That was the theme, across the spectrum. And I would say probably about 70% of the people I interviewed voted differently probably than me, though I’ve been surprised when I learned later who people voted for. You just cannot judge a book by its cover.

Katie (09:20):

You put your finger on something that I found to be so true personally during COVID, that I felt it was a very collective, humanizing experience. The idea that the entire globe was going through this shared experience really felt, you felt connective tissue to the people around you that you might not have had. Sounds like that was a theme that really manifested itself in your conversations.

Michelle (09:52):

Oh, absolutely. And now I know who I’m gonna tell you about. One of the things I’m seeing, is I think a lot of us, particularly in America, go-go-go, achieve achieve achieve. We focus so much on our own lives, our careers, our kids, etc and we don’t often lift up our heads and think about others. I mean, we do to some extent, but not in the way that we did during the pandemic. I think there’s been a lot of thought of others.

For example, I was in the middle of Alpine, Texas and a cattle rancher said to me, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about those people up in New York, how are they doing, have you talked to anybody up there?” As a matter of fact, I talked to a restaurant owner in New York City who is on his knees because he can’t open indoor dining. And he said, “Yeah you know, I’ve just been thinking about them a lot.” And I have to say I’ve been haring that all over the country, people thinking about each other. Which helps me roll into your question about one story. You ready?

Katie (10:55):

I’m ready, I want to hear it.

Michelle (10:57):

Okay, her name is Brenda, and she is with Raton MainStreet. Raton is in New Mexico. It’s a little tourist town, and there’s a train station that stops there, right near the Boy Scout Museum because scouts and their families and all, when they’re headed to Philmont every summer, they stop there and they go into the museum and they go into all the little downtown shops. And this community also does balloon festivals, you know hot air balloon festivals and concerts. Okay, none of that could happen. So, the downtown in this town was just dying.

And Brenda and two other women, all of whom seem to be close to 50 plus, said we gotta take care of our town. So, they decided they would do sort of a CVS-like, Facebook Live cash mob. So, what does that mean? It means on Tuesday and Thursday nights, for two hours each time, they would go on Facebook Live from the inside of one of the downtown shops. And then they go around and they would hold up different objects that the shop was selling and would say, “And there’s this and it’s this much money”. They had about 100 viewers each time. And because they were older, they weren’t self-conscious, they probably didn’t even put on makeup before they did this, they put on wigs sometimes or goofy outfits and camp it up, and it was great entertainment. They did that for 12 weeks and through it, sales revenues of more than $40,000 was raised for 30 plus downtown shops so they could pay their rent and utilities during lockdown.

Katie (12:45):

That’s so fantastic, I love that. I absolutely love that. There’s a woman in my town doing something similar. She is running a Facebook where she promotes all of the local women-owned businesses. Each week she kind of gives an intro, she turns over her Facebook page to them and you learn about the shops, the tutors, or the lawyers, you know, the accountants, in your own community that you might not otherwise know. It’s such a wonderful way of surfacing people to connect them to consumers. I love that story that’s so beautiful.

So, you talked about pluck too, so this is a perfect example of that. What other examples of pluck did you see that kind of surprised you?

Michelle (13:30):

Oh. [laughs]

Katie (13:32):

[laughs] I keep putting you on the spot. You’ve got hundreds of interviews to sift through.

Michelle (13:37):

Yeah, I have like three, four hundred people floating around in my head. Pluck. Well, let me tell you about Marilyn Joy, J-O-Y, from St. Louis. Marilyn started a barbershop in downtown St. Louis, 27 years ago. When I met her at her vacant barbershop, she was celebrating a birthday in her sixties. And she had thought about retiring at the beginning of 2020. She thought, this will be my last year, I’m going to retire. But then COVID hit and the cushion of money she was expecting to get from her clients in 2020, at least the spring, dried up. So, she was sitting at home doing nothing, and number one, she said to herself, “Oh my gosh, I am going to hate retirement, that’s not happening.” [both laugh] So, she made this big decision, forget retirement, I like being around people.

One of the things I’m seeing with really excellent entrepreneurs is that if you treat your customers like friends first and not a customer, it is amazing what your customers will do to keep you going. So, she started getting calls and infusions of money from her longtime customers saying, “Marilyn can I help you out?” One guy gave her half of his stimulus cheque. And the reason why I think that’s pluck is number one, she started a barbershop 27 years ago in downtown St. Louis and she’s a single, older woman who embodies her last name, Joy, and she was not at all set back on her heels by the lockdown even though it meant no business. She just had spirited and determined courage.

Katie (15:42):

I love that. How fortunate that she learned the lesson from COVID that she was not ready to retire and that she gets her juice and her energy from interacting with people. Did this cross-country trip teach you anything about yourself?

Michelle (15:58):

Oh, so much. [laughs] 

Katie (16:01):

Tell me. [laughs]

Michelle (16:03):

One of the things it taught me about myself is that I like being my own boss. [laughs]

Katie (16:11):

Who doesn’t? Who doesn’t Michelle?

Michelle (16:14):

I used to tell people, oh no no, I don’t want to be in charge, I’m an A++ deputy. But you know what, I am tired of being a deputy. [laughs]

Katie (16:24):

You’re ready, you’re the front person now.

Michelle (16:27):

I’m ready, and the fact that nobody could see my value through my 86 customized cover letters, forced me to say, is there something wrong with me? No. What’s wrong with society’s construct on this? And I think we’ve just really gotten it wrong about older people. So, the person who first planted this in my brain is a woman named Elizabeth Isele, I-S-E-L-E, she founded the Global Institute for Experienced Entrepreneurship when she was 70 years old.

Katie (17:06):

Okay, I need her on this show. [laughs]

Michelle (17:07):

Yeah, you sure do! So, Elizabeth is regularly called up by the Secretary-General of the United Nations about the various places he wants her to go speak about the fact that one of the biggest societal wastes we have right now is not understanding that our older generations have incredible skills and talents. To have this set up where you go into retirement, all those skills and talents that you’ve spent your life building, we don’t need them anymore. That’s ridiculous. So she actually has facts and figures about how much we’re missing out on in terms of GDP et cetera because we’re not using our talents.

So, this trip has helped me understand that if I go back and I look at my jobs as a lawyer, as a homeschool educator, as a PR person working on political campaigns, as a journalist. If I go back and I look at all the work I do with non-profits, it really brought me to this moment to be able to do Who We Are Now. And when I think about all these incredibly talented, experienced women, like me, who are being told no, we don’t want you in the workforce because you’re too experienced and too good at what you do, that just doesn’t make any sense to me. But it’s where we are right now in society so for those of us like me, let’s go ahead and use our talents to create our own gigs.

Katie (18:44):

I absolutely love it and I could not agree more. If your value is not being recognized, create your own thing. And I do think that as people live longer, there are more of these portfolio careers that one can have. You’ve obviously had one, you’ve been a lawyer, you’ve done education as a stay-at-home mom and you’ve worked as a non-profit leader. Now you are an oral storyteller. What’s next for Who We Are Now?

Michelle (19:09):

I don’t know—

Katie (19:11):

Now that you’re your own boss, what’s your 2021 vision for this?

Michelle (19:16):

Being very, very real Katie, that’s the voice of me on a good day. The voice of me two days ago was me going on FlexJobs, me going on LinkedIn and seeing job after job, and me thinking, they’re never gonna hire me. I submitted two more cover letters for jobs that I know nobody’s gonna hire me to do. There’s still a lot of self-talk that is being involved to help steady myself because I still don’t have a job. I have Who We Are Now, and I’m telling myself, I’ve got these notes all over my motor home: Believe in yourself. [laughs]

Katie (20:00):

Right, it’s a good note.

Michelle (20:01):

I know where this could be going if I could just believe in myself enough, which is that it looks like I’m gonna have a book deal by the middle of April, which is exciting but the book won’t come out until the fall 2020[1] . I’ve been asked by a prestigious university to speak about my project, I’ve gotten a call from one of the major networks about interviewing me. I know that if I continue to use this as a foundation and a platform that I could do the book of my dreams, or maybe a mini-doc.

If I could do anything, this is what I would do. Envision, Katie, a person who is about 90 years old and they have tons and tons of wrinkles on their face, okay? And you interview them and your question to them is: tell me about the biggest, wildest adventure you had in your life? What happens is they blow you away and you sit there and go, “No you didn’t do that.” And this person transforms from a 90-year-old to like an 18-year-old, before your eyes and it’s so joyous. If I could do anything it would be mini-doc series celebrating just, that surprising nature of that youth and rambunctiousness that’s inside all of us.

Katie (21:39):

Oh my god, I love that so much and I’m just shooting beams of energy your way and hoping that we can manifest this together. I would love to absolutely watch that, that sounds stunning. I hope that vision comes true for you.

Michelle (21:56):

I hope so too, I may have some leads. So, you know, I keep having leads, I keep having leads, but there is so much self-talk going on in my head, just like there was when I decided to homeschool. Because I decided to homeschool in 2006, long before it really became discussed in the press and I found that whenever I’m kind of outside the mainstream accepted way of going through life, I always question myself, so I do a lot of self-talk to steady myself and say this is the right path for me.

Katie (22:33):
So, I want to talk a little bit more about that self-talk. That’s another theme that’s come up on this show. Women talk about self-doubt, how with age came more confidence that their path was the right one. Because we all have those down days, where it’s really hard to get out of bed and it’s not going the way we want it to go. I love that you have a note to remind yourself “Believe in yourself”. What are some other things that you do to make your inner critic more of an inner coach?

Michelle (23:12):

I really do. Right now I have index cards that are taped up on the walls of the motorhome. I also use whiteboards like crazy, and I have them in different sizes. Whenever I’m starting to doubt myself I’m like, “Okay, get out the whiteboard” and then I brainstorm all the different ways, what I have, how I can use my assets, in fabulous, fun ways. And then I say to myself, oh yeah, I’ve got all that. So, I use the index cards, I use the whiteboards. And I love whiteboards because you can just scribble all over them, it’s not like typing it out on a laptop or journaling, it’s just wild and free and crazy.

And then the last thing is I remind myself of abundance and scarcity. So, a friend of mine, who is a yoga instructor, reminded me that what I had done this past summer with the motorhome leans into a traditional yoga philosophy which is: when you are faced with scarcity, there’s always abundance in your life someplace else. Yin and yang right? So, whenever you’re faced with scarcity, think about what do you have in abundance? My scarcity was, didn’t have a job, didn’t have a house, didn’t have a kid underfoot, so I no longer could say, “Oh, I’m a stay-at-home mom.” And what did I have? Well, I had an abundance of time. [laughs]

Katie (24:45):

Sure, that’s something.

Michelle (24:48):

I had my motorhome and I had an abundance of curiosity and darn it, I had an abundance of skills and talents. So, leaning into abundance, identifying it, and owning it, it can help drown out the scarcity.

Oh, and then there’s one more thing that keeps me going other than the index cards, the whiteboards, and abundance scarcity. The last one is, they say that action is the best antidote to fear. And so whenever I’m feeling fearful, I say to myself, “Well that just means you actually just need to do something.” Even something small sometimes. I have a couple of hundred stories I’ve gotta convert from transcript into story. When I start doing those, I get grounded again and the fear dissipates. 

Katie (25:41):

I love that, and I feel like I do that in my own life too. When you put yourself into action, you propel yourself through. It’s that phrase: the way out is through. Once you start making your way, you do move through the fear, and the maybe anxiety or worry, that negative space that you’re in. I completely relate to that, I love that.

Michelle, I am so curious. I want to know a little bit more about how the RV works and I want to know a little bit more about what your day looks like, how much driving you were doing, how did you find where you stayed, what’s it like to be in an RV community? The reason I’m asking this question, when I was growing up, the oldest of four kids, my mom was working, she was managing all of us. And she used to say, “When I retire I’m getting an RV and driving across the country.” And we would laugh because I grew up on the 19th floor of an apartment building in New York City, I didn’t learn to drive until I was 30, [Michelle laughs] it was never even remotely on my list to get an RV and go anywhere, and I love that my mom had this vision. And by the way, she didn’t do it. I’m just curious, for those of us who have never done this, walk us through a little bit of what your day-to-day is like.

Michelle (26:55):

Sure, well let’s start with the motorhome first. So, my motorhome is 29 feet. When I bought it in 2006, it was amazing because it has the same dashboard as a Ford Explorer. So, when I would sit in the front seat it was just a longer vehicle but it was the same dashboard, which was kind of nice, and had a backup camera. What I found was that with a motorhome, the side mirrors on the motorhome are so much better than the mirrors that they put on our regular vehicles, that I’m actually much more confident driving the motorhome than I am driving the car.

Katie (27:34):

Fascinating.

Michelle (27:35):

Yeah, so put me on a highway, give me a choice, I’ll take the motorhome any day. But you can get them as small as 23 feet. This is my grocery vehicle, I don’t have any slides, I just unplug the water, I unplug the electricity and I drive off, it’s no big deal. I have two queen-sized beds in here, and a sofa and a dinette, a stove, oven, full refrigerator, microwave, shower, bathroom. The only thing I don’t have is a washer and dryer. So, that’s the motorhome.

In terms of the amount of driving, I don’t like to drive more than about three and a half hours a day. So for the majority of the trip, I would drive three and a half hours and then spend two days in the town, and then I would drive three and half hours and then spend two days in a town. The way I would find people, by and large, love to love it, love to hate it: Facebook. I would go on Facebook for little towns. So, let’s talk about Valdosta, Georgia, where Valdosta State University is, which I didn’t even know existed until this trip. I would go on Facebook and I put in Valdosta and that way I found about number one in the press for Valdosta State University was this woman named Colette who had made a really, really giant face mask for one of their statues. So, I thought I would love to interview her.

Katie (29:11):
Like a COVID face mask? Like a mask that we wear for COVID, or what kind of face mask?

Michelle (29:16):

Yeah, yeah, a huge face mask. And she was inspired by the face masks on the lines at the New York Public Library. And what I didn’t know was that Colette was a member of what they call the Anti-sewing Squad which was founded by comedian Kristina Wong in LA when she could not perform during COVID, and now she is in charge of what she calls “Sweatshops”, but they’re all volunteers all over the United States and they’ve made 250,000 face masks by the end of 2020 for vulnerable communities.

Katie (29:47):

Woah, oh my god, I love it.

Michelle (29:51):

So, that’s what happens too, maybe one thing leads to the other. Also when I did Facebook for Valdosta, Georgia I found Caleb who, and this is one of my favorite stories, he started an ax-throwing business during COVID. [both laugh]

Katie (30:08):

What?

Michelle (30:10):

And he decided not to do brick-and-mortar and that was even before COVID. 

Katie (30:14):

Good! Who is throwing axes in a store, that’s hilarious, tell me about this.

Michelle (30:19):

So, he’s got this mobile unit, so it’s a trailer and it’s this cage and at one end of the cage are two pieces of wood with a big circle on them. You give the person an ax and they haul off and they try to hit the middle of the circle.

Katie (30:36):

This is fabulous.

Michelle (30:38):

He started doing this in the spring, and because it’s natural socially distanced. [laughs]

Katie (30:43):

I would hope so.

Michelle (30:45):
You would hope so, and because it’s outside, it was so perfect.

Katie (30:52):
What does one pay? What does one charge to throw an ax? I am just curious. Do you have pricing on this or do I need to hit the Google and look it up. 

Michelle (30:59):

I think you’re gonna need to Google it.

Katie (31:02):

I’m googling that so hard when we’re done.

Michelle (31:03):

I thought that was hysterical. When I was interviewing him, he said “You know, we had a lot of mom groups coming in over the summer.” [laughs]

Katie (31:15):

Of course, you did! These mothers are like, “I have been sheltering in place with every single person in my family and my COVID puppy for too long, give me that ax, I have some aggression.

Michelle (31:26):

Give me that ax. And you know what he said, women are hands down better at throwing an ax than men. I don’t know if they just listen to instructions better, or if there’s just that much rage and frustration. [laughs]

Katie (31:39):

I’m going with C, a combination of A and B. That’s why. You have made my day. I love this story, I’m hitting Google, I need to know more about this. You have just had such an incredible experience, traveling around the country, hearing all these stories. I’m so excited about the idea of a book and a doc series, I am so thrilled that you’ve been with me today. Michelle, where can people who are listening to this show learn more about Who We Are Now and follow your work and maybe see some of these interviews?

Michelle (32:16):

Absolutely. So, it’s whowearenow.us is the website address. You can follow me on Facebook and Instagram, @whowearenowusa.

Katie (32:34):

Okay, I’m linking to all that in the show notes. Before I let you go, I usually ask guests if they have a resource or a product that they want to share. I’m so delighted that you’ve directed people to your social media, is there anything else you want to let our listeners know about before we wrap up?

Michelle (32:48):

No, I think the other thing I want to add is that I have adored every single person I have interviewed. And it’s given me hope that we all are as together as I thought we really are. 

Katie (33:03):

That is such a wonderful note to end on, that we’ve been on this collective experience together, have a conversation with somebody that you wouldn’t before, be inspired by Michelle, talk to people about their experiences. We still have a long way to go to recover from this experience and if we start to treat each other as neighbors, it’s going to make all the difference.

Michelle, thank you so much for being with me today.

Michelle (33:27):

Thank you, Katie, I really enjoyed it.

Katie (33:29):

This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women over 50 who are aging without apology. Join me next week when I talk with mental health advocate and author, Terri Cheney, who ripped the covers off her secret battle with bipolar disorder in her New York Times best-selling memoir, Manic. We explore the struggle, stigma, treatments, and her practical advice for managing and thriving with mental illness.

If you enjoyed this week’s show, please head to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to review the show. Reviews help us grow the show. So, if you take a minute to write a quick review, I have some fun, A Certain Age swag I want to send you. Write a review, let me know, and I’ll mail you two A Certain Age laptop stickers with our tagline: age boldly beauties, and age out loud. Yes, you heard that correctly, you’ll get actual, physical mail. How fun is that? See you next time and until then: age boldly beauties.

Season Two
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NYT-Bestselling Author Terri Cheney On Modern Madness and Mental Health
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Love, Loss, and Laughs. A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief