Speaker 1: 0:06

Hi, I'm Jane Leder, host of Older Women and Friends. You know, when it comes right down to it, I find aging to be a complex affair Highs, lows and everything in between but as I see it, the one constant is change, and the key is how we adjust, how we transition. Do we start a new career, write that book we've had rolling around in our heads for years, move to warmer climes to be near our grandchildren, continue teaching or researching or coaching other women, or do we just hang out, travel and have a good time? The guests on Older Women and Friends have many stories to tell, to share, about what they've been up to and what they've learned along the way. So turn up the volume and join me on Older Women and Friends.

Speaker 1: 1:14

In the year and a half that Older Women and Friends has been up and running, gerontologist Tracy Gendron's name has been mentioned over and over again. Her book Ageism Unmasked, published in 2022, is the gold standard of books on the subject, and Tracy has been around the globe talking about feeling your age really means and how we can change the way we think about growing older. To watch and listen to Tracy doing her thing is exciting and convincing. It's misguided. She suggests to buy into the popular myths that, for example, 50 is the new 40 and 70 is the new 60. This whole concept is that you are only as old as you feel. But what the heck does that mean anyway? Who's the goddess on high who dictates what someone your age should feel? After all, no two people age the same way.

Speaker 1: 2:17

What I appreciate most about Tracy is her skill at taking miles and miles of research and boiling it down to its core, and if I were a betting woman, I'd wager that audiences leave her talks with a newfound enthusiasm for all they can do to age well and, for women, the ways we serve as standard bearers for the gift of longevity. Tracy, welcome to older women and friends and listeners. I'm saying that because this is day number two of our attempt to get this recording underway, so we are both deeply appreciative that we are here. So, tracy, listeners love to know a little bit about a guest's personal story, so I'd love to know what kind of kid you were.

Speaker 2: 3:16

Oh what a great question. Well, first, jane, I am so happy to be here and I know it's going to be worth the multiple attempts it took us to get to this point. So to answer that question and that's such a good question I was a pretty rambunctious kid who sought a lot of adventure. I was always looking for adventure and what's so funny is that I was a terrible student terrible terrible student because I didn't care. I wanted to like chase boys and parties and things like that. So it's actually pretty amazing that I graduated from high school but I did, although I still have dreams sometimes that I actually didn't. And then I wonder if like does that mean I don't have a PhD but I do? And my high school teachers, I think, would be floored at how far I have come since then. So when I finally figured out that if I applied myself I could do it, everything changed. But I'm super grateful for the childhood adventures that I had.

Speaker 1: 4:19

And where did you grow up? And do you have sibs? I do.

Speaker 2: 4:23

I grew up in New York, on Long Island in New York, and I have one brother and we have all relocated to Virginia. So my parents live in Virginia, about 10 minutes from me. My brother lives in Virginia beach, about a couple hours from me.

Speaker 1: 4:36

Fabulous, it's so nice to have family close together, which is the exception rather than the rule of the truth. Did you have grandparents or other adults in your life excluding your parents?

Speaker 2: 4:51

Yes, and I write about Nani and Papi, who were my paternal grandparents, in the book Ages Among Mast quite a bit. Nani and Papi were hugely influential in my life. I grew up seeing them every week. We would go on Sundays and watch football and listen to classical music and Nani would make these exquisite meals and they were the epitome to me of how growing older can be a gift. I think that they were so influential in my life and I was so close with them and I saw them as something to look up to and something to look forward to and it was, yeah, profoundly influential for me.

Speaker 1: 5:33

So what were some of the characteristics? I mean, obviously they were loving and supportive, because otherwise you wouldn't have wanted to look forward to the visits unless, like me, you had a tray of chocolate chip cookies in the oven and ready for my three sibs to eat. So what was it specifically? You said you really look forward to spending time with them.

Speaker 2: 6:03

Yeah, it was definitely the warmth and the love, but it was also the creativity, the intellectual curiosity. They were both really drawn to the arts. My grandmother was a concert pianist, so to listen to her play and even to go to some recitals of some of her students. My grandfather was a physician and you know to hear his stories and he would show us x-rays and you know they were just so intellectually stimulating for me. And they traveled the world so to see their travels and the artifacts from their travels. And you know, my very first trip to Europe I went to Greece and it was funded by my grandparents because they wanted me to have the same love of exploration that they did. So they were a whole packet.

Speaker 1: 6:51

And I'm assuming, then, that you did not operate under any of the existing stereotypes that older people are frail, that they're in the background, that they're, you know, have nothing really important to share, and yada, dada, dada. So I'm making the assumption.

Speaker 2: 7:09

no, you know not exactly because, and I think that's really that's. It's a great question, because I think even if we have positive role models for what it means to be older and it means to age, we're all still exposed to this larger cultural narrative that we have. You can't escape it, it's everywhere you look. So I was a trained gerontologist and it took me, I don't know, probably till 10 years ago so maybe 20 years after becoming a gerontologist to finally see how I carried ageism within myself. So it's no wonder that it's, you know, it's prevalent, it's out there, it's ubiquitous because it's everywhere and it's really quite invisible.

Speaker 1: 7:52

Well, you talk about becoming a gerontologist and I'm really interested in why. I did a little research and at least Dr Google mentioned that only or less than 1% of physicians in the US are certified geriatricians. Yeah, what attracted you?

Speaker 2: 8:15

Yeah, so first it's important, there's a difference between a geriatrician and a gerontologist. Please clarify.

Speaker 2: 8:22

I will certainly do so, so the geriatrician, and geriatrics is the branch of medicine that really serves older people. It looks at, you know, some of the more common illnesses and diseases and symptoms and how we can really work with the complexity of older people. So it's medical. A gerontologist has at least a master's degree in gerontology. Gerontology is the study of holistic aging. So we're the people that study aging in terms of the biology, the psychology, the social roles, the spirituality, and we do research about what aging is like in terms of development. So they're really different and I was really drawn to aging as a process of living, aging as a process of being and growing and developing, and that's why I wanted to become a gerontologist.

Speaker 1: 9:12

And what does that? You said it's more like getting a master's degree in In gerontology. In gerontology, yes, Is that like a one-year program following four years?

Speaker 2: 9:24

or something like that it depends Usually a two-year, two-year 30-credit-ish program. They do have certificates as well, but yes, it's looking more holistically.

Speaker 1: 9:35

So do you have one-on-one contact on a regular basis or are you involved more often than not in research?

Speaker 2: 9:44

Research, teaching, but we always have service activities and other activities that we do with older people. I don't know how you teach about gerontology and not include the voices of older people, because I only know what it's like to be me. I don't know what it's like to be anyone else at their age. So we do try and make it really interactive.

Speaker 1: 10:06

Well, that leads perfectly to what I wanted to ask you about, and that is this idea that you're only as old as you feel, and we hear that all the time. I hear that all the time. And why is that misguided?

Speaker 2: 10:25

Yeah, that is it's such a good question because we accept that at face value, that it's just you're only as old as you feel, because in order to really feel good, we're supposed to feel younger, right?

Speaker 2: 10:37

That's really what that message is saying is like my body might be this age, but I feel like I'm younger. And what I try to tell people is no, you feel the age that you are. It's just not what you expected it to feel like. But when we say I'm 50, but I feel like I'm 30, we're actually discounting 20 years of our life experiences, 20 years of growth and development, 20 years of becoming the unique and individual person that we are. We don't actually want to be younger versions of ourselves. We don't. We've worked too hard to get to where we are today hard to get to where we are today. So I think it's a really misguided way of kind of, you know, giving into ageism and not recognizing that we develop at all ages and stages of our life and we can own that and it can be a part of us that we're proud of.

Speaker 1: 11:31

And a lot of us will remember I don't know days in high school or college and say, oh no, I never really want to experience that again. Yet, man, I look back at those photos and I sure looked pretty damn good, you know. So it's like this dichotomy of I wish I didn't have the physical changes, you know, the aches, the pains, whatever. But you're absolutely right in terms of the wisdom that some of us gain and I'm going to get to that in a minute, because you made some really good points about that as well and in one of your talks I think it was your TED talk and I'm not sure I got this all correctly, but it was you used a comparison between what and how we think and learn about age and a horny 18-year-old learning about sex. Now, I don't know how often you use that line. I went oh well, that's interesting, please explain.

Speaker 2: 12:33

So now I have a chance to ask you, yeah basically that the way that we learn about aging is filled with misconception. It's like when a young teenager is learning about sex and they think they know what they don't know right, they kind of go into it and realize like, oh wow, I had that all completely wrong. So eventually they figure it out and they realize the truth about sex and sexuality. But very few of us realize that we never actually learn the truth about aging, that we tend to think of aging as a process of physical decline. We tend to use these idioms like over the hill and past your prime and anti-aging. Anti-aging is death, Anti-aging is not a goal. So we just and we don't realize that we never learned that aging is the process of change that happens over time. That includes decline and growth. We don't look at the end growth part. So yes, we were just kind of comparing it to some other misconceptions.

Speaker 1: 13:38

They're very funny what I think you are saying, and you've said it already that I, for example, feel the age that I am. I am proud and loud to be 79. Yes, yes, yes, 79? Yes, yes, so I don't know.

Speaker 2: 14:05

I'm going to come up with my own little saying. And just by the by, how old are you? I'm 53. 53. 53 years old and yes, and this is what 53 feels like for me, and this is what 53 looks like for me. I look my age and I feel my age.

Speaker 1: 14:18

There you have it. Well, I mentioned this whole idea about wisdom and you did say, I think, in that same talk I was going to say well, what are some of the ageist assumptions out there about age? And the one that just hit me smack dab was, for example, being old or older doesn't mean you have wisdom and I'm going. Well, it doesn't. I mean, that's what everybody says, you know, it's a wise woman. That's what we're on this journey for. We want to be crones. So what do you mean? That we don't necessarily have wisdom?

Speaker 2: 14:58

Yeah, I think and you take that with a grain of salt, because I think, as we get older, we all develop a certain level of wisdom, especially in terms of getting to know who we are. Personally, right, that just happened. But you know, you've heard the expression there are old fools just as well as there are wise fools, so it's like, just because somebody is older doesn't necessarily mean any one thing about them, just like there are young people that have wisdom, so it's not the sole province of the old, just like, you know, having fresh new ideas is not the sole province of the young. We need to just, you know, kind of break free of some of these like large generalizations that we make, like young people are tech savvy Exactly there are old people that are tech savvy.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Exactly, I'm not sure I put myself in that category. I'm not sure I would either.

Speaker 1: 15:50

After the snafus that we've had getting this together? I'd say definitely not. And you were talking about aging, and it is a process, you said, of both decline and growth. And why are we so stuck on focusing on this negative stuff? Like I don't like the way my skin looks. You know, every time I stand up I have to just shake and rattle and roll in order to get everything flowing again. What impedes us? And you did mention, of course, that even with you, who trained to be a gerontologist, that it took you years before you were able to get rid of that self-talk. Yeah, yeah you know.

Speaker 2: 16:35

I think it's a couple of things. I think, first of all, we have to recognize that decline is real and loss is real. So I never want to invalidate anybody's experiences. As we get older, we do have losses, and those losses can be family, friends, people. It could also be we.

Speaker 2: 16:52

Our bodies don't work the same way that they used to. So I think there's the reality to it. But then on the other side, there's the conditioning of it. So it's just like how the powers that be define beauty standards for us. They tell us what's beautiful, they tell us what's valued. Well, why? Because they want to sell us things. It's an industry. People profit from ageism. So if we are told wrinkles are ugly, then we're going to believe that wrinkles are ugly. If we're told that they're beautiful, then maybe you know there'll be another industry that pops up to create wrinkles. But you know so I think it's just a lot of this conditioning and these societal norms that other people dictate for us, and aging got thrown in the bucket of like. You don't want that, you don't want to look old, you don't want to act old, you don't want to feel old. So here, buy all of these things so that you can look, act and feel younger.

Speaker 1: 17:46

Interesting when we look at some of the ways that we can grow, that we are maybe on the road to wisdom. Hello, women, I'm thinking we're in the lead here, but nevermind, that's a stereotype, I get it. But, for example, being more comfortable in our own skin, which is something I think you were alluding to a little bit when you talked about the time and the many years it took A to understand why you still had some of these ageist stereotypes within yourself. What's the process and I don't even know if there's any research on this at all. I'm just throwing this out and it may be a really silly idea, but what is the process that older people can go through so that they, for example, do feel more comfortable in their skin, or something else, that we declutter not only our closets, but we declutter our friendships? Can you talk about any of that?

Speaker 1: 18:56

Yeah, I'm winging it at this point, folks.

Speaker 2: 18:58

No, I love it, I love this. So there is actually research and theory about this, a lot of great research that shows that as we grow older, we tend to emotionally focus on the things that make us feel better and we are much more able to prune the relationships and the things that are not working for us. It really is a form of pruning and it's something called the positivity effect, where you actually see things in a more positive way. Why? Because you've been there and done that, because this isn't your first rodeo, because you've had experience, because you've wasted a lot of time on people that don't give you joy and that don't fulfill you. So that's a part of wisdom that we have to say. I don't want to invest in that anymore. So, in ways, many people, their world gets smaller, but it gets richer because it's filled with the things that they love. So that's a piece of it.

Speaker 1: 19:53

They get richer but then I'm finding myself in this position right now because people I've spoken to and that I've interviewed about friendship and the importance of socializing as we age, the importance of having a support group, having I don't know three you know really best friends, and then it goes down from there and I'm thinking I don't know man, I'm not sure I feel that you know how many. How many friends can I call at 2 am in the morning and saying I need to go to the hospital, please come immediately? So I understand all the benefits. I'm a very social person but I'm finding and I did read something about this recently about the importance of being a bit more assertive, not aggressive but assertive, and kind of having to put ourselves out there, maybe more than we had been doing in previous years. Does that make any sense? It does.

Speaker 2: 20:55

So there's a couple things. First, I think we need to focus on quality of relationships rather than quantity.

Speaker 1: 21:00

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 21:01

Yeah, it's not the number of people that you have, it's whether you feel satisfied with the relationships that you have. If you feel like I'm really, I'm in a good place, I feel really happy, I feel very content with the number of friends that I have, that's one thing. If you feel like I'm lacking, then that's something else. But you're right, when we get older, and especially after we stop working, we don't have those social structures built in anymore. So you do have to seek it. How many people make friends at work or going out for drinks after, or whatever it may be but suddenly you don't have that anymore and it becomes much more challenging. So you have to take the initiative to join a book club, to join a group or a senior center or travel or whatever it is, and that does make it a little bit harder.

Speaker 1: 21:50

I also find that, because the number of people younger than I am is continuing to diminish, that I am having more relationships with, in this case, women and some men who are significantly younger. That's great, and I know the whole thing about intergenerational relationships, whole thing about intergenerational relationships. It's almost a matter of hey, either you make some friends who are younger or, guess what you know, as your older friends get ill, possibly pass away, move away. That circle just gets smaller and smaller. So we either step outside a little bit of our comfort zone and strike up some relationships with younger people.

Speaker 2: 22:38

Which is a beautiful thing. We should all have friends that are both older and younger than we are. What a rich tapestry of friendships if we can learn from each other and people of different ages.

Speaker 1: 22:49

And the thing is that some of these people are really smart and really wise and have so much to share with me and to teach me and then I hope that you know that is refers Absolutely so for me. I take away from your years of years, from your years of research and teaching and writing, to sort of own our age and to say it out loud and as we just did a few minutes ago, but when I was listening to this TED Talk and you had suggested that people in the audience, I couldn't really see them and I couldn't really tell the volume of people. What's your response to that? Do you send people out basically saying I'm 56, you know, and this is what 56 looks like on me. I was just curious what the feedback is that you get on that.

Speaker 2: 23:51

Yeah, I actually will very often end a talk having everybody say their age out loud and it works really well, and I think some people get really uncomfortable because it's the first time they've ever said it out loud. Some people are ready to go right away, but I think there's something so empowering about saying I am owning myself and truly together. We are all, then taking the first step to create a world that values people of all ages Something so powerful about that. So that was a big audience at TED. I think there were about 1200 people there, wow, and it was loud and they did it and they went with me and I could feel the energy and they did a great job.

Speaker 1: 24:35

I think it definitely spoke to some and what kind of questions do you get from people who are in the audience, whether at a TED Talk or somewhere on the other side of the world?

Speaker 2: 24:48

Yeah, lots of them. A lot of people will ask about gender differences, the difference between ageism and masculinity and femininity. That's a common one. Cultural differences that's one I get all the time. Is ageism a Western phenomenon? The answer is no, so that's another one that I get. Yeah, I think those are probably two of the most common, but people are always kind of at different places with this. For some people when I do a talk, it's the first time they've ever thought about this. Some people have been thinking about this and then kind of take something else away, and I always learn when I get to hear other people's experience.

Speaker 1: 25:27

So I say in the introduction to the podcast, which I've got to change soon, anyway, I'm getting tired of hearing it. So I don't know about people are listening, but what I say is that for me, going through the aging process, that there are highs, there are lows, there's everything in between, but change is a constant, and that we become much more adept and, by the way, happier when we are able to adapt to the changes. Does that ring true with you?

Speaker 2: 26:08

It does, and that's throughout our entire lives. There is no developmental stage that we're not changing. Life is constantly changing. So, yes, we become more adept and we adapt more easily than we're practiced we have Anything.

Speaker 1: 26:23

I didn't ask that you absolutely must share with the listenership, or was I pretty thorough?

Speaker 2: 26:30

here. I have loved this conversation. I think this has been great. I'm so glad that we had a chance finally to make this happen. I think, yeah, this was really enjoyable.

Speaker 1: 26:41

Terrific, I feel exactly the same. All right, thank you very much, appreciate it, thank you, thank you. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Older Women and Friends. And, speaking of friends, please tell yours about this podcast and if you have any suggestions for future episodes or guests or anything else you'd like to share, go to speakpipecom. You'd like to share? Go to speakpipecom. That's S-P-E-A-K-P-I-P-E dot com. Forward slash older women and friends. You can send me an audio message or respond to one of mine, because it is your feedback that drives this podcast. Until next time.