Aging Well: Finding Beauty in the Gray

Send us Fan Mail Theresa Pierce and Laurie Zacco had been a couple living and working in Florida for 19 years when they decided to rent out their home and make a go of living the full-time RV'ers life. They had some exposure to this through Laurie's father and his wife who had their own RV. One year later, Theresa and Laurie were married. Roughly one year after this, the pandemic hit. Th...

Send us Fan Mail Jacquie Ducette is a fellow podcaster and Retirement Lifestyle Planner singing from the same sheet of music as Hugh Willard. While house sitting in Mexico, she bumped into the world of podcasting by joining a friend for a presentation on how to generate 12 months of content in 3 days. Newly across the threshold of her own retirement, she felt moved to further explore this new worl...

Send us Fan Mail Ross Le Cras had cut his career teeth in radio and advertising for much of his career in Western Australia. Moving into the empty nest years with his wife Leanne, Ross began to feel the pull to a different calling. The wisdom of his years began to reform and redirect the character and quality of his interactions. Always interested in psychology, what makes people think and do the...

Send us Fan Mail Creatives Samantha Shad and Carl Nordgren join us again this week with their thoughts on stories, storytelling, and their central role in our creative processes and lives.   Samantha Shad is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, entertainment attorney, and author of The Write To Happiness and Write Through the Crises. She teaches courses and workshops on creativity and writing in n...

Send us Fan Mail Samantha Shad is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, entertainment attorney, and author of The Write To Happiness and Write Through the Crises. She teaches courses and workshops on creativity and writing in numerous settings. Carl Nordgren is a creative entrepreneur, radio show host, award winning novelist and most recently the author of Becoming A Creative Genius Again. For many...

Send us Fan Mail Among Becky's many talents, her storytelling was discovered one day while reading to her children at the local library. From there, she was sought after by the Chautauqua Society of Greenville, South Carolina and encouraged to share her talents in other storytelling venues as well. Through the Chautauqua Society, Becky has received rave reviews for her historical re-enactment...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Kirk Ridge has walked two parallel professional paths over the past 40+ years. While supporting students, teachers and institutions around students' writing, he also has been a musician and singer-songwriter. Overlapping the end of his main career and leading into his recent retirement, Kirk has added radio show host and senior puppy trainer to his CV. His balance to this...

Send us Fan Mail Amanda and Darrel are recent retirees and the heads of their four-generation deep family. They are also bloggers, hosting their website AnDweplant.com containing a bevy of blog posts, some playful, some speaking to the pains of recent losses, as well as life-lifting pictures and inspirational videos. Not ones to rest on their well earned laurels, the Mays keep moving forward with...

Send us Fan Mail Jody and Mark Rollins were living their best career and family lives before uneven closings into retirement. While looking forward to their retirement years following successful careers and healthy financial stewardship, they quickly learned there was much more needed to be truly happy and healthy in the many years ahead. More purpose, more intention, more orientation to self and...

Send us Fan Mail New York Times, USA Today, and The Sunday Times bestselling author of 28 books, Diane Chamberlain has maintained a powerful pace with her rich and varied novels over her 30+ year (second) career as a writer. She often draws from her first career as a social worker and psychotherapist for her stories and inspiration. She is now coming into this time in her life wherein she is more...

Send us Fan Mail Susan Kurowski parlayed her lifelong love of animals along with her business acumen into her work with the Pets for the Elderly Foundation beginning in 2006. In 2009, she was named the executive director. Since that time she has been instrumental in meeting the Foundations dual missions of reducing the numbers of animals in shelters, with the risk of euthanasia, and providing folk...

Send us Fan Mail Leanne Le Cras has lived the length of her life in Western Australia. It is there that she and her husband raised their two children. It is there that she steadfastly worked for many years. She left a toxic work situation just prior to the pandemic and considered that she would officially retire. Since then, she has reevaluated and has decided to "unretire". From a posit...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Mia Yang has a deep love for seniors that was born of her early years with her grandparents in China. Out of lifelong formative experiences that included quality of care decisions for her grandparents, she chose to become a geriatrician, a medical doctor specializing in the care and compassion for older adults. Her latest venture is her new podcast: Ask Dr. Mia: Conversations...

Send us Fan Mail Mary Ann and Patrick grew up with mothers who were sisters and fathers who were brothers. Mary Ann's family lived in upstate New York save for a 5 year stint in Texas and Patrick's family began in Nashville, Tennessee before migrating north to Finley, Ohio. The two families spent every Easter and two weeks in the summer together. Loving chaos would be the most apt phrase...

Send us Fan Mail Lynn Harrell started college with the goal of working as a camp director for children. That is until a required project wherein she went to help with the North Carolina Senior Games opened her world to the joys of time spent with the senior set. She has spent much of her professional life working with the NC Senior Games including the past 14 as the Associate Director. Join us as...

Send us Fan Mail Gwen Buchanan has packed a lifetime into her 50+ years. Two life threatening accidents resulting in both hips being replaced, and numerous personal challenges only served as renewable energy sources for her to complete multiple marathons and to set out on her first, and solo at that, hike over the entire Appalachian Trail. Join us for our conversation with this delightful and spir...

Send us Fan Mail We take a brief pause from sharing the stories and expertise of our guests on this week's show to reflect on the current and substantial challenges facing the United States today. What is our role as Third Agers in this time? What is our responsibility within the formal and informal social contracts we have with our families, community, and greater society? We still have much...

Send us Fan Mail Author Carrie Knowles joins us again this week to share from her latest book Shifting Forward: Fifty Reflections on Everyday Life . Carrie is a prolific writer and author having published dozens of short stories and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and four novels: Lillian’s Garden (Roundfire Books, 2013), Ashoan’s Rug (Roundfire Books, 2013), A Garden Wall in Provence...

Send us Fan Mail Author Carrie Knowles was awarded a North Carolina Arts Council grant to write her memoir in 1994. The Last Childhood: A Family Story of Alzheimer's recounts her arduous (is there any other word to describe this experience) and often rending experience with her mother's disease. She updated the book in 2017 to include her experience following her mother's death. Wit...

Send us Fan Mail Pickleball is a racquet/paddle sport that has risen from its humble beginnings in Bainbridge, Washington in 1965 to becoming a veritable tsunami sport of passion and play and community building, particularly among Third Age folks. Today there are numerous championships, both national and international, as well as an enormous groundswell of pickleball courts and participants of all...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Peter Balsamo has spent the length and width of his life in higher education and service to the greater community. His story has an interesting turn in that he became a father in his mid-50's. A few short years later, with his daughter starting school, Peter retired. Not missing a beat, their family found their through line, or rather true-line, in the substance of travel...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Stevan Jackson is a ethnomusicologist and folklorist. Having taught at several universities over the course of his career, he now spends much of his time writing and performing. He's written several nonfiction and fiction books and as a multi-instrumentalist, Stevan is involved in several musical groups and projects. Clearly the moniker "retired" is not applicab...

Send us Fan Mail Out of her own family trauma and into being raised by her grandmother, Dr. Piper followed a natural path into her study and research as a gerontologist and Assistant Professor at the Center on Aging with Kansas State University. Through the course of her ongoing work, Dr. Piper has confirmed that for grandfamilies perspective matters. And most hold the view that raising their gran...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. John Dempsey is coming to the close of a long and distinguished career. He started as a young naval officer in VietNam during the war, followed by a brief stint in the Carter Administration before finally settling into his home of academia and leading several institutions of higher education. With an ease and good humor, John shares a few stories of his time and interests with...

Send us Fan Mail Nancy Ruffner was a legal and financial specialist with a global EAP company for many years before facing the kaleidoscopic experience of her own parents' aging issues. Out of this, she pivoted to coaching and consulting as one of the nations first Board Certified Patient Advocates. An expert on managing aging issues, Nancy founded NavigateNC, a company that she describes as...