They Said Yes. We'll See What Happens Next

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

From a recent rafting trip

What happens when we say yes to adventure? It depends

Dear Reader: Before you accuse me of trying to convince you to jump out of an airplane, stop there. Okay, well, if you really want to, please do; it has a way of changing your perspective about life in ways that we don’t see coming. I’m a fan. But this isn’t quite that. Well, sort of, but stay with me here.

This is about a bunch of women who said yes. Yes to themselves, yes to dreams, yes to….a different life.

The situations are very different, but the idea is the same.

Let’s start with Carol Amendola D’Anca. I’m just going to steal her entire LinkedIn post (she’s cool with this, we’re connected) and share it here:

I sat on the sidelines too long. I wasn’t exactly sitting around. I was actually working my butt off at corporate jobs.

⬅ First “inside sales” for a scientific medical sales company.
⬅ Next, outside sales selling medical equipment.
⬅ Next, going back inside to a marketing job managing 300M in sales.
⬅ Then, management jobs all the way up the corporate ladder to EVP.

Each “job” taught me a lot and I’m grateful for the opportunities, but oddly I was still sitting on the sidelines when it came to my dreams.

⬅ I wanted to spend more time in Italy.
⬅ I wanted to be in the business of prevention of disease, not treating it with medical equipment and devices.
⬅ I wanted to help others feel better, live longer and avoid disease.

Finally, I realized I could keep killing myself at work or I could get off the sidelines and pursue my real passion - nutrition.

I quit my job and set up my private practice.  I had the MS nutrition degree but still needed to pass the board exam and do the internship – no small tasks but I learned a thing or two about paying the price for what you want.

I could have never imagined the journey that keeps developing, beginning with nutrition and expanding to lifestyle and longevity education with lifestyle excursions in small villages in the south of Italy that fill up quickly. And guess what? It's 100% me - who I am, what I'm good at and what I love doing.

I’ve learned that going out on your own isn’t easy but it’s the best ways to truly get to know yourself and what you are made of. I wouldn't trade this journey for the world. (author bolded)

I love this. Carol is at midlife and had to completely redirect, which costs time and effort right about the time way too many of us are claiming we’re too old to do just that. Wrong.

What’s too old is our attitude, driven by an ageist society.

Photo by Ella Olsson on Unsplash

Letting go of what doesn’t work

Next, my buddy Shannon. We met four years ago when she was training for a body building competition. We made instant friends and have been connecting since. She’s now in her mid-fifties.

Three years ago Shannon launched a meal prep company, based on her knowledge and love of nutrition. She found a kitchen, marketed her services and made specialized meals for her clients.

The work load increased exponentially. Over time Shannon wanted to spend more time with nutritional consulting, as the meal prep was eating up her time. Managing the kitchen, the endless shopping and all the rest, well, it had stopped being fun.

I watched her deal with depression, frustration and the feeling that she just couldn’t get out from under these commitments, when there were other things she wanted to do with her life.

Being in our fifties as women involves a whole lot of things: menopause, when we really do begin to say goodbye to our youthful faces (at least most of us), when society stops noticing us. We start losing friends, parents, we start noticing that life is moving way too fast and maybe we’re not quite in it the way we dreamed.

Between our hormones and all the things we deal with as aging females, fifties can be difficult enough. If we’re doing work which doesn’t serve us, that’s one more burden to carry. Men have their own private doubts as they stare down the big five-oh, too.

At breakfast the other day, Shannon announced that she was done. She’d made plans to let the meal prep part of her life go. She was visibly more relaxed, happier, and frankly, relieved.

She is about to launch into a life more focused on what she really loves. Truthfully, all her work on meal preparation makes her even more valuable as a nutrition counselor.

She’s also thinking about taking another job. But that remains to be seen.

The point is that Shannon said yes to herself. The evidence was in her body language, the energy she radiated, how the depression had lifted. Shannon is extremely fortunate, and she knows it, that her husband is completely behind what she wants to accomplish. Not all of us have this. She does.

She said yes and her partner will benefit from her joy.

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

A late-in-life do-over, starting with an adventure

Finally, my friend Amelia. Amelia’s Black, a PhD, computer expert/nerd, world traveler and someone largely unafraid to take chances. She had retired from her teaching college and was living in a condo close to work.

Had been for years. Perhaps too long. Perhaps a little too comfortable and familiar.

An unfortunate situation arose out of a connection she’d made with one of the employees, a man who turned out to be seriously dangerous (not just to her but to many residents). Amelia faced leaving her predictable, familiar condo and all the relationships she’d built there behind.

It was the best possible thing, too. While deeply uncomfortable, the situation has forced my friend to consider her last third very differently. The condo was convenient to work, but she doesn’t work any more. Huge trees that used to frame her view were torn down for city projects.

She loves trees. Wants them in her world.

She now gets to look at where she wants to live next, and how.

Where do you even start? She was thinking, road trip, to loosen the cobwebs and get inspiration. Well, my guest room is on that road trip list.

At sixty-five, Amelia is right at that point where she’s got options. She gets to look around and consider how she wants to exercise them.

So I invited her to go on a rafting trip with Oregon River Experiences. We’d find a few more friends, have a girl’s trip on the Rogue which I’d just done.

She would shake loose aspects of an old life and have the kind of fun she’s not had for a while.

At first, she resisted. Then she said yes. I know Amelia. She’ll leap into this the same way she did with fencing (she was a champ at it), and it will give her great joy.

I like rafting because you can’t use your phone, you camp, you work, you play hard, have fun and get to decouple from everything except Nature and each other. It’s an easy but still superb outdoor adventure for a few days. Just long enough to shake the rafters (pardon the pun) and get your juices flowing.

Perfect for people in transition. Every night in your tent, every day around people having fun, every moment hiking the sand bars or bouncing over the rapids is a remake of perspective.

Amelia said yes.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but knowing Amelia, it’s going to be amazing.

What about you?

These women said yes.

Especially from about fifty on, many of us, male and female and all pronouns, are wondering if we said yes to some things which don’t serve us any more.

Is it time to say no to some or all of them and yes to something else?

Some of us have conditions which keep us where we are, so a no to them is impossible. Those could be physical challenges, a partner needing care, financial limitations. Anything; we all have something in the bucket.

Mostly fear, which can cause us to lose focus. What if what if what if?

What if we don’t say yes to us, even if it’s some small thing?

It took years for me to allow myself to take a Wednesday off. I now take that Wednesday and spend it on the Oregon Coast, no matter what. In four years I might have missed two, for good reason. That’s for me. Of course it was hard.

What is possible? All too often we focus so hard on what we don’t have that we miss what we do have.

One woman wrote me that she now kayaks when she can, even though she is responsible for care-taking. That allows her grace and a space to be herself on her terms. Again for many, perhaps not possible.

What is?

Can you take long walks? Find friends to join you for yoga? Create a book club? Become a volunteer, take a class, learn a skill?

I learned about an 86-year-old woman who just graduated from equine massage school. She’s got a new profession.

Does it matter?

What matters is our willingness to be curious about what we can do for ourselves which allows a different life, if even for a little while.

I’m big on doing something dramatic to kickstart the thought process and invite us to think big. Surprisingly it also works for people who begrudgingly come along on some hare-brained excursion only to discover that it was precisely what the doctor ordered.

The inner doctor, of course.

What have you done to refocus, retread, remake some aspect of your life? What might you need, if you feel stuck?

As we begin our swift slide into holiday season (lest you think I jest, here’s what I saw today while looking for more pots for my baby maples…

and Santas will be out by September)- will you end your year with a bang or once again hope that you’ll find new motivation by January?

Let’s not keeping kicking the can down the road.

Let’s do something radically, wonderfully different NOW. Tomorrow isn’t promised. Right now is. What will you do for you today?

What will you say YES to, that scares you?

Let’s play!

Seen on a walk near the Oregon Coastline

Thanks for reading about everyday people making big changes and taking risks. I hope this article was inspiration if you’re in need of a boost. If so please consider

If someone you know could use a nudge to try something and this article might help, please also consider

Either way, let’s please live our lives while we have them. In full.