Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 6

Ep 66 Long Term Care Expert Lisa Cini

“From fear to freedom”: Leading Alzheimer’s and long-term care design expert Lisa Cini on navigating senior living decision-making, leveraging our teens for difficult conversations with our parents, and GenX’s own encouraging elder care future.

Lisa’s website
BOOM: The Baby Boomers Guide to Leveraging Technology, so that you can Preserve Your Independent Lifestyle & Thrive
The Future is Here: Senior Living Reimagined
Hive: The Simple Guide to Multigenerational Living
Organizations supporting NorCal fire relief efforts

Preorder Nancy’s book, The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time! Coming from Running Press Dec 3…

Me and you and a dog named Boo, traveling on cruise ships and home swaps through our Golden Years

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                  Related StoriesEp 62 Modern Elder Academy Founder Chip ConleyWho Helped You Become The Person You Are Today?Ep 65 Author Sarah Ladipo Manyika 

Who Helped You Become The Person You Are Today?

I don’t know how long I’ll have power here in the windy, dry NorCal wildfire zone so I’m typing like this.

via GIPHY

We’re doing ok! Better to not have light than to have too much light, in the form of a wall of flame bearing down on us.

Admittedly four days is a lot of time to live by flashlights and candles, but honestly I feel like candlelight is so flattering to everyone that I’ve looked really, really good since Saturday at 11 pm. Also, while I didn’t love throwing out the entire contents of the ‘fridge and freezer once everything gained the consistency and temperature of oatmeal, I had been saying that I wanted to shop and cook differently once I had an empty nest, so this was the push I needed to start all over again.

Mostly the last few days have been the reminder we get once in awhile during a crisis, that people are kind and tend to want to help each other. I still had to work, so I’ve been using my laptop at the kitchen tables of various friends who still have power and WiFi. One made me avocado toast (yeah we DO live in California, what?) and baked me a single warm chocolate chip cookie at 3 pm. The other laughed when I told her my husband had mistakenly brushed his teeth with my toothbrush in the early morning darkness, then set a brand new toothbrush still in its packaging down next to me and insisted I take it.

Other friends are delivering ice from their still-working freezers to try to save melting food, offering rides, and pouring stiff drinks in their electrically-lit houses when the sun sets.

And with our kid in college near some of the SoCal fires, my friend Lisa did me the kindest favor of all: when I texted her in a panic that campus was going to be evacuated, she said, “I’m on my way” and got in her car across town to go fetch our daughter. The evacuation order was lifted a short time later so she didn’t have to complete the trip, but I have no worries that she would do the exact same thing  if I ask again. Even if “across town” in LA means a four-day drive.

All of which is to say that in the midst of the horrible California news you are reading and seeing on TV, there is still a ton for which to be thankful. Which leads me into today’s real topic: it’s time for another Listener-Contributed episode of the podcast, and here’s the question.

Who is someone who helped you become the person you are today, and how did they do that?

I would love to collect up your stories of the formative, inspiring, helpful people in your life, and share them in a special Thanksgiving Episode of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. Leave your comments below, or press on that there blue bar on the side to leave me a voicemail!

I love to hear your stories of the cool people whose paths have crossed with yours in your life and altered its course in a significant way. I love it so much that I wrote a book about it, in fact, which is available for pre-order now. Reviews are starting to come in which is exciting/terrifying. Publishers Weekly just said ““Sweet and wise, this hopeful book will inspire readers to honor those who have made a difference in their lives.” And hey – have you checked out the chapter playlists I’ve been releasing each week on Spotify to give a musical perspective to what that chapter covers? Follow @daviskho there so you’ll know as soon as they come out!

Chapter 1 – Lining Up Your Letters
Chapter 2 – Family First

Ok, what’s your answer – Who is someone who helped you become the person you are today, and how did they do that? As soon as we get power restored, assuming it goes off again this evening which is a decent assumption based on current wind speeds, I’ll look forward to reading it!

via GIPHY

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CommentsI used to work in the education department of a college in the ... by RachelRelated StoriesWorking The PoleTalking About What We Don’t Talk AboutHas Anyone Seen These Kids? 

Ep 65 Author Sarah Ladipo Manyika

“Life is a strange journey”: Author Sarah Ladipo Manyika on writing stories she wanted to read but couldn’t find, the beauty of intergenerational friendships, and a big awkward mea culpa from Nancy to Sarah’s most recent fictional heroine.

Sarah’s website, with links to In Dependence and Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun
Books&Rhymes Podcast interview with Sarah: “When Writing Begins to Sing”
An Interview with Toni Morrison
On Meeting Mrs. Obama
Mondays with Mrs. Harris

Preorder Nancy’s book, The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time! Coming from Running Press Dec 3…last week in their review, Publisher’s Weekly said, “Sweet and wise, this hopeful book will inspire readers to honor those who have made a difference in their lives.” Yay! Exactly! That’s what I was going for, seriously.

One of the songs that Sarah has cited as inspirational in writing In Dependence, by the father of South African jazz, Hugh Masekela

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

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                  Related StoriesEp 63 Comedian Zahra NoorbakhshEp 64 Urban Farmer Natasha NicholesEp 62 Modern Elder Academy Founder Chip Conley 

Talking About What We Don’t Talk About

This post is made possible with support from AARP’s Disrupt Aging. All opinions are my own.

This is a post that talks about talking about menopause.

Don’t worry. I’m not actually going to TALK about menopause. God forbid! No! Heaven forfend we should have an open discussion about a natural phase in the life of literally 49.6% of people walking the planet.

Am I even in menopause? How should I know? I’m 53, and the average age for its onset is between 45 and 55, although according to Dr. Internet, “menopause may occur as earlier as ages 30s or 40s or may not occur until a woman reaches her 60s.” See? It’s a crapshoot! The mere fact that I’m writing about it could propel me backwards in the process, or forwards. NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Worse, nobody seems to want to discuss it.

Maybe it’s because the dominant narrative of menopause is that it’s the day a woman reaches her sell-by date (expressed nowhere better than in this Amy Schumer skit.) Keep that information under wraps, lady. Can’t have babies anymore? What’s your entire point, then?

The question persists, even if researchers are figuring out that having older female members of the species around has serious evolutionary advantages, something I first read about and discussed in my interview of author Jonathan Rauch, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50. Anthropologists have even come up with the Grandmother Hypothesis, which says that having a grandmother increases a toddler’s chance of surviving to adulthood by 30%.

Still, no woman wants to admit out loud that she’s…not buying tampons anymore.

I confess, I hadn’t thought about it much until I read a recent article in The Atlantic called “The Secret Power of Menopause.” The author, Liza Mundy, writes about three new books out this year that are tackling the subject with fresh perspectives, defining it not through a lens of melancholy but of power. This was the phrase that stuck with me in Mundy’s reporting:

…the very concept of a menopausal syndrome was the invention of a culture that aimed to psychologically weaken women in a strong period of life – at a historical moment when female power was rising. ‘Dominant groups…can be very creative in inventing new ways of oppressing people.’

Silencing half of us from talking to each other about what we’re going through is an extremely effective way to keep us feeling isolated.

Maybe that’s why I was absolutely mesmerized by this scene with Kristen Scott Thomas from Season 2 of Fleabag. (One of my Empty Nest goals is to catch up on ALL THE TV and this brilliant show was the top of the list.)

“It is horrendous. But then, it’s magnificent.”

There is actually one person with whom I’ve openly discussed “The Change,” as my ninety-something Aunt Noonie calls it. A friend who lives literally on the other side of the planet, whose time zone is inverted with mine. We get on WhatsApp and furtively text each other questions about signs and symptoms, just as she’s waking up and I’m going to sleep. Evidently, I need the core of the earth between me and the other person to feel comfortable discussing what is, to remind us all again, a natural phase of life.

And recently, I’ve also been perusing the host of helpful articles and videos at DisruptAging.org. They’re doing a lot of heavy lifting in opening up the conversation about what getting older feels like for both men and women.

But in honor of World Menopause Day on Friday, October 18, I have a new goal: to find someone in my actual zip code to whom I can admit that I am going through exactly what I am supposed to be going through at my age.

It might be horrendous. But then, it’ll be magnificent.

Can’t we just talk? Aka when a 21-year old songwriter/singer phenom unwittingly writes a midlife anthem

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CommentsLadies, you might want to check out my friend's blog called ... by AndreaI would love to do that! by Nancy Davis KhoI don't want to scare you but I know someone who made it to 11 ... by Nancy Davis KhoOMG that is a milestone. What do we throw, a white tent party? by Nancy Davis KhoWe'll set up in a corner of a blue and gold tent at Parent's ... by Nancy Davis KhoPlus 5 more...Related StoriesTalking About What We Don’t Talk AboutYou Might Have to Put on a Red LightCaregiving When You’re Not Close By 

Ep 64 Urban Farmer Natasha Nicholes

“Life is fleeting”: Urban homesteader Natasha Nicholes on how her farm on the South Side of Chicago has created community, why loss has shaped the way she views opportunity, and that time Harry Connick surprised her with a spa day.

Houseful of Nicholes – Natasha’s blog
We Sow We Grow on Facebook
Natasha on Instagram
Midlife Mixtape Ep 27 Empathy Expert Dr. Kelsey Crowe

The scream, tho

And here’s some Avery Sunshine…woooowwwww!Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

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Concert Review: Vampire Weekend

The Band: Vampire Weekend, October 1 2019. Or as I call them, the Band That Launched Midlife Mixtape, because at a 2011 Vampire Weekend show, the bouncer said, “Are you just here to drop off your kids?”, triggered a midlife music crisis, and this whole mishegoss was born. For everyone else, they’re a NYC-based rock band that was initially known for its world music influences (think punk rock meets African guitars). Their latest album, Father of the Bride, features a bunch of different collaborators and their sound goes further afield as a result. This is my favorite joint off the new album.

The Venue: Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, San Francisco. Just across the way from San Francisco City Hall, this area outside Bill Graham is pretty much ground zero for San Francisco’s persistent, complex, and difficult homelessness problem, and not an area I go if I can help it. I can’t imagine what tourists think. That said, once you’re inside it’s a big wide open party – great place to see an upbeat band like VW play.

The Company: My husband wait WHAT? He stopped going to non-Bruce Springsteen concerts with me years ago. And we had just gotten back from the East Coast Parents Weekend and were still wiped out. But hey, we’re Empty Nesters now so we have to make it count.

Then I wandered out into the lobby in search of the merch table and out of a crowd of 8,500 people the first person I run into is the OTHER ballet carpool mom who ALSO doesn’t have to drive on Tuesday nights now. Great minds, and all that.

The Crowd: So cheery. Much vapey. Very smoke. You know, a year ago I hoped that edibles and vaping would mean less smoke at concerts, because I don’t understand anything. Instead, there’s still smoke, but it smells like MANGO or WATERMELON or whatever awful vape cartridges people are killing themselves with. And is there a clove cigarette vape flavor or was that someone reliving my college years?

Either way, a highly diverse crowd of people were very nice and sang along to everything, including the M.I.A. sample that lead singer Ezra Koenig asked us to please sing for the intro to “Diplomat’s Son”.

Worth Hiring the Sitter?

I mean obviously this isn’t a thing we have to worry about anymore, but I think it’s still useful for you guys, right? The answer is an emphatic yes.

Vampire Weekend does a high energy live show without a lot of ornamentation or set theatrics. They’re just a skilled live band who seem to be getting more comfortable in their own skin in the years since I first saw them.

Though original bandmember Rostam wasn’t onstage – he’s off doing his own thing now, though there appears to be no bad blood and he’s one of the contributors to the new album – Vampire Weekend succeeds in having a unique and immediately identifiable sound, even as they evolve. They jumped nimbly back and forth between the old and new stuff; definitely went off on a few jam-band tangents mid-song, stretching something like “Sunflower” into a nine minute Phish situation (A Phish-uation?) that made me think of another song off the new album.

Then again that that was probably just my sore feet on the Bill Graham Civic’s concrete floor talking. After all, I’m old enough to just be dropping off my kids at a show.

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Comments1) I remember turning my nephews on to Vampire Weekend about 10 ... by Larry SchmidlinRelated StoriesConcert Review: Tedeschi Trucks BandConcert Review: Billy Idol and Steve StevensConcert Review: Christine and The Queens 

Ep 63 Comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh

“I want to perform for 10,000 people”: Feminist Muslim Iranian-American comedian and podcaster Zahra Noorbakhsh on how aging has changed the way she approaches her comedy, the insidiousness of confirmation bias, and an endorsement for mental math.

Zahra’s website
GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast
6 Things All Immigrant Kids Experience – video

Zahra on figuring out at age 11 how to guarantee her passage to Heaven…

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

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Has Anyone Seen These Kids?

They were last spotted in early February 1998, when Nancy was great with child and her husband was great with newly-acquired Lamaze training from which his main takeaway, uttered to Nancy only once, was “So it sounds like labor just feels like a bad leg cramp!” A short time later, they welcomed the first of their two daughters, and said goodbye to the child-free lifestyle that had been theirs for the first five years of marriage.

I ask, because as of Friday, we’re back to being a duo, with both girls off at college. And I honest to god cannot remember how we spent those initial five years of matrimony. What did we do with all that free time, when we were well-rested and didn’t have to drive ballet carpools?

We lived in DC – we only moved to the Bay Area when I was ready to pop the baby out. I know we used to amble over to Georgetown from our neighborhood and window shop for expensive eyeglasses. So that killed about an hour each Saturday.

On Friday nights we watched “The X-Files” while eating Chinese takeout, the match to which we have never found in the Bay Area despite this being such a hotbed of Asian culture. (@me if you want, but City Lights in DC stands alone.) That’s another 90 minutes or so, if you count calling in the order and washing chopsticks and bowls afterward.

What else? If you take away our full-time jobs and sleeping, there are still [(8 x 7) – 2.5] hours we must fill up again.

We both traveled a ton for work back in those days – me for my international product manager job, sometimes for weeks at a time; him all over Alaska when he worked with the Native Corps up there, to tiny villages you can only reach by bush plane. Some months, we were only home at the same time for a couple of weeks each month. I am guessing it’s why our marriage took solid root in the early years – we gave it plenty of space. Neither one of us travels as much for work these days, but we do spread out in our house way more than we could in our little newlywed apartment. Space is still important.

Something I did to kill time then that I am unwilling to revisit: jogging. I ran most days, starting in college, and “competed” in 10ks (in quotes because I don’t think my 8 minute mile was a real threat to anyone.) One Sunday morning in ’97 I finished a race and said to my husband, as we walked home through Georgetown, “I feel little weird. Let’s buy a pregnancy test at CVS.” When the positive sign appeared in the window a half-hour later, my elation at impending motherhood was matched by my elation at having an excuse to never run another step.

I’ve read that it’s helpful for empty nesters to learn something new together. So I suggested to my husband that we sign up for a beginner yoga class. We are both enthusiastic about trying it! Unfortunately, the one I found is on Monday nights at 7 pm, which is traditionally the night we both pass out from exhaustion by 8 pm, so we haven’t gotten there yet. Maybe early bedtimes are the real shared hobby!

I’ve been thinking about watching Big Ten football with him again on Saturdays. When we were first dating, I pretended to love it, because doy, that meant he would come over to my apartment to watch with me. As soon as he put a ring on it, I dropped all pretense of spending my Saturdays that way, and then I gave birth to two daughters who refer to all athletics as “sports games”. So the poor man was lied to then abandoned for 21 years of cheering on the Wisconsin Badgers, solo. Feels like I could make it up to him by rejoining him on the couch, and besides, that kills another three hours/week.

At our rectangular family dinner table, we’ve always sat diagonally from to one another, each of us facing one of the daughters (the better to peer into their souls). The other night, while our youngest was babysitting down the street during the dinner hour, I suggested to my husband that after we drop her off at college, I could shift one seat to the left so we’re eye-to-eye and knee-to-knee.  “That’s ok,” he said, chewing a meatball. “Probably better this way, where we just see each other out of peripheral vision.”

I would like to go back to those two baby-marrieds in the picture and ask some questions: Do you always eat take-out? How often do you do laundry? Did you ever use the dish washer?

But mostly I’d like to give them a knowing shake of the head and say, “You have NO idea what you’re getting into. And you’re going to be completely over your heads.”

Then I’d lean in close to whisper one more thing. “But you’re about to embark on the most amazing 21-year adventure of your lives.”

Poi Dog was pretty much the theme band of our early marriage. And here’s their cover of our mutual favorite New Order song.

***Got my first official review this week of The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time, by Kirkus Reviews, who called it “A genial volume about a fun approach to showing others how much they mean to you.”  Check the full review here – thank you Kirkus! The book comes out on December 3 – have you pre-ordered yet? Added to your Goodreads “Want To Read” shelf yet? Thank you so much!Also…The Events and Appearances schedule around the book is starting to fill up – check it out and come see me! I’m actively looking for opportunities to speak at your bookstore, event, group, or conference in 2020 and beyond, too. My topics include:

The deceptively simple gratitude letter and its outsize power to create more resilience, happiness, and connection – in the workplace, community, and the world
The lost art of thank-you note writing – perfect for high school/college audiences.
Persevering through setbacks in the creative process – designed for writers and creatives of all stripes
The Thank-You Project Workshop – let me help you organize and brainstorm how you’ll put gratitude letters into practice.

Got ideas of where I should speak? Email me at dj@midlifemixtape.com so I can follow up – and thank you for your support!

 

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CommentsThat was the BEST wedding weekend…snapped this one in front ... by Nancy Davis KhoLove the streetcar in the background. Maybe you need more trips ... by CarolynYeah, you may want to find some alternative Veteran Parents. ... by Nancy Davis KhoWhen ARE you coming back? I have your engraved robe and ... by Nancy Davis KhoSeriously? I think of them every day. Sometimes twice. xoxoox by Nancy Davis KhoPlus 3 more...Related StoriesLearning to DisengageAdi-Rookie in Adirondack LifeWorking The Pole 

Ep 62 Modern Elder Academy Founder Chip Conley

“Not even at halftime”: Hospitality entrepreneur and Wisdom@Work author Chip Conley talks about the benefits of inter-generational mutual mentorship, his midlife wisdom school, and that time he brought Linda Ronstadt breakfast in bed.

Chip’s latest book, Wisdom @ Work: The Making of a Modern Elder
Modern Elder Academy
Follow Chip on LinkedIn

Get out your tissues as inter-generational duo Dolly Parton and Brandi Carlile sing a little song Dolly wrote called “I Will Always Love You”.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

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Adi-Rookie in Adirondack Life

Exactly a year ago, I was packing for Family Camp and devising a list of questions to ask my friend Maria, who would be accompanying me there for the first time in our thirty-five year friendship. The result was this article that ran in the July/August edition of Adirondack Life, a print-only publication guaranteed to make you drool over lakeside Adirondack real estate and moose-themed decor.

It’s time for me to throw the hiking boots and bathing suits and Bananagrams into the duffel once more – this year Maria’s not coming, but that’s because my husband and youngest daughter can FINALLY join us again, thanks to a college start date that is still weeks away. (Oakland public schools started mid-August for the past six years so I would see my daughter off to her first day, thank my husband for staying home with her, and then head out to the Adirondacks. Me missing Family Camp is never a good plan, or as my husband liked to say, “You go. You’re not right all year without it.”)

So while we’re off the grid next week, I hope you’ll enjoy this story of Maria’s first visit to camp. Catch you in September! Oh and P.S. – Mom’s getting packed for another year, too