Lisa Niver's Blog: We Said Go Travel, page 34

Women Wonder & Wander! Niver’s News: March 2023

March News 2023 with Lisa Niver & We Said Go Travel:March is Women’s History Month! I celebrated by going to the 10th annual Women’s Travel Fest in NYC, skiing with my friend of 38 years & my dad and interviewing strong incredible women for my podcast. Thank you to my friend of 12 years, Alexandra Jimenez, Travel Fashion Girl, for inviting me to WOMEN’S TRAVEL FEST! There were so many amazing speakers! DO not have FOMO!! You can watch them all with a virtual pass. CLICK HERE to get yours !Thank you to my friend, Pip Jones, who I met traveling last year in Iceland for inviting me on her podcast, Travel Goals Podcast. We talked about how travel is for EVERYONE (not just young people!) Lisa and my dad, Frank, at Park City, Utah 2023Skiing with Carl and my Dad in Park City, UtahI am honored to be a speaker at FOUR Travel & Adventure Shows in 2023! I spoke in Los Angeles, Chicago and NYC in January and February! Please join me in DALLAS –April 1 and 2, 2023 at Dallas Market Hall.

“Discover endless vacation options from the top travel providers and destinations from around the globe. Meet one-on-one with thousands of travel experts who are on hand to help you find, personalize, and book your next trip. Uncover thousands of dollars in savings with exclusive travel deals and show-only specials. Receive expert advice and learn how to travel like an insider from dozens of educational seminars. Plus, meet Samantha Brown, Andrew McCarthy, Peter Greenberg, Pauline Frommer, Patricia Schultz, LISA NIVER and more!” Click here to buy tickets and get a special rate with my discount code GOTRAVEL23

I am grateful my dream of speaking at the Travel and Adventure Show came true! THANK YOU for watching my podcast! It has now been seen and heard in 16 countries on 4 continents!

My #podcast MAKE YOUR OWN MAP now watched in 16 #countries on 4 #continents USA Singapore UK Italy Switzerland Hong Kong Canada Netherlands Japan France Latvia Philippines Australia Mexico Guatemala Germany https://t.co/DLubaMesNH pic.twitter.com/BFvCXtak5F

— Lisa Niver (@LisaNiver) March 24, 2023

New PODCAST episodes with: Lisa Genova, NYTimes Bestselling author and neuroscientist, Travels with Darley, Emmy Award winning host, Christie Tate, NYTimes Bestselling author & Reese’s Book Club and Laura Carney, author of My Father’s List. WATCH my video podcast, “MAKE YOUR OWN MAP: Are YOU ready to be BRAVE?” on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Podcast,  Google Podcasts, Audible, Anchor & iHeart Radio WHERE CAN YOU FIND MY TRAVEL VIDEOS?

Here is the link to my video channel on YouTube where I have NEARLY TWO MILLION views on YouTube! (Exact count: 1,820,000 views)

Thank you for your support! Are you one of my 3,880 subscribers? I hope you will join me and subscribe! For more We Said Go Travel articles, TV segments, videos and social media: CLICK HERE

Find me on social media with over 150,000 followers. Please follow  on TikTok: @LisaNiver, Twitter at @LisaNiver, Instagram @LisaNiver and on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and at LisaNiver.com.

Video Podcast: “Make Your Own Map!”

Fortune Cookie SAID:

A dream you have will come true.

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the conquest of it.

My 38th friendship anniversary with Carl in Park City, Utah!!

The post Women Wonder & Wander! Niver’s News: March 2023 appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Laura Carney FOUND and FINISHED her Father’s BUCKET List!

Thank you Laura Carney for joining me on my podcast!

Laura talked to us about finding her father’s bucket list, deciding to complete it and writing her book!

My Father’s List: How Living My Dad’s Dreams Set Me Free

Laura Carney is a writer and copy editor in New York. She’s been published by the Washington Post, the Associated Press, The Hill, Runner’s World, People magazine, Guideposts, Good Housekeeping, The Fix, Upworthy, Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper and other places, and her book My Father’s List: How Living My Dad’s Dreams Set Me Free is being published by Post Hill Press in July 2023. Her work as a copy editor has been primarily in magazines, for 20 years, including Good Housekeeping, People, Guideposts, Vanity Fair, and GQ. She’s @myfatherslist on Instagram and Twitter, and her websites are myfatherslist.com and bylauracarney.com.

Lisa Niver:

Good morning. This is Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel, and I’m so excited to be here with author Laura Carney. Hi, Laura.

Laura Carney:

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Lisa Niver:

I’m so excited to hear about your book, My Father’s List. It’s incredible what’s happening with the publicity for your book. Everyone wants to talk to you about this incredible journey you’ve been on. So, tell us, tell all the listeners a little bit about how did this happen? I know you found your father’s bucket list. So, tell us a bit about how that happened.

Laura Carney:

My father passed away in 2003, because of a distracted driver, a teenager who was making a phone call. It wasn’t until 13 years later–the year that I got married, and my brother also got married, my husband and I were visiting my younger brother at his first house, he had just purchased a condo. We had gone up to celebrate that, and he was a couple of weeks away from his wedding, and in the process of the move, he had found this little pouch that had my dad’s list in it. Nobody knew it existed, except for my mom, we found out later. She actually was there when he wrote it. I was a baby. It was 1978 when he wrote it.

As soon as we saw it, it was a lightning bolt kind of moment, where I knew immediately, I needed to finish it for him. Again, there’s no waffling. No like, oh, that seems crazy. It was just, we loved it so much, because it was so funny, and the items on it were so him. It was like, of course this is what he wanted to do. And my husband was the one who actually said it first, “this is your book. You need to finish this and write about it.” And you know, I always joke, thank goodness he said it before, because he ended up being the main person who was doing these list items with me.

Lisa Niver:

There’s so much to talk about in that, what you just shared, so, first of all, I’m so sorry about your father that what a horrible thing for you to grow up without him. That must have been. I’m so sorry.

Laura Carney:

I know. Yeah, I was 25. So I was an adult, but it was more like I didn’t get to experience a lot of the adult milestones.

Lisa Niver:

And I know you’ve done some activism about distracted driving.

Laura Carney:

I did actually. You know, it’s so weird: I always like to say that everything goes back to running for me, because I wasn’t an athletic person. At least, I didn’t perceive myself, not since I was a kid. I played all different sports as a kid. But when I was 35, I took up running. It was just because my coworkers at Good Housekeeping were all running marathons. You know, my old jobs, we went to happy hour, and this place, they didn’t do that. They were more wholesome. So, I thought, okay, I’ll try running.

And next thing I knew, an article came across my desk one day about distracted driving, and it was about a man. His name is Joel Feldman, whose daughter had been killed by a distracted driver, and as soon as I saw it, I remembered that the driver had been on a phone in my dad’s crash. So, I called him up the next day. I said, I think I’ve had an experience with this, can I help you?

So, he had me talking in a high school with him a few months later, and that was really the beginning of it, because since I was already a runner, now, I just started raising funds for him with my runs. And I think what happened was, the running was helping me release my grief. I had so much, mostly anger, but anger and grief just bottled inside of me, and when I would be moving my body in this, you know, vigorous way, it was almost like I was just releasing these toxins out, you know, and I would always find myself crying. Not always, but often, and I think it was also because I felt like I was doing something empowering with the grief. Like, here I am raising money for this organization that’s trying to save lives.

So, you know, I did it that way. I never really became someone who was doing lots of talks, I think because, you know, it wasn’t my child. Like it wasn’t, you know, it was a little bit different for me. And I also started to feel like, something about it just, I wasn’t as good at it as other people were. I just wasn’t into the legal side as much. I’m a writer. I’m much more comfortable behind the scenes. So, when the list appeared, for me, it was just like, this is a really inspiring form of activism. Like this feels like something that is right for me to do, because if I if I’m talking about someone’s dreams, and I’m kind of illustrating to the world, this is what’s lost if a person loses their life, so, that honestly that, yeah, my activism and my writing, those things were the catalyst for that moment to happen, and certainly my wedding, too.

But yeah, when I started doing the list, it’s almost like everything in the years leading up to that had been preparing me for it.

Lisa Niver:

You were in the right place at the right time.  So, this is where I got confused. He wrote the list when you were a baby, that’s why I was thinking you grew up without him. Now, I understand. Did he do any of the things on the list before he died?

Laura Carney:

He did. Yeah. I mean, my brother and I were just marveling over the fact that he had checked off five of the items and marked one as having failed at, you know, just as many as like, he did things like a comedy monologue in a nightclub (thank goodness, because I didn’t want to do that). And he did go to the World Series game, and he wrote the score next to it, as proof. He helped his parents enjoy their retirement. He developed an impressive record collection. The one that he failed, that was “pay my dad back $1,000 plus interest,” which made me kind of sad, because it just meant that my grandfather passed away before he was able to do that.

Lisa Niver:

You talked about the World Series. And there were quite a few sports ones on the list. You went to the Rose Bowl and the Super Bowl. Were you a sporty family? Because you said you weren’t that athletic.

Laura Carney:

He and my brother were, and my brain would shut off when they would talk about sports. They loved sports. But yeah, I mean, he took us to games, all kinds. Basketball, baseball, college football games. He was a huge sports fan. My brother was, too. I mean, he coached me in sports as though I was a boy.

Lisa Niver:

You were very athletic. What was the picture you sent me with something about the best seed. Was that tennis, but your foot was in a cast?

Laura Carney:

That was arrogance on my part, because I did play on the tennis team in high school, and I considered it my best sport. So I thought, oh, I’ll just do this in one day. This is fine. And I was playing against a friend, my husband’s best friend, who’s a tennis coach, and I was kind of having some stomach issues, and my husband’s like, oh, I’ll do it instead of you. It’s okay. And I said, no, no, no, no. I’m going to get this done today. And like, as soon as I got out there, like, I just tore a tendon in my foot. Like, one wrong move, and then I had to get surgery. And it just, I mean, that, in a way became the most involved list item just because of what happened that day. And you know, in many ways, my greatest teacher, because I realized, I could have just not played, and anytime I approach a list item with arrogance, like, this is going to be easy, or like, arrogance, or rushing, like, let’s just get this out of the way, you know, stuff like that, it doesn’t work. That’s been the case. So, what I started learning was, if I’m doing this with humility, so, no ego, I’m doing this with kindness, and I’m doing it to promote somebody else, that’s usually when they work out.

Lisa Niver:

Those are really good lessons for people listening, who also want to do things from a bucket list, that you really have to pay attention. There’s risks personally, and you have to pick well. Tell us about corresponding with the Pope, how’d that happen?

Laura Carney:

I put that off towards the end, just because it seemed impossible. I thought this surely is the one, this is the one that’s going to do me in, that is going to be…you know, you can’t even call him “he,” the pronoun he uses is “His Holiness”…like His Holiness might not respond. And I consulted a priest in New York, a Jesuit priest who is comfortable in the media. He works with Martin Scorsese. Like he does a lot, and he wrote me back, unbelievably, and said, just try it, he might write back. So, I thought, well, this guy seems to have an audience with Pope Francis more than most priests, so, maybe…I’m not saying he put a word in for me, but maybe he knows something. So, I went ahead and I wrote the letter. And I just crafted it really well. I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to tell His Holiness, and you can you can google online, there’s a proper etiquette to writing to the Pope. And most people don’t know this, but he will write back, or somebody will who works under him, who they say represents him.

Lisa Niver:

That’s so amazing. So, the Pope and then also a president, you have corresponded with, right?

Laura Carney:

Yeah, President Jimmy Carter. I was doing a TV show, an interview right at the very beginning of doing the list, and somebody wrote to me, someone emailed me and said, you know, if any president will do, Jimmy Carter still teaches Sunday school every Sunday in Plains Georgia, and he was 92, at the time. He’s not doing it anymore now, so I emailed his health liaison, and she said she could give me a tour of the Carter Center if I came down, and she told me to get in touch with the innkeeper because there’s like one innkeeper in town and she’s the one who makes sure you can get into the church, like you can get a pew, because sometimes he would have 500 people and they couldn’t get everybody in. So, we basically went in there like we were VIPs. So, we got to sit right behind where he was sitting. But that still didn’t ensure that I was going to be able to talk to him. It wasn’t like just be in the vicinity of a president, it was talk to the president. So, just by total coincidence, we ended up at the hotel at the same time as one of his biographers. And you know, being a journalist, I had been bingeing everything, Jimmy Carter for like a week, and so, I could talk to Art about him, and kind of hold my own. And that went on for two or three hours.

Lisa Niver:

You talked to him for two or three hours?

Laura Carney:

In the parking lot. Yeah, my husband, kind of chiming in sometimes, but mostly just watching it because he found it very entertaining.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, my goodness, how incredible.

Laura Carney:

Yeah, and he kept…it was funny, because his name is Art Milnes. He’s actually a Canadian speechwriter for Prime Ministers, and he kept throwing out all these names, like George HW Bush and George W Bush, and you know, people he’d met, and I got to my hotel room, I just Googled it, and it was like, there he was with each one of the men he’d been talking about and Jimmy Carter even spent the night in his house once in Canada. So, I mean, we’re pretty sure he put in a good word for us, and that’s why I got a few sentences. But the funny thing is like, we’re still friends now. Like, I just talked to Art last week, and to this day, we still don’t know. Like, we don’t know if he said anything to him, and he’ll probably never tell us.

Lisa Niver:

Well, that’s okay. I mean, what an incredible journey you’ve been on the last five years. And how did the experience of the COVID coaster change getting through your your list?

Laura Carney:

I’ve never heard it called that before.

Lisa Niver:

There were ups and downs in the COVID coaster.

Laura Carney:

That’s true. That’s very true. Like I don’t want to sound like I benefited from the pandemic, because I certainly didn’t. I had to stay away from my family, just like everybody else did. And also, I mean, my husband and I are quite privileged, in that we could both do our jobs from home. So, you know, we didn’t have to cope with a lot of hardships that so many people did. But at the same time, I was starting to write a book proposal then, and I suddenly had a lot of time and space to do that.

You know, I had list items that actually could be helped by the fact that we couldn’t leave the house and we couldn’t go certain places. So, like, have my own tennis court, suddenly, a Ping-Pong table sufficed, because we didn’t know when it was going to end. We might have been trapped in the house forever. So that was the closest I was going to come to having my own tennis court. Own a large house and our own land, that ended up being a very large tent, which if you look up house in the dictionary, it just says shelter. You know, it says a couple of things. But it says shelter. And we couldn’t travel anymore, but we were itching to travel. And the best we could come up with was camping. So, I was sitting there and it occurred to me, oh, my God, this is our large house, and we had just run every single street in our town, just because we were so restless. And I thought, well, that’s sort of like we owned our land. So, there were a lot of things like that that happened during the pandemic that was almost like, I mean, quite honestly, what it was teaching me was even in times that seem bleak, and terrible there are still glimmers of hope in your everyday life, and that my dad’s spirit, who had been helping me the entire time, like he’s still there helping me. He’s still helping me find like, the bright lining of everything.

Lisa Niver:

That was very beautiful. What you just said, yes. And that’s true. So, during the COVID, coaster, you had times where you weren’t traveling, but quite a few of your list are traveling including London and New Orleans. Were they places you also wanted to go or it was really you went because it was on your dad’s list?

Laura Carney:

Oh, yeah. I mean, there wasn’t ever a time where I was like, St. Thomas. God, don’t make me go there. Yeah, I wanted to go to all those places, and I had been. I mean, we’d been to Paris, already. I’d been to Los Angeles, already. I’ve been to Chicago. I’ve been to Las Vegas. So, a lot of them I had already checked off. Yeah, it was thrilling to get to go to each of those places. Sometimes it started to feel a bit much, like we went to New Orleans, and then San Diego, and then Miami, and then St. Thomas within a period of eight months. So, it was a lot of traveling and I got really good at traveling. I got so much better at packing, so much more efficient. Like it just started…I remember at one point I felt like getting on a plane, to me, started to feel like getting on a train, which is what, as a commuter to New York City, I would do every day. But yeah, it was a really interesting way to travel, too, I think, because I was always doing it as a researcher and as a writer, and I’m always looking for the things, like what would my dad have experienced if he checked this off himself? So, usually, that means very cultural or historic parts of the places I’m going to.

Lisa Niver:

Did you have a sense of how he picked the places? Was there a theme to it?

Laura Carney:

Yeah. Like the Rose Bowl, and the NCAA Final Four, and also the Super Bowl, I mean, because he’s a sports nut, like we were talking about, especially football, he really loved watching football. I think you could kind of narrow down each of these places to one thing, sometimes, that he was probably most interested in. So, for example, Vienna is the study of music, and my dad was a singer. So, he loved the Vienna Boys’ Choir, and surely he was interested in the history of music, and that’s why he wanted to go there. It was, you know, Vienna is also a cultural melting pot for Europe, and he was an American Studies major, who was also very interested in world history. So, that would have been something that he was curious about. London, I think everybody wants to go to London, but I knew he loved King Arthur. He was a writer, he loved literature. So, those are the things I’m focusing on when I went to London, and we actually made a side trip to Ireland, which is where my family’s from. So, that was really amazing, too.

And then, as far as San Diego goes, I had to go sailing in San Diego, because that’s where people do it. I mean, most naval bases in the world are in San Diego and my dad helped…he actually was like…he has a publishing company on the side, and he helped his friend publish her book called Sailing Is Fun in the 1970s, so I think that’s probably what he would have wanted to do. She was joking with me once though. She said, he was handing it out at marinas, where they already know how to sail. But anyway, yeah, that’s why I did that. In New Orleans, similar. We went to Jazz Fest that’s, you know, a town that’s famous for music. Yeah, that’s really how I was narrowing things down. St. Thomas, I think he probably wanted to go there, just because in the 1970s, the Caribbean became a very popular place for people to want to travel to. So, I think that’s probably what that was about.

Lisa Niver:

And I noticed when you were talking about the different places, you mentioned, Vienna, and singing, you recorded some songs also as part of this, right?

Laura Carney:

I did. It’s funny, I’ve been featured now on three TV shows singing, and it’s been a different song each time No, sorry, no, two TV shows and NPR. All of a sudden, I hear my voice at like nine o’clock in the morning. And each time without instrumental accompaniment. Thank you, but I don’t think of myself as a singer.

Lisa Niver:

I think a lot of people don’t think of themselves as a singer, or a sailor, or an athlete. And I think it’s really inspiring for people that you did it anyway.

Laura Carney:

Yeah, I can carry, I have good pitch, I can carry a tune, and the singing was, it was almost like any other list item. I mean, I’ve told people sometimes, when I did swim the width of a river, I was like, in the middle of this river and just thinking how am I going to do this, and all of a sudden, I could. Like I was a much less panicked person, coming back. And things like that would happen all the time, where suddenly I felt more confident, and like I couldn’t fail, if I had my dad helping me and if I was doing it to honor him. So, the same thing happened with singing. Like, I remember being startled when I first heard my voice while recording with my cousin who was helping me, because he’s a musician. And I said, what did you do to it? And he was like, nothing. This is just you. And I thought something’s going on here. Like, clearly my dad’s helping me, and I feel like he helped me write the book, too, quite honestly. Because you know, sometimes you read a passage and you’re like, did I do that? Like I can’t do…I’m not usually that good. You know what I mean?

Lisa Niver:

I think it’s fantastic. I have to say when I looked at the pictures you shared with me, one of my favorites was grow a watermelon.

Laura Carney:

Oh, that’s everybody’s favorite. So quirky. It’s so unusual. I mean, he liked to eat watermelon. That’s the closest I can come to you for why he would have wanted to do that. And you know, plant an apple tree, that’s easier to figure out because he was so American, and that’s Johnny Appleseed. That’s such an American thing to do. I don’t know why he wanted to grow a watermelon, but you know, we don’t have a backyard. We live in an apartment. So, I actually just grew it in a pot on my fire escape. And my husband helped a lot with that because he’s a morning person, I’m a night person. So, he was watering it every morning and I was watering it every evening. And by the end of the summer, we did have one little baby golf ball-sized sugar baby watermelon. And they’re supposed to get to be about like bowling ball size, but I think it’s because our bucket was so small. And it only reached, like I said, but it still tasted good.

Lisa Niver:

I think that everybody is going to love learning more about you and your dad’s list in your book. So, tell everybody, where can they find more if they want to see the pictures? They want to hear you singing? They want to buy the book? What’s the best way to find you? What should they do?

Laura Carney:

Oh, well, you can preorder the book at bylauracarney.com. That’s my website. I also have a newsletter sign-up on there. I’d like to update everyone every week on what’s going on. And @myfatherslist everywhere: Instagram, Facebook. And if you want to go to Twitter, I’m LAC30.

Lisa Niver:

Your book is available for preorder, and if people want to see you more, you’ve been everywhere, lately. The Daily Blast, Lester Holt, People Magazine. Congratulations on so much incredible coverage for your book, My Father’s List, and I I agree with you, I’m sure your father helped you with these challenges, and I bet he’s just so proud of what you’ve accomplished.

Laura Carney:

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. And it really, a lot of the lesson for me was just letting go, and just believing that he was.

Lisa Niver:

It has been so much fun to talk with you. I wish you the biggest and greatest success. I can’t wait until the next book comes out when you get to do your bucket list.

Laura Carney:

Yeah, yeah. I’m already doing it. So, that might be a good idea.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, you are doing a whole other list of your own? That’s awesome. All right. Well, we’ll have to talk about that on the next podcast. Thank you, so much, and good luck.

Laura Carney:

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

On the cusp of middle age, a newlywed journalist discovers and finishes the bucket list of her late free-spirited father.

Fifty-four adventures in five years. That’s what thirty-eight-year-old journalist Laura Carney embarked on when she discovered her late father Mick’s bucket list.

Killed in a car crash when Laura was twenty-five, Mick seemed lost forever. My Father’s List is the story of how one woman—with the help of family, friends, and even strangers—found the courage to go after her own dreams after realizing those of a beloved yet mysterious man. This is a story about secrets—and the freedom we feel when we learn to trust again: in life, in love, and in a father’s lessons on how to fully live.

Connect with Laura on her website, Twitter and Instagram

Years after her dad died in a car accident, Laura found the bucket list he left behind.

Since finding the handwritten list in 2016, she has diligently completed every item — including skydiving and meeting former Pres. Jimmy Carter, @helloross shares. pic.twitter.com/7wKQRHhIW1

— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) January 26, 2023

INSIDE EDITION: In Completing Her Late Father’s Bucket List, Daughter Faces Mortality: ‘I Had Something That Needed to Heal‘

INSIDE EDITION: Woman Finds Dad’s Bucket List Years After His Death, Vows to Complete It: ‘It’s What I Was Meant To Do’

PEOPLE MAGAZINE: Daughter Completes Bucket List Her Late Dad Made the Year She Was Born: ‘I Know He’s Proud’

The Washington Post: She found late father’s bucket list, then spent 6 years completing it

NPR: Daughter starts checking off things on her deceased father’s bucket list

Michael Carney was killed by a distracted driver and never had the chance to finish his bucket list.

His daughter Laura found it 13 years later and decided to complete it for him to honor his legacy.@Yamiche shares their story: https://t.co/OwxlGzDFLT

— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) February 7, 2023

Laura Carney decided to complete her dad’s bucket list after she lost him unexpectedly in 2003. There were more than fifty items on the list, and it took her six years to complete. She shares what the scariest thing was on that list.#bucketlist #newjersey #lauracarney #journey pic.twitter.com/Bs0oGaK7Vd

— Daily Blast LIVE (@dailyblastlive) February 2, 2023

The post Laura Carney FOUND and FINISHED her Father’s BUCKET List! appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi is NOW Available!

I love Alka Joshi’s books. I wrote about The Henna Artist A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick (The Jaipur Trilogy 1) and The Secret Keeper of Jaipur (The Jaipur Trilogy Book 2) and her new book, The Perfumist of Paris (The Jaipur Trilogy Book 3) is available TODAY!

The Perfumist of Paris takes readers to 1970s Paris where Radha, a passionate assistant perfumer is trying to navigate her home life while building her career one scent at a time. Radha travels back to India in search of essential oils for her first major project and enlists the help of her sister, Lakshmi, and the courtesans of Agra. During her olfactory journey, her senses are awakened by India’s vibrant majestic flora, woods, herbs, and spices. Due to its unique biodiversity, India cultivates dozens of natural ingredients used in modern perfumery today, sourced from as far south as Kerala’s spice gardens to Aligarh’s northern flower fields.

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A post shared by Alka Joshi (@thealkajoshi)

Born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, Alka Joshi has lived in the United States since the age of nine. She has a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of the Arts. She ran her own advertising and PR agency for 20 years. At 62, her debut novel, The Henna Artist, became an instant NYTimes Bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Bookclub pick, was Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, translated into 26 languages and is being developed into a series by Netflix. The sequel, The Secret Keeper of Jaipur, is also being translated into multiple languages and the third book in the Jaipur trilogy, The Perfumist of Paris, will be released TODAY!

New York Times Bestselling Author Alka Joshi Enlists LilaNur Parfums for ‘The Perfumist of Paris’ Book Tour

The discovery set offers readers of Alka Joshi’s upcoming novel a multi-sensorial understanding of main character Radha’s journey as a fledgling female perfumer in the ’70s.

FROM MS. MAGAZINE: 8 BOOKS THAT WILL TRANSPORT YOU:

While author Alka Joshi’s story starts in 1955 in Jaipur, India, I have to admit some of her descriptions reminded me of my travels there in 2013. I spent three months on the public bus traversing the sub-continent—and her descriptions of the colorful saris, delicate samosas and other tasty treats reminded all my senses (especially my sense of smell) of my adventures.

Women’s lives are intertwined from the village, to town, from one town to another and one life to another. The way that boys become men, and men act like boys, causes many dramas and traumas in this tale. The women find ways to run away from one life but are often surprised by the ways it catches up to you.

I was able to interview Alka Joshi for Thrive Global, “Writing and Rewriting during COVID with Alka Joshi.” And she interviewed me on her show, Reimagine:I wrote about Alka Joshi’s second book for the Jewish Journal and cannot wait for book three! Read all about it here: Travel back to India: The Secret Keeper of Jaipur

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I also wrote about The Secret Keeper of Jaipur for Thrive Global in an article called Sizzling Summer Reads: Feel All Your Feelings. WATCH Alka Joshi on my PODCAST, Make Your Own Map: the 3Ps: PASSION, PERSEVERANCE and PATIENCE

The post The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi is NOW Available! appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

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Christie Tate on how to be your own B.F.F!

Thank you Christie Tate for joining me on my podcast! Learn how to be your own B.F.F. -A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found from Christie Tate! I also loved her first book, GROUP, you can read about it here.

Christie Tate is a Chicago-based writer and essayist. She has been published in The New York Times (Modern Love), The Rumpus, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Eastern Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Kiese Laymon selected her essay, Promised Lands, as the winner of the New Ohio Review’s nonfiction contest, which was published Fall 2019.

10/23/20 Christie Tate author of “Group”FROM OUR INTERVIEW

Lisa Niver:

Good morning. This is Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel and I’m so honored and excited to be speaking today with New York Times Best Selling Author and Reese’s Book Club author, Christie Tate. Hello.

Christie Tate:

Hi. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, my goodness, it is such an honor. I have loved both your books so, so much and I would love if you could talk a little bit to my audience about Group because I just loved how you shared what an incredible process it is to be in group therapy and how challenging it is, and just all the questions that came up for you. So, tell people about how did that happen that you wrote a whole book about how strangers saved your life in therapy.

Christie Tate:

I wrote Group over the period of five years and I knew I was going to write about it when I had originally gone to therapy because I was very, very lonely and I was very, very concerned that I was going to die alone, The way that I talk about it — I want a boyfriend, but what I was trying to say is I want a life, I want a family, I want people to be close to me but I was scared and I didn’t know how, and I didn’t have a lot of money. And I was a law student and I ended up in group therapy for two main reasons.

One was a good friend of mine had changed and I saw a light go on in her eyes and I thought– what is it? And she said, it’s my therapist, I do group. And I was like, ewe, group. And then she told me the price and group is–because you share the circle with other people and divide up the time– it was a lot cheaper and that appealed to my budget. And when I got there the therapist told me, if you want to work on relationships, if you want to build up intimacy, if you want to change your life, group is the way to do it, and he was so sure and so confident, and I was the opposite of that. I was buying single funeral plots and I was 27 years old.

I decided to hear the call and I did originally think– I’ll do this for a year and then when I become a lawyer and make the big bucks then I’ll go get a real therapist and do real therapy, but it turned out I understood how potent it was within the first three months and I stuck around, and my life changed dramatically and I could see the arc of what it had done to me.

It reminded me, this is a very audacious claim, but Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, her life changed as she walked the Pacific Crest Trail. It changed, she mourned, she grieved, she learned, she met herself out there, and that’s what happened to me in therapy except I just went back and forth to this little office in downtown Chicago, back and forth to therapy, and I thought, maybe someone else would like to know that this is possible, and that’s why I wrote the book.

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Lisa Niver:

That’s so beautiful. I have been in group therapy and I understand what you’re saying, and I think, especially in this time where we’re still continuing on the COVID coaster, which I know is a lot about your second book which we’ll get to, but that people are really searching for how to get help…

Christie Tate:

Yeah.

Lisa Niver:

…and that’s really important to bring up — that therapy can be expensive.

Christie Tate:

Yeah, real expensive, and I was not in a position where I felt like I could wait. It was the beginning of my second year of law school so, I have all of second year and all of third year before I would have a full law job. I felt very precarious mentally and emotionally and I had started to have fantasies about how I might end my life and I thought I can’t wait two years I need something now and I don’t have any money so, what do I do?

Group therapy is not free, I had to take out extra loans and I just banked on it working and that my mental health had to become a priority because I scared myself, and I’m obviously very glad I did. But none of those decisions are easy and I wanted to story them because a lot of people are in that position every single day.

Lisa Niver:

It’s so true. We keep hearing in the news about people where we’re so shocked that someone has taken their life and there are really hard situations for people, and in Group you talk about feeling like a misfit and feeling alone and the loneliness, but you also you tell funny stories. Can you say a little bit about the breaking of the plates? I love that one.

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Christie Tate:

Well, yes. I am very, very dramatic. I don’t mean that in a pejorative way, I’m a very sensitive person and I feel things really, really deeply, and once I got into group it became safe for me to really explore the full extent of my rage, my loneliness, my sorrow, and my terror which I’d just been shoving down, and I had disordered eating which contributed to more repression, and when I got to group I had a full permission slip from my therapist and my group get it out. Let’s play full out.

I went through a breakup, it was very, very upsetting, and I was extra upset because I thought I’m a good girl. I go to group, I do the work, I’m emotionally working on myself, why did this man I loved so much break up with me? I was horrified that those things could still happen to someone who was in mental health treatment, which is absurd but that’s what I thought, and he dropped me off after telling me I was not the one and I was devastated, and I just picked every single dish out of my cabinet and threw it on the floor.

And that’s an expensive way to do rage, and then I was ashamed. Then I thought what have I done? I have no glasses, I have no plates, I have no platters. I threw a Thanksgiving platter on the floor that I had bought at Walgreens for 9.99, and what do I do? And I wanted to not be alone with the explosion of it all so, I put all the pieces in a bag and I took it to group and I put it in the middle of the floor between all the chairs and I said this is what I did, and it’s messy.

Coming to life and getting into rage and going all out in your emotions is really messy and I can’t be the only one…maybe I’m the only one who’s broken all my dishes, but I can’t be the only one who’s been surprised by the intensity of what I was holding onto. No wonder I was bulimic for years– a lot was going on inside of me. If I don’t have a way to get it out, bad things happen.

Lisa Niver:

I think it’s really so courageous of you to share the actual stories. I’m working on a memoir and I know for myself sometimes writing some of the pieces…I literally used to write until I was pretty sure I was going to throw up and then I would lie on the floor.

Christie Tate:

Yes. Yes. People always ask me if it’s cathartic to write and I think that’s one word for it, but it is a reliving. It is a reliving, even though there’s a part of my brain that’s crafting and it’s making an object of my experiences on the page, but my soul is reliving it and it is extremely intense, and I have such a high regard for all memoirs for that exact reason because I know what it feels like and it is not for the faint of heart.

Lisa Niver:

It is not for the faint of heart, but you struck a chord with so many people. As I said, you’re a New York Times Best Selling Author, you’re in the club with Reese Witherspoon books, you were Amazon Best Books so, when the book came out, of course, you hoped you would reach people, but what happened when you were on the list of everybody?

Christie Tate:

It was such a huge surprise. I live in Chicago so, I’m not steeped in publishing. I read very widely, I’m a very enthusiastic reader, but I was new at being an author and I was a full-time lawyer when the book came out and so, I didn’t understand what was about to happen. I knew it was a huge deal that Reese Witherspoon was going to put her name on my book, and I was thrilled, just beyond, I’ve never felt anything quite like that, certainly not professionally.

I had no idea how many people would write to me with all kinds of feedback and sharing with me their therapy stories which I hold so closely to my heart, and some people were like, your therapist is a terrible person, and I accept that. I accept that people have very strong feelings about mental health treatment. Mostly what I wanted my book to do was shine a light for anybody who had money problems or individual wasn’t working for them.

But also let’s have more discussion. Let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about what works and what might work for one person and not another because every single conversation peels back a little bit of stigma. So, in terms of what happened.  I still get letters from readers and people are still discovering the book and it is the greatest joy, it is such a joy. My biggest dream for my book is I hoped one day I would be shopping in Costco and I would see it next to Obama’s book or something, and so, this has exploded all of my bucket list dreams.

I saw Christie’s book at SIMON and SCHUSTER in NYC, March 2023!

Lisa Niver:

I was just in the lobby of Simon and Schuster and I saw your new book right there in the display case! So, you decided to write another book.

Christie Tate:

Yeah, I did. Even before Group was published, even before I had a book deal, I knew I wanted to write about friendship because Group is really all about how I straightened out romantically. I had a lot of work to do along the dealing with early trapped trauma and eating stuff, but really I thought where’s my boyfriend, I want a husband, I want a family, I’m getting old — that’s the engine of Group.

But I really have also done a lot of work around female friendship and that had nothing to do with the boyfriend and the husband. I really wanted to tell those stories in part because I had been crippled all my life by the idea that friendship is if you’re a girl and the right kind of girl, friendship is easy, and you have lifelong friends and you have pods and you vacation with all your friends. I’m a little bit ill at ease in social relationships and I wanted to write about some of my own bad behavior, ghosting and being neurotic and insecure. I know I’m not the only person and I wanted to write in tribute to the notion of the work we do to get straight romantically can also be done in our friendships.

Lisa Niver:

Yes. So, you named your book B.F.F., Best Friends Forever, and I think one of the things you wrote that really spoke to me was about how one life can alter another, that friendships change us, but also that it felt like you were missing this secret code.

Christie Tate:

Yes. I remember being in kindergarten–very young, watching other girls, and maybe it was my community or just my particular vision, but I felt like other girls were best friends and their moms were friends and they did stuff on the weekends, and they were really embedded in each other’s lives, and it looks like they were held so closely in their friendships, and I had no idea how to do that.

I had no clue. My mom didn’t have friendships like that and neither did my dad, and I didn’t have the language at age 5, 6, 7 to express longing like that, and I didn’t have the skills. I did not know what it meant to be a good friend, and so, I had to make every mistake. I had to experiment with social climbing and then getting dumped and then dumping friends for a boy, and all of the things you’re not supposed to do. I had to do them. Part of the work that I’m interested in as much as getting married is how to build a community.

That’s something that I’m still interested in to this day. I haven’t cracked the code just because I wrote a book about it and I’m better than I used to be. I believe it’s my life’s work to keep working on this.

Lisa Niver:

One of the things that I see in Group and in the B.F.F. book is you talk about the triangles mother and sister or you have a friend and they have a friend and can we all be friends. The triangles, whether at work… the work wife or the work spouse. But I think all that plays into it and of course, now we’re all managing all this on social, too.

Christie Tate:

Oh, yes. it’s so painful. My children are in middle school and they have their own relationships, too, friendships and social media, and they’ll see things…like, it’s just like they’ll see things that will hurt their feelings, they’re not involved, and I will say to them, me, too. Everyone’s in a writing conference and I’m not there and I wasn’t invited, that’s how it feels, and it upends me and it takes me down, and I don’t have…I mean, I wish I had the wisdom for my kids.

What I strive to have is like, balance for myself, for my own soul, my own peace of mind, and when I first started telling people I was writing about female friendship, this woman I didn’t know at a reading for Group turned to me and she said, you better be writing about triangles. And I just laughed because I’m like, women know. If you say friendship triangle to a woman, they’re like, very unstable, very unstable. I’m like, exactly. Exactly.

And as you mentioned, I grew up with a mom and a sister. We also had a brother, but like, the females formed this triangle and I always viewed myself as on the outs, and that infected all my friendships because I was sure I was going to be pushed out, and I had to work through that as an adult in order to form healthy relationships.

Lisa Niver:

And I loved what you said about the inspiration. You said, “broken bones and irreparable rifts belonged in middle school but not motherhood” and you worked to repair several key relationships.

Christie Tate:

Yes. I was really interested in that and, I was embarrassed that I had gotten to be in my 40s and I was still so envious of other people’s success or their bodies or their hair. It felt so shameful. I was supposed to be a feminist and I had been in recovery and therapy all these years. I was a mother and I was so ashamed of my behavior, and what I had learned, thank goodness through all the work, was while keeping it to myself is never going to work. It’s just not going to work. Pretending it’s not there, also a failure. And so, what if I start writing about this, talking about this.

And what the great blessing I got is one of my friends that I knew from recovery tapped me on the shoulder and said, you know, I think we have a lot in common and I think it’s time for both of us to work on friendships. And I had just settled down with my about-to-be husband and I thought, oh, my God, can you let me catch my breath from being so sad about being single, and she said– no. Let’s go. And I agreed, so that is what is remarkable.

I also wanted to put this story out in the world because in Group there is an Ivy league-trained therapist and he’s crazy and he’s exotic and he takes up a lot of space, and with B.F.F. it was me and a friend. We were both bungling along and we decided to help each other. We don’t have degrees, we didn’t pay each other, we just decided, let’s stop telling ourselves we stink at friendship and let’s do something different and let’s do it together, and our lives changed.

Lisa Niver:

Yes. The power of committing to another person to try to be better.

Christie Tate:

Exactly. Exactly. It’s kind of that simple and that hard all at the same time.

Lisa Niver:

It is very hard and very simple, I agree with you. How can people can come find you? I know you’ve been on a book tour…

Christie Tate:

Yes.

Lisa Niver:

…but tell people, I know you’ve been having…you can’t be uninvited when you run the workshop so, tell people they can come work with you.

Christie Tate:

Yes. Yes. I’ve started doing some writing workshops and they’ve been just amazing, the most amazing people have come forth and they want to write their stories, and I really only write about relationships so, I thought, let’s do it together. Let’s get in a room together and tackle the hard ones, especially those people we think we’ll have to wait until they die before I can write about them, and let’s do this together.

So, I’ll be doing something in the Hudson Valley in fall of 2023, and then right after MLK Jr day in January of 2024 I’m going to have a second annual event in Palm Springs that’ll span Monday to Friday. We did that before and it was a really wonderful experience. So, I try to draw people who might want to get to the sunshine in January because I live in Chicago, that’s what I want. Check my website for the dates and signup. I would love to see any new faces.

Lisa Niver:

And tell people, your website name is…

Christie Tate:

My website is christietate.com.

Lisa Niver:

And can people find you on social media? Where do you hang out and share wisdom?

Christie Tate:

All the wisdom comes down on Instagram and my Instagram is christieotate I’m usually there posting all kinds of whatever’s going on, and would love to have any kind of reader engagement. It brings me great joy.

Lisa Niver:

And I know on your website people can find if their book club is reading Group, you have a whole book club guide?

Christie Tate:

Yes. The best way, if you want me to Zoom in or if you’re local to me, I’m happy to come by. It’s so fun to go to a book club. What I love about book clubs is people are not afraid to say, I have this in this issue. Like, I don’t mind that engagement, it’s so brave for readers to look me in the eye and go like, I really hated this. And I’m like, awesome. I want to hear more about it, like, you don’t have to like all my stuff.

Anyway, I find that really invigorating and brave. So, it reminds me of group therapy. And yeah, so, email me. There’s a form on my website, you can reach out to me and we can set something up.

Lisa Niver:

That’s so amazing. So, people can read your book and they can learn more about you, and the book is also an audio book?

Christie Tate:

Yes. Both books appear in the audio format. Right now B.F.F. is just in hardback, but you can also get it on Libra, I think that’s the Indie book store version of Audible, but of course, Audible as well and hardback, and then Group is available in all the formats, and several different languages if you are not an English speaker.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, wow. That’s so exciting.

Christie Tate:

Yeah. It’s pretty fun.

Lisa Niver:

And what happens once you’re in the Reese Witherspoon Book Club, do you guys have chats with the other authors or…

Christie Tate:

Yeah. You know, it’s a real bonding experience because Reese and her company, Hello Sunshine, and the Reese’s Book Club, they’re really good to their authors and they have give aways and like, online events, and there’s a really wonderful app that anybody can join, but you can find out, you know, what the new book picks are. We don’t get to find out early but a bunch of us have bonded who were like, around each other and there’s a sense of camaraderie, and there was talk in 2020 about like, one day doing a retreat with everyone and I’m just like, holding my breath waiting for that because how amazing would that be like, oh, my gosh. So, hopefully one day that will come to pass.

Lisa Niver:

Yes, and before we go, I’d love for you to just talk a little bit, I think that being in the COVID coaster that it’s been such a hard time for people feeling lonely and alienated, and obviously book club is a good way to get together, and I think some of the inspiration for your friendship forensics was COVID so, I don’t know if you could speak a little bit to about how you…I don’t know if it’s the right thing to say, turned the corner during COVID, or for reconnecting that you can share a couple tips for what could people do if they’re just feeling like everything’s so hard right now for them.

Cover reveal! Memoir coming October 2020. @AvidReaderPress pic.twitter.com/w1ZX1agVzE

— Christie Tate (@ChristieOTate) April 28, 2020

Christie Tate:

Yeah. I definitely agree with that. There’s two things I feel that are manageable starting points, right, because you can’t build a community in one dinner, and that’s so overwhelming. One thing is, I’ve started calling friends when they pop into my mind, even if I only have five minutes, I just call them up and I say, I’ve got seven minutes until I pick up my daughter or until the pasta boils and I wanted to say hi. What can you tell me in seven minutes, what can you tell me about your life? What do I need to know about what’s new and exciting in your life, and I’ve never had anybody say unless you have 45 minutes we are not talking.

I mean, everyone’s busy, everyone’s crunched so, there’s something about the little snatches of time that I used to just stand in the kitchen. Maybe I would be scrolling making myself miserable low key and stirring the pasta, and now I can have a connection — the idea that it has to be so long has crippled me, right?

And the other thing for me is I’m very scared to initiate socially. I have lots of reasons and I’m working on that, but one thing that’s been very helpful is when I hear an invitation…because lots of invitations come my way that I used to just bat away or not hear in some psychological way, what if I just said yes? I just give myself the goal to say yes. If someone says, we should do lunch, I pull out my calendar and say, what about this day? Now, I may not be the person who’s really good at saying, we should go to coffee, but what I can do is hear the bid for connection and then take it up and keep carrying it.

And once I realize how often people are offering to connect, I realize it was all right in front of me. It’s really right in front of me and I bet that’s true for lots of people, even as isolated as we are, we’re still on the COVID coaster. My community is still extremely…there’s places in my community where we’re still masking so, I get it. It is not easy, but when someone  would say, oh, I would like to go on a walk and be like, I would love to walk Saturday morning. Just follow it up, and if you’re walking anyway, why not, right?

So, those two things. Start somewhere and five-minute phone calls. That has been really, really enriched my social connections.

Lisa Niver:

Now I’m wondering if the next book is called Five-Minute Phone Calls.

Christie Tate:

Oh, I like the way you think.

Lisa Niver:

I am so appreciative that you spent this time with us and I know that your books have meant so much to me and so much to other people so, thank you for walking through all the shame and pain and tears to share your incredible story and really help people. Thank you.

Christie Tate:

Thank you, Lisa. This has been a total joy.

Learn how to be your own B.F.F. -A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found from Christie Tate! I also loved her first book, GROUP, you can read about it here. MAKE YOUR OWN MAP: Lisa Niver’s Podcast

The post Christie Tate on how to be your own B.F.F! appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Meet me in DALLAS at the Travel and Adventure Show 2023

l will be speaking THREE TIMES in DALLAS at the Travel and Adventure Show 2023! Meet me Sunday, April 2, 2023 in the Savvy Traveler Theater at 3:00pm for my talk: “Becoming Brave– Steps to Make Your Dream Vacation Happen” Meet me at the Dive & Water Sports Pavilion SAT APRIL 1 and SUN APRIL 2, 2023 to talk about how “SCUBA Changed My LIFE: Diving Adventures AROUND the WORLD” on behalf of PADI (Professional Association of Dive Instructors)

“SCUBA Changed My LIFE: Diving Adventures AROUND the World”

SAT APRIL 1 — 11:30am and

SUN APRIL 2 — 12:45pm

Show Location:

Dallas Market Hall
2200 Stemmons Freeway
Dallas, TX 75207
214-879-8330

2023 Show Dates/Hours:

Public Show Hours:
Saturday, April 1: 10am – 5pm
Sunday, April 2: 11am – 4pm

Directions/Parking:

Parking is FREE at Market Hall.

Discount Ticket Code: GOTRAVEL23

I will be doing a GIVEAWAY at all THREE of my talks–be present for a chance to win Dallas CityPASS tickets and a PADI e-learning course! I will be speaking LIVE at FOUR of America’s Favorite Travel Shows! Come see me at  The Travel & Adventure Show 2023

“Discover endless vacation options from the top travel providers and destinations from around the globe. Meet one-on-one with thousands of travel experts who are on hand to help you find, personalize, and book your next trip. Uncover thousands of dollars in savings with exclusive travel deals and show-only specials. Receive expert advice and learn how to travel like an insider from dozens of educational seminars. Plus, meet Samantha Brown, Andrew McCarthy, Peter Greenberg, Pauline Frommer, Patricia Schultz, LISA NIVER and more!” 

I learned to dive in 1990 and fell madly in love with exploring the underwater world.See my articles and videos all about scuba: CLICK HERE PADI Dive-in LIV+ Beaches Turks and Caicos 2020I will be speaking LIVE at America’s Favorite Travel Shows! Come see me at  The Travel & Adventure Show 2023CHICAGO –Jan 14-15 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention CenterNEW YORK CITY – January 28-29 at the Javits Convention CenterLOS ANGELES— February 18-19 at the Los Angeles Convention CenterDALLAS–April 1-2 at the Dallas Market Hall 

“Discover endless vacation options from the top travel providers and destinations from around the globe. Meet one-on-one with thousands of travel experts who are on hand to help you find, personalize, and book your next trip. Uncover thousands of dollars in savings with exclusive travel deals and show-only specials. Receive expert advice and learn how to travel like an insider from dozens of educational seminars. Plus, meet Samantha Brown, Andrew McCarthy, Peter Greenberg, Pauline Frommer, Patricia Schultz, LISA NIVER and more!” Buy tickets at a special rate with my discount code GOTRAVEL23 or use these links for these cities: CHICAGO –NEW YORK CITY —LOS ANGELES–DALLAS

Buy tickets at a special rate with my discount code GOTRAVEL23 or use these links for these cities: CHICAGO –NEW YORK CITY —LOS ANGELES—DALLAS Watch my Spotify Video Podcast: Click here for Season 1 with guests: Deepak Chopra, Alka Joshi and Patricia Schultz. Lisa Niver and BJ Korrus at the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism AwardsLearn more about my articles, videos and awards: LisaNiver.com My YouTube channel has nearly two million views. Sign up for my newsletter so you will be the first to know about when you can pre-order my memoir from Post Hill Press & Simon and Schuster!

The post Meet me in DALLAS at the Travel and Adventure Show 2023 appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Travel is for EVERYONE! Lisa Niver on Travel Goals Podcast

Thank you Pip for inviting me on your podcast, Travel Goals Podcast for Travel through the ages – why adventure isn’t just for young people! Travel is for EVERYONE!

Do you want to have more adventures but don’t know where to begin, travel expert, author and YouTuber Lisa Niver is here to help! In this episode, Lisa discusses how you can make your travel dreams come true and have adventures through the ages, no matter your age or travel experience.

Adventure travel has long been advertised with pictures of bright-eyed and wrinkle-free young travellers sporting heaving backpacks and tie-dye trousers, staying in $3-a-night hostels.

 But that’s not the full picture, plenty of people travel throughout the decades and while their travel style might change, their love of the road never falters. Whether you’re fresh out of university, a nine to fiver, or about to enter retirement, adventure should be for everyone.

If you’re considering broadening your travel horizons, setting out on your first travel trip, or wondering how to make friends on the road, then Lisa has some great advice for you. 

Lisa is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries and six continents. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she worked on cruise ships for seven years and backpacked for three years in Asia.

She has a huge YouTube and TikTok following and is the founder of the website WeSaidGoTravel which is read in 235 countries and was named #3 on Rise Global’s top 1,000 Travel Blogs. 

Tune in and get ready to be inspired! 

Listen on SPOTIFY Lisa, Robin and Portia in Sky Lagoon, Iceland, June 21, 2022

I met podcast host, Portia Jones, in Iceland! See us in Action as Travel Journalists in these videos below and articles, Roaming Around Reykjavik, and Feeling Icelandic at Sky Lagoon Iceland

Listen on iHeart Radio Alyssa, Robin, Lisa, Pip and Crai at FlyOver Iceland, June 20, 2022

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New episode: Travel through the ages – why adventure isn't just for young people.

Do you want to have more adventures but don't know where to begin? Travel expert @LisaNiver is here to help you make your travel dreams come true! Download now: https://t.co/EedwDezP9e pic.twitter.com/3i74Nmnbbj

— travelgoalspodcast (@travelgoalspod) March 17, 2023

Thank you again to Pip for inviting me on your podcast, Travel Goals Podcast for Travel through the ages – why adventure isn’t just for young people!!

The post Travel is for EVERYONE! Lisa Niver on Travel Goals Podcast appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Women’s Travel Fest 2023: Get your Virtual Ticket NOW!

Your VIRTUAL PASS to Women’s Travel Fest 2023 is AVAILABLE! CLICK HERE

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Meet the 2023

Speakers

The Women’s Travel Fest | March 3-5, 2023

Founder, Travel Fashion Girl

Alexandra Jimenez

Alex is the founder of Travel Fashion Girl. For over 10 years, it has helped women travel carryon only in a stylish and efficient way. TFG empowers female travelers with the confidence to live fearlessly, embrace style, and collect moments, not things.

Alex is also a frequent guest on podcasts and a conference speaker and was recently the closing keynote speaker at the Women’s Travel Fest in March 2020.

She has been featured in national news outlets; including the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Oprah, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, Reader’s Digest, Forbes, USA Today, and live on the Fox & Friends Morning Show.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Founder, Solight

Alice Min Soo Chun

As a little girl growing up in Seoul, Korea and then upstate New York, Alice spent many days learning how a simple fold can become structured. Origami forms were taught to her by her mother, who also taught Alice how to sew her own clothes.

Always creative, fascinated by design, structure and forms, Alice studied architecture at Penn State where she obtained her undergraduate degree and went on to earn her Masters in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

With emerging trends in material technology resulting in smarter, lighter, faster, sustainable fabrication, Alice started to sew solar panels to fabric as early experiments for harnessing solar energy with softer, malleable material. She became focused on solar technology and finding ways to create clean energy solutions upon learning her son Quinn was diagnosed with asthma.

While teaching as a Professor in Architecture and Material Technology at Columbia University, Alice created early prototypes of solar lights with her students. Fueled by her passion for helping the underserved, Alice invented the world’s only self-inflatable, portable origami solar light, eliminating the need for a mouth nozzle. This ensured a healthy, sanitary method to inflate. Alice named this invention the SolarPuff and conducted three years of field testing in Haiti.

In 2015 she launched Solight Design and initiated a KickStarter program with unprecedented results. She went on to win numerous awards including the US Patent Award for Humanity and her products have been exhibited at MOMA, the Modern Museum of Art in New York City.

Website | Twitter 

Dear Alyne

Alyne Tamir

Dear Alyne is a personality with over 3.6+ Million followers across all social media platforms.

She has traveled to over 90+ countries, making content ranging from world travel, social issues, lesser known countries to human rights, vegetarianism and much more!

She enjoys running “Dear Alyne Retreats”, week-long camps dedicated to nurturing the talents of aspiring female creators and entrepreneurs.

Dear Alyne has also worked and collaborated with amazing brands like: The United Nations, Microsoft, Facebook, Etihad, and Coca-Cola!

Website | Instagram | Facebook

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In Search of Traveler

Ashley McCurdy

After losing her job, Ashley McCurdy got rid of her expensive Southern California apartment to travel the world and live in hotels (usually Marriott) full-time and vlog about her experiences on her YouTube channel, In Search of Traveler.

Ashley caught the internet’s attention in 2020 by staying 103 nights at Marriott properties for $4356, which includes properties like the Ritz Carlton in Cancun & W in Midtown Atlanta.

Join Ashley as she takes a walk down memory lane and shares the strategies she used over the past two years which have allowed her to travel, eat, explore, and live in hotels full-time for $500/week.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Ashley Gets Around

Ashley Peterson

Ashley Peterson is a full time traveler and content creator who’s visited over 90 countries on 6 contients. She is the face behind Ashley Gets Around, a popular Instagram about her travels and travel hacking. She is a huge AVgeek who flies about 200,000 miles per year. She owns and runs the only woman owned subscription service for business class flight deals. Ashley is passionate about helping women travel more luxuriously for less.

Ashley is also the co-founder of a boutique tour company, Wild Air Travel, which does bespoke small tours to some of Ashley’s favorite

She has been featured on CNN, Good Morning America, the Today Show, Washington Post, and Miami Herald.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Unruly Traveler

Calen Otto

Calen Ann Otto is a queer, anti-speciesist travel blogger who explores the big wide world on a very small budget. After completing a solo trip across the USA at the age of 19 with only $300 and a bike, Calen discovered that there are so many alternative ways to travel that cost less.

Inspired by their love of meeting strangers and sharing their incredible stories, Calen created the Unruly Travel blog. There they share photos, videos, articles, and podcast episodes from their unique travels in hopes to inspire others to get out and grow.

Calen has been to 5 continents, 35 states, 20 National Parks, and more than 20 countries as a vegan and is passionate about doing the least amount of harm wherever they go. They wrote and published ‘The Art Of Unruly Travel On A Budget’ travel guide book to make travel more accessible to all.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Journeywoman CEO

Carolyn Ray

An entrepreneur for over 30 years, Carolyn is the CEO of JourneyWoman, the world’s first solo travel publication for women, established in 1994. With a global audience of over 60,000 subscribers, JourneyWoman empowers women to live the life of their dreams (as she is) by sharing first-hand travel tips and also provides women with the world’s largest directory of women-friendly trips.

She is the incoming Chair for the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) in Canada, and a member of the North American Travel Journalists Association and the Travel Media Association of Canada. Trained as a CTI Co-active Coach, she actively mentors emerging leaders and supports female entrepreneurs as a SheEO Activator and is ranked as one of Canada’s top 100 female entrepreneurs on the PROFIT/ Chatelaine W100 list.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

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Heart of Travel

Chelsea Glass

Chelsea was born and raised in California and first began studying Spanish at the age of 19 while living in Guatemala and working in the tourism industry for three years before returning to California to continue her academic career.

After more than a decade immersed in the language, along with her post-graduate studies in Spanish at CSU Sacramento, Chelsea is a fluent Spanish speaker and experienced language instructor. From 2012 to 2016, Chelsea worked in both tourism and language education (Spanish and ESL) while pursuing her M.A. in Spanish before moving back full time to Guatemala in 2017 to start Heart of Travel with business partner Ana Castillo. Her own experience learning Spanish helps us provide you with the best tips and tricks to master the language.

Chelsea is passionate about responsible and sustainable travel practices and believes in the power of travel to improve local economies and break down barriers. Through travel and Spanish language education, Chelsea and her team hope to share a more comprehensive insight into Latin America and to change the often negative narrative regarding Latin America and immigration. When she’s not working, Chelsea is happy being a mom, partner, animal lover, reader, writer, and gardener!

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Host, The Thought Card

Danielle Desir

Danielle Desir Corbett is a podcast marketing coach passionate about helping podcasters strategically grow their audiences and monetize through affiliate marketing, brand deals, and sponsorships.

Podcasting since 2018, Danielle is also the host of The Thought Card, a 4x grant-funded affordable luxury travel and personal finance podcast empowering financially savvy travelers to travel more, build wealth, and live on their terms.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Pack Light Global

Dawn Booker

Dawn Booker is a fearless traveler and culture curator who inspires women of color over 40 to “pack light” and to see the world. Many women create amazing lives and careers that are on point in every way. However, on the path to creating these happy families, marriages and careers women often set aside their “inner explorer” to affirm and honor the many commitments to others. Realizing this in her own life, in her mid-40s Dawn moved to Paris to pursue an MA in Global Communications at the American University in Paris and returned to North Carolina transformed and committed to a life that honors her desire to see the world.

Through her global experiential travel business, Pack Light Global, Dawn hopes to inspire and connect women of color who would love to travel internationally. “I share my favorite destinations, what I have discovered about myself through travel and reveal practical tips and advice that will help you make that first trip, or the next trip to a dream destination, fearlessly.”

So yes, life is short, but it is also wide so Travel fearless and Pack light.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Wanderstay Houston

Deidre Mathis

Deidre Mathis is a hotelier, author, and world traveler. She is the Founder of Wanderstay Hospitality Group, a hybrid hospitality brand. The first location, Wanderstay Houston Hostel, opened summer of 2018 in Houston, TX, and offers themed private and shared accommodations. The 2nd location, a boutique hotel, will open in early 2023. Mathis is the first Black woman to own a hostel in the United States. Mathis is also the Director of the Wander Abroad Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) organization that provides passports and short-term study abroad programs to college students.

Having traveled to over 46 countries on all 7 continents, she fell in love with the instant community and cultural diversity boutique accommodations provided. She wanted to bring that same experience stateside, and thus the concept of Wanderstay was born.

She included many of her travel experiences in her book, “Wanderlust: For the Young, Broke Professional.”

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Author

Diana Eden

After a career as a dancer and actress, Diana Eden spent 30 years in Hollywood, costume designing prime time television series, soap operas, movies for TV, and feature films, Eden received three Emmy nominations for her work.

Following “retirement” at 68, Eden continued designing films, teaching, and writing her memoir “Stars in Their Underwear” which covers her interaction with some of Broadway and Hollywood’s biggest stars. When not doing all these things, she is traveling! She has been published on Journeywoman.com, CostumeDesignersGuild.com, Pivotdancer.com, The Huffington Post and The International Womens Writers Guild’s magazine Network. (possible cut? Trips she has taken since turning 80 in May 2020 include an African safari, a Moroccan Food Adventure Tour, and destinations Iceland, USVI, and France, with Bora Bora and Italy on the calendar for later this year.)

Website | Instagram | Facebook

The Nomadic Network

Erica Hackman

Erica Virvo is a purposeful traveler and connector, who loves the thrill of living in countries people have rarely heard of. She’s spent 5 years studying and working in obscure countries in the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa. While she loves visiting the frequented tourist spots like everyone else, the memories Erica has treasured the most are the everyday experiences she participated in with friends she’s found along the way. Through these connections and ordinary activities, Erica gained a deeper appreciation for the world and people in it.

Erica has a BFA in Interior Design. However, she has never worked as an Interior Designer and has completely built her career (and life) out of her immersive travel experiences.

Erica has been on the Nomadic Matt team since she moved back to the US in 2013, a budget travel website with over 1 million monthly visitors that teaches people how to bring their travel aspirations to life by exploring the world on a budget. Her tips have been featured publications including Levo League, the Positive Psychology Podcast, and Forbes.

She believes that strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet. Combining this motto with tips and tricks she’s uncovered along the way, Erica’s greatest passion is helping others shape their trips into authentic travel experiences that they can use to create the life that they love.

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Travelpreneur

Erica James

Erica James is a Travel Agent, Podcast Host, Blogger and YouTuber from Nashville, TN. As a Travelpreneur, Erica helps real people, with real jobs and real budgets travel the world without quitting their day job by providing expert travel planning, tips, reviews, and expert interviews!

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Packs Light

Gabby Beckford

Gabby Beckford is an award-winning travel influencer and solo travel expert at @packslight. With more than 800,000+ followers across her platform and features in the New York Times, CNN Travel, and Travel+Leisure, Gabby is on a mission to make the incredible accessible through travel, for young, women of color.

Website | Twitter | Instagram

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CEO, Girls LOVE Travel (GLT)

Haley Woods

As a passionate travel-loving nomad, Haley founded GLT in Dec 2015 to foster friendships with fellow travelers all over the world!

Since then, it has become recognized as the largest and most engaging womxn-identifying travel community on Facebook – amassing over 1.2 million members residing in 150+ countries worldwide, and often referred to as “the Google search engine for the womxn traveler.”

Despite its explosive growth, Haley’s commitment to the community mission of Girls LOVE Travel has remained the same: to encourage members to get offline and explore the world fearlessly.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Jen on a Jet Plane

Jen Ruiz

Jen Ruiz is a lawyer turned full-time travel blogger and author. She is a 5-time Amazon bestselling author, 3-time TEDx speaker, and 2-time award-winning travel journalist.

She has been featured by The Washington Post, Forbes, and ABC News and is the solo female traveler behind Jen on a Jet Plane.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Travel Writer & Editor

Jenna Scatena

Jenna Scatena is an award-winning travel journalist whose work explores the intersection of place and culture.

Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic, AFAR, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, BBC Travel, San Francisco Chronicle, Marie Claire, O the Oprah magazine, and Vogue. Her essays have been anthologized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing Vol. 9 and Vol. 11 and An Innocent Abroad (Lonely Planet), and have won multiple Solas Travel Writing Awards and one Lowell Thomas Award from the SATW Foundation.

Previously she served as an editor at Sunset and San Francisco magazines. Jenna received her B.A. In nonfiction writing from Ithaca College and is based in Istanbul and San Francisco. She regularly teaches travel writing workshops online and in Turkey. jennascatena.com

Website | Instagram | Twitter

Founder, Women’s Travel Fest

Kelly Lewis

Kelly Lewis is the founder of Go! Girl Guides (travel guidebooks for women) the annually sold-out Women’s Travel Fest conference, and Damesly, a boutique tour operator for women.

She has been called a “pioneer” in women’s travel by National Geographic and a “woman changing the face of travel” by Adventure.com. She’s a dreamer, an optimist and a go-getter, passionate about seeing the world and helping other women to do the same.

Website | Facebook | Twitter

The Travel PM

Kendra Abney

Kendra Abney is the Founder & CEO of The Travel PM. As a project manager and long-time traveler, Kendra is an expert in putting together the perfect plan for clients traveling for personal or business reasons.

The Travel PM offers customized Perfect City Plans, downloadable and in-print travel tools, researched destinations, and more. Contact Kendra with The Travel PM to learn more about travel planning for your next trip.

Website | Facebook I Instagram

Passport 2 Pretty

Kenecia Lashae

Kenecia Lashae is a global citizen and entrepreneur born in Fort Worth, Texas. Upon graduating from Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas, with a B.A in Business Marketing, Kenecia landed in New York City, where her dreams of becoming a professional makeup artist came to life. Her passion for beauty comes at a close second to her love of travel. To date Kenecia has visited 44 countries and 6 continents.

Passport 2 Pretty, a digital platform, was created from Kenecia’s expertise in beauty and passion for travel. It was in Rishikesh, India where Kenecia earned her 200 hour yoga and meditation teacher training certification from World Peace Yoga School.

Kenecia’s world travels serve as inspiration for her role as a travel influencer, speaker, wellness warrior, writer, self-love advocate and future wealthy auntie.

Website | Twitter I Instagram

Climber, Motivational Speaker

Lei Wang

Lei is the first Asian woman to complete the Explorer’s Grand Slam and a sought-after international motivational speaker and executive coach.

She helps business leaders accelerate their careers to exciting new heights with ease and grace, lead their organizations to make a bigger impact, and connect deeper with the community they serve.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

President, TTC Tour Brands

Melissa DaSilva

Melissa DaSilva is President of the TTC Tour Brands for North America with an industry career spanning more than 30 years. For DaSilva, travel is both a personal passion and professional pursuit. An avid and lifelong traveler Melissa has been to more than fifty countries and has lived in both the US and the UK.

Her contagious enthusiasm comes from a deeply held belief she shares with TTC; travel helps broaden perspectives through the connectivity of shared experiences of adventure, exploration, learning and laughter showing how we are all more alike than different.

Website | Twitter | Facebook

Adventurely

Mita Carriman

Mita Carriman is Founder & CEO of Adventurely (backed by Backstage Capital & Google for Startups): a company on a mission to connect digital nomads to each other & their new local communities with thoughtfulness around sustainability & local impact in mind.

Originally an Entertainment & IP attorney from New York City- Mita spent 5 years traveling the world as a full time digital nomad while working remotely across 20 countries, 26 cities & 60+ Airbnb’s. It was through her experiences as a digital nomad that she was left compelled with inspiration as an Entrepreneur to build products & services to serve the digital nomad space.

Mita firmly believes that the future of work is inextricably tied to the future of travel and she is a remote work advocate.

She was named 1 of 16 women inspiring international travel in 2021 by Buzzfeed & a top 10 digital nomad to follow in 2022 by the Tourism Board of Dominica. She also has grown digital nomad communities in Barbados (during their launch of the world’s first digital nomad visa) and Playa Del Carmen Mexico.

Website | Instagram

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Editor, Fodor’s Travel

Nikki Vargas

Originally from Colombia, Nikki is a Senior Editor at Fodor’s Travel, a published author, the Founding Editor of Unearth Women, and a freelance journalist.

As a published author, Nikki is represented by the literary division of the Paradigm Talent Agency.

Her first book, Wanderess, is an exhaustive women’s travel resource combining the wisdom and expertise of leading women in the travel space. Wanderess was published by the Clarkson Potter imprint of Penguin Random House in February 2022.

Nikki’s second book is a candid travel memoir called Call You When I Land, which will be published by the Hanover Square Presss imprint of Harper Collins in November 2023. Nikki’s work has been covered by The New York Times, Good Morning America, CNN, Vogue Spain, and The Washington Post; while her bylines have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Zagat, VICE, Food & Wine, and more.

As a public speaker, Nikki has spoken at the Women’s Travel Fest, Women in Travel Summit, Latino Travel Fest, the Travel + Adventure Show, IMM North America, and the former New York Times Travel Show.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

The Professional Hobo

Nora Dunn

Nora Dunn (aka The Professional Hobo) has been a digital nomad since 2006 and is considered an OG travel blogger and digital nomad.

She combines her expertise as a former financial planner, with 17 years of travel lifestyle experience, to help people travel long-term while working remotely.

Her travel adventures range from the sublime to the absurd to downright terrifying. Ask her about the kangaroo.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Editorial Director | The Frommer Travel Show

Pauline Frommer

Pauline Frommer is the Co-President of Frommer Media LLC with her father, and travel legend, Arthur Frommer, founder of the Frommer’s guidebooks. Together they publish the Frommer’s guides, as well as Frommers.com, which gets 12 million page views per month.

Pauline is also host of the Frommer’s Travel Show, a podcast that was named one of the 13 best for travel by the New York Times. She is an award winning travel writer and editor; her most current book is the best selling Frommer’s New York City 2023.

You may recognize her face as Pauline created weekly travel segments for CNN’s Headline News for three years; she’s also made appearances on The Today Show, Good Morning America, The NBC Evening News, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NPR’s Marketplace, and every local news station you can name. She’s mother to two very well-traveled daughters, and married to Columbia University professor Mahlon Stewart.

Website | Twitter | Instagram

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The Roaming Nanny

Retha Charette

Retha is all about women supporting women and has been from a young age because of her membership in the Girl Scouts. In 2020 she’ll be celebrating 30 years in the organization!

She has been traveling consistently for over 6 years and in February of 2019 left her full-time job as a Nanny to be a Travel Writer, Adventure Guide, and Travel Nanny (just to name a few things she does.)

Retha loves sharing her passion for travel and discovery with others and is always looking for new and exciting places to explore.

Some of her favorite adventures so far include climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, learning to scuba dive in Cozumel, Mexico, and camping in Antarctica.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Host, Samantha Brown’s Places to Love

Samantha Brown

Samantha is a two time Emmy Award winning Television personality and travel expert.

Over the last 20 years, Samantha has traveled around the world visiting over 250 cities in 75 countries and 45 U.S. states creating over 200 hours of engaging and informative television programming along the way.

Samantha started her TV career at the Travel Channel where over 15 years created many iconic travel series, including Great Hotels, Passport to Europe, Great Weekends and Samantha Brown’s Asia.

In 2018, Samantha moved from Travel Channel to PBS and her new show there, “Samantha Brown’s Places to Love” quickly became the highest rated travel program on public television. In 2019 she earned two Emmy awards (Outstanding Travel and Adventure Program and Outstanding Host for a Lifestyle, Children’s or Special Class Program) and has been nominated again every year since.

In Places to Love, she finds the destinations, experiences and most importantly, the people who make you feel like you belong to a place, and not just a consumer passing through.

Samantha’s fun-loving style has made her a revered and engaging television personality whose approach is less expert, less host and more a person you would want to travel with. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and 9 year old twins.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

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Investor. Speaker. Author. Entrepreneur.

Sarah Weaver

Sarah Weaver is an author, speaker, coach, real estate investor, and business owner. Sarah runs three businesses that serve both real estate investors and real estate agents. 

She travels the country coaching real estate agents and hosting intimate retreats for investors. Talk about a dream life.

Invested Adventures hosts epic events for real estate investors all over the world. Sarah is taking 18 investors to hike Patagonia and 12 investors on an African Safari 2023. Arya Design Services helps investors analyze, furnish and launch their furnished rentals nationwide. The Sarah Weaver Mentorship Program serves investors looking to grow their portfolios no matter where they live. 

Sarah owns 19 units in four states. This includes nine furnished rentals—all of which she self-manages from afar. Did we mention that Sarah is always traveling? She has traveled to 47 countries on six continents and has been fully nomadic since January 2019.

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Global Beauty Expert

Stephanie Flor

A Makeup Artist Discovering Beauty Through a Global Lens

Well versed in the language of beauty. She is endlessly curious about color, texture, and what lies beneath the surface. Flor’s mission is to understand other traditions, while remaining steeped in her Latina roots. She’s traveled to over 35 countries in her quest to diversify the conversation. She is working on q documentary series is inspired by New York’s diverse cultures coming together, and their mission of sharing their beauty culture with the world.

Stephanie has been featured in Forbes, Oprah, Yahoo, Refinery 29, Marie Claire,Vogue, Instyle, and more. She has been named, Latina magazine’s “Young & Inspiring: Ones to Watch” list. Beauty Vanguard and Marie Claire featured her as “Making Her Mark”.

Website | Instagram | Twitter

Points & Miles

Stephanie Zito

Stephanie Zito, founder of wanderingforgood, is a professional travel hacker and part time humanitarian on a mission to help travelers access the globe through hotel, airline, and credit card points.

Stephanie is the author of the award travel books Upgrade Unlocked: The Unconventional Guide to Luxury Travel on a budget, The Honeymoon Hack, and the forthcoming Go Girl: Travel Hacking Guide for Girls, and also is co-owner and managing editor of the Travel Hacking Cartel, a points and miles service.

Stephanie has been collecting miles since high school, and took her first international airline mileage trip in 1994 to Europe. Stephanie has since traveled to more than 125 countries and all seven continents using points and miles.

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Founder, Mejo

Timathea Workman

Timathea has traveled extensively around the globe leading tours to study everything from classic art in Europe to Grey whales in Baja, trekking through the Moroccan Sahara by camel to watch the sun rise over the red sand dunes, hiking across blue glaciers in Antarctica between penguin rookeries, visiting remote islands in French Polynesia to learn bee keeping and dive with sharks, conducting interviews on creativity and censorship with contemporary authors in China, studying the wildlife of Patagonia, and working with A-list actors on a film crew at historic sites in Jordan.

She has led small group tours walking between villages on the Coastal Path in Cornwall, exploring islands in the Adriatic, Ionian, and Aegean Seas, learning to cook homemade ravioli on the Amalfi Coast, visiting iconic Harry Potter sites, and sharing her favorite cafés and museums around the world. When she is not traveling she teaches writing and life skills to teenagers and works as a freelance writer, editor, photographer, and bookmaker in Los Angeles. She is the creator of Mejo, the unique travel memoir journals. She also rescues pigeons.

Timathea loves sharing her joy of unplugged travel with others to help them get the most out of their experience and see the world with new eyes. She has fun inspiring women to find the often overlooked everyday details along the route and tap into the inner journey that is sparked by new surroundings.

Website | Instagram

Travel Reporter | Travel with Vikkie

Victoria M. Walker

Victoria M. Walker is a travel reporter and the founder of the “Travel With Vikkie” newsletter.

Victoria has been seen and heard as a travel expert on NPR, MSNBC, Newsy, and FOX 5 in Washington, among others. She contributes to AFAR Magazine as Special Correspondent covering the U.S. South, The New York Times Real Estate “Build” section, and Upgraded Points. She was formerly the Senior Travel Reporter at The Points Guy.

In February 2022, Victoria reignited an international conversation around pay transparency after a tweet about her salary went viral. She’s been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, GMA and others.

Victoria previously served as a multimedia journalism lecturer at Howard University, where she taught Multimedia Storytelling, Intro to Media Production and Digital Media Literacy. She also held an adjunct position at Marymount Manhattan College.

Victoria started her career as a video editor at The Washington Post and was part of the team that won the Society for Features Journalism’s Diversity in Digital Features award in 2019 for the “Green Book” project.

A proud native of Hampton, Virginia, Victoria now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her four-year-old pug, Migo. She is represented by Michael Longclaws at Javelin.

Website | Twitter

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Travels With Darley talking about SEASON TEN!

Thank you to Travels with Darley for joining me on my podcast! Lisa and Darley at the NYC Travel and Adventure Show Feb 18, 2023

Recognized in Forbes for her “PBS Travel Empire,” Darley Newman is the creator and host of Emmy Award-winning series “Travels with Darley” and “Equitrekking” broadcast on PBS, Amazon Prime, Ovation TV JOURNY, Wondrium and networks in over 85 nations. Having led production teams in over 25 nations and 26 states, her filmmaking adventures include traversing one of the world’s largest salt pans in Africa, free diving in South Korea, swimming with sharks in Dubai and biking the WWI ‘red zone’ in northeast France. Her series takes viewers to remote and stunning locations to reveal fascinating global cultures, adventure and cuisine, and inspire viewers to break out of their comfort zone to learn more about the world. She’s received six Daytime Emmy Award nominations, for hosting, writing, producing and best series, and has been honored with two Telly awards and the North American Travel Journalist Award. She recently completed her 10th season and 59th half hour of “Travels with Darley.”

Check out Season 10 of Travels With Darley:

Travels with Darley Season 10 Promo from Darley Newman on Vimeo.

Darley-Newman.com

DarleyCNewman.com

Travels with Darley 10th Season Special Edition T-Shirt https://www.darleycnewman.com/shop

Follow Darley on Instagram // Twitter // LinkedIn // TikTok // Facebook 

Darley Newman and Lisa Niver at The Mar Vista Sept 16, 2019

Lisa Niver:

Good morning. This is Lisa Niver from We Say Go Travel and I’m so honored to be here today with Darley Newman. Hi Darley.

Darley Newman:
Hi Lisa. Good to see you again.

Lisa Niver:
In a short amount of time we’ve been so lucky to be together in real life in Los Angeles, in New York. Who knows where we’re going to meet up next besides here on the internet.

Darley Newman:
Maybe Türkiye?

Lisa Niver:

I hope to go with you there. Congratulations first of all on 10 seasons with your PBS show. That’s really incredible.

Darley Newman:

Thank you. We’ve done a lot of episodes now. 59 half hours. I’ve written a lot of scripts.

Lisa Niver:

It’s really impressive. Congratulations just to even get started at all — let alone to get to 59 episodes. I know that you’ve done a lot of different things with video, with production, with travel. Tell people a little about how you got on this path because I’m sure you have people come up to you all the time and say you have my dream job.

Darley Newman:
Oh my gosh. Totally. You know, it is a dream job. It’s a lot of work but I love it. I figure if I’m going to be working every day anyway I might as well work on something I love and get to travel. That’s really why I started the series. I caught the travel bug early and I wanted to try and see the world and thought if I have to be in an office every day how am I going to go out there and see the world. I don’t want to wait until I retire. I want to do it now.

So, I came up with the idea for my first series on PBS which was Equitrekking and did 35 half hours of and went horseback riding all around the world and learned so much doing that series and really felt like the theme of what I was doing is similar to what I’m doing now with traveling with locals and getting those insights from people who live in the destinations.

That’s what I do with Travels with Darley and now we’ve been everywhere from Los Angeles to Little Rock Arkansas and Türkiye and Istanbul and France and a lot of different places but through that local perspective on what it is like to really live there and be there and also the history and culture and, of course, the food because food is so important in life in general.

Lisa Niver:

You really have covered so many places but say a little bit more about how you first caught the travel bug. Did someone in your family take you on an adventure or did a teacher inspire you? Did you get the bug in school or you read a book, how’d it happen?

Darley Newman:

So, I’ve always been really curious about things in general and always asking why, but I was able to take a trip in high school. I actually went with my friend’s family on a European cruise and it was amazing. It was a smaller cruise ship. It was luxurious. We went to France. We went to Italy. We went to Greece, and I’d never been to Europe before and I was in ninth grade and it was really life changing. The food was amazing and the architecture, the history, and I thought wow, I’m just seeing Europe for the first time.

I had been to Mexico and Caribbean but hadn’t been to Europe before and I thought there’s a whole world out there that I would love to experience and see. I mean, not even just in Europe. I went on to go to Asia and other places but I really caught the travel bug then. I had a couple trips with my family to do different adventures but getting to go to Italy and try Neapolitan pizza in Naples for the first time and seeing all the ruins in Greece, I was like wow this is something I really need to experience and I’m enjoying learning so much more about other cultures as I get to these places.

That’s how I got started. It was being invited on a trip and saying can I go. Yes. Okay. Wonderful.

Lisa Niver:

Well, you know what’s funny is that’s actually a lot of how I also got started. I went on a cruise in the Mediterranean with my family and saw a lot of similar things. Of course, I went on to work on the ship and you went on horseback…so, were you horseback riding as a child, is that how you got started with Equitrekking?

Darley Newman:
I actually started horseback riding at summer camp. One of the things I loved going to camps as a kid is you could try so many different things. I was doing archery and karate and theatre and painting and pottery, but horseback riding was an activity that I just really gravitated towards and being able to learn at a young age. I was six years old. I was one of the youngest campers there and in the mountains of North Carolina, and just really fell in love with being outside on a horse. I’m sure the mountain air and the beautiful scenery didn’t hurt.

I mean, there’s something just special about exploring on a horse and being with horses in general and they have such a different demeaner. Everyone says that horses really reveal a lot about you when you interact with them and I think that’s been really true, and I’ve seen that more and more as I’ve gotten those experiences because I do horseback riding adventures now with Travels with Darley as well and I’ve done a lot of stuff on the ground like ground work with horses and also riding and it’s just such an amazing experience.

Lisa Niver:
Wow. That is all incredible. I’m curious since you started so young– people always ask me what could possibly still be on your bucket list. I know that you still have a lot on your bucket list, because the more places you go the more places you see. Where are some of the adventures you really want to still tackle?

Darley Newman:
I definitely want to do more travel within Asia. I haven’t been to Thailand yet. I got to go to Cambodia, which was an amazing trip but Thailand would be on my list not only because I love to eat Thai food and I’d love to go over to Thailand and try some more authentic Thai cuisine but because I hear such great and fascinating things about Thailand. That’s definitely on my list. More of Asia in general. I would love to venture throughout South America a bit more. I’ve done Uruguay but getting over to Argentina I think would be really fascinating and of course they’ve got a great horse culture there, wonderful outdoor scenery.

I think just experiencing more of these different things. Antarctica might be on my list but it’s not as high. A lot of people are going to Antarctica right now and doing these expedition cruises which is a bucket list item for so many people. I think I would like to do that but I have a lot of other places that are a bit higher ranking right now. So, hopefully I can juggle my schedule to get to all of them or at least figure out some film trips to these spots.

Lisa Niver:

Well, it’s so amazing. how do you pick? I know season 10 has amazing things. Like you were in a sidecar and sometimes you were in costume and you flew in the treetops. How do you figure what’s going in the next season? Are you already working on season 11 or how does that work?

Darley Newman:
I am. I’m always looking for something distinctive in the destinations now. It started really a couple of years ago when I did this year where I did some really extreme adventure activities. I did the world’s highest commercial bungee. I swam with sharks in Dubai. I did the world’s highest commercial climbing wall in Reno, Nevada. I feel like the adventures started to seek me out because then people heard I was doing these adventures and then they would say… You can do a zipline roller coaster in the eastern townships of Quebec which is what I just did on this recent season which was really fun actually and also cycling through the trees.

There’s also a lot of unique things out there if you start to look in different locations. I definitely look for those when I’m planning a new season and then I always intertwine. I’m looking for more exotic foods and interesting foods now too that have a story behind them. I feel like anything that has a good story can be fodder for a great travel adventure and a lot of those places are open to the public and accessible. Those are places I look to profile because as you know people want to watch and go to those places, whether they’re looking at your podcast or hearing about it on my show. It’s something that they can go and recreate, and I think that’s what makes it really cool.

Lisa Niver:
Yes. I agree with you. I love that you were in costume in Quebec and the cycle car. I think it does make such good television moments and I like that you’re looking for stuff people can go and do because sometimes people say to me I saw what you did. Can I do it too.…Have you done the Edge Walk at the CN Tower in Toronto?

Darley Newman:
I haven’t been there yet. No.

Lisa Niver:
Unfortunately, the day I was there it was raining but they still go in the rain. It’s only cancelled for lightning. I like what you said about adventure searches you out because when I was just in New York at the conference with you –someone said to me– have you done the City Climb? So, I did the skyscraper climb in New York. I don’t know if you’ve done it yet.

Darley Newman:
No. Is that over The Edge?

Lisa Niver:
YES! The Edge in Hudson Yards. We should have gone together. That would have been so fun.

Darley Newman:

We should have. That would have been awesome.

Lisa Niver:
Next time I come we’ll do an adventure.

Darley Newman:
I love it. I love it.

Lisa Niver:
I agree with you it’s important to find adventure. What do you say to people who see your adventures and say I could never do that. Like what would your advice be to people who want to take a bigger step to being a bit more brave?

Darley Newman:
Well, of course everything is personal. Something that I do, someone else may not do and vice versa but I think it’s important to sometimes get out of your comfort zone whether that’s going on a trip to France to try to learn the language and that might be a true adventure. Or going to take a cooking class somewhere. Those are all things that are so personal but I think stepping out of your comfort zone every once in a while is really good for you because it’s amazing how much it teaches you about yourself and about other people in the world.

I was surprised at how emotional I got when I did the bungee, even during it. It was really an emotional experience and I thought it would just be scary and adventurous and I’d be filled with adrenalin, but it really made me emotional…well, probably because my life flashed before my eyes that I was like why am I doing this.

Lisa Niver:
Oh my gosh. It was the first time you ever did a bungee jump?

Darley Newman:

This was my first-time bungee jumping.

Lisa Niver:

And you did the highest one!

Darley Newman:
It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records and you go off of the Macau Tower. So, it is an actual tower with concrete and a city beneath you. So, it’s not like you’re in New Zealand and there’s water beneath you. You’re going with your arms out. You go face first and it’s pretty intense. It’s super intense. I don’t know if I could do it again. I’m just going to be honest. I did it. It was intense. My adrenalin was — I can’t even tell you. The whole rest of the day I was jacked up. I was like what are we doing next? What are we doing next?

Lisa Niver:

I think that’s good for people to hear because I think that there’s a perception that you’re not afraid of anything and you just do everything and that’s not true for any of us, and you know, I still get lost. I still get confused. Sometimes I have a flight delay. Everybody has the same kind of drama with travel. We don’t have secret super powers.

Darley Newman:
No. It’s all about your perspective on things. I did know that was relatively safe. It’s pretty safe to do that, the bungee. I wasn’t so worried that I was really going to die, but when you’re doing the jump and you’re very focused on this because I want to follow the instructions properly so I don’t hurt myself.

Lisa Niver:

That’s another good point for people listening or watching that we are not doing stuff unattended. We are going to places that have a safety rating. At City Climb, the two cables can hold two rhinoceros and I said I’m pretty sure I weigh less than one rhinoceros, so I’ll be okay. It’s not like somebody has got a piece of twine and we’re jumping off of buildings. These are things which we feel are good risks.

Lisa Niver:
They are good risks.

Darley Newman:

Again, it is something that when you’re in a location and you can do that adventure and it’s not really in that many other places or it’s really nowhere else– then it does make it special. That’s why I say yes to a lot of those things because I think when else am I going to be here and get this opportunity and I made it to this place far far away from my homeland. Let’s just dive in. Yeah. Let’s do it.

Lisa Niver:

When you’re out and about is everything planned in advance? Are you seeing what you find with locals? What’s your style?

Darley Newman:
When I’m filming for the show, Travels with Darley, I’m doing a lot of stuff that’s planned but a lot of stuff does come up that’s just not planned because that’s the nature of travel. That’s the nature of weather changing and somebody getting sick that you’re with. In Hong Kong, I ended up at the Hong Kong medicinal doctor buying herbs with my location fixer guy who was sick and he wanted to go to that doctor. So, I got that whole experience of what is it like to go to the Chinese doctor, and he actually checked me out and prescribed some herbs for me to help me sleep better when I’m traveling and I thought wow, and we filmed it and we put it in the show. So, that was totally unplanned.

A lot of the food stuff can be unplanned too. I was just in Mexico at the International Folk Art Market and I’m saw this sign in the distance for the New Mexico state cookie, the official state cookie of New Mexico. Of course, we have to do that. We have to have the New Mexico state cookie and the family who started the business was there. The whole family was there. It was a great opportunity to meet them and hear the story and we filmed that too. A lot of stuff is definitely planned. A lot comes up. It’s just fun and interesting when you’re in a new location and you can see it and experience it.

Lisa Niver:
And what’s the New Mexico state cookie like?

Darley Newman:
It’s called the Bisco chito and in different parts of the state they actually say it and pronounce it differently but it’s almost like a shortbread cookie, but they do all of these different iterations of it. So, you can get one that’s like a spicy jalapeno and a cheesy one and all these different ingredients that go into it but it’s a recipe that’s pretty old in New Mexico. It comes over originally from the Spanish who came over that way. So, there’s a lot of history behind it and a lot of fun fodder around the legends attached to it and all that stuff, and meeting the family who got it into legislation and legislated as New Mexico’s official state cookie. These people are dedicated to that cookie. So, no better place to try it.

Lisa Niver:
What an incredible moment. In New Mexico, didn’t you also do some pottery?

Darley Newman:

I actually did pottery in this season in Cappadocia in Türkiye and that was…I was out with the Einstein of pottery. That’s another one where I knew I was going to do a pottery segment in Avanos and go to Cappadocia which is known for its pottery but I didn’t know that I would get to have him on camera because we didn’t know his availability. So, sometimes you’re just lucky and it works out. With today’s schedules it’s hard to sometimes get people that you want to be there.

I was lucky to have him, and his name is Jay Gallop and he’s really well known throughout the world and has this awesome studio there and has workshops and classes. He’s trained a lot of female potters and pottery was traditionally male oriented in Türkiye. Now a lot of women are doing it because they’ve come to Avanos and learned the craft there. I thought that was a neat story and that’s how he met his wife. She was there trying to learn pottery. They ended up getting married, having kids, and she helps with the family business.

I got a little bit of a lesson with him even though I’m not great at pottery. I hadn’t done it since I was a child at my summer camp experience.

Lisa Niver:
Wow. I also do pottery. I saw that picture and I thought I really want to do that. It’s something so special to take mud and make art. I’m so glad you got to do that.

Darley Newman:
It was really interesting Lisa. I think you would like it because also the clay there is really special. It has a mix of volcanic soil and they get different soil from the mountains and they mix it and when they add the water he held it up to my ear and I could hear it almost crackling. It was almost like pop rocks in the mud. It has a different consistency. So, it’s pretty interesting to be able to work with it. That’s one of the reasons why the pottery there is so unique and special.

Lisa Niver:

Well, I can certainly see why you’ve had so many episodes and so many Emmy awards because you just exude the excitement about the place, and I know I really want to go and I know everyone else wants to go. Can people travel with you? Do you lead groups or how do they find you?

Darley Newman:

You can’t travel with me yet though I’ve done some special things where people have won the opportunity to come on some of our filming adventures. I might do some stuff coming up, so stay tuned about that! But, for right now, I’m mostly traveling and connecting with people on social media. I’m doing a lot of live streams as I travel, which I think is fun. So, on Facebook and I also work with Smithsonian Associates and I livestream out about destinations. I just did one from Bordeaux over the summer. In Colorado, I did one.

So, I’m on location going live and sharing it out on different platforms and people follow along and get to interact and that’s where you really never know what’s going to happen because not only can the technology fail but you’re just out in the world. We were walking through Bordeaux down the promenade down by the water and we’re just literally on a live stream. I was there with one of my friends who’s French and we go live. So, we had it planned out, but you can’t really plan everything for that either. That was definitely an adventure.

Lisa Niver:
Tell us more about what’s happening with Smithsonian. You’re doing lectures?

Darley Newman:
I do. I’ve been doing a series where I do a deep dive into different locations. I just did one on Bordeaux and I’m on for an hour and a half teaching about the place and sharing my tips for what you want to do while you’re there, insider information, and I bring on live guests who are experts…they’re tour guides or they have knowledge of the history.

When I did one in Quebec, I actually brought on the guide that I used in Quebec City. When I got dressed up, because you can take his tour and he does these different festivals and he’ll bring a costume for you, so you can be historically accurate when you’re walking around and it was really fun. I mean, I have to say I looked a bit ridiculous.

Lisa Niver:
No. You didn’t look ridiculous. I saw a picture. I thought you looked super cute.

Darley Newman:

I enjoyed the experience. I said I’ll wear that outfit while I walk around, and I was walking around Quebec City and it was so funny because we were standing out anyway because we were filming this. So, we have our cameras going but this woman was yelling at me from Petit Champlain which is one of the famous shopping streets and she called out my name and I looked over and it was a girlfriend from college I haven’t seen in 20 years, and she recognized me and she was there with her family on vacation. So, it was fun to reconnect, but she never would have seen me if I hadn’t been in costume or filming but I feel like if you’re going to be in a costume people might say hi to you.

Lisa Niver:
It’s really impressive. So, you’ve been to 85 nations. Is that right?

Darley Newman:

My show has been broadcast in 85 nations.

I’ve been to a lot of destinations and I’ve been to a lot of the USA. I do a lot of the US if you watch both series. I just did Delaware as a state. I’ve done North Dakota, Alaska. I’ve done New Mexico a couple of times. So, I’ve been to a lot of US destinations and I’m trying to hit as many of those as possible because I think sometimes people overlook what’s right here. Especially we learned that during the pandemic. I think everyone started to travel more in their own areas or close to home. I think it’s important to do and I’m looking forward to continuing to get to new states that I may have been to before myself but then to film them. I think it’s great to share that content and information with other people.

Lisa Niver:
I’m ready to go travel with you. We should do a show together. One time when Darley and I were together in Los Angeles we showed up wearing the exact same outfit, so we’ll add the picture because that was so funny, but tell everybody — if they want more which of course they do –where can they watch your show and how can they get connected with you?

Darley Newman:
You can watch Travels with Darley on your local PBS station. It’s on Create TV which is a PBS lifestyle channel. It’s also on Ovation TV’s journey which puts it onto the apps. Through their own apps, Samsung TV, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire. And then I’m also on social media doing a lot of lives and content through @DarleyNewman and Facebook at Travels with Darley.

Lisa Niver:
Can you give us a hint of where you’re going or is it a secret?

Darley Newman:
I’m going back to Alabama. I had done two episodes on the Civil Rights trail there two years ago and I’m going back to focus in on food. When I was there, I got to eat some of the world’s best barbeque in Selma, Alabama but I’m going back to cover food throughout the state and do some other adventure activities. Then I’m going to Louisiana and I’m going to be doing a lot along the east coast right from my home area of New York and beyond, so it should be an interesting season.

Lisa Niver:
Oh my gosh, that’s so exciting. So, one thing I’m putting on your bucket list is to do a cooking class in Thailand because I think that you would love it and also just to say the most giant thank you. It was so great to see you recently in New York, and I hope everyone will watch your show everywhere and follow you on social media. So, thank you Darley Newman from Travels with Darley — we’re sending you good thoughts to go to Thailand and thank you so much.

Darley Newman:
Thank you Lisa. I appreciate it.

Lisa, Darley, Angel and David celebrating TRAVELS with DARLEY in Los Angeles, Sept 16, 2019

PODCAST LINKS

Amazon Music/Podcast

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/c0965f2f-6888-4d59-b4fe-052c79dda3de/episodes/1fd38192-621d-4abf-9a22-7f680f02aabe/make-your-own-map-are-you-ready-to-be-brave-travels-with-darley-talking-about-season-ten

Apple Music/Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/travels-with-darley-talking-about-season-ten/id1669157721?i=1000604350233

Audible Podcast

https://www.audible.com/pd/B0BYKCT15F

iHeart Radio/Podcast

The post Travels With Darley talking about SEASON TEN! appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Make Your Own Map Interview: Lisa Genova, Empathy Warrior, Author and Neuroscientist

Thank you to Lisa Genova, Empathy Warrior, Author and Neuroscientist, for joining me on my podcast!

Lisa’s mission: “My purpose in my writing is to humanize and to engender empathy and compassion for people who have neurological issues.“

Ask yourself like Lisa does: “what would I do if I didn’t have to care about money or what anyone thought?“

Enjoy our interview on your favorite PODCAST platform or the transcript below:

Lisa Niver:

This is Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel. And I am so honored and delighted and excited to have the most incredible author, neuroscientist, Mom, yogi here with me today, Lisa Genova. Thank you for being here.

Lisa Genova:

Lisa, thank you so much. I love your energy and your generosity. It’s so fun to know you.

Lisa Niver:

Thank you. First of all, you have a PhD from Harvard in neuroscience. People know you write about neuroscience and you bring these incredible realistic characters into our lives. So, one of the questions I personally have for you, and I’ve loved your books forever, is what came first? Were you always a writer and then you were a neuroscientist? How did this evolve that you’re at the top of excellence in both of these amazing hard challenging fields?

Lisa Genova:

Oh, my goodness, thank you. I had zero desire or inkling to write most of my life. I was a geeky, nerdy scientist always and very laser focused on that and driven since I was 18. I decided I wanted to be a neuroscientist when I was young, when I was 18, right away in college, and studied that. It was called biopsychology back then. It’s now a neuroscience major as an undergraduate, but that didn’t exist yet because I’m that old. I got a job as a lab tech in a neuroscience lab at Mass General Hospital in Boston right out of college working on the molecular basis of drug addiction.

I went on to get my PhD and I studied that at Harvard and I was a fellow at the NIH. And then I still had no idea I was going to be a writer, but my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and right about that time that I got my degree. And as the neuroscientist in my very big Italian family, I was not her caregiver. She had nine children, so we had lots of people to help with caring for her. But I could learn about Alzheimer’s and pass that education on to my family to help us be better caregivers. And everything I read, it was helpful. I read the neuroscience and that was interesting to me, not helpful to my family, but I read about the disease management and how to be a caregiver.

I knew the worlds of Alzheimer’s and yet what was missing from it was the perspective of the person who has it. At the time everything was written by a scientist, a clinician, a caregiver or social worker and not from the perspective of someone who has the disease. And what I recognized in myself was I felt a lot of sympathy for my grandmother, and a lot of sympathy for us who loved her and we were losing her right in front of us. So, I felt bad for her and bad for us and sympathy is a disconnect–she’s otherized. So, I felt bad for her, but I didn’t feel empathy. I didn’t know how to feel with her. I was very uncomfortable around my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s.

I loved her so much and it was really heartbreaking to watch her lose access to her entire life’s history and not know who we were. And I remember thinking, well, fiction is a place where you get to walk in someone else’s shoes, and feel empathy for someone else’s experience and at the time that kind of story didn’t exist about Alzheimer’s. And I thought, maybe someday I’ll write it. And I don’t know how to write. That will be when I’m retired some day and the very fast pace of my professional life has slowed down. My first child was born in 2000 and I quit my job. I didn’t intend to quit right away, I thought I’ll take six months to a year off.

And then my marriage started to unravel, and I didn’t go back to work, and I was trying to fix my marriage. I had been with my first husband since I was in college, and I was 33 at the time when we got divorced. It was upsetting for me to get divorced. My life had been on a very linear, check all the boxes, I’m doing all the things “right” and now I have this sort of upheaval on what I had framed as a failure. And I was heartbroken and upset and really afraid of an uncertain future. But the fear, luckily, turned into a curiosity and I started asking myself good questions, — what’s my future going to look like? What if I could do anything I wanted?

At first, I thought I’ll just go back to work. But then I thought, what if I could do anything I wanted? and I didn’t have to care about what anyone thought of me? And the answer, the thing that just kept bubbling up was you want to write the book.

Lisa Niver:

Wow.

Lisa Genova:

I tried like hell to talk myself out of it, because I don’t know how to write, I’m a neuroscientist, I don’t write fiction. This is not a safe, stable choice for you right now, girl, you are a divorced, unemployed single Mom. But it was the answer every time I asked myself what would I do if I didn’t have to care about money or what anyone thought? And it was I want to write this book. So, against all sort of reason and sort of you know the logical thing, because it was wildly illogical, I dropped my daughter off at preschool and began doing the research for the book that would become Still Alice.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, my goodness, I’m so glad you shared that with us. Because your books have helped, inspired and educated so many families about so many terrifying, confusing diseases. But I think that for all the people like me who get divorced and feel like complete failures and think what am I going to do now? And what a brilliant question to ask, what would I do if I didn’t care what anyone else thought?

Lisa Genova:

I felt so much shame and fear and that question was really liberating. I still ask myself that on a regular basis, am I living the life I really want to live? And if not, why? Sometimes there’s practical reasons that you can’t, but are there baby steps? My whole life changed because of that. I didn’t have any writing background, and I became a student again. I read lots of books on craft.

And I didn’t know any other writers, which turned out to be helpful, because I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I didn’t know how hard it is, and I didn’t know how bleak that it can be and how difficult is to get published. And you know a bit about how hard that can be.

I didn’t know and so I was sort of blissfully unaware. And I would go into bookstores and libraries and look at all of the thousands of books and think all of those people wrote books, why can’t I? Why not me? It helped, getting out of my own way that was the hardest part of writing the book. It was giving myself permission to do it.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, my gosh that is exactly the way all people start in something new. But how incredible that your “I think I might give myself permission to do this” turned into a New York Times best seller and a movie where the actress won the 2015 Oscar.

Lisa Genova:

Yeah, it’s bananas. And Lisa, it didn’t start that way either though, because I wrote the book and then no one would publish it.

Lisa Niver:

Oh.

Lisa Genova:

There was no one to represent it. I sent out query letters to a hundred literary agents and I heard back no in a form letter, Dear author, no thank you, from most. I got three responses saying we’ll read the manuscript. One, I never heard back from and the other two thought that Alzheimer’s was just too scary and too depressing of a topic for fiction readers. They thought people would shy away from it and that it just wasn’t marketable, so I had really hit a dead end. It was stick the book in the drawer and go back to neuroscience, the bench or consulting or biotech. Or, and this was the summer of 2007, I self-published it. And I sold it out of the trunk of my car.

This is before Facebook, social media was MySpace and Shelfari. It was very limited, but I used that. I was giving myself one year, because I thought if I’m like those contestants for American Idol who are auditioning and can’t sing, but think they can sing, I’ve got to get my life going. I have to earn a living, if this doesn’t work I have to get going here. I was giving myself a year and in 10 months — word of mouth lead to a literary agent who took me on and she sold the book to Simon & Schuster. It ended up being this book that’s been translated into 37 languages and Julianne Moore has an Oscar. So, it’s such a fun story to tell. Your mouth is hanging open. I went from selling out of the trunk of my car, I was begging people to read it.

STILL ALICE

Lisa Niver:

Oh, my goodness. I think it’s so important that people hear that– obviously at this point where you have potential movie deals for three more books. There’s an Oscar from one of the movies. Your TED talk has been watched by eight million people. But it’s hard sometimes to remember that everybody starts at the beginning, and that a hundred agents really ignored you and I mean, gosh, would it be fun to write them all now. But don’t do that — that’s bitter, you’re not bitter.

Lisa Genova:

No, no, no. But it’s like that scene from Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts goes back to the store where the woman wouldn’t wait on her and she’s says–you work on commission, right?

I still hear that to this day, Lisa. There are people who will come up to me and say everyone tells me that your book is beautiful and it’s helped them, but I just can’t go near it yet. It’s too close and I can’t do it. It’s just too upsetting right now. And I understand that. There is that element of this book, this topic, this subject– it’s heavy, it’s hard for folks depending on where you are in the journey. If Alzheimer’s is in your life it can be hard to read this book. It takes courage.

Lisa Niver:

I agree with you, it can be hard. I know for myself we have a family member that had ALS and isn’t with us anymore, but Every Note Played was such a beautiful journey. Your characters when I was reading it, I feel like I know them, your character development is so brilliant and compelling.

Who first called you an empathy warrior? I love that.

Lisa Genova:

Oh, my gosh, I can’t remember where that started.

Lisa Niver:

I love that.

Lisa Genova:

I think it was in Australia on a book tour there. Someone introduced me for a talk and they come up with their own little spin on your bio. And I thought I love that. After Still Alice — when I was given permission to continue, because now I could feed my family, make a living doing this. I get to combine these two things that I care about now, right? I’m passionate about the brain, and brain health and how does the brain work to allow us to think and feel and remember and everything else.

And what about all of these people who live with neurological diseases and disorders and mental illness who because of something going wrong or working differently in their brains that they become otherized and stigmatized and people don’t know what’s going on with them? And that lack of familiarity, that lack of language to be able to talk about what that is, makes people feel afraid, right?

Lisa Niver:

I see.

Lisa Genova:

If you’ve got something going on with your brain and I don’t know what that is, I feel afraid of you and so that further, you know, stigmatizes and alienates folks. And feeling lonely and alienated on top of what’s difficult is such an unnecessary price to pay. My mission, my purpose in my writing is to humanize and to engender empathy and compassion for people who have neurological issues.

Lisa Niver:

Yes, you’re such a gifted storyteller. I remember reading Left Neglected, which was the book about traumatic brain injury, if anyone hasn’t read that one yet. I have intermittent left esotropia that was undiagnosed for a very long time, so I don’t have full left neglect, but I had a lot of missing pieces. And for me it was so interesting to read about someone else and see how they experience it.

How do you come up with these ideas and are the people drawn from your giant Italian family or where are you getting all this inspiration?

Lisa Genova:

Thank you. And before I answer you, you really just hit on something that is also magical, a magical sort of byproduct of all of this and now I’m very mindful of it– is that the books not only help educate with respect to the experience and compassion and empathy for people who have no knowledge of TBI or ALS or Alzheimer’s. As in, I don’t have that in my family and I might never read a book about, I’m certainly not going to read a nonfiction book about ALS, if that doesn’t affect my life, but I might read a novel and now I get that education.

But for people who do live it, the books, because I really do homework and I’m trying to tell the truth under these imagined circumstances, I can portray with dignity and respect, that they have a chance to feel seen and heard, right?

That on these pages, like you just said with respect to your experience, — that’s how I feel, that’s what happens to me. And there’s so much healing that can happen in that — to know that you’re not alone and to feel that you can point to this and say this is me, so I love being able to do that. How do I pick my topics– it depends.

Left Neglected, the book about the traumatic brain injury, came out of a curiosity. I didn’t know anyone with it prior to doing the research for that book. Oliver Sacks wrote a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. He’s a neurologist. And these are true stories and they’re sort of like short stories of clinical vignettes of folks with really interesting brain stuff.

He wrote the book Awakenings, which became a movie with Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. There was a three-page story about a guy with left neglect, and I thought what happens to him? He’s in a hospital in the story and I wondered does he go home? How do you live…how do you walk through a whole world if you’re only aware of half of it? What is this like to experience that?

The book on autism, Love Anthony, was inspired by my cousin, she’s like a sister to me, her son has very severe autism. So, instead of the Temple Grandin’s and a lot of people out there who have the high-functioning Asperger’s end of autism. I thought– what is the other end like– where folks are nonverbal and don’t like to be touched, and can’t make eye contact? What is that experience like and how is that felt?

ALS came out of Still Alice. Richard Glatzer was the co-writer of the script and the co-director of the Still Alice movie which was directed and written by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer. Richard was diagnosed with ALS just a couple of months before he read the book, and agreed to be involved in the film and so he was on-set filming 12 hours a day. His ALS began in the motor neurons of his neck and head, so he couldn’t speak and he was drooling. And one of his arms, maybe his right, was completely paralyzed and he’s typing with one finger on an iPad. He’s a heroic man and a beautiful soul, good guy.

By the end of the filming, I asked him if I could write about ALS next and would he be the first to explain to me what it feels like? And he said yes and we corresponded through email right up until just before the Oscars. My last email from him he typed with his right big toe. It’s a combination of personal and someone I know or I am really curious.

Lisa Niver:

It’s amazing, amazing what you’ve done. And I know there is a new book on the horizon. Are you allowed to tell us what are you diving into next to help people have their personal experience revealed or have more empathy about?

Lisa Genova:

I’m writing, I’m about 200 pages into my next novel. It’s about a young woman with bipolar disorder. I chose bipolar because I had this notion, and I think I’m spot on, that this is something hiding in plain sight everywhere.

That this is a neurological issue, mental illness issue where there’s a lot of shame and a lot of stigma and so people are keeping it secret and not talking about it.

I’m really hopeful to tell a story that becomes a vehicle for conversation to normalize and humanize and talk about a subject so that our communities can be more empathetic and compassionate And we can collapse the distance between people who don’t have bipolar and people who do.

I hope that will help people who are going through it. It’s a really tough disorder to live with and it requires a lot of support from community to do well with it. Many people do great with it, but in the beginning when you’re trying to figure it out and you’re feeling alone in it, and like you have to hide it– it’s an unnecessary burden to deal with. I’m excited to put this one out there.

Lisa Niver:

Well, I can’t wait for that. But while people are waiting for that, in case anyone hasn’t read your nonfiction book, Remember, I think that Remember shares so much about how important it is to pay attention. And I love that you talk about forgetting is not evil.

Lisa Genova:

Thank you. That book came out of talking about Still Alice and Alzheimer’s for so many years that I found that most people, especially over the age of 40, have this really unhealthy relationship with their own memory. That, in these moments of forgetting that we all experience every day, just as a normal part of being human, people go into a tailspin and a panic. And there’s fear and anxiety and stress over, oh, my God, I must be losing my mind or my memory is terrible, or I might be getting Alzheimer’s. This is the first sign. And I recognize that people have this expectation that memory is supposed to be perfect.

Lisa Niver:

Right.

Lisa Genova:

And it’s just not. Our human brains aren’t designed to remember everything. And there are things that we’ll always fail at if we only rely on our brains, so things like a to-do list are perfectly okay. Or why you walk into a room and you don’t know why you’re in there and that’s normal. And here’s why that happens.

I wanted to give people a sort of owner’s manual. This is how memory works. This is what it needs. This is what it doesn’t need. This is why it forgets. Here’s how you can improve it and optimize it and keep it healthy. And here’s what you can let go of day-to-day and not worry about if you can’t — it’s not designed to remember to do things later, remember people’s names.

It doesn’t catalogue everything we encounter it only remembers what you pay attention to. So, just real super quick folks, if you are regularly forgetting where you put your glasses, your keys, your phone, where you parked your car. Oh, my God, what does that mean? Am I getting Alzheimer’s? I’m betting you didn’t pay attention to where you put them. Because if you don’t give it a moment’s attention, that’s a neurological input, you cannot create a memory of anything past this present moment unless you give it your attention. So, if we didn’t make a memory of it in the first place, you didn’t forget anything.

Lisa Niver:

I think it’s brilliant that you called it an owner’s manual. Because I do think you give so many quality explanations and tips about encoding memories and feelings and journals. But I also think it’s important that people have clear information about how we can help our brains with our choices every day.

What do we eat? Do we exercise? And like you said you’re a yogi, do we meditate? But can you talk for a minute? I think it’s really important that people hear from you about, that we think stress is the biggest issue, but that the lack of sleep is really, really a problem.

Lisa Genova:

I don’t know which one impacts you more– whether it’s reactivity to stress and can you be less reactive to stress, because we’re not going to be able to remove the stressful world from doing what it’s doing — it’s how we react to it. But sleep is big and it stresses people out, unfortunately, to hear this because a lot of people are not good at sleeping.

But the data’s super clear, it’s just really compelling, that human brains and human bodies need seven to nine hours of sleep. Because sleep is not a state of unconscious nothingness. We are very biologically busy while we sleep and we’re repairing and we’re restoring or consolidating memories. We’re cleaning metabolic debris that accumulated during the business of being awake.

A lot of important things are going on and if you don’t get the right phases and the right amount of sleep then you’re disrupting those processes. They’re interrupted and not completing and over time that can create some health issues and can create some memory problems.

So, knowing that, then people think– oh, my God I don’t sleep enough, I’m in trouble. Everything up until today is water under the bridge.

What can you do tonight to support a good night’s sleep? I did not get a good night’s sleep last night, but I’m not panicked. It’s just — new day, new night — what can I do?

This is a whole other episode, Lisa, but people can Google. Start with your room temperature — is it too hot? You want to be able to fall asleep. Write down your to-do list for tomorrow if thoughts are cranking and you can’t shut your brain off.

Are you exercising during the day? Because that helps you fall asleep at night. Get off your screens before bedtime. Your pineal gland thinks it’s daytime if you’re staring at this screen right up until the moment you want to fall asleep, because that light is telling your brain that it’s daytime. If we can get back in the rhythm of the planet, that would help us fall asleep.

There are things we can do that will help the people who are saying– I just can’t fall asleep and that’s the way it is. We need to get empowered. We have agency and influence here. Ask yourself what can you do to help support a better night’s sleep tonight and see if that works. It’s worth it.

Lisa Niver:

I agree with you. It could be its whole own episode and I would love to have the chance to talk to you again. I just wanted to talk briefly about the choices you make that can make a difference. And it’s important that if you ate more vegetables, and you turned your screens off earlier and you got a good night’s sleep, you might feel a whole lot better.

Lisa Genova:

Yes.

Lisa Niver:

And remember those simple steps.

Lisa Genova:

We live in a funny culture. Everybody wants the magic pill so they can destroy their brain and body and then just take the magic pill to fix it. We all want to live a long life, but we want to match our brain span to our lifespan, right?

We don’t want to live to be 80, but have Alzheimer’s at 80, so that is going to require some good living choices along the way. Because we know that the health of your brain and body has a combination of the genes you’ve inherited and how you live. We can’t do anything about the genes you inherited, but we can do a lot about the way you live.

So, if you can incorporate a healthy lifestyle on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t feel like deprivation, it doesn’t feel hard. Once you get in the habits of yummy healthy food and daily exercise it feels good, you feel better, and then you’re setting yourself up for a healthy brain for a lifetime.

Lisa Niver:

That’s the perfect segue towards the end of our conversation about choices. Because the thing you started with, about how you came into being a writer was– what choices do I want to make with my life, what’s really going to fulfill me and make me happy? You said it much more eloquently. What was your question that you asked yourself about what you should do with your life?

Lisa Genova:

I love what you’re saying. Can we be intentional? It’s, if I could do anything I wanted what would I do? To this day for me still, it’s I want to write the next book, and that’s what I’m doing.

Lisa Niver:

That is so exciting and we can’t wait for the next book to come out. And several of your books are going to be movies soon. Can you talk about that or we’re not talking about that yet?

Lisa Genova:

From your lips to God’s ears.

We have three in development. And I am so glad I write books and I don’t make movies because it’s a lot of puzzle pieces and you’re not in control of a lot of them.

Every Note Played, Inside the O’Briens, and Left Neglected are all in development. And any one of them could pop soon, so hopefully we’re filming at least one before the end of this year.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, my goodness, it’s so exciting. Lisa, your books, I love them, it’s been my honor to write about them. I really appreciate all of your support in my writing career and I wish you so much incredible success with all of it. And thank you from all your readers, that don’t get this opportunity to speak to you directly but will be listening, that we love your books.

Lisa Genova:

Oh, Lisa, thank you so much. I am cheering you on as well and thank you for being such a support. It’s fun that we got connected.

Lisa Niver:

Thank you, thank you, thank you. And if people want to find you, what’s the best way to look for you on the Internet or social media? Where can they get updates about books?

Lisa Genova:

I’m on Instagram and Facebook, that’s really me — @authorLisaGenova, and my website is lisagenova.com.

https://www.instagram.com/authorlisagenova/

https://www.facebook.com/authorlisagenova/

Lisa Niver:

Perfect. And everybody who wants to learn more, don’t forget to watch her TED talk, which already has eight million views. Thank you so much and I can’t wait to buy your next book.

Lisa Genova:

Thank you, Lisa.

My interviews and articles about Lisa Genova:

Feminist Fiction Books to Curl Up With for the Holidays

https://msmagazine.com/2018/12/24/virtual-search-irl-empathy/ REMEMBER BOOK TOURThrive Global https://community.thriveglobal.com/surviving-covid-like-a-superhero/

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