EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever stopped to think about yourself and your story? If someone were to write your memoir what would it say? We all seek some level of authenticity but have trouble removing the labels and finding our whole story. Welcome to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. In this program we’ll explore diverse stories on identity to help determine what is truly yours. Now here is your host Diane Dewey.

Diane: Welcome to Dropping In everyone. Hope you’re feeling well and feeling safe. We’re broadcasting live from St. Petersburg, Florida with our guest Stephanie Rafflelock who is in Austin, Texas, beautiful city out west. Good morning Stephanie.

Stephanie: Hey, good morning Diane.

Diane: Nice to hear you. Shas written a delightful little book on aging, a book that I really like for what it’s not. It’s not a guide as to how to stay young when we’re no longer young. It’s actually a completely different kind of guide. We’ll get to Stephanie in just a moment. We’re going to first provide some context on what’s going on in our world and just trying to make sense out of these crazy times.

The novelist Arundhati Roy who wrote the God of Small Things said historically pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It’s a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it dragging the carcasses of our prejudice, our hatreds, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and our smoky skies behind us or we can walk lightly through with little baggage ready to imagine another world and ready to fight for it.

Ready to imagine another world, I’m so ready to do that and I think we all are. Can’t wait to get through this portal as everyone feels the same way and thinking that there is going to be a new vision and a shift in values. We certainly know who the heroes are, the healthcare workers who’ve been stretched beyond limits but still keep fighting, the parents who are homeschooling, our local leaders who advocate for our interests. A man in England, Stephanie 99 years old Tom Moore. He relies on a walking frame to get around and he walked his 25 meter long garden 100 times before his 100th birthday on April 30th. Why? To raise funds for the national charities which includes health services.

Tom Moore, he hoped for about a thousand British pound sterling. So far he’s just raised over slightly over 17 million pounds. That kind of outpouring just feels right now as we look for the ways to make things better and to show appreciation for health services. I have a much smaller example. My cousin Joyce and I contribute 25 $10 gift cards from the local deli chain for the caregivers at my mom’s assisted living facility every few weeks. It’s small but it says thanks. I know we’re all trying to look for those ways to reach out.

Stephanie’s book, a delightful little book on aging. It’s small but there’s a big reward. It’s a really easy, breezy read but then when you stop to think of some of the nuggets that Stephanie’s tucked in there. It’s not such a little book. It stays with you and some of the ideas are prescient like the value of slowing down, stopping to notice, writing in our journals and reading more. Stephanie, you write life has never been so full and I mean and I don’t mean with busyness. Life has never been so full and I don’t mean with busyness. I mean with intent. I know that with Covid 19 there’s a lot of fullness of intent and diminishment of busyness sometimes much to our benefit. It’s very apt for our time.

Another nugget is gratitude. Now that we’ve faced a time when we find we can take nothing for granted. It’s so much more important to be thankful for what we have. It’s easy to complain about what we’ve lost but let’s try to be thankful for what we do have because as this pandemic has shown us we don’t really know what’s next. I’m feeling the urgency to get daily boosts of positive thinking and affirmation and Stephanie Rafflelock gives us some gems here and on her podcast Coffee Table Wisdom, a program that promotes healthy aging in body, mind and spirit.

Stephanie is the real deal here. She writes about wellness and it doesn’t get any more important than that right now. A little bit of background Stephanie Rafflelock is the author of A Delightful Little Book on Aging published by She Writes Press April 2020. That’s this month. A graduate of Naropa University’s program in writing in poetics. Stephanie has penned articles for numerous publications including the Aspen Times, the Rogue Valley Messenger, Nexus Magazine, Omaha Lifestyles, Caretube.com, 60andme.com. She’s also a host for Coffee Table Wisdom, a program that promotes healthy aging in body, mind and spirit like we said.

A recent transplant Austin, Texas Stephanie enjoys life with her husband Dean and their Labrador retriever Jeter. Yes named after the great Yankee shortstop. She lives an active life of hiking, Pilates and swimming trying to offset the amount of time that she spends in her head thinking up stories and essays. Welcome Stephanie Rafflelock. So great to have you with us.

Stephanie: Thank you so much Diane.

Diane: Your book is divided into parts. We’ll do the deep dive right now. Those parts are called grief reclamation vision and laughter. Growing up my close friend was Russian so I’m going to start with the laughter and work backwards like reading backwards. The grace of humor and you write about how you enjoy the Christmas holidays best because then you can have a glass of wine in one hand and a cookie in the other and no one judges you. I thought this is absolutely awesome and maybe we’ll carry some of that tolerance with us now as we all just try to cope with what’s going on and finding that we all get forgetful and preoccupied staring into space these days. Tell us how you got interested in writing about aging. Was there a stereotype that you found didn’t fit you as you grew more mature?

Stephanie: Well it was really my reading audience that educated me about aging. I was at a place in my life where I was looking for places to publish. I found a website called 60andme.com that was geared towards women 60 and above. I began writing for them. What I didn’t expect was the kind of feedback that I got from women my age and some men who said we don’t want to go gently into that good night. This whole retirement thing it’s like retirement is a word that doesn’t really convey what it means to go through this passage these days because so many people are working longer.

Some people still retire but it’s not the kind of retirement of our parents where you sit back during the day and maybe you play a little golf and that’s it. There is a great creative surge to living 60 and beyond if we pay homage to that, if we pay attention to that and allow ourselves to become more creative at this time. All around me I see women flourishing in politics, in encore careers, in mentoring. It’s expansive. Aging should not be a contraction and I think that up until this point in history we’ve treated aging as this great contraction. In truth it’s this great expansion. That’s how I got into writing about it. That’s a long answer to a short question was the feedback I got from women.

Diane: Well it’s brilliant because I think that in previous generations it seemed as though I’ve reached stages where I’ve felt almost very sorry for my mother because she and her cohort typically don’t develop the passions, the sense of purpose outside of caregiving for partners, nothing wrong with that. It’s definitely needed but outside of husbands and partners there weren’t any really compelling interests that made her want to get up in the morning after those sadly, after my dad was gone and after her second partner was gone.

I think there’s an evolution there that’s gone in parallel to what you’re writing about. You talk about purpose in life and you talk about a friend of yours Austin. I’ll just read a snippet. Austin had a purpose in her life. Her hair is white. Her hands are bony and veined. She has beautiful hands. Hands that know the wisdom and wonder of making art. She gets up and she paints. This is something that she’s excited about each day. Really it’s something that can be a focus for us right now that takes our mind off of what’s going on even if we’re a little self-absorbed. You point to people like Austin as a role model.

I think that it’s not just women around us Stephanie it’s you. You are also empowering by your example. Do you think that we’re just doing better at this in terms of finding creative juice later in life or are we tipping the scales into busyness?

Stephanie: No, I don’t think that we’re tipping the scales into busyness. I do believe it is an evolution and part of it are the far-reaching tentacles of the women’s movement that began as I was coming of age. What feminism means in older age. It is more difficult in this country for a woman to grow older than it is a man. Usually they have less money. I’ll bet you the farm that no one has ever said to Warren Buffett have you ever thought about getting a little lift right here but women hear that all the time. This is an evolution of women finding out that even as they grow older they can stand in the light of their truth and say I have purpose and significance to my life.

I don’t need to be just an object of care just as in my generation the word girl kind of carried over into your womanly years. It stopped working a while ago because women wanted to become mature women and grow into individuals. Similarly with growing older for a woman we still want to continue growing into that individual that we know we are. Just because you turn 65 doesn’t mean that spiritual growth and psychological growth comes to an end. I would like to believe that we develop right up until the day we die that we have that potential within us. It looks different but everything does.

I mean look at how different our world looks right now and yet we’re drawing upon the tools that we know. It’s like we’re going to reinvent ourselves. We know what reinvention is. That’s what’s going to get us through that portal and I loved that piece by the way from The God of Small Things that you read this morning.

Diane: Thank you. I do too. I think about what you just said in terms of maintaining this kind of carapace, this outer body image and we’ve all seen so many examples of it. Women who invariably start to look exactly like one another because the hair has to stay blonde. It has to stay straight and long. The lips have to be puffed out and everybody’s smile is way too wide and on it goes the enhancements, the whitening, the tightening, all of it.

That maintenance, I’m here to tell you I think detracts from the impetus of growing as a person, from developing ourselves creatively, what you’re talking about. I really have to go back to Roy’s quote there. If we’re going to leave some luggage behind let’s leave more of that behind because honestly when you’re talking about your wellness program and your activity, your exercise, your Pilates. That’s the kind of thing that actually makes us well. Taking a bunch of chemicals and pouring them on our head doesn’t make us well.

I just think that this is just a great time to really declutter in that way. You’re right that in your town and I’m thinking this is Austin now. Seniors are valued participants. That’s such a meaningful thing too to feel as though you have, you count even as you’re not going gently into that night which I’m so glad you brought that quote back. I’m wondering about seniors in the pandemic in the sense that there’s a certain amount of ostracization that goes on now. There’s a lot of sequestering of seniors. I really kind of worry how are they making out being sequestered all alone and in some ways even being regarded as vulnerable and kind of distanced even more than we all are by this disease, by this pandemic.

Stephanie: That’s kind of a two-fold issue Diane. We as a culture we cull older citizens from the herd and we place them over here in isolation. Ask any mental health expert and they’ll tell you that isolation is not good for one’s mental or physical health. It’s those people that I have the most concern about as well because once you cull somebody out from the herd and you put them in a pen they become an object of care and lose that ability to be sovereign individual souls. The idea of striving for that is less. That’s one side of things that needs a lot of work in our society.

The other side of that is I don’t think that anyone is more equipped to share with us the wisdom of navigating the waters that we’re in right now than a person who is in the process of growing older. What I mean by that is I know the truth of growing older is that it takes place against the backdrop of grief, that there is loss to be dealt with all of the time. That the truth of life is that even with intent and purpose one feels more vulnerable because physically you just are. That really describes what’s going on in this pandemic. This pandemic takes place against a backdrop of loss and grief. The playing field has been leveled we are all vulnerable right now.

Diane: We’re all on it exactly. It’s connected us in a way. We have less than a minute to go but I’m just going to strike a chord of absolute agreement there the sovereignty of an agency of the elderly and their shared wisdom as occurs in many eastern cultures. I second that notion because the happiest people I know are my 80 year old neighbors who she’s made me a mask. They have the most philosophical outlook about all of this, a real way that we could all learn.

Right now we’re going to stop and take a short break but when we come back we’re going to talk more with Stephanie Rafflelock about the idea of deadlines and how we’ve all come up against one. Don’t go away. We’ll be right back.

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Has your manuscript languished because you can’t find the direction it wants to take or have you lost the motivation to finish and polish it for publication because it can be such a big formidable task? Let Diane Dewey help you resolve your writing issues. Diane’s manuscript coaching offers help with sticking points like the arc of your story and how to flesh it out, finding the inner story and what you want to say, developing your message revelations that become your reader’s takeaways, helping to rally the motivation to finish your project and what to do next. We can analyze, edit and advise you on publishing. Who are the next collaborators on your writing path? If you seek resolution to these and other questions please contact Diane Dewey author of the award-winning memoir Fixing the Fates. Find her at trunordmedia.com. That’s T-R-U-N-O-R-D.com or on her author’s page dianedewey.com. Diane can also be found through social media. Connect with her through the links on the show page.

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You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

Diane: Hey everyone welcome back. We’re here with Stephanie Rafflelock, author of a beautiful and delightful little book on aging. The title is A Delightful Little Book on Aging. It’s published by She Writes Press this month. It’s really a must read because there’s so much in a very small pocket-sized book but it will grow on you in ways that are just very helpful practically, spiritually, mentally in this crazy time that we’re living through.

Just before the break we started talking about how older people and I’m just going to throw my hat right in that ring. Those of us that have been around for a while and certainly beyond my decades have when the going gets tough they get going. I mean here’s this 99 year old from the NPR show who decided hey, I’m going to raise some funds. I’m going to walk around my garden a hundred times. I mean this is resourcefulness. Of course he’s lived through Second World War. There’s a perspective there right Stephanie that we don’t even have. How do we access that? How do we access the voice of older people more?

Stephanie: I think that both older people and younger people in our culture need to learn to listen to each other more carefully. It’s one thing to have an organic unfolding of your own elder wisdom because of perspective. It’s another thing then to try to push that on to someone else. The way that I think younger people hear that message is by listening and questioning the way that we can best give it is also by listening first. I know that’s a little bit like the cart before the horse but I think listening first is what organically leads us to that place.

Diane: Absolutely. I think that’s very wise. Even the questioning part I think is applicable. Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten was from a friend who asked me the question that he wanted to tell me the answer to so that I came to it myself. I think that there you have really hit on something. It’s not about being didactic, teaching, pendantic. It’s really about creating this portal, this questioning, listening portal. I think that your book goes a long way to opening the eyes of all of us who read it. Hey wait a minute, there’s I don’t want to rush past this.

You write that writing for you is a doorway into the examined life, a way to express the breadth of emotion I feel, a soul bath. This is beautiful. A soul bath that drives the tears of loss and inspires the joy of being alive. I would just note it’s a doorway that works both ways. Readers and the writer can examine life through this. I know that you also touched on the fact that we’re going through a shared period of loss and we have now levelled the playing field. Let’s get back to that idea that we’re now all much more vulnerable than we were pre-Covid. This idea of deadlines. Are we going to start living like we mean it? Are we going to add to our resolve? What do you see as we move towards the sunset together on that horizon eternity, where eternity lingers also your words? What do you foresee happening?

Stephanie: Ever the optimist of course I want to see the best. I see this whole pandemic as a wake-up call on so many different levels, a wake-up call and also an opportunity for each one of us to ask ourselves individually how will I make the most of my life today? You now that our heroes doctors and nurses that get up every day and go fight this battle are asking themselves that question how can I do my best today? How can I be my best today? My hope is that that kind of questioning is what we pull in behind us rather than as in to go back to that original quote from The God of Small Things pulling in the smoky skies and the dirty rivers, the stuff that hasn’t served us. I too think when you read that particular passage about the smoky skies and the dirty rivers one of the things that happened in the last several weeks is air pollution has cleaned up.

I can’t help but wonder if this simple solution has been in front of us all along. I read an article recently in a business magazine that said really there are thirty five percent of the population that doesn’t need to go to a brick-and-mortar place to do work. You think well what if you could cut traffic all over the country by 35%. We’d certainly have cleaner skies. I would like to think those good things are what is going to follow us.

Diane: Yes, I’m hopeful as well. I live on the gulf coast of Florida. The manatees and the dolphins are back and it’s such a difference. I think in order to ask ourselves these confrontational questions we first have to be candid with what’s going on. We had a hard time doing that. Now we’ve realized by its absence, by unnecessary travel all of us were guilty of it who you know jumped on a plane, jumped on the bus, the here and there of it. You say 30% of us, my stepdaughter is far happier working from home she’s told us.

I mean people might be able to really ask themselves the questions of what do I really need? That will end up inevitably being far simpler than what we had but it does take a really candid, it takes honesty. I think the other thing that you bring up in your book time and time and again that I think is really helpful here is not being completely positive about everything all the time, looking at the shadow side, looking at what we’ve done to ourselves and where we’ve brought ourselves and not sugarcoating it. Even the blurb on the front of your book from Andrea Pollard, “a heartwarming companion for anyone who wishes to age without sugarcoating the losses.” I think this is and “while continuing to live life with an open spirit.”

We can only wish for this Stephanie. I wonder about this sugar coating. I mean this seems endemic for several generations now. We’ve sugar-coated what we’ve been doing. That’s part of it.

Stephanie: Pretty much. The idea that we are entitled to convenience all of the time but we don’t know what life without convenience is. The idea that we don’t examine the shadow side of things. Now I’m an optimistic person. I’m a positive and upbeat person but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have room to hold the sorrow of the culture. I believe that it is the elder’s job to hold the sorrow, to make a container for the sorrow of this culture right now. I believe that most of us do not weep nearly enough. This is a time to weep. Not really because it’s negative but to weep because there is loss all around us and there is a kind of impotence that comes from an inability to do anything about that loss. We should be weeping more. We should be laughing more.

I think that love and loss are a cycle that you can’t really have one without the other that without loss you never get to these questions, you never fully understand the depths of love but also without love loss is unbearable.

Diane: Well there’s a duality. Things come in pairs and they come in opposites. That’s why your embrace of the shadow and your understanding of it’s a time to weep I really connect with that. This sense of hopelessness or inability to affect change in what’s happening. We are in we are engaging or experiencing firsthand in real time trauma. Trauma is that which cannot be processed and which we are helpless to do anything. I think that your sense of the weeping yes, it is the converse of laughing. You look at comedy and tragedy, look at all of those polarities that encompass both.

I think that this sense of loss and isolation I really have reached out even myself to say these people think they’re dying alone. If they could hear our thoughts or feel our thoughts they would be in a gigantic embrace. It’s very, I welcome even just random it’s always something random because we don’t permit ourselves to cry. The other day I got an email from a friend of mine. She has completely turned her life around and she’s just about to get her BA rather later but better later than never and couldn’t be more proud. It was touching but I really burst into tears and it’s because we need to cry. We need something to turn the faucet on.

As you say people who are holding their feeling in become numb. What are the outlets that we have for this? What do you see yourself? I mean literally I don’t I know we don’t have a how-to guide here but how do we integrate much more of this into our lives? Is it about talking more?

Stephanie: I think you touched upon it in the opening of your show you talk about authenticity. I think authenticity is key that the work of the, well the work of all of us really is to find the authentic heart. That’s kind of the purpose, the overarching purpose. What is most authentic so that we don’t shut anything out and also so that we welcome the breadth of experience that this world has to offer? It is authentic to weep when we see the kind of suffering that’s going on in our world today. It is also authentic to smile and laugh when we see the hopefulness that arises through those gift cards that you and your friend give away.

In my neighborhood the hopefulness comes from the kids who have taken to writing chalk messages on the sidewalks. Hop here to stay happy and they’ll draw like a hopscotch thing and they draw flowers and rainbows and hearts. My favorite the other day was I went I saw one with flowers that said stay loved. I thought it was such a perfect poem stay loved. It’s in the search for the authentic heart. The whole purpose of the examined life is to get to that authentic heart.

Joseph Campbell widely said it’s not the meaning that we really want so much. We’re always digging around for what something means. It’s the rapture of the experience that we want. The fullness of the experience in older life and in younger life is to live from this authentic place where it’s all contained, all of the celebrations, all of the missteps, all of the sorrow, all of the joy. You really can’t have one without the other. It’s like that old Zen symbol of little bit of light in the dark on one side of the circle and a little bit of dark in the light on the other side of the circle. It’s like we need all of those experiences. You can be optimistic without sugarcoating it and to me that is the authentic place to live from. It’s all things. It’s everything.

Diane: Well you’ve done a great service by bringing back Joseph Campbell. This sense of rapture it’s always about emotions. It’s not the lid on the emotions. It’s unlitting the emotions. I think that you’re touching really now at the heart of it. I think that you’re encouraging us also in this book. I’m going to read a short quote. Is grief a negative emotion? I don’t think. This is Stephanie Rafflelock. Mostly we turn our face from grief because we’re not well versed with being in its presence. It requires us to sit still with suffering and be its witness. Okay that’s pretty huge right now. The scale of grief is really large. How do we sit with it? How do we not keep hitting the escape button, the buy button, the send button, the consume button? We’re going to have to find a way to sit and witness what is happening.

Stephanie: So many of those distractions that you just named have been taken from us. I mean sure they’re shopping on the internet. We don’t go out and do those things. We are left alone a great deal of the time. You can’t just fill up your life with people the way that you used to. Whether we like it or not we’re sort of being pushed into that sitting with what is.

I have this little quote that I keep on my computer and I wish I knew who wrote it but I don’t. It’s not mine but it says help me to be less fearful of the measure of time and more fully alive in the time that simply is. Help me to live time not just to simply use it, to breathe it in and return it in acts of love and presence. That’s what we’re being called to do in this these times I believe is that you can return this time to live it not just use it up. Return it in acts of love and presence.

Sometimes I think to get to a point of self-respect where you can do that you start by giving it away to someone else. Giving your kindness away grows the kindness in you. It’s kind of a weird paradox but it’s not all just about you. Kindness needs other people for it to grow. Love needs other people for it to grow and sitting in the silence. If we can just sit with our suffering and think about the people that are doing the heroic work, doctors, nurses, people that aren’t seeing their kids that are putting their lives at risk every day.

My big one right now are the people at the grocery store. That’s my one outing of the week is the grocery store. Those people that stand behind the counters so that you can go in and still get food put their lives at risk every day too. I hold them in my heart. I breathe in deeply and think about those people. There’s a practice in Buddhism called meta practice which the literal translation means gentle friendship. Really what the practice is is to breathe in the thoughts that you want starting with yourself first and then extending to other people. May you be happy, may you be well, may you be safe, may you know peace? There are thousands of variations on that. There’s not really no wrong way to do it but it’s that kind of practice of sitting still with this whether it’s listing your gratitudes when you’re at the grocery store or it’s doing a formal practice like meta but something where gratitude enters the picture because gratitude will allow us to sit with the suffering that is. Not your suffering, not my suffering just the suffering.

Diane: Well that’s outstanding. Thank you Stephanie for that. We are going to need to take a short break but I do love to have a practice, a concept, an idea of what it might look like to be meta and also to step out of fear because fear will eat us. That is for sure. I love that you’ve given us some light and a way forward on that. When we come back we’re going to take a short break but we are going to come back with Stephanie Rafflelock and we’re going to talk about a whole bunch of other things that will just need to be heard including cocktail mommy. That’s one of her and so we see that we can go really from the deep to the very light. We probably need to do that more often than we know. Don’t go away. We’ll be right back with Stephanie Rafflelock.

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Has your manuscript languished because you can’t find the direction it wants to take or have you lost the motivation to finish and polish it for publication because it can be such a big formidable task? Let Diane Dewey help you resolve your writing issues. Diane’s manuscript coaching offers help with sticking points like the arc of your story and how to flesh it out, finding the inner story and what you want to say, developing your message revelations that become your reader’s takeaways, helping to rally the motivation to finish your project and what to do next. We can analyze, edit and advise you on publishing. Who are the next collaborators on your writing path? If you seek resolution to these and other questions please contact Diane Dewey author of the award-winning memoir Fixing the Fates. Find her at trunordmedia.com. That’s T-R-U-N-O-R-D.com or on her author’s page dianedewey.com. Diane can also be found through social media. Connect with her through the links on the show page.

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You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

Diane: Welcome back everyone we’re here with the author of A Delightful Little Book on Aging but it’s really a delightful little book on living. The author Stephanie Rafflelock has been sharing I would say some really good insights and secrets to living in in these crazy times. Sometimes it feels like okay this is really a big bummer but you know what? We really need to go there and we’ve been talking about, sitting with the suffering that’s been going on. In a way we’re so unaccustomed to that in our society because it’s a very dynamic, acquisitive culture, shopping, acquiring new experiences, insatiability but realizing that human suffering is inevitable and life is messy. This imperfection is sometimes extreme at times like now.

Stephanie gives us these words of recalibration “in an attempt to restore well-being and balance I am more focused than usual on a deliberate gratitude practice. This is the healing bomb that never fails to turn things around for me.” She goes on to say that part of her practice was to write this post. I think this healing balm that you’ve got going Stephanie, it’s really awesome and it’s on the page, nearly every page of this book.

You also talk about grace is gratitude in action. Do you want to just speak to that for a moment? I thought it was such a beautiful thought. It’s almost like putting gratitude as like a verb or it suddenly has a life. Do you want to speak to that a bit?

Stephanie: Sure. I do think that gratitude has a life and grace is with us I think all of the time but gratitude is a recognition of the grace. That’s why gratitude practice is so valuable. It pulls us away from a poor me kind of mentality. It gives us a break from the true and horrible suffering that’s going on. It also gives us a place to delight in the world. It does all of those things. That’s why I walk it. That’s why I try to practice it however I can, whenever I can. It’s that bit of magic I think in one’s life.

Diane: It is. It’s true. It’s transformative. I think that right now it’s just all too easy to look at the negative. It’s all too easy to say oh my God, I can’t go in the car to go and see my friends. I miss the hugs. I miss the stores. We have had to curb our online shopping actually. There is a little bit of compulsiveness that happens in a compensatory way but I mean I think you’ve just also hit on the idea of like getting away from victimhood. Clearly one of the easiest traps to fall in with victimhood is looking at one’s parents and pointing the finger but let’s just turn that finger back.

I love there was, there are two or three very I think revealing more memoir like segments in your book because you do go into your personal life. You described your mother. This was I totally loved this. She was a fallen catholic, a divorcee who later married a Mormon. Cocktail mommy and Mormon mommy. I like the cocktail mommy best. Then she, your mother goes on and teaches you to knit but she gave up on the knitting lessons too soon. Though I learned how to knit in pearl she never got around to teaching me how to cast off. I thought to myself this is a brilliant metaphor. You never learned the part about binding and then you go on to divulge that endings and tying up loose ends are not your strong suit as a result. I mean carrying that forward and does this mean like also closure, the sense of binding or is it continuity or how would you describe that?

Stephanie: Well there’s certainly a sense of closure but I think more for me that metaphor of not knowing how to tie up the loose hands reveals itself in my life as feeling like the interloper that I’m not well rooted in a familial sense. I often feel like I got off the bus at the wrong stop. Quirks that I’ve carried far, far into my 60s. It is what it is. We all have those little ticks.

Diane: Right but the great part is that you can talk about it.

Stephanie: I can laugh about it.

Diane: You can laugh about it exactly. I mean rootedness I’m right there with you. I think you know my story fairly well and many people do. I think that the other part of your story, your memoir parts of your story. I loved this wildness that was present in you as a child more in the father passage. You talk about, he’s a park ranger. He’s out in a park and you’re very young and you really have the run of the place. You suggested it to your detriment. I love this wildness and maybe rootedness is a good thing. Maybe it’s something that we do feel we need to have. Goodness knows the American history is steeped with family history. Where I grew up near Philadelphia it was all known family names just like Boston is, just like Dallas is.

It’s something that maybe gets hyped up too much. I’m kind of more and because and I have to feel that way too being adopted, adaptive to being adopted but I mean you talk about the wildness. I think wow, there’s no substitute for that. That’s something you were wild with nature and running around as a child. There’s no substitute for that. I wonder if that’s brought forth in you the notion of viability in later years. You’re that much more interested in agency for yourself.

Stephanie: Absolutely and there is a gift in that wildness. I think that women of my age often go through a process of reclaiming what is wild in them. That’s the silver lining in that call it lack of rootedness or the sense of being the interloper is that there is this wild that allows me to experience the rapture of life. I still think it’s a great thing to go barefoot even if it’s only on my front lawn but to go barefoot, to be barefoot in the rain, to stand outside when it’s raining and get shaking wet. These are great sensual delights of my life.

I think that a lot of us look to reclaim that wild part of ourselves where we’re not so structured, we’re not so obliged and we just are. It’s beautiful and it’s wonderful. It doesn’t rely on anything except our giving into the once again the authenticity of heart.

Diane: I love the whole you just immerse yourself. You’re far from thinking that and I love also in the book you talk about how we’re doing art for art’s sake now in later years. It’s not achievement oriented anymore or goal oriented. This kind of ties in with going out on the lawn which is dangerous here because there’s so much fertilizer but okay with your bare feet and in the rain and experiencing. Not using what you’ve acquired to shut yourself off from experience but on the contrary opening yourself up to and I think yes, you’ve reconnected with your rapture. It comes through on every page of your book.

I think that that that part of it you write “I trust what my heart tells me because of the essence of my life. The soul of me is what never changes.” this is great also in the sense of timelessness. Yes, we’re aging but there’s something that’s never aged a bit and thank goodness for it. Be glad of it. This is a wonderful aspect. I know that you say that you were a Type A personality and every once in a while we relapse but I think that you’ve really given us this idea of take off the raincoat and go out and experience passionately.

We have just a couple minutes left and you’re going to want to be able to connect with Stephanie Rafflelock. It’s a wonderful website stephanierafflelock.com. She’s also on Instagram and Facebook but you’ve talked here about your going in depth with your writing. You’re going more in depth and you’re welcoming the opportunity to do that. Can we look forward to another book?

Stephanie: You can.

Diane: Oh good. Okay terrific.

Stephanie: I look forward to it.

Diane: Good, when?

Stephanie: October, I’m sorry not October. Fall of 2021 a book called Creatrix Rising which is about the creative surge that happened with women in midlife and beyond.

Diane: Wonderful. Okay I’m already psyched for that. I’m going to say here’s I’m just the, we’ve got one minute to go because I don’t think people should be shamed at all about how they cope with where we are. You also advocate mindlessness simply spacing out with the tube, the puppy videos with YouTube and one is optional. I just say not for me it isn’t but it’s been an absolute best thing having you with us today Stephanie. I really appreciate you sharing so much of yourself with us and A Delightful Little Book on Aging. StephanieRafflelock.com. Facebook Stephanie Rafflelock and all into Instagram and twitter. It’s just been a joy and a pleasure. Everyone, celebrate your successes and others. Let’s support one another. Let’s take good care of one another. Until next week on Dropping In be. Well thanks Stephanie.

Stephanie: Thank you Diane.

Thank you so much for dropping in. please join Diane Dewey again next Friday at 8 AM Pacific Time and 11 AM Eastern Time on the Voice America Variety Channel. We’ll see you then.