Latest / ROAR with Danielle Davies: Women, Culture and Impact / Women and Aging: Why We Disappear (with Pamela Redmond)

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Women and Aging: Why We Disappear (with Pamela Redmond) · ROAR with Danielle Davies: Women, Culture and Impact

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  Hi, I'm Danielle Davey, and you're listening to Roar, a show
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  that amplifies the voices of women breaking barriers, leading
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  change and making real impact. Keep listening for bold ideas
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  and stories that inspire you to find your voice and make some
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  noise. Hi everybody, this is Danielle
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  Davies, the host of Roar. Today's guest is Pamela Redmond,
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  novelist, Substack writer and creator of Nameberry.
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  You may know her novel Younger, which inspired the TV series,
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  but Pamela has continued exploring what it really means
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  to age. Stay visible and keep redefining
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  yourself. Her latest project, the One
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  Woman Show Old Woman Naked, opens a new chapter.
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  At age 72, she's stepping on stage and exposing both the body
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  and the story of her life, not as a farewell act, but as a
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  reflection on 72 years of living in a female body and refusing to
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  fade into the background. In a way, Old Woman Naked isn't
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  a departure. It's a culmination of everything
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  Pamela's been writing toward the truth about women and age, told
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  without filters and this time, without clothes.
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  Welcome, Pamela. Thanks so much for being here.
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  They're great to be here. Well, that was a great
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  description. Can I borrow that to use for a?
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  100% I will send it to you when we're done talking.
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  Excellent job, really Well, I, I love what you're doing and I
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  love how I love how you've done so many things.
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  But for this in particular, you know, you've written novels,
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  you've run a global brand, but now you're moving into
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  performance with Old Woman Naked.
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  What pulled you in this direction?
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  Well. The main thing was that I wanted
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  to do something that AI couldn't do.
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  You know, I nice that was that was the first inspiration.
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  And you know, I, I own this website named Barry that's based
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  on 10 books of names that I wrote with Linda Rosencrantz
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  over 40 years. And it basically is a collection
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  of, of my life's work, our life's work with names, where we
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  really transform the whole culture.
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  And then AI tiptoed in accept everything out, you know, 40
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  years worth of content and then they put themselves first in the
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  search results, which means that our traffic and our revenue is
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  cut in half in the past year. And we didn't even it happened
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  before we knew it was happening so.
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  Because you think like about you're a writer and and writers
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  are getting, you know, their content taken and their voices
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  taken and their approach taken. But I didn't think of something
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  like that. Wow, that's terrible.
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  And it's not just us, you know, it's, it's publishers of every
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  size, you know, big publishers that are publishing kind of
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  factual information. It's just all been taken.
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  And a company like News Corp or The New York Times or Harper
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  Collins, you know, they can get a deal, a licensing deal with
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  the AI companies, but we're too little.
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  You know, we're just 2 1/2 people basically.
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  We used to be 3. But.
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  And so, you know, I, I have found that actually creatively
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  inspiring this year because, you know, we have just been forced
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  to reinvent yet again. But at the same time, it's like,
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  Oh my God, AI really is coming. You know, it's like you have to
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  be a writer too. Like, what about my dishwasher?
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  What about the laundry? You know, everybody wants to be
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  a writer. Why does AI need to be a writer
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  anyway? I just feel like everything I've
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  ever done in my life, AI is coming and trying to take away
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  from me. So it's like I I want to do
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  something that AI can't do. So what is that something live,
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  something personal? It's something real.
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  It's something human, right? I'm like, OK, so that means I
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  appear somewhere in person in some capacity.
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  So what could I do, you know, to make people listen to me as
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  opposed to anyone else? And I kind of said jokingly to
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  myself like, well, you can take off your clothes.
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  And then I'm like, Oh my God, that is a great idea.
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  I love that. I love this.
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  I love that that's what you landed on and why, like you
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  could take up your because you're right, nobody's going to
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  look away. Right.
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  And, and it hasn't been done and, and there's really a lot to
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  say. You know, it's like a young
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  woman, you know, it's, it's, you know, I, I, I guess I wrote this
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  once, you know, if you're a pink pony girl, it's like I get naked
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  all the time. I mean, there are thousands of
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  naked young women, but there aren't any naked old women
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  anywhere or very few, you know, the few that there are, everyone
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  says, oh, did you see the Emma Thompson movie Leo Grand?
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  Yes, you know, there have been a few.
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  But I actually actually now this is part of the show, but I after
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  I did the show, I went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York
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  and I'm like, all right, I am going to see if I can find any
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  art depiction from any era of an old woman naked.
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  OK so I spent like 3 hours walking through the mat and I
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  did not find a single one and almost no old women at all.
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  And then I went searching on their database and you know,
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  they have a lot of results, but you come through them like what
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  is really an old woman naked 66 depictions from all of history
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  as opposed to, yes, all of history, including one, a Rodean
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  sculpture entitled The Gates of Hell.
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  That's great. That's great.
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  I'm going to have to find that and put that up with this, I
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  mean. I'll send it to you.
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  And so, you know, it's like if we're feeling invisible, it's
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  because we actually are invisible.
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  We're invisible in the culture. We're invisible in history.
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  You know, we're invisible to men, certainly.
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  And so that, you know, when I started to really think about
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  what it meant to be an old woman naked, what it meant to expose
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  my body and talk about my body, I thought this is something
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  really that nobody has ever done, you know, that I've
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  certainly never done. And I just felt super inspired
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  by the whole thing. It was just, you know it.
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  I knew it was a great, it was like younger.
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  It was like the baby name stuff. It's like, I know this is a
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  great idea and I just boom, did it very quickly.
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  And so, so far it's just been a it was a one night show and but
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  it rolled out. You know, I had never performed
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  at all. I've done speeches, but I've
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  never done anything resembling acting like not even in high
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  school. So, and certainly, you know,
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  have never taken my clothes off. So I thought I, I don't know how
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  I'm going to feel up there. You know, I don't know what this
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  experience is going to be like. Let's just do it once and see
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  what happens. So that's, that's what I did.
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  And then of course, I'm like, I love this.
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  Well, I love that. It's like you're telling your
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  personal story, but it's also, it's very political.
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  Can you talk a little bit about that too?
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  And not just, well, I feel like there's the invisibility, but
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  there's also like a defiance aspect of it.
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  Yes, yes, yes. It's sort of like, all right.
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  You think this is ugly. You think this is unacceptable.
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  You don't want to look at it, but maybe you haven't been
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  looking at it in the way it deserves to be looked at.
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  You know, and, and I'm saying that in a very thinking way.
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  I didn't start out with that, you know, formulation.
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  But after I wrote it, I thought, you know, you can't, if you're
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  somebody who's 72 or 62 or whatever, you can't look at your
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  body the way you do when you're 24.
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  I actually have a picture of myself naked at 22.
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  Oh, that was a smart move. Well.
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  What was some like bullshit artist took this picture and you
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  know, and I let him and I never told anybody.
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  I never told anybody, not even my husband of 33 years, not my
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  best friends ever. It ended up in a book.
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  I don't even know how I figured that out.
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  And I had to order this book from Germany to get picture,
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  which I, I, you know, put up behind me when I did the show.
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  And it's like, I thought I was hideous.
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  You know, I thought I was so fat.
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  I thought, you know, whatever, you know, I, I have this like
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  gorgeous body, which of course you can see now, right?
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  I always say if I could go back, I would just cartwheel.
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  I would just cartwheel naked all over the place because I'm like,
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  what? I didn't know, you know, I mean,
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  just just even just your skin, like the firmness of your.
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  I keep going. I'm so sorry.
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  Oh, no, absolutely. That's the whole point, you
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  know, And then to be actually faced with this is what you
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  looked like and and this is how you felt.
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  And on the other hand, you know, I look at myself now and I'm
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  inviting, you know, 100 people to look at me too.
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  And it's like now I'm like, I look amazing.
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  I actually think, you know, it has nothing to do with the, the
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  reality, you know, is that reality.
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  The reality inside is like, wow, I'm like, wow, I stand upright.
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  I can walk, you know, I'm still here.
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  I'm like, I can swim, I can talk to, you know, this body allows
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  me to do so many things that are central to my life, which I
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  don't think I ever saw my body and myself as merged in that way
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  until I did this. So, you know, if that is
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  personal more than political, but I think, you know, there's
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  some inverse relationship between how I feel and how most
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  women feel about themselves and how society feels about you.
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  And so once you're past menopause, you know, you're
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  free. I would call it free from the
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  constant threat is not it's really a pejorative, but it's
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  more like the possibility. Am I going to have another baby?
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  Oh my God, am I You know, once that's all over and it's just
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  you and your body is not going to, you know, give birth to
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  another human or you know, your body is just yours and the world
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  is like we don't want to we don't want to know.
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  We don't want to see it. There's.
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  An. Incredible liberation in that
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  which is like you're just not. I mean, I and, and a lot of
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  women, you get over this hump of 50 and it's like I'm not
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  comparing myself to any idealized images.
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  I don't open a magazine or or go online and see tons of beautiful
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  bodies that I compare, you know, mine unfavorably to.
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  Right. I didn't even think of that.
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  Yeah, you don't. I mean, when you're young, it's
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  a it's like a barrage of flipping through magazines and
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  you worked at Glamour, right? So it's like all, I mean, my
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  goodness, you're like so bombarded with these beauty
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  standards and all. I mean, you're right.
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  Who do we see? I.
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  Mean there's nobody I I got AARP and I was all excited because I
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  would saw Jude Law on the cover of I was like, OK, these are my
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  people. Even that you don't see a lot of
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  women and they're and we're not displayed the same way, you
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  know, in AARP as as we are in like a fashion magazine.
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  Exactly, exactly. So, you know, I think that that
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  is a really interesting, you know, doing this show, of
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  course, I've started talking to a lot of women about their
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  bodies, which has been super interesting for me.
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  And everybody has their own way into the show.
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  You know, a lot of young women have seen it and really relate
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  to it or are really interested to see how things unfold.
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  You know, older women often feel the same way I do.
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  You know, it's I have at least three women I've talked to who
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  are around my age. I will start the sentence with,
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  well, you know, after menopause you feel, and they've all ended
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  that sentence in the same way. Free, free.
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  I love that and I feel I I read your Oprah article too, where
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  you talk about this and and how like you finally own it like
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  it's your body. Nobody's even I mean, you know,
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  there's birthing and if you breastfed like you are a literal
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  food machine, it's just AII almost just said it's a
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  nightmare. It's great, but it's also like
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  you're not your own. You have you're not your own
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  until I think you get to a certain age.
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  And then the fact that you can own it by lack of comparison too
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  makes it, I think, even better. Yes, yes.
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  You know, and one of the things you mentioned about
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  invisibility, I, there's a, there's another author I've
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  interviewed and her name is Kirsten Miller.
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  She wrote a book called The change.
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  I don't know if you heard of it or Lula Dean's library, little
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  library of banned books. And in the Change, it's about
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  three women, and they're like going through this period of
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  time where you would think of the change, but she has them
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  kind of transform in this sort of in a different way, in a way
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  that's powerful. But one of the things she said
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  when we talked is she was like, there's power in the
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  invisibility. She's like, if they don't see
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  you coming, like you, you don't know what's going to happen.
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  Like you've got that. It's almost like an invisibility
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  cloak in some ways. Yes, I, I love that.
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  That is the perfect way to put that.
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  Yeah, it's people, don't, you know, especially if you're, if
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  you're working, if you're running a business, you know, I,
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  I remember going into some meeting with another website,
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  right? And they're all guys and they're
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  all younger than me. And they're looking at me like,
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  OK, I don't want to fuck her. She doesn't remind me of my
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  wife. And I'm, I'm seeing like the
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  wheels turn. Like, what do I make of her?
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  And it's like mom, like where? Does she fit in my viewpoint?
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  What do you think? Like what do?
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  You wear. Where do you get what do you get
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  as feedback when people just hear the title Old woman naked
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  for the first time? Well.
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  Mostly for the first time, it's like, you mean you're going to
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  be, you know, why would you want to do that?
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  What, you know, somebody said, like, why do you have to take
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  off your clothes to tell this story of your body?
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  And I think how could I tell the story of my body without taking
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  off my clothes? Because it's what happens at the
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  end of the show. You know, I'm only naked at the
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  end of the show. And what people have said is, is
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  what I wanted to happen, which is like now that I've heard this
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  whole lifetime's worth of stories, you know, and the story
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  of your body, it's almost like you actually being naked is the
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  least interesting thing, you know?
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  And I can't see your body without seeing it in the context
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  of this whole history and all these experiences, you know,
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  And, and that's how the show ends.
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  You know, that it's rather than an idealized image that, you
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  know, I am all these different people and I am all these
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  different things made manifest. And I love this.
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  I love this. I want to come if it, if it goes
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  on the please tell me, please let us know because I want to.
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  I, I have to ask you though, forget, OK, first of all, you're
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  naked. So that's its own huge
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  vulnerability. But you also never performed
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  before. So was this like absolutely
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  terrifying or did it make you feel completely alive?
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  Or both? No, both actually.
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  I was really terrified that I was going to forget my lines.
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  Yeah, I and and I thought from the beginning, like there is no
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  way I can remember 40. At the time it was like 4550
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  minutes. Now it's longer because I've
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  been unpacking it. It's like there's, there's just
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  no way I can remember this. So I, you know, did what I do
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  when I do a speech, which is cards with like the topic and
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  then, but it was that part of it was, was difficult for me.
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  I would say very difficult, much more difficult and probably was
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  good because it, you know, it's like it totally distracted me
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  from from the naked part, but. I the naked part didn't.
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  Really didn't bother me at all. So.
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  That is, that is so great. I mean, we, my sister and I joke
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  like I am so modest and I am, I could not like I when I joke
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  that if I, I wish I could go back in time and like have my
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  naked bodyguard rolling through the streets with confidence.
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  But still, I would still be like, but I have to put
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  something on just because I'm was grown up Irish Catholic,
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  still have to put. I would still be like feel
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  compelled to to cover myself up because that's just what I do,
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  but that would be such like a mental, I don't know if it would
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  be a mental distraction or an anchor like this is the thing
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  that's getting me through the rest of it.
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  That would that. I just think you did an amazing
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  thing by doing that. And simultaneously, it's not
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  like you're like, let me practice being naked first.
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  You did them together. So it's pretty awesome.
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  I, you know, honestly, I don't know when I was 50, I don't
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  think I would have done this. I I don't really, yeah.
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  I think I would have still been at that point seeing my body as
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  related in some way to my young body, you know, maybe a softer,
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  somewhat droopier version. But I didn't.
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  I, I think my body has become something completely different.
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  Even though it doesn't look completely different, it feels
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  completely different to me. I but I think that speaks to
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  women's place like we're all, you know, under the men's gaze
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  under, under the gaze of men and, and were described even
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  just last night, my daughter said that somebody said
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  something to her about somebody being chunky and she corrected
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  them and they were like, well, that's just a description.
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  And she was like, no, like there are other ways.
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  Use your mind. There's other ways to do this.
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  And so I think the fact that the sad thing is it takes us so long
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  to kind of own our bodies. It takes us, you know, when we
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  are willing to do cartwheels naked or in that shape.
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  We don't, we are kind of subjected to that male gaze or
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  even our own inner, you know, looking at ourselves.
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  We we react to our bodies in the way that society does.
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  So I love that you're doing this and I, and now I'm going to
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  aspire. Now my kids are going to be
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  like, no, mom, please put your clothes on.
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  But I, I do think it's so powerful and especially even as
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  you mentioned in the going into the museums and looking for old
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  women naked and you can't even find them at all, but you can
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  find old men naked everywhere. Oh yeah, yeah.
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  They love being naked statues in Italy.
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  They're everywhere. Yeah, but I, I go ahead.
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  I was just going to say I hope this will be bigger than the
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  show. That's that's my intention, for
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  it to be much bigger than me standing there doing this like
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  it's a conversation, you know, it's something that can and
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  should be approached from a lot of different angles.
• 20:29
  Well, absolutely, but it also ties into what you started with
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  jubilarian I I feel like from from an outside perspective.
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  So you coined this term jubilarian, which you you
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  mentioned is actually like a Catholic terminology.
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  I guess it was used in churches, right?
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  Interesting to capture women celebrating this stage of life
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  rather than fading into the background.
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  How does that word reflect where you are now?
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  Well, you know, it's very much it, it connects exactly to what
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  I was talking about with old woman naked, which is that, you
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  know, after 50, suddenly you're like, wait a minute, I thought
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  this was going to be downhill. And I'm happier and freer and
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  more creative and more, you know, confident.
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  You know, I think all these positive things do happen to a
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  lot of women as they got get older.
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  I mean, that's certainly been my experience.
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  So and and you know, Jubilarian and old women naked are kind of
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  very connected and in many ways, but one of the ways is just that
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  doing jubilarian, which was just an impulse.
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  You know, I write about that in the very first sub stack, which
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  is like, I was just standing in my kitchen right there.
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  And I suddenly it's like I need to do something like I need to,
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  I need to. Well, it was I was thinking
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  about Mrs. Dalloway, you know, and there is the beginning of
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  Mrs. Dalloway, which is all about, you know, an older woman
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  finding joy in the everyday, right.
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  And she there's a line at the very beginning, which is what a
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  lark, what a plunge, you know, as Mrs. Dalloway, which is was
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  Virginia Woolf's book, which was the basis for the hours as she
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  goes out to buy the flowers herself.
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  You know, she's somebody who just loves the world and loves
• 22:20
  her everyday life. And I thought of, and it was a
• 22:25
  beautiful day, you know, and I was looking outside and I just
• 22:28
  those words, what a lark, what a plunge came into my head.
• 22:32
  And it's like, I need a plunge. I need a lark.
• 22:37
  I need something, you know, that's just fun and creative and
• 22:42
  positive. And that's a risk, you know, but
• 22:45
  in a not with a way that doesn't have very high stakes Let's.
• 22:49
  Say even even even that kind of joy is sort of resistance at at
• 22:54
  this moment in time. You know, you're like, I will be
• 22:57
  joyful. So there like, hey everyone,
• 23:00
  I've got some exciting news. I'm partnering with Louie.
• 23:04
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• 23:08
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• 23:13
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  first. Order louielube@getlouie.com
• 23:27
  That's GETL UW i.com and use code ROAR 15 that's RO AR15 for
• 23:36
  a special discount at checkout. Sometimes, you know, I have to
• 23:40
  say, it feels a little bit like, you know, I, I don't want it to
• 23:44
  be, oh, the world sucks. So I'm just going to ignore all
• 23:48
  that and go off and have fun. You know it it it.
• 23:51
  It doesn't it, I don't get that. I don't get that impression.
• 23:54
  It seems like you're you're trying to stay joyful despite
• 23:59
  what's going on and like acknowledging that it's a little
• 24:01
  bit harder and so like making it more meaningful.
• 24:07
  Yeah. And you know what, I think
• 24:08
  that's that's a really good way to put it.
• 24:10
  And I think that that's also central to the joy of getting
• 24:13
  older is that you do have to, on some, you do get pleasure from
• 24:18
  knowing that the days of joy are limited, you know, and that, you
• 24:24
  know, that there's something in the show where I actually asked
• 24:27
  AI, like, when am I going to die?
• 24:30
  You know, here are my statistics.
• 24:32
  Like when am I going to die? And AI said that I was going to
• 24:36
  die on October 22nd, 2041. OK, I know.
• 24:43
  Oh my gosh, seriously. I know.
• 24:45
  So it's like, OK, I've got, what is that 16 years, 17?
• 24:49
  I can't even add it, but it feels like I've, I, and I think
• 24:54
  because my mother died young, you know, my mother died at 61.
• 24:57
  And that clock has always ticked really loudly in my ear and, and
• 25:02
  more loudly all the time. So I feel like, you know, this
• 25:05
  is very precious. Today is very precious, right?
• 25:10
  And this year is, you know, this moment, it's all this body, you
• 25:15
  know, that does function, that is healthy, that is happy, you
• 25:21
  know, that can still be joyous. Like it almost seems like a sin
• 25:24
  against the universe not to make the most of that.
• 25:29
  I love how you said that. And I feel like, you know, there
• 25:32
  are, this is really simplifying things, but they're like 2 sets
• 25:35
  of people. There are people who feel like
• 25:37
  you do and are like, I'm going to make the most of all of this
• 25:40
  and I'm going to find the joy. And I'm going to be purposeful
• 25:43
  about finding the joy Because, you know, the reality is some
• 25:47
  days are crappy days and there are some people in the world
• 25:50
  that are crappy people. And so you have to make an
• 25:52
  effort. But then there are other people
• 25:54
  who are kind of just you get the impression that they're sort of
• 25:56
  just waiting it out like, well, you know, how long can this go
• 26:00
  on? And so I love one of the things
• 26:03
  that I feel like you have done so well is reinvention.
• 26:08
  And you write about reinvention, but you're also reinventing
• 26:11
  yourself. I mean, you just performed as an
• 26:13
  as on stage as an actress for the first time ever at 72.
• 26:17
  You've you've reinvented yourself as an entrepreneur, A
• 26:20
  performer. What have you learned?
• 26:22
  And and you've also got divorced after 33 years of marriage.
• 26:26
  So that's that's part of reinvention.
• 26:28
  What have you learned about starting over, especially later
• 26:32
  in life, or really through all your phases?
• 26:35
  Well, I think one big thing, especially as you get older, is
• 26:39
  that you have to get really comfortable with being
• 26:42
  uncomfortable and a lot of have your nails right.
• 26:49
  I, I mean, I really, I think the first time I really puzzled this
• 26:53
  through was when, you know, I always wanted to be a novelist.
• 26:56
  I always that that was the thing I wanted to do and I was just
• 26:59
  paralyzed because I didn't really know what I was doing.
• 27:03
  I was very much like, am I good enough?
• 27:06
  Can I be good enough? You know, I didn't even really
• 27:08
  want to try because it was, it made me so uncomfortable.
• 27:14
  And I took a, a writing class. This was in my late 40s.
• 27:19
  We were living in San Francisco. And it was with the novelist Ann
• 27:23
  Packer. And I was sitting in the parking
• 27:25
  lot outside the first class. And I was so nervous.
• 27:30
  I mean, I was physically, I'll, I, it seems crazy to me now, but
• 27:36
  I had not put myself in a position of doing something
• 27:40
  completely new that I didn't know how to do and that I really
• 27:44
  wanted to know how to do. I just hadn't put myself to the
• 27:47
  test in that way. And it was terrifying.
• 27:51
  And of course, you know, you do it and then it's, it's fine.
• 27:54
  But it's like I had after so many years of being a
• 27:58
  professional writer, you know, having success on some level,
• 28:03
  knowing what I was doing in terms of writing non fiction
• 28:06
  books, I had to or, or even short stories.
• 28:11
  But I had to go back to the beginning and sort of be a
• 28:14
  beginning, be a beginning writer again.
• 28:16
  And and and let myself be vulnerable and that let myself
• 28:19
  be bad at it, you know, leave myself open to judgement.
• 28:24
  That was not going to be positive to correction to
• 28:26
  learning. So I that was a huge lesson for
• 28:31
  me at that time. That really kind of became
• 28:34
  cumulative over time as I started other new things.
• 28:37
  It's like, oh, if you're, you're going to do a new thing, you're
• 28:41
  going to feel uncomfortable. You need to be OK with that, you
• 28:44
  know, and that's what it is. It doesn't like, I think you can
• 28:47
  interpret those feelings as like, oh, obviously I'm no good
• 28:51
  at this, you know, obviously I shouldn't even try.
• 28:54
  This is too painful. I can't stand it.
• 28:56
  It's like that's what it feels like to be new.
• 28:58
  You're supposed to be ignorant, you know, you're supposed to not
• 29:03
  know, like you're a beginner. You're supposed to not know what
• 29:06
  you're doing. So.
• 29:07
  I think so. So many people don't put
• 29:09
  themselves in that position after a while, you know, we kind
• 29:12
  of get comfortable like, and actually really, I do see it at
• 29:17
  this age. So I'm 51 and I see and I'm from
• 29:20
  a small town in South Jersey and you know, you see people have
• 29:22
  been working. I know a lot of people who are
• 29:25
  like, well, I can retire in this many years.
• 29:28
  And, and, and they're not talking about doing something
• 29:31
  else. They're talking about wrapping
• 29:33
  something up. So they're not, which maybe for
• 29:36
  them, they've got a plan and they're, you know, they're going
• 29:38
  to do something new and brave. But I feel like people can get
• 29:42
  kind of stuck in that like uncomfortable things are
• 29:45
  comfortable now we we can finally afford XYZ and the kids
• 29:49
  are out of the house and less it's less.
• 29:54
  It's more unusual to see people go for something new once we get
• 29:59
  older. Well.
• 30:01
  You know, I'm envious of those people.
• 30:03
  I, I, yes, me too. You know, if I had that life
• 30:09
  where I was just happy with everything as it was and I never
• 30:12
  had to put myself out there. I mean, that sounds pretty nice.
• 30:18
  Maybe I'm just constitutionally, you know, malcontent or I do see
• 30:23
  those years of, you know, I always wanted kids.
• 30:25
  I have 3 kids, I work through my kids, but at the same time I
• 30:29
  work part time, you know, and I and the hours that I worked, I
• 30:32
  felt like I had to make money because, you know, I was paying
• 30:35
  a babysitter, right? And so when I finally it it, it
• 30:39
  took me the years until my kids were older to feel like I
• 30:44
  deserved to do something just because I wanted to do it, That
• 30:48
  I could spend some time, you know, working on a novel that I
• 30:52
  knew was not going to pay me any money for a long time or maybe
• 30:56
  ever. So.
• 30:58
  How old were you when you wrote your first novel?
• 31:01
  50 You were 50 when you wrote your first novel. 55 Zero yes.
• 31:06
  Thank you. Because that's just awesome.
• 31:08
  Thank and that, but and that's so great.
• 31:11
  I love it. I don't care if you're
• 31:12
  perpetually not content. I love the results because
• 31:16
  you're not, you're not defining what's over.
• 31:19
  You're you're, you're not defined by what's done.
• 31:22
  You know, I actually have a friend who has younger kids.
• 31:25
  My kids are 20 and 16, almost 17 and, and hers are little and
• 31:29
  she's in the thick of it and she's exhausted.
• 31:31
  And you know, every time she has a conference call, they're
• 31:33
  running in the room and, and she said something to me earlier
• 31:37
  earlier this year. And I was like, I'm not sure if
• 31:39
  I should do this or if I should take this chance or whatever.
• 31:41
  And she was like, what are you crazy?
• 31:43
  She's like, you got to the other side.
• 31:45
  She's like, you're like a middle-aged white man.
• 31:47
  She was like, you're proof it can happen.
• 31:49
  And I was like, it was like such, I was like, I am so sorry
• 31:57
  that you're feeling like this, but now I feel great.
• 31:59
  And I was like, I do feel like a middle-aged white man.
• 32:03
  And for lack of better terms, I'm like, you just suddenly have
• 32:06
  that freedom to do what you want to do.
• 32:09
  So here we are on a podcast. That's exactly that.
• 32:14
  And you know, actually in the book of younger, this this was
• 32:18
  not really a theme of the show, but Darren Starr, you know, his
• 32:21
  his theme was more love and romance and, you know, work and
• 32:25
  self fulfillment. And it's not motherhood.
• 32:27
  But the the book was a lot more about motherhood.
• 32:30
  And the conceit of the book was that Liza and Maggie were best
• 32:37
  friends from childhood and that they were born on the same day.
• 32:40
  OK. This is not, you know, Debbie
• 32:41
  Mays, our character is kind of in the show is older and Liza is
• 32:48
  younger. Anyway, they're born on the same
• 32:50
  day. Liza's got to the other side,
• 32:53
  you know, and it's is OK, what now?
• 32:56
  And Maggie is like, oh, wait a minute, maybe I do want to have
• 33:00
  a baby after all. And so a lot of what happens is
• 33:03
  the 2 of them kind of taught like, and, and Liza's like, why
• 33:07
  would you, Oh my God, you have no idea.
• 33:11
  Like you're going into this tunnel and it's going to be a
• 33:14
  long time till you come out. And Maggie's like, I, I need to
• 33:18
  do this, I want to do this. You did it.
• 33:20
  You got, you know, having children, you got a lot of joy
• 33:24
  and a lot of meaning out of that.
• 33:26
  And I don't want to miss it. So I think, you know, 4 year old
• 33:29
  women today are often at one end or the other and it's a very
• 33:32
  different experience. It is, it is.
• 33:35
  And I, Speaking of the book, I, I really appreciate it because
• 33:39
  again, my kids are getting closer to the age of the
• 33:45
  daughter whose name I'm now going to forget in the book.
• 33:47
  And, and when she comes home from Africa and she's like, you
• 33:53
  know, the mom makes this the lasagna and she's doing
• 33:55
  everything she wants. And she's like, you know, she's
• 33:58
  setting the time aside and she's going to spend this time with
• 34:01
  her daughter because her daughter must need her.
• 34:03
  And she really wants to be there, even though she's got her
• 34:05
  own hopes and dreams and wishes and boyfriends to go see.
• 34:11
  And then she gets this, she sets the table and the daughter's
• 34:15
  like, I can't eat this. Like not only can she not eat
• 34:18
  it, she's like disgusted by it. So I was like, oh, what a gut
• 34:23
  punch. And it's, and it's so true
• 34:25
  because even now my son's going to come home for Thanksgiving
• 34:29
  and I'm all excited and I'm there's a new movie that I
• 34:32
  wanted to watch with him. And I'm thinking we're going to
• 34:34
  watch this movie and he is probably not going to do this
• 34:39
  much as he misses me much as he loves me.
• 34:42
  That's not, you know, he's got his own life.
• 34:46
  And so therefore I, it's just a big, it's a big transition for
• 34:50
  everybody. And I, I love that you mentioned
• 34:51
  that. That's a big theme of the book
• 34:53
  because that's, I got a lot of that out of the book too.
• 34:55
  I was like, oh, this is really that motherhood piece is a big
• 34:59
  part. Yes, and that.
• 35:02
  And that guilt and like, they own me kind of kind of thing is
• 35:07
  a big part too. Because they do.
• 35:09
  They do. You are at their literal beck
• 35:11
  and call. Yes, yes, it's, it's, it's an
• 35:14
  awkward time because it's also kind of the end of your of being
• 35:19
  a mother in that caretaking way, you know, so you don't want to
• 35:22
  rush it too much, but. I know, I know if my son calls
• 35:27
  me in like the middle of the night, he goes to school in
• 35:29
  Hawaii. So if he calls me in the middle
• 35:30
  of the night, I'm like, I have to take this call.
• 35:33
  Like he wants to talk to me. This is a special time.
• 35:37
  This will not happen forever. So there I am.
• 35:40
  But it is. Yeah.
• 35:41
  So you want to hold on. But also it's it is Women have a
• 35:45
  different kind of transition, I think, than men.
• 35:47
  But. But back to what you were saying
• 35:49
  before about about putting yourself in these uncomfortable
• 35:53
  positions. A lot of people are
• 35:55
  uncomfortable and then they're uncomfortable that they're
• 35:57
  uncomfortable and they're like, I think I'd just rather not.
• 36:01
  And even if it's something really small from getting in the
• 36:05
  pool in the summer and you're like, I just, I don't, I just
• 36:08
  don't want to, it's uncomfortable.
• 36:10
  I have to get wet, the water's cold, etcetera.
• 36:12
  Then I got to dry off, take a shower.
• 36:13
  It's a, it's a, there's a lot of tasks.
• 36:16
  I'm a very lazy person. So I'm always like, I got to
• 36:20
  look at the benefit to risk, You know, it has to outweigh.
• 36:24
  But how do you keep the momentum going for yourself to continue
• 36:28
  to be uncomfortable because you've been being uncomfortable
• 36:31
  for a while? I have, I have been being
• 36:34
  uncomfortable for a long time. Well, you realize, you know,
• 36:37
  once you do it, it's like anything like that, that, that
• 36:41
  there are rewards on the other side that are worth, you know,
• 36:45
  the discomfort is temporary, that you move through it and you
• 36:49
  get to another place that's really valuable, which is, you
• 36:52
  know, a new kind of confidence, you know, all these new things
• 36:56
  that you learn and become proficient at.
• 36:59
  And it just, you know, it's funny what you said about
• 37:03
  swimming, because I've become a swimmer in the past few years,
• 37:06
  just in my first time in my life.
• 37:08
  And every time I get in the pool, I feel that every time,
• 37:13
  you know, every time I sit down and every single day when I
• 37:18
  start to write, I feel the same thing, which is like, I can't do
• 37:22
  this. Oh, it's horrible.
• 37:23
  Oh my God, I and I, so I've started to do this thing where I
• 37:27
  get into the pool in the first lap.
• 37:30
  I say to myself, I'm swimming, I'm swimming, I'm swimming just
• 37:35
  to, you know, get myself that you're in the thing that you're
• 37:40
  uncomfortable with and you don't need to do any more than that,
• 37:44
  but just let yourself feel uncomfortable.
• 37:48
  That's if you can get the length of the pool feeling
• 37:52
  uncomfortable, you'll feel less uncomfortable.
• 37:55
  And then you can progress, you know, and you can let other
• 37:59
  things in. So it's, it's, it's a passage.
• 38:02
  It's not a, it's not a a wall. Quick pause to invite you into
• 38:07
  the war community. War is all about amplifying
• 38:10
  women's voices, and you can be part of it.
• 38:13
  I share the messy, unfiltered behind the scenes stuff in my
• 38:16
  emails, things you won't hear anywhere else.
• 38:19
  Sign up at listen to roar.com and get in on the real talk.
• 38:23
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• 38:27
  Share it, drop a comment or pass it to that one friend who needs
• 38:30
  to hear it. Every share helps bring more
• 38:32
  women's stories into the spotlight.
• 38:34
  All right, let's get back to the episode.
• 38:37
  So it sounds like you still get uncomfortable.
• 38:40
  That part doesn't really get easier, but you learned how to
• 38:44
  get through the discomfort that the habit of being discomfort
• 38:48
  has become easier. Right.
• 38:50
  It's not a permanent state, I think is what I'm saying.
• 38:53
  You know, it's like, I think when you, if you don't let it
• 38:56
  stop you, you can get to the other side of it.
• 38:59
  You still feel it, but there's something valuable on the other
• 39:03
  side of it that you're not going to discover unless you go
• 39:07
  through it. How do you keep doing it now?
• 39:10
  Like, are you? Are you planning other new
• 39:13
  uncomfortable things besides continuing your one woman show
• 39:17
  and Jubilarian? No, I I think that the one woman
• 39:21
  show and is pretty much enough for right now.
• 39:26
  Well, I was like, is there skydiving in your future?
• 39:28
  I mean, honestly, being naked in front of a crowd is some
• 39:32
  people's worst fear in the world.
• 39:35
  Like people have dreams about being naked in front of a crowd.
• 39:38
  They have nightmares about it. So it's technically you really
• 39:42
  could do anything. Yeah, yeah.
• 39:45
  I, you know, then as I said, the naked part is not central to
• 39:49
  this. For me.
• 39:50
  It's more, you know, the emotional nakedness is scarier
• 39:55
  to me. So I have never written about my
• 39:58
  life in this. Intimate and honest way.
• 40:03
  You know, I'm I've been a novelist, I've been cloaking
• 40:07
  everything in character and story.
• 40:09
  You know, I've been inventing a lot, but in the invention is the
• 40:14
  reality. So it's much scarier to me to
• 40:19
  write about myself. So honestly, can you?
• 40:23
  Tell us actually a little bit about that because like what for
• 40:28
  somebody who's coming and they're like, oh, I, you know, I
• 40:31
  watched younger, I read the books, I love them.
• 40:34
  And now they're coming to see your one woman show.
• 40:35
  How does it differ? You're talking about your life.
• 40:38
  What kind of stories are you including?
• 40:41
  Yeah, I'm, I'm talking about my life.
• 40:43
  But you know, and I mean, it's the whole thing is stories that
• 40:50
  I I really have never told anybody.
• 40:53
  I mean, it's really a lot of the stories that feel that have
• 40:57
  always felt from different parts of my life so shameful that I
• 41:00
  couldn't talk about them. There is, it's funny, the
• 41:04
  Catholic thing, you know, there's something in the, the,
• 41:08
  the section about childhood where I was, you know, my
• 41:12
  friends and I pulled down our pants and just kind of looked at
• 41:15
  each other, you know, and we would do this and I would be
• 41:17
  like, Oh my God, this, you know, I was so consumed with shame
• 41:22
  like this is. You're going straight to hell.
• 41:25
  Oh, yeah, I know. I know this is wrong.
• 41:29
  I know it's a sin. I don't know which sin, but
• 41:31
  they're all those sins with words in them that I don't
• 41:33
  really like adultery and covet. So it's like I, I have to
• 41:39
  confess. And I actually went to
• 41:41
  confession and I do this in the show.
• 41:45
  I actually, Janice Maffei, who produced the New York shows, had
• 41:49
  this idea that I should kneel down as I did it and, and do my
• 41:53
  confession, which I remember in, you know, in vivid horror.
• 41:59
  And I said to the priest, I did bad things with my friend.
• 42:05
  The priest said, what kind of bad things?
• 42:09
  And I'm like, what kind of like, what?
• 42:12
  Like my head exploded because I never like imagined that there
• 42:16
  was any other kind. And then he's like, and, and of
• 42:23
  course the perspective that we have now in priests, right?
• 42:26
  He's like touching and I'm like touching.
• 42:29
  Not. Even to say.
• 42:35
  It's so innocent. It's such an innocent like
• 42:40
  memory of of that. It reminds me of being a little
• 42:43
  kid and somebody saying I know what the F word is.
• 42:46
  And I was like fat, like I, you know, you just, you just have no
• 42:51
  idea what's going on. And then anything could be any
• 42:56
  worse. Yes, yeah.
• 42:58
  I mean, I remember seeing written on the sidewalk FUCK and
• 43:05
  coming home and asking my father what that meant.
• 43:07
  And he slapped me across the face.
• 43:10
  And I was the only time that had, you know, my father was a
• 43:12
  very gentle guy and it was the only time that happened.
• 43:15
  But that that was the only response.
• 43:18
  So it's like, OK, that's bad. I don't know why, but it was
• 43:23
  like there was this whole misty world of bad things that I
• 43:30
  didn't understand and I didn't know, like, why are they hiding
• 43:35
  Anyway? I I always had the feeling that
• 43:37
  there there was something big that the adults were hiding and
• 43:40
  you and I was, I was right. You were right, but I love that
• 43:45
  that's the kind of story that so and everything is about your
• 43:49
  body and the things that have occurred in around into your
• 43:53
  body in your 72 years. Yes, exactly, exactly, so very
• 43:59
  you know, it's the vulnerability you you did really say that very
• 44:02
  well and the the the nakedness and the vulnerability
• 44:06
  emotionally and literally. I think that's, that's what
• 44:12
  happens and the emotional literal, I mean the emotional
• 44:17
  psychic nakedness feels much riskier to me and you know, then
• 44:23
  then the physical nakedness. Well, even in, you know, you're,
• 44:27
  I'm just trying not to give everything away or anything
• 44:29
  away. Not that I've seen it, but even
• 44:31
  in the Oprah article, you wrote something about sexual partners
• 44:36
  and talking, reminiscing with your friends and one of them
• 44:38
  said something like, or a few of them said something like, I
• 44:40
  don't even remember the date rapes.
• 44:42
  And it's like, those are, first of all, that sentence alone.
• 44:46
  They really should have just pulled that out as like the
• 44:49
  thing to make you read talk that you don't have to be naked.
• 44:52
  You could just say that that line would also get people's
• 44:55
  attention. But that's so telling about
• 44:59
  women and, and you know, our lived experience and where we
• 45:02
  are in this universe and, and how the universe responds to us.
• 45:06
  But I would imagine that hearing you tell these kinds of stories,
• 45:11
  not saying that that's your story, but anything in relation
• 45:14
  to those. What was the what was the
• 45:16
  audience reaction like? What did people say to you
• 45:19
  afterwards? You know, I, I, I feel immodest
• 45:24
  saying this, but but people were blown away.
• 45:27
  They really were, you know, it's like everything that I hoped
• 45:31
  would happen, happened. You know, I mean, people laughed
• 45:34
  a lot because it's funny, but you know, people cried at the
• 45:37
  end. I didn't cry at the end, but I
• 45:41
  was afraid I was going to because the last line would
• 45:43
  always make me burst into tears. I won't tell you what it is.
• 45:47
  I. Have no.
• 45:47
  Don't tell me, don't tell me. But it's, you know, I think that
• 45:52
  people, it was a like a, I don't know, wormhole is, is sort of a
• 45:57
  really ugly word, but it was, you know, it, it, it, I think
• 46:02
  there must be some word in physics or something for like,
• 46:05
  is it black hole or is it some portal?
• 46:09
  It opens some portal for women, I think, to go through and think
• 46:14
  about their own physical experience in a way that they
• 46:18
  hadn't before. Because the things I was talking
• 46:21
  about were particular to me, but there was at least one thing for
• 46:26
  everyone that it's like, Oh my God, that happened to me too.
• 46:31
  And I've never, I also have never told anybody.
• 46:34
  And now I'm feeling this commonality.
• 46:36
  You know, one of my fantasies of, of what could happen with
• 46:40
  the show, I was imagining, I think in practical terms, this
• 46:44
  would be hard, but I was imagining like this audience and
• 46:48
  the when I did the show, there were 100 people there, OK.
• 46:51
  And you know, the things I talk about, like the date rapes, you
• 46:55
  know, I was imagining like little flags in front of
• 46:58
  everybody or hair ties or hats or whatever.
• 47:02
  It's like, OK, if you've been date raped, put up a red flag.
• 47:05
  You know, if you, if you were a kid and didn't when you were a
• 47:09
  kid, if you didn't know you had a vagina, which I didn't know, I
• 47:12
  just thought it was a crack, you know, nothing underneath.
• 47:17
  Like put up a white flag, you know, put up.
• 47:19
  And, and I, I mean, everybody would have a flag.
• 47:22
  And I would guess that many people would have many flags
• 47:27
  because these are these are things that have not been spoken
• 47:31
  or revealed or discussed, but they're really universal.
• 47:36
  Yes and I think the flags are a great idea.
• 47:39
  Can you do that? And, and I think I think that's
• 47:42
  a great idea because it also would make everybody in the
• 47:45
  audience feel so comforted, like not just for you, but you know,
• 47:49
  it's not just two people in isolation who have had these
• 47:52
  experiences. It's.
• 47:54
  Yeah. Women, it reminds me a little
• 47:56
  bit of the me too movement and how you know you'd be reading
• 48:00
  these stories and you're like, you read some horrible story and
• 48:03
  then there's a million people like me too me too, me too.
• 48:06
  It happened to me too or and that was specifically about
• 48:10
  sexual assault. But all of these stories that
• 48:13
  you're mentioning, especially in if you were raised with families
• 48:19
  who are like a little bit more closed lipped about about your
• 48:23
  body or about your body's place in the world, I think it would
• 48:29
  get so much, so much universal appreciation from all the people
• 48:34
  watching it. I think that would be great.
• 48:36
  I love the flag idea. And you know, you talked about
• 48:39
  someplace, one of the things that you wrote talked about the
• 48:41
  idea that this could be a revolution, almost a
• 48:46
  revolutionary. And I, I know you just said
• 48:49
  you're being immodest and, and this is a really big goal, but
• 48:52
  but why not? What would that look like to you
• 48:54
  if that kind of revolution gathered momentum?
• 48:58
  Yeah, You know, I, I've been thinking about that a lot.
• 49:01
  You know, how do you unpack this and what else can it be?
• 49:05
  As I, I, I'm writing a new draft, It needed to be longer
• 49:09
  anyway. It was like 4550 minutes and and
• 49:12
  I knew it needed to be 60 to 70 minutes to be a commercial play.
• 49:19
  And and I have a new framing story.
• 49:21
  And you know, I mean, in terms of reinvention, I'm much more
• 49:25
  comfortable with rewriting and re envisioning now than I used
• 49:28
  to be and expanding. But it's kind of like it, it
• 49:32
  always feels to me like, yes, it's a piece.
• 49:35
  It's it's a piece that's meant to be spoken and it can also be
• 49:38
  something written, But what else is it?
• 49:40
  You know, I went to this amaze. I've been, you know, educating
• 49:45
  myself and seeing a lot of one person shows, which is, you
• 49:48
  know, not something that I ever focused on before I saw what the
• 49:51
  Constitution means to me. Did you see that?
• 49:54
  Oh well, it's amazing hiding I'm.
• 49:57
  Here in South Jersey, I don't get out much, but I really I'm.
• 50:01
  From HBO or Netflix or something.
• 50:03
  There was a video version of it made and it's really great.
• 50:05
  Oh, good. There's another one called Down
• 50:08
  on Your Knees about blowjobs. That was a sensation which I saw
• 50:12
  with my daughter in the city a couple years ago.
• 50:17
  And that one was very popular. And I've been watching Mike
• 50:22
  Birbiglia, who's really great at, you know, telling Catholic
• 50:26
  boy, really great at telling these stories that kind of
• 50:29
  unfold in this elliptical way. I really admire him.
• 50:32
  I love David Sedaris. You know, I'm like.
• 50:36
  And I do, absolutely. I love him.
• 50:40
  I love him. Yes, so all these things feel
• 50:43
  like more like new models for me, you know, like like like
• 50:47
  that's my role model. Not like I think I'm going to be
• 50:50
  that good, but that's that's where what I'm aspiring to.
• 50:54
  But anyway, I saw a one person show in LA by a writer named Ed
• 51:00
  Schmidt and he lives in Brooklyn and he does these performances
• 51:04
  in people's homes. So you buy a ticket.
• 51:07
  Yes, he's that young. He's like 60 ish.
• 51:10
  You buy a ticket and they don't tell you where it is.
• 51:13
  And you just, you know, a few days before they give you the
• 51:16
  address and you show up and there are 12 people sitting
• 51:19
  around a table and the table is full of objects.
• 51:22
  And he comes out and he is a character named Edward.
• 51:29
  So it's kind of like an alter ego, but from a different era.
• 51:32
  I don't it's that part is, you know, for a name person, a
• 51:35
  little bit confusing, but and then each audience member hands
• 51:41
  him an object 1 by 1 and that's determines how in what order he
• 51:46
  tells the story, if that. Anyway, I love that.
• 51:50
  I I love to think, isn't it great?
• 51:52
  I mean, I love to see if it broke the paradox, you know, And
• 51:56
  it felt like, I don't think, I think I would be less
• 52:00
  comfortable getting naked in a room with 12 women, you know,
• 52:04
  just 12 people sitting around a table.
• 52:06
  But I, it made me have this fantasy of 12 women sitting
• 52:10
  around a table each. There's something called a
• 52:13
  Jeffersonian dinner. Have you ever heard of that?
• 52:15
  Are you exposing? Me to all kinds of new things.
• 52:19
  Tell me about that. One, you have to have one.
• 52:22
  So a Jeffersonian dinner is when you, if this is something Thomas
• 52:27
  Jefferson really did, and I think he did it with like
• 52:29
  political events of the day. So he would invite people to
• 52:33
  dinner and there would be a topic like, you know, the
• 52:36
  economy or something. I'm picking something really
• 52:39
  boring. But I did this once on my
• 52:41
  birthday and the topic was birthdays.
• 52:43
  And everybody had to come prepared with a 10 minute story,
• 52:47
  10 minutes tops, about anything to do with birthdays.
• 52:51
  And you go around the table and each person tells their story.
• 52:54
  And then we all discussed and, and everybody, everybody showed
• 52:58
  up grumbling about this, this is stupid.
• 53:01
  I don't want to do this. And it was like the best dinner
• 53:05
  I have ever had. You know, each person came at it
• 53:08
  in a very individual direction. Everybody got to know each other
• 53:13
  in this really intimate way. Anyway, so I was imagining A
• 53:16
  Jeffersonian dinner like this, where each woman would tell an
• 53:20
  intimate story about their lives, you know, their bodies
• 53:24
  over their lives, and they would have to take off one thing.
• 53:28
  So it doesn't, you know, you have to take off your bra.
• 53:31
  You could take off your bra or you know, but I thought that
• 53:38
  sounds interesting. I don't know.
• 53:40
  I. That does sound interesting.
• 53:42
  I love that idea. I love I well, I almost like you
• 53:46
  could, you could almost have it up there with you see, now I'm
• 53:51
  going to just start brainstorming like you can have
• 53:53
  that as you know, another portion like a they're sitting
• 53:57
  there and they can plug in. Do you know what I mean?
• 54:01
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Theater minor.
• 54:03
  So you know, these ideas have to come out somewhere.
• 54:06
  I I I am so glad I met you. I.
• 54:09
  Think I'm a wealth of information.
• 54:14
  You, you know, all these things you did, even the names like
• 54:16
  Nameberry. I feel like there's just a
• 54:18
  through line for you. Do you feel like there's a
• 54:21
  through line for you in your work?
• 54:23
  You know, for a long time I didn't, I I was like, what, you
• 54:26
  know, how do all these things connect?
• 54:29
  I would actually meet a lot of people who would think that I
• 54:32
  was two different people, especially when my name was
• 54:34
  Pamela Redmond Satrin, which is a much more just, you know, a
• 54:38
  singular name. People would be like, oh, I
• 54:41
  thought there were two Pamela Redmond Satrans.
• 54:45
  That seems incredibly unlikely to me, but I think less unlikely
• 54:50
  than that one person would do two such different things as,
• 54:55
  you know, names and and novels. But my friend Kate here in LA
• 55:03
  who was going to produce the show in LA, it's like, oh, I
• 55:06
  know what the through line is. It's identity.
• 55:09
  And I'm like, that is brilliant. You know, that is yes, that's
• 55:13
  it. The through line is identity.
• 55:15
  The through line is reinvention and the through line for me as a
• 55:25
  creator is doing something in a different way than it's ever
• 55:30
  been done before, but in the way that it should be done, you
• 55:35
  know, and in something that I think the goal is like something
• 55:38
  that's both original and natural.
• 55:41
  Original and natural. That's like the holy that's.
• 55:47
  You have a Holy Grail of creativity.
• 55:49
  Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Well.
• 55:50
  I think you're I think you're doing it.
• 55:52
  I have I have one last question for you, but I could talk to you
• 55:55
  all day. You're going to be like you're.
• 55:57
  So great at this, Oh my God. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 56:02
  I have to tell my mom you now you wrote your first novel at 50
• 56:07
  and and I I don't mean to keep Hemming and hawing on this or I
• 56:11
  don't mean to keep coming back to it, but you also were
• 56:13
  divorced after 33 years and I'm imagining is it around the same
• 56:17
  time? No, no, I was 61 when I got
• 56:21
  divorced, and that was not coincidentally the age my mother
• 56:25
  was when she died. So yeah.
• 56:28
  We could have had a whole episode on that.
• 56:30
  Yeah, so I broke my first novel 55.
• 56:34
  We launched Nameberry, which, you know, was going from writing
• 56:38
  books to creating a website. I mean, we had no idea what
• 56:41
  we're doing. And.
• 56:44
  And 60 is when Younger got sold to TV, so yeah.
• 56:52
  OK, so it actually is even better.
• 56:53
  So if you could go back to before you ever wrote a novel,
• 56:56
  if you could talk to this person that you were before you even
• 56:59
  wrote a novel when it was just a dream and you know, you were
• 57:02
  like, am I going to is it going to be any good or do I do it
• 57:06
  anyway? Even accepting the fact that it
• 57:07
  might, I mean, many people write novels and there are many
• 57:10
  drawers across America and and that's it.
• 57:13
  And you've actually had a not only a successful novel, but it
• 57:16
  was turned into ATV show. If you could look back and talk
• 57:19
  to that woman who was at the time raising kids, married, not
• 57:23
  doing the dream that you had, what would you say to her?
• 57:29
  I think the thing I would say is don't give your power to other
• 57:34
  people. You know, I was so fixated on
• 57:40
  when you say, is it any good, right?
• 57:41
  I was so fixated on other people judging whether my work was good
• 57:45
  or not that I couldn't even, I couldn't judge it for myself.
• 57:49
  And it, you know, it very much relates to the old woman naked
• 57:53
  sex relationships. You know, I was always fixated
• 57:56
  on, oh, does he like me? Is he having a good time?
• 58:00
  You know, I wasn't, I wasn't able to judge it from the inside
• 58:04
  out. And I would say that's something
• 58:07
  that only recently I've really understand in a really deep way.
• 58:12
  It's like, how do you like, what do you have to do to get that
• 58:18
  feeling in yourself? That certainty is like, I know
• 58:21
  this is good and I don't need anybody to tell me anything and
• 58:26
  that takes a long time to get to, but I feel that way now.
• 58:30
  I work a lot harder on my writing now than I ever have in
• 58:34
  my life, you know, rewriting the again and again and again and
• 58:39
  really like just looking for that feeling of excitement and
• 58:43
  certainty that this is this is it.
• 58:48
  And, and you don't need anybody else to tell you, you know, it's
• 58:52
  like you don't need anybody to confirm that feeling.
• 58:55
  And I wish I'd been able to get to that when I was young in all
• 59:00
  kinds of ways, in my writing and, you know, in my life, in
• 59:03
  all kinds of ways. Well, I love it and I love that
• 59:06
  you did it now. And I and you, you know, the,
• 59:10
  the last thing I'll say is in the jubilarian also, you wrote,
• 59:13
  which everybody's obviously going to have to read, because
• 59:14
  I've read Lego because I keep talking about it.
• 59:16
  But you wrote how to be, I think it's how to be 90 or, and, and
• 59:21
  how you have a model, like a model for it.
• 59:24
  And, and I think everybody needs that, right.
• 59:26
  We all need to see how other people are doing it and how it
• 59:29
  can look and it it doesn't have to necessarily look like, you
• 59:34
  know, packing up your bags and heading for the hills.
• 59:36
  It can look like reinvention and daring and creativity and
• 59:41
  confidence in doing something new.
• 59:43
  So I thank you for, you know, how to be 72 because you are
• 59:51
  knocking it out of the park. So thank you.
• 59:52
  I appreciate. It so much, Danielle, thank you.
• 59:55
  Thank you. Really good for my ego.
• 59:57
  Thank you. Why don't we hang up?
• 1:00:00
  No, Thank you so much for being here.
• 1:00:03
  I appreciate it. Thank you for having me, it's
• 1:00:06
  been great. That's it for today's episode of
• 1:00:10
  Roar. I hope you enjoyed Pamela's
• 1:00:11
  honesty, humor and hard won wisdom as much as I did.
• 1:00:14
  Next week we're heading somewhere totally different but
• 1:00:17
  deeply needed. My second to last guest of the
• 1:00:19
  season is Lisa Field, the founder of Lucky Star Art Camp.
• 1:00:23
  If you've ever fantasized about running away to the woods with a
• 1:00:26
  bunch of creative women, eating gorgeous food, making things
• 1:00:29
  with your hands, and remembering who you are outside the chaos,
• 1:00:33
  well, Lisa basically built that place.
• 1:00:35
  Our conversation is all about what happens when women step out
• 1:00:38
  of their everyday lives and into a space that's actually designed
• 1:00:41
  to refill them. Before you go an FYI, you can
• 1:00:45
  grab a free copy of the Roar Rolodex.
• 1:00:47
  It's a curated list of women centered resources worth knowing
• 1:00:51
  right through the link in the show notes.
• 1:00:52
  It's completely free. It's packed with the tools,
• 1:00:55
  communities, and voices we talked about on the show.
• 1:00:57
  And so it's also live and it'll be always added to.
• 1:01:01
  If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a
• 1:01:04
  rating, share it with a friend who loved Pamela's work.
• 1:01:07
  It helps Roar reach more women who need these conversations.
• 1:01:10
  Thanks again and we'll see you next week.