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Who You Are When the Rushing Stops · After the Rush Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've been telling people for years that the transition is the work,
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: not the thing you get through to reach the real chapter,
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: not the awkward waiting room between your old life and the new one,
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: the transition itself.
• 0:18
  That is where the real work happens and almost nobody is
• 0:22
  talking honestly about
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  SPEAKER_00: what that actually looks like and that's why I'm here.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to After the Rush.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Catherine McDowell,
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  SPEAKER_00: and today,
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  because this is the first podcast and you deserve to know who
• 0:51
  is talking to you,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell you a little bit about where I came from,
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  SPEAKER_00: what I know,
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: and why I think this conversation is worth having.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to start with something that happened when I was very young.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I'm going to make it into a lesson,
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  SPEAKER_00: but because it explains something about how I think.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was a teenage single mother without a home.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was doing math constantly.
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  SPEAKER_00: The way you do when the numbers are not abstract.
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  When the question is not,
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  should I save for retirement,
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  but can I afford to cover this today?
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  SPEAKER_00: And if I can't, what does that actually cost me over time with interest?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I remember standing in a store.
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  SPEAKER_00: I won't dress up the memory.
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  and thinking,
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  if I cannot pay for this right now,
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  I cannot pay for it plus interest later.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I won't buy it.
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  SPEAKER_00: That sounds simple.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was not simple.
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  It was a discipline I had to practice under conditions most
• 1:58
  people will never face.
• 2:00
  And I am grateful I learned it then because it has shaped every
• 2:04
  financial decision
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I have made since.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I went on to put myself through college,
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  SPEAKER_00: built a career in occupational therapy,
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  SPEAKER_00: clinical work,
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  SPEAKER_00: department leadership,
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  SPEAKER_00: university teaching.
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  I helped corporations design programs for their retiring
• 2:23
  employees back when
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  SPEAKER_00: companies were still invested in the people who built them.
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  I founded a non-profit and in that built a housing community
• 2:35
  for homeless single mothers
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  And I became the person who funded it,
• 2:40
  writing grants that brought in over a million dollars.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have managed organizational budgets,
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  SPEAKER_00: I have negotiated contracts,
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  SPEAKER_00: I have sat with women who had nothing,
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  SPEAKER_00: no credit,
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  SPEAKER_00: no income,
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  SPEAKER_00: no safety net,
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  SPEAKER_00: no hope,
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: and helped them to understand that they were not their debt.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is one of the most important things I know how to do.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have changed careers more than once.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: What other people call retirement, I call a pivot.
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  I have done it enough times to know that the transition itself
• 3:20
  requires a different
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: skill set than the career did,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: and that most people are walking into it without those skills,
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  SPEAKER_00: not because they're not smart,
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  SPEAKER_00: but because nobody told them what the questions were.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: My husband is 10 years older than I am.
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  SPEAKER_00: I say that because it matters.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have a front row seat to what the next chapter actually looks like.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not in a brochure, not in a financial plan, but in real life.
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  SPEAKER_00: The decisions that come up,
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  SPEAKER_00: the adjustments that nobody warned you about,
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  SPEAKER_00: the unexpected freedoms,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the things that no retirement calculator fully accounts for.
• 4:04
  I am watching him navigate it I am learning from it I am
• 4:09
  preparing for my own
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  version of it This is not abstract for me I am not a researcher
• 4:16
  who studies this
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  SPEAKER_00: chapter from a distance I am inside it I am writing from inside it
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: My sons are adults now.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: They have careers and partners and lives of their own,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I'm figuring out in real time what it means to let go with grace,
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  SPEAKER_00: to renegotiate those relationships as equals,
• 4:39
  to find genuine delight in watching them build what they're
• 4:43
  building without
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  SPEAKER_00: needing to be at the center of it,
• 4:47
  I also love to travel and I'm learning sometimes imperfectly
• 4:53
  sometimes with a real
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: resistance to actually enjoy the wealth I've spent decades building.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: It turns out to be its own skill.
• 5:03
  I'll talk more about that in future episodes because I think
• 5:06
  it's one of the most
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: unexamined problems in this life chapter.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be clear about what
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: After the Rush is and is not.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a retirement podcast.
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  I want to say that directly because I intentionally did not use
• 5:26
  the word retirement
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  SPEAKER_00: in the title.
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  SPEAKER_00: Retirement implies an ending.
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  SPEAKER_00: I do not believe in endings.
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  SPEAKER_00: I believe in transitions.
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  And I think the word we use for this chapter shapes up how we
• 5:39
  show up for it.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is not generic financial advice.
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  SPEAKER_00: I am not a licensed financial planner.
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  SPEAKER_00: I will say that as many times as it is useful to say.
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  SPEAKER_00: What I offer is something different.
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  The perspective of someone who has lived the financial
• 5:57
  conversation at every level
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  SPEAKER_00: from genuine poverty to organizational budgets to personal wealth and who
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: understands from all of that that money is never about money.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a wellness platform.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: I bring my clinical background to the conversation when it's relevant,
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  SPEAKER_00: but the center of After the Rush is the architecture of a life.
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  How do you design what comes next with intention and clarity
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  and some honest humor
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  SPEAKER_00: about the parts that resist design?
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  SPEAKER_00: And it is not advice from someone who has figured it all out.
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to be direct about that.
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  SPEAKER_00: My husband's chapter is further along than mine.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm watching, learning, and adjusting.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm writing from the middle of this, not from the end of this.
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  And I think that is actually more useful than advice from
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  someone who claims to have arrived.
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  If you are in or approaching the 55 chapter,
• 7:06
  this show is probably for you.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to be specific about that.
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  I'm not here to give a watered-down version to an audience
• 7:21
  that's uninvolved.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking to people who are lost.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking to people in crisis.
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  SPEAKER_00: The people I'm most interested in finding are the people who are capable,
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  SPEAKER_00: experienced,
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  SPEAKER_00: and often underestimated
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  including by themselves you may have had a successful career in
• 7:49
  every external
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  measure and you're now asking what is it actually next you may
• 7:56
  have defined
• 7:57
  yourself by your work for 30 years and the title is going away
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  and you're not
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  SPEAKER_00: entirely sure what remains when it does
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  You may be in a partnership where you and your spouse are at
• 8:11
  different stages of
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: this transition,
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  SPEAKER_00: which creates its own friction,
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  SPEAKER_00: its own negotiation,
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  SPEAKER_00: its own quiet pressure that nobody warned you about.
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  SPEAKER_00: You may have built financial security over decades,
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  SPEAKER_00: and now for the first time,
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: you are supposed to live from it rather than toward it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that turns out to be a different thing entirely.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: You may be recalibrating your relationship with your adult children,
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  SPEAKER_00: with your aging parents,
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  SPEAKER_00: with your own body,
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  SPEAKER_00: your own time,
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  SPEAKER_00: your own sense of purpose.
• 8:50
  You are not looking for someone to tell you what your life
• 8:52
  should look like.
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  You are looking for an honest conversation about what is
• 8:58
  actually possible and what
• 9:00
  it actually takes and what the experience is like for people
• 9:05
  who are living it
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  SPEAKER_00: right now.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is a conversation I'm here to have.
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  Each episode of After the Rush will live somewhere inside one
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  of five big topics.
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  SPEAKER_00: First, career and reinvention.
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  Because how do you build something new when you already have a
• 9:27
  full resume?
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  SPEAKER_00: What does a pivot look like at 58 or 64 or 70?
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  SPEAKER_00: I've changed directions multiple times.
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  SPEAKER_00: I know what that costs and what it returns.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about money and financial identity.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not the mechanics.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of places to get the mechanics.
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  I am interested in the beliefs and habits and identities that
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  shape every financial
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  SPEAKER_00: decision people make,
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  SPEAKER_00: usually without knowing it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have watched people earn six figures and stay broke.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have watched people on fixed incomes build real stability.
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  SPEAKER_00: The difference is almost never the math.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then there's lifestyle and what I think of as the art of enough.
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  SPEAKER_00: What does it actually mean to enjoy what you built?
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  SPEAKER_00: Travel?
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  SPEAKER_00: Rest?
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  SPEAKER_00: Generosity?
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  SPEAKER_00: Creative work?
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  SPEAKER_00: These are skills.
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  And many people in this chapter are learning for the first time
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  how to receive.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm learning it alongside them.
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  relationships at every age adult children aging spouses aging
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  parents friendships
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  that drift and friendships that deepen the relational landscape
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  shifts dramatically
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  in this chapter and almost no one talks about the negotiation
• 11:02
  required to move
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  SPEAKER_00: through it with any grace and finally
• 11:08
  What I call the long view on health,
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  not as a wellness topic,
• 11:13
  as a structural one.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: What do you need in your body,
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  SPEAKER_00: your nervous system,
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  SPEAKER_00: your actual physical life to sustain the chapter you're trying to design?
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  SPEAKER_00: I have clinical background.
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  SPEAKER_00: The body has a vote in every plan you make.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's worth consulting.
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  I want to end this first episode with the thing I come back to
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  most often,
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  SPEAKER_00: the line I return to.
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  SPEAKER_00: When I was young,
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  SPEAKER_00: with nothing,
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  SPEAKER_00: doing math in real time,
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  SPEAKER_00: if I cannot afford to pay for this today,
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  SPEAKER_00: I cannot afford to pay for it plus interest later.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: That discipline, practice under conditions I would not wish on anyone,
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  SPEAKER_00: created every option I have now.
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  SPEAKER_00: The freedom I have in this chapter is not an accident.
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  It is the result of a thousand small decisions made when I had
• 12:19
  almost nothing.
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  And what I have learned from my own life from the people I have
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  worked with from
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  sitting across from women who thought it was too late from
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  watching my husband
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  navigate the chapter I'm approaching is that it's never too
• 12:38
  late to apply that same
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  clarity to your money to your career to your friendships to the
• 12:46
  life you still have
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  SPEAKER_00: time to build
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is what After the Rush is about.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you're here.
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  I will be back next week with a real conversation about what it
• 12:59
  actually looks like
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: when the paycheck stops.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not the financial mechanics, but the psychological shift.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because that is the part nobody talks about.
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  SPEAKER_00: Until then,