Latest / Butterfly Days w Tami Jorden / Baby, You Ain't No Copy: Midlife Isn't a Faded Version of You

Transcript

Baby, You Ain't No Copy: Midlife Isn't a Faded Version of You · Butterfly Days w Tami Jorden

• 0:10
  Tami Jorden (00:02.22)
• 0:15
  Welcome to my realm. I'm Tammy Jordan, and this is Butterfly Days, the podcast that proves you're not past your prime. You're living in it right now because women don't have expiration dates. Butterfly Days is a celebration of the extraordinary potential of Gen X and Boomer women. Throughout history, women have shared wisdom to uplift and empower one another. And you're about to learn hard-earned wisdom and best-kept secrets.
• 0:20
  From interesting, inspiring women. So if you're ready to embrace your butterfly season with confidence, find joy in the present, and create a legacy that matters, you're in the right place. No more holding back. Let's spread our wings now. Here we go!
• 0:30
  Tami Jorden (00:53.932)
• 0:35
  Welcome to my realm. This is Tammy Jordan, and you're listening to Butterfly Days. If you worked in an office in the early 90s, you remember him. I know you do. The guy by the copy machine, whatever happened to copy machines, somebody would walk up to run a copy and he would start in spinning their name into nicknames nobody asked for. Making copies.
• 0:40
  Rob Schneider, the Schneiderleader, the Schneidmeister on Saturday Night Live. And for a few years there, it seemed like every one of us knew somebody like that guy. And I've been thinking about him lately, not the nicknames. Those are so awesome though. But about the copies. Because I think a lot of us think that we spend our lives making copies. And I want to talk about what happens when you realize you're not making copies at all.
• 0:50
  What on earth am I trying to say here? Well, think about all the versions of you that have already come and gone. The girl that you were, the young woman figuring it out, the one who built the career, the marriage or the family, maybe all three at once. The one who held everyone together when things got hard. The one who crashed and burned and had to rise from the ashes. Version after version, each a little different. Each one a new copy of you.
• 1:00
  And every one of them mattered. Not one of them was a waste. Each version taught you things that make you you. But here's a lie that creeps in around midlife. You know how a photocopy can work. Copy of a copy of a copy, each one fainter than the last. And somewhere in here, we can look in the mirror and think, that's what I am now, the faded version. the worn out Xerox of the girl that I used to be.
• 1:10
  This is it. This is all I've got. No more iterations coming. And let's be honest, that ache can be real. But I'm not gonna paint over that. A lot of women carry it quietly and nobody talks about it. But you know what? You count on me to talk about tricky stuff. And that ache is built on something false. Follow me and see what you think. Because you are never a photocopier.
• 1:20
  Tami Jorden (03:14.166)
• 1:25
  You weren't making fainter and fainter prints of some original girl. Every version of you was a brand new original, a fresh page, not a copy, a first edition every single time. And one more thing, we're not living our mother's midlife. That generation got handed a script that said fifty was the beginning of the end. But we kind of got handed something different, more years, more health, more room to change our minds.
• 1:30
  There are versions of you still coming. Did you hear that? There are versions of you still coming, and they can be the most whole, most deliberate, most yours of all. As your favorite Datula, I do have to say this. Knowing there are more versions coming doesn't mean you have unlimited time. You don't. There's a last version for all of us. But that's not the sad part. It's actually the whole point.
• 1:40
  Because knowing that your number is finite is exactly what lets you make a next version on purpose, not on autopilot, not by default. Deliberately because it counts. So how do you make the next one on purpose? Here's the good news that we didn't always get told. You've been packing for it your whole life. Picture a knapsack. As highbrow or utilitarian as you prefer it, it's yours.
• 1:50
  Every version of you drop something into the backpack. A skill, an instinct, a hard won piece of knowing. Decades of it. And midlife is when you finally get to set the knapsack down, unsip it, and see what you've been carrying. Here's the catch. You know the old saying you can't see the forest for the trees? Well, midlife is the reverse of that. We are so deep in our own forests.
• 2:00
  That we've stopped seeing the individual trees that we planted all those years ago. And the gifts that are so natural to us, so automatic, we don't even count them as gifts. The thing you do without trying that everyone around you finds remarkable, you've written off as, that's nothing. Anybody could do that. Well, sister, it's not nothing. What's effortless to you looks like magic to somebody else. And when you finally see your talent.
• 2:10
  Tami Jorden (05:37.11)
• 2:15
  And plug it into something new, that's when it gets good. Fresh purpose, a sense of accomplishment you forgot you were hungry for. Friendships you never saw coming. Maybe it's a mastery you already have. Maybe it's a call you never answered. Maybe it's a passion that you set down 30 years ago and could pick right back up. Let me tell you about two women. You're gonna enjoy this. The first woman is Ganawalska. She spent
• 2:20
  Yes, Gana Walska. She spent the first half of her life chasing a singing career. She poured herself onto a stage that, if we're honest, never quite played to her strengths. She could have kept forcing it. Instead, in her mid-fifties, she did something gutsy. She followed a completely different call. She bought a piece of land in California and she started building a garden. No formal training, just her natural creativity.
• 2:30
  And a fierce love for it. She spent the next forty three years of her life on it, and today it's called Lotus Land. It's considered one of the most extraordinary gardens in the world. She found a real instrument in her fifties, y'all, and it was never her voice. Her creative impulse turned out to be for the earth. Isn't that amazing? Now the second woman is a friend of mine.
• 2:40
  And hers is a story I really want you to sit with. She spent her career in accounting, I know, thrilling. Detailed, thorough, endlessly patient, a hard worker, a loyal defender of the people and ideas that she believes in, and underneath all that precision, one of the most tender hearts I know. She loved being a mom, and when she retired, she knew she wasn't ready to just fill her days with pickleball and mahjong, lovely as those things are.
• 2:50
  She'd heard about Casa, that's a court appointed special advocate. They're everyday volunteers that a judge appoints to stand up for a child in the foster care system. Often the one steady adult in a kid's life where caseworkers and placements crazily come and go. She had zero background in foster care. She just had a hope she might help a child that needed it. They assigned her a boy who had a turbulent life and he was not thriving. So she did.
• 3:00
  Tami Jorden (08:04.982)
• 3:05
  What she does. She showed up patiently, again and again. She got curious about him, who he was, what he'd been through, what he'd needed. She documented everything carefully, the way only someone with her training would. She became part of his team at the table with social workers and lawyers and judges. And over a few years, that quiet, meticulous life.
• 3:10
  Maternally fierce advocacy did something. It makes me cry every time, you guys. It kept the system from losing him. It kept him from slipping through the cracks, and eventually it helped place him where he finally found his forever family. The trajectory of that boy's whole life changed course because a retired accountant chose to aim everything she already was at a child who
• 3:20
  Who needed exactly that?
• 3:30
  Who knows what the seeds of her care will grow into? She's planting them in a future she may never fully get to see. She had no idea going in that her skills would fit so perfectly. But those of us who know her, we were not surprised for a second. Two women. One follows a brand new call, the other aimed everything she'd already become at something that needed her. Different doors, same truth.
• 3:40
  And my message to you, my dear, dear listener, is what you're carrying is enough. In your backpack it is. And it's not too late to use it. And notice what both of these women were really doing. They're taking what they know and giving it to someone who needs it. Women sharing what they know to help other women, to help a child, a community, a stranger. That is the best of the history of the world. And it always has been.
• 3:50
  Tami Jorden (10:04.034)
• 3:55
  So no, retiring isn't fading out, getting older isn't running out the clock. It's a season where you finally get to mind the best of what you've become and spend it on purpose. That's the whole reason I do this podcast, because we are not bodies trying to last longer. We are lives trying to matter more. And I believe we can. The next version of you, it's yet unwritten, but you've got the knapsack, you've got the trees you planted, and
• 4:00
  And you're not making copies, you're making originals. So here's where you start. You don't need a silent retreat to find these things. I just want you to consider taking a hot minute for yourself on the commute, folding laundry, wherever your hands are busy and your mind can wander. And just notice. What do you love doing? What comes so easily you stop counting it? What matters to you so much, it still tugs at your heart.
• 4:10
  You don't have to do a single thing with your answers yet. Just notice them. Name them. Because the minute you do, the seed is in the ground. And when the moment comes, and it will, you'll be ready to grow it. So go find the gift you've been calling nothing. I got news for you. Somebody out there needs exactly your nothing. And here's my benediction for you.
• 4:20
  May you seek clarity on what hidden gifts your life has developed. May you use your unique talents for greater good, and may that service fulfill something inside you that nothing else can. May you know the great satisfaction of having left the best of you on the stage when you take your final bow, 'cause honey, you ain't no copy. And remember, I'm rootin' for you.
• 4:30
  I hope you have an amazing week. Please share this episode with someone who needs it, 'cause you know there's somebody out there who does. Take care, and I'll see you next week in a great interview.
• 4:40
  Tami Jorden (12:16.086)
• 4:45
  I'm so grateful you listened to this episode. I hope it was a real value to you. If there's a sister in your life who needs this message, please share it. Just like women have done to lift each other up over the centuries and across cultures. Women lifting each other is so important. It's why I do this work. And to avoid FOMO and keep up leveling your own life, make sure you don't miss the next episode.
• 4:50
  You may be losing hormones, but your life has given you powerful perspective. And I believe you have something to give that no one else does, that the world needs. So remember, I'm rooting for you. Let's go.