The following is a transcript of this episode. It has been edited for clarity.
Teaser: Midlife is filled with challenges, of course. But what would happen if your worst fear came true and you lost everything? That happened to my next guest who, in her 40s, suddenly lost her marriage, her job, her money, and became a mom on welfare. Now 15 years later, she’s a successful entrepreneur, author and influencer who’s been featured in Oprah’s online magazine. And she’s here to tell us how it’s entirely possible to turn even the worst luck around, start from scratch and find success, joy and love in midlife.
Intro: Welcome to More Beautiful, the podcast for women rewriting the midlife playbook. I’m Maryann LoRusso, and I invite you to join me and a guest each week as we strive for a life that’s more adventurous, more fulfilling and more beautiful than ever before.
Maryann: Hi, welcome back to the More Beautiful Podcast. My guest today is the lovely Lorraine C. Laddish. Lorraine is a successful digital content creator, the author of several books and an influencer in the over-50 space. She has been featured in [the online version of] O magazine, called Oprah Daily. She is one of my favorite pro-aging advocates who writes about topics like lifestyl, health, and the yoga practice that she’s so passionate about. Lorraine, welcome to More Beautiful. It’s so great to have you here.
Lorraine: It’s great to be here. I just got inspired by what you said about me. [Laughs]
Maryann: [Laughs] It’s funny, sometimes you forget of all the things you’ve done until somebody reminds you. And you’ve done so much! You know, we spoke a couple of days ago, and something you told me in that conversation was, “You live long enough things are going to happen to you.” Which is so true, because I don’t think any woman gets to this age without experiencing some ups and downs, some losses, some life-changing events. And I think people love you because you’re so candid about the challenges you’ve had. You talk very openly about your struggles with eating disorders, anxiety, depression, as well as the fact that in 2008, when you were only in your mid-40s, you found yourself separated from your husband, unemployed, in debt, with two young daughters. You became a mom on welfare and you were so close to being homeless. But you decided to make a $500 investment in yourself. Tell us about this time period, and lead us up to that turnaround moment.
Lorraine: So I’m originally from Spain, although my mother’s American. I lived in Spain for most of my life, and I moved to Florida in 2004 when I was 41. At the time I had a 4-month-old and my other daughter with my then-husband was 3, so [moving to the U.S.] was already one starting over. In Spain I used to make a living as a language interpreter and author and…a fitness instructor….I had my career made here. When I came here, yes, I spoke English, yes I had nationality…and I was [able to come here and] not have to deal with papers like many immigrants have to…But I had not really lived in the state. So that was a big adjustment at that age. But somehow I was able to get myself in the Hispanic community, which I found was my community, and find work as a journalist with no real prior experience as a journalist. And I was able to incorporate my kids into my work. But in 2008, after several years of knowing that my marriage was not what I thought it was going to be, and having tried everything…which is something I tell every woman who asks me, when do you know you should leave, is when you’ve tried everything, so you have no regrets. And what “everything” meant for me was going to couples therapy, going to self-empowerment seminars with my then-husband. We tried a trial separation under the same roof…I do not recommend that at all. [Laughs]
Maryann: Yeah, I know people who have done it…It’s almost always a disaster.
Lorraine: It was no fun! [Laughs]…But you know, we had no work. We had debt. We had a relationship that I wasn’t proud of showing my children…Because…being from divorced parents…I was also feeling, what am I teaching my kids if I stay? So at 40 or 45, I made the decision to leave. I didn’t go back to Spain because I wanted my kids to be close to their father. I grew up without a mother. So sometimes our struggles benefit our children. Me growing up without a mother made me the mother I never had, or made me want to be the mother I never had. And that also shaped the way I handled my divorce, which was on amicable terms…I was always thinking of my kids, not me. And I did not get any kind of help from my ex, so my kids and I ended up on welfare. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to work. It was that I had been self-employed from the age of 20…I’m nearly 60 now and I’d been working for myself in different countries for 40 years. Of course, at the very beginning of that it sounded like a [bad] thing, [as if] I couldn’t hold a job. I couldn’t stand having somebody over my shoulder. I couldn’t stand being at the same place every day at the same time. And that was a detriment when I was 45 and looking for a job. Because it was the recession. Newspapers were folding, or they were just cutting back on staff. So I had no writing gigs. I had no translating gigs. I had no freelance work at all.
Maryann: Tell me about it. I was a journalism major with a journalism degree and a ton of clips. That was a tough time for everybody.
Lorraine: Yes. So imagine me trying to get a job in retail or just anything? I didn’t have any experience. So who are they going to hire? Me at 45, or some 16-year-old kid who is going to be fine with minimum wage and maybe have more energy? Who knows. So it’s not that I didn’t want to work, I just couldn’t find any work. In that time, I got a lot of help from all the contacts I had made as a journalist. I had a book section in the Palm Beach Post in Spanish. And all the people I had ever interviewed, in those four years that I worked with them they came back, eventually, when the digital world was starting, to let me know, hey, there’s this gig, there’s that gig, you will be perfect for it. But before all that happened, I was on the verge of being evicted a number of times. I did get help from my family. But everybody was struggling, as you just said back. So it’s not like they could support me fully for two or three years…And I did find that when I had nothing to lose, it was one of the times of my life where I found simplicity. I mean, the worst thing that could happen was that I would become homeless. And you know, I would stay at a friend’s house maybe or I could go back to Spain or a number of things, but the point was that I discovered that there was a lot of kindness in people. When my kids’ school saw that we didn’t have enough money, they gave my kids uniforms, they gave them socks and shoes, and we qualified for the free food at school. They put us on the charity list on Christmas, a friend recommended that I signed up for food stamps, and I was like, What the heck? This is for poor people. But then I realized: I’m poor! I could barely buy food for my kids. And so I did qualify for the food stamps. And the first time that I took my then 7-year-old and 4-year-old to buy the Cheerios or whatever it was that they wanted but we couldn’t afford, it was like Christmas. And their faces when we could just buy what they really wanted were was priceless. It was tremendous.
Another anecdote that is very dear to me is that when I went to dance classes…And that may sound terribly frivolous for a single mom on welfare; but I have always thought it is very important to take care of one’s mental health because I have struggled, as you said, with major depressive disorder and anxiety. And I didn’t I could not afford to go down that road again, especially with my kids. So I signed up to these $40-a-month classes once a week. And I took my kids there, to salsa class. It was a very healthy environment. No drinking. It was just fun. And in that hour-and-a-half I forgot everything. And I met wonderful people.
Maryann: Such a joyous form of dance.
Laureen: Yes, yes. I loved it. And it was also social. And there was a school teacher who asked me how I was doing. And I told her that I had had to sell all my family’s jewelry—heirlooms, like a ring that my grandfather was wearing when he died, my wedding rings, like everything my kids had ever been given when they were babies, anything. I had to sell the whole thing. It was a very emotional experience for me…So I told her, and she asked if they’d given me enough money [for the jewelry]. And I said, I don’t know, I paid the rent with it. And then she asked me to go home with her. I’d never been to her house. I followed her in my car, like at midnight. And she went to her room. Remember, she’s a schoolteacher, OK, she’s not a rich person. She’s just a normal income, low-income possibly person. She goes to a room, comes back out and puts something in my hand. And they were two sets of engagement and wedding rings from her two failed marriages.
Maryann: Wow.
Lorraine: And she said, I have been keeping these to give to the right person.
Maryann: What generosity.
Lorraine: And she said, just take it for your kids. And as a mom, I did not say no. But I do remember saying—and Facebook was already around—that I was going to tell everyone how [kind] she’d been to me. But she…said to me, What has just happened is between you, me and God, and that’s it.
Maryann: Were you bawling, I’d be bawling.
Lorraine: I cried the entire half-hour drive back home in the middle of the night, in the rain. And I thought, if all these people believe in me—and she was one of them—I can do this. I can get out of this. And that was a pivotal moment.
Maryann: That is such an amazing story. Wow.
Lorraine: And you know, one of the beautiful things of having been able to get myself back on my feet…is that I took my writing career online. That’s it. I didn’t reinvent myself. Some people say, Oh, you reinvented yourself. And I’m like, No, I have always worked with words. I just took them online. And someone from that dance class, who was an entrepreneur, asked me if I wanted to write blog posts for his coupon website. And as a writer, of course, it was like 20 million steps down from writing books, but it was money—little money, but it was money. And one thing led to another and I started realizing the power of social media, online, of the Hispanic community, that was very much being highlighted in the media back then. And then I started making a good living, a better living than I ever had. And so then I did reach out to her and I said, look, I did it.
Maryann: And was she so excited for you?
Lorraine: Yes. Oh, and then there were other people who also lent me money or gave me money. And I’ve been able to track some of those people down and return the money. And I remember, I think it was two years ago, I found this person on LinkedIn. And I said, hey, remember the money you lent me however many years ago, and she thought it was a scam.
Maryann: Really? [Laughs]
Lorraine: [Laughs] She said, how do I know it’s really you? So I ended up sending her a check. She had completely forgotten that she had given me $400.
Maryann: Wow. So did you use some of that money to start Viva 50 Media?
Lorraine: No.
Maryann: What was the sequence of events?
Lorraine: So what happened was that…all those contexts that I had made while working as a journalist for the Palm Beach Post in Spanish, either I reached out to them or they reached out to me, and somehow I got offered a position as a managing editor, which I had never done. I was a writer always for Hispanic publications. And the money that they were now offering me was [more than I’d ever made before]. So I did that for a while and I’ve always done work that I was not not qualified for; I just learned on the job. And at the same time, someone gave me a heads up that About.com, which is now [Dotdashmeredith.com] but back then belonged to the New York Times, was looking for “experts” on different subjects. And one of them was Latina mom, and it was in Spanish. I applied, but you had to learn HTML and SEO and a bunch of things that I had no clue about. The process of applying was [more than] a month. And it was grueling. And I thought, if I don’t get the gig, I will at least have learned for free.
Maryann: Right? Learning SEO is a big deal.
Lorraine: If I got the gig. And I got the gig. And I cried. And it’s interesting to me now, because the pay was $650 a month, which is nothing. I mean, now for posting one picture on Instagram I get four times more than that, or more.
Maryann: It’s incredible.
Lorraine: I was willing, and a lot of people are not willing to do that. I was willing to learn everything I could about that. And so eventually, I got a gig as the editor-in-chief of someone else’s website for Latina moms. And there, I managed pools of writers, I managed the calendar, I managed the budget, I managed the influencers I met and again, I had never done that. And I enjoyed it, I did it well. And I was still working as a contractor, still working for myself. But when I was about to turn 50, I thought, I already know how to manage budgets, I know how to do SEO, I know social media pretty well. And I like it. I had, by then, already divorced formally, I had met my now husband, the love of my life. He was also a journalist for most of his life. And now he has to take my picture.
Maryann: He’s the Instagram husband.
Lorraine: He’s more than that. Because…we go above and beyond for our pictures. He’s had to relearn photo journalism…Like a lot of the gigs I get is because of his photography. Like he doesn’t just grab my phone and take my picture. He’s a professional. So that has helped us a lot.
Maryann: That was actually my next question: What does a midlife marriage look like?
Lorraine: Gosh, when we met, we were both down and out. It’s not like, oh, I married this guy with a bunch of money and he saved me. No, not at all. We met through a common friend. And he is bicultural bilingual, like myself. He was, as I said, a photojournalist, but he was kind of hanging up his camera and going back to school to become a writer. I had already published a few books, but he’s a fiction writer. I’m a nonfiction writer. And he had a kid, which is unusual, because at our ages, we could both be the parents of adult children. But we both had little kids. Mine were 5 and 8, and his kid was 6. But yeah, we raised our kids together. We both had dreams. He almost lost his house to foreclosure. I had to file for bankruptcy. We saw each other through that. And through co-parenting with [exes] that we didn’t really want to have to deal with. But we did. And we did it together. We got married when I was 50, after five years of being together. And we basically did it because I was tired of going to school and saying oh, I am Finn’s dad’s girlfriend…They don’t take you seriously. And they would ask the kids, are these your parents? And they would say no, they’re just dating.
Maryann: [Laughs]
Lorraine: Yeah, we’d been together for five years, living together, and my kids would say, “my almost half brother.” So I was like, I don’t want this. I want a family. So at 50—when I was 50 and Phil was 49—we got married on the beach with just our families and our kids. And we launched Viva 50. And it was so great, almost 10 years ago. I remember telling Phil, my husband, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to have this make money anytime soon. This might take a while and then we’ll figure it out. Well, do you know I made it profitable in the first year?
Maryann: That is no easy feat. I know, trust me,
Lorraine: But I don’t pretend to be this very hard working person. I’m just an obsessive compulsive…
Maryann: [Laughs] But you’re out there hustling, girl. I see you—you’re working hard.
Lorraine: But I’m built that way. I have to do this. Like, if I say this is my goal, and this is what I’m going to do. I go to 100%. But I honestly credit my addictive compulsive, obsessive personality, because it’s not a huge effort for me to do that. And so we made it happen. And we have had to adapt. Because when I started it at 50, I didn’t want to be the face of it. It was a website with a Facebook page and Instagram and all the rest of it. But then what happened is that everything started shifting and brands were looking for people. And then eventually my personal brand, Lorraine C. Laddish, became stronger than Viva 50. And that was not my intention at all.
Maryann: Interesting. You didn’t intend to be an influencer, then?
Lorraine: Not really. I mean, I wanted to have a website that would bring money in, and I did it. But honestly, the way we get sponsors is more through my presence online than the website, for sure.
Maryann: Makes sense. I mean, you are a personality. I want to just backtrack to the marriage for a second because you know, this past couple of years, I have been to three weddings of women over 50. And they have been the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever been to. It seems like when people get married at this age, they look at the whole union differently. What did this marriage mean to you? How did you go into it differently than you did your first marriage?
Lorraine: Well, first of all, I remember that when I got married the first time I was crying my eyes out.
Maryann: Not a good sign.
Lorraine: Yeah, but the thing was that I was 35 or 36. And my biological clock was ticking. And I was one of those women who really wanted to have kids. I didn’t really care how I did it. At that point, I would have done it without a husband, but my ex-husband was kind of a breath of fresh air who was four years younger than me. And compared to the other people I had been with…he was so much fun. But it ended up being that’s all there was: fun and partying. But of course, if I could go back in time, I don’t know if I would change anything because otherwise I wouldn’t have the kids I have. And because of my ex-husband, I ended up in Florida. And because of my ex-husband, I divorced. And someone introduced me to this husband. The interesting thing is that Phil, my husband now, also comes from a traumatic divorce, a little more traumatic than mine…[Neither of us wanted] to date for the heck of it. When we first met, we were like, are you in this for the long run? And he was like, Yeah, I don’t want Finn [his son] asking me [next week], “Where’s Lorraine?”…Before I met Phil, I had made a list of all the attributes I wanted in a potential partner and I included things like bilingual bicultural, tall, with hair…I mean, stupid things.
Maryann: With hair! [Laughs]
Lorraine: Yeah. My ex was bald. It might sound terribly frivolous, but I was like, heck, who cares? Just ask for everything. He [especially] needed to be a father, because I didn’t want someone who didn’t have kids. Anyway, it happened. [Phil] checked off all the boxes.
Maryann: By the way, I think I saw Stanley Tucci [or some other celebrity on social media] saying something [about how] bald men have more testosterone.
Lorraine: Maybe! But that’s not all you need. But obviously, that was a silly thing to say but I just made the list so detailed. Now everybody’s gonna think, Oh my god, this woman is frivolous.
Maryann: No, we’re just having fun!
Lorraine: The point is that before I knew what I didn’t want, but I wasn’t really specific on what I wanted. And I think that if Phil and I had met when we were younger, we might not have worked.
Maryann: Hmm, interesting.
Lorraine: Because we were different people. I did not have the self awareness and self control, and the yogic mindset that I have nowadays. I was a young, confused person who grew up seeing unhealthy ways of relating in my family. And that’s what I did too. And so by the time we reached our marriage, we were both able to work things out. Nothing’s perfect, and we have struggles, parenting struggles with our children, and we have things that we face that are hard. But we work them out. And that is the important part. And I’m not worried like with my ex—it was more like, where is he? And when am I going to see him again? And I’ll tell you one anecdote. This is going to seem like what kind of people were you with before? The first time that I was here taking care of his kid, and Phil had a photo shoot, and he said, I’ll be home at 10:30 I thought that probably means 2 in the morning, or if he even shows up.
Maryann: Wow—low expectations.
Lorraine: Imagine, at 10:30 sharp, the car pulls up and I was like, what? Obviously, because my self esteem was so low before that. I also had a hand, obviously, in picking men who are not reliable.
Maryann: Was punctuality on your list? Reliability?
Lorraine: Yes. Definitely someone I could feel safe with. And I definitely feel safe with him.
Maryann: You know, along the lines of marriage and love and all that, I came across a story last night that you wrote on Viva 50 probably several years ago, and it made me smile. You were writing about your husband wanting sex during the day…
Lorraine: Oh, that was not me…I have guest bloggers, and I think that was Elizabeth Heath.
Maryann: Oh, OK…But I love the way you talk about body positivity throughout all of your writing and your posts and stuff. Did you always have that positivity? Or did it take a while for you to feel that way about your body?
Lorraine: It took me 60 years.
Maryann: Wow.
Lorraine: I grew up with a family that was very concerned about physical appearance for some reason. And interestingly, it was more the men than the women. I joke a lot about my grandfather who used to put scotch tape on his forehead for his wrinkles. And my Spanish grandfather…and my dad is very vain as well. He’s 84 now and yeah, so I grew up with that. By the age of 16 or 17, I had a full-blown eating disorder that kind of swallowed me up for 20 years. Fortunately, the second 10 years were more of recovery than not. But I feel that for me—and this goes against all science and psychology—[the turning point was] when I knew for sure that I wanted to become pregnant with my eldest. That was the end of [the eating disorder]. And this goes against everything, because not only have I written books about it, but I have, of course researched it. And pregnancy can actually be a trigger for women, because their body is changing and you’re gaining weight…so it can trigger a lot of the self-loathing and uncomfortable feelings with your body. For me, it was the opposite. And again, I know this is not everybody.
Maryann: But I do know women who…got control of their addictions when they got pregnant, whether it was drinking or smoking or whatnot…
Lorraine: Yes. But see, those things have nothing to do with how you see your body…Eating is something you have to do every day. You can live without smoking, you can live without drinking alcohol. I have a family member who’s a recovering alcoholic, 30 years sober, but that person doesn’t have to have a little bit of alcohol every day. It’s harder to have a little bit of this or a little bit of that. I was bulimic, so that was even harder because it implied complete loss of control. Or I would go the other way and not eat at all. So for me having children was really a salvation for me. I respected my body. I loved it. I wanted to raise kids that were never told, “Oh, you’re too fat,” or “You’re too like this…” And I never did. I never weighed myself in front of them. Never. Sometimes I wonder, will it ever come back? And it’s a scary feeling. Because I’ve had dreams. I’ve had dreams about having that behavior of binging and purging. But it’s never happened in real life. But then what happened after that is I turned 50. And I’m like, Oh, my goodness, I’m in the best shape of my life. I’m emotionally fine. I’m mentally physically, this is great. And then I go into menopause.
Maryann: Hmm, hmm. That really throws you for a loop.
Lorraine: It messed me up royally. I did go on hormone replacement therapy up until this day. It worked for me. It’s not for everyone, but it’s working for me so far. But then there was the issue of from one day to the next at some point, realizing, Oh, my goodness, my skin is hanging everywhere. And I hadn’t noticed that. So that was a revelation. And I did have an “Oh, crap!” moment of seeing some pictures that my husband had taken of me at the beach. And I’m like, nobody can see this. This is horrifying. And eventually, I posted those pictures, and I decided to share them.
Maryann: Yeah, I remember you posted photos of you in a push-up position, how your tummy looks from below. And I thought that was so brave, but so important to show that.
Lorraine: Well, I don’t know that it should even be called brave, because that’s really what we see.
Maryann: It’s honest.
Lorraine: Yeah, that’s interesting. I told my husband that I wanted an honest photo. I said, you know when I tell you to take pictures of me…to be careful in telling me about my neck and this or that. And I said, don’t tell me [this time, just take] pictures where all my flaws are visible. And he said to me, “You mean honest pictures?” And I said yes. So that’s what I do now.
Maryann: I do think it is brave, because what’s out there is not always nice in terms of reception. It can be a very nasty place, social media. And the majority of people shield themselves from that because they can’t handle that. You know, I struggle with that too.
Lorraine: I just had a reel go viral on tick tock, and my goodness, the horrible comments were hundreds. And I took some of them and then I made a different reel with them—you know, what are you going to do? But I don’t know that I could have taken it…in my 20s or 30s. But now at almost 60, I’m like, who cares?
Maryann: So is that how you handle aging? How do you handle the changes happening to your body? Are you embracing them? How are you loving the skin you’re in right now?
Lorraine: So it’s interesting, I I sometimes look at something like my arms or my legs, they used to be super toned because I was always a runner. All my life I’ve exercised for mental health. And then I look at the skin and see how it’s really sagging. And I’m like, I’m still gonna wear [what I want], like I’m wearing a tank top right now. I’m not gonna stop wearing it. I’m not gonna stop wearing a bikini.
Maryann: And you look great, by the way.
Lorraine: Thank you. But the thing is that I spent my youth worrying and not going to parties or not going to the beach or not going or not doing certain things because I hated my body. I’m not gonna start doing it again at 60.
Maryann: What a waste of time, right?
Lorraine: What is a little worse for me is like when I had a rotator cuff tear this past year; it has been horrible. I have lived with chronic pain. I have learned how to hand-stand at 57; I was so happy doing all my arm balances and suddenly I can’t do any of that. And I’m in pain 24/7 for a year-and-a-half.
Maryann: I’m so sorry.
Lorraine: That’s OK. It’s all a lesson and it’s a lesson in why was I doing the handstands? Was it for me? Was it because of my ego and I wanted to show others what I can do? How can I dial it back to honor my body now? Understanding that I am in pretty good shape considering, honestly, my age and the health issues I’ve gone through at some point, but at the same time I think of my best friend who died. Belinda, she died of cancer five years ago. She was my best friend, the friend that never says you don’t call me or the friend who never throws anything in your face. And she was younger than me by a few years.
Maryann: I’m so sorry.
Lorraine: It’s OK. You know, it’s life. It’s what we said, that you probably will not meet anyone at this stage that hasn’t gone through stuff like that, right?
Maryann: Yeah.
Lorraine: But the thing is that whenever I feel tempted to feel bad about anything, or even that my life is getting shorter, it’s like, Belinda would have loved to be this age. And she told me that; she said, “all I want us to age.” And before she died, she told her sister, who was slightly younger than me, “Go live the life that I can’t live.” And so I have cried tears and rivers and everything. But I have her very present. And then I lost two other friends. One of them will also never be 60. The other one was older. But all this gives you that perspective of, you know, wrinkles and…I do do facial treatments. I do Sculptra, I do Xeomin, and I’m very transparent about that. But I laugh when people say, “Well, you know, what about your neck? Or what about your arms?” I’m like, “Unless I get a whole body lift and put a bun up here…I’m not gonna do that.”
Maryann: [Laughs] And is it really worth it?
Lorraine: No. Not for me. Like I love taking care of my hair. I love taking care of my skin. I’ve always done this since I was 12. It’s an enjoyment. But the moment that it takes over my ability to just be—and that’s where becoming a yoga instructor at 55 helped a lot, helped me to be present.
Maryann: What does happiness mean to you now, at 59? As you approach 60? Are you scared about turning 60?
Lorraine: I’ve gone back and forth with that, because I will be quite honest. I only had one age crisis when I was 25. Which of course now seems ridiculous but I’m very cognizant of when younger people tell me they’re scared of aging. I don’t laugh at them. I meet them where they’re at, because they don’t know what it’s like to be 59. So they’re gonna be scared of turning 25. So for me, it’s the same thing. At the very beginning I was like, yay, I’m turning 60 Next year. And then I had that big injury, which is now much better. I’ve dealt with it. But it was my first time that I felt, ah, what if I never recover? What if this is it? Of course you wonder those things, I’m human. But when I put everything in perspective, and I know that it means that life is getting shorter…My grandmother died at 102, by the way, so she lived a long and good life. I read a lot about death. Because fear of aging is possibly fear of death. And in my case is more fear of other people’s deaths. But I also want to make the best of whatI have…and to [realize] I’m not exiting my 50s in the same condition that I entered them for a variety of reasons. Not better or worse, just different. I will not exit my 60s in the same condition that I am right now. And I have to keep that in mind. I will never be as young as I am today. So I need to be here now. And make the best of it.
Maryann: What are you looking forward to in your 60s?
Lorraine: I don’t know. I think I am so in the flow. And I have stopped having expectations. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t have dreams and goals. But I don’t know the same way that when I turned 50 I didn’t know that I was going to become a yoga teacher. I didn’t know that I was going to want to. I didn’t know that I was going to take improv classes. I didn’t know that I was going to want to do a lot of different things that I eventually ended up doing. I also don’t know what I’m going to want to do in my 60s. And that is a beautiful thing because I will be surprised. I’m not going to be on the couch.
Maryann: I bet on that. It’s so true. I think it’s great to still surprise yourself and be surprised, no matter how old you get, and to constantly learn new things and have a growth mindset and be open. And I love that you are. Lorraine, what would your advice be to women out there who are going through a tough time, maybe they’re in their 40s. Maybe they’re in their 50s. They feel like there’s no way out of whatever situation they’re in. What would be your advice to them right now?
Lorraine: To tell someone, because we are rarely, rarely alone in our feelings. Sometimes, we don’t tell things because of shame. Or I should have my life together by this time in life. And that is often not true. If you listen to financial experts, they will say, Oh, by the age of 60, you should have all this money and retirement…but some of us don’t, because we had all these things that we had to overcome. They’re probably not alone. Other people will be willing to help them. And usually, if you take some step, almost any step, and [eventually] you will end up walking in the right direction.
Maryann: I agree, take any step. I feel like when people are stuck, I say just make any move right now. Just do something different to shake it up in any small way. And it tends to then propel you in a different direction. You just never know.
Lorraine: Yep.
Maryann: Lorraine. It’s been such a pleasure chatting with you. Can you tell everybody out there where to find you online.
Lorraine: If they put my name in Google Search, Lorraine C. Ladish, they will find me. That’s good and bad, because I’m easy to find.
Maryann: That’s all your SEO skills coming into play.
Lorraine: I’ve had old boyfriends come back. And I’m like, oh, no, no, thank you.
Maryann: Assign that task to Phil…
Lorraine: [Laughs]
Maryann: …You know, he can take care of them. Lorraine, I’m so excited to see what you do next. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Lorraine: No, thank you always.
Outro: Thank you so much for tuning in to More Beautiful. Please visit Morebeautifulproject.com For show notes and bonus content. And it would mean so much if you could subscribe, rate and leave a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you’re listening. See you next week for another great conversation.
