Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Ep140: A fabulous future starts today
This week Besties Angella and Leslie explore how to invest now to create a future that their older selves will thank them for. They were inspired by an 82-year-old patient who's maintained friendships since high school and lives vibrantly in her ninth decade.
0:00
Welcome to Black Boomer Besties
2:05
An 82-Year-Old Inspiration
6:20
Future Self Letters and Financial Preparedness
15:40
Health 2.0: Physical Fitness for Aging
22:57
Lymphatic Health and Body Maintenance
27:17
Messages from Present to Past Self
34:02
Gratitude for Emotional Resilience
Book a free coaching consultation with Angie here:
https://calendly.com/rhythmwigs/more-joy-complimentary-consultation
Want behind the scenes content, Join us on Patreon at $5 or $10 level:
https://patreon.com/user?u=83534204
Get Angie’s eBook:
We’re Too Old for This! The Inquisitive Older Woman’s Guide to Joy http://joystrategy.co/ebook
Visit our website www.blackboomerbesties.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/blackboomerbestiesfrombrooklyn
FB: https://www.facebook.com/BlackBoomerBoomerBestiesfromBrooklyn
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
Hey Ang hey, les what's cooking. Good looking. Listen. This is my green day Listen you know me in green.
Speaker 2:You look marvelous in my green, oh you look marvelous in my black.
Speaker 1:So welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.
Speaker 2:I'm Angella and that's Leslie, my best friend of almost 50 years. We are two free-thinking 60-something-year-old Black women who have decided to be more bold and joyful in our lives, and we started this podcast so that we could share some of that with you and hopefully encourage you to come along with us, not on our journey, but to have your own joy journey, your own bold joy journey.
Speaker 2:So today we're going to be talking about our future selves, both from where we are now and what we hope our future selves will be, and some of the things that we might have hoped for when we were younger, and whether we have met those expectations in our current age. So that's where we're taking you today, but Leslie's got an ask for you.
Speaker 1:So I'd love for you to click like and subscribe. We bring really good content and it's kind of funny, it's provocative, it's poignant, it's cerebral, all the things, but it really it comes from the heart and we deliver it to you about once a week. So hit like and subscribe, tell your friends about us, sign up for notifications so that you know when we drop new content. I'd appreciate it, she'd appreciate it, and we heart you.
Speaker 2:We heart, you, we heart you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, so Leslie had a patient. A patient. Ok, so Leslie had A patient, a patient, and I haven't heard this.
Speaker 1:Yet she said and you won't believe it I called you up from the place when the lady was in the recovery room with her permission. Yes, she's actually going to be a guest on our podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she said, I don't know nothing about podcasts, I don't listen to podcasts, I said. I said maybe your son can help you, or my grandson, you know I'm like okay, she needs the other generation. So I had the occasion to meet an 82-year-old patient and when you all see her, you'll see that she's this beautiful black woman, kind of small frame. She has these like light up blue eyes. You know how elders have their eyes can be light sometime and whatever you know, and she's completely with it. She's feisty, she's talkative and what made me think about having her guest appear on our podcast? We were in the operating room because she was having surgery but her hand was numb, so she was awake and talking right. And boy did she talk and talk and talk and she told me some stories that were just so lovely and wonderful and, like whoa, I'm not going to give too much of a personal story because she's going to tell you in her way.
Speaker 1:But what struck me was that she said you know, I have my best friends, I'm best friends. There's six of us. She's 82 years old. She says there's six of us. We were all best friends from high school. Wow, I said what. That's very rare, because our nearly 50-year old high school initiated friendship is rare. Here this woman has what a 70, about 65 year, you know, friendship with this sick circle of six. And she says and I think her friend is Bernadette, who may also appear she says, and you know, bernadette just bought herself a pair of skinny leather jeans. I'm like she must be on this podcast.
Speaker 2:Must be on the podcast. Yeah, so definitely. I know I want to be her when I grow up, so that's kind of how we decided to talk about it.
Speaker 1:Here's a woman who seems to be very happy in her life and with her relationships and has maintained friendships over the years, which is really, really special and important. What happens with a lot of elders that I see you know? They become lonely in their older age. I know Nana Ruby used to say this because so many of her friends are gone now.
Speaker 1:And it's not. A lot of older people make intergenerational friendships and maintain those friendships other than with family members, but it's rare to have them, you know, very close to a neighbor who might be a generation younger or something like that. And then so when they're close-knit, community of friends, their own cohorts, when they pass away as elders, you know they're left lonely, you know.
Speaker 2:So I see that.
Speaker 1:So, and just in thinking about her and looking at her, I'm like man, that's what I want. She's cognitively intact, she's funny, she's witty, she laughs a lot, laughs at herself, and I'm like you know, that's what I want to be, that's what I want to be.
Speaker 2:So that's where it began, that's where it began, but you guys will meet her soon. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that, and so you know, there's definitely some of the things that you mentioned about her. When I think about my future self, remember when I had us work on I don't know if you ever did it, I did it, but it's probably like one of my, one of my notebooks back. It's probably not in this one. The question was to write a letter to your future self. I didn't do it.
Speaker 1:I know, you know it, I know that doesn't feel like shit, Ange.
Speaker 2:You know what?
Speaker 1:I ain't got time for that. Write a letter to your super. Listen. I'm saving lives.
Speaker 2:Any distraction from going inward. Leslie will take it. She will pay money to not go deep can I make a donation?
Speaker 2:yes, so the idea of it was to write a letter to your future self and talk about things like what is it that you are so happy that you are living either personally kind of your own life, or in relationship with others, or or place where you, where are you? Now that you're, you can write a letter to your, to your. It is not a letter to your future self. Let me make that correction, Okay.
Speaker 2:It is a letter at the stage of your future self. Let me make that correction. It is a letter at the stage of your future self. So let's say, 10 years in the future, you're writing a letter to your current self. So your future self is writing a letter to your current self to thank you for whatever, or to help.
Speaker 2:Or to not necessarily, because you may, as you think about your future self, you may recognize that there are certain things that you were not prepared to do, that you are living the consequences of in your future.
Speaker 1:Why didn't you take that left when you needed to take? You know when you went right. Instead, I told you, didn't you take that left in the fork of the road when you needed to take.
Speaker 2:You know when you went right. Instead, I told you didn't you hear me? Or if you? If you know now that you will never give up eating pork, you will eat pork and whatever else. That's not good for you and you know that your future self is going to be Clutching your heart.
Speaker 1:You know, down the left side, left sided jaw. I don't mean to laugh at that.
Speaker 2:I don't mean to laugh at that. I just mean that there may be some things that you're, you're, you're, you're, you've dug your heels in and you're like, no, not doing that, that you are aware that your future self, you know um would be writing to you saying you know, come on now you'd have to do me like this, so anyway.
Speaker 2:So if I were to write this letter, it sounds like some of the ways that your patient would be experiencing, because I absolutely want to have the friend group that I currently have. I've done most of the culling and the curating of my friends. I've done that over the last couple of years, last year in particular so now I want to keep all the ones that I have and I can imagine because most of them are from high school, I can imagine having friends that have been, you know, in my circle for that many years. I can definitely see that. I definitely see myself living abroad and you know, we've we. Most of you already know that Leslie and I have plans to move abroad and I'll probably do it a little bit before her, but she will be on my heels. So that is something that absolutely I want to see in my future. Something that I you know it doesn't come easy for me is managing my finances oh yeah, by the way, that's another person. Easy for me is managing my finances.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, by the way that's another person that we're going to have on we're going to have my, my money coach is going to be on, probably towards the end of this season, maybe into next season. She's going to be in an episode where we're going to be. We're going to be interviewing her soon, but I don't think she's going to actually be out until next season. But anyway and that is someone who I decided listen when I talk about joy, I'm going to talk about it again. It doesn't mean that you're just tiptoeing through the tulips. You got to take care of what you got to take care of. If there are things in your life that is causing your joy to not be there, what are you going to do? So someone recommended a money coach, someone who is helping you to manage the money that you have. This is not a financial advisor, that type of thing.
Speaker 1:What's the difference? We'll talk about it more, just briefly, yeah, just briefly and then, when she comes on, we can talk about what it is that she does and why she's so helpful.
Speaker 2:Right. So she has helped me to take care of those financial things that I have been avoiding. So, there's some psychological component. Why has it got to be a psychological? Can I just be avoiding it?
Speaker 1:I didn't get to it. That has nothing to do with psychology.
Speaker 2:I didn't get to it. Okay, yeah, she helped me to. We don't talk about it in terms of budget, but I guess that would be the way that most people would understand it. I'm planning to move abroad. What do I have to put in order? You know, you guys heard me talk about the fact that I have, I'm going to be taking on a certain number of clients. No more, no less. That was something that came out of my um money coach work, because I understood my money really well and I could say, because I do kind of want to go into semi-retirement, I want to cut down my client list to this, because that's the number that I want to achieve and so it's work like that and of course it is budgeting, but it's really kind of being more present with the money that you have.
Speaker 2:It's less about making money, but being a better steward of the money that you have. And that's one of the things that, despite me not liking this stuff at all not my jam I realized that it's something that my future self, my joy, insists that I take care of, Take care of now. Yeah, and so she was recommended to me, so I did that. So in my future that will be more in place, right Because it's something that I'm taking care of more now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel you will. That kind of reminds me I think my right earpiece went out.
Speaker 2:Oh OK.
Speaker 1:I guess that's what I get for paying $5.99 for them, I guess.
Speaker 2:I got my money where?
Speaker 1:they don't owe me anything.
Speaker 2:It's done. It's $5.99. It's done.
Speaker 1:But then too I am wearing my meta glasses. You know, I can just talk and listen through the glasses.
Speaker 2:Listen listen For our Patreon subscribers out there. You may have seen by now we uploaded a new one Leslie talking about her damn. Anyway, let's move on.
Speaker 1:Anyway so what we talked about in previous sessions is about health 2.0, this concept of what kind of things you need to set up today. When I retire, I want to travel, or this or whatever. So they spend so much of their work and life preparing financially for retirement so that when they hit this, that number, you know they're ready. But it takes more than that. You and I already talked about the importance of cultivating and maintaining friendships across different generations, because when you're retired, you may want to travel with someone or you know whatever. But the other thing I've been traveling a lot lately, as have you. Walking through the airport is strenuous. It's a whole thing. It's just a whole thing. I'm flying out tomorrow. The whole thing about you packing and carrying and getting to the airport, changing gates, walking. You have to lift that bag that you overpacked over your head into the overhead bin, then you bend down and sit down, and then you got to. You know, keep yourself moving to avoid, you know, sitting in someone's lap Venous stasis or blood clots.
Speaker 1:But so what I'm saying is it takes a certain level of fitness. So what I would say in 15 years from now is thank you, Les, for starting working with a trainer two days a week.
Speaker 2:It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:Because not if I fall Older people, we lose balance, we lose what we call proprioception. We're not sure where we are in space and what have you. So when I fall, I want to be able to pick myself up, and in order to pick myself up, I need a certain amount of lower body strength, I need good proprioception, I need good vision, I need to have my mind, you know.
Speaker 2:You need to know how to put your arms so that you don't break anything To fall right, all those things.
Speaker 1:And that starts now at 63, in preparation for 73 and 83. So maintaining a level of fitness, and I don't want to start when the horse has been out the barn already.
Speaker 2:I want to start now, right the horse ain't out the barn, les.
Speaker 1:That's just how long it's going to take me to build up.
Speaker 2:Les Wait hold on, wait look at that.
Speaker 1:What is that definition? What? Yeah, so, ange, twice a week, 5am, you will find me with my trainer going through the. I'm like, uh, she's like. I like that. I like to see that she's like. But why like I like that? I like to see that. Why are you making that face? I like to see that she tells me I'm her favorite. I'm like. I know you say that to every client.
Speaker 2:Don't make me go talk to your other clients about you.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's really, it's a commitment I made. That it's a commitment I made. That is not necessarily for now, because, as much as I would love to lose the 20 pounds that I gained this year, oh, you gained 22?
Speaker 2:20 also. Yes, me too.
Speaker 1:Something else we have in common. I'm not thinking about the weight loss. I'm really thinking about getting stronger and being able to move myself in the ways that I want to, and I do want to travel.
Speaker 2:You know, I do want to be independent, you know.
Speaker 1:So I think that's one of the things that I can think about. And then, too, I also think that our maintaining the relationships, not just with friends, but with family members, and all of that. I recently went to Atlanta to visit my grandmother, who is elderly, as you can imagine, and lives out there. I've been saying for months, grandma, I'm coming to see you, grandma, I'm coming to see you, and I had off one weekend and I'm like I will be on a flight to Atlanta tomorrow and spend the weekend. We had the best time. She cooked for me, we drove around.
Speaker 1:She's in her upper eighties and she drove me around and I was like, is she okay to drive? But she was. She's quite fine, you know. But you know. So she seems also to be living her best life, living alone and doing different things. And not just that, she still has hopes and ideas about what she wants to do, wow, yeah, that reminds me too of my uncle, who is in his upper 80s as well, and he goes into work. He's an accountant, he goes into work every day, wow, and you know he doesn't want to stop working. He talks to me about his clients and this and that and these are the things I mean both of these elders are very sharp, you know, and physically fit.
Speaker 1:So they've maintained themselves over the years. You know. So many people raced to retirement so that they can do what they can, rest Right, because they've given all their good years and their good physical bodies to their work lives. So 45 years later, 40 years later, they go into retirement exhausted and beaten up, just making it under the door and beaten it up, beaten up.
Speaker 1:So I don't want to be that person, you know which is why I'm planning to you know, stop working full time soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know yeah for sure, yeah, and that's why you really can put boundaries. And again I'll say that you know, this isn't about getting everything perfect. We don't have everything perfect. We're not. You know, everything isn't the way that you know we would want it to be, but we do have an awareness around these things and we try to get better and better and better at putting into place these things.
Speaker 2:I desperately need to, because I know that experience and I could probably get to where I want to get to without having a trainer, because I have a gym right over there a few steps away, and so I really do need to make those commitments and I want to start doing. There's a series of exercises. You guys can find the stuff on YouTube. That's where I found it. I'll put a link to the one that I use, or I used to use, want to really get back, and that is a series of exercises that helps with your lymphatic system. Oh, I remember that, yeah, and it's nothing strenuous but it gets you know. If you think, leslie, can you say a little bit about what the lymphatic system does?
Speaker 1:No, it's no, I can't, Please. Why would I know about this? No, it's actually one of your bodily systems, just like your respiratory system, just like your digestive system, that type of thing. Right, and it actually. It carries what they call lymph fluid. But the lymphatic system is very important in immunity and in allergens, and you've heard of antibodies and reactions to allergic reactions. It becomes a big issue when people have what they call lymphedema, you've seen, or they call it elephantiasis or whatever, when people have very large limbs or low extremities or what have you, and that's a faulty, a problem with the lymphatic system, where it's not draining properly and it's pooling and creating problems for folks.
Speaker 1:So lymphatic drainage, they say, is important, as you were telling me, because you know by doing those exercises you have lymph nodes, all over your body. You know, a doctor may when you get sick they may you know, feel here or feel under your arms. There's prominent ones. In your groin there's some. Behind your neck there's all these lymph nodes that may become activated or inflamed or swollen when there may be an infection or some problem that it's trying to fight against you know with the lymph nodes or the lymphatic system.
Speaker 2:Great. Thank you for that. It's so good to have a doctor in the house. So this series of exercises, kind of it's a series of tapping Some of them are swinging, but you're pretty the systems, how blood flows through the body, and so on. We are machines, we are these machines, and there are things that work. There are joints that work or not, there are flows that work or not, and so when you kind of think about this lymphatic system and it's moving things through your body, that's what kind of gets me engaged with it, because, okay, some of it may seem silly but I know that it is helping the liquids to move through my body in the right way. So, anyway, enough about that. That is something that I definitely want to get back because I know my future self will be grateful. When I was in New York a few weeks ago, my partner and I moved, walked from 20, where were we Les? In Little Italy, from Little Italy to 37th Street. That's about two miles East side, west side, fifth Avenue. So neither.
Speaker 2:And we didn't plan it, I didn't have on the best shoes for it, but we couldn't stop. It was a beautiful night. We couldn't stop. We just kept going, kept going, but it created some swelling in my feet. It was both of them, and now it's just one of them, and that like makes me come on. When I was in Panama, I had some swelling in my feet. So I really feel like you know, angela, you got to listen to this body that God gifted you with and you're not taking care of it. So, yeah, we got to my future self. I would like my future self to thank me for doing these lymphatic exercises so that I can not have these issues with swollenness as I get older. But I'm going to pivot a little bit before we run out of time. I want to talk about how you feel now, at 60 to 63, that your younger self can look at you now, because you are now the future self of your younger self.
Speaker 1:Okay, starting to get a little. But okay, go ahead, get a little woo, woo, woo. You know I'm not a woo woo. Make it plain.
Speaker 2:You are now the future self of your younger self, and so what are? Just give me one, maybe two things that your future self now is writing to your younger self to say thank you for. Oh we didn't plan this, guys, so you gotta give her a minute.
Speaker 1:How about you go first?
Speaker 2:One of those things is that I'm so grateful that you, you, you didn't shy away from getting to know Leslie, that you could see that she was just as geeky as you were, despite the lipstick, despite the, you know, having the, the, the, the attention of upperclassmen. I'm so grateful that I saw you more deeply than how a typical teenager would make judgments and that our friendship has lasted all these years.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's very sweet, so I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 2:Do you want to go before I say my second one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, mine was similar to that, but not as specific as you were. I'm happy about maintaining the friendships that are so and relationships that are so important to me now and they really feed me now. You know, I have been fortunate to have been supported all of my life by loved ones, friends, family members and all, and one of the reasons that I'm just so grateful because I know that the person that I am today is an amalgam of all of these people who have sacrificed and prayed for me and been there for me and all.
Speaker 1:So I'm really glad that, even as a young person, I was able to appreciate the importance of connection in that way and it's sustained me for where I am right now.
Speaker 2:Right, right, okay, I'll think of one more, and I'm grateful, younger self, that you. This is quickly becoming very emotional.
Speaker 1:I can see that.
Speaker 2:I'm grateful that you believed in yourself, that you trusted your brilliance, that you stayed in school, even though it was really hard to get through Penn, feeling really isolated at times and being around really wealthy people who had very different experiences than you did. I'm so grateful that you stayed and had the tenacity to keep pushing forward, and I'm grateful that you asked for the help that you needed and yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:That's good, mm-hmm, that I have this what I call unusual way of looking at past romantic relationships, such that the relationships that I've been in in the past, I've left those relationships without ever hating anyone, even if they were bad.
Speaker 1:I haven't had too many bad relationships. But what I'm saying is that I've always appreciated that there's a time for everything, that everything happens in its time and there are some things that it's not the right time for it. Right, right. So when I've left prior romantic relationships over the years, I've never left with enemies. You know it has never made me into a bitter person who was afraid to encounter to get into another relationship. You know I did not close my heart to future romance or love or whatever. Even after you know my recent divorce and you know, being in a long-term relationship with my prior husband, I'm grateful that I kind of, in my opinion, saw things in the right way and put things in the right perspective and didn't go crazy about, you know, like with bitterness and unforgiveness and things like that. I don't recall any really bad breakups, you know, or I certainly haven't held on to them.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I think that that has informed how I move in the world in a new relationship and new relationships going forward, let's say, you know, without a lot of that fear and that bitterness that sometimes can sabotage a new relationship and bring so much baggage in. I don't think that I have that, yeah. So I thank you, liz, for not taking things too personally.
Speaker 2:Good job, liz. Look at you going deep, so proud of you. Look at me. Look at me, all right.
Speaker 1:I think that's a wrap. Wow, yeah, yeah, oh, I can't wait till you meet this lady. She is just such a delight. I'm excited, excited. You know I have the privilege of having patients. Sometimes, like I told you, I had a patient who went to tech, so the surgeon and the staff in the room, we're everywhere in all different countries and whatever, but he and I were talking so excitedly I didn't want to, I delayed putting him to sleep and everybody is around me like they're kind of waiting, scrubbed, and they're like looking at me and I'm like wait.
Speaker 1:But do you remember, mr carapresso from technical drawing and what? About and this and that, and we were just going on and laughing, and this, and that he says wait till my wife, he meets you. You know, whatever he he was, uh, like five or six years younger than us, but I don't remember why I brought that up. Oh, but I think I was just appreciating my patients, and you know what they do for me, so I guess I'm never leaving work.
Speaker 2:You're never leaving work and you know what you love it. You love it way too much. You're never leaving.
Speaker 1:I really do Speak the truth.
Speaker 2:Wow, speak the truth.
Speaker 1:Well, alright, alright. This has been another cool, cool episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn, brooklyn. That was fun, alright.
