The MiDOViA Menopause Podcast: Real Talk on Hormones, Work, and Wellness for Midlife

Episode 055: Retire With Attitude: Building Purpose, Community, And Identity After Career

• April Haberman and Kim Hart • Season 1 • Episode 55

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Tired of hearing that retirement means retreat? We sit down with Lustre co-founders Erica Baird and Karen Wagner to flip that script and show how midlife can be a launchpad for purpose, community, and power. They walked away from high-profile careers, hit the same identity shock so many of us feel, and built a modern space where women design what comes next with confidence and style.

We dig into the big shifts that happen when the calendar clears and the title disappears, and why a yes-first mindset can turn uncertainty into momentum. Erica and Karen share a practical framework to treat reinvention like real work: audit what lit you up, map the skills you still want to use, and craft a plan that fits a 20 to 30 year runway. We talk about building community on purpose, especially for introverts who want depth over noise, and we offer simple scripts to answer “What are you doing now?” with clarity and pride.

Ageism shows up in subtle and loud ways, so we name it and counter it with visibility, advocacy, and action. You’ll hear how Lustre’s platform connects thousands of women through thoughtful content, interactive expert sessions on health, money, and longevity, a weekly news briefing, and a member directory that sparks real-world meetups. The stories will move you: a marketer who returned to playwriting and made it to Broadway, a finance executive who chased a lifelong dream to fly and now circles the globe.

If you’ve been standing in that cold hallway between what ended and what’s next, this conversation hands you the handle: say yes, find your people, and let purpose steer the next chapter. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs this reframe, and leave a review to help more women retire with attitude.

Erica Baird is a retired lawyer with a career spanning four decades. She was the first woman partner in the General Counsel’s Office of her then Big 6 accounting firm, working in the US and abroad on some of the major financial issues of the day.  Erica is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and New York University School of Law. Erica has a daughter and lives with her husband in New York City. 

Karen E. Wagner was the first woman litigation partner at her global law firm in New York City. She practiced law for forty years, litigating cases involving domestic and international debt, sovereign rights and insolvency. After she retired, she co-founded Lustre, a platform advocating for retired professional women. Karen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and New York University School of Law. Karen is married, has two wonderful children and lives in New York with her husband.

Website: https://lustre.net

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MiDOViA is dedicated to changing the narrative about menopause by educating, raising awareness & supporting women in this stage of life, both at home and in the workplace. Visit midovia.com to learn more.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Medovia Menopause Podcast, your trusted source for information about menopause and midlife. Join us each episode as we have great conversations with great people. Tune in and enjoy the show.

SPEAKER_02:

Hey, welcome back everyone to the Menopause Podcast, the space where we rewrite the story of midlife, one honest conversation at the time. And today we're diving into a topic that nearly every woman thinks about, but rarely talks about it openly. What comes next? What does purpose, identity, and contribution look like after decades of building a career, raising families, and caring for others? And so today we are joined by the brilliant co-founders of Luster, Erica Baird and Karen Wagner. They are former senior executives who walked away from enormous careers in law and finance only to discover that retirement or what society thinks retirement should look like didn't fit. So they set out to redefine it. And through Luster, they've built a bold, modern, stylish community for women ready to step into their next chapter with confidence, attitude, and connection. And they're changing the narrative about what it means to age with purpose, curiosity, and power. Oh, Erica and Karen, thank you so much for being here. We've admired how you've carved out this incredible space for women who aren't done, who want more, and want to evolve. And your mission resonates deeply with our listeners. So thank you. Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_03:

Thank you. Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

I love having two people on because um April and I always go at this together. So it's fun to have four of us today. Listen, your tagline is retire with attitude, and it's bold and refreshing. So what does that attitude look like for today's midlife and beyond women?

SPEAKER_01:

So uh we came up with that because uh it really reflects how we uh we and the women that are part of this community think about the future, right? It it is a downer experience to retire for most of us. I mean, there are some lucky people that think, oh yay, I'm retired, but for most of us, it's kind of a shock to our system. And so the question is how once once you absorb that shock, shock and you kind of get over that hump, how are you going to approach the next 20 or 30, as you said, decades of your life? Yeah. And so what we mean by that really is it's a just a yes attitude. You know, it's I'm not old, I'm not done, I'm not invisible, I refuse to let people categorize me or stereotype me like that. And I'm going to find a way to be all the things that I want to be and do all the things that I want to do. So it's it's kind of a take control attitude, saying, I I can do this, I can do this. Yes, I can.

SPEAKER_00:

A lot of self-talk, right? Um, and and building ourselves up. I I'm so excited for this conversation because I just had a similar conversation with a friend yesterday who is in this place who um, when I said, What do you want? did not have an answer. And Kim and I find that all the time. You know, I've been caring for people my whole life. I had my career and I'm ready to retire, but I don't know what I want. I don't know what I need. I don't know what I want. I don't know what's next. Um, so I love what you're doing. And and I would say, um, you know, midlife can sometimes feel like it's this um middle place, it's this almost like an earthquake, um, identity earthquake, so to speak. And I'm wondering if you can share with our listeners what some of the biggest shifts are that you see women experiencing as they think about what's next in their lives. What are those big shifts?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, some of the shifts are the ones you've alluded to. Often at the time that you're retiring, you're perceived as getting older. Your children, if you have had a family, are growing up and they don't need you anymore constantly. Your job is disappearing, your structure for low these many years is gone. What next? And a lot of people come into this with a feeling of shock, like, okay, well, what's what am I doing? Where am I going? I can't see the future. I don't know what's happening. So, what we're trying to tell women is actually you have an amazing foundation upon which to build. It's not like when you were entering the workforce when you were also being revolutionary and insisting on entering this place where women hadn't been welcome. You did a great job then, but you didn't know anything then. Now you know everything. So now you have a foundation and you can build on it. Now you haven't spent much time thinking about yourself and what you're going to do because you've been working full-time and raising your children and looking after your parents and everything else. So you need to take some time and think and start thinking what did you like about what you did? What did you not like? What kind of passion do you have? Where do you think you might play a role? And take time. You've earned the time to think about it. So take time and think.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, without filling that space, right? I feel like um oftentimes we jump from one thing to the next to fill space and to feel busy because it can be a little bit frightening, depressing. I mean, you fill in the blank with the additives to retire and not have the next thing. And it does remind me of um the I'm a very visual person. It reminds me of being in a hallway and one door is closed. Both doors are actually closed. So you've walked through a door that is closed and you're standing in the middle of a hallway. It can feel cold, it can feel empty, it can feel lonely because there's not another door opening for you immediately. And I'm wondering how you, with your organization, help women to differentiate that, you know, end of the job here and the beginning of a new purpose here. So you reference that a little bit, Karen, and asking those questions and finding the space and finding the quiet and really um having that self-reflection. But what other tips can you give women, tangible tips to say this is what you should do?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I just to follow up on that, I think April for second, the I the interesting part about pausing, right? The first thing that we say is you're not alone. Because in that hallway, you feel really alone, and that you're the only person in the world that is going through this sense of loss, this mourning period of fabulous loss, like you've never experienced before. The second thing is that notwithstanding the fact that you know you have this these foundational skills, right, you've never really had to exercise them in certain kinds of ways. You've never had to build a community on your own because you had school and then you had work, you know, then you had your family's friends. I mean, you you never really had to do all the things that now you may have to do on your own. So, what we basically say is to follow up on what Karen said, uh, is uh you know that you're gonna miss community. I mean, let's just assume that you're gonna miss community. Tell yourself you miss your community, you miss your work community, and think about how you're gonna go about uh uh finding a new community. You're not gonna replicate the old one, right? But what did you like most about it? Did you like that it was multi-generational? Did you like that it was, you know, out and about? Did you like the conversations? Do you want it to be centered around uh you know, new interests? I mean, I we tell a story that um uh Karen has one story and I have another, but I really wanted to pursue interior design. I like visual stuff too, and so I thought, oh, I'll take classes. And I, because everything I did was at night after work, I signed up for classes at nine o'clock at night at some New York art school, and you know, everybody in that class is 17. Right.

unknown:

Right?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, there's nobody that I wanted to meet. My people were not gonna be taking classes at nine o'clock on a weekday night, and so I took the same exact class during the day, and I have three new friends, some of whom I travel around the world with. So it you have to, I think our message at Luster is just one practical example. You have to think through where are your people, not just where are the people, you know. This is a class of poli sci that I might be interested in, but are my people going to go to that location? Are they gonna be there? Are they gonna be virtual? Do I really want a virtual experience, or am I looking to meet people to go out to for coffee with? And luster is another thing. I mean, our people are getting together on luster, finding each other in their communities and getting together because they are having trouble finding women who have dispersed. I guess is the right way to say that, right? We all worked, we all were you could find you, I'd call, you know, your headquarters and I could find you now where are you? Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And I think um you talk about like what what trying to identify what you want. And April referred to that for a second. Like, we've never asked ourselves that. We've never asked ourselves like, what do we want and how do I go get that? And that seems so scary for something that you've never had to do before. And you and yet everyone knows that community is important for longevity. Um, how do you how do you guide people um to f figure out what it is that they want and how not to, you know, be that person that stereotypical person who turns on the TV and that's what they do all day. Because that's easier. That's easier about retirement, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. How do you help them figure out what they want and then how to take some action on that?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, oddly enough, one way we found to be useful was to say, think about it as your job. Think about it as work. You've been working for 40 or 50 years, whatever it is. You know how to work. You know you have to sit down, maybe write something as we did on a piece of legal pad. Think about what you really want. It's regard this time as work. Don't regard it as um self-absorption or um planning to do something entertaining or without purpose. It's work. What is it that you would like to do now for 30 years in the future? And by the way, that's another thing that a lot of people don't realize. Our runways are long. I'm glad you brought that up. Yes, you have to have some thought involved in what you want to do. For most of us, also, you need purpose. Filling your time is not purposeful. What is purposeful is thinking about doing something that you want to do or that you think other people would like you to do as long as you want to do it too. And think about how your life is going to evolve and how you want to make it work for you. And uh what we did, uh luckily we were we knew each other, so we did it together. We found an office. And we went to the office and we sat in the office and we said, okay, this is our job today. We're gonna write this list, we're gonna think, what do we like about what we want to do? What did we not like? How are we gonna get community? Who do we know that we could commune with? And we really were very analytical about it.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that you treated it like a job. Um, I'm an Enneagram one, so I that's where I go. Lists and plans and lists.

SPEAKER_02:

Make it to the airplane very early, just so you know. I mean that's great.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, but I mean, in all honesty, though, as we're we're talking through this, it's not so easy for some people. Even if you are very successful in your career and you're retiring, not everyone has that personality. Um, jobs are different, roles are different, right? Maybe you didn't lead a team of 50 people, maybe you weren't C-suite, maybe you preferred being in a lab right all day. And and that's successful, but now I have this identity crisis where I don't have work and I'm not an outgoing person. I kind of prefer to be alone. It can be kind of scary when we say um treat it like a full-time job, right? I think it could be a little bit overwhelming. So how how do you how do we encourage women to come out of that shell, to break out of that shell? And it's really um taking that little fear monger and and giving it a tap off the shoulder, right? Like you're not welcome here. I don't need you right now. I don't need you right now. Thank you for that, but I don't need you right now.

SPEAKER_01:

I think that there's some things that are more important than others, right? On in that tap on the shoulder. I think it's as Kim said, we know that community is important for longevity. We know that somebody that wants to be in the lab all day in a re whatever the retirement lab looks like is probably not going to thrive over the years as much as a person that has people around. So I think that the uh the notion of getting out right of whatever it is that your cocoon is, if you're that kind of person. However, it doesn't mean you have to go to a cocktail party every night or go, you can go to the library and talk to the librarian. I mean, you can't it doesn't have to be noisy activities, it can be tutoring a kid, you know, at a nonprofit down the street. It can be literacy stuff, it can be, it just means finding some place that you're comfortable uh, but is not uh it's not all about you. And that sounds uh kind of strange, I guess, but it uh the minute it's all about you, I think you're taking away a big chunk of what makes the future sentient and healthy and lively and interesting and all the things that we want it to be going forward. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and I think for women, um, it it's very hard even when they try to be all about themselves, right? They're so used to taking care of other people. Like I said, I'm I'm watching my mom go through this transition right now, and she knows what she wants, but how to get there is is feels selfish to her. And trying to figure out how to, you know, break out of that feeling of I now can take care of myself and do what I want is a huge thing. Um, I guess I'm wondering for people that have worked for decades, what do you what are you seeing as the hardest part of loosing loosening or letting go of that identity that they built around work and who they are around that space?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, the identity is going to be taken away from you one way or the other. And what we have certainly observed is that people feel lost and almost no matter what they did before or what they want to do now, it's very important for them to find someone to talk to. Not like a therapist, but a friend who says, and you can go to your friend and say, I really miss my job. And there are some people who would say to you, Well, you must not have had very much of a life if you miss your job. But those those of us who had jobs that we loved, we do miss our jobs and we do mourn the loss of them. And we can talk to each other about that. And somehow we found that that makes it more likely that a woman who's feeling that way will start feeling like she could come out of her shell and start thinking about something else because she's not alone. Yeah. We we tell women like people like that, you're not gonna get your job back. You're just not. And in fact, the great news is in a few months, you're not gonna want your job back. That's the great news. But you are gonna find that the strengths and skills that the job gave you are going to lead you to someplace new. You can't see it right now, but you have to work at it. And once you work at it for a while, and you might try a few things and they you might fail. And you might think you want to do something and you do it, and it's just horrible, and you never want to do it again. Fine. You've been through that. Keep going, and you will find something that will give you purpose and will give you community at the same time. And it may be a something quiet, like as as uh Erica says, you don't have to be at a party every night, but you can be with other people who feel the same purpose that you do, or at least a similar purpose, and you can talk about it and share it, and you will develop a community that way.

SPEAKER_02:

You two are pretty inspirational on that, actually. How did how did you come to come up with this realization like this is what I need to do now in my post-retirement, or we need to do now? I assume that you know you had some connection and were talking, but how did that come up for you?

SPEAKER_01:

You know, it took us a while. I mean, I I think that um when we we had all sorts of ideas of things we were gonna do when we retired together and age and stereotypes and ageism got in our way, I think, and that was stunning to us because we thought, you know, the day before we were fine. So that was kind of a shock to our system. Um but uh really to clarify something I said before, I think we also realized that this was a time to be selfish in a good way. I mean, selfish, Kim to talking about your mother, I mean, is not a bad word. You know, I I think we've made it into something that's negative, but it's not necessarily negative. It's it's taking care of yourself is first and foremost, right? If you don't do that, you can't take care of anybody else. I mean, we learned that years ago. So I think we said to ourselves, look, you know, here's what's happening to us. All these uh things that people think we are, we're not. And yet slowly we started to internalize them ourselves. And strong, we're both pretty strong, uh tough kind of women, but we found ourselves going out in our, you know, somebody say, What do you do now? And we'd say, We're really tired. You know, it it we started accepting all those things, and they were internalized. And that's what we started really saying. We need to fight fight back against that. We need we need together to say, no, they're assuming we're one kind of person, maybe we're new, maybe they've never seen people like us before, but we're not that.

SPEAKER_03:

That's where retire with attitude comes from, right? I I love that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I want to just I want to just stay right here in this moment uh for just a minute, because I think you know, we have listeners of all ages um that tune in. And if we're not at that post-menopausal stage, the average post-menopausal stage, right? You're a little younger, you might not really know what we're talking about here. Um, so when you say ageism and you know, fitting into that mold that society says that we're in now, can you unpack that a little bit more and tell me what you mean by that? What what are what are some words that come to mind to help the audience understand what you faced at that point?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think that a couple things. Retired means older, right? In in in our world, right? So if you say that you're retired, you're you're saying something about your age, and when, and society believes that when you are of a certain age, uh you uh want to or you're entitled to or you should be any of those things, right? Uh taking retreating, I guess is the best word. Retreating. So you should be making room for the next generation, you're not relevant anymore, you don't know what you're talking about, the world has moved on. Ageism makes assumptions solely on the basis of your age about who you are now. I think Karen, that's that's kind of how I'd say what ageism is about. So instead of saying, and I think uh my daughter is in her early 40s, and I think she would find that too in a way. I don't think it's there it is uh it is unwarranted and unfair stereotypes and assumptions based solely on age.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And then women have, I mean, just to say it, women have a double whammy because older men have historically, at least in our country, been silver foxes and all those procreation things that they can do or continue to do, right or wrong. Right. Um so they're kind of the gray hair, silver foxy guy in the room, and you know, nobody says I'd like the gray-haired woman in the room.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and I I mean you're right. That's that's fair, uh, Erica. Even in even in your 40s, I think we can feel that ageism begin to to creep up, to creep in.

SPEAKER_02:

And you don't want to. You want to, I I mean, I want to believe that that's a thing of the past. And unfortunately it's not. And you still see it and you still battle with it. And how do you um get past that? And you know I think that's something that's misunderstood about aging people. And I think, you know, you're trying to break those molds of what's of what is assumed there of someone that age. But what do you think besides this ageism thing is the most misunderstood about people who still feel energized, ambitious, full of ideas? What have you found as you're trying to implement this and talk to other people in your in, you know, in in in your community?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, one thing we found, which is sort of the flip side of all this, is that if you go back and you look at uh retirement 100 years ago when it was sort of invented in the United States, the people who were retiring were men mostly. And a lot of them worked in hard physical labor. A lot of them had been through one or two world wars. It was a very physical thing, and it was tiring, and they were tired, and their life expectancy was not long. So retirement was a couple of years of hanging out in the sunshine and having a good time with your wife and well deserved. Now we're coming at retirement and older age from knowledge economies. We're coming at it from without having had the physical stress that that generation did. We have much more life ahead of us. The the health uh changes in the 1950s have resulted in us being having healthy longevity. It's not just that we're living, it's that we're living well. We've we're very healthy, we're very energetic, we most of us can still think more or less. And so we just have a long time ahead of us to use what we have. And that that's the flip side is a lot of people don't realize we didn't realize it really when we retired. We were relatively astonished to hear how what our life expectancy was going to be. And it makes a big difference to how you think about your future. If you think about it for two years, well, fine, and go, you know, sip your pina coladas and have a good time. 30 years, you can't do that. You have to have a plan. And for women especially, we think the plan has to involve purpose of some kind. And that means some kind of devotion to activity that is outside of you to some extent. Yeah, make it love.

SPEAKER_02:

It's real simple how you say that. I mean, it sounds simple, right?

SPEAKER_03:

It's hard to figure out what that is, but it sounds like, okay, yeah, I'll just go do that. Well, it's it was, I don't mean to suggest it was easy. I mean, Erica alluded to this. We the thing that really opened our eyes one day was uh we both we found a nonprofit we really liked, we loved their mission. We said um we don't want to work at your mission, but we have many skills that could be applied to on the sort of corporate side of it to broadening your reach. And we'd like to offer our services for free for six months to do a project that we think will make you better. And they said, Oh, wonderful, that is so wonderful. And then they took it to the board, and the board came back and said, We don't know where to put you in the org chart because we don't want you to run the place, which we didn't want to do. We don't see you as interns, and we didn't either. We just don't know what to do with you. And we that started us thinking, okay, this is an issue here. They don't know what to do with us, they don't know who we are, what we can do, what we have to offer. All of us women of this generation, they don't know what's going on here. So we better explain it. And that is why one reason we started Luster was to advocate in words, but also in pictures. This is what we look like. We're not all in rocking chairs and using canes. We've got all kinds of vitality. So that was a real eye-opener for us.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And and, you know, we have a lot of talent, we have a lot of knowledge, we have a lot to give. I mean, I'm sure that your skill set and your background that both of you have would have been a huge benefit for that nonprofit or really in any organization. I've worked in nonprofit for years and years and years. Um, and it just um my blood pressure went up when I just heard that. Honestly, like, oh my goodness, what a lost opportunity. Um, and so I love that you created a community. You created Lester as a result of what you were experiencing. I think it's phenomenal to see women at our age doing that. They just fill the gap, which is exactly what Kim and I did as well. Community is important, um, and it's a foundation really for what you do. Um, you know, women, women women lose their identity. We've talked about this, and they look, they're looking for that community, and that can be really hard. Um, plugging in, we've talked a little bit about that as well. Can you give us maybe more specific ways in which Luster creates that sisterhood and that connection and that belonging so that our audience understands what you do?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. Um, so Luster is a website which has a weekly newsletter that goes out to all our members who pay$65 a year. And what they get from that is uh a number of things. And I think by saying these things, it kind of gives you a sense, April, of what we how we create community and how people respond to it. So it, as Karen said, it has, I would call it thought leadership about how to think about retirement, how to redefine it, how to um reimagine it for yourself. It's not proscriptive. We don't have, you know, do this and do that. It's just for thinking people to say, maybe if I looked at it differently, maybe if I said I don't want to do this for my daughter, um, you know, I should take some control and maybe I should decide where my interests and her interests are at, you know, collide and when where they don't, um, because filling up your time is not uh what we're about. So we have a lot of thought leadership about uh the journey. You know, what is it like to deal with the shock of retirement? How do you get over the hump? How do you what do you say? We have lots of stuff about what do you say to people who ask, what are you doing now? That's a huge issue for us, right? And we don't want to talk about the past, we want to talk about the future. So there's that. Then we have monthly events that are um mostly virtual. We went kind of virtual at post COVID, but they're and the community gets together for two kinds of events one is speakers. That are pretty much experts that have something to say about where we are. It can be not political, but on interest, you know, substantive issues that are of interest in the world, like economics, um, but often about things like our health, our well-being, our economic future, all that kind of stuff. And those are interactive, although you can listen to them later. But there's a lot of questions that we have found that people like to appear before the luster audience because, as somebody said, they're the best questions I ever get. So it's a it's a good uh virtual uh event. So we have those. Then we have a weekly news show um with a veteran reporter that's a half an hour, which is a run through of the things that you probably know, but at least Karen and I are news junkies, but we still always always learn something we didn't know. So that's a good half hour well spent, and that's a lot of conversation by everybody about what how people are feeling about things, what's uh what's going on in the world. Um, and then Luster has other resources like um members' tips and trip tips um about where to travel around the world that are hidden, you wouldn't be able to find those on your own. And finally, and maybe most importantly, it's a platform that has a directory, a member directory that people are finding other people where they live and actually getting together on their own. Um we realized was uh from our members, I can't find my tribe. I can't find my people. And we said, well, we have we have several thousand members, um about 2,500 or more now. We have we know where these people are. Why don't we find a way to to create a platform where you can find each other? And they are doing that all over the country. They're getting together for coffee, they're getting together in museums, they're planning stuff to do. So they're finding their tribes. And so I think for most of our members, what the feedback we get, and we get a lot, is that I finally found women like me. I retired, I lost, I I couldn't find them, and now I know where they are.

SPEAKER_02:

That's sweet.

SPEAKER_00:

That's probably my favorite part right there. Yep. Um, that you're connecting women across the country. Bravo.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, really.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. It's wonderful. We're gonna stop right there, right? I mean, no, it's wonderful. That's important. Yeah. I'm wondering if you have any stories. Can we? Yeah, I mean, I I love personal stories, and I'm wondering if you have uh a story, uh it may be your own story or uh someone within your community that maybe surprised you, surprised her in the role that she stepped into after retirement.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, we have a few. One of our favorites is a woman who we got to know a couple years ago. She's in her late 60s. When she was young, she grew up in some small town in Texas. And when she was 16, she asked her mother if she could come to New York to learn how to be an actor. And astonishingly, her mother said yes. So she came along, and after a couple of years, she realized she couldn't wasn't gonna eat. So she went back, she went to school, she um became a marketer, she was very important in big institutions and and she had a great career. Then she retired and she went back and started learning playwriting. And she wasn't really planning to go anywhere exciting with it, but she ended up two years ago, her play was produced on Broadway. Amazing, which was unbelievable. Wow, she's extraordinary and she's remarkable, and she just decided, well, I'm gonna do this now. And she just did it, and she found people to do it, and um, so that's one of our favorite stories.

SPEAKER_01:

Another one, just a quick one, uh was a woman who retired, so obviously over 60, and she thought she would do things consistent with her career. She was in financial services, you know, which is typically you go on a board or you have something like that. And she kept getting um conflicted out that there were reasons that she couldn't do this, and then she couldn't do that. So she said, screw it. I've always wanted to be an airline stewardess or uh it's not called a stewardess, yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Um and so she applied and she got accepted to flight school, and she's now flying around the world. She said, unlike the young, younger folks who are you know want the stuff close to home because they have kids and husbands, she said, My husband's fine with this. I'm going everywhere.

SPEAKER_00:

So she was that's outside the box, and I love that. Um, Karen, your story too. I'm you know, I'm picking I'm really visual again, but I'm picturing someone going into their closet, right? How many old boxes and stuff do we have in the closet of stuff that we have held on to? I don't even know what is in this closet that I'm looking at in front of me for crying out loud. But I'm picturing going through the closet and pulling out an old box and dusting it off. You know, you blow it off and just say, yeah, let me go back and see what used to bring me joy years and years ago before, you know, kids, before I had to launch them in college, before I started caring for my parents. What again, it comes back to that. Um, what do I want? What do I love? It brings me joy, what brings me purpose? Um, and I I just I love both of these stories because your story, Erica, is like I didn't expect that. So good for her, but caring yours is just remarkable because she came back to something that she really wanted to do, couldn't afford it. And look at her full circle and using it's amazing.

SPEAKER_02:

It's never too late.

SPEAKER_00:

Never too late.

SPEAKER_02:

Never too late. My um, you'll get a kick out of this. My 20-year-old daughter told me the other day that she should have gone to med school, it's too late now. And I'm like, what are you even saying? Oh, what are you even saying? You're 20 for crying out loud. Those stories are great because you know, you don't think that you can or should, or or you know, it's too late. And the message is it's not if there's something you want to do, go after it.

SPEAKER_03:

It is never too late. Yes, absolutely. And that's what a lot of these women who we have come to know, they're amazing. Yeah, it's amazing how they came to what they came to. They're indomitable, they will not be slowed down, they do what they want to do, and they're inspiring to all of us. They really are. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, we could keep talking, but that is that is like the most inspirational. I love stories, right?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm glad that you're glad we shared a few.

SPEAKER_03:

So where can people find you? Our website is www.lusterlu s t-e dot net. And we're also on social media and under various names, but luster L U S T-R-E will find you all of them. And we would love to see you there.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, so good. Okay. So we always ask our guests at the end of our podcast, and you're both gonna have to answer this. So sorry you don't get away with with it. Because man. Yeah. But what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

SPEAKER_03:

Best piece of advice I ever received was work hard and then keep working harder. And the faster and harder you work, the sooner you will get to where you want to go.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, wow. Okay, say that again.

SPEAKER_03:

Work really hard. Really hard. Then the harder you work, the faster you will get to where you want to go.

unknown:

Great.

SPEAKER_00:

April. I know, I'm writing, I'm like writing on that. Yeah, yeah. I love it. Okay. That's good.

SPEAKER_01:

Erica. Just say yes. I think that um a lot of people that had careers like ours, you were saying no most of the time to a lot of things in your life. And when I retired, it was a di a shift in in paradigm of saying, instead of saying, you know, do I really want to do that? Recognizing that if try it. You can always say no later. It kind of it totally shifted from a no to a yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Lead with yes, because we are told to say no. You can always change your mind later. Right. Don't put too much on your plate, say no. And that is a complete 180. Complete. Um, say yes, and then you can change your mind later. And isn't it a blessing that we get to say yes to things that we use to say no to?

SPEAKER_03:

So is indeed a blessing. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

We're heading into the Thanksgiving week. This will air hopefully before Thanksgiving. So just that attitude of gratitude, we can end on that note. I appreciate your time today. It is timely, as I mentioned at the top of the show. I've had several conversations this week with individuals who really are at a loss. So thank you for being here, but thank you for doing what you are doing and creating that community for women and inspiration. You are an inspiration. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01:

As are you guys. Um, thank you for doing for our daughters who you're doing what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much. Of course. Well, I get to be doing people like you. So yeah, absolutely. Uh, but until we meet again, listeners, go find joy in the journey, and we'll talk to you next time. Take care, Cluster friends. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much, ladies. That was a pleasure. Thank you for listening to the Medovia Menopumas podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please give it a thumbs up, subscribe for future episodes, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend. Medovia is out to change the narrative. Learn more at Medovia.com. That's M I D O V I A.com.

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April Haberman

Co-host
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Kim Hart

Co-host