Aging with Purpose and Passion

Living Your Legacy: Finding Purpose, Connection, and Fulfillment in Later Life

• Beverley Glazer • Episode 125

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What if the secret to aging well isn’t found in anti-wrinkle creams or retirement plans, but in purpose, community, and perspective? Filmmaker Sky Bergman discovered this truth when she interviewed 40 elders aged 75+, gathering a collective wisdom of 3,000 years. 

Sky’s journey from a 30-year university teaching career to documentary filmmaking at midlife—sparked by her 100-year-old grandmother's active lifestyle—reveals how embracing change and purpose can transform the later years of life. Despite having no formal training in filmmaking, Sky turned her passion project into the successful PBS documentary *Lives Well-Lived*, celebrating the richness of life at every age. 

In this episode, Sky shares the four key traits she uncovered in those aging well: purpose, community, resilience, and a positive outlook. These elements offer a powerful blueprint for women over 50 seeking to reclaim their sense of purpose and connection in their later years. 

Sky also addresses the societal issue of age segregation, demonstrating how connecting different generations can reduce loneliness and create meaningful bonds. Whether you’re looking to rebuild a sense of community or discover your own purpose, Sky’s practical wisdom and inspiring story will guide you toward living your best life—no matter your age.

Ready to reimagine your relationship with aging? Tune in and discover how cultivating purpose, community, and resilience can transform not just your later years, but every day of your life.

Have you enjoyed this episode? Please drop a review and share this episode with a friend. 

For similar episodes on grief and loss check out Episode 96 and 122 of aging with Purpose and Passion. And Catherine Marienau and Gail Zelitzky co-host their weekly podcast, Women Over 70-Aging Reimagined, where vital women ages 70-110 change the narrative about aging . Listen here: www.womenover70.com


Resources: 

Sky Bergman:

skybergmanproductions@gmail.com

https://www.skybergmanproductions.com

https://www.instagram.com/liveswelllived/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/skybergman/

https://www.facebook.com/liveswelllived/

Beverley Glazer:

https://reinventimpossible.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverleyglazer/

https://www.facebook.com/beverley.glazer

https://www.facebook.com/groups/womenover50rock

https://www.instagram.com/beverleyglazer_reinvention/


Schedule a clarity call with Bev: https://calendly.com/reinventimpossible/15min


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Have feedback or want to be a guest on the show? Contact us at info@Reinventimpossible.com

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host. Psychotherapist coach and empowerment expert Beverley Glaer. Psychotherapist coach and empowerment expert, beverly.

Beverley Glazer:

Glazer, have you been thinking of leaving a legacy? Well, welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion. I'm Beverley Glazer, and I'm a transformational coach and catalyst, empowering women to step into their confidence, take a leap of faith and create the life that they truly deserve. And you can find me on reinventimpossiblecom. So are you ready to discover your full potential? Today, I'm joined by Sky Bergman, a filmmaker, professor emeritus of Photography and Video at Cal Poly, st Louis Obispo, where she spent a 30-year teaching career, and her work is in museum collections and it's appeared in renowned magazines like the Smithsonian. And Sky's passion today is creating films that inspire intergenerational connections. Her successful PBS documentary Lives Well-Lived and her book Lives Well-Lived Generations celebrates life's essence and the richness of life at every age. So, whether you're looking for meaning or building stronger relationships, or embracing your legacy, this conversation will inspire you to live with intention and joy. So keep listening. Welcome, skye.

Sky Bergman:

Wow, thank you for that introduction. I love that. Thank you so much for having me, Beverly. This is a joy, Well.

Beverley Glazer:

Sky, you grew up in a multi-generational home and not everybody has. I have for a short time, and it was a lot different than what you have been talking about and describing. Tell me what was it like for you growing up in this multi-generational home and who was there and what was it all about?

Sky Bergman:

Well, I was very lucky to live with my parents, my grandparents and even my great-grandmother, who lived to be into her late 90s. I was 19 when she passed away, so she was definitely also an influence in my life. I had no concept that a four-generational household was a unique thing, because you know when you're a kid, that's your own lived experience, that's what you know, and I think that what was wonderful was that we're Italian and so we, as many Italians do, sit around the table for many hours, especially on Sundays where we'd have these long meals and the stories would come out after dinner. And you know, I think that that wisdom was passed down from one generation to the next, and I just feel so fortunate to have had that connection, not only with my grandparents and my great grandmother, but also with their friends, because they would always have friends coming in and out of the house. Also with their friends, because they would always have friends coming in and out of the house, and so I grew up being very comfortable around older adults and really learning their lessons and listening to stories. So I think that that's where maybe my passion started, and I should also say that my dad was a geriatric physician from the time that he finished medical school. From the time that he finished medical school and I think that that certainly played a role in my desire to learn more about older adults, because he would come home from work and talk about the amazing stories of the people that he had met through his, his profession and and seeing them as patients and really listening to their lives not just listening to what was wrong with them at that moment, but listening to their stories about their lived experience, and I think that certainly permeated who I am as well.

Beverley Glazer:

But you became a professor, yes, yes, and teaching for 30 years.

Sky Bergman:

Yeah.

Beverley Glazer:

I loved it, so why did you take the leap from academia?

Sky Bergman:

Well, I should go back to why did I even take a leap into academia, which was when I was an undergrad. My undergraduate degree was actually in finance, and I took a photography class for fun my last semester in school and I fell in love with the magic of the dark room and watching the image emerge in the developer something that we don't really do in this day and age.

Sky Bergman:

But it was so magical and I realized at that moment that I, although I was good with numbers, it wasn't making me happy, it wasn't my passion and I was in my early twenties at that point. But I thought I don't want to settle in my early twenties for something that you know can make me money but I'm not happy doing it. And so I realized that not only did I want to be a photographer in that moment, but that I wanted to be a university professor. I love that environment of learning and being in the university. And so I went to my teacher at the time, who I'm still friends with to this day, and I said to him Lou, I'd like a job like yours, how do I do that? And he took me under his wing and really helped mentor me and got me into, helped me get into graduate school, and I became a professor of photography for 30 years and loved every minute of it.

Sky Bergman:

But when I was approaching my 50s, I was, I had been department chair. You know I'd done everything at the university and I was really looking at role models for what I could become in the next half of my life. You know I had this amazing role model my grandmother, who was 100 and still working out at the gym. And I'm 59 now, so full disclosure. I was in my mid-40s so about 15 years ago, and everything that I was seeing in the media were all the things that we could do to avoid aging, all the anti-aging creams, and everything that was being depicted in the movies or on TV series were the negative aspects of aging. I do think that that's changed in the 15 years since I experienced that, but at that time it was such a negative thing and, let's face it, the one thing that we all have in common is that we age each and every day, so we might as well learn to embrace it rather than dread it.

Sky Bergman:

And having this incredible role model in my own family of my grandmother who I was so close with, you know, because I grew up with her I think that that spurred me on to a completely new career, and it started off actually doing cooking videos of my grandmother, because she was an amazing cook who never wrote a recipe down, and I realized that I didn't want to just write her recipes down or just do audio.

Sky Bergman:

I wanted to see the gesture of her hand she's Italian, so gestures, but I wanted to really capture that and so that was my first foray into filmmaking, into doing any video work at all, was doing these cooking videos of my grandmother that I called Cucina Nana, which means grandma's kitchen, and I loved it and again I had that kind of aha moment like I had back when in my early twenties, when I was in the dark room and watching the image emerge in the developer. Aha, I'm a storyteller, I love doing this and I need to do more of this and as I'm looking at 50 and looking for positive role models of aging, I need to find other people out there, like my grandmother, who are aging well can be my role models that I can document and um, and that set me on this new, completely new path of being a filmmaker, and how are you able to do that?

Beverley Glazer:

I mean, this costs money. I don't have to tell.

Sky Bergman:

No, you don't have to tell me. Well, I think that one of the things that I've always done and you know I was at this crossroads of me do I become a finance major or a photographer? And certainly if I was doing it for the money, I would have done the finance major part of it. I have always followed my passion and my heart and always let that lead me in whatever direction I'm going, and I think that when you have a passion project and you're authentic, people want to help you and that that was certainly the case for lives well-lived. So I had no idea of what I was doing. I mean, like I said, the only videos that I'd done were these cooking videos of my grandmother, um. But at the time the Apple store had help for people that were working on projects and I would go into the Apple store and I had three guys in there who I called my Apple gurus and I actually gave them a film credit and I would go in for that one-on-one help and they would help me. I didn't even know what to Google or YouTube to ask the questions about filmmaking, since I knew nothing and they were like my teachers and I have learned through this process that it is actually a sign of strength to ask for help and to say I don't know how to do something, can you help me? And I think when I was younger I was a little more intimidated to do that. And now it's like hey, I know I have this idea for a project, how can I make this happen and who can I ask to help me?

Sky Bergman:

And I think that I also looked for creative ways to finance my film. So I'm lucky because I do have my day job, which was teaching. That was funding my life, but then funding a film, because I thought it was very important to pay everyone that worked for me on the film. I think, as a creative, we get taken advantage of a lot of times for in quotes, exposure, and I didn't want to do that. So I made sure that everyone that worked for me it was my passion project, not theirs I made sure everyone got paid, and so I thought how can I fund this so it's not just all coming out of my savings?

Sky Bergman:

So I started renting out rooms in my house through Airbnb and I would tell the people that were renting rooms hey, I'm working on this film and you are now helping me fund this film. And not only did I get funding out of doing that, but I also ended up with these amazing people who were like passionate supporters of the film. So they were coming from supporters of the film, so they were coming from all over the country and when the film went to film festivals all over the country they would go and cheer me on and it was lovely. I mean, it kind of worked in many ways. So think outside the box, and it's what I guess I'm saying. Follow your heart, follow your passion and think outside the box in terms of ways to make things happen.

Beverley Glazer:

Amazing.

Sky Bergman:

Tell us about Lives Well Lived start working out at the gym until she was 80. So she taught me that it's never too late to start something new, even working out at the gym, and I did a little video of her working out at the gym and give me some of her words of wisdom, and I came back from. This was for her 100th birthday and I came back from that trip. She lived in Florida and I'm in California and I thought I'm going to put this little video together and then I'm going to ask all of my friends, family and all the alum I've taught over the years I've been at the university do you have somebody in your life that's as much an inspiration as my grandmother is to me? And so I kind of put a call to action out there hey, please nominate people if you have them, because I'm working on this project.

Sky Bergman:

I don't know where it's going to go or what I'm going to do, but this is what I'm looking for, and I was inundated by heartwarming nominations to be part of this project and that was really how I got started. And so I spent four years interviewing 40 people that were 75 plus, with a collective life experience of 3000 years, and came up with this film and it was just such a joyous moment in my life because I just took the time to really listen to people's stories, and what a gift that was. I'm forever changed as a result of that.

Beverley Glazer:

Yes, I was going to ask you that next question how were you changed?

Sky Bergman:

Well, I think I like to say that my grandmother left me the greatest gift, which is the gift of 40 new grandparents, because I think all the people in the film kind of adopted me as their pseudo grandchild and I adopted them as well, and so you know these wonderful friendships. But also I, part of why I wrote the book was because there were really four lessons that I learned from all these people, and I'm not a social scientist, I was coming at it from an artist's point of view and a very personal point of view. So I was looking for people who were aging positively and I was doing a cross section of everybody 75 and older. And the four things that I think all these people had in common was one the most important was having a sense of purpose. And boy, that purpose can change over time. And I know, I see that.

Sky Bergman:

You know, when I was teaching at the university I'd see that with college students who all of a sudden realized, oh, my goodness, I'm in the wrong major, where's my purpose? And they were kind of struggling Right. And I think the other big time, another big time that many older adults have this is when we retire from our jobs and we have to redefine who we are and but having that reason that we get up every morning, that reason that for being that reason that we give back, I think that was super important. I think the second thing was really, um, having a sense of community, feeling like you're a part of something bigger than yourself and that you had people that could be there to rally around you when things were going well and to be there to help you out when things weren't, and so feeling like you have that support system, and it could be friends or family, but everyone that I interviewed had a great support system, great community.

Sky Bergman:

I think third and fourth kind of go hand in hand, which is like resilience and positivity, the way that you look at life, and many of the people in the film, because of their age group, they dealt with World War II and all the trials and tribulations that came along with that. But how do you reframe what's happening around you? How do you make it so that you can get through those tough times and still look back on that in some positive way and still look forward, and that resilience to keep going on, looking at life as the glass is half full rather than half empty. And so those were the things that I learned the common traits, yeah.

Beverley Glazer:

Yeah, but you're still now an Indie filmmaker.

Sky Bergman:

Yes, I'm working on a number of films right now.

Beverley Glazer:

Indeed, oh, yes, oh yes, how did you got it on PBS? How did you manage to do that? Because PBS and indie doesn't work.

Sky Bergman:

Well, I think, being respectfully persistent so I had a mentor when I was in graduate school who would say no is just a starting point.

Sky Bergman:

And so, being respectfully persistent, continuing to reach out sometimes one person will say no and another six months later another person has taken over and all of a sudden they say yes to something. So, I think, knowing that that was something that I really wanted for the film, to get it on PBS and and just you know, pursuing it with, uh, the passion that I pursue everything else with, and uh, it's hard sometimes not to get down when you hear no, but thinking about how can I reframe this and how can I repitch it so that I get to yes. And it took a couple of years, really. And then we had to find sponsors and it was during the pandemic when it aired, and so it was difficult. We actually postponed our broadcast by a year to make that happen. And so, playing the long game and waiting for things to happen, I think sometimes the best things take a little bit more time than you think, but it's worth the wait in the end.

Beverley Glazer:

Yeah, I'm hearing right through it Positivity and resilience, and just keep on going with that passion. It's wonderful to hear. So how can you speak to women 50 plus who don't really have a support system, who have had a career and you know those are their people and they don't have students around them, it's you know. And then they're getting older and retirement is ahead and travel sounds wonderful for a while, but after a while it wears thin. A support system when, would you say, you can start if you just really don't have it?

Sky Bergman:

Well, that's a really good question, because when I was in my mid forties and I was department chair, I looked around at my friend group and I realized, oh my goodness, everybody is tied to the university and I don't really have a support system outside of that and I need to make more women friends. I had something happen to a friend of mine and I realized it was all her women friends that came to her aid and I just thought, wow, something happened to me. I don't have that right. I don't feel like I have that right now, and so I think, start small. What I did was I started a ladies dinner. It was the first Monday of every month. It was a big potluck and you didn't. There was no book club. You don't have to do anything for it except bring something to eat or drink, and I now have 150 people on my email list that come and what I said was bring your friends, you don't have to RSVP, make it consistent.

Sky Bergman:

And somehow that worked. And all of a sudden I have this new friend group that are from range from 20 to 90 and an age and all different varieties of people from all different walks of life. I mean, I would even if I was talking to somebody in the grocery line and I thought they sounded interesting, I would say I know this sounds weird, but I do this women's group and if you'd like to be part of it and you would be surprised at how many people are longing for connectivity and for wanting to be part of something. I even saw recently, in the last couple of weeks, on Facebook there's a group for our local community and a woman posted there. Hey, I'm trying to get this woman's group together just to do crafts together. It's going to be every Thursday, you know. So people are doing that in many different ways.

Sky Bergman:

My way was around food because I'm Italian. So what do you do to bring people together? We eat together. But I also think, if you are feeling alone and isolated, another thing that you can do very easily is find causes that you're interested in and become involved. If you're around like-minded people, that's where you can meet people that can be your friends and you're giving back in some way. So it's also this sense of purpose. But finding your tribe, finding your community, I think is really good. You have to go out and make it happen. It's not just going to come to you. So I think you have to be very deliberate in how you form that community and saying yes to things that sound interesting and maybe iffy and saying no to things that don't really feel right. I mean, I think kind of finding that balance is really important, but be proactive.

Beverley Glazer:

And you also wrote the book. Tell us about that.

Sky Bergman:

Well, I wrote the Lives Will Live Generations book for a couple of reasons. One is and I'm dyslexic, so it's really tough for me to write, but it just felt like I needed to do it and it took me a couple of years to get it done. But I had so many people that were asking me please talk about what did you learn from all the interviews that you did, from all that wisdom that you gained? How did you make something like that happen? Being a first-time filmmaker, and then I've been doing a lot of work connecting generations, not only with my film but in giving talks and to different companies and educational institutions and communities, and so I wanted to dedicate the second half of the book to really interesting organizations that are connecting generations around the globe.

Sky Bergman:

I feel like right now we live in such an age segregated world and it's kind of this us versus them and in so many ways, and so whatever we can do to break down those barriers. And the second half of the book was really I interviewed. I spent about a year and a half interviewing 40 people around the globe who are doing work like from an intergenerational symphony to co-generational housing, to this organization in Denmark called Cycling Without Age. I mean just some really interesting innovative ways to hopefully inspire people to either become part of those organizations or to think about what they could do in their own life, to do something to connect generations. And that goes along to your former question about how do you not feel so isolated? Well, you know, do something, be part of something, and these intergenerational activities are certainly one way to do that and tell us about those activities that you actually did do.

Beverley Glazer:

You were connecting your students. You were connecting with older adults. What was that all about?

Sky Bergman:

Yeah, so we have a project that is based on a class called the Psychology of Aging and that's taught every quarter at the university here and that professor and I teamed up to kind of create this project where we go in with the students to older adults, we connect with the older adults, we show the film. So that's kind of a starting point, and I do a big Q&A and then the students and older adults use the questions that I formulated for the Lives Will Live film as a starting point to interview each other, to get to know each other, because the hardest thing when you throw people together is like how do you start that conversation? So this is kind of like an ice breaker to start that conversation. And then we have a big wrap. We do a photo shoot. I get to do a photo shoot of the pairs, which is lovely. You can see the connections that form in such a short period of time when we do this photo shoot. And then at the end of the quarter we do a big wrap party where the students and older adults talk about what they've learned from each other and it's just such a beautiful thing.

Sky Bergman:

And even during the pandemic we still did this project where we work with Senior Planet, which is part of AARP, to do it on a virtual basis, and one of the most beautiful things to me was this young student. A young man said at the end of it this was the first new friend that he had made during the pandemic and I thought how cool is that? That his first new friend is this older adult from doing this project. And I think, you know, students and older adults tend to be the more lonely people in the world, more socially isolated, believe it or not, and so bringing those two groups of people together was such a wonderful experience. And, of course, the common theme that we hear at the end of the project is that they realize that they have far more in common than their differences and really the only difference is their age, and it's just such a beautiful project to be part of.

Beverley Glazer:

What do you want the listeners to take away from all this, all this wisdom?

Sky Bergman:

I would say a couple of things. One is live your life with passion. You know, follow your heart, follow your passion, create your community and, in the words of my grandmother, always be kind. If we were all a little kinder to each other, the world would be a beautiful place.

Beverley Glazer:

Perfect. Thank you, skye. Skye Bergman is a filmmaker and professor emeritus of photography and video at Cal Poly, St Louis Obispo, after a 30-year teaching career. Her work is in museum collections, it has appeared in renowned magazines like the Smithsonian, and Skye's passion is creating films that inspire intergenerational connections. Her successful PBS documentary Lives Well-Lived and her book Lives Well-Lived Generations celebrates the richness of life at any age, and here's some takeaways from this episode.

Beverley Glazer:

Connecting with different generations creates a ripple effect of wisdom. Understanding Aging with purpose is the key to living a fulfilling life, and building a strong support network and embracing a positive mindset is essential for thriving as we grow old. If you've been relating to this episode, think of one small step that you can take to enhance your life. Perhaps it's connecting with friends or family, or joining a community, or simply changing your mindset and being more positive about your life. For similar episodes on living life to the fullest, please check out Aging with Purpose and Passion, episodes number 96 and 122. And if you've enjoyed this story, catherine Mariano and Gail Solitsky co-host their weekly podcast Women Over 70, aging Reimagined, where women ages 70 to 110 rewrite the narrative on aging. That link will also be in the show notes it's wwwwomenover70.com, and so where can people learn more about your work, skye, see your work, buy your book? What are the links?

Sky Bergman:

The best link to use is skybergmanproductionscom. That has all of my work on there, so all the films that I'm working on, and a link to my book, and it'll take you to Amazon. It's on Kindle and paperback, so that's the best link skybergmanproductions. com.

Beverley Glazer:

Terrific. That link will be in the show notes and it'll also be in my site too. That's reinventedpossiblecom. And now, my friends, what's next for you? Are you just going through the motions or are you really passionate about your life? Check my free checklist from go from stuck to unstoppable to unlock your full potential, and that link will be in the show notes too. You can connect with me, Beverly Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook, women Over 50 Rock. And if you're looking for guidance in your own life, I invite you to explore Reinventimpossible. com. Thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please drop a review, share it with a friend and always remember that you only have one life, so keep aging with purpose and passion.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, reinventimpossible. com and, while you're there, join our newsletter Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion and celebrate life.