Season 1: Question 5 - In what situations do you turn to women from different generations for guidance or advice?

In what situations do you turn to women from different generations for guidance or advice?

Transcript

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welcome to 10 women bringing together 10 women with 10 thought-provoking questions based on one theme during this episode of 10 women we hear 10 different answers to this question in what situations do you turn to women from different generations for guidance or advice women seek out other women to ask for advice but when do you turn to different women of different generations to help you I was thinking about this question and you know I'm a teacher I teach college classes so I have a lot of students who are like between the ages of 18 and 25 so I'm thinking ah this different Generations but I never think about going to them for advice or guidance because of that power dynamic in the classroom so I tend to stay with women who are my age or older yeah that makes sense and for me it wasn't so much different Generations but people who had experienced something different so for me um going through menopause um I look at women who have already gone through that process to make sure that I'm not going crazy you know that that what I'm experiencing is kind of the same path that they walked before we hear the 10 answers remember to take a moment to think about your own answer to this question in what situations do you turn to women from different generations for guidance or advice and don't forget that we want to hear your answers too follow our 10 women series on Instagram to share your thoughts and to read the responses of others in our community visit our website to find other ways to connect um hi my name is Michelle I am a gynecologist bicyclist and someone who loves life I would think that actually it's not the situations necessarily that I will turn to people um it's more of I'm a collector of ideas thoughts and experiences um again one of the beauties of my job as a gynecologist is I get to see women of all walks of life all sizes shapes ages and listening to them and kind of understanding the experiences they've had the mistakes they've made the the things that they are going through uh being able to understand what it is they're going through and then being able to um help them through it then allows me to maybe later on in the same situation be able to understand how I should react um how I should go through that experience and know two people are the same but often times it's I collect these little things in the back of my mind to say okay you know I remember remember this I remember that somebody said this at one time that they were doing this and this is what they did to be able to help themselves through it and so uh try very hard to to en enjoy and and work on that and I as I said I get to see patients and of all sorts of different uh Generations so it's fun sometimes to understand how one group is still doing versus another I think that the experience of finding yourself and understanding who you are and managing relationships has not changed I think that getting through the world and making sure that you or or wanting doing what you want to being able to have um your place in the world has um younger generation is a little bit different with the things that they have to go through with social media and things that are going on with the bullying and and and the idea of having to be everybody being the same has always been there but now it's just taken to the next level but I think as far as getting to where you want to be as far as you your path in life your career and and who you want to be that not much has changed about that I don't think I am Lana Martin and I am an aunt a daughter and a friend I mean everything really I just like to get the opinions of the people around me um friends cuz I have friends of all ages um I have some friends that are my mom's age you know anywhere along the Spectrum I mean I like to ask them what they're doing like where they're finding Bargains um how they're doing with financial planning anything really um I can reach out to them to talk about all kinds of stuff um women's health issues that too yeah like we were talking about traveling um I have a friend who is older than I am I think she is in her 50s um and she's from the area over um near the Grand Canyon so I think she's from Flagstaff she says and so she gave me some advice as to places I can stay things I can see when I go over there um so that was a good resource my name is Judy Fowler I am an educator a mom and a team player I feel like my my life is so work driven at this point that that's just where when I'm able to be around other people it's it's usually work you know when it comes to social settings with children it's I'm I'm a only child but but I'm also I enjoy being home and we have lots of friends but we' just rather stay home so when it comes to asking those types of questions I'm usually in a work setting so I do think about different reasons of why I would need to talk to different women in different stages so being in on a college campus and different situations especially since being an educator post postco education is different and even the whole reflecting on just even trying to be a teacher educator during Co and health and physical education how do we get new teachers to be to understand I have to teach facing a camera trying to engage students that was one thing and often times I will ask different opinions based on experiences like in teacher education okay so for example when I would have an issue come up with a student teacher teaching online I would ask um children or you know what what was like for you when you were you know just to gain perspective so it's really all about the perspective so I know during Co it was a lot about teaching online as the teacher and other teachers veteran teachers younger teachers but also the other side as the student what was it like so like to get that perspective but to the original question for now it's more of did your body do this or is this you know like these stages that I'm experiencing that I will call on other people more jokingly I think I always say that my first via character strength is humor so I always like to bring a little humor into what I do because I think we need more humor especially now in our in our world after this election we need lots of humor uh I think that it's more of gaining different perspectives on others experiences sometimes I feel like my experiences can be the same but I do feel because of I don't know my having my life dedicated to Athletics and sport that I don't feel that I'm experiencing some of the same things that my peers may be if that makes any sense I think sometimes it's more about my own personal health that I'll ask those questions now because I'm seeing different things change uh one big thing is have I even hit per menopause yet you know I think about that quite often because I see people and I really remember what my mom would do she was a little bit earlier I think in her 40s or late 40s but all of a sudden she would she'd wear layers but all a sudden she'd rip the top layer off and she's like beat red and sweating I'm like did you just eat 14 jalapeno peppers what just happened you know when I was younger trying to figure that out but even for me now I I don't I still have not had any of those symptoms but then other things will happen that it's more of a mood or the mental health piece so I'm really trying to navigate that again talking earlier my my parents we don't talk a lot about a lot of things so I've always had to lean on other people to get get my advice maybe that was good or bad I don't know um but I feel like it's more of a pulse check for me I think when it comes to certain situations as a professor I do like to talk to my students just to gain their perspective on things but it's interesting I want to go really deep sometimes but the answers I get are really shallow in the sense of there's not enough time or they don't know exactly how deep I want to go so I don't know how much information I'm really accessing with that so I'm not so sure that's really a reliable source to me I think it's more if I have to trust in who where I'm going with that information it's more about me I can articulate it's my body how I feel and hoping that other women have experienced that or I've heard them say yes or no or I've heard them say it so therefore I'll say oh I need to remember to maybe check in with this person about certain things so I can make sure um what I am feeling or thinking is real my name is Susan sasman and I am an extrovert a creative Visionary and a nurturing kind of gal as a grandmother I might ask my other friends who are grandmothers how that feels to them how they deal with their children and their grandchildren I process with like-minded women who have had like experiences and that's always feels good um as an event planner I Look to much younger women women um from 19 up to maybe 60 to see what music they listen to and the ways they communicate I also do a lot of work in politics and it's very interesting to me how the younger women might view pro-choice for example um or any of the women's issues you know the feminist issues and how they stand on that because if you don't understand where they're coming from you really can't help shape the narrative because it's not really all about me or my my friends in my age group so leaning on women who are older than me to kind of lead the path forward and how to navigate that landscape and then looking to the younger women to help inform me about what's hot and what's not in their group uh and then with the women who are in my group like when I was raising children I really relied on the company of other moms who had small children so that I wouldn't lose my mind and uh get together and you know and just bring up all the things that are hard about marriage about children about sleeplessness Etc so I've always look to the company of women of all ages to help me get more centered and to just be able to look at the world through different lenses so I I value them a lot old and young really and the peers my name is an Sparks hyen bomb Garder and I am a caregiver um I'm a member of a women's organization that I'm very passionate about I'm a cyclist um I'm a road road cyclist and um I love being outdoors I belong to a women's organization and a lot of this the other members are uh are older than I am and so in in seeing them and how they have progressed um I I say well that's that's going to be me you know in 10 years uh learning from them well certainly younger people for the technology uh I mean they they're that it's just it comes second nature to them uh but I I I'll be honest I don't have that much experience or it just seems that my life circumstances I'm not around young people very much at all um so that that's a hard one my name is Terry Wiggins and I am a woman I am a mother and I am a daughter well technology is the big one I also ask for um I I love to cook and so I often ask for good healthy recipes from other people I ask for what books people have read or where people have traveled and look for tips um I think that asking people about their spiritual life is something I really appreciate you know what what have they deal into what has made a difference for them and I've also asked people for um how to start businesses I've had a couple of businesses myself and it's been really great to ask other people's advice for that one uh my name is Abigail dun Moses and I am an educator of adults who heals the Brokenhearted in every situation and let me tell you why I say that um in my home that I grew up in lots of people came to my parents for advice so I could see the stream of people coming for advice and sometimes I would get to listen in on what they wanted advice about so the whole idea of getting advice was something that I bought into very early on in my my life and and I was an let's just put it an extraordinary child because I myself had my own advice giving business at a very young age I called the business you know tongue and cheek because people would come to me for advice that were twice three times four times my age and even my parents would do that you know um my father would sometimes times say well let's see what Abigail has to say about this well it goes from the sublime to the ridiculous okay let's start with the ridiculous I had to go to an event and I have to decide what I want to wear and of course just like every other woman I have absolutely nothing to wear uh and so I start thinking thinking about what might be good and then I call one friend who uh sort of has more of a African kind of texture to the clothing the jewelry they they wear I'll call another friend who's maybe a little Floridian and you know kind of Flowery kind of you know and then I'll call another friend who who's maybe a a plain Jane you know who just tell me just put your black dress on shove up some jewelry and get out the door you know um so um I have what I call a board of directors and there was a time where the board of directors made all the decisions for me and I was not the decision maker until I fired the board of directors and now I have a board of directors that are friends that are affirming that are supportive that don't make decisions for me because it's not about a dependency it's about empowering so that's the ridiculous example the sublime example has to do with uh post divorce and what does that mean for me me and my relationship with men so I do a lot of talking about that a lot of examples you know staying open to learning not being broken by the the the more trying parts of that so lots and lots and lots of advice my name is is Kimberly Burke and I'm a human a teacher and a lover oh I asked the kids but I don't have older women in my life different Generations can be young yeah I do I ask them all the time um typically because I want to compare what my brain is thinking to what an 18-year-old brain thinks about a particular situation um so I ask a lot of people cuz I'm very extroverted anyway and I just am interested in how you know sometimes I think I'm an anomaly and many times I realize that I am and how I think about things and how I approach the world and so my students are really by where I ask um I wish that I had older generations to ask I just don't have access to older people when you do ask what kinds of questions have you been asking I ask a lot of existential questions because I want them to step out of themselves you know they're so narcissistic at that age typically um to get them to think about their Futures I think this this particularly this generation is really struggling with that being able to Envision a future um and because I'm in an HBCU I'm kind of in a unique position as an older white woman um to really dig deep with some topics especially in light of what's going on in the world right now um getting them to think about things like like generational wealth you know why are you buying your 15th pair of $400 sneakers you could be setting that up in the stock market and you know you'll have a house one day or you'll um because I feel like society and this is just going to be a political commentary but um that they set them up not to have generational wealth and they don't realize it you know they're buying right into to buying the grills and the cars and the shoes and the hair and the nails and the um so sometimes it's a simple question like they'll say I I want or I need new shoes do you need new shoes or do you want new shoes and then that starts the the conversation and it's part of my favorite part of what I do my name is Marie Leonard and I am a mom a daughter and an energetic lover of life I feel like one of the things I value about the creative spaces and my faith space is that we're really intergenerational I can think about we had a crafting night at my house from church because I teach a crafting and contemplation class at lent and so I had like my alumni over and we had a robust intergenerational from 20s to 60s conversation about um pelvic floor Health um and it was so good I I didn't there were things I didn't know and we were able to share information and you know what what do you need to know at this age or this stage or oh have you tried that therapy and that was really helpful so I feel like in some spaces you can kind of have a a deeper broader um you know group of people who you can hear from younger people who can say like well I heard on Tik Tok which I I'm like I love that but also what um so but I think that um that's sort of nice to be able to at least know what's happening in the Zeitgeist but also talk to someone who may have experience as well so I feel like creative spaces even in my crossstitch guild you know we have a lot of people who've dealt with cancer or aging parents or rowdy kids or and so we can just have a conversation while we're engaging in the thing that we all share our craft but at the same time we're able to have these other conversations so that that I feel like is the space where we can have the kind of intergenerational and it's so good because it doesn't mean that one person has all the information we all have little bits and pieces at our church we have a lot of 20 to like 20 to 32 like that 20 to 35 group and they're just very happy to hang out with us that's the other thing I think is like I appreciate younger people who are happy to hang out with people who have gray hair and don't just assume because you know I'm at a different stage of my life I have nothing that I can offer them um so I think there's like I appreciate people who are open to like let's all have a seat at the table cuz sometimes I think I'm sure when I was younger I may have been a little Gen X jaded about gray hair um and I feel like younger people aren't as jaded that's because our genx aging is better my name is Abigail more and I am an entrepreneur a lawyer and an enog 7 I was thinking about this like at this at my age now most of the big moments other than you know Dying God forbid as we go forward but I mean most of those moments have have I've I've lived through so I'm often the person to give the advice you know I've been through childb birth I've been through loss and divorce and adoption and all these different big life moments um my mom is 95 and she's in her dying process now and we've said all the things we need to say to each other and I am able and grateful to be there with her and hold her hand um and she said I just saw her this morning and she said we had such a good time didn't we so I mean I turned to her to reflect back on what we experienced together um so so I and I'm and again it goes back to what I've said before since I'm very much my own friend I wouldn't say I seek out advice as much as maybe I should you know asking for guidance um a lot of times it's about relationships though just you know how could I handle something better how could I be kinder how could I be more compassionate and and younger women will help with that as well as older women so I think it just depends on the situation so let's remember the question in what situations do you turned women from different generations for guidance or advice how difficult was this question for you to answer be honest after you answer this question for yourself think about reaching out to other women in your life for their answers remember to share your answers with us on our 10 women series on Instagram we can't wait to read your answers and speaking of answers we've actually got some different answers on our Instagram page that's because we asked all the women's surprise questions to learn more about them join us on Instagram at 10w women series to hear their answers we hope you will join us every Tuesday for a new episode wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts this series is distributed both as an audio only and a YouTube video format to allow you to enjoy each episode your preferred way be sure to visit our website at www sassy.com to learn more about this series and all the places you can find us 10 women is a production of sassy yam media Amy Brown and Sarah Howard producers feel free to send us an email at sassy medag gmail.com special thanks to the women of season 1 Kimberly Burke Judy Fowler Michelle Horvath Marie Leonard lyanna Martin Abigail dun Moses Susan sasman Abigail Seymour Anne Sparks bumgardner and Terry wiggin