Welcome to the Wisdom Trust. I'm Lauren Crawford. This podcast is for gay men over 50 who sense there's more to this stage of life than we've been taught. More connection, meaning, honesty, and possibility. Each episode is a conversation with a thoughtful gay man who's navigating the deeper questions that often emerge in the second half of life. Aging, identity, purpose, belonging, reinvention, community, love, and living consciously. These are not conversations about decline, they are conversations about becoming. I'm glad you're here. Hi there, Lauren Crawford here. Welcome to The Wisdom Trust. This is a podcast and a community for gay men over 50 years old who are enjoying life to its fullest, also experiencing some of those challenges that come up through our midlife journey. We're going to start our podcast series with this episode of Me, where I'm going to share a little bit about myself, why I'm doing this, uh, what I see as important work and how I see it growing. Our goal here is to create community, uh, podcast being the front-facing element of that, but also uh supporting elements in the background. And I'll talk more about that in a bit. So let me tell you a little about a little bit about who I am and what I'm all about. So I spent a lot of my life uh doing self-inquiry work, doing the work of figuring out who I am. And that started in my 20s when I was kind of a little bit frustrated with the way life was uh playing out for me. I ended up going back to university at 28, totally shifted my life, learned the whole art and skill of facilitation, which I love, which became a huge part of my career. During that time, I also fell into yoga, and yoga became this vehicle for me to understand myself, learn to love myself in a whole different way. Uh, so there were these two uh opportunities that that corresponded at the same time. A couple of years later, I landed my dream job and moved from the West Coast. I was in Vancouver at the time to Ottawa. That dream job uh set me up nicely with a great salary, a great set of benefits and a pension plan that, you know, was unheard of from my background. I came from a very humble background. And so this was kind of like I'd hit the jackpot, if you will. And I continued my yoga journey as well, all through this time, deepening my practice, understanding it as a little bit more than something physical. It was really, really impacting me at a deep level. And so I decided at that point, um, fairly early in that career, to also do a deep dive into yoga. So I did a teacher training certification and ended up for over 20 years having two sort of parallel careers. I had my uh corporate job, uh, a lot of which involved facilitation programming work, working with our members in the organization where I work to see them grow, expand, and become the best versions of themselves. Where over here on the yoga side, same thing. I was working with people who were doing a deeper journey, a more metaphysical journey through the body of yoga, physical body and body of work of yoga, to realize themselves. And in all of this, I was, of course, growing, evolving, and and making a lot of changes. But somewhere along the line, that dream job became not so much. And I struggled a lot and I needed a little bit of more direction, I would say. The yoga was certainly helping me. I did a lot of ongoing development. In the first teacher that I worked with was for 15 years. Master level certification was always deepening that part of my journey. And it was amazing. I learned a lot, I grew a lot, I was helping a lot of people in their own journeys. At that point where I was in my 40s, coming into my 50s, I realized I didn't want to stay in that job anymore. And the yoga thing was working, but not in the way that I thought it would. At that point, I was running a small studio, I'd bought a building, I was living upstairs, running yoga in the main floor, going to my job every day. It was a busy life. I realized later in retrospect that I was doing a lot of avoiding of certain aspects of my being. We'll get into that maybe a little bit later. Long and short is uh COVID comes along, I lose my yoga business, I end up in bankruptcy. And that took me down a whole other path of surprisingly not, you know, collapsing, but it was really a springboard to a whole new dimension. That was when I discovered coaching and understood that there's a whole different way of looking at personal development outside of the spiritual lens through coaching and other beautiful personal development and personal growth uh aspects. Started studying with a different teacher, a whole new way of looking at things, grew my coaching capacity, started to understand what it was like to become a solopreneur. And that was very exciting. And I chose to work with midlife men because I was going through a big transition. This was now in my 50s, and wanted to provide some of the tools and resources I had to others to help them moderate through that transitioning period. And that was really beautiful. It also afforded me a lot of opportunity to heal some of my issues around my relationships with men, which may sound weird, being that I'm a gay man, but I always struggled with my relationships with men. Primarily, I would say, because of the that foundational relationship with my father, which wasn't the most healthy. Coaching opened me up in a whole new way. And more recently, what's happened is this idea of working more specifically with gay men. I avoid, I'd been avoiding that. It was pointed out to me by two mentors who I hold near and dear. Both of them are very highly intuitive people. Both of them happen to be people at channel. So they they're drawing their input from not just their minds, their intellects, their egos, or even their intuition, much a deeper place. What I told them is I'm doing this coaching because my larger journey that I'm I'm I have this passion for is to eventually create co-living environments for aging gay men, like physical environments. And they're like, oh, interesting. Well, you need to get on that now. And I'm like, what? And they said you don't need to wait to create the physical home and space for folks. Create that virtually now by way of creating community. Because I'd spent my whole adult life as a single person. Yes, I dated and had, you know, boyfriends here and there, but largely because of these two parallel careers, I was potentially avoiding that too. But I did not have that relationship journey that many of you will have had or are having. So I knew how to work with loneliness and sort of overcome that feeling that, oh, I'm alone. Because when your life is filled and rich from the inside, there is no such thing as loneliness. So I wanted to bring that perspective to aging gay men because I recognized, felt intuited that that was an issue that was large and front and center. We know that loneliness is an epidemic in North America, writ large. And I suspected that it was even more so with a lot of aging gay men. And resource research has borne that out in terms of uh the conversations I've been having over the last few weeks. So here we are. That was really the pivot that I needed. This hearing these two amazing people, Jennifer Huff being one of the co-leads in the coaching program that I'm a member of, and Lee Harris, who's an internationally acclaimed uh energy worker, intuitive musician, a channeler. He had and I had a conversation where he was the one that really uh guided me this way. Uh, this pivot has been incredible, and it's really in its infancy because there's been an expedite, expedited energy shift around going from what I was struggling with for a couple of years, growing this men's uh coaching business, to now aiming and targeting uh men like myself over 50 who are gay. The universe is loving that I found this path, or I would argue that she actually dropped me into this direction and this path. It's been incredibly exciting. So, what does that look like? Well, I'm creating this, this podcast. I'm creating a Substack channel where we can uh build community. I'm planning programming that's gonna be supporting the back end of this podcast. So people want more, they want to plug in, they want to do things with other guys. This is all part of this work. So it's been a big transition. My fabulous moment for sure. Each of these podcasts are going to uh focus on these five areas. And the first one is well, what's that fabulous moment that occurred? What was that pivot that you went through? This is mine, and it's relatively recent. The coaching thing was, I thought, the big pivot, but actually the big pivot is this working with men like you who I want to bring together and hear your stories. And over the coming weeks and years, you will be hearing beautiful stories uh from a number of amazing men. I've had conversations with a number of them already in the process of recording the podcasts now. So I know that a lot of these men are gonna resonate with you in terms of their journeys, and they're all very unique. The interesting thing for me as the person doing the interviewing was that there was a thread of their story woven through my fabric. So I resonated with each one of those individuals on some level, and I suspect that will be the case for you as well. In doing all of this, the next bit is well, what is that bringing me from? Oftentimes there's things that are holding us back. And so when we make a pivot, and sometimes the pivots are by design, and sometimes they're life circumstances, right? And you're gonna hear a lot of different pivots that occur. So for me, it was this again, this transition into coaching now, coaching and doing a podcast for gay men over 50. Now, what does that give me freedom from? What am I letting go of? And part of that is trying to fit the square peg in the round hole, right? Like trying to work in an environment where I felt a little bit of that imposter syndrome to a degree, working with midlife men writ large, not just gay men per se, who were high achievers and more on the executive side of things. I could definitely facilitate and do and work that uh niche and bring them along in their journeys. However, there was a slight misalignment. There was um a lacking in authenticity. So, what this has given me freedom and license to move away from is this constant pushing and struggle and challenge to bring this thing to fruition, this coaching uh work that I'm so committed to to fruition. Why am I committed to it? Because I'm all about service. I'm all about giving back these 25, 30 years of rich, rewarding work that has benefited me in so many ways, serving that back to the community in whatever way I can. Even now, I still to this day volunteer a couple of times a week to teach yoga and meditation classes at a local facility. So I'm all about that service. I'm all about serving the teachings that have served me well by way of sharing them with others. So the freedom from was really getting out of that pushing mode, that struggling mode. And as I mentioned, this new alignment has really taken me to uh an ease and a flow. In doing this work, moving into the coaching, the first coaching fellow I work with who was running a beautiful coaching program, he told us that when you do this work, there's often a lot of healing that needs to occur. And I thought, well, that's peculiar. Like I've been meditating for 25 years. I have a deep, beautiful practice. I've done a lot of personal growth work in that arena. So what the heck are you talking about? And I actually rolled my eyes and thought he was being a little bit silly. And then what I what I realized was, oh, there were a lot of uh things that I didn't know. There was a lot of growth that I needed to experience. And most humbling that I had been spiritually bypassing a lot of my own stuff, shall we say? This whole pivot here, moving into working with you all, is the freedom to actually be me. The freedom to show up for men in a way that maybe I never have because I was too scared to. Freedom to share these beautiful teachings and practices with other gay men and being beyond that point of will I be judged? You know, will this resonate? Freedom to just be myself and to expand and to explore. And that's ultimately rewarding. Find out more about the wisdom trust at school. School.com slash the dash wisdom dash trust slash about. Our webpage is the wisdomtrust.com. On Substack, we're the Wisdom Trust.com. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, youtube.com slash at the Wisdom Trust 50. And so stepping into that, when we find ourselves in alignment, when these pivots bring us to a new place, a new station in life, shall we say, there's an upleveling that occurs energetically. Now I'm the energy guy, I'm all about working with energy, and you'll see that through these podcasts when I may interject and share a little bit of a moment with someone where we tap into something deeper. You know, there's this saying that we use in the yoga tradition that the issues are in your tissues. And sometimes we've got stuff so bottled up in there that we can't even really recognize it. But someone else may be able to. Sometimes a teacher can see what you can't see in yourself. That's both the potential. Sometimes we don't always see our potential, and also some of the stuff you might be holding. So this idea of leveling up, letting free some of that, those energy knots that might be gripping inside of you. Because when those knots are there, they weigh on you physically, and that can result and will result in health issues, and they weigh on you mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. So we want to find ourselves, especially at this stage in life, after 50, in total alignment with what our soul's journey is. Now, the first decades have really been about, you know, who am I going to become? What am I going to do? What's that status thing going to be all about? You know, and status is different for different people. You know, success is different for different people. I've only in the last few years started to understand that success isn't about money in the bank account. Success is about how you're showing up for your life, how how comfortable you're sleeping at night, you know, how you're able to, again, um, I think at this stage in the life, be able to serve is a real rewarding thing. There's there's success in all of that. How you're able to integrate and communicate and and share all of the teachings that you've experienced in your life. Some of those are more formal, some of those are just life lessons, right? And that wisdom. So we're moving into, you know, this era where we can free ourselves from some of those expectations of our younger years, 20s, 30s, and even into our 40s, and then in our 50s and 60s, start to really be in this place of up-leveling who we are energetically. And so that means that this time is not the beginning of the end. It's not the decline years. This is, I want you to really feel this. This is the springboard to the best years of your life. Now, if you're rolling your eyes like I did when that coach told me you're going to do some healing, that's okay. I want you and I invite you to stick around over this season of podcasts and join in the community and share your insights, your wisdom, learn and grow from others and let them hear from you in terms of your experiences, and we will level up. There's a time and a place for this, and it is now because the world's in a bit of a shit show. And it's up to us as individuals to show up and to light up. Now, that doesn't mean yelling and screaming at each other and saying my political party is better than yours. That's all a big distraction. But what it is about is you is about how you are presenting, how you are showing up for yourself first and foremost, soul aligned, feeling whole and connected. And then that ripples out. That's how change happens, people. It's not by those power brokers out there. I really strongly, strongly believe that. So the leveling up is will happen of its own accord. And I want to also provide, you know, my insights on some of that and tools that people can work with as well. So when we level up and things start to feel more aligned, then life is more fun. Then we can figure out, you know, new and different paths to tread. We can maybe let go of some of the things that no longer serve us. I recently got rid of all the hookup apps on my phone, for example. I'm like, you know what? That frustrates me more than anything else. So I know that addictive tendency to go in there. Why not just let go of it? So there are choices that we can make and move ourselves forward so that we are in a position of not being stuck in some of those old patterns of behavior that keep us feeling caged, heavy, maybe not as uplifted as we had hoped, that up-leveling stuff I just talked about. And that frees us up to have more fun, to be curious about life. What can I do? How can I show up a little bit differently in terms of my daily choices? And how could I maybe meet new people? How could I plug into this wisdom trust community and make some friends? And God only knows, maybe even eventually meeting up with those people when there's a retreat or when there's a collective um coming together in real space and time. How do we have fun? It's really, really important. For me, I'm a real uh visual person, you know. So I love everything that connotes beauty. Nature takes on a whole new uh it's it's like a canopy of absolute beauty when you allow yourself to look at it that way. And you can't help to in many ways. So I live on a one of the most beautiful spots in in Canada. Canada's an exceptionally beautiful country anyway, on Vancouver Island on the West Coast. And it is exquisitely beautiful here. So just being outdoors, even in neighborhood walks, there's these old growth trees. There's so much beauty. Architecture is interesting, and then the seascape, you know, there's water. So, how do you fun can look like a lot of things? It doesn't need to look like the stuff that we were doing in our 30s. It doesn't need to be bar culture and involve, you know, alcohol, no judgment. I'm a non-drinker, but you know, like we can look at doing fun differently at this stage in my life. And I think that's a really important thing. Because when we lose that sort of curiosity and that instinct to sort of get out there and explore, that's when we will decline. That's when we will uh begin to maybe um disconnect and become a little bit more isolated. And I'm not just speaking to single people, I'm talking to couples too. You know, like you can get in a very comfortable pattern that just becomes incredibly familiar and actually not be having all that much fun. You know, there's there's often this thing about, oh, well, if you're if you're not in a couple, you must be incredibly isolated and alone. I would argue that you can be isolated and alone, whether you're coupled or not. You can be isolated and alone if you're amongst throngs of people. The aloneness and the isolation is really driven from how you feel inside. Having fun, what does that look like for you? Getting out of the box of what that maybe looked like in the past and being creative about what you do. So you're gonna hear from some of the podcast guests in our conversations what some of that fun can look like. And I'm I'm super excited for you to hear that and and get inspired and then start writing and sharing in the community about some of the things that you're doing. And if you're super pumped up and having fun about Things or uh by things and with things, and you want to like share that with others, it'll be an opportunity for you to be a guest as well. So the next thing we want to be thinking about is all of these things, and if they're not happening yet, and I use that word very intentionally, yet, uh, let's create the intention that they are going to be happening, that these shifts are going to be happening for you, that you plug in in such a way that you are intentional in terms of how you're moving forward proactively with that curiosity, with that innocence of a child. You know, Jennifer Huff, the mentor that I mentioned earlier, she has a beautiful uh agents of awakening, she calls her community. And they talk about being that cosmic three-year-old. You know, so we're part of this cosmic realm, all this beautiful quantum physics stuff, which I may or may not delve into in these podcasts, but how we are all part of this beautiful, multi-dimensional, multi-layered reality. And we can get really, really stuck myopically thinking, well, this is my life, and this is what I do, and this is what's gonna look like a little box like that. And it's like, no, it's big. So this curiosity can look like the cosmic three-year-old, and we want to bring into that all of these rich and rewarding experiences that you've had in your life. That's the wisdom. These are the wisdom years. This is called the wisdom trust because A, wisdom is part of what we uh accumulate through our life's experiences. And yes, some of those experiences are shitty. Yeah, we've had some hard times. As gay men, we've we've realized and lived through a lot, right? My coming out years were during the the peak of the HIV and AIDS crisis. I was horrified around, you know, what was going on. And uh so we've got a lot uh in our journeys uh over the past decades that have brought us here. That wisdom, we need to tap into that collectively and individually, right? Don't shortchange how much of you is is embodied with with that, empowered by so much wisdom. So the wisdom trust, that wisdom, the trust part of it is really having the trust and having the uh faith in each other to work together to trustfully build on this collective wisdom that we have so that we can grow as individuals, grow in community, build friendships, build alliances, whatever that may look like. That's the wisdom aspect of this. So that's a little bit about my story, why we're here, and and why I've created this podcast. What you'll be exploring over the next little while will be, again, beautiful conversations. I will step in from time to time and maybe play a role with a little bit of coaching. Maybe uh I might have an uh intuitive download which we'll uh I'll imbue uh into the conversation with the participant if if they so choose to hear it. There might be a little bit of energy work as well. All of these things will be uh tools that you can look at using or at least reflect upon. And using this again as an opportunity to maybe expand your frame of reference. When I did the initial cursory overview of what was available out there for uh midlife gay men, I found a lot of it was pretty heavy and in tone. Like, and I'm not about bypassing all of that, those more challenging aspects of what we get to experience at this stage in my life, in our lives, because we do, there are challenges. But I also want us to build that frame of reference and that frame of mind around there's so much to build upon here. There are so many things that we can do that maybe we've not even considered quite yet. That's the thrust behind this. It's a positive, affirming, a building community. Uh, and and I want you to be part of that. I truly do. One of the best ways that you can stay plugged in is by connecting with our various uh other platforms. So there'll be more long-form essays and reflections on some of these podcasts at the Substack channel. So the wisdomtrust that's dotsubstack.com is where you'll find that. The video elements of our podcasts will be on our YouTube channel, which is on YouTube at WisdomTrust50. So that's where you'll find the visuals, and there'll be some outtakes there and maybe some shorter uh clips as well. So this is uh an exciting time for me. I'm so pleased, privileged, and honored to be able to show up for you. And it's really me bringing my life's work uh to the public in this way. And I know that there are so many of us who could use a little bit of that positive and uplifting energy on a day on the daily, right? So that we feel more alive. There's so much potential here to grow as well. And I would love to hear from you in terms of how do you think the Wisdom Trust, this community and podcast for gay men 50 plus, can serve you. So go ahead and let us know in the comments because we're more, more, more than willing to explore uh what we're already planning, but also what you think would be really, really helpful. And even podcast themes, go ahead and share those ideas. It's been really great being here with you. And I hope you enjoy uh the season that's ahead. All right, take good care, and we'll see you in the next one. Bye for now. Thank you to our guests today, and thank you for listening. If what you heard landed with you, if you felt seen, heard, inspired to make a shift, want to hear about it. Get back to me on one of our platforms or where you're listening to or seeing this. And if you know another man over 50 who you think would benefit from hearing this, share it with them, please. This community grows when we show up for each other. You can find more essays on these topics, reflections, and such at our Substack account. Watch for other content on our YouTube channel, and stay connected to us through our school platform. This is where we engage and are building our community. Remember, the second half of life isn't the beginning of the end. For many of us, it's the moment life finally begins to open up. You're not alone in this. We're in it together. I'll see you next time on the Wisdom Trust.