WOW: Wise Older Women
“Wisdom That Grows Louder with Time.”
Welcome to WOW: Wise Older Women a podcast dedicated to raising the status of ageing women and dismantling the narratives that silence them.
Here, older women speak with authority, beauty, depth, and fire. Their stories challenge, inspire, and illuminate.
In a world that too often ignores, isolates, or diminishes older women, we choose to listen. To revere and celebrate the brilliance, courage, humour and tenderness they bring along with plenty of high‑vibration wisdom carried in their words.
These conversations aren’t just stories, each one of them is a teaching. A personal map from the past, forging the way ahead, full of magic, medicine and momentum.
This storytelling series presents ageing not as decline, but as ascent. It’s a platform where older women don’t need to hide. This is where they are honoured, uplifted, heard and held; with reverence, respect, and wonder.
Their voices are powerful, their wisdom is vibrant, and their stories are a gift to us all.
Welcome to the podcast. Settle in. Let their voices guide you.
WOW: Wise Older Women
S2 Ep3: Gayle Cue
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Gayle Cue is a woman who grew up under a wide Montana sky in the Northwest of the US. That harsh and heavenly country provided her with grit and groundedness along with the gift of resilience and strength which continues to help carry her forward.
Gayles story weaves through all the juicy ingredients of a life lived in flow, allowing what is meant to be, to simply be. It might have taken her a few years or even a few decades to reach that conclusion and that’s what we’re here to acknowledge in this series of storytelling.
Gayle married at 18 and became a young mum before recognising the need for change. That bravery steered her toward navigating a new relationship which introduced her to blended family life, with four kids under seven.
Then came the moment that changed everything: Gayles second husband sat up in bed one morning and announced. “We’re going on a trip.”
The family took a giant leap that carried them across the world, to eventually land on Bunjalung country in Byron Bay. It’s here she co‑created Sound Waves Music Store, helped build a community radio station and temporarily housed all of it’s volunteers. Gayle inevitably became one of the quiet forces shaping the creative heartbeat of the town.
She’s lived through profound loss, rebuilt her life more than once, travelled to sacred sites around the world and remembered past lives. More recently she’s embraced shared living, and stepped into elderhood with a mix of humility, humour, and deep soulful insight.
Gayle is vibrant, wise, grounded, and endlessly curious. She’s the kind of elder we can look to, to be reminded that - as life expands – so do we.
Content warning: This episode contains discussion and references to suicide. Some parts may be distressing or triggering for some listeners. Please take care of yourself while listening and reach out for support if needed or stop listening at any time.
You can catch Gayle on Bay FM during her show Still Groovin
Series 1 & 2 were made possible with assistance from the Community Broadcasting Foundation. cbf.com.au.
Support future episodes of WOW: Wise Older Women - Here
Contact Host & Executive Producer Rasela Torise - aloha@plantationstudios.com
Music generously provided by Purple Planet Music
S2 Ep.4 Guest: Gabrielle Griffin. COMING SOON.
Welcome to Wow, Wise Older Women, wisdom that grows louder with time. It's a podcast dedicated to raising the status of aging women and dismantling the narratives that silence them. Here, older women speak with authority, beauty, depth, and fire. Their stories challenge, inspire, and illuminate. In a world that too often ignores, isolates, or diminishes older women, we choose to listen, to revere and celebrate their brilliance, courage, humor, and tenderness. They bring along plenty of high vibrational wisdom carried in their words. These conversations aren't just stories. Each one of them is a teaching, a personal map from the past, forging the way ahead, full of magic, medicine, and momentum. This storytelling series presents aging not as a decline, but as a scent. It's a platform where older women don't need to hide. This is where they're honored, uplifted, heard, and held with reverence, respect, and wonder. Their voices are powerful, their wisdom is vibrant, and their stories are a gift to us all. Welcome to the podcast. Settle in. Let their voices guide you. Today's guest is Gail Q, a woman who grew up under a wide Montana sky in the northwest of the US. Amongst the harsh and heavenly country, she gained the gift of resilience and strength that's continued to help carry her forward. Gail's story weaves through all the juicy ingredients of a life lived in flow, allowing what's meant to be to simply be. It might have taken her a few years or even a few decades to reach that conclusion, and that's what we're here to acknowledge in this series of storytelling. Gail married at 18 and became a young mum before recognizing the need for change. That bravery steered her towards navigating a new relationship which introduced her to a blended family life with four kids under seven at one point. Then came the moment that changed everything. Gail's second husband sat up in bed one morning and announced, we're going on a trip. The family took a giant leap that carried them across the world to eventually land on Bungelung Country here in Byron Bay. It's here she co-created Soundwave's Music Store, helped build a community radio station, and temporarily housed all of its volunteers. Gail inevitably became one of the quiet forces shaping the creative heartbeat of the town. She's lived through profound loss, rebuilt her life many times, travelled to sacred sites around the world, and remembered past lives. More recently, she's embraced shared living and stepped into elderhood with a mix of humility and deep soulful insight. Gail is vibrant, wise, grounded, and endlessly curious. She's the kind of elder we can look to to be reminded that as life expands, so do we. As you've aged, you've become much less attached to outcomes. How does that look in your everyday life?
SPEAKER_02It shows up really literally every day, and it's from the very big things to very small things. A big thing would be like my daughter had been living overseas for 22 years, and I had just accepted, well, that's how it went. That's what happened. And I wasn't expecting her to move back to Australia because when I left the States, I left and never went back. And then just this last year, she was feeling like it was time to come back to Australia. And she kept sort of coming back to me about it. And um I finally worked out that she needed me to say, I want you to come back to Australia. And I said, Well, I want you to do what you want. And she said, Yeah, but I want you to want me to come. So I had to be attached to the idea that she would come, so to speak, but because I'm so neutral about outcomes, the case. Anyway, she did move back, and I'm thrilled about that. Now that she's here, possibly there was some protection there, not wanting to get my hopes up. She might change her mind or something. But it's also about maybe smaller things. I've made plans with a friend, we're gonna go to Brisbane for the weekend, and then suddenly she can't go. I don't want to go by myself, so I have to not be attached to the idea that we were gonna go to Brisbane or that might interfere with my friendship with her. I just find it all day long, really, it's about not having attachments to certain things. Sometimes I'm more successful at that than others. I had my heart set on a particular vanity. I'm doing some home renovations. And then yesterday they called to say, also sorry, that vanity is no longer available. I was, you know, a little disappointed.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned that you left America and didn't go back. So tell us a little bit about growing up in Montana, your mix of cultural roots and what kind of world you grew up in and perhaps how that shaped the woman that you became.
SPEAKER_02I'm very grateful that I grew up in Montana. I'm more grateful that I was able to leave Montana. So it it's incredibly breathtakingly beautiful, landscape-wise, mountains you cannot believe, big sky. But it's also there's a certain mentality, real cowboys and Indians type of territory, and it's just not my tribe. And so I was always quite cramped there. I didn't understand that at the time. I mean, I sort of felt it, but I hadn't really identified what it was. But growing up in Montana made me I mean, I think this is part of my makeup anyway, but it also made me very resilient. And you have to be hearty to grow up in Montana because besides being breathtakingly beautiful, it's breathtakingly cold many months of the year. Lots of snow. Snow is heavy to move if you have to shovel your car out or shovel the driveway, scrape the windscreens, chop wood, build fires to stay warm. You know, I learned to drive in a manual car, learned to drive four-wheel drives. I just feel like a lot of what Montana offered me gave me a heartiness to get through life.
SPEAKER_00You had a a child quite young. How young were you? And how did that pan out?
SPEAKER_02Without much thought. I got married at 18, just a few months after graduating from high school. And he was tall, dark, and handsome. He's three years older than me, so he'd been to the Navy and back home. He was very worldly. We just got married. I mean, I was ready to have sex, and I was scared to death of getting pregnant. So we had to get married, so that if I got pregnant, it would be okay in the eyes of the neighbors. So when I was twenty then we did have a baby, and like I say, without much thought, it was just very prosaic. Okay, I'm married now. What do we do near Oh yeah, we have children, that's what we do next.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Was that what was going on around you? Is that what you mean by sort of the small-mindedness of a of a small town?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Some very good friends of ours were pregnant, and I think I caught the excitement of them preparing for a baby, and so I I just sort of ran with that. I didn't give it much thought, really. I just thought that's what you did. And at the time, being 20 years old, seemed to me like a reasonable age to have a baby. I wasn't fifteen, sixteen, I was married. You know, I don't necessarily regret it because it made me a very active mother. It meant I also became a grandmother at a young age, so I could be a very active grandmother as well.
SPEAKER_00And it's just how my life played out. Did you have to give up work and and how did that feel for you? Whatever changes you had to make um at that age?
SPEAKER_02I don't think I was working, but then I had to get a part-time job. Staying at home with a baby all day long was a bit much for me. And so then when she was maybe a year old or something, I did get a part-time job at a Sears, Sears and Roebuck, and my mother babysat for me, which she was thrilled about. You divorced? Yes. It was alcohol, really. I kind of knew the marriage probably had a limited run, but I really wanted two children, and so I hung into the marriage probably longer than I should have. When your partner's drinking, there's so many problems, wrecked cars, loss of money, you know, just things, and I thought raising two children's enough. I don't need to raise two children and a husband at the same time. So it was a very difficult decision, of course, because he loved his children and I would have preferred that we remained friendly, but he moved away after the divorce.
SPEAKER_00And then suddenly finding yourself remarried in a blended family with four children under seven.
SPEAKER_02I married just about a year later. I look back on it again and think, wow, I just got swept up the second time around. He was really generous and funny and a musician and he loved my kids and so I got married.
SPEAKER_00Did you stay in Montana? Is that something that you both wanted?
SPEAKER_02Well, yes, we were very grounded there. You know, that's where we had been raised, and we were there probably about eight years before we left to travel. It was uh, you know, lots of fun blending the families. We bought a big house, so the kids all had plenty of space. We were out in the country, they could run around, and we had big hills for sledding and skiing. So it was a beautiful time. Then one day it all changed.
SPEAKER_00It certainly did. So I would love to hear the story about when your husband sat up in bed and announced, we're going on a trip. What did that moment stir in you and your family?
SPEAKER_02I can still see it so vividly. I was at the dresser getting ready for work and he was still in bed, but then he just sat bolt upright and said, We're going on a trip. And I kind of laughed, thinking, Oh, he's just had a dream that we've been on a trip. And I just commented, Oh, are we now? And kept getting ready for work. And then when he came home that night from work, he had all these travel brochures, mainly about New Zealand. And he was a very intuitive kind of guy, and he always responded to that intuition. So this is something that came to him that we should go to New Zealand. And so he turned it into a business trip. So he had a business that sold liquid propane equipment, and he had contacts in New Zealand, and so he turned it into a business trip. Little did we know what we were in for. What changed inside of you during that trip? We went we did not take the children with us, four small children. My parents came out and stayed at the house and took care of the kids. And that was the first time I had been out of the US, other than Canada, of course, which was my backyard. So we did make it a legitimate business trip as well to, you know, meet the requirements of tax deductions. But then we spent time exploring the island, met some very beautiful Kiwis and it's hard to describe it in a way that can make other people understand the magic that there was in that trip. There was just a real sense for my husband particularly of having been in New Zealand before, not so much for me, but for him, he was very aware of having been there, not in this lifetime. Funny things happen, you know, that you think, well, how could that have happened? And like what? Well, we had crossed from the north to the south island and we were just kind of wandering around on the beach there by Nelson, I think it was, and he suddenly shouts, Oh, I found it. So I come running up and like, what did you find? And he picked up this seashell. And I said, Well, what do you mean? He said, I don't know. I don't know why I said that. Um, I still have that seashell, it's framed in a little box at home. But something in him really shifted that day by finding that seashell. See, that makes no sense to other people. So it's just a lived experience that for us is kind of like a crossing of realms or something happens.
SPEAKER_00On your way home from that trip, uh you stopped by an island where something happened for you as well. Can you share that?
SPEAKER_02Yes. We stopped in Tahiti for about a week, and that was very exotic being from Montana, and we were in a bungalow out over the water, and one morning before dawn, I'll say 4 a.m. or something, my brother, who had died just previous to us going on the trip, appeared at the foot of the bed. And his death was it was a suicide, but he had also been schizophrenic. I'd been caring for him before his death, and so I had a lot of process to do with all of that. And he appeared then at the foot of the bed and he said something to me like, I and I don't know if he used words or it was a conveyance of information, that I needed to move on because he had. So I got up out of bed and I walked out on the boardwalk and watched the sunrise, and that finished cementing the experience for me. And that was the message I went away from. Now, at the same time, I was reading Shirley McLean's book, Out on a Limb, if you remember that book from back in the 80s. It was an unfolding journey for her. And I hadn't really been reading books like that. It just happened to be the one that was in my hands when I went on this trip. And it just had a very huge impact on me along with that experience. So by the time we arrived back in Montana, I just felt like a very different person. I actually even felt like my hands had changed. The look of my hands had changed during that trip.
SPEAKER_00How long was it before you decided that you were going to upstyx and move the whole family to New Zealand? And how did you relay that to your children?
SPEAKER_02So the trip to New Zealand was in 85, and you know, we came home not expecting to be changed, and so we tried to just go back to life. But because we were different, suddenly it just didn't look as great to us as it had been. We were always dissatisfied with the American defense spending and space travel, and we were paying quite high taxes, and so we just thought New Zealand had a lot of appeal because it was so simple and quiet in comparison. And my husband and I talked about it quite a lot, but of course we had a business and a home and cars and all this, so how is it even possible to make a change like this? And then he went to a conference for his business and he mentioned it to a couple of people that he might be considering selling the business, and somebody responded straight away. This might have been, you know, nine months or twelve months after the trip. He just mentioned it at a conference and then we had a buyer. So as soon as we had a buyer for the business, that was kind of the key component. On the New Year's Eve, then of 86, we talked to the kids and said, Well, look, this is what we're thinking about doing. What do you think of that? And they were quite good sports about it. It's like, oh yeah, that would be cool. And the boys, of course, had their own little boy group, so they weren't worried that much about moving countries because they had each other. And so we said, Well, okay, don't tell anybody because a lot has to happen before it's real. And they stuck to that. They were good. They didn't tell anybody. And then we saw that it was gonna roll. My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer, and my mom called to tell me he was gonna have surger very radical surgery. When I got off the phone, I just thought, well, this is it. I we have to go now because if we don't go now, we won't go. We just won't be able to go. And so it was very difficult telling them that we had decided to move 12,000 miles away with their only grandkids.
SPEAKER_00You touched on the Shirley McLean book, which dives into reincarnation. And there's a connection here to when you told your mother-in-law that you were moving, what was her response?
SPEAKER_02There's a big backstory on that. So when my daughter was born, she was due on the 25th of January, and my mother-in-law said, no, she's gonna be born on the 7th of February. And I didn't pay that much attention to it, but when I went past my due date, I was like, Well, why do you think she's gonna be born on the seventh? You know, two weeks extra of being pregnant, not ideal. And she said, Well, that's the day my mother died. And my mother's coming back as your daughter. When I look back on it, it's surprising that I wasn't more surprised by that. But I didn't really think that much about it. That I kind of thought that was her thing. Her mother had died the year before I met my husband, so I hadn't known her. Anyway, the daughter was born on the 7th of February, as predicted. And then when my daughter was about six weeks old, one day she was distraught, unconsolably distraught. And fortunately my mother was home and nearby, so I called her and said, I just don't know what else to do. And she could hear the baby crying. She said, I'll be right over. So we took her into the clinic and the doctor said, Take her straight to the hospital. I've called ahead, they're waiting for her. And she had gone into heart failure because she had a hole in her heart, which is not all that uncommon. It happens with babies, and so then two things can happen either as they grow the hole grows and requires surgery, or as they grow the hole closes, which fortunately was our result. But that was just another confirmation for my mother-in-law because her mother had died at a young age of a first heart attack. And so this was more confirmation for her that this was her mother who had returned. So that's the background to the next bit of the story, which is I was really dreading telling her that we were moving. And I called her up and said, I'm just wondering if you'll be home this afternoon. I wanted to come over and talk to you. And she said, Well, yes, I'll be home. You can come, but I know. And I said, You know what? And she said, I know you're moving. And I'm like, How do you know? And she said, Because my mother came to me and told me in a dream. And she's so happy that she's gonna get to see the world and move. So my mother-in-law was so generous in letting go of the kids, all the kids, but especially her mother reincarnated, which she totally believed. So at that point, I'm like, maybe there's something to this.
SPEAKER_00Well, you did make the move and you went to New Zealand. Tell us a little bit about the New Zealand experience. I know that you said that you never really found the place to put down roots. So, yeah, how did it go with four kids in the car driving around to New Zealand looking for a new home?
SPEAKER_02It was fun. The boys had the skateboards with them, and everywhere they went, they just melted right into the skateboard crowd. And having an older glamorous sister meant that even the older boys sort of thought they were cool, but really they were just trying to get to the sister. So the kids were. We're fine. And uh my husband and I were enjoying New Zealand, but looking where's the community for us, where's a business that we feel we can thrive with. So we spent quite a bit of time in the North Island, we went to the South Island, but it just wasn't happening. We just couldn't find the business or the community. And so about maybe six months into it, we said, what are we going to do? Because we've burned all the bridges, so to speak, we'd sold everything in the States. There was nothing to go back to. So we said, well, let's go to Australia and just have a beach holiday and chill out and see what's happening. Which we did. We rented a car in Sydney, a van. We were driving up the coast and we had been staying different places. We stayed the night before in Ballina. So when we got up in the morning, we just took the beach road into Byron. We drove into Byron and everybody's like, oh, what's this? I think we found it.
SPEAKER_00But you didn't stay at that time. You had to go back to New Zealand. Did you need to figure out visas and things like that?
SPEAKER_02We did stop at the Brisbane Consulate on our way back from the Great Barrier Reef and inquired about the criteria for immigrating to Australia. It was the same as New Zealand, so we had that all sorted really. But you can't apply for permanent residency from within Australia. So we went back to New Zealand, rented a house on Waihickee Island, put the kids in school, and just took our time completing that process. And then eventually in early 88, we came to Australia permanently with all of our luggage.
SPEAKER_00What did Byron awaken in you, do you think? What did you feel when you first landed here?
SPEAKER_02Well I I think the when we first visited the first time through, of course there was the spectacle of being on a beach when you're from Montana. Beach is not something that you have. We we didn't have all this paranoia about the kids. So they were able to kind of just go off skateboarding and things and leave my husband and I to explore and check it out. And we just loved everything about the small town feel. There was a lot of new age availability. Richard Smykowski was doing astrology sessions there in the corner shop, suppertime blues, great food. Um the top pub was still an old kind of rambling shack. The whole thing just appealed to us.
SPEAKER_00You and your husband set up an incredible business, probably something that he was wanting to do most of his life, and you went into it together. Tell us about Soundwave's music store.
SPEAKER_02He had always been a musician, had always wanted to own a music store, but wasn't even really a a dream that he was working on or anything. But when we got to Byron, there was a place down next to the Byroni, and I think it was called the Sound Center. The guy, Alan, was um doing hi-fi repair equipment in there. And so I was at Samadis having a float tank experience when suddenly I hear a knocking on the float tank, and it's my husband saying, Come on, get out. I found a shop for us. We can open a music store. And so he quite literally pulled me out of the float tank. I got dressed, and we went down and took up the lease on Allen Sound Center.
SPEAKER_00What was inside? What was there when you first arrived, and how did you build it into the business that it became?
SPEAKER_02He was mainly doing hi-fi equipment repair, but to do that he did have a few cassettes and LPs. Not sure he even had any CDs, maybe. So yeah, we just turned it into a massive CD shop. We did have LPs and cassettes were still very popular at that time. But the back room that he used to do the repairs in, we turned that into a hi-fi equipment display area. And we had Richter speakers, which were very highly regarded in Australia, and Yamaha Hi-Fi equipment. And I know people today who still have that same Yamaha Hi-Fi equipment in their homes.
SPEAKER_00Well, it was well worth being pulled out of the float tank then. Was all of this the float tank and the new age kind of um vibe and barn at the time, was that new to you?
SPEAKER_02It was new to me because I had not explored any of that really while living in Montana. It was the Shirley McLean book that opened my eyes and made me realize that there was this other thing going on. I mean, it's how I live my life now, I it's amazing, but for the first thirty-five years of my life, I did not r have a relationship with a higher power or God or divine being, whatever you want to call that universal force. I just didn't even think that I wasn't having one or that I should have one, or that you could have one. I was raising four kids and running a home and working full time and it just wasn't part of the equation. So yeah, this was all new to me.
SPEAKER_00And those four kids also helped work in Soundwaves Music, didn't they?
SPEAKER_02Raising the children in the store was of course a blessing for all of us. And we were able to demonstrate to them what it meant to be of service, how to provide good customer service. And for my daughter, she's a naturally organized person, so it was she picked up managerial skills with adequate training and really set her off on a good foot for life as well.
SPEAKER_00And also then how you transitioned into becoming part of creating a community radio station, which was also at one stage housed in your store.
SPEAKER_02We had not been in Byron long when one night at five o'clock the shop closed. Clyde went over to the rails, which is where everyone went at five o'clock. Clyde is your husband. Yes. And he came back saying, Oh, we're gonna start a community radio station. There's a group of people. So this was kind of historically the way our relationship went. He was the ideas man and I was the administrator. So he says, We're going on a trip, I do the administration. I buy the tickets, I figure out where we're staying, what the itinerary is. He says, We're gonna go here, we're gonna start a music store, I say, okay, and then I do the paperwork. He comes and says, We're gonna start a community radio station. I say, okay. Not great timing. We are just getting settled in a new country, starting a new business, putting kids in school, but yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00You were instrumental with your administration in really helping to set up the foundations of this incredible radio station that's now been going for over 36 years. What do you remember at that time about your connection to community radio? Because obviously your husband had this great idea, but what were your thoughts around that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it wasn't ours solely, of course, there was a group of very enthusiastic people who wanted to start community radio. And then we had that event happen where there was a big concert scheduled to take place out at the arts factory, I think. And it got canceled at the last minute. There was no way to notify all these people who were going to be converging into Byron, and that was really, wow, we have to have a a news outlet. We have to be able to communicate to the community in some way. So that was a big incentive to get it going. Sound Waves was not that big, and we had our own amount of paperwork to run a business. So as the Bay FM paperwork started to accumulate, it was like, well, where am I going to put this paperwork? I need another file cabinet. And where would I put the file cabinet? Well, one day, literally, and it's a standing joke, if you get something for free, it's because it fell off the back of a truck. But in this case, the file cabinet really had fallen off the back of the truck, and so it was a bit damaged. The drawers didn't really shut properly. But someone came in enthusiastic. I found you a file cabinet. I took it. I said, okay. And then it just grew, and one day I looked up in the shop and the shop was really full, and I realized the majority of the people in there were Bay FM people, not Soundwave's customers. And I said, Yeah, we we have to find an office for Bay FM. So we did. We found a little space out in the old whaling epicenter. It was called the Epicenter. And we just rented a little room there, a place for the file cabinet, a little desk. Robbie McGrady's wife made these cute little curtains for the windows. And we just had somewhere to start storing all this junk equipment we were gathering to do mock broadcasts with that had been in sound waves, taking up shelf space with our new Hi-Fi equipment. So it was a great relief to me that Bay FM paid something, $15 a week rent on this room or something like that. So when I think about those early days, I think about the file cabinet that fell off the back of the truck. I think about the cute little curtains. I just think about getting rid of all that junk hi-fi equipment that we were using.
SPEAKER_00And also having space for your customers. Exactly you lived through quite a long period of your husband's illness and then his passing. How did that reshape your understanding of life at that time? How did you manage through all of that?
SPEAKER_02Hmm. I I think we all managed fairly well with it at the time. Of course, as the years go on, then you realize how much the children missed out on having a father, even though they were older by then. Still he died very young. He was forty-eight when he died. He had been sick for a number of years. He had had a what I call a karmic life. I didn't realize that always at the time that it was happening, but he had had a very difficult upbringing emotionally and then physically he had had a lot of accidents. So he was in a lot of pain all the time, which meant he did self-medicate with alcohol and and pot for years. But after we were married, there was a time when I realized I was in a second alcoholic marriage and and just said, I can't do it again, so you have to make a choice now. It's me or that. Well, fortunately at that point he chose me. So then we had a really great five years of him being sober, which was what was all that energy behind waking up and saying, Let's go on a trip, managing to get us all into Australia. Um couldn't never have done that if he had still been drinking. And so we'd been in Byron and settled and things were really great. And I remember well the night he decided it deserved a celebratory drink to celebrate, pulling that all off. And I thought, oh no, it's the beginning of the end. And it was, in terms of he went back to drinking. And so, you know, alcohol is always damaging for your health, and that's a choice people make. Not judging that. People make that choice that they need the alcohol even if it's damaging to their health. So if somebody's already unhealthy and they choose alcohol, well you could imagine it's a real slippery downhill ride. And that's what happened there. He did in early 1998 then take his own life, and uh he left a beautiful note for the children and I. It's amazing how much that note comforted us because he was really conscious when he did it, and um he was such a funny guy, great sense of humor, and his sense of humor was in this note of how he wrote to us. And there was no feeling sorry for himself. He just said he had had enough. He just couldn't do it anymore. So that really supported us in getting through the process of it, that he had made a choice. And then anytime there's a suicide, the coroner, I guess, requires an autopsy. Some government official requires an autopsy. Which I was not in favor of, but I didn't get to have a say about that. And in the end, I was so glad they had done it because when it came back, he didn't have any drugs or alcohol in his system when he did it. That also was very comforting that it was really truly a conscious choice.
SPEAKER_00Was that common knowledge of his passing and how he passed, or was that something that you just kept within the family?
SPEAKER_02No, I think most people knew that. You know, we were very public people. Our business was on Johnson Street. So we put a sign up on the door that said death in the family, closed for a week or whatever we did. And it's a small town. You don't really keep secrets like that. I don't remember ever thinking we needed to keep it a secret or anything.
SPEAKER_00You would have had a nice community around you then by that stage, which is is comforting as well. What happened to the business and where did you go after that huge event?
SPEAKER_02Well, he died in January, and then the blues fest is always Easter, which I recall was April that year. And a local businessman came in and approached me about buying the business, and I said, Well, I'm trying to get ready for the blues festival. I can't think about that right now. If you're really serious, come back after because we always had a stall out at the blues festival. And um he came in the day after the blues festival, so he was serious. And I just thought, yeah, it's time to let it go. It was my husband's dream, he's not here. And probably the real selling point was he had teenage children, so he hit me in my soft spot. He said, Well, the reason he wanted the business was he wanted to raise his kids in there the way he had watched us raise our kids. And I thought, that's a good reason to buy it. Did you invest that money into something for your future? I did invest the money in a first mortgage company, which some wealthy friends had recommended to me. It had met all the legitimate criteria and was paying a very good interest rate. And so it also helped me not have to work right away. I had income coming from the investment money. But that ended badly for me in the end. It was fine for several years, but then the party was over when the global financial crisis hit. So in 2008 I lost all that money.
SPEAKER_00That's a very profound blow. Did you find that your self-worth somehow was tied to your financial stability? And how did you rebuild your identity after that?
SPEAKER_02Very much so. I did not know that at the time, but when I lost the money, it was devastating, like literally took me to my knees. I can remember that day I realized it had happened and it the feeling, I can still conjure up that feeling of what that was like. I didn't know how much my identity was tied up in having money in the bank. And I think to some degree this is maybe a baby boomer generational sort of idea that, you know, our parents had lived through the wars and the depression. So for them to come out of that and make a living and make money, that's what you needed to do. And so that was sort of drilled into us as we were growing up. You need to make money, you need to save money, you need to have money in the bank, you need to not draw on government benefits. And I was very much of that school. So when I didn't have money in the bank anymore, I realized how much I was tied my self-worth was tied into that. And it was a hard blow for me. It took me a long time, I'm gonna say 18 months, to kind of emotionally regather myself. I had a couple of cards up my sleeve, like I had a very small superannuation that I cashed out under hardship conditions. It was enough to kind of buy me a year's time. Fortunately, I had a house that was paid for that I had bought years earlier when prices were very low. But yeah, it just took me a long time to work through that and realize that the amount of money in the bank wasn't an indicator of the quality of my personhood, of what kind of a citizen I was. And I got there with support, of course, from friends and my own exploration of different studies. And I've never been one much for counseling, just not the path I've taken. But I kind of work through things on my own. Might take me a little longer, but I get there. It was great. I mean, that sounds weird, but you know, I I lived with my parents until I was 18 and got married, and then I lived with a husband, and then I had children, so even that year in between marriages, I was living with children, and then I was married again and had four children. So this was the first time ever in my life that I had lived alone. And I am not a person who gets lonely, feels lonely, has homesickness. It's just not how I made. And so I didn't really suffer any of that empty nest syndrome. I just stepped into the next phase of life and it was sort of great to buy groceries, and the next time I came home, they were still in the refrigerator.
SPEAKER_00But then one day you made a conscious decision to stop living alone and really embrace or move into the world of shared living. What was happening inside you at that time? What do you think made you ready for that shift?
SPEAKER_02When Clyde died, and the kids all being only six, seven years apart in spread, they all kind of left home at the same time. The oldest one had stayed longer and the youngest one left early. So everybody's departure all really kind of happened in a two, three year period. So that was a very kind of sudden change of lifestyle. And then I lived alone for like twenty years, and I enjoyed it all. I didn't really think about the fact that I'm living alone. I was conscious that I definitely wasn't interested in dating, didn't want to get married, any of that kind of stuff. But I had a very active social life, was involved in community radio, I wasn't really missing out on anything. And then one day I felt like, well, wait, I'm getting older, I don't want to live alone all the rest of my life. I don't want to get married. So what's gonna have to happen here? Oh, I think I have to look at shared living. So I kind of just put word of mouth out and the dots got connected, as it does, the universe is always looking after us. And a woman was moving up from Melbourne, she had already had a job up here and she needed a place to stay, so she moved in. It was my first shared living experience. It also happened to be hers. So we were probably a bit messy at times. I recently went up and stayed with her in her apartment in Brisbane, and we were laughing about how we were back then as mature women trying to figure out how to be housemates and the mistakes we made and the sensitivity we did not have about what it means to be a housemate. But we're still friends.
SPEAKER_00The house that you were living in with her actually got sold fairly promptly, didn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, when I had this impulse that I didn't want to live alone, that was actually a small brick and tile house in Bangalore. It only had one bathroom. And I kind of thought, well, if I'm gonna do the shared living thing, I probably need a bit bigger house or at least two bathrooms in the process. I called a girlfriend who was in real estate, and before my house even went to market, she had accepted an offer on it for more than the asking price we had decided on. So I said yes. And then I thought, okay, I'll start looking, and I found a house straight away over in Ganelabaugh. So the situation then, this is like 2016. I sold a very small house in Byronshire for a great deal of money, and then I bought a very large house in Ganebah for a small amount of money. So that worked out really well, and it was perfect for shared living.
SPEAKER_00What are the benefits of shared living? Because in this area in particular, it's quite well known that women over 50 and over 60 are some of the highest statistics as being homeless. And this is really one solution to homelessness for older women, isn't it? By sharing a home, by opening up a home when you have extra. Space. What are some of the benefits, but also what are some of the challenges at this age?
SPEAKER_02Well, definitely financial for everybody. I mean, it it supports me. I'm 75, I'm on a very fixed income. So to rent rooms out to have tenants, of course, supports me. But I'd say everyone who's lived with me over the last ten years, they just don't have the financial backing to own their own home, so they have to rent. So to find a a beautiful home to live in for rent is uh a real blessing to them as well. And the challenges are many, of course. I've been very fortunate, again, I and I don't attribute this solely to good luck. I I think there's a higher power that's helping us navigate the difficulties of life. So for the most part, everyone that's come to live with me, I have been compatible with. There's been a couple people that weren't, but I also was fine about that to just see where it went. But I set a certain standard. And when I first started shared living, I was quite idealistic. Okay, I'm the homeowner, but we're all going to be equal in the home. We're all going to have an equal say about things. And I did run with that for a while, and to some degree it's it's still true. But the reality is as a homeowner, you're the one paying the rates, you're the one paying the insurance. If the house gets damaged, you're the one who has to get it fixed. And so there isn't an equity in that same way. And that's just the truth of it, and you work with that. But you can still do things in a shared way. And if I do ever have tradesmen in the house while they're off at work, I always let them know, oh, this is going to happen, or the electricity is going to be shut off on this day, or those kinds of things to keep it equal. But as the homeowner, you do end up taking responsibility for things that renters don't. So I'll just add to that by saying in prefacing this question, you were talking about particularly the statistics on women and homelessness, which is higher than men, of course. We're all aware of that, I think. But I just wanted to take this point to interject that one of my permanent tenants right now has been with me for four years and he's a man. I didn't necessarily set out to only have women tenants. I hadn't just given it any thought. That was who turned up on the door was women. And then one day I had a room and he contacted me and wanted to come look at the room, and he did. He was very gentle and well kept, but he left, and I'm like, oh gee, do I really want to live with a man? I don't know about that. And then he called a little bit later and he said, I would really like to live with you, and my housemate at the time was named Nikki. And just the way he said he would like to live with us kind of did it for me. He didn't say, Oh, I like the space or that room will do. You know, he wasn't about the space so much as he was he wanted the relationship of the people in the house. And he's still there four years later, so obviously it's worked out.
SPEAKER_00You've also had some profound spiritual experiences around the world, in Egypt, in France, in Mont Segur, and even during a physio session where you recalled a past life as a Native American warrior. What do these moments mean to you? Um, what relevance do they have in your life throughout your life?
SPEAKER_02It's probably a linguistics or a definition issue, but I wouldn't refer to them as spiritual experiences. For me, they're more soulful, which means to me that it comes through the veil. It comes from another realm. It isn't necessarily a skill or an ability I have to tap into that. It's given when it's needed. And so referring to the physiotherapy session I was having, I had a very bad pain in my upper back underneath my right shoulder blade. I'd had it for years due to what I thought was a specific incident, and I had seen many different physiotherapists over the years about it. And then one day when I was having a session, the therapist said to me, Do you have any recall of a past life as a Native American? And given my accent, I didn't think it was probably too big of a stretch for her to pick that I'm from the Northwest U.S., but still, you know, kind of random in the middle of the session. And I was just given that information. Yes, I have been, and I was injured. I took an arrow in the back underneath the right shoulder blade, and it was lodged there then for the rest of that life. It was always very painful, but I did live on after that. Now the amazing part of that story is that it cleared it. I've never had that pain in my back since that day. No big elaboration, we didn't talk about it at length, I didn't have to get counseling. I just needed to nominate it. And she called it up, she was given the question, she asked it, she responded to what she was given, I answered, that was it. It was gone.
SPEAKER_00How does your understanding of reincarnation connect to these kinds of incidences in your life?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think for everyone it's probably a little bit different, so I can only speak to my actual lived experience. Could be very different for someone else. And it isn't always definitive. Like I was going to France and I saw a friend who said she wanted to go with me, which was great. And then a couple days later she said I'd like to go to Egypt first. So I said, okay, let's do that. And she was very connected to Egypt. She was having lots of experiences in Egypt about past life. And I was aware that I'd lived in Egypt before, who hasn't, really, you know, if we get to looking at it, we've all been there. But at one temple, we were doing a float down the Nile on a river floating ship, and uh we were getting out at different temple sites, and we got out at one called Dendira, and when we went into that temple, I just was completely overwhelmed and burst into tears. I'm not a person who cries. Anyone who knows me knows I'm very stoic. I can't even cry when I want to. But I was just burst into tears, and I cried for, I don't know, an hour or longer, and I don't know why, but that's what happened there. So that leads me to think, okay, I've got some past life connection to that particular temple, especially. So it's it's like that. And then I have always felt connected to the Cathars that lived in France. Um the Cathars was a Christian movement that's said to have been started by Mary Magdalena and Peter after the crucifixion. They got on a boat and left Alexandra and went to France, and that was the start of the Cathar, which they were active for a couple of hundred years. They were eventually annihilated by the Inquisition, by the Catholic Church. I've long felt a connection to that lineage. So that was why I wanted to go to France and to the south of France. The day we climbed Mount Segur, which is the last stronghold of the Cathars, uh, was a very emotional day for me and the three traveling companions I was with. We were very blessed that day that when we got to the top of the mountain, not sure I could even make it today, because it's very steep. You can look it up on the internet, it's an amazing stronghold. There was a few young guys there, kind of noisy, boisterous, but they left right after we got there. And then no one else came up there while we were there, and we had the place to ourselves, which was fantastic, especially when you see the 360-degree views. The reason they were there is there's no way to attack this place because it's sheer cliffs, one winding trail that you can get down. And in the end, they got squeezed out. They didn't have food or water, and so they had no way to go except down, and the crusaders were already had the pyre built at the bottom of Mont Segur, and the 205 people who were still living up there decided to walk down the mountain and straight into the pyre. Singing. So when we came down the mountain, we also sang just in honor of that. Historically, if you look it up, you will also see it often says that was the end of the Cathars, but I don't believe it was. Some still got out and carried on the lineage, but they like to claim that as a success.
SPEAKER_00Do you feel that souls return to the same places or the same communities? How do you make sense of where reincarnation reappears and when?
SPEAKER_02Well, I don't claim to be any expert on this. I can just go with what feels true for me. I'm sure there are instances where it's important for people to reincarnate within the same community, family, region, and there could be all kinds of reasons that that happens, but it isn't necessary. We've all probably been born in many hundreds of lives over the years in different locations, in different colors of skin, we've been parts of different religions, and this is the experience that we have as human beings. So I I think it's possible that we do come back into the same communities, but it's not necessary. Whatever lessons we need to learn, whatever we take out with us, it's unresolved. This is something that feels true to me. If we have unresolved issues, we are likely to get placed in situations where we are given another opportunity to resolve it, could be with different people in a different place.
SPEAKER_00That description makes me feel like we are each other as well as ourselves, because like you say, when you come back in a different skin color or a different country or different nationality or a different form, even it shows to me like a unitedness of all souls, and that's a that's a really beautiful feeling. Thank you for that. You have described aging as becoming the scientist of your own life. What does that look like in everyday practice?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm very much a scientist of my own life, and it's a physical component to it. Like if I hear gluten's not good for you, it dulls your senses, it makes you lethargic. I don't just say, oh, I don't believe that, or oh okay, I'm gonna do that. I like experiment. Okay, I'm gonna not eat gluten and see if I can feel a difference. Well, I can, so I don't eat gluten. The same with dairy. And you know, it's hard to give up ice cream. But if you really take it on as a self-experiment and you drink milk or eat dairy, eat cheese, you can feel that in your body. It definitely clogs up your sinuses and perhaps makes you more emotional, more reactive. And with dairy, it takes quite a while for it to leave the body. So you might have to go 90 days without eating dairy before you can feel the lightness and the benefits of that. But it's also recognizing what triggers me, what causes a reaction in me, and being willing to see that, okay, that wasn't a response, that was a reaction. Then working with, can I do that differently? You know, can I be less reactive and more responsive? So everything becomes an experiment, really, because how am I going to evolve? How am I going to grow out of who I am? And as we become older, it's, I think, easy to rely on the past. Well, I've always done it this way. This is how I feel about this, this is what I think about this. Well, it's like, well, what if I don't? Can I look at it from a different angle? And then try that on and see how it feels.
SPEAKER_00Have any of your life lessons, soulful lessons or emotional lessons, has anything surprised you?
SPEAKER_02I would say I'm surprised at the internal changes I've been able to make, that I can feel the difference within myself. Things that I used to believe. I can see those as a belief, which is not a concrete thing. It's not true, it's just something I've told myself, and I can let it go. And I can see things differently. I guess that surprises me a little bit. But one of the things I'm working on at the moment is to not be surprised. Because I think, well, why should I be surprised? So much weird stuff happens to me and to the in the world. And what is the element of surprise? That's a way of like getting thrown off track or becoming discombobulated or depressed or whatever. Surprise is to me not necessarily a good thing. Although my daughter gave me a wonderful surprise on Easter Sunday, so I don't want to discount surprises entirely.
SPEAKER_00You had to quit judging yourself so that you could quit judging others. How did that transformation unfold?
SPEAKER_02I think it's one of those conundrums, and there's quite a few of them. Like, you know, to really love people, you have to learn to love yourself. Because if you can't love yourself, there's no way you're really truly loving somebody else. It's just not possible. And the same thing with judgment. I had to quit judging myself in order to quit judging other people. And you can hear it, you can say it, but then to do it, to put it into practice is not as easy as saying it. You know, can you really do that? Can you quit judging yourself? Can you forgive yourself? We've all made mistakes. And as we get older, we've made a lot more mistakes. We have more mistakes to look back on. And we can be quite hard on ourselves. That's where I feel like uh probably one of the biggest healings I had was learning to forgive myself, to go, yeah, I really screwed that up. I made a mistake, I wish I would have done it differently. And then live with that without putting yourself down or being upset about it or degrading yourself in any way. And when you reach that level of being humble, it's much harder to hold a judgment against somebody else, too. And you don't know what their life has been like and what path they've been on, what events have happened to them. When I was growing up in the 50s, it was all about putting yourself last, and the mothers of baby boomers were excellent at this. They put everybody else first. And I remember I had two brothers, and so there was five of us in my family, and having a roast chicken on Sunday or something was a a big meal, big treat. And my dad liked the breasts, so he got the white meat, and the kids got the drumstick, and my mother would end up with the back and the neck of the chicken. And it was very upsetting for me that my mother got these scrawny pieces of chicken. And one time I tried to talk to her about it when I was a bit older, like a teenager, she said, But I like them. I don't know if she really did or not. But this was so typical of everyone else. If there was money to buy extra clothes, the kid's got the clothes and the mother went without. And so we were taught to be self-sacrificing and to think that if you thought of yourself first, you were selfish, and that was a bad thing. But whereas I come more it's not about putting yourself first, but it's about treating everybody equally, including yourself. You're equal to everybody else. You're not underneath them, you're not above them. We're all equal. We just weren't modeled that as baby boomers growing up.
SPEAKER_00Having gone through a financial roller coaster, how connected you thought that you were to your wealth and your money. What does true wealth mean to you these days?
SPEAKER_02Well, true wealth is definitely an internal, it's an energetic state of being. And I'm sure we've all met people who are what we might call enlightened or or generous, are homeless even. But true wealth is a state of being. It's an energetic thing. Are you able to live your life in a way that you can be transparent and that you have energetic integrity and that you take responsibility? These kinds of things bring true wealth. I have a bumper sticker, not on my car, it's stuck to something in my garage, but it says, my superannuation is my livingness. And I always love that because it's like, well, if you live your life in a way that doesn't bring back repercussions on you, then it'll be okay. I mean, this is the karmic wheel that everything has a result. And so I really like the idea that how we live our life is also our prayer. Because we know there are people out there who are corrupt, who are doing all kinds of terrible things, but they go to church on Sunday. So this means they're okay. Yeah, I don't buy that. You cannot go to church, but if you're living a life of responsibility and integrity and generosity, then it's going to be okay.
SPEAKER_00What do you believe is the role of elders in this modern society that we are in these days?
SPEAKER_02I think growing up we are just trying to survive. And I mean, you know, as teenagers, everything's a drama, and you're affected by things people say. And then you hit the 20s and the 30s, and you're trying to find a career, or you're building a family, and your hands are just full. In the 40s, you probably have found a path, and this is the time to really make your money in your 40s and 50s, get yourself set up for old age. And then when you hit 60, it's kind of like, okay, life's pretty much behind you, really, and there's this relaxation that happens for people. I know nowadays people still work well into their 70s, and I'm I think that's fabulous. I think early retirement has a lot to answer for in terms of people losing purpose and and focus. So I'm not advocating for early retirement by any means. But I just think there's a it's almost like a hormonal change that happens as we age. It's the gift of the grace of aging. It's a design. It's in our, it's built into our cells that we go through these transformations as we age. And really, the 60s were so fabulous. Every time I meet somebody who's in their 60s, I'm like, oh, oh, just enjoy it. Just enjoy it. It's the best time of life. You're done raising kids. You've sort of picked your path in the way you're going to be in life. And it's just all about learning to love yourself completely, learning to love others. And I thought the sixties were great. So I th I think the elders in the community, they're just in a different headspace. They're in a different physical space, of course, too, because the body, especially as you turn into your 70s, it becomes much more body focused, things are starting to wear out. And so how do you deal with that, a body that's starting to wear out? You know, so you have a new game to go about. But I I think elders have a lot to offer in the community for all the younger generations. One of my best friends at the moment is a six-year-old. And he's such a joy to be with, but I know how important I am in his life. His parents have just been making a will for them. And so that includes taking care of him in the event that mom and dad should pass together. And they have a lovely family that they've talked to and they're gonna take my six-year-old friend. But he said to them, But I still want to go to Gail's house one day a week, right? That'll be okay. And they said, Yes.
SPEAKER_00How beautiful. Is there anything that you wish younger women understood about aging? Not as a decline, but as more of an expansion?
SPEAKER_02If I could write a love letter to my 13 year old. Self and sort of think about it that way. And I do think about this in terms of when I come back next lifetime, I definitely don't want to spend 50 years figuring out who I am, which is what I did this time. I'd like to really have a grasp on that I'm okay even when I'm 13, and to trust in myself and to have not an arrogance but a confidence that I'm also an equal child of God and that I have a divine purpose in being here and that I have a responsibility to take care of my body in a way that I'm receptive to being in communication with the universe. And so that's what I would like to come back for myself next lifetime to have that in me and not spend all those years flapping around trying to figure out, well, what is it? What's real? What isn't real? I think it's about really being grounded in yourself, being your scientist of your life at 13 instead of waiting until you're in the old age bracket when you think you have time. And the other thing I've felt I learned way too late in life is that every aspect of life is equally important. So the family life is just as important as the life with your friends, uh, when you get your first job, how you are in that job, how you are with everybody, it's all equal. And if you're doing the dishes, you need to bring the same amount of attention, presence, responsibility to doing the dishes as you do to your homework or your job or attending to your friendships. It's like balancing that out so that every situation and every person is getting the same amount of you when you're doing whatever you're doing. And also remembering to give that to yourself. Exactly. And that it's okay to have time alone. There's some fear about being alone or not having people around you. And and I see that particularly with young people. They think they have to be go, go, go, they have to be talking to somebody, they have to be on the phone, they have and it's it's like you really need to spend some time alone and get to know who you are.
SPEAKER_00Well, let's end with your return to Bay FM, which is such an honor really to have you there, because I know that you're such an integral part of, along with other people, the beginnings of this community radio station that's so dear to my heart. Tell us about your return, why you decided to come back after a rather lengthy break and what you're doing there now. Because, you know, you came back and you said, no, no, I'm not doing a show.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'd say also I I feel that a lot of things in life I see it now, that they're not decisions that I've made. Once you really embrace the fact that we're part of a divine creation, all of us, and this includes nature and the communities and the individuals, and and you just become part of that divine design, then you're being moved to do what you need to do or what needs done. So I don't even think of it in terms of making a decision to come back to Bay FM. I was moved to contact Bay FM and see if they needed volunteers, which of course they did. And having a lifetime of administration background, which is what I've done. I never had higher education, I never got degrees or had big goals, but I always had administrative skills, and it has seen me very well through life. And those skills not only started my business, but are I know a big part of the foundation of Bay FM. So to go back in there as a front desk volunteer, it was just a joy to do it because I knew I could do the admin sort of with my eyes closed, so to speak. But because I'm on the front desk, I also get to see everybody coming in and out of the station on Fridays and and I just love that. Know a lot of them still from way back when community radio is a bit of a I don't know, I don't like the word addiction because I don't like to think anything's an addiction. I like to rise above addictions. But there's a passion, there's a bug that you get bit by when you're in radio maybe in general, but particularly community radio. Because here you've got, you know, nearly a hundred people every week turning up to do their little bit of whatever they're doing at Bay FM. And what's holding that, what's gluing that all together? We are. We're the glue of the whole thing, everyone doing their bit. So I love being back there. And I am starting to go on air, even though that wasn't my original impulse. It was admin. And I may go on air, I may develop a show, I may not. I'm still open to just seeing what happens. That's another way that I'm a scientist, is it's a lot about just seeing what happens.
SPEAKER_00And that is the way that you've lived a lot of your life, isn't it? Saying yes to something and just letting it unfold ahead of you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think maybe I'm not necessarily a yes person, but I think for most of my life I wasn't very good at saying no. And so things happened to me because I didn't declare a position. Whereas now I still don't necessarily feel that I'm a yes kind of person. It's a more laid-back position of seeing, well, what presents, and then responding to that. And sometimes my response is no nowadays, and sometimes it's yes, but it's just more of a movement to feeling what's being asked of me, and is it true? Do I respond to that or not?
SPEAKER_00Do you allow yourself to look back and be proud of anything in your life? And if so, what would that be?
SPEAKER_02Pride is not something I really relate to. There's a few of these very standard human behaviors that I don't have a relationship. Jealousy is one of them. I've never really understood jealousy. I can't feel it coming at me, and I've never thought I experienced it with someone else. And pride, I probably always had a very negative uh definition of, thought it's an arrogance, and so I would have avoided it. But, you know, I don't have a judgment about that now, but it's not something I particularly relate to. Because even with Bay FM, I was a founding member, I gave twenty-five years of hard work to it in the beginning. And then I took a ten year break and now I'm back. But I can't really say I'm proud of it because there was it it doesn't feel that personal to me. There was a group of people, and it took all those people in the different combinations to make it happen. So I don't think I have anything I'm particularly proud of.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm proud of you. Thank you. And thank you so much for sharing your words and your story with us here in Wise Older Women. It's been a real privilege and an honor to have you sit in front of me here and and hear your words. So thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Rosella. It is an honor for me to be here and tell what's a simple story. It's just a life story. And I guess as a parting comment, that's what I would like to say to the listeners is that each one of us has had an incredible life, no matter what it is we've done, the good and the ugly of it all. And it's worth reflecting on in a generous way, without judgment, to just see the patterns. You know, I think it's worth reflecting, but not dwelling on it as we get older. Can we look back on it without attachments to wishing that it had been different?
SPEAKER_00Thanks for joining us for this extraordinary conversation with Gail Q, a woman whose life demonstrates how aging can be a natural expansion, not a narrowing. Her story is really testament to the power of allowing the universe to guide us. To trust there's a bigger story outside of the one that we see and live on a day-to-day basis. Gail's an elder who leads not with authority, but with a deep presence. And proves that wisdom isn't something that we acquire. It's something that we grow into, not always comfortably, often stretching way beyond what we imagined possible. Through every choice, every loss, and every moment of utter surrender. My gratitude goes to Gail Q for sharing her life story so far, showing us that aging is an initiation and that community can be a lifeline, that reinvention is always possible, and that elderhood is a role we can look forward to stepping into with intention and humility and grace. Keep living well and keep honouring the elders amongst us and the elder that you're becoming. What does that look like for you? Have a think about it until we meet next week for another dose of Wow with my next guest, Gabrielle Griffin, whose story you're not going to want to miss. We still have three more stunning episodes in series two, so get ready to be reshaped by what's to come. If you want to catch Gail, you can do so. She's the host of Still Grooven on Bay FM Fridays between 9 and 10am, where you can hear music and updates for seniors, events, and groups. Series 1 and 2 of WOW were made possible with the assistance from the CBF Community Broadcasting Foundation. To support future episodes of WOW, you can head to the link in the episode description. Executive producer and host Rosella Torres, music generously provided by Purple Planet Music. Until next time, alofa A2. Much love and thanks for listening.