Fearlessly Facing Fifty And Beyond
The Fearlessly Facing Fifty and beyond podcast encourages women to be fearless and fabulous at any age. Let's be honest, midlife and beyond comes with change. And let's face it, we are a masterclass in reinvention. So let's fearlessly face all the “F” words” together, like fashion, fitness, finances, family, friendships, faith, failures, our futures just to name a few. Let's get fired up about aging and CANNONBALL with confidence into our "next one thing".
Hosted by Amy Schmidt, a sought-after national media expert and thought leader on a variety of topics, an award-winning podcast host, stream show host, TEDx speaker, and author (Cannonball! Fearlessly Facing Midlife and Beyond) who has appeared in hundreds of publications, podcasts, live news, tv lifestyle segments, and radio, she is ready to arm you with all the tools to move the needle on your journey.
As a former journalist, turned what she calls, a ‘trailing spouse’ staying home to raise her children, she believes her voice and action-oriented advice allows people to move the needle on their journey and make positive changes in their relationships. Through countless reinventions, at the age of 49, she knew there was more to do, and she launched her brand and podcast, Fearlessly Facing Fifty.
Get ready to CANNONBALL with confidence and begin pushing play on your next adventure. Let's GOOOOOOO!
Fearlessly Facing Fifty And Beyond
EP213: Becoming Who You Really Are: A Midlife Awakening with Filmmaker Brooke Berman
What happens when we wake up in midlife and realize we've become someone we never intended to be? Award-winning playwright and filmmaker Brooke Berman joins us to explore this profound question through the lens of her debut feature film, "Ramona at Midlife," which recently premiered at Geena Davis' Bentonville Film Festival.
Brooke shares her remarkable journey from acclaimed playwright to first-time film director at 52—a rare achievement in an industry where first-time directors are typically men under 35. Her candid reflections on creating an authentic female leadership style reveal the delicate balance between collaboration and direction on set, shooting an entire feature in just 15 days.
The conversation takes unexpected turns as we discuss the liberation that comes with midlife awakening. When we were 25 and imagined our future selves at 50, most of us pictured someone who had "done the heavy lifting" and was essentially coasting. Reality proves far more dynamic and challenging, but also more rewarding than we ever anticipated.
Most powerful is Brooke's insight about self-acceptance: "If I don't love the person I am right now in my imperfect skin, then what are we talking about?" This revelation, alongside her disciplined approach to self-care through morning rituals of meditation, yoga, and gratitude practices, offers a blueprint for thriving in our fifth decade.
Whether you're approaching midlife, navigating its complexities, or looking back on it, Brooke's story will inspire you to embrace your authentic self and recognize that evolution doesn't end at 50—it often accelerates in the most beautiful, unexpected ways.
Connect with Brooke. Listen now, and then watch "Ramona at Midlife" on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, or Fandango at Home to continue the conversation about reinvention and self-discovery.
Ready to FEARLESSLY FACE all the F WORDS – be inspired and encouraged?
Get a copy of Amy’s Best selling book: CANNONBALL! FEARLESSLY Facing Midlife and Beyond here
Fearlessly Facing Fifty and Beyond has over 200 episodes with inspiration and stories to age fearlessly and connect confidently to others thriving at midlife and beyond.
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Hey, fearless Friends, it's Amy Schmidt, and today's F Word is going to be how we fearlessly face our 50s yeah, our 50s. You know what? Today's guest is incredible. I just watched her movie last night it was a premiere night, actually and I watched it on Apple TV and I'm not there and I actually, in my phone, wrote down several things that we're going to discuss during this episode. A few little notes, but today I have on the show Brooke Burman. She's an award-winning playwright, filmmaker and memoirist. She wrote and directed LeBron at Midlife, which recently premiered at Geena Davis' esteemed Bentonville Film Festival. Her plays have been seen across the country and internationally. She's the author of three nonfiction books, including the Memoir the Place Like Home, published by Random House. Brooke Berman, I am so excited to have you on the show today. Well, hey, fearless friends, like I said in the intro, this is going to be an awesome episode, and you know what? My guest, brooke Berman. Welcome, brooke, thank you know what.
Speaker 2:My guest Brooke Berman. Welcome, Brooke, Thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited You're sitting in your son's room, which I just am calling out, because I just think that's awesome. Thank you so much why not.
Speaker 2:I always tell people so that they know the anime books aren't mine and they know the samurai sword isn't mine, Isn't yours.
Speaker 1:Keeping it real. Keeping it real. I love this. So I have to just set the stage by saying I watched Ramona at midlife last night. I want to go back to this film and I have to actually take my phone out because I have to read something, and I didn't tell Brooke about this before. This is one of the quotes from the movie last night. People in midlife wake up and they realize they have become someone they haven't intended. I loved that. I wrote it down. My husband was watching the movie with me. I know it gave me goosebumps because it's so true. I mean, is there really like this midlife awakening? That's like wow, who am I now?
Speaker 2:Well, look, I'm not an expert on midlife. I mean, I wrote a fictional story about fictional characters and I put words in their mouth, so I can only speak from my experience. But while I was writing the movie, I got really, really interested. I had a couple of projects I was writing around the same time and each of the three of them hinged around the idea of who we, when we were 25 and we looked into the future, who we imagined we'd become, and a confrontation between that imaginary self and the person we actually became. Right, because you're never going to, you're never going to intuit it exactly the right way. It's always going to be a little different than you imagine.
Speaker 2:So in this kind of midlife reckoning, there are the girls that we were at 25. And then there's the fantasy of what it would be like to be 50. I mean, I imagined that 50 year olds were, I mean, not done but settled. I imagine that 50-year-olds had really done the heavy lifting of their lives, had become the people they needed to become and were, you know, basically coasting till death. And that in fact, is not true, and I don't know if it's particular to our generation that it's no longer true because the structures have upended, or if it was always not true. I mean my grandma certainly, who's one of my role models. She had a whole second life in her fifties and then a third life in her seventies. Did she really, oh?
Speaker 1:okay, that's amazing. That's amazing yeah she did.
Speaker 2:She went, she was a stay at home mom, uh, when her kids were little. She was a stay-at-home mom when her kids were little and then, after my mom got married, she went back to work as a real estate agent and she had a whole life then and then after her husband died in her seventies, she actually then had a whole other chapter and she recommitted to selling houses. She sold houses in Detroit but moved into an apartment and had a community and she worked until she was 95. Did she?
Speaker 1:really that's awesome. That's awesome. I mean, it is really interesting. I think there's so much that we, we these layers that we just peel back in our fifties. You know, you, you kind of rediscover and and and uncover things about yourself you didn't realize.
Speaker 2:I certainly know I did.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't know about you, but I really feel there is that awakening.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And look, I didn't become a mom until later. So we're the same age and your son is a grown-up in London and my son's a 14-year-old, in his freshman year of high school, and I'm getting texts all day, you know, can he get off his phone please? The teachers are like please tell him to get off his phone, because I didn't have a child till I was 41. So I spent my 40s sitting on playgrounds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, isn't that crazy, I mean. And so many women did, so many women did. When we talk about Gen Xers, you know, I think about we kind of were that generation of we can do it all right. I mean, we were kind of the world is like. We were kind of, I think, kind of sold that bill of goods of. Was it private school or public school? Was it a stay-at-home mom or did you work, was it? You know all of that. We kind of had those choices, but we felt like we the baby boomers gave that to us.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think we inherited that from our mother's generation. I don't think we made that up.
Speaker 1:You think we did? Yeah, that's probably true. That's probably true. There was this feeling of like we could do it all and we were really striving to do it all.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think so I can only speak for myself and all I ever wanted was to be a theater artist. So I moved to New York when I was 18 and I built a career in the theater and, honestly, I wasn't thinking about having it all. I just was doing things in the order they came.
Speaker 1:Have you always been like if I was to sit down with your mom and if your grandma was still alive? And I ask them you know, hey, was Brooke always super creative?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I come from a creative family. My mom was a concert pianist, my grandma had wanted to be a singer but then gave it up to have kids, and my mom gave up her piano to have me. My mom's sister is a painter. Like my cousins are musicians. I sort of come from that.
Speaker 1:You do, I love that, I love that, so you've always had that.
Speaker 2:That's just, that's in your genes. I always ask people like when was it for you when your passion and purpose really intersected? Oh, that is such an excellent, excellent question. I mean, honestly, I went I think it was in my thirties. I went to graduate school at 28. So I was in grad school from 28 to 30.
Speaker 2:And I think that was when my passion and my purpose collided and it was when I committed to being a playwright, because up until then I had been a performer and I had written and I had produced and my hands were in a lot of different creative baskets. My hands were in a lot of different creative baskets. And then I had this opportunity to go to Juilliard and study with Marcia Norman, and it's really where I got my ducks in a row and committed to one thing which was playwriting, and really set about learning that craft, and I think it was in those years. And then I had a bunch of plays that were produced and then that led to films and I'd always wanted to make a film, but I didn't know how. It seemed super overwhelming and like there was this whole technical side and um is it completely different?
Speaker 1:Is it completely different? So for someone listening or watching, walk, walk us through that. Like it's just completely different how you write it, how you create it.
Speaker 2:All of the above, all of it's completely different. Playwrights kind of dream up the play and then we have lots and lots of time in rehearsal with actors. We workshop the play, we go to these little development colonies there's a lot of time where the play is this protected thing between artists and we're making it better and making it better, and making it better, and then we bring it to market.
Speaker 2:So you hear these stories about Lin-Manuel, miranda and Hamilton, for example, and he had the idea when he was an undergrad at Wesleyan and then he was writing and then they would do these workshops and then it's very far down the line where they start to bring in the business people and figure out how to market it and how to sell it and how to bring it to audiences and all of that. Film is the opposite. So generally in film you pitch an idea, you get hired to write that idea, you attach, cast pretty early you, you attach, you bring in the writer and the director and you're always, even from the inception, selling and film has to get made in a very specific number of days because you're paying people by the day. So you have to have a rock solid plan. There's not a lot of room for like figuring it out and figuring it out.
Speaker 2:It's my favorite part. You know the collaboration, yeah. Oh yeah, as a, as a creative, it's very. Yeah, film is very, very, very practical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, interesting. So I want you to take me to that moment of um the premiere at Gina Davis's esteemed Bentonville film festival. I mean, that's huge. And I want you to walk me through this because I feel as though a lot of times in our 50s and beyond, our inner critic is very noisy and our inner cheerleader is muted, like we are just. And I have to be honest with you, I do a lot of media and there's a lot of times when I have to go back and watch it or I see the segment and I'm like, oh, are they going to get me from that right angle? Are they going to get me from this? Am I going to look 10 pounds heavier? That inner critic, even though I know my message is really good, I still fight that to this day.
Speaker 2:Oh Amy, I feel that way every day.
Speaker 1:I feel that way every day. Okay, then we're soul sisters.
Speaker 2:Of course I do. I feel that way right now. I didn't know we were going to be on camera.
Speaker 1:I know you did and I'm like, oh, no stress, no, you look beautiful, but that inner critic is so loud. So take me to that premiere Sure, Walk me through that.
Speaker 2:I mean I always wish I were taller. I always wish I were five pounds lighter. I always wish I were a little blonder. I always like rethink my choice to not Botox, like I don't do that. But then I think like, oh, geez, maybe I should like. Really, brooke, you know, I think that's really human.
Speaker 1:It is human, it is human, so true, so true. I know I got on the scale and I was measured the other day at my physical and I'm like, oh, please still be five, four still. You know, I'm like, please, I was so that was good, but what? Were you feeling as like I mean, the curtains probably didn't open, but for our viewers and listeners let's just say the curtains opened and this film starts.
Speaker 2:And you're sitting there. What are you looking at? Are you watching?
Speaker 1:it, or are you looking at people's reactions?
Speaker 2:Well, by the time, we had our world premiere. So you're talking about our world premiere on the festival circuit, which was at Gina Davis's Bentonville Film Festival in June of 2023.
Speaker 1:Wait a minute, just say that again. I mean you said that like, oh yeah, it was just a Gina Davis's film, you got to like own that girl.
Speaker 2:All right, All right, we had our world premiere at Gina Davis's Bentonville Film Festival. Gina herself introduced the film, so that was thrilling. I got to meet her, which was thrilling, yeah, and it was really exciting. But I think you have to understand, as a middle-aged mom, I'm always caretaking. You know people keep asking me are you enjoying this? And I think, well, I don't know. Am I? Because in my brain I'm working through the logistics of everybody else's experience. Does that person have what they need? Did catering show up on time? That sound cue feels off to me.
Speaker 2:How does the actress feel right now? Is somebody taking care of her? What are we doing after this? Did somebody set up the after party? What's going on with that bill that I know I need to pay? How are we getting to?
Speaker 2:I'm a mom, so I'm always momming my way through it. I don't know what enjoying it means at this exact moment, but there are moments when it really hits me and the most exciting thing, honestly, is when people see the film and want to come talk about it with me. Or the most thrilling thing on the festival circuit is that people really feel seen by this movie and there's a sector, not just women, but also some stay-at-home dads who come up to me afterwards and say that was my journey. I had that experience. That's how I feel and that's what matters to me. You know that we're really connecting with audiences Because, look, there are all these movies about middle-aged women on the marketplace right now, but very few of us are like injecting toxic substance or having the kink relationship or, you know, in the case of that Delightful in Halfway movie, dating a rock star, you know most of us are Ramona.
Speaker 2:Most of us are just figuring out how to make room for ourselves on a small human scale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. How do you go about casting? How do you find that she was fabulous? She was fabulous and so beautiful, isn't she great, oh, I know so beautiful and relatable. Like honestly relatable, just like okay, yeah, I get this, like wow. My shoulders dropped a couple times during the film because I was like whew, just deep breath. Like wow, I get this, I feel this.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm doing my job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they did, they did, they really did. I had to stop it a couple of times because my husband was like oh, amy, and I was typing in my notes because I knew we had this interview and I'm like I got to write that down because it's so good, it really was good, but how do you go about filling those spots?
Speaker 2:You've written this you kind of have an idea in your mind of who you want to cast. Well, I actually wrote it for that actress you did.
Speaker 2:So, that actress that you're talking about. I wrote the movie for her and I developed the movie with the actors who are actually in it, which is a rare luxury in the conventional Hollywood system. Before this movie, I'd been in development with another movie. For I'm going to tell you eight years Wow, eight years. Because in the conventional Hollywood model, what you do is you get a movie star and then, based on the movie star or at this point it's really like three or four movie stars then you can go get your funding Because you can say to a financier I have this extraordinary movie star that everybody wants to go see, and so you know you'll make your money back. And that was exactly how my other project that was the hill, my last project died on, because we spent two years making offers to extraordinary actresses who were probably never going to say yes to a small scale movie, and we couldn't get our million dollar budget without one of those names. So we just the movie didn't get made.
Speaker 2:And when I turned 50 and the pandemic happened five seconds later, I just felt like I didn't have time to waste anymore. I had played by the rules, I had done what everyone told me to do. I had followed every known coordinate about how to make my first movie and when that wasn't working, I took matters in my own hands and I did it my own way. And if I'm going to do it my own way, then I'm going to cast who I want. I'm going to cast people. I trust I'm going to cast people I've worked with before. I'm going to cast theater actors. I'm going to cast people who we can get on set and make stuff up together and I trust their instincts, you know fully.
Speaker 1:Oh well, you hit it out of the ballpark. They were all phenomenal, Really were.
Speaker 2:Really were they all great.
Speaker 1:I love them so much. I want to talk a little bit about something that comes up often, especially at this stage of our life women of a certain age, I guess and that question of help. I've had certain circumstances in my life. I took a hiatus from the podcast for a bit because of some health things in our family and it was a time actually Brooke and I talk about this in some other episodes where I actually needed to ask for help, like I really needed help.
Speaker 1:And in my 30s, in my 20s, when I'm like you know, I'm a broadcaster, I'm a journalist, I'm doing all of this and I wanted to get there the fastest I could you know further, fastest and I do it by myself, like I can control it all. I can do it better if I do it by myself. And then in my 50s, a bunch of things hit and it was like loss of parents, moving back from being in Germany for six years, all of these different things, and I was like man, if I actually use my resources and I actually put out there, hey, I need some help, you just grow in so many ways. Have you found that, or are you still kind of like I got to do it myself. You found that Okay.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely. And I'm smiling while you're saying that because I don't know if you remember, but that's in the movie. There's a moment when Ramona's ex says will you be okay? And she goes I'm always okay. Yes, because that, in fact, is that hyper control I can do it all. I have to do it all. I have to do it all. I can't accept help, I'm always okay. It becomes armor, right? Yes, yes, I had to accept help. So much on this movie.
Speaker 2:I was a woman in her 50s who had never made a feature before, so there was a ton of stuff I didn't know how to do. In my 40s I changed lanes from primarily being a writer to being a writer director, and that was huge. I went to work. I got a job teaching screenwriting at NYU Grad Film and while I was teaching my students to write, I was learning visual logic from them. I was really. I used that job as my second graduate school. I went to every meeting. I went to every meeting. I went to faculty meetings, I went to guest speakers. I went to, you know, programs in the evening so that I could learn what the students were learning and I could learn to think with a camera, which was really new for me. And then I needed help figuring out how to make a budget. I'd never really made a budget for a film before I needed help. I had one of my good good friends is a filmmaker who's more established than me and he talked me through every scene of my movie. I just asked him.
Speaker 1:I asked him to mentor me, and he did. I love that M word mentor, it's huge. It's huge, yeah, wow. I love to hear that because I think so often, so many of us get stuck saying I can just do it myself. There's also this factor of our stage of life where the two Ps, the evil twins, I call them perfectionism, procrastination. Oh, I'm going to wait till the timing's right to do this. So I'm just just gonna wait a little longer. Or I'm just gonna wait till I've lost this 10 pounds or this five pounds. You mentioned it earlier in the conversation. You know I'm just gonna wait. I'd be waiting forever, but that that happens so often, you can't wait, yeah, you can't wait. So at 52 you wrote your first film, right 52 well, no, no, I had written other films before.
Speaker 2:I had written many films before but I hadn't gone into production and made one.
Speaker 2:I sold my. I wrote my first film 20 years ago. I sold a uh, I did an adaptation of one of my plays for a movie star and I sold it to Hollywood. And then I moved to LA and I wrote movies for a living for a couple of years and while the movies weren't getting made, for various reasons, I was in development with a different one and my development executive said well, do you want to direct this? Because if you direct it, I know how to set it up.
Speaker 2:And back in 2007, 2008, I was like, no, I don't want to direct it. But a couple of years later I thought, well, actually, maybe I do, because the director is the person that has the will and the ability to move the thing, to move the needle forward. The writer in Hollywood has no power. And I understood how the story needed to be embodied and what it felt like, and I understood how to put the elements together, even if I didn't always understand what it felt like. And I understood how to put the elements together, even if I didn't always understand what it looked like. So this was the first movie I made, but it was not the first movie I wrote.
Speaker 1:Okay, perfect. Thank you for clarifying that.
Speaker 2:But still 52.
Speaker 1:I mean crazy. So I want you to take me to a moment. I mean they talk about yeah, go ahead, no, go ahead. Finish please.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was just going to say. They talk about first-time directors all the time, but they're rarely women in their 50s, right? First you think about a first-time director, and there are all sorts of festivals for first-time directors. They're usually men between 25 and 35. Wow, every now and then there's a girl in there, but nobody's over the age of 35 ever.
Speaker 1:Amazing, amazing. I want you to take me to a moment that's really been a challenge for you. That's really challenged you, whether it's personally or professionally. I mean you've got a 14-year-old. Right now You're in like the throes of like getting their temps, their license or wearing deodorant every day, making sure they do so their room isn't stinky. You know, I mean I'm just a little beyond that. Mine are grown and flown, but you know you've got so many things you're managing as a mom and a wife and, you know, an executive producer. I mean just amazing. I want you to, for the listeners and people watching, take me to a moment that really challenged you, where you were like man, I could pull the covers back over my head right now and not get out of bed today. Did you have any moments like that, and how you've persevered.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God, yeah, do we have enough?
Speaker 1:time.
Speaker 2:I've had so many moments like that. Yeah, exactly, I mean on a personal level. I'll tell you that in the middle of production, my son got COVID and I had to move out of my apartment because I couldn't bring COVID to the set. So I had to hide it from everybody on set and then sort of silently move out and live in a hotel for a week which was actually quite nice while we were in production, because it was a health hazard. So that's one thing. But I will tell you that in general and this is so ironic for a director I hate telling people what to do, and it's true to mom too. I tell my son what to do a lot, but in a perfect world, right, we want to guide them and have them make the best choices, and then that's just really how it works out.
Speaker 2:And on a film set especially on an indie set where we had to shoot our film in 15 days, we had a very tight budget, we did not have room to mess around. We had to get stuff right 15?
Speaker 1:15?
Speaker 2:The idea 15 days, we shot it in 15 days. Yeah, wow, yeah. So most film crews work in the way that the director shows up and says you stand there, you stand there, we're going to get that shot. We're going to get that shot. We're going to get that shot. Okay, shot, we're going to get that shot. We're going to get that shot. Okay, everybody, let's go.
Speaker 2:And it's not my leadership style. My leadership style is incredibly collaborative. It's probably very female, it's very nurturing. Okay, I just want to make sure, do you feel good about that? Great, and how are you feeling Great? And if an actor says you know what, I don't want to do it that way, I want to do something else, my impulse is to say great, let's do it the way you feel and we'll all adjust. But in fact, that is quite impractical on a film set. So the biggest hurdle for me and I'm being very vulnerable by sharing this is that I had to craft a leadership style that was in integrity with who I actually am, but effective. I had to be able to get the job done without coming in and acting like some dude I saw on Masterpiece Theater.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, very interesting, that's hard.
Speaker 2:That's been hard for me. I had to learn how to really stand my ground.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is hard, that is a big challenge. Oh, absolutely. Oh, I love that there's so much to talk about. Last two things I do, because I know we're winding down here on time. But last two things I want to ask you or talk to you about is this whole thing about kind of loving ourself more in our 50s? You know you're balancing a lot. I know you mentioned and I'm going back to earlier in the conversation when that curtain opened at Gina Davis's after she announced the opening and you met her and everything, and you're kind of looking around making sure the caterer's there, making sure that everybody's set, making sure that. How do you carve out time for yourself and do you? What's your self-care routine?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a morning routine. I have a rock-sol a morning routine. I have a rock solid morning routine. I wake up with my son In a perfect world. I try to remember to drink water before coffee, but that's not always what happens. I have a meditation practice. I have a yoga practice. I write down five things I'm grateful for every day. I have a journaling practice. Every single day, I have to do those things.
Speaker 1:Do you really? Oh, I'm proud of you for that. That's awesome, and I hope everybody listening can incorporate some sort of self-care, self-love routine because we do. We need to treat ourselves as guest of honors like we treat everyone else.
Speaker 2:We do we treat them with kindness and love.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:I think the real lesson in our 50s is that this is it. We're not going to miraculously wake up and be somebody else. In our 20s, it was easy to imagine that our lives could go in any direction, anything could happen. But I'm 55 right now and I don't know if anything could happen. A great many things will happen, but I don't know that anything will happen. So if great many things will happen, but I don't know that, like anything will happen, so if I don't love the person I am right now in my imperfect skin, then what are we talking about?
Speaker 1:Love that, love that. That's a mic drop right there, so I watched it on Apple TV last night. So where else, ramona at Midlife, we can watch it there. You can either buy it or rent it, right.
Speaker 2:You can buy it or rent it on Apple TV on Prime Prime is our big one right now and Fandango at home.
Speaker 1:Oh, fabulous. Okay, that's awesome. I'll have everything in the episode notes for that how to watch, and I would love for I'm actually going to kind of do when we drop this episode, I'm going to have a little little questions for the people that follow me, just to find out and get some feedback for you, Cause I I just loved it and I would love to hear what other people think too. It just is, it's just spot on. You really did a great job and I hope that you can savor this a little bit. You know, I think sometimes we just go from achievement to achievement, to achievement to next goal, and it's like you got to really savor this because it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2:I think you're right. I'm going to learn how?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know what? We're all a work in progress, right? So last question is I can't wait to hear your answer on this. I already have a feeling what it's going to be, but I may be off, brooke, if you were sitting on the couch and you look over and there's Brooke at 30, what advice would you give her?
Speaker 2:Keep going, it's not over, it's not done. You have lots and lots of time to evolve. You'll do so many things, and I will tell you that Brooke, at 30, was very, very worried that she wouldn't have a child. So I would tell her that you're going to have a child in your future.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Thank you for that. I always love that because I think about that so often. Like if Amy was sitting here at 30, what would she think, and what a privilege it is. What would she think? You know, I?
Speaker 1:always say I would, I was such a I'm a recovering perfectionist, for sure but I would go over to that Amy and just hug her and just say I love you as you are. You know you're perfect. Just you're in, perfectly perfect, and that's and this is right where you need to be at this moment, because I think so often we project out or we think so many, you know we're planning all these things, but it's like in this moment where you are, you're meant to be right there and that's what I would tell her.
Speaker 2:Just embrace it. I love that. Yeah, thank you, I love that so much. 30 is when my life started to get good. My 20s were really hard. My 30s were amazing. Get good my 20s were really hard. My 30s were amazing.
Speaker 1:My 40s were hard. Again, my 50s have been amazing. Yeah, I agree, and I love just shining a spotlight on women like yourself that are just doing incredible things and through collaboration and through you know, sharing how you, how your passion and purpose intersected. Thank you for that, because so many people get stuck and I hope from this episode today, from words that you've spoken, that people can say all right, you know what Brooke did this. I think I'm going to try this, I'm going to do something, and that's really where my heart is and I think that's where yours is too.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad. Yeah, absolutely, I mean. I think the other thing that's really important in everything you're saying is to hold the people you love close to you, because I made this movie with people I love. I didn't do it by myself. I wrote that movie for those actors. I called up all my friends. People really showed up for me. I asked for help, just like you're talking about, and this was a community effort as much as an individual achievement.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I love it. And thanks for being so flexible and being like, yeah, I can make it work. I mean, we literally pulled this together in 24 hours. Not even no, we did, we did it's true. Thanks, brooke. Thanks for asking. Oh, absolutely, have a good day and everybody go watch the film. All right, see ya. Thanks so much for listening today. We know how valuable your time is and that's why we keep it short and sweet. Don't forget to follow us on all the socials and you can check out all the links and resources in the show notes. Until next time, go forth and be awesome.