Ruth Yunker, a 73-year-old woman determined to prove age is meaningless, embarks on an unexpected and daring journey into the world of modeling, challenging her preconceived notions of herself and society’s stereotypes to discover the beauty of agelessness.
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Show Notes | Transcript“I’m always big on saying take on the new thing. Be brave, be open, be curious. Whatever age you are, you have to fit it into what you’re already doing.” Ruth Yunker
Ruth Yunker is a writer, humorist, traveler, and fledgling model. She has written for 40 years and has published three books of her own, including her current book, Baby, I’m the Boss of Me: My Journey to Ageless.
When Ruth turned 70, she felt a sudden awakening, understanding the idea of agelessness and aging. Through her experience, she learned to embrace the joys of being alone and became determined to share her journey with others. With the help of her friends, she began her journey into the world of modeling and found a new passion in life. Now, at 73, Ruth is turning her experiences into a book, showing others that age is just a number.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
- Aging with Confidence: Ruth Yunker’s Journey to Agelessness
- Falling in Love with Paris: Why Ruth changed her mind about this city.
- Exploring a Career Change: From Writer to Modeling
- Living Alone and Enjoying the Freedom: Ruth’s Experience Living Without a Pet or Someone Else in the House.
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In this episode, Barbara shares the challenge she faced after becoming a widow, and how she became a transformational life trainer.
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand
Namaste. I am Gloria Grace Rand, and I am so delighted to be with you for another edition of Live. Love. Engage. And we’ve got an amazing woman on the show today that I can’t wait to chat with and to learn more about her and have her share her story with you all. So I want to welcome first of all, Ruth Yunker to Live. Love. Engage.
Ruth Yunker
Well, thank you for having me.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I am very pleased to have met you virtually here for a moment because I’m really excited to learn more about you. But let me tell our listeners and those watching on YouTube what you’ve been up to. Ruth is a writer, a humorist, and traveler, and she is also a fledgling model at the young age of 73. She’s been writing for 40 years and has published short stories, magazine articles, and book reviews, and also three books of her own as well. Her first two were about her stays in Paris, and her current book is called Baby, I’m the Boss of Me: My Journey to Ageless, which consists of stories of her life and how now she’s facing the third trimester of life. And there’s a copy of the book right there she was showing. She’s doing it with joy, personal power, and above all, a healthy sense of humor. And there’s more there, but I’ll maybe let you share a little bit more of that. So let’s see. I’m trying to think where to start, and I know a lot of times when I’ll have guests on, I ask them about what got you to where you are today. So maybe I’ll ask you, why did you decide to write this latest book? And we’ll start with that.
Ruth Yunker
Okay, well, I’ve been writing forever, and I stopped writing fiction pretty early on, and for the last 20 years, I’ve just been writing about my memoir essay type stuff. So it was a change of genre, but it was also I reached the age of 50, and I stopped drinking, which was very important, needed to be done. And at that point, first of all, I taught yoga for seven years. I couldn’t pick up a pen for seven years. But I decided to start writing exactly what I want to write, and what I wanted to write was humor. And so I also then, at that time, began traveling to Paris and by myself and staying in an airbnb and having to go to the grocery store and the laundromat. And in the end, this has been like, for almost every year for 16 years. I have a whole social life over there, thanks to social media and a normal life, you know, I mean, I did the tourist stuff. I don’t do that anymore. I go over there and just live there. I love it. But then I turned 70, and that totally freaked me out. Carrying things too far. I remember turning 60 and having a beautiful birthday party for myself. All women people give you great presents when your birthday has a zero at the end of it. Oh, this one’s important. Okay. And a friend of mine at that time who was older than I am, said, come on in, the water’s fine about being 60. So when I turned 70, the number just didn’t flow. I personally don’t care, but I knew exactly how it looks to the world or how you say, if I’m 70. I mean, people have stereotyped reactions to it. So why? Quite obviously because there I was having a meltdown on my 70th birthday quietly in the country somewhere, you know, and then suddenly I was 71 and then 72. I mean, and I didn’t feel any different. The morning I woke up when I was 72, I looked in the mirror and I thought, I now understand the meaning of the word ageless. This is called my journey to ageless, baby I’m the boss of me. I understand it because I didn’t personally feel what my stereotypical idea of what 70 would be like. I didn’t look like it for all the various reasons. And all of a sudden, I understood my age was meaningless. And anyway, at that point, I’ve been doing memoir essays all along, but I decided to put it specifically in a book and write about how I’m aging and how I feel about it. And if anybody likes what I have to say, then they can do it too.
Gloria Grace Rand
I like that. I can relate. Now, as we’re recording this, I’m two weeks away from my 60th birthday.
Ruth Yunker
There you go. Have a big party. You’ll get great gifts.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I tell you what I decided to do was I for years had wanted to host a retreat, and I, for one reason or another, never did it. And I said, you know what, screw it. I’m going to host a retreat this year. And so I’m doing it like the weekend before my birthday. There was a full moon that weekend, and I just thought, oh, this is perfect. That’s what I’m going to do. So I totally get that you do want to celebrate those milestones. And I can also understand 70 kind of being strange because I know well, because, I mean, my mom passed at 78, and so I’m sure when I hit 70, I’m probably going to start wondering about it myself a little bit. But I don’t feel like 60. And yet I remember when I was a kid and you would see people who were like 60 or 65 and oh, they were so old. But I don’t know if it’s because we are baby boomers that it’s different now. We’re living differently, I think, too. And then our our parents or grandparents did tell me a little bit about because I love I’ve seen some of you. I know you got like, an Instagram account, and you’ve got pictures on there. And so tell me about this modeling that you are doing us that I love. So you’ll have to check around, tell everyone, like, what your your Instagram is?
Ruth Yunker
Well, it was a challenge. I wanted to be a model when I was 16, and this life interfered, and, you know, and I didn’t. Yeah, my mother said, oh, well, send you to New York then. But I spent I’d had a peripatetic childhood, lived a lot of places. I didn’t want to go anywhere, and I knew I wasn’t tall enough at the time, didn’t have quite the right look. I just knew, no, don’t bother. Anyway, so life goes on and on, and I was having dinner with someone in January. He’s kind of a marketing person. We’re friends. And I was saying, yeah, you don’t make a whole lot of money writing books, and you get a lot of personal satisfaction. And I said, yeah, so I’m going to be in doing the speaking thing now. The speaking thing, now that the pandemic is over, that kind of thing. And he leaned back and said, you said you wanted to be a model when you were a teenager. If you want to make some money, why don’t you model? There’s a whole huge world for they call them silver models. All those women who keep saying on Instagram and keep saying, I began transitioning into my gray. And I’m thinking, do they know anything about transgender issues going on these days? And what they sound like compared to what these people are going through with just going gray, for God’s sake. And they usually have gorgeous heads of hair, too. So I couldn’t go gray if… I don’t want to go gray. So not now white. My hairdresser is saying, we’re pretty close to white. And I’m saying, when I turn 80, I’ll go white.
Gloria Grace Rand
There you go.
Ruth Yunker
Yeah. So he said, Why don’t you try it? And I said, Well, I don’t have a clue how to get started. I live in L.A. That’s just like a hopeless situation. He said, well, you should try it. You should try it, the speaking thing. You’re not going to like it, and I just know you. And they said, but get professional headshots. And therein began in February my journey into this whole modeling world and also being out here in Los Angeles that involves the Hollywood world and the Hollywood mindset. And I am not looking to do fashion modeling in fashion magazines. Obviously, I’m not old. I mean, there’s women who have been models since they were 20 who are now 70, and they’re gorgeous, and that’s their world. I have a commercial and print model, which means I’m going out for commercials. And in the background of an AAA ad in, you know, west ways, there’ll be a picture of the grandma with her little kid or something, and it’s a slow process, and it took me months to get the headshots and get them redone. And, you know, it’s like that and but I’m now sending out I’ve got I’ve had two auditions back, which apparently is excellent. I didn’t get either job, but I got the call back.
Gloria Grace Rand
Right.
Ruth Yunker
But what’s turned out to be an issue with it is fitting it into my current life. I’m always big on saying take on the new thing. Be brave, be open, be curious. Whatever age you are, you have to fit it into what you’re already doing. So I’ve got very little writing since this has started, and I don’t like that. My next book is in mind, but I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure it out one day at a time.
Gloria Grace Rand
There you go. Well, are you a morning person or a nighttime person?
Ruth Yunker
Morning. Okay, well, you can show me the bedroom door at 09:00, and I’m up at 530 or six.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right, well, then what I would recommend is you just need to start putting a couple of minutes in, even if it’s 15 minutes a day, to start writing, and do it first thing in the morning before you get too involved in anything else. Because I know when I was writing my book, that’s what when I got stuck for a while, I had a coach tell me, just do 15 minutes, even if you don’t write, but just dedicate that 15 minutes. Maybe you’re just thinking about it.
Ruth Yunker
That’s so true. And, I mean, I have a wonderful friend, and also she is also a writing instructor. Just marvelous. And she says, write 45 minutes in the morning. And that’s how my last book got written. And I’m not talking about editing or rearranging it, I’m talking about rough draft.
Gloria Grace Rand
Right. Yeah.
Ruth Yunker
And of course, the other big things don’t start at the beginning. That poor kid. That stops every writer in the world. Oh, my God. But that’s so true. And I look at myself, and my morning consists of getting up and going for a walk on the boardwalk, which I am not going to stop. That has to come first. But when I come home, I sit on my balcony with my coffee and peruse the world instead. I could that’s a very good point. I’ll take you up on it.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay.
Ruth Yunker
Balcony can wait for a while.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yes, that’s true.
Ruth Yunker
There in the evening, when I’m ready to go to sleep, I can sit out on the balcony.
Gloria Grace Rand
There you go. That’s it. Yeah, absolutely. So tell me a little bit about you going to Paris. So what was that like? Because I know I’ve actually talked to another woman I had on the podcast not too long ago, who does… She’s like a digital nomad, and so she travels around Europe, and actually, my daughter is doing that as well. She’s living in Europe actually, right now. She is in Hungary right now and maybe moving to Germany temporarily because her significant other has some work there for, taking an internship for a few months. So let’s start with this. What did you like best? What did you like best about living in Paris?
Ruth Yunker
Well, let me first say that I never liked Paris. I lived in Belgium when I was a teenager in Brussels, Belgium for three years. I saw Paris for the first time when I was twelve. And I totally thought it was a complete and total waste of time. It was dirty. It wasn’t the United States. The Mona Lisa was this tiny little painting up there on the wall. And I didn’t like it. But it was a few years after I had stopped drinking and my mother had died and I was the oldest of six kids. And I kind of kept the family home, was a nice beach house here. And my father, so I was with him and life is still going on and all that. I mean, he was wonderful. He didn’t need caregiving. But at one point I just thought, I have got to get out of town. I’m going to go away for a year. I’ll set it up and then I finally said, no, just make it six months. Okay? Where are you going to go? Well, I’m going to go we’re going to go to Florence, or I’m going to go to Cairo, or I’m going to go to Iceland. I’m not going to go to Paris because Paris is such a cliche. Right. But I learned to speak French in Belgium. I speak it with a Belgian accent, but I’m not fluent. And I can’t speak at all when I’m home. But when I’m over there, for some reason, it all works out. So I thought, be reasonable, go to Paris. Because you’re going to be in your own apartment by yourself for six weeks. And so that’s how it started. So I went off not grudgingly. That was the minute I got there. I’m older now. I’m not twelve years old anymore.
Gloria Grace Rand
Right, exactly.
Ruth Yunker
Yeah. And it grew on me. But the title of my second book is Baby or Paris, I’ve grown accustomed to your ways. And that’s because learn to do it the Parisian’s way, being polite, like them in every country, every time I travel, I try to do things their way. Somebody said, well, you’re not being true to yourself. And it’s like that old song, are you kidding? You’re being polite. Also, since I was a new kid in so many schools growing up, I’m just aware people will understand you better if you do it their way. And I like to be understood. Or how you dress. Don’t go over there wearing flip flops and pink shorts. No. Wear some black pants and some good running shoes and a shirt and you know, just do it. And then you get into it because it’s just a costume like anywhere else. So I will say, as I think about it now, I haven’t been since 2019. I’ll probably go back next fall. Because really the pandemic gave me personally the excuse to stop traveling, and I’ve kind of liked it. But it’s a big city, so there’s the parts that I don’t go to. And I’m not just in the tourist area. I now stay where real Parisians live. I found my areas and everything. There’s a lot about it that’s annoying. The Parisians themselves are the little ways they’re just completely, but once you get used to that, once you can make a Parisian laugh, which is my big thing. But they have kept such good care of that city. They have kept the spirit of it. They honor it. It didn’t get blown to bits during the Second World War, thank God. And so it really has that feel of old, and I love that. I’ll just go sit in the cathedrals, different ones, and just sit there. Because one time I wrote about this in my first book, I could actually hear kind of a ghost like thing, and I said, Well, I know it’s not a ghost in there. If it is, that’s fine. I’m all for them. Just don’t bother me, and I’ll get along with you if you get along with me. But as I got up and began walking around the church, and then finally I went outside, there was a school right next door, and the kids were out, which was kind of fun, too. You never think of little Parisian kids actually going to school, but they do. They’re so charming, the little ones. I had some French friends there, American, married to whatever, had to raise their children there. And I said, what happens to them because they’re so charming? And then they turn into these grown up snitty. Not everybody, of course, French. And he said, It’s the schools. So the schools kill them for what that’s worth.
Gloria Grace Rand
What would have been perhaps your biggest challenge in living there?
Ruth Yunker
Oh, being in Paris?
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Ruth Yunker
Well, people always kind of ask questions from that, till somebody the other day said to me, what is the thing you worry about most? What’s the thing I feel good about most? Let’s try that one. I mean, the challenges were just the classic challenges you have when you go to a new city and have to move in and learn where the laundromat is. Getting my money back from the sales women at the mono Pree. When I brought back a hair thing, that didn’t work. That was one of my biggest triumphs, that I actually got my money back.
Gloria Grace Rand
Very good.
Ruth Yunker
I was ready, and that was my first trip. I think the challenge would basically be me, my own self consciousness, worried that I’m going to make a fool of myself. And that’s just ridiculous, because nobody is paying attention. They’re really not paying attention to you in terms of actually dealing with Paris. There is no challenge. You’re in a foreign country. You’re there on purpose, right? You don’t expect it to be, I want to stop in their tracks and talk to you in English unless you go to Oslo. They all speak perfect English. And Oslo. I love Oslo.
Gloria Grace Rand
Good to know.
Ruth Yunker
Apparently they start learning English in first grade because Norwegians say nobody speaks Norwegian, but everybody speaks English. So they speak it idiomatically. I mean, I was there for a month and I just loved it. In fact, my next book was, is going to be calling I Cheated on Paris with Oslo.
Gloria Grace Rand
I love that. That does make sense. I remember when I was in, I think, junior high, we hosted two exchange students from Norway and yeah, and they were lovely young women and it was really nice having them. You had talked about at the beginning that 70 was sort of this awakening moment. So now that you are, I guess, 73, so what are you enjoying most about this time of your life now?
Ruth Yunker
I’m enjoying pulling the age card whenever I need to, particularly with my children who are grown ups. I remember the first time I did not feel the need to get up and give my seat to somebody else because I was darn tired at the end of the day and it was in Paris and I just thought, I’m keeping my little seat here. But I think one of the things I’m enjoying the most about this age is this is the first time in my life that I have lived alone and I have wanted to live alone my entire life. I got married, I had a big family. I didn’t have my own bedroom until I was eleven, but I got married at 19. My mother said, you think you’re going to be free? You’re not going to be free. She was right. She’s a very pragmatic woman. But anyway and we had two kids. We were married, then we got divorced. And then for seven years I didn’t have a partner. I mean, I didn’t have a long term. I wasn’t looking for relationships because I had two toddlers, but I had toddlers, so I was alone. And that’s when starting with the pets started at that point. And then I remarried and he had two children. So between us we had four. Then I divorced him and my mother died and I moved in with my father. And at some point my son came back to finish his, his degrees and so he stayed there too. And with by now three or four cats from both of us. We are a cat family. And so I didn’t move out into my own apartment till my father died. Yeah. And I love it. I’m missing a pet. And I’ve never had a pet unless I’ve had another person living in the house with me. It’s not that I can’t handle the pet. It’s not that. It’s leaving it if I’m going it’s by itself. And usually there would be somebody else there. I just like being able to walk in the door and not have to look at the floor to trip over either a baby or a pet. I don’t have to ask anybody what they want for dinner and what do they want to watch for TV and will they please go to bed and can you keep it quiet? I can do exactly as I want, and at this age, there’s a certain responsibility to being responsible what you think you want to do, but there’s also no rules. I mean, I just personally love that my daily life in here is just all this is all mementos. I’ve paired all the furniture down. At this point, I don’t, this won’t be the last place I live. I like to move, but, yeah, I’d say I always hate sayings about, you know, like, what would your 16 year old say to you? Or what would you say to your 16 year old? You know, that sort of thing. I hate those. I have a answer to that. And mine is, ask your 16 year old what she thinks of your life now. What does she think of you? And mine is saying, thank you for the modeling thing. I had no idea it wouldn’t be this glamorous thing, but thanks. Nothing glamorous about it. I like that when people say, I wish I had the wisdom, or whatever you want to call it, the smarts to keep myself happy when I was younger. But I certainly by this age, it’s entirely up to me, and I understand and believe that everything in my life is up to me. It is not somebody else’s fault over there if something goes wrong or it doesn’t work out the way I want, or I’m in a bad mood. So I’m a little reluctant to embark on a serious relationship because I have to work on that one. It’s your fault. I’m not the best with that. So I think I’m getting better, and I’m a yoga, very serious yoga practitioner, and so that helped. But I think that’s it getting to this age. I’m pragmatic about death. One day I was worrying about something that I worry about, like in a circle that quit, and worry worry worry, I finally I stopped and I said, here you go again on that topic, why don’t you want to worry about something? Look at how much closer you are to death than you were a few years ago. But you start having friends. I start having friends die and my parents dying, and I don’t want to do it, but at some point, I can also see that you’ve lived long enough, and it’s like, show me what’s next.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. Well, I had something I was going to ask you now it just went out of my head, but that’s okay.
Ruth Yunker
Me too. I mean, it’s not a couple
Gloria Grace Rand
I know what it was I was going to say is if you wanted to have a pet, you could get two cats, and that way they can keep each other company when you do leave. Because I do have two cats, and I’ve gone away for the weekend because…
Ruth Yunker
I’m babysitting. I live in a duplex, and I’m upstairs in my neighbor. We’re like a family of three in this house, and anyway, they have two kitties, and they’re away for the weekend, so I go down twice a day. But what about the long term traveling?
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, there are services that you can get where somebody will come in and take care of your cat. My son and his girlfriend did that because they traveled to Europe and they had a cat, and so they had somebody come in, basically, and house sat or took care of the cat while they were gone.
Ruth Yunker
Of course, I can beat that one to death, too, which is after leaving them at home. Way back when I used to take my children I lived on the East Coast at that point out here to California for their summer vacation. I would leave my cats at a cat babysitting place. It was run by Doris Day. I swear she looked just like her, it was a big bar out in the country in Maryland. It was as good as it could get. And the three of them were together and stuff like that for six weeks. And I wanted to do that because I didn’t want to leave them in the house because then subliminally in the back of their mind every time you leave after that, when you didn’t come back for a long time, they have no idea of knowing that it’s.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that’s true
Ruth Yunker I don’t know. You know what? Probably no one around me, my friends, no one thinks I should have a pet right now. It’s taking so long to get here.
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s true. All right, I’ll agree with you on that. That sounds reasonable. What are you curious about right now?
Ruth Yunker
Well, frankly, I’m curious about what this modeling thing is going to consist of. It’s been hard work. I took two classes this summer, both by Zoom, one taught by a really mean casting director out here, but it gave me a play. And then one a woman who’s seen me through some of the magazine, I write for Pro Age magazine on the Internet and all that. And she’s into that anyway, she’s my East Coast coach. He’s more like this is what when you go in or when you have to send them in a self taped video audition, here’s what you have to do. And I learned lingo, sides are your lines. I never thought about having lines. I wasn’t I just wanted to be in a picture where you smile, you know what I mean? But I’m having to remember how to memorize. I’m curious to see how that goes. And when I say curiosity, I think what I also mean I don’t mean so much. I mean for myself, but I think in this day and age especially, and I don’t want to get political but in the climate we have of everyone seeming to hate each other or hate this type of person or that kind of thing, to stop that, to be curious about the person you instinctively recoil from. Be curious about the new town you found yourself stuck in because your husband got a job there. Be curious about your daily life. Look at other people. It’s not so much about what I’m curious about exploring. I mean, I tried to take up roller skating again last year. Failed miserably. I was appalled. I used to roller skating when I was a kid. Right. You couldn’t do that. I decided I’m not doing any sports in which you need to wear a helmet for fear of falling on your head. But that’s more be curious about the world in general, something you don’t know. If you don’t believe in therapy, think about that. Why do you have that reaction? Or you don’t care about the stars in the sky. How come? They’re there. If you don’t believe in science, hit yourself over the head and say that again out loud 100 times and see how smart that sounds. I don’t know. It’s that kind of thing. And that’s more what I mean. I mean, I could always be very curious about what outfit I’m going to wear the next time I take a picture for Instagram. I haven’t bought anything new in two years, though. I’m working on fumes here.
Gloria Grace Rand
You’ll have to get out there and go find yourself. Treat yourself to something new.
Ruth Yunker
Yeah, I am. I’m treating myself to… I’m treating myself to not going anywhere for a while.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay.
Ruth Yunker
I’m going up to Oregon and visit my daughter for a couple weeks. I got stuck in Oregon. I had left. I was in the mid. Anyway, she lives in Oregon, and my son lives here, and I went to visit for two weeks on March, march 12, 2020, and I was there for three months before she’d let me leave. She’s a lawyer, and you can’t argue with her.
Gloria Grace Rand
No, definitely not. Yeah, I know how that goes. Well, yeah. My daughter was in Germany at the time, and so she had to come home, and she she was not too happy about that.
Ruth Yunker
Yeah, well, I’m glad you got her home, really? Frankly.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Ruth Yunker
Yeah. There’s a time when they have to listen to their parents. I don’t care how old they are.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, I know. Yeah.
Ruth Yunker
First thing you did this morning, and I said, well, I had an argument with my grown son, actually.
Gloria Grace Rand
They’re fun to banter with.
Ruth Yunker
I love my adult children. I don’t know how mine are, seem mine are in their 40s, so, you know, they’ve they’ve been a little beaten up by life now to their past. I mean, when I told I I had a facelift when I was 57 or something like that, and the person I was the most afraid to tell, I was going to do it. I wasn’t afraid to tell anybody except my daughter, who was 25. She was appalled. How can you do that, mom? Have a facelift. There’s nothing wrong with the way you look. And, and, and you said, you know, we’re going to age organically and all that, and and I wrote about that in my book. Baby, I’m the boss of me. It’s that kind of thing. It’s memory first with how I’m dealing with these things as I come along with them. And I realized that I remember my mother would say, should I have a face lift? And she had four daughters, or I have three sisters and two brothers, and we’d all look at her and see her same beautiful face that we loved. Like our animals look at us. They don’t know how old they are and they don’t care. And we’d say, Have one if you want, mom, it’s all right. But my daughter was 25, and she’s since apologized and definitely believes in Botox and will have a face lift when the time comes, and everything else. She’s 42 now. I think it was that moment where you really see mortality. I think she looked at me and suddenly a big, strong mother who was totally assured all life, a single parent for so much of it and so on, and suddenly being vulnerable. I think I’m looking older and I want to have a face lift. She felt that, it scared her a little bit, I think, to see not vulnerability, the fact that I wouldn’t necessarily always be there or getting older. I think that’s what it was.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that could be. I’m glad you’ve made up. So that’s good.
Ruth Yunker
Her mother in law is 85 right now. Would like to have her chin done. She’s 85. She has the money to have it done. But, you know, she grew up scrabbly hard and the five kids, and she’s going to ask her daughters, and I know her daughters, and they are all well, No, I think they might be they might be old enough now to be okay, but she’s dragging her feet with… if not now then when? If it’s bothering her might as well.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. And that is I think the good thing to know and to appreciate is yeah, when you do get to a certain age, and that is the thing that I have appreciated as I’ve gotten older in this, I continue to get older, and I would like to continue to get older for about another 40 years.
Ruth Yunker
105 for me. I’m not sure why, but that seems to be the age.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that’s that’s about where I’m, I’m headed as well, is is that we can, we can start well, number one, I don’t care so much about what other people think anymore, thank goodness. Like, when you’re younger and it’s like you’re really concerned, but take me as I am. This is it. And it’s nice to be able to have that, to be able to just say, yeah, this is me, and if you don’t like it
Ruth Yunker
And you feel So comfortable in your core. Your core is saying yeah, you know what? I do want ice cream for dinner to act.
Gloria Grace Rand
It’s not going to be the end of the world.
Ruth Yunker
It’s not. Nothing is the end of the world by our age and then wait till you add another but 60s were great. My 60s were lovely. Well, everyone has been pretty good except my 20s. My twenty’s I regret. But anyway, the good part of being older gets into acceptance as well which is something that is a hard concept to embrace. But it doesn’t mean being weak or giving in. It means frankly, I think it means go with the flow. If you can see where the flow is going then go that way.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yes, exactly. Is there anything else that you’d love to share with our listeners that I haven’t asked you about that you think Would be useful?
Ruth Yunker
about getting older?
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. Or anything else? Well, I’ll leave it up to you.
Ruth Yunker
Well, my platform basically is about getting older but it started changed a little bit during the pandemic where there when everyone was bemoaning how they couldn’t go out and they hadn’t had a meal in the restaurant. Meanwhile people are losing their money. I think you’re privileged; I’m privileged. We’re lucky and we appreciate it. Others don’t seem to get it. But anyway, I started on a big thing about start noticing the little miracles that happen every day in your house, in your kitchen, while making your bed, tripping over your cat. But whatever that, you suddenly go, oh, my gosh, look at the sunlight on that picture that I haven’t looked at. Because they’re free. They’re there for you. Whatever your spiritual beliefs are, plant that in there and it makes your daily life so much more interesting. When is the little thing going to happen? The other day I was in my car, stopped at a light and was rather wide intersection and a man he wasn’t quite a street person yet but he was veering on it. But his corduroy pants were a little battered. But anyway and he was he was our generation, older, and he started walking across the street and formerly a good looking man and he started walking across the street and then saw that maybe he wasn’t going to make it. So as he noticed that and I’m noticing over here, he began kind of a skip and then the skip. Remember when you’re skipping and your skip could get really big? He got there with his skip getting across and you could just almost feel the joy coming from him like oh my God, I still got it. And just how that feels when you lift yourself off the ground. I have scoliosis and arthritis in my lower back and injuries from sports all my life and I can’t jump. I’m not supposed to jump and I can hardly jump. That for me. There it was free for me to sit and take it in. And that comes in handy. That that kind of attitude. And then the other attitude I have is, as you’re getting older, quit complaining about it and start taking care of yourself. And by that I mean get a good exercise, don’t gain weight. People say, oh, you’re too thin. No, I’m not. Do it. Do people ever turn? I feel like sometimes saying, you weigh too much to these people who tell me that, but usually they don’t. Really overweight people keep quiet about that. My daughter just lost 60 pounds this last year. And thank God, I was so worried. Something clicked. Seeing all of my I don’t know, something clicked. And I said, just start walking the dog more often and don’t eat after 07:00. Start paying attention. If you can go to bed feeling a little hungry, you have succeeded. But see, my mornings, I start early, so I start eating early and end early. But I believe in that. Taking care of yourself. Someone says, of course, yeah, you look good because you work at it.
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s it.
Ruth Yunker
That’s exactly why. You stop working at it. When I see an elderly couple out on the street now, or an older woman or man by themselves, upright, beautifully dressed. My father got dressed every day. He died at 93 because he missed my mother. He he’d had it. I can’t believe it time for me to go. He wasn’t. Nothing really wrong with him except but he got dressed fully dressed every morning. I don’t I have my yoga pants on and my comfortable bra. I put on a necklace for you.
Gloria Grace Rand
Thank you.
Ruth Yunker
Forgot the earrings. But remember and that we are responsible for our own health. It is not somebody. And our own state of being. I’m not talking about someone who’s suffering from a chronic serious depression or any mental disorders or sometimes chronicle, chronic conditions though, you are the one dealing with it. So you have to figure out a way to try and be happy about it. And talk to your organs like we all notice how bad our skin is. I have the oldest hands in the world. I said to my plastic surgeon, can I lift my skin on my arms? And I’m strong, I’ve got muscles, but the skin and he said, I’m not going to do it. There is an arm lift. You wouldn’t like it, and I’m not going to do it. I started telling my skin, thank you, but I tell my liver is thrilled since I quit drinking 22 years ago, it went right on and really pay attention that if something’s aching, well, what did you do? I have to know if I suddenly have sciatica there, where did it come from? And I now know I have a chiropractor every two weeks. I use yoga to help me with that. And psychologically, if you don’t believe in therapy, I’m sorry for you if you’re depressed, because a therapist would help in a way that therapy helps. It’s challenging. Maybe that would appeal to the person you don’t just talk about. I went in the first time and sat down and I thought she was going to ask me a lot of questions. She said, well, start telling me about yourself. And one time after I finished a litany of this person had done that, that person had that. And she said, well, who is the common denominator in every story there?
Gloria Grace Rand
Don’t you hate it when that happens? And then you look at yourself, you’re.
Ruth Yunker
Like, oh, but I hate it for 1 minute. And then it’s like that just gave me power back. Because I am in charge of 50% of everything that happens to me. Everything. So if you’re getting a divorce. I wanted both of my divorces and I got them. But it wasn’t always his fault or even your children. I used to say to them though when they were little now obviously they’ve got their own lives and everything, but they’d be standing there crying and I’m mad. And I never knelt down in front of them. I always stood above them, towered above them. It’s all about power with little kids. But I said, Why is Mommy mad? Why is mommy mad at you right now? Because I didn’t want to put my shoes on. Right! And it began to sink in. They had caused it – cause and effect. I don’t know if you find yourself getting more and more depressed and you’re not going out for your exercise and you’re not walking and instead you’re eating and you’re just getting so depressed and you just can’t figure out a thing to do with your hair. I just don’t have any sympathy for that. I had to go through when I stopped. Sobriety hit my family like a ton of bricks because my son cracked up on drugs when he was 21. He’s now a psychologist and he works with drug addiction. Had a good ending. But it was a very bad scene. And that was when I realized number one is up to them. You can’t fix them. I’m so unhappy because my son is still a drug addict at the age of 55. Well stop paying for rehab, it’s not doing any good. Let my son go to the street. And he didn’t end up on the street, thank God. But I mean, I had to kick him out and it took him six months to come around and he said he finally first of all, he noticed all his friends were getting way ahead of him because he’s an arrogant intellectual person about himself. But he said that he finally realized he could have all the drugs he wanted or everything else. He couldn’t have both. But he had to decide that that isn’t something anybody said to him.
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s true.
Ruth Yunker
So that whole part of taking responsibility for your own happiness. And then some other people will say to me, well, sure you’re happy. You don’t have any problems. Who do they think they are to say that to anybody? How do they know I don’t have problems?
Gloria Grace Rand
Exactly
Ruth Yunker
Right? I mean, everybody has problems and all of us are recovering from whatever it was our parents did wrong. I look back now at my poor mother and think, oh, did I really say that to her at one point? But she could answer like, okay, fine. Well, when you have your own, she wants time to said to me, I hope you have a kid just like you and I did. My son, my daughter was much more easy going. He’s the harder one.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yes. I remember my mother using that line as well. That’s a mother line to use. It really is. It’s the ultimate. But it’s all good. And they do come around because it’s like, I know I was so happy. I love my daughter. I was so happy when she went away to college. It was like, thank God, and now she’s a wonderful person and she was always a wonderful person, but it was…
Ruth Yunker
They have to break away. My daughter’s 18 year old stepdaughter has finally left. That’s actually probably what helped her anyway. I shouldn’t say that, but she’s difficult for her own reason. She has other reasons. But. But she’s a good she’s a good kid, but she’s 18. I think you have to hate your parents and they have to hate you in order for them to actually leave the nest. They’ll come back. They’ll come back. We all came back at some point to mom and dad and I had my son for five extra years when he was finishing his doctorate, you know? Yeah, I don’t know it’s like that. So I think there and that’s again, part of the curiosity part, which is be curious about people. The person checking you out at the grocery store yesterday, the kid who packed my groceries, I said thank you like I always do. He didn’t even. Most of them will kind of look up and say, oh, thank you. You’re welcome. I hate it when you say thank you and they say not a problem, when it’s their job in the first place, not a problem is not the right. But you shouldn’t talk to a writer. What do you mean it’s not a problem? It’s your job in the first place to pack my groceries. I said to him thank you and he didn’t say anything. And as I pushed my card out, I thought, I wonder, maybe that age group doesn’t say thank you. Maybe he didn’t hear me. Maybe he’s excessively shy, maybe he’s on the spectrum.
Gloria Grace Rand
Could be all sorts of reasons.
Ruth Yunker
You have good hair. I should have said something like I really like your ponytail because I do or did and maybe I would have gotten a response. But the cashier, she was all totally cheerful. My age, still having to wear a mask in there. Pick and choose a moment.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh my goodness, this has been a delight, and I knew it was going to be. If someone listening to you wants to learn more about you or check out your books or anything, where can they connect with you?
Ruth Yunker
You can get all of my books on Amazon. All three of them are on Amazon. If you go directly to the book itself, it’s an endlessly long address. And then also, I’m quite active on both Instagram and Facebook. I had a YouTube channel. I still have it, but it’s dormant right now. It stopped during the pandemic. And it’s me talking about getting older or my style of doing it, because that’s another thing I went to AA, and AA was great on. They don’t give advice. They say, here’s how I did it when I had your problem. And that is amazing, because people can hear it then.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that’s true.
Ruth Yunker
That’s what I say about why I don’t wear a bathing suit in public. I don’t care how pulled together I am. I can wear a bathing suit. I can’t do the short sleeves, though. My arms terrible. So strong. So social media. I’m there under Ruth Yunker always. And the books are on Amazon.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right, very good. I will have all that information in the show notes. So for those of you who are listening somewhere where you can’t write it down, just go to liveloveengagePodcast.com and look for this episode, and you’ll be able to get all that information. Thank you so much much for spending some of your day with us today. I really appreciate you.
Ruth Yunker
Thank you for having me.
Gloria Grace Rand
Thank you. And I appreciate all of you for watching and for listening. And if you enjoyed today’s episode, I hope you share it with a friend. And until next time, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically.
