By Gwen
Putting Menopause Center Stage
Jeanie Linders wrote a musical about hot flashes that took America by storm. She’s using the profits to help other women.
Jeanie’s Lesson: No matter how many people tell you no, if you have an idea you believe in, keep going. And never look down the road too far. Instead, make sure what you’re doing today is important.
“It’s taken over my life,” Jeanie Linders says, laughing. Did this former Florida-based ad agency owner have any inkling that the lyrics she wrote poking fun at hot flashes would generate a theatrical empire? “Not a clue.” Yet now, four years after it opened on a small stage in central Florida, more than a hundred thousand people — mostly women in their 40′s and 50′s — are seeing Menopause The Musical every month, worldwide. And it’s changed women’s lives on both sides of the footlights.
It all started one evening ten years ago when Jeanie was about to attend an NAACP ball in Orlando. “There I was in my gown, ready to leave, when I had a ferocious hot flash. I was standing in front of the refrigerator, fanning myself with both doors, singing Rod Stewart’s “Hot Legs,” only I was singing “hot flashes.” Though she’d never written a play, the idea of creating a musical based on menopause just clicked. Jeanie pinned cards listing menopause symptoms on a bulletin board, bought a pawnshop record player for $10, got out her old 45′s and started writing new lyrics for old favorites. “Chain, Chain, Chain. Chain of Fools: became “Change, Change, Change. Change of Life.” “Staying Alive” became an insomnia lament, “Staying Awake.” “I would email the lyrics to friends, and they’d write back, “That’s funny, send more.”" When she had enough material, she sent her play, featuring four women shopping at Bloomingdale’s and singing about hot flashes, mood swings, and weight gain, to a theatrical lawyer, who told her that nobody would produce it.
But she couldn’t let go of the idea. “I just knew it would work,” she says, and so she produced the play herself. It opened on March 28, 2001, in a 76 seat theatre she built in a former Orlando perfume shop. “The actors had to climb thorough a hole in the wall to their dressing rooms in the show store next door.” The show is lovably dorky, with the four actors wearing goofy outfits and doing 1970′s disco moves; critics sneered but audiences ate it up. Women flocked to the show, they brought their friends, and everybody howled. The musical moved to West Palm Beach, then opened off-Broadway, where it’s still running 3 years later. The cast members are all over forty, all over size 10. This brand of reality theater really strikes a chord with midlife women. “Walk down any street in America and you will not find four desperate housewives who look like those women on TV,” Jeanie notes. “Hollywood says you’re young, you’re thin, you’re hip. My audience is not. I always say, there are five girlfriends at the show — four on stage and one in the audience. If she gets up and dances at the end, we’ve done our job.”
Jeanie receives a constant flow of emails from women thanking her for taking menopause out of the closet. “Most of our parents went through the change, retired from their jobs, had grandkids, and waited to die. It’s not like they started whole new lives.” Not so for us boomers. “Our generation had a president killed, a war in which the guys we were engaged to were dying, our parents were divorcing — all of a sudden, things were upside down. With nothing to hold on to, we’ve been reinventing our lives all along.
“Menopause is not just a physical change,” she continues, “Not only can we not longer reproduce, but our parents are passing away and suddenly there’s this reality that we’re not going to live forever. What happens then is that all the people we’ve paid attention to our whole lives — husbands, children, bosses — take a backseat. Our inner voice is saying, Excuse me, it’s my turn.”
As she rode the crest of seemingly unstoppable success, and her ad agency morphed into a single-show theater production company, Jeanie’s inner voice told her to take thte money and do some good. She launched a nonprofit called Women For Women Foundation that makes grants to women over forty. W4W provides mentoring and financial support to women’s service organizations, grants scholarships in the arts, and serves as a clearing house for information on issues that affect women at midlife. She’s also launched the If Only Award. “I call it the Make a Wish Foundation for living women with dying dreams.” Jeanie says. “This is not, ‘I want to meet Brad Pitt,’” These wishes are the stuff of life reinvention — going back to school, starting businesses, seeing the world.
Jeanie may have a soft spot for struggling women because she’s known failure herself. “In 1986, I tanked totally,” she says, with typical candor. “It rained and nobody came to a jazz festival I created.” She was on the line financially, and when she lost her business, she lost her identity, too. Suddenly, she was not loner “Jeanie Ad Agency”‘ as just plain Jeanie Linders, “I spent 5 years trying to figure out who the hell that was.” She had produced events her whole life, from a fine arts mall in a derelict shopping center to multistage music festivals. “I’ve done all these bizarre things — worked for Michael Jackson, ran Francis Ford Coppola’s resort in Belize, taught high school in Jamaica.” But now she wanted to do work that was truly meaningful.
When she saw three hundred women in an off-Broadway theater standing and clapping, shouting, “That’s me, that’s me,” she knew she’d found the vehicle to change people’s lives. She’ s grown her company by extending opportunities to the women around her. “At first, I was running this whole production out of my back bedroom,” she says. “the phone would ring at two in the morning with people reserving tickets. Menopausal women don’t sleep.” Now she has twenty people working at an office in Orlando, and additional staffers in each of the thirteen cities with long-running productions. One is her former cleaning lady. “She’s my production manager and she’s fabulous. She just needed that hand up.” Another is a friend of 25 years, who advised Jeanie to forget about producing this show. “She’s now my advertising director,” Jeanie says.
Getting rich isn’t the plan; adding richness to life is. “Somebody wrote a newspaper article saying that Jeanie Linders is making a mint. That’s not true. I finance all my own shows, and when we make enough money, we open in another city. Souvenir sales benefit the foundation.” Jeanie, who is single, adds, “I can only spend so much money. For the first 50 years of my life, I lived on $35,000 a year.”
When she went through those tough times, her friends told her, “You’re a survivor, you’ll make it.” And despite raging arthritis that has already meant multiple operations, including two knee replacements, Jeanie is optimistic. “Sometimes I feel like C-3PO. But no matter how much metal they put in your body, you have to choose life. When I was sixteen, I wrote Jeanie’s Beatitude: Cursed are they who live to exist but fail to live while existing. I never want to just take up space.”
Where will she be in five years? “No idea,” Jeanie, who’s now fifty-six , says. “I never look down the road that far. My biggest concerns are taking care of my employees, and getting the show in front of as many women as I can.”
Susan Crandell
Thinking About Tomorrow:
Reinventing Yourself at Midlife
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This story helps me to remember that we all have our own unique dharma and our own unique ways of bringing our dharma to the world, while being touched and inspired at the same time every time I read it! Are you interested in discovering what’ wonderful gift is laying dormant inside of you? Contact me, I’d LOVE to help you find it!
Gwen
By Gwen
Employee turnover has decreased since Civitan Foundation began hiring older caregivers like Leo Levenson, 65, who helps client David Zowin, 43. The problems facing older workers are well documented in the media, so it was refreshing to attend the Encore Opportunity Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., in November 2009, where the buzz in the room was all about the value and values that experienced employees bring to a job. The event honored 10 nonprofits or government organizations that have demonstrated their commitment to encore talent.
“Seven out of 10 nonprofits have recently hired someone we’d think of as in an encore career,” said Civic Ventures Vice President Phyllis Segal, citing recent research done by Civic Ventures and MetLife Foundation. “And those who have done it are far more positive about recruiting the encore workforce than those who haven’t.” That led to what Segal jokingly called her very sophisticated theory on hiring encore talent: “Try it, you’ll like it.”
During a panel discussion and mingling over lunch, a few themes emerged. Social innovators like Elaine Santore (cofounder of Umbrella of the Capital District) stumbled into social entrepreneurship to solve a problem or fill a need. Santore created an organization that matches up individuals over 50 with handypeople to help with household chores. She got the idea when her own mother had to give up her home because she could no longer care for it. By starting Umbrella, Santore created jobs for retired plumbers, carpenters and others looking for part-time work. The business model made sense. “Who better to help a senior than another senior?” she explained.
Many of the people hiring and managing encore talent are in encore careers themselves. “I was CEO of a children’s service agency and took early retirement, the so-called dream. About two and a half years into it, I realized that it just wasn’t for me,” said Jim Fischer, CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Lake-Sumter Florida Inc. Dawn Trapp, executive director of Civitan Foundation, which runs programs for people with disabilities, moved into the nonprofit world after a long career in the travel industry. Captain Cecil Whiteaker, 62, came to the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Dept. after 20 years in the Marines.
The employers talked a lot about how experienced workers tend to have patience and life experience that helps them on the job. Whiteaker found Gwinnett County’s use of older people as jailers to be especially successful. “Sometimes they become mentors or informal counselors to the inmates,” he said. Trapp said she values experienced workers because they tend to make a commitment to the work. “We were predominantly hiring college students and turnover was very high,” she said.
Intergenerational issues do exist in these organizations, but they aren’t insurmountable. “We force good communication because we put people together and expect it,” said Habitat for Humanity’s Fischer. “We always try to mix our resources on a task, like sending a 21- and a 72-year-old out on a truck. We’re also seeing a lot of mentoring which goes both ways, especially around technology.”
Diane Piktalis, an expert on boomers and workplace issues who helped select the winners, closed with a gentle command to employers to go home and replicate their activities. At least one organization in attendance, Umbrella of the Capital District, is already doing that.
Marci Alboher’s blog
www.encore.org
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By Gwen
One’s calling in life, says the author and minister Frederick Buechner, is “that place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” To find your calling in an encore career, ask yourself: What need in the world will ignite the passions in my heart, tap my natural gifts, educational background and skills, and bring new vitality to all of life?
You might start by finding a quiet spot and pondering three not-so-simple questions:
Who am I? Try to distill what you have discovered about yourself during your many years of work and uncover the attributes that have been elusive or oftentimes buried for years. According to E.E. Cummings, “To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight one of the hardest battles any human being can fight.” To discover a new purpose in life will require that you live more authentically, not bending to the outside forces around you. You will be challenged to go to the center of who you really are.
How do I function best? How are you wired and in what circumstances do you function best? What natural talents and learned skills do you have to contribute? You may know many of your abilities, but other gifts may yet to be discovered. You need to carefully assess your natural talents, favorite skills and the fields of knowledge toward which you have gravitated most of your life. What have you been praised for doing well? What experiences have you had that ignited a passion?
What am I here for? Take as an article of faith that you were put here for a purpose and that you have been given the gifts you need to achieve your mission. What is your summum bonum – the place where you can give the greatest good? Finding that place may not be easy or clear or concise, as it is a work in progress. In the beginning, you may uncover only a vague pointing in a direction that will seize your heart. The important thing is to take action, and in the midst of your experiences, as the Quakers say, “a way will open.”
A providential force beyond your control is always going before you and opening new doors to walk through. It may take two or three years of shedding old paradigms and habits before you discover your heartfelt passions and new pathways become clear. As you take steps of faith, remember the journey is an integral part of the mission, and both the passion in your heart and the needs of the world are proteanly dynamic.
This time of revelation and self-discovery provides a great opportunity to probe the “world’s deep hunger.” Take a journey to uncover the many needs in our world today and search out the places where you might fit in. You may find a group already addressing a need that is tugging at your heart and an organization in which you could be a vital participant. Or you may uncover a unique solution to a problem to which you are being called to start your own organization.
Today, we have one of the most powerful search tools in history to find every imaginable group at work in the world. With the Internet, everyone should be able to find a place where his or her years of wisdom, experience and giftedness would be of great value. Encore.org offers many opportunities to connect with others who share your geographical location or your passions.
We live in perilous times: a period in which the very underpinnings of our society are crumbling. Our very ground of being is shifting beneath our feet. Yet those with a mind set on finding their passion for living and with eyes upon the “world’s deep hunger” stand on a solid foundation. Rather than being distracted by material concerns, they are focused on caring and giving to the needs in the world around them. They are called to serve.
Posted 01/25/2009 – 4:36pm by Sam Shafer Are you ready? Sam Shafer, a parish priest, now works to help participants identify their gifts, uncover their passions and find their callings. This piece is adapted from a six-week course he conducts for churches, community groups and other organizations. He lives in Oakland, Calif.
By Gwen
Program helps unemployed and low-income workers who are 55+
Working with a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, AARP is co-funding an employment program that helps job seekers over age 55 to find employment.
The program provides job training and job placement, and is available free to people who qualify.
What is the AARP Job Training and Job Placement Program?
This job training and job placement program is called the AARP Foundation Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP).
SCSEP helps people 55+ become more successful at finding a job by:
•Improving job skills
•Gaining work experience
•Increasing their self-confidence
How Does SCSEP Work?
First, SCSEP staff assesses each applicant’s need to determine eligibility. Based on each person’s needs, free services include:
•Assessment of existing job skills and interests
•Assistance with setting job goals
•An individual employment plan
•Help with locating job training for new skills
•Resume assistance
•Job interview tips
•Information about job clubs and workshops
•Job leads, and follow-ups to check progress
•Worker’s compensation insurance
•A yearly physical exam
•A free one-year membership in AARP
What Are the Criteria to Join SCSEP?
To qualify for the SCSEP job training and job placement program, applicants must be:
•Unemployed
•Age 55 or older
•Must live in a county that is served by an AARP SCSEP office
•Income must be below 125% of the federal poverty level. AARP recommends that you check with your local SCSEP office because not all income is counted.
How to Apply for this Job Training and Job Placement Program
1.The first step is to find out if you live in an eligible county. In order to be part of this program, you must live in a county that is served by an AARP SCSEP office.
If there is no AARP SCSEP office serving the county in which you live, you will be directed to find a SCSEP office through another sponsor.
2.The next step is to contact the local SCSEP office by phone or in person. A staff member will ask you questions to determine if you are eligible for job training and job placement services.
If you receive benefits like SSI/SSD and Medicaid, or assistance with food stamps or public housing, acceptance into this program may affect your benefits. A SCSEP staff member will help you determine how your current benefits may be affected.
For more information on the AARP Foundation SCSEP program for job training and job placement, see the AARP Web site for Low Income Job Seekers.
By Sharon O’Brien, About.com
By Dharma
The question of the boomers’ legacy is very much up for grabs right now.
In “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc,” about the most heroic rangers on D-Day, Douglas Brinkley argues very convincingly that Reagan’s 1984 visit to Normandy actually began the whole “Greatest Generation” thing. It hadn’t existed before, and understanding the story and the current yearning in the country was part of Reagan’s political/cinematic genius. So he largely “invented” the greatest generation mythology that day, with Peggy Noonan’s help.
Tom Brokaw followed a few years later, named it in a catchy and appealing way, and we have lived with that story ever since.
If it is true that the story of the greatest generation was written between 1984 and 1995, then we are coming into the time when the story of the boomer generation might be written. And how that story turns out will be determined by several things including what we “need” as a country and people at the moment, what the generation actually does (if anything), who writes the story and the motive of the writer.
We can influence the story of the boomer generation in a big way, but we can’t make it up in the absence of the right societal political setting, and we can’t make it up in absence of real and important action and leadership from those in the generation.
July 27, 2009 – John Gomperts, Civic Ventures
By Dharma
Baby Boomers are transforming the way we think about retirement and aging. Retirement in America is undergoing a revolutionary transformation. When our grandparents and parents retired, they could usually count on a handsome company pension, as well as Society Security and other benefits. Today, few workers in the private sector will enjoy a company pension. And today, Social Security and Medicare face growing funding issues. Americans are being told—every day and in increasing numbers—that they will have the sole responsibility for producing income for themselves for a much longer span of retirement time.
Retirement Revolution, hosted by broadcast journalist Paula Zahn, is a two-part documentary that explores the many challenges and opportunities faced by the 78 million Baby Boomers who are now heading into retirement.
Our new generation of “old people” fulfill a unique and important role in society.
As the first wave of Baby Boomers turns 65, they are changing America’s ideas about what it means to grow old and what it means to retire. With sixty-five fast becoming the new “middle age,” retirement may mean a new career instead of the golf course.
Retirement Revolution offers practical considerations that can help ensure a retirement on one’s own terms, even in a risky world in which Medicare and private pensions are facing real problems. With everyday stories placed in the context of experts’ perspectives on retirement and aging, Retirement Revolution alleviates anxieties, inspires confidence, and demonstrates the pressing need for change where the ways of the past simply won’t be enough.
“Retirement” today often means the beginning of a new career.
The documentary explores numerous revolutionary discoveries: how even late starters can save enough to supplement their Social Security income; how to turn home equity into old-age income; how to ensure a secure old age with new retirement investment products like annuities that begin at age 85; the joys of encore careers begun after age 50; how Social Security can be secured for another 50 years; and the remarkable compassion and help that the new “old people” are providing to the rest of society.
Explore the Retirement Revolution microsite at www.wttw.com/retirementrevolution.
Retirement Revolution is a co-production of James L. Schlagheck and WTTW National Productions.
By Dharma
After my friend Anne left a successful career on Wall Street, she spent several years writing fiction. She completed two novels, then realized that the issues and problems in the real world had become more compelling than the stories she was making up.
“What was I doing writing fiction when I could be out there with real people, doing something meaningful?” she told me. “Cliché or not, I wanted to use my business skills and international experience to make an impact on the world.”
As it turns out, she is in good company, according to a study released today by the MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures, a San Francisco-based think tank on boomers, work and aging. The 2008 Encore Career survey asked 3,500 Americans between the ages of 44 and 70 about their current and future work plans and preferences.
The results indicate that a majority of people in that age group want to use their skills and experience to help others. In fact, the report estimates that between 5 and 8 million Americans are already involved in what Marc Freedman, CEO of Civic Ventures, calls an “encore career”—meaningful work that combines earning an income with making a contribution to society. “I think of it as practical idealism,” he says.
What the Study Means
The results of the study may be early evidence of a trend. “For us, the major finding was the numbers,” says Freedman. “This is not just an abstract ideal. Millions of people are already acting on this impulse.”
People like Ed Speedling, who became an advocate for the homeless after a career as a health care executive, or Beverly Ryder, who brought her years of corporate experience to a new role in public education. (These stories and others can be found on Civic Ventures’ networking site, www.encore.org.)
Freedman credits these “pioneers” with “blazing the path” for those behind them. And considering that there are 78 million baby boomers, that’s a lot of people to play “follow the leader.” According to the study, nearly half of those not already in encore careers have a strong desire to move into such jobs.
“If even a small fraction of baby boomers go into encore careers, it could have a transformative effect on industries that are so dependent on human resources to be effective,” says Freedman.
This is good news for education, health care, government and the nonprofit sectors, all of which already are experiencing critical labor shortages. A study by the Bridgespan Group—a Boston-based management consulting group for the nonprofit sector—reported that nonprofit organizations will need some 640,000 new senior leaders over the next 10 years, and that number could rise as high as 1.2 million.
Changing Public Policy
While Freedman acknowledges that those who want to pursue an “encore career” must take some of the responsibility to make that transition, he also thinks that society should meet people halfway. That’s going to require changes on many levels, he says. “We’ll probably see a dramatic increase in life coaching and workshops for more affluent people, but if we are going to tap the talent in other sectors of the boomer population, we need changes in public policy.”
In the first place, he suggests getting rid of penalties for working longer. Making affordable health care accessible could encourage active participation in encore careers, he says. Freedman also argues for the creation of new kinds of incentives, like IBM’s Transition to Teaching program, which prepares employees to take on a second career as a math or science teacher.
“And we need more online resources for people wanting to make this kind of shift,” says Freedman, who notes that most of the major job sites offer openings in other industries.
The study reports that people already in their encore career discovered that many problems that they had anticipated—like the lack of flexibility or the fear of being underappreciated—never materialized. Over 75 percent were satisfied with the salary and benefits, but the need to learn new skills and coping with a loss of seniority continued as concerns. Still, the feedback from those who have already embarked on an encore career was positive. “The message seems to be ‘try it, you’ll like it,’ ” says Freedman.
That’s certainly true for my friend Anne, who’s now working in the nonprofit sector in the area of global poverty. “Right now, there’s nothing else I’d rather do,” she says.
Survey Results
The survey of 3,500 men and women was conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. by telephone and on the Internet from February through April 2008. The respondents were divided into three categories: those in encore careers, those interested in such careers and those not interested. The complete study is available at www.civicventures.org.
Among the key findings related to those in encore careers:
• The majority were between the ages of 51 and 62. More than half were women.
• Most (52 percent) are engaged in professional or managerial careers, and an additional 28 percent in other white-collar occupations. Nearly one in five (18 percent) have blue-collar jobs.
• The largest group (42 percent) lives in the suburbs; 30 percent live in urban areas and 28 percent in small towns and rural areas.
• More than a third of those who chose encore careers did so for financial reasons and health benefits.
• Most reported a high level of satisfaction (84 percent) and felt they were making a difference (94 percent).
By: Cathie Gandel | Source: AARP Bulletin Today | June 18, 2008
By Dharma
OKAY, Now Here’s The Next Big ThingWE are probably going to be the next big thing – women baby boomer entrepreneurs! By 2010, I predict that many of us will be like Colonel Sanders who made more in his second career after age 65.Women make really great entrepreneurs. We work for other people usually but when women take that risk to become business owners, look out! We can ride that wave, especially now with the Internet to help us.
Surfs up! Let’s get started! Learn to market your self and your business. Sign up now to learn more about Internet attraction marketing!
Make More “Retired” Than Hired!”
One of my mentors is Ann Sieg. She tells one of my very favorite stories about how she not only wanted to retire early but she wanted to make enough money in multi-level marketing (MLM) to retire her husband early too! And she did! But not the usual MLM way, the renegade way. She leveraged herself by working at home, building her MLM online.
Talk about a “Don’t Mess With Me” spirit with a big heart, that’s Sieg. She’s THE renegade network marketer. She wrote the book!
Colonel Sanders Didn’t Have What We Have
Colonel Sanders didn’t have the Internet Web 2.0 advantage. We do. Learning things like how to Generating free leads using Squidoo 
for example, is something the colonel couldn’t do – there was no Squidoo!
Terri Stallcop www.terristallcop.com
By Dharma
There is no security in doing something for a living when you are dying inside while doing it. That is taking care of the body at the expense of the soul. And a withering soul cannot help but produce a withering body. So do not think you are “taking care of yourself” by killing your spirit to keep your body alive. How long will you put off what you are dying to do? You will not have to think but a second to know exactly why you received this message today.
Neale Donald Walsch www.nealedonaldwalsch.com
By Dharma
Women: Have you ever thought of becoming a custom home builder for your ENCORE career?
PACIFIC PALISADES, CA—Cathleen Gallagher could have turned over that glorious piece of land at 609 Las Lomas Avenue in Pacific Palisades to a “different” kind of builder. She could have hired someone to plan out where each room would go, how they would all work together to create the home’s flow, figure out the big picture and the details, and pick all the finishes.
After all, men dominate the home building industry as a whole, and when it comes to custom homes, women are but a speck on the builder spectrum. Which is unfortunate, given the fact that, if Gallagher’s home—a magnificent display of smart floorplan choices and exquisite finishes— is any indication (and it is), women make mighty fine custom homebuilders.
“The reality is that the larger-scale builders, from the Centexes to the Brookfields of the world, have invested a lot of money to get a female perspective on their product, usually through the services of an interior designer,” said Tom Weston, president/CEO of Weston/Mason Marketing, a Los Angeles-based advertising agency specializing in home builders and developers. “Typically these builders are male, and while very talented and capable of overcoming enormous challenges, they do sometimes overlook some of the realities of building a home that really works for today’s family, which means emphasizing the woman’s perspective.
“In the custom market, it’s all about anticipating needs, which is certainly the role of any builder, but at a much more personal and detailed level,” he added. “Someone who naturally comes equipped with the female perspective and who also brings the necessary building/planning/designing skills offers a tremendous advantage to that process.”
To read the entire story go to: PowerWoman Magazine http://www.powerwomenmagazine.com
"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."