Husband Underfoot: Surviving Your Husband's Retirement

Wendy Green [: 00:00:34

Hello and welcome to the hey Boomer show. My name is Wendy Green and I am your host for hey Boomer. Hey Boomer is the podcast where we go beyond the surface, exploring the complexities of family dynamics, maintaining health, navigating caregiving, addressing loneliness and friendships, and embracing new relationships. It's the podcast that acknowledges the challenges and opportunities that come with aging with a compassionate and realistic approach. My guest today, Mary Kay Fleming, is professor Emirata of psychology. She's the mother of two, a grandmother of three, and an award winning humor writer in Greater Cincinnati. For 38 years, Mary Kay taught human development courses at Mount St. Joseph University, and she's held a variety of administrative posts before retiring mid pandemic in 2020 at the age of 65.

Wendy Green [: 00:01:46

The essay that launched her second career as a writer was a humorous essay about wearing Spanx to her daughter's wedding, and it took first place in the Irma Bombeck humor writing competition in 2016. Her most widely read pieces are a satire about readiness for parenthood and an essay on living with a retired husband published in both next Avenue and next tribe. It was her essay about living with a retired husband that led me to Mary Kay. The story started with, quote, I was excited about my husband's imminent retirement. I envisioned him cleaning the basement, repainting the house, and cooking dinner while I was at work. Now he's retired and I realize the odds are better that the whistling forest animals from Snow White will drop by to maintain our home. So you can see where this show is going. I'm going to share the link to Mary Kay's author page at the end of the podcast, and you can read the full article that I just referred to as well as enjoy all of her other writing.

Wendy Green [: 00:03:08

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Wendy Green [: 00:04:40

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Wendy Green [: 00:05:53

All right, let me bring Mary Kay on. All right, tell me about how you got into humor writing from being a professor of psychology.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:06:05

Yeah. Not a direct path, is it? So I have to give my family a lot of credit. I grew up in a family. I'm the youngest of five siblings. We're all spread out in age, and everybody was funny and everybody was a storyteller. And if I wanted to play with the big dogs, I had to compete. I had to try to one up people when they said something funny. My nearest sibling in age is four years older than me, so we are very spread out in age.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:06:39

So there was just a lot of that ray parte around the dinner table and that sort of thing at home. And I do have to give them a lot of credit. Probably the first time I made an attempt to write something funny, and I wasn't doing it for publication or anything, but this is probably, I don't know, ten or 15 years ago, we were dog sitting for the golden retriever that lived next door, and she was very funny, and we had a dog that she played with, and I always thought anthropomorphic humor was very funny. So I wrote these diaries from the dog's point of view, and these people would take about two vacations a year. So I was doing my little diary project twice a year, writing it from the dog's point of view, and the dog dictated to me, and she put in funny pictures and really juiced it up quite a bit. And people would say, I want to read your dog diaries. That's kind of how it started. And then the biggest change probably came in 2012 when my friend Vicki, I have to shout out to her, she introduced me to the Irma Bombeck Writers workshop, and I went with her, and that changed my life, because I found out there were other humor writers, there were places to publish, there were people and groups that I could connect with online, and that made just a huge difference.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:08:06

So the workshop is offered every other year. I skipped the next year and went in 2016 and entered the humor writing contest. And that's when I won with the story about Spanx, which I'm sure every woman has got one of those. My two children married within six months of one another, so I was getting quite a bit of use out of the shapewear, as they call it, and things just ran from there. I've gone to most of the Irma Bombeck writing workshops and taken courses online and met people online and stayed in touch with groups and critique groups. I was not a trained writer. I was trained as a scientist and an academic, and that's a very different style of writing. So I more or less had to go back to school to learn about personal essay writing, but I love learning new things, so I just took to it like a duck to water.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:09:11

Now, this is sort of my second career, and I really enjoy it.

Wendy Green [: 00:09:15

And it was something that your brother encouraged you to do, too, right?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:09:19

My brother, yes. He probably gave me the best advice I got from anybody about retiring. He and my husband and I, and we're all within five years of each other in age. We're sitting around the table and my brother's pointing to people, what do you want to do when you retire? What do you want to do? And we're all talking about our future retirement plans. And he asked me, and he said, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to write. He said, then start now. That was the best advice I got.

Wendy Green [: 00:09:50

You knew right away that you wanted to write.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:09:53

I did know right away by that point, I had published a number of pieces, gone to some workshops, taken some classes, and knew that I wanted to spend more time at this. It was always going to be an advocation. It was never going to be a major source of income, but I wanted to freelance doing personal essays and humor essays and get into satire a little bit, which I did. So when he said, start now, the idea was that before you retire, you sort of get moving on what your eventual activity is going to be, so that the transition into that is very smooth. And it was. That was excellent advice. I took it, I used it, and my transition was pretty smooth as a result.

Wendy Green [: 00:10:43

Yeah, that was brilliant advice from your brother to plan to retire to something. So what about your husband? Did he have something to retire to at that point?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:10:53

Well, it wasn't cleaning the basement, I can tell you that. I wanted it to be cleaning the basement. I even thought that I did have all these grand plans. I wasn't exaggerating in this story when I said I wanted him to do all this stuff. Long list. Well, that wasn't his list. But I put a sign on the basement door. Construction danger.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:11:19

Construction zone. Pardon our dust. And I thought, oh, he'll think this is funny. It's his new office. He should just go to the basement and not come out until he's prepared to reduce the volume in the basement by at least one half. The basement is still full. That was not his plan. But he retired from a career in environmental health and started to write poetry.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:11:44

And I thought, where did this come from? But it was kind of funny because when he first started to do it, I said, okay, not only are you not cleaning the basement. And not doing the stuff on my list, you stole my dream. I said I wanted to retire to write. You didn't say you wanted to retire to write. But he wrote all this poetry, and he's done really good work. It's really good. And I'm glad it's a source of such satisfaction to him. But I didn't know about that plan until he would say, you want to read my poem? So there it was.

Wendy Green [: 00:12:19

That's a cute comment from Jeannie. If only hints would. So how. How long before you retired? Did your husband retire?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:12:35

He retired about three and a half years earlier than I did. And his retirement was planned, and so was mine, which is great. That's the way to do it, is to plan ahead and do it on your schedule. Not everybody has that luxury. I wish they did. It makes things a lot easier. But I did wind up retiring one year earlier than I planned. Because the summer before my last teaching year, two people close to me died.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:13:11

My brother in law who was in his eighty s. And a friend who was in her sixty s. And they died within three weeks of one another. And to me, the message of that was, no one gets a guarantee. So if you have something you still want to do with your life, you should do it. And some people talk about don't die with your song still in your heart. And I felt like I really wanted to take time off to write. And I thought, why am I waiting? So I didn't, of course.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:13:44

Then what happened is I wound up retiring in the middle of the pandemic. Which was quite an unceremonious way to leave a long term job. But who knew at the beginning of the school year that was going to happen?

Wendy Green [: 00:13:57

But I love what you said. Don't retire with that song still in your heart. Right. Do something that makes you feel fulfilled and happy. And.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:14:08

Know my, my humor writing heroes growing up were Irma Bombeck and Dave Berry. That's who I read in the newspaper, and I loved them, too. And Irma Bonbeck has a quote that has always been an inspiration to me, and I will not get it right word for word, but it's something like, when I stand before God at the end of my life, I would like to be able to say, I have nothing left. I used all the talent you gave me.

Wendy Green [: 00:14:37

That's right. I used it all up.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:14:40

Yes, I used it all up. And that was an inspiration to me. I thought, yeah, that's what I want to do. I want to be able to say that I used the talents that I had and that I did some good with them. I would like to think that my humor writing is uplifting to some people, even if it's just to find out they're not alone in what they're going through. And that's not the only thing. There are plenty of other things that I do, but I never imagined humor writing to be my whole legacy. But I think the idea of, if you have a gift that's unused, this is your time to explore it and use it.

Wendy Green [: 00:15:22

Yeah. Well, I want to talk a little bit about the difference between the way men and women view retirement. So when I think about it, I think about the women in our generation, really, we felt permission, unlike some of our mothers, to work outside of home. And we were breaking the stereotypes in many ways. And yet, while we worked outside of the home, we also still were mothers, some of us, and we volunteered in different capacities. But a lot of the men in our generation, bless their hearts, have not made as big a shift in their role model for retirement. Seems to still be their father's retirement. So did you find that in your retirement, in your husband's? And if so, how do we adapt or deal with the men in our lives who just want to rest and relax while we still feel like we have a lot to do?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:16:22

Yeah. Well, I think you put your finger on something very important. The norms changed dramatically for men and women in our generation. I think we were the transitional generation. I think life is different for our daughters and our sons and our in laws. Men do participate more in children's care and day to day care and volunteering in school and clubs and activities and all that sort of thing. So I think the next generation is doing it differently. But you're right.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:16:57

We saw that model, and in so many things in our life, I think in parenting and retiring and adjusting to retirement and lots of other things, our default mode is more or less to have the expectations that our lives will be like our parents, and we repeat that pattern unless we decide to do otherwise. So I think the men in our generation did have a challenge with women's expectations for all of it, retirement and childcare and every bit of life, the work life balance, for that to be very different than the men did. And it really took a lot of communication and adjustment on both our parts in order to deal with that. I think women were always used to a lot of multitasking. They could be full time and full time at work and also feel like they were doing a full time job, parenting and, as you said, volunteering at school and volunteering with activities and clubs and so on. And they were very accustomed to dividing their attention in many different ways. A lot more men in our generation probably drew their primary identity from their work life, and that has implications for the family, but it also has implications from them in terms of their satisfaction and their reason for getting out of bed in the morning during retirement. If all of their identity and their feelings of productivity were coming from the workplace and not from family life, or balancing lots of different things at the same time.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:18:37

So I think you have to communicate about those differences in norms and the different expectations you have about retirement. You want to sit around? I don't want to sit around, or vice versa, whatever it might be. You want to travel? I don't want to travel, whatever the differences might be, and try to work that out and maybe make some joint plans and also figure out when it's fine to make plans by yourself. Not everything has to be done jointly. If you have more need for going out with friends, that's absolutely fine. I think it's just something to work out with each other, and that means communicating about the different expectations.

Wendy Green [: 00:19:25

I hear a lot of women talk about their husband's underfoot, like the title of the podcast, their husband's underfoot. They can't get him to get off the couch. He watches Netflix all day. I don't know if that was your reality, but at least for the first couple of months when they're unwinding. But do you have any thoughts about that?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:19:51

Well, thankfully, the sitting on the couch all day or watching TV all day was not my reality. It was more like, oh, instead of working in the basement, I'm going to write some poetry today. And I thought maybe there's a couple of days that you could still be in the basement cleaning up or whatever. I think it just takes talking about it and trying to figure out where the balance is going to be struck, who's going to do what, and what it takes to make you happy. I know, for example, in our relationship, one of the differences that was real was that my husband, I think, wanted to spend a lot more time together. I don't think his friend network was as wide as mine, and I like more solitude than he does. Well, that was something to talk about. And a balance had to be struck, a compromise had to be struck.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:20:50

I didn't really want to retire to 24/7 husband, as much as I love him. That wasn't my idea of retirement. So it's a matter of working it out with your partner and figuring out ways that both of you can be happy. But if you keep that inside and you let it fester, the difference in expectations is going to continue to be a source of disgruntlement, and it's not good to let it fester. You've got to talk about what those differences are. They can't read our minds. We can't read their minds. That's true.

Wendy Green [: 00:21:32

And I would suspect, Mary Kay, that you used some humor in some of those negotiations.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:21:39

Yes, and thankfully, my husband has a wonderful sense of humor. People asked me after I wrote the article, they said, oh, my gosh. And there were several others that feature him in an under the bus position. And people have asked me about, oh, how does Don feel about the fact that you write these things or whatever? And he gets a little ribbing from his friends. He loves it. He eats it up. He does. So that's why it works.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:22:08

I would never publish something that really made fun of another person. Know, got the laughs at their expense. Don thinks it's hilarious that I write this stuff, and he goes right along with it. So that's another thing where, what does the other person expect? What do they have a sense of humor about? What do they tolerate? What do they find? Both ways.

Wendy Green [: 00:22:33

It does work both ways. Yeah. And you're right. You would never have written anything that made fun of him because he.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:22:44

No, and I never would about my kids, either. I think there are humor writers that don't quite draw that line in the same place, but I would never do that.

Wendy Green [: 00:22:53

So has that. Speaking of kids, has retirement changed your relationship with your kids at all, in any ways?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:23:01

Well, yes, in a couple of ways. First of all, they're very proud of my writing. They think this is just great because I think to them, it came out of the blue. Like, who knew? Mom was a writer, she was an academic.

Wendy Green [: 00:23:18

Mom wasn't a humorist.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:23:20

Yeah. Where did all this come from? Well, I've been saving it up, so there's that. But the other thing is, my children did not have families of their own. Children of their own at the time I retired. That quickly changed. The two grandbabies came in 2021. Now there's a third. And that is actually one of the major adjustments that Don and I have made in retirement is that now we babysit two of those kids who happen to live right next door.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:24:01

They knew what they were doing when.

Wendy Green [: 00:24:02

They bought that house.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:24:03

I guess. They did. Yes, they did. And we babysit three days a week. That's a big commitment. It's a lot of time, but we love it. And it's a joint venture, a joint enterprise, and we have the same goals for that activity. And so I think that's been something that has really brought us together, because when I talked about my greater need for solitude, and we don't share every hobby either.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:24:31

My husband is an avid gardener. I don't garden. So there were some differences there. But this is something we do together, and we do have to work toward the same goal. It's the same as when you're parenting, and you realize that if you don't get on board with each other's parenting style, the kids will learn to play one against another, which is not healthy for anybody, honestly. The same thing happens when you spend lots and lots of time with your grandkids. So that has been something we could do and enjoy together. And we do.

Wendy Green [: 00:25:05

So it's fulfilling his need of wanting to spend more time with you, too. And he gets to be a more participatory parent grandparent than he probably was when your children were young.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:25:17

That's right, because he's doing the hands on care of infants and toddlers, which largely he missed out on on his five days a week when he was working. Yeah, and he was a very involved dad, but he wasn't there as often as I was. But he does it all now.

Wendy Green [: 00:25:40

He does. Oh, good for him. Has that changed your relationship with your husband, the retirement that you're seeing him in a different light now?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:25:52

I think so, because not only did I not see him in this role as often when we were parents. I was like other parents at the time. You're raising your kids. I think your attention is divided so many different ways. In fact, I'm writing a serious essay about this now. Your attention is divided so many different ways. You might be feeding a baby, but you're also thinking about the sink full of dishes and the laundry timer is about to go off, and you have to prepare something for work tomorrow. And there are all kinds of other things that are going on.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:26:30

And now for the three days a week, we just eat up our grandkids, and there's not as much division of attention that I think compromised a little bit of what we were able to enjoy and learn from parenting. So it's a lot of fun, and I find it a very mindful activity, and I think I'm happy I can give it a different level of attention than I was sometimes able to give my kids.

Wendy Green [: 00:27:03

Well, I think that's true. That's one of the benefits of being a grandparent as opposed to a parent, I imagine. Still, as you're full time grandparenting three days a week, you still have to set more boundaries than if you were just playtime grandparenting.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:27:23

Exactly. That's an important distinction, right?

Wendy Green [: 00:27:27

Yeah. So I'm curious. Like, the Monday morning that you woke up and realized you weren't going back to teaching, do you remember what that was like?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:27:42

I remember thinking. I remember thanking the brother in law and friend who passed away for sending me a message I could use about their passing, and that they sent me a lesson I could learn from that. They both had wonderful lives. But I think this idea that especially the friend who died in her 60s, that there are no guarantees, we're not guaranteed the amount of longevity we might want. And actually, I learned that in my own family. Both of my parents died when they were 64 years old. I grew up thinking, people drop dead when they're 64. They don't thank goodness, and I didn't thank goodness, but that became my internal standard, my expectation.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:28:44

And so seeing older relatives go past that milestone and enjoy more longevity, I did learn some things about living a full life even after retirement, and that even given that, anything can change in a moment. So if you have something that you still want to do with your life and you have the flexibility to stop working and pursue the other goal, go for it. And I did. And I loved my job while I had it. But I have to say, it's really surprised me that leaving it was like, it was like flipping a switch. I did not look back I didn't long for it. I didn't regret having made a decision too quickly. They invited me back to do adjunct teaching, and I said, thank you so much, but no, just no regrets.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:29:54

And that's pretty much how I felt the whole way through. I will say I made the decision to retire in August. The school year started in August. I did wait until December to tell my department about it. I wanted to give them plenty of time to plan, but I wanted to be sure I wasn't going to change my mind. And I was really never tempted to change my mind. That worked out really well.

Wendy Green [: 00:30:23

You just described the transition so beautifully, of kind of finding what's your reason? What's your know, finding that spark that really kind of ignites you. And that sounds like what you found now. So when someone asks you, Mary Kay, if you meet them for the first time, what do you do? What's your answer?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:30:46

Well, I say I'm a grandparent, first of all.

Wendy Green [: 00:30:50

Okay.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:30:51

And a writer, secondly, okay. And a retired psychologist. I think, one, if I had any hesitation about retiring, it was that I might feel like I lost that part of my identity. I didn't, and I found that out pretty quickly. But that was probably the one question I had in my mind. I wouldn't really even call it a doubt, but a question is, I did have a strong professional identity, and I thought maybe I would lose that entirely, and now who would I be? And I did not feel that way because I realized being a psychologist is the way I look at the world now. And so I'm not going to stop being a psychologist. I'm going to stop teaching psychology, but I'm not going to stop being a psychologist.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:31:45

That was a great comfort.

Wendy Green [: 00:31:47

What about your husband? Did he have trouble transitioning from the role of who he had been professionally?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:31:55

I don't think he had any difficulty at all either. He had planned to retire. He was ready. He had also loved his job, but he was ready to leave it. There comes a time when you feel like maybe it's time for younger people to pick up the mantle, whether you were in a leadership position or not. It's time to invest in that next generation of people who will take it forward. And I think we both sensed that. And I think he probably had a little bit more of a transition with figuring out what he was going to do with his retirement, because poetry wasn't going to be a full time advocation for him.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:32:44

But luckily, his brother was volunteering at the zoo. We have a wonderful botanical gardens with our zoo in Cincinnati, and he volunteered on the horticulture team. And Don also loved gardening, so he volunteered along with his brother at the Cincinnati zoo. So now what they do is, at least this is what Don does. He goes to the zoo one day a week to pick weeds at the zoo. And then he comes home and I'll say, we have weeds in our front yard, and he'll just laugh and that's the end of it. And the weeds are still there. But he loves picking weeds at the zoo.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:33:25

But they have beautiful garden and they also plant tulips and do all this. I mean, they've won awards. Their botanical gardens is gorgeous. So he picks weeds at the zoo.

Wendy Green [: 00:33:38

You got to have something to do to get out of bed. Four in the morning.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:33:42

That's it. You have to find your reason to get out of bed in the morning. There has to be something meaningful. I have a hard time believing that anybody is really happy in retirement sitting in a chair doing nothing. Yeah, I do.

Wendy Green [: 00:33:57

I would agree.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:33:59

Where are you getting your sense of satisfaction? That's at least what works for us.

Wendy Green [: 00:34:07

So did you ever get him to cook a meal for you while you were still working?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:34:13

A few times. Don't ask me how many hands I would have to use to count on because it wouldn't be very many. But, yes, occasionally, yes.

Wendy Green [: 00:34:23

Okay. Now what's next for you? The kids are going to get bigger. They are going to school.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:34:37

Yes. The two and a half year old already does two mornings a week at preschool. And that is a lot of fun because I can't wait for her to tell the stories my kids told when they were three and a little bit older, but they were three and went to preschool and learned all sorts of things. And she does come home with stories, but it's been a little bit of a transition from having her full days to having her just half a day. But the other one that we watch is ten months old, and so she's pretty much full time hands on. So, yeah, there will be those transitions and we're just going to roll with it. And I'm still going to write in my spare time. I have noticed.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:35:29

I'm not sure if this is temporary or not. I'll see.

Wendy Green [: 00:35:33

Okay.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:35:34

I have noticed. I do more serious writing now and a little less humor writing. I still love humor, and when something inspires me, I write it. But some of my inspiration came from interactions that I no longer have. For example, I wrote one essay about why I should retire, because when I was teaching full time, all the students would come during exam week and say their grandmothers died and they couldn't take the exam. And I started to think, maybe we, as faculty need to get out of the picture here, because all these dead nanas are on our heads. We're apparently killing all the grandparents. A lot of these grandparents did die multiple times.

Wendy Green [: 00:36:22

Multiple times, of course.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:36:23

Yeah. It was a terrible fate for them. Yes. They died many times, often quite gruesome. Always during exam week. Always during the exam week. And I wrote something funny about going to doctor visits that were embarrassing mammograms and colonoscopies. And I wrote something that actually did quite well about colonoscopy prep, because I.

Wendy Green [: 00:36:50

Remember reading that one well, and people.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:36:53

Who have had colonoscopies will read it and recognize and hopefully laugh about it. But I had another motive. My mother died of colon cancer. And I thought, if everybody can just laugh about the prep and laugh about the procedure, maybe they'll be more willing to go. That's a win in my book. Everybody should be doing routine screening. And if the way we get to encourage you is to make some jokes about how miserable the prep is and how nothing, the procedure is good. Go.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:37:30

You should go. It's preventable.

Wendy Green [: 00:37:32

Yeah. So your writing really has an undertone of trying to be helpful, even with its humor. And even as you're doing the serious writing, too, I think, right?

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:37:43

Yes. The serious writing comes more from, or is inspired more by stories that I somehow want to get off my heart. There's something that I think might contain, I hope might contain a lesson for somebody else. And I love that kind of writing. But I have the luxury, I'm not making a living at this. I have the luxury of writing when and what I am inspired to write. And thank God for that. It's a great source of satisfaction.

Wendy Green [: 00:38:18

I love your writing. So we're going to share your author page in a moment, but tell me, we called this husband underfoot. Surviving your husband's retirement. Give me two or three takeaways that would help somebody survive their husband's retirement or their own.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:38:40

So I think the takeaways are plan your retirement, if you possibly can, leave on your own terms and decide what you want to do. It might be travel, it might be volunteering. I hope it will be volunteering. It might be continuing your education, it might be taking care of the grandkids. But to ease the transition, plan it and do it on your timeline, if you possibly can. And then I would say give yourself the time and the space and the grace and give each other the grace to make the adjustment. It won't be automatic. Everybody goes through an initial period where they think they're on vacation.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:39:27

Hey, this is great. I don't have to no alarm clock. I don't have to wake up in the morning and then maybe feeling some loss or some grieving, whether it's for the friends you had at work, the type of work you did, the identity that you might feel a loss of because you're not there, whatever it might be. And then you move into more of a period of exploring. I can do this, that and the other. I'm going to make some plans about what I want to do in my retirement, but you have to give yourself the space and the grace to do that. Don't expect that what your retirement looks like two years out is going to be the same as what it looks like two weeks out. And then finally, I would say, don't rely on your spouse or any one person to meet all your needs.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:40:19

Keep your friend network close. And I think that's especially important for women because on average, women outlive men and we're going to rely on our friends. So invest in the relationships that you want to keep.

Wendy Green [: 00:40:42

Those are perfect. Spot on. I love, you know, I think I mentioned to you I use William Bridges'book transitions with some of the coaching work I do, and he talks about exactly those kinds of give yourself some time, give yourself some grace, explore and friends. So important.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:41:05

Thank you. Thank you so much. You're most welcome. Thank you for the invitation.

Wendy Green [: 00:41:10

Yeah, so Mary Kay's author page is at authory. It's authory.com/MaryKFlemming and I will put all of this in the show notes. She also graciously shared her email. This is her email at the university. So it's Mary.K.Fleming@msj.edu. So you can read her writings at the authory site.

Wendy Green [: 00:41:46

You can email her with questions. I love that we got so many great comments. People really have enjoyed this discussion today. You're beautiful. I really appreciate that you joined us today and I hope that anybody who listens later to the podcast or listens to the recording later will also leave us some comments and kudos and let us know how much that you enjoyed it and what some of your takeaways might be. That would be great. Great reminder about mycarelink360.Com/Ref/boomer.

Wendy Green [: 00:42:29

Go check out how you can help your loved ones stay connected to their family, friends, doctors, caregivers, whoever in a way that's really easy for them to use. Plus it has all other kinds of things like brain games and articles and music and things like that. So check it out, mycarelink360.com/ref/boomer and go sign up for the great global giveaway roadscholar.org/Heyboomer I mean, imagine if you won one of those seven trips. That would be so exciting. I signed up. So next week is my turn for a solo show, and I think what I'm going to talk about next week is the book the four agreements. If you haven't read it, it's by Don Miguel Ruiz and it's something that we've been talking about in the Boomer Banter group that I meet with monthly.

Wendy Green [: 00:43:32

And there's some really important discussion questions in the book in what he says are really the four things that we need to live a peaceful, useful, healthy life. And if you have questions for me that you'd like me to address on one of my solo episodes, go ahead and drop me an email at Wendy at hayboomer biz. I'd love to do an ask me anything episode. So whatever your questions might be, not that I would answer every single question, but there might be some good ones for an episode. And each episode of hey Boomer is an invitation to listen, learn and apply the wisdom gained from each episode to your own life. The path ahead may not always be easy, but it's traveled best with support and shared insights. Hey Boomer is produced by me, Wendy Green, and the music you heard at the beginning was written and performed by Griffin Honrado, a student at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and my grandson.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:44:49

Wow, that's wonderful.

Wendy Green [: 00:44:51

I love that. Thank you so much, Mary Kay. This has really been fun.

Mary Kay Fleming [: 00:44:57

You're most welcome. Thank you for the invitation.