Vital Presence - Shaping a new story

Author Christina Baldwin is a pioneer in the field of personal writing, a decades-long teacher of journal writing and story. In 2024, she released her debut novel, The Beekeeper's Question, Love and Honey, War and Reckoning, A Novel of WWII, a book I heartily recommend. We talk about a rich array of topics, including themes from the book, the relevance of a novel set during World War II to today, how Christina worked with a Native American advisor to make sure her story was appropriate and accurate, and the challenges and rewards of independent publishing.

Vicki Robin has been breaking ground throughout her career—now she's challenging how we think about aging with her Coming of Aging writings. We talk about the possibilities and paradoxes of aging. She challenged the stories of our times in 1992 with her seminal book written with Joe Dominguez, Your Money or Your Life, a book that challenged our obsessions with acquiring things rather than creating the time we need to live a rich life. She challenged us again with her book about eating locally with her book Blessing the Hands that Feed Us; Lessons from a 10-mile diet. She's a true social innovator, and has been active supporting her community on Whidbey Island, Washington.  

Chris Miller (CJ) is an entrepreneur, artist, writer, and speaker. He's a lifelong Spiritual learner who has spent the last 20 years examining the creative process and its relationship to spirituality. He's the author of the book, The Spiritual Artist and produces a podcast by the same name in which he interviews artists and spiritual thought leaders. In addition, CJ holds yearly Spiritual Art Retreats where consciousness and art-making combine.

Dr. Michael Williams is a Canadian-born storyteller who spent three decades living in Scotland, where he honed his skills as an oral storyteller. We talk about our mutual love of storytelling as we trace Michael's history as a contemporary bard, in Europe and Canada and his recent work with elders and hospice patients.

Dr. Clarissa Castillo-Ramsey brings artfulness together with leadership and helping people grow. She is an organizational psychologist, artist, coach, and author of the book: Painting Your Path: 21 Interviews with Extraordinary Women.

Francesca Aniballi, PhD, uses fairy tales as a transformative tool for adults. She combines her knowledge of expressive arts, literature, myth, and Celtic culture, to offer us a path toward self-insight—tapping the healing power of the imagination. 

younger? Author Sally Jean Fox made it her quest to discover what could bring heart and meaning to the second half of her life. She chronicles her story in her new memoir Meeting the Muse After Midlife: A Journey to Meaning, Creativity, and Joy. In this episode, she is joined by Dana Lynne Andersen, her friend, colleague, and teacher to explore what it means to follow an artful, transformative path into one's last decades. Dana Lynne Andersen is the Director of the Awakening Arts Academy in Assisi, Italy, where she offers courses and also leads a Transformative Arts Certification program, which Sally has taken. Sally Jean Fox is an author, coach, performer, and artist who writes about the search for meaning in the post-midlife years. She writes the Engaging Presence blog and hosts (with exceptions like this) the Vital Presence podcast. 

Legacy educator Merle Saferstein teaches the power of legacy journaling—capturing thoughts and memories that might be only for the writer's eyes but from which lessons might be shared with others.  For 48 years, Merle Saferstein journaled, amassing a collection of 380 journals. From there she distilled key passages into two books Living and Leaving My Legacy Vols. 1 & 2 and interspersed her writings with tips on how to begin legacy journaling. Prior to writing her books, Merle spent twenty-six years as a Holocaust educator helping hundreds of Holocaust survivors to share their legacies.  After retiring, she created Leaving Your Legacy®. Through classes, workshops, and lectures, she has guided thousands of people in sacred legacy work, writing for wellness, and journaling.

  Mik Kuhlman is an actor, physical theatre comedian, performance artist, theatre-maker, and teacher who has worked and taught globally. Building on her twenty-five years experience with original ensemble and solo theatre, she recently created a stunning outdoor performance and celebration of our connection with nature called, "The Standing Nation."  Merging science and feminist inspiration, she performs a piece of art and activism that will forever change how you see trees.  

Gretchen Staebler is an award-winning author in the Pacific Northwest who wrote a moving memoir about returning to her childhood home to care for her mother. It's a candid, complex, and well-crafted story that will be useful to anyone faced with providing end-of-life care or support for a family member. Gretchen also provides advice and support for caregivers at her website GretchenStaebler.com.  In this interview, she offers some of her top tips for caregivers while talking about her own writing journey and how she produced her first book after sixty.

Priscilla Long, Seattle-based author or Dancing with the Muse in Old Age, Minding the Muse, and The Writer's Portable Mentor takes us behind the scenes of her fascination with late in life creators. 

  Dana Lynne Andersen is a multimedia artist, writer, playwright, and teacher who has taught and exhibited on three continents. She is the founder of the Awakening Arts Academy, with programs in Assisi, Italy, and online. In this conversation, we explore the nature of the Transformative Arts Certification Program she offers—why it is so needed in the world and what it represents.

When her beloved husband took his life, and with it her life as she knew it, Suzanne Anderson faced a choice: would she be broken down and defeated, or broken open and transformed? Join this conversation about walking an unexpected path to a powerful outcome.

Executive and entrepreneur turned community builder and advocate for women in the 3rd act of life, Diana Place shares wisdom from her journey and the inspiration for the online 333 Collective she created.

When Debbie Weiss lost her husband of 30 years before she was 50, she learned life lessons that she has shared through her recent memoir Available As Is: A Midlife Widow's Search for Love.    We talk about the challenges of love, loss, midlife dating, and what it was to begin her writing career. after fifty. Debbie Weiss

Lois Holzman is a “ performance activist” who uses her academic background and experience to organize people—as individuals and communities—to participate in creating new development, hope and possibilities. Trained as a development psychologist, she gives new meaning to what it is to develop. Practicing “Non-knowing growing, ” she helps people ask questions, have interactions, and question assumptions in order to create new ways of becoming. Her tools include play, improv, and performance, and great, provocative questions.

Isidra Mencos' debut memoir Promenade of Desire—A Barcelona Memoir (October 2022, She Writes Press) is a sensual coming of age story tracing her journey from repressed Catholic virgin to seductive Mata Hari, as Spain transitioned from dictatorship to democracy. 

Alex Doman is in the business of learning, brain enhancement, and healing through the science-based applications of music and sound. He is a third-generation pioneer in sound healing, and his businesses, Advanced Brain Technology and Vital Neuro, build on the history of innovation begun by his father and grandfather. We talk about how to support brain health and thrive in times marked by rapid change as well as the aftermath of the pandemic. 

Margo Weinstein is a traveler, intrepid adventurer, class-action lawyer, and single mom. Educated at Yale College and Northwestern University School of Law, she became a partner in a multinational law firm, but that did not stop her from traveling to over eighty countries, moving with her young son to Shanghai and Bali, and discovering how to combine wanderlust and motherhood. Now at midlife, she looks to the road ahead. 

Juliet Bruce, PhD uses myth, storytelling, and expressive arts to help those struggling with hardship, trauma, and the challenges of living in these times. We discuss her upcoming book and how she uses story to change lives. 

How can we bring a community focus and reinvent the conversation about dementia care and the process of caring for the dying. Mary is on the faculty of the Eastside Institute in NYC.

Dana Lynne Andersen turned the tables in the interview to ask Sally about her creative life.

Dr. Joye Hardiman is a cultural activist who is showing us how to build a stronger tomorrow by learning from the artifacts and stories of the past. She is the producer (and star!) of Ancestral Art Works on YouTube. Joye has been an actress, a theatre director, scholar, writer,  university professor, community activist, world traveler, storyteller, and higher education architect. She was the Executive Director of The Tacoma campus of the Evergreen State College urban campus and a member of the faculty.

Multimedia and performance artist, and educator, Dana Lynne Anderson talk about her unique approach to unlocking our creative and consciousness through art.

PJean Storlie, author of Once Upon an Innovation talks about her new book and her own mid-life reinvention. 

Massad and Fridley, both Eastside Institute faculty, are changing the narrative around dementia with their "Joy of Dementia"  workshops. The workshops allow paritcipants impacted by dementia to play together, while challenging assumptions about how we work with people with dementia.

Conversation about how the author was able to let go of what was keeping her from finding enough and how she was able to find the joy of enoughness in community.

Sally Fox, head of this podcast, has the tables turned on her by Ellia Harris who interviews Sally about her book-in-progress Meeting the Muse after Midlife. They talk about creativity, moving beyond the myths of aging, and tapping the special Superpowers that can come win the 2nd half of life.

Tina Shattuck is a social entrepreneur who takes big ideas and then brings them down to earth in the community. She has founded two organizations focused on the empowerment of women and girls Working Mothers Revolution and Women Hold the Key. We talk about how she has developed her projects from a foundation, always, of community. She's currently working on an initiative to connect women of different ages, maid, mother, and matriarch, for the learning and betterment of all.

Dana Lynne Andersen, founder of Awakening Arts Academy of Art, Creativity, and Consciousness speaks on the importance of awakening our creative and artistic expression for our development and for the world.

Pat Samples is a author, coach, and teacher who has led clients and groups to rediscover the magic of the information living in their bodies. 

Why are elders needed in these troubled times? Michael Meade, internationally known author, storyteller and mythologists has addressed this question in his latest book: Awakening the Soul: A Deep Response to a Troubled World. We talk about his insights in this conversation about keeping the soul alive when the world is struggling.

Dr. Stevens-Long is the author of Living Well, Dying All: A guide to choices, costs, and consequences.   Judy is an expert in adult development and wrote the classic text on that subject, Adult Development, which is still in use today.   Judy brings her research background, curiosity, and a wealth of personal experience to the study of how we can prepare for death. With the large baby boomer population moving into their later years, preparing our systems for their care is critical. As individuals, we can prepare ourselves with knowledge to have the best death possible.

Nan Narboe is an author, therapist, and trainer who has created a tantalizing and compassionate collective portrait of what aging creatively can look like. What does the face of aging look like, especially among creatives? What might sixty, seventy, eighty or beyond look like? These were questions Nan Narboe asked as she began her compilation of stories from writers sharing their experiences in the second half of life: Aging.  

Lynn Jericho has studied the work of Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, economist, and esotericist Rudolf Steiner as well as other spiritual teachers, and puts these to work in her approach to coaching and in her online programs. 

Ann Hedreen is working on her second memoir, titled The Observant Doubter and talks about the writing path. She is the author of the memoir Her Beautiful Brain (She Writes Press, 2014). Ann and her husband Rustin Thompson own White Noise Productions and together have made more than 100 documentary films, including Quick Brown Fox: an Alzheimer’s Story.

Kathyrn Carole Ellison is about to publish her ninth book of poetry–at age 80. She writes to send a message of hope to the world and distill lessons to share from the richness and challenges she encountered in  a long life, well lived.

Jand Howard lives in Hawaii where she personally experienced the devastation of the Leilani Estates by the volcanic eruption in 2018. Jane is an artist, environmentalist, educator and eco-tour leader who could be a role model for resilience.

Dr. Carol Orsborn is the best-selling author of 30 books including the book she wrote with Dr. Robert Weber Consciously Aging: The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker’s Guide to Growing Older which won a 2015 Gold Nautilus Book Award winner in the category of Consciously Aging. She recently published a novel: Angelica's Last Breath.

Dr. Harry "Rick" Moddy has been a leader in the field of conscious aging, through his senior positions, books and articles, talks and wisdom. He explores some of the possibilities and challenges behind this exciting stage of life.

Ellia Harris shares ideas about how to declutter and organize in a mindful way that supports our thriving as we age.

Patricia Hunt-Perry has had a remarkable life. She's worked with many of the world's spiritual luminaries, hosted her own radio and PBS series introduced innovative courses in a university setting and been a Dharma teacher.  Now in her eighth decade, she shares some of her wisdom. 

Maria Genné is a dancer, choreographer, and educator who has created amazing programs that bring people together across generations to interact through dance, music and story. She helps older adults tap into their creativity and joy through the arts. Her organization, Kairos Alive, is a performing and participatory dance, music, and theatre arts organization,  led by a core group of professional artists who work collaboratively, across arts disciplines and across generations.

Activist and author Kit Bakke didn't start writing seriously until after 50 when the events of 9-11 motivated her to start. She talks about her first book, Miss Alcott's E-mail, her recent book Protest on Trial and how dissent is so important to a democracy.

Painter, writer, and Sage-ing facilitator Anne Boynton talks about infusing more creativity into your life in your 3rd Act, or any age.

Author and Sage-ing facilitator Ina Albert talks about how we can counter ageism to choose a more empowering path to aging.

Rachael Freed is an author, workshop leader and expert in the area of writing your legacy. She shows us how we can find personal fulfillment as we age and bring joy to others by writing legacy letters and giving blessings.

  John C. Robinson is a clinical psychologist with a second doctorate in ministry. He’s an ordained interfaith minister and the author of nine books and numerous articles on Aging, examining its psychology, spirituality and mystical dimensions. He speaks at Conscious Aging Conferences across the country.

Marilyn Paul, Author of An Oasis in Time describes the benefits of taking a rest day off a week. 

Christine McHugh, videographer and director, shares a story of making a legacy documentary with a powerful twist at the end.