Nov 29

Nov 29 Meet the Authors! | S7 E04

When do you turn to books? Sometimes for escape (mysteries, anyone), sometimes for the joys of fine literature (“Matrix” by Lauren Goff or “Haiku Mind” by Patricia Donegan), and yet at other times for knowledgeable counsel. In this episode, two badass women authors talk with us about the recent books that their life experience led them to write and share with others. In Why Are There Monkeys? radio personality, comedian and cancer survivor Brooke Jones, 70, captures her near death, laugh-out-loud “Question and Answer” session with God. Executive coach Bonnie Marcus, 72, draws on her 25-year corporate career to write Not Done Yet! a defiant guide to navigating gendered ageism in the workplace for women over 50. Curious about what they have to say about the divine and the workplace? We were. Listen in to what we heard.

+ TRANSCRIPT

Introduction

Joanne and Idelisse: Welcome to Two Old Bitches. I'm Idelisse Malave and I'm Joanne Sandler. And we're Two Old Bitches! We're interviewing our women friends and women who could be our friends. Listen, as they share stories about how they reinvent themselves.

Uh, hello, Joanne, it is wonderful to gather with you around the microphone. It is because this is a very different episode than previous episodes.

It's unlike, I think any other episode we've ever done and we have different types of episodes, but this this is a new kind of episode. And it's a new kind of episode because well, for a variety of reasons, but this episode kind of takes me back to the Two Old Bitches origin story, because when we started Two Old Bitches, we didn't intend to start a podcast.

Joanne: We were talking about our lives in our kind of late-ish sixties when we had left quote-unquote full-time job jobs and were doing consulting and also exploring other things, just out of curiosity and how women of our age and somewhat circumstance got to live these amazing lives.

Idelisse: And it was, I think about our own curiosity about this next phase in our life, and also about other women, how were they navigating this phase in their life?

Joanne and Idelisse: And wouldn't it be great, we thought to write a book, but then we meet with an agent, your friend Ann Marie, and we said, what do we have to do to write that book? And then we realized that we didn't want to do those things, but we really like to talk to people. So we would start a podcast, right? Because writing a book is a lot of work we thought back then, and a podcast would be less work.

Yes. Maybe not. It's not. And we're not giving up the writing the book idea. Although now we have decided to start a blog for some of the same reasons. Right?

Idelisse: Exactly. We want to share it and we want to share it in writing, which is a different medium and you approach it differently and is accessible in a different way.

So who knows? We may yet write that book.

Joanne: It's possible in the question it raises is about this moment in life. And in many women's lives that we've met. And two women in particular, who we're going to talk about very soon, where you have this idea that you have some type of wisdom that you've gained some type of experience or seen something or understood something in a way that you want to share with other people.

Idelisse: There is a desire, not to proselytize, but almost, right? And it's not necessarily prescriptive, but it can take many forms. And we were talking about books throughout the course of our lives, right. That had influenced us because they presented new ideas, different possibilities about how to live. Um, and some of them were more profound than others.

Joanne: Some of them were somewhat, as you said ridiculous. So yours, for instance.

Idelisse: So one of the books that came to mind for me, it was a book called The Game of Life where basically was, I think, written in the thirties. And it was really one of those kinds of magical books and the whole idea was if you live into your aspirations, if you want to be rich and you act as if you were rich, then you will be rich.

Now what this meant for me is...

Joanne: ...You acted rich? Which is why you dress the way you do!

Idelisse: And I probably would have had more money for retirement. It's a good thing I decided not to retire if I hadn't done that. But it was a ridiculous book in some ways, but it, it was like I was a lawyer and so intellectual and all of these things. And for someone, a friend to introduce this idea, oh, you know, magic, you could just act as if, and it will happen was fascinating, but there were others. You had some very serious ones.

Joanne: It met your moment. It met your moment for me. And that was in your twenties, right?

Idelisse: Yes. No, that was in my thirties.

Joanne: That was in your thirties.

Idelisse: Early thirties.

Joanne: Right. And for me in my twenties, I remember meeting Ingrid Bengis' Combat in the Erogenous Zone, which totally turned my life around.

Now that I think that book is out of print now, but it was just the idea that, you know, I was in control of my own vagina and that other people were always trying to stake that territory, claim that real estate. When it was mine. Very simple, very simple idea of not a how to book, right. But it just completely flipped.

Idelisse: It reframed, it reframed? And for me in my early twenties and we were in our early twenties at about the same time, it was not a book that I look back now on and say, oh, what a wonderful book. But at the time, as you said, it met the moment was Germaine Greer Female Eunuch. And it was 1970. I was back from Puerto Rico, back in New York, you know, ready to, and it was, it did it sort of, it was a reframe.

Yes. That's what I am. I'm a feminist. Oh my God. Who knew?

Joanne: And unlike us, those books don't always age well. If our listeners have books that really changed or shaped their lives. We'd love know about them, so please contact us.

Idelisse: We'll happily complile the list if you'll let us know what books mattered to you in, in, in your life.

Joanne: So that's what's interesting in this moment is that now that we're approaching our seventh season, what happens for us is that people contact us, women contact us largely, right?

Idelisse: Not only are we coming around to the possibility of writing again, with the blog, but we are, people are reaching out. Agents are reaching out, PR professionals are reaching out and saying, oh, would you like to have so and so on your podcast?

Joanne: Amazing. And so Bonnie Marcus, who you're going to hear from, and Brooke Jones, who you're also going to hear from, are two women who reached out to us who have been inspired exactly in the way we were talking, right.

Idelisse: Who have a message that they want to get out, who have something they want to share with, I think primarily women, but maybe broader in, in Brooke's case. And they are the authors and I think their PR people may have reached out to us. And I think they were among the first then. So of course our response, we were so thrilled. Somebody wanted to asking to be on our show that we said yes. But I think we also wanted to give them a hand.

Joanne: Yeah. And also to learn about what they were interested in.

Joanne and Idelisse: And so we're going to start with Brooke Jones who, because they're very different from each other. We've said that, right. And their books are very different, very different. You know, Bonnie's more, a kind of book that is about like how to become and how to, how to navigate right agism in the workplace. Brooke, whose book is called, Why Are There Monkeys? Very different.

Joanne: Yes, really more about something that happened to her that stayed with her for many years and that ultimately she sat down to share the wisdom and insights that she acquired in the moment of a near death experience.

Who is Brooke Jones?

Brooke: I'm aging, gypsy crone. I'm a breast cancer warrior and former Los Angeles and San Francisco radio personality and political satirist. I'm a mother of a beautiful daughter, Kristen.

I have had a host of angels living on my shoulder, literally since the moment I was born, not sure which of those is true. One of them must be, cause I'm still here. What brought me to my divine experience. I was 25 and very, very, very stupid. Now I'm 70 and probably even more stupid, but that's another story.

A couple of friends came over and said, hey, let's try this. And this was a drug and I overdosed and I was very dead for eight long minutes. One of the two people was a medical person. So yeah, there was no phone in my, in my apartment, so they couldn't call anybody. They didn't really want to, because drugs were involved.

So they did everything they could think of to bring me back and nothing worked. And in those eight minutes, Earth time. I was standing at the front door, having the question and answer session with God and eight minutes here is not the same as there, because of there, there, there is no time. So in heavenly time it could have been an eternity.

It could have been a second. I don't know, but on Earth time, it was eight minutes. And because I didn't even believe in God at the time that it happened, the first startling lesson for me was, oh my God. God is real. Wow. And the next startling thing I learned was God has a sense of humor. So, I don't know why that surprised me really, because have you ever seen a Platypus or a desert rain frog or a blog?

Obviously whoever made those has a sense of humor and he laughs, he loves to laugh.

I asked if I could ask questions and he said, yes, and so I asked every question I could think of. And I was probably helped by the fact that a lot of nights when I was in college, when I should've been studying and my friends should've been studying, we would sit around and have rep sessions. I'm sure you remember rep sessions and the most common subject would be, if you could meet God, what would you say?

And I spent so long doing that with my friends, that there was finally meeting God and oh wow. Now I get to ask all those questions. So I sort of had a storage capacity of questions that I just sort of went okay, here we go. I wanted to know everything I want to know who killed John Kennedy. I wanted to know how dolphins manage to not drown when they sleep.

I wanted to know everything and anything, but I figured if I am going to be asking questions of the ultimate answer, man, I should probably make them be really good questions.

Um, I grabbed my notebook and I wrote down every single word of the encounter. Every question I asked and every answer he gave me, then I put it aside and I started to figure out how it was going to live my life. And many years later when I was starting to actually get a handle on all of this, and I think I understood it, and I think I understood what my purpose was, I decided to put this into a stage play since it was all question, answer, question, answer it, read like a stage play. So I did a one woman show in Los Angeles with a voice-over actor friend of mine, who's got the deepest, most beautiful voice, and, and when I asked him to do this, he said, oh, I waited all my life for a woman to call me God.

So we did the show. We did one show that was 1996 at the comedy store in Los Angeles.

I went to Eugene, Oregon to visit some friends and I just planned to visit and then go somewhere else. But, you know, I forgot to leave, I guess. Um, so I figured while I'm here, I'm going to take this stage play and turn it into a book because I think people need to know this. I think people need to read this and I started writing it and then I was diagnosed with cancer and that sort of put a hold on, everything in my life.

And my battle with cancer was really long and really unpleasant. And then finally I was able to finish writing the book and prayed about it the whole time. If I, if this is what I'm supposed to do, help me do it, please. And so it was just published and now I think I'm pretty sure that I didn't come back with a mission from God that that's the Blues Brothers had a mission from God.

I think I was given a divine responsibility and that responsibility is to write the book, have the book published and then do everything in my power to have millions and millions of people read this book.

And a lot of baby boomers have written to me to say that they know, we all know, we're living in what's probably the last chapter of our lives, this life anyway. And a lot of us are terrified about is, is this all there is and what is on the other side? It's kind of scary not knowing. And they've read this book and they've written to me and said, I used to be terrified of what comes next and the thought that all of this that I've done is the only purpose in my life and it just doesn't make any sense. And after I read your book, I realized that I have nothing to fear about what's coming next.

Idelisse: Aging is the topic of Bonnie Marcus's book, not done yet. And very specifically though, about aging in the workplace and how women can avoid the marginalization that often happens as we get older, how we can stay relevant and powerful in the workplace, I think primarily with a focus on more corporate types of workplaces, but still about aging.

Who is Bonnie Marcus?

Bonnie: I think it's taken me awhile to own the title of bad-ass or bitch, you know, throughout my life and career I've had moments where I was, I definitely owned being a badass. And then as life would present certain challenges, I'd kind of retreat a little bit and play it smaller. But now I'm like, you know, why not just own it and live it and give it all.

Idelisse: And is that something that you think has come with age?

Bonnie: You know, that's a good question because I think for women, um, our age, it can go in either direction. It can be I'm owning it and I feel powerful and I just don't give a damn and I'm going to say what I think and learn to say no and you know, and all that.

And then there, the women who retreat. Who feel apologetic about their age, who don't really own their experience and their talent and their wisdom. So, uh, I think with me, it has definitely come with age and experience.

Joanne: So you've written a number of books. What was the motivation behind the last one?

Bonnie: The motivation behind the politics of promotion was to help women understand the importance of paying attention to the culture of the office politics, to not believe in the myth of the meritocracy that your work alone is going to help you get ahead. Uh, and you know, when I interviewed women about, about the topic of office politics it was like opening up this emotional can of worms, where women are like, it's evil, it's bad karma, it's a waste of time.

The politics of promotion provides a toolkit for women to learn how to advocate for themselves, how to build a strategic network, do the things they need to do to, to thrive in the workplace. And many of the things that I talk about and not done yet, are a bit of a refresher, but more than that it's building the awareness that because you're showing visible signs of aging, you are now much more vulnerable to being pushed out. So you need to pay more attention to the types of things that perhaps you should be doing your whole career and maybe you haven't, but you better do it now because you are more vulnerable.

I think that we, for, for a lot of reasons become disconnected with the value that we bring to our work to society and figuring out that value proposition really grounds you and gives you the confidence that you can really make a difference. It helps you to build influence to advocate for yourself to help your manager, your team, your organization, um, reach its objectives. Uh, and because we become disconnected and we don't really understand that, um, we can't powerfully position ourselves as somebody who can make a difference who deserves to be at the table. And there are many reasons why uh, limiting beliefs will hold us back from doing that. And, and I, you know, I talk about, there are two different types of barriers that women face.

Some of the, the external barriers are, what, what is there in the workplace that we have little control over changing, you know, gender bias still exists. We're not paid equally. We lack the opportunities for sponsorship for, for advancement. Um, those kinds of things are slowly changing their systemic. But learning how to navigate learning how to recognize what those are is certainly important, but the other type of barrier are our own internal barriers, where we keep ourselves small, where we hold ourselves back and that limits our ability to then position ourselves successfully.

There's a lot of attention uh, within businesses that, you know, as part of a diversity equity inclusion initiatives, gender is definitely included and it's included in unconscious bias training. You know, how successful that is? I think, you know, you know, only time will tell there's still a lot of work to be done.

Uh age-ism however, Is not on anybody's radar, gendered age-ism specifically is, is just not, it totally on, uh, you know, not there. If you look at companies and their DEI initiatives, it's rare that age-ism is, is addressed, but especially gendered age-ism, not at all. And that was one reason why I wanted to write this book was to build more awareness because it is so important of an issue for women. It affects our job security, our financials status, and, um, I don't think that society in general understands the negative impact on women.

I have to confess, as I was writing this book, I realized how ageist I am. Um, you know, we all hold ageist beliefs and those beliefs really influenced the way we interact, the way we show up.

So I think, uh, the first step for all of us is to understand, well, what are some of these beliefs that we hold. And then it it's appropriate to call it out or address it when we also see it, you know, when other people say demeaning remarks or push us aside. I think in terms of what the workplace can do, that's a great place for, for leaders to begin to take an assessment of what ageist and gender age-ism you know, they, they hold. And how is that affecting the policies and the practices in their particular company and environment?

Joanne: So you've just heard Bonnie's call to action. Brooke Jones' call to action is don't be terrified of what's next, it's coming. You're ready. You can listen to words of inspiration and get ready to deal with whatever comes your way.

Idelisse: And change is coming. Change is always coming.

Joanne: It's coming and oh, I meant to mention as well that Brooke is also a comedian and her book is Why are there Monkeys? And there are lots of ways to interact with her online.

Idelisse: And Bonnie Marcus's current book is not done yet. She has an earlier book called The Politics of Promotion and she is a working executive coach. And Bonnie also has a podcast and it's called Badass Women at Any Age.

Joanne: So there are a lot of way to find out more about both Brooke Jones and Bonnie Marcus. And there are going to be many more ways also of interacting with us.

Joanne and Idelisse: Just to remind you once again, we are launching a Two Old Bitches blog. Please take a look. You can look at it on Medium, as well as on our website. And please let us hear from you. You can write to us by clicking contact off our website or connect with us on social media. And remember that we did ask if there are books that made a difference to you in your life, we'd love to hear what they are. We also want to ask you if you're listening on one of the podcasts platforms like Apple, Spotify, subscribe to Two Old Bitches.

Thanks for listening.