For some of us, getting older follows a specific pattern that includes marriage, children, career advancement, and retirement. But what if some or all of those things don’t happen? What does aging look like then?
This week, Lara and Rowan sit down with Julie Broczkowski, a psychotherapist who, in many respects, has defied the standard approach to getting older.
After listening to some of our previous podcast chats about aging, Julie had some things to say. We’re glad she said them, and we think you will be, too. There is no one way to age. Isn’t that the best news?
Who is Julie?
Julie Broczkowski is an introvert, a cat person, and psychotherapist (which is her third career) and she loves to read and walk in the woods. She describes herself as “non-standard in many different directions”, which has definitely affected how she perceives aging. When we said on the first aging podcast that we might do more, she immediately messaged us, volunteering to talk about it.
Links
Unboxing It episode on Fairness
Unboxing It episode on adulting
Transcript
(please note that these are not carefully edited and may have some errors)
[00:00:00] Julie: it is hard to step off because when people have these really strong expectations of how you’re gonna be. it can feel really hard and you fear that rejection, you fear that rejection so much. But I think the more marginalized we become, the more different we are than people on the track, the more we’re able to see the wider picture. Welcome to unboxing it. I’m Lara.
[00:00:47] Rowan: And I’m Rowan,
and as previously promised, we are going to talk some more about aging, which other than like how cool I think brains are is obviously my new favorite topic. How getting older isn’t so bad. Maybe just to comfort myself, but that’s okay.
I’m with you on that one.
[00:01:07] Lara: Right?
[00:01:08] Rowan: Yeah, I’m getting older too.
[00:01:09] Lara: Well, we’re doing it together. And I also would say that it’s one of the things that I hear back from other people about like, oh, I have something to say about that. I have something to add to this conversation because I think it’s such a big topic.
And we all have feelings about it. And I think we’re starting to understand that we don’t need to have some of the feelings we used to have. So when we did our very first episode about aging, I think we said, Hey, we wanna do this more. If anybody has thoughts, let us know. And my friend Julie, who is on the podcast with us today, and I’m gonna formally introduce her in a minute, almost immediately, was like, I have things to say.
And I was like, and I wanna hear them. Julie and I have been friends for longer than I ever can remember, 15 years maybe. We met on Twitter back in the day when I enjoyed Twitter, and we became real life friends. She only lived like a. 10 minute walk from me at the time, which is one of the beautiful things about the internet.
You can make real life friends, and she is somebody who I have learned a lot from over the years because she’s opened my eyes to new ways of thinking in so many different areas. And so I’m always excited to hear her point of view and to just talk to her. So welcome, Julie. I’m so glad you’re here.
[00:02:33] Julie: So glad to be here.
[00:02:34] Lara: I will now do the formal reading, the bio part so everybody can find out a bit more about you. Julie Broczkowski is an introvert, a cat person, and psychotherapist, which is her third career, she loves to read and walk in the woods. She describes herself as non-standard in many different directions, which has definitely affected how she perceives aging.
[00:02:56] Lara: welcome Julie. I’m so glad to have you here. You did immediately talk to me about wanting to say more. And I think it’s because you’ve had a lot of experiences and thoughts about this topic. What was the thing that first made you think, oh, let’s talk about this.
[00:03:15] Julie: Well, it was sort of that non-standard thing because when you guys had talked about aging, had sort of gone through all the milestones that I would say average or.
I guess typical people go through and I had not gone through a lot of them, so while it resonated with me in some ways, in a lot of ways it didn’t. So I kind of wanted to talk about those differences and those people on the margins of the social contract of aging and the ways that it is maybe more in control.
By us than we think it’s that we don’t necessarily have to go through all those milestones
[00:03:55] Lara: I love that because I think that there are a lot of people, including me, who sort of just trucked along doing a lot of the things in the order we were supposed to do them, and then I kind of got off the path.
But there are a lot of people who. Don’t do that all along. And there are people who I think might wish they could have done things differently but didn’t think they could. And so having the conversation from all the different directions and just opening up people’s eyes to what is possible and what you can actually do.
I think there’s the, you can do that thing that comes up sometimes for people and
you don’t know what you don’t know
[00:04:32] Julie: exactly.
Yeah, I think that a lot of these milestones that we hit, getting married, having kids empty nest, having grandchildren, you know, all those things sort of define how a lot of people choose to live their lives.
I’m married now, I have to act like this. I’m a mom now, or a dad now I have to act like this. I can’t do these things anymore. I have to grow up. But I also can’t do the things ahead of time. You know, if you’re in your twenties and you’re knitting, it’s like, oh, I’m in my grandma ears. This is such a grandma thing to do. It’s like, no, you’re someone in your twenties. You’re doing it. It’s a twenties thing to do. That’s how I feel. ‘cause I mean, I did get married, I got married actually a lot younger than a lot of my peers. And there are things in that , that differentiated me from them.
I grew up in a small place. When I moved to the city, I had already been married for a few years and all of my peers in the city were not. I got married when I was 24. My peers were getting married when they were 29, 30, that kind of thing. And something as simple as geography can change the way that we moved through these things.
[00:05:42] Julie: I didn’t have kids so I didn’t go through that young mom stage. And then the empty nest stage and then the grandparent stage, you know, these are all things that just kind of, went by on the other track for me. Where they are so fundamental to how people think of themselves, how people define themselves, and how people choose to act.
Like I say, you know, once you get to be a mom, you can’t, do X... I don’t know, post thirst traps on the internet, just as an example. You know, there’s things like that. So, there’s all these things that I didn’t necessarily feel the pressure of. and the other thing is that for the past 10 years I’ve been going to university part-time and full-time.
I did two degrees. And so most of the people that I have spent time with over the last 10 years have been younger than me, including most of the professors and oftentimes significantly younger than me, like 30 or more years younger than me. And we were peers. So I learned all the lingo, I know all the internet memes, you know, I’m constantly explaining these to people my age.
what on earth is that? It’s like, oh, oh, I know, yeah. It’s just the, idea that you can place yourself in different areas along the spectrum. You don’t have to follow the track.
[00:07:02] Rowan: I think anytime we disrupt
the norm, if you will, it can really throw us into this sort of identity crisis for some of us.
for me, my ex and I had a baby when I was 20 years old. and suddenly I’m a new parent. At 20 to this child, I’m still a child in a lot of ways, and now I’m looking after a child. And if you had taken us back, you know. A hundred years, 200 years, that’d be very normal to have a child at that age there’s a reason that 20 year olds can go party all night and then get up for work the next day because they have the stamina to also be up all night with a newborn and still function and feed themselves and their families the next day.
So, had that component, but it also was really strange because none of my friends had children. A lot of the people who had children were significantly older than me and then couldn’t really relate to me because I was so young. We bought our first house when I was 22 years old, and now we’re living in a new sub development with all these people who are.
10 years older than us, probably at the youngest, a lot of them. And so we didn’t really know our neighbors very well. And so the minute that you put yourself in that situation where I’m not doing the thing that other people my age are doing, whether that’s significantly younger or significantly older, it really does throw off that social contract.
And then you have to. Find out what that means to you and how to make it work.
[00:08:43] Julie: Yeah, you definitely get some static from the people who are on the track, and I think, especially from the people who are on the track and are not super happy on the track, you know.
[00:08:53] Rowan: Well, let’s go into that a little bit.
what do you mean by that?
[00:08:56] Julie: I think that there are people who don’t think a lot about these things and just do what they feel like they’re supposed to do. What everyone their age is doing, what other people expect them to do.
I mean, that’s another big thing is that we put these expectations on people of what they should be acting like. And my favorite absolutely non-important example of this is once I turned 40, I started getting so many scarves as gifts. I don’t wear scarves, but apparently that’s the appropriate gift for a 40-year-old lady.
[00:09:36] Lara: I’m really glad nobody thought that about me ‘cause I also do not wear scarves.
[00:09:40] Rowan: Oh, I got a lot of scarves too, around that age before transition. People got me so many scarves. Now they get me ties, which, I mean, I like ties, but how often am I gonna wear one? So I have a closet full of ties. I have like 30 ties.
I wear one like once a year.
[00:09:58] Julie: So yeah. So there’s this expectation that we should follow along and. I think a lot of people just do that without thinking about what they really want. So I think a lot of people walk around not thinking about what they really want. They think about what’s easiest, what’s expected of them, what’s acceptable.
they just do the thing that seems easiest at the moment, but then you get into it and you marry the person that you happen to be dating when you’re 26 years old. Who is maybe not the person that you really want to marry, but all your friends are getting married and people are saying, oh, when are you getting married?
And you’re dating this person and they’re perfectly nice and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t marry them. Like no big red flags. So you marry them and you do the thing that all your friends do, and then you find out that it’s like, yeah, maybe I don’t wanna live with this person for the next 60 years of my life.
Then it’s a failure, you know, again, viewed by society. But society made you do it in the first place because you didn’t listen to yourself. And I think the people who end up in that situation are often the people that push back against those of us who don’t follow the track the most because they want us on the track.
Because if we chose to get off the track. They could have too, and they didn’t.
[00:11:21] Lara: Yeah. If I had to do it this way, why don’t you have to do it this way? That’s not fair. If I had to go into the office every day, why do you get to work from home? Go to the office? Like, there’s so many examples of that.
[00:11:36] Julie: Yeah.
and when those are people that you love and you care about and , you care about their acceptance. It’s not always the easiest calculation to make. And you know, I have empathy for it, but it’s also,
in some ways they did it the easy way and I did it the hard way.
‘cause, I mean, in the end it turned out I could not have children. But I knew when I was eight years old, I did not wanna have children. and I never changed my mind. You know, that was 45 years ago. I still haven’t changed my mind. And the static, you know, one of the best things about being in my fifties that nobody asks me that anymore.
When I was in my thirties, that was like the first question, do you have kids? No. When are you gonna have some?
[00:12:21] Rowan: They would just go right out and ask you when are you going to have some?
[00:12:25] Julie: , Maybe not quite that bluntly, but I mean, I know a lot of people, English isn’t their first language and sometimes they just come out with things like that.
But yeah, some people would be like, oh, I bet your parents would make really great grandparents things like that.
[00:12:39] Rowan: Oh my God.
Wow. Wow. , But people do that for everything. Like, before my middle child transitioned, and before we adopted our daughter who we adopted, when she was a teenager, we had what the world saw and like what I thought was three boys.
And even after one boy, but especially after two or three, the amount of people who would say to me, are you gonna try for a girl? Are you trying for a girl? Oh, I bet you would love a daughter, wouldn’t you? Right. It was the weirdest thing to me because it’s like. Do you not think? I’m just grateful to have kids.
Like I wanted kids. Now I have kids. I don’t care what their gender is, but, this is the social contract. And when people have one boy and one girl, people go, oh, that’s the perfect family. Why? Why is that the perfect family? So yeah, this is the standard that we all hold each other to.
And I have heard from other friends who are childless largely by choice and some who simply cannot have children and wanted them, that have to endure this type of questioning that you’ve had to endure. It must be really. Challenging to feel. I don’t wanna presume how you have felt.
Some of my friends have described as feeling like they have to get defensive about it, and, and there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to have children or not having children.
[00:14:06] Julie: Yeah. And some people can get really pushy with it. Like, I had a friend of my husband’s when, all his friends except for one, have kids.
And so, you know, we’re all together at a barbecue or whatever, and I’m, playing with the babies, and they’re like, oh, Julie, you’re so good with the babies. And I’m like, this is 20 minutes and I haven’t even changed a diaper and I got nine hours of sleep last night. So this is not the evidence you think it is.
but yeah, it did get wearing and did get defensive about it sometimes and in the end, for medical reasons, I had a hysterectomy when I was 33 and it became a lot easier after that. ‘cause as soon as you say that, everybody feels sorry for you and they shut up and they don’t push it, which still didn’t sit right with me.
But it was easier than fighting with, my parents’ friends from 40 years ago, you know, that they went to high school with, or whoever was being pushy about it at that moment,
So as soon as I said that, they’re like, oh, okay. You know, I’m not gonna be pushy about this.
She can’t help it, which is not true, but it was easier because that is one of the allowable exits off the track.
[00:15:14] Lara: Which comes to that non-standard piece that we’re talking about. It’s whenever we decide or desire something nonstandard, there’s probably gonna be some pushback and that comes in so many different stages of life.
It comes in so many different ages of life, and we all get to decide what we want, when we want it. And like, that’s it.
[00:15:37] Julie: That’s a big,blasphemous statement to some people.
[00:15:40] Lara: It is,
[00:15:41] Julie: you know, that really, they can’t deal.
And I think, Lara, you’re right when you said that they feel like, well, I had to do that. What do you mean I didn’t have to do that? as a psychologist, I will say that. People admitting that they were wrong is one of the hardest things people will do. So much mental gymnastics to not admit that they made a mistake.
And , having a child is not necessarily a mistake, but it’s also not something that they would have. Chosen in their heart of hearts without all this societal pressure, so it becomes easier to double down and triple down. You know that joke about where the parent says, it’s like, oh, having kids is so rough.
You should definitely do it.
It reminds me of that thing where it’s like, this smells terrible here. You smell it.
[00:16:33] Lara: And while it’s a slight tangent, from aging, sort of, I think just the discussion about the children question is a good one.
We did an episode not that long ago , Rowan and I gave our 2 cents about whether or not it’s fine to not want children, but as two people with children, knew we wanted to at some point have a conversation, and this isn’t a whole episode, but with people, who didn’t have children, because that is a different perspective.
But I think understanding, like, yeah, I didn’t wanna have children. That’s it. I didn’t wanna have children, and people don’t need to try to convince people that they’re going to regret it if they don’t. And so I’m glad we touched on that a little bit.
[00:17:13] Julie: Yeah. And. Like I said, the first time I really had the conscious thought that I did not wanna have children, I was seven or eight years old, is when my mother was pregnant with my brother, and
[00:17:23] Lara: That looks terrible!
[00:17:25] Julie: Yes. I had zero interest. Like, I did not care. And everybody else was like, oh, you’re gonna get a little brother, and I’m like, mm-hmm.
And you know, it seemed awful. Like I can remember that he was born in March and we went skating that winter and my mom couldn’t go skating ‘cause she was like seven, eight months pregnant. And I thought that was so sad for her. It’s like all these things that pregnant people can’t do. And I mean, my own birth.
Was a horror story. My mother was in labor with me for like 54 hours or something and it’s like, no, like I always had like this physical revulsion against pregnancy, like zero interest and that still continues. I still think it’s really weird. I don’t like touching pregnant people’s bellies.
That seems terrible to me. You
know, I, no,
[00:18:18] Rowan: And that’s okay.
[00:18:20] Julie: Yeah. feeling that way. I should absolutely not be a person who has children.
[00:18:25] Rowan: Right. Exactly. And I mean, like, when I was younger, I think because our first baby was an oops baby. Now, of course we had options, but we decided, my ex and I together, that we wanted to have this baby.
And I have no regrets about that. He’s a fantastic human being. and we went on to have more children, which is what I wanted as well. And it was really hard. We had a really hard time as parents in some ways, but also we’ve. Produce these amazing humans, and I’m so proud and I love watching them grow up.
So it’s all good. But there was a time in my life where I got defensive. When I saw people who were very proudly childless by choice, and it was very easy for me to label people, selfish, you know, very easy for me to label people, as lazy , you know, as immature. And that was in my twenties, right?
Because I was really trying to justify my own decisions to myself and I didn’t feel secure in them, and so. It was much easier to project that on someone like you, Julie, rather than look inward and really examine my own feelings about that. That takes some maturity. That took me a little while, and I think I read something recently that said only about 10% of people are truly self-aware, and, you would know this more than I would, so please correct me if I’m wrong, and that out of that only a certain percentage of people will actually go.
choose to work on themselves, and push outta that comfort zone. So it’s like, it took me a long time to get there, but I think age, no matter how you arrive, whether you have children or not. Bringing it back to age now, ‘cause we’ve talked about kids a lot, but I think aging. With it brings to me, I felt, has brought me a great deal of wisdom and I look back on where I was before and I go, Eugh.
But you know, like, oh wow, I had some growing to do. I know I’m gonna look back on where I am now in five years ago. Ooh, yeah, I had some growing to do, right? Because it has been consistently that way my entire life. I don’t think that you need to. Have gone through the typical steps that society lays out for you in order to grow as a person.
And in fact, I would say that if you subscribed to certain ways of living that you didn’t really want deep down. It can leave you quite stuck and then you wouldn’t grow in a way that maybe if you had just allowed yourself to be who you are and step off the treadmill if you will, and walk on the grass beside it.
That would facilitate that growth?
[00:21:11] Julie: Yeah. I think sometimes people think that they have to go all the way back to where they made the choice. And of course time is linear and ever moving forward. So we can really never go back to where we made that choice and they don’t feel like they can just step off.
And it is hard to step off because when people have these really strong expectations of how you’re gonna be. it can feel really hard and you fear that rejection, you fear that rejection so much. But I think the more marginalized we become, the more different we are than people on the track, the more we’re able to see the wider picture.
‘ cause when you’re on the track, all you can see is the track. Especially when most people are on it with you, but as soon as you step off the track, you get to see all the way around and you become more open, like you said, Rowan, about being more open to people who don’t have children and why they might not, as you become more aware of people who are in that situation who have chosen that situation.
And see them as equivalents rather than, somebody different than you. You can imagine, maybe there was, an alternate dimension where I didn’t have children. This is a possibility. Seeing the possibilities is a big part of it, and I think the more marginalized you become.
The more possibilities you see. And it’s just sort of like a snowball.
[00:22:37] Lara: I’m curious from your experience, ‘cause you’ve got this interesting experience, having decided to go back to school and then suddenly hanging out with all these young folks, including the professors.
Do you see it changing? Like so we’re all around ish the same age? you know, we came up. Gen X. And I think that does inform a lot of things for us. Do you see differences in those who are younger in terms of them not feeling as attached to the rules of society and how things are changing?
[00:23:07] Julie: Yeah, I think so.
And I think you folks had talked about that in your podcast on adulting, is that sometimes the opportunities simply aren’t there. But I think society has kind of shifted that buying your first house is not necessarily the milestone that it used to be. And same with having kids getting a real job, instead of doing two or three different things or, working five years at one company and moving to another company.
And I mean, it’s just. The way that things are shifting. I think back to like comparing my parents who were, very early boomers and Gen X and then the kids now is that, my parents, each went to one year of post-secondary education. They went back to their tiny little town and immediately got jobs They kept those same careers for the rest of their lives. My mom was a teacher. She was even offered, would you like to teach grade one or grade five? Like there wasn’t even much of a competition. And then, you know, when I was that age, I was still like four years from finishing school.
Then when I did graduate, it took me like a year and a half to find a job and I had to move to a big city. But, you know, I had a job that I could have kept for a long time. I could have worked in that field for a while. And then the kids today are like totally expecting to have two jobs or a side hustle or, Work, freelance Or, you know, start their own businesses. There’s just a lot more options, but it’s a lot harder to have that stability that even we had and then that definitely our parents had. So I think those kinds of things have changed where the aging markers are. I mean, my mom got married when she was 19 and I got married when I was 24. And the kids now are like, not even getting married.
I don’t think it’s ever static and I think sometimes the people on the track feel like it is.
Again, if I had to go through this, you have to go through this too. Why aren’t you going through the same thing that I’m going through? I saw something about this, I can’t even remember where that we don’t just want to feel like we are able to get what we want. We also want to feel normal.
[00:25:19] Rowan: Ooh, wow. Yeah.
[00:25:22] Julie: I think, that’s why as we see. things changing politically. It’s these people who not only want what they want, they want what they want for everyone. And it’s because they wanna feel normal. And I think in past times societies were a lot more homogenous.
You know, back when we had four channels. Everybody watched the same tv, everybody went to the same movies. all this kind of stuff you know, everything seemed very similar and so you could feel really normal. And now there’s, furry cons and 17 streaming services and nobody at work can talk about your show ‘cause nobody’s watching it and you don’t feel normal anymore.
[00:26:03] Lara: And I think, fitting in has always been a big one, and it’s, the distinction I like to talk about is we don’t always need to fit in. I don’t want to fit in anymore, even though it’s what I tried to do forever. I want to find places where I belong. And fitting in is just trying to shove yourself into normal.
And belonging is finding the people that get you for who you are
[00:26:25] Julie: and that you
resonate with.
[00:26:26] Lara: Yeah. And I think it’s harder for some of the older generation to remember that it’s not the same for the younger generation. Right. Like, I did it Okay, but it’s not the same now. Yeah. Or, I wanted that.
I’m like, well, did you, or did you never even ask yourself if you wanted that, and you just, you know, chugged along. And so yeah, it’s changing it, and I hope that some of it is circumstantial for the younger generation that they can’t just easily do the thing, but I’m hoping that there’s also some of it that’s really about saying like, I don’t want that,
and that’s okay.
[00:27:00] Julie: Yeah. I mean, and don’t get me wrong, I did a lot of things not on the track, but I was a homeowner with a yard for 20 years. I never used my yard. The only time I ever went out into it was to mow it, to appease the, homeowners society. And when I finally figured that out, I was in my late forties, but I sold my house and bought an apartment and I’ve lived in apartments ever since.
Even though I was really strong on some things, I still fell prey to that, you have to get a house. You can’t just live in an apartment for the rest of your life. That wasn’t a conscious thing and nobody ever said that to me, but that was definitely an expectation.
And then I stepped off the track.
[00:27:45] Rowan: I know a couple of things about stepping off the track too.
[00:27:48] Julie: You do!
[00:27:50] Rowan: I went from owning a home at 22. To selling my home at 47. My last home bought three of them. Right. one after the other, not all at the same time. And now I rent. And is there insecurity in renting?
Absolutely. There’s insecurity in renting. Right? Your landlord can come and say, Hey, we’re not gonna renew your lease for this reason, or whatever it might be. The rent is going up. My rent has gone up every year. Right? on the other hand. I live in an old Victorian house that is absolutely way more beautiful than anything I’ve ever lived in because the architecture is fantastic and if anything goes wrong with it, it’s not my problem.
And he is great at fixing things. So I also get to live exactly where I want to live, which is very central Toronto. I can walk to everything and. That is the trade off. And a lot of people would think at my age, I’m almost 50, that that would be a huge step backwards. But I see it as a win. That’s a win for me.
I’m actually not tied down to anything. Well, now I’m gonna be opening a business. But other than that, I can move around, I can choose. If this is too big for me, I can choose very, very easily and with a very specific timeline to move to something smaller or move to a different part of town and experience that.
So I think my next question for you is, let’s say somebody thinks to themselves, okay, I’m listening here and I’m gonna be honest with myself. The things that I’ve been doing up until now are not really what I wanted to do. and there are some things I can’t change. Like maybe when I think about, maybe if I’m really honest with myself, I didn’t wanna settle down and have a family, but I do have a family now, right?
and now I’m getting older. What are some of the things that you think people could do as steps to unpack this feeling of, let’s say, regret? Because there might be some regret, and discontent and think about how they could build the last part of their life in a way that’s more authentic to them.
[00:30:10] Julie: Well, one of my favorite psychological techniques is imagining that two things can be true at the same time. So you can enjoy your life, not regret anything, but also want to change. Wanting to make a change does not equal. You made a mistake. Wanting to make a change does not equal. You are wrong. you know, you’re stupid.
You made a wrong choice. You can be a valid human being
who didn’t make a mistake and still want things to change. And you can change extremely small
things. I mean,
you can change where you get your coffee. Like, if you wanna become a person who, patronizes local coffee shops instead of the big Bucks coffee shop.
[00:30:56] Rowan: Thank you for that, by the way. As somebody who’s opening a coffee shop,
[00:31:00] Julie: You know, you don’t have to make a big announcement. You don’t have to come out about it. You can just start choosing to do that. And if you wanna be a person who. Has friends over.
Yeah. I wish my friends would invite me over be that person, you know, and have two friends over. It doesn’t have to be a big elaborate party. It can be a very small thing. Have two friends over for coffee for an hour in one small part of your house, so you don’t have to clean up the whole thing. you know, you can, like I said, it took me 10 years.
To get to the point where I had all my qualifications to become a psychotherapist, and I started with one psychology, psychology 1 0 1. Basically. I took that online before the pandemic, and then we had some medical stuff happened. I had to stop for a year, but then I started again and you can make these small changes.
Wanting to make a change doesn’t mean that what you’re moving away from was a mistake. It could just mean that it’s over. It could just mean that things are different now. it’s like using the wrong tool for a job. Yeah, that screwdriver came in really handy when you were taking off the outlet covers, but now that you’re painting.
That screwdriver is a really terrible paintbrush. So, it’s not like you made a mistake picking up that screwdriver that was useful to you at the time, but you can change without what you’re moving away from having been a mistake.
[00:32:25] Lara: I think that’s really important , and I know I’ve caught myself in this before, when you’re like, I wanna make a change.
It feels like it has to happen immediately. within a few days you’re like, why isn’t it done yet? But change doesn’t have to be this, like ripping off the bandaid. I’m, burning down my life. Let’s change everything in a minute. It can be just a little bit moving forward, just trying things, seeing if you like them because maybe you won’t, maybe you think you will.
Don’t burn down the whole thing before you try it out. Like there’s all kinds of little ways that you can do things. And again, no matter how old you are, you don’t have to, Stay stuck in this is what somebody who’s 40 can do to change. This is what somebody who’s 50 can do to change. And I see it in all kinds of different ways, including some people who wanna retire early and people are like, but why?
Like, what do you mean but why? Right? Like we get to just talk about things. Some of the first steps are just putting it out there that you might want the thing. You don’t have to do anything other than start saying, Hey. This is a thing I think I might want.
[00:33:36] Julie: The very first thing I do anytime I think I might wanna do a thing and this is the beauty of social media, I start following appropriate social media
content
and you know, sometimes I follow it and I’m like, Nope, I think I’m done with this now.
And then I just unfollow those people. And then other times it like, gives me the confidence. It’s like, Hey, these people are putting it out there and I can do this too., Like right now , I have signed myself up for a resin art class. And so I’ve immediately started following all the Instagram resin people.
And, I’m still really excited about what’s happening in November. because that exposure can change the way we think. You know, just exposing ourselves to, different things that we may wanna try and first of all, it doesn’t have to be perfect before you decide to tell anybody or do anything.
And it also doesn’t have to be, like you were saying, Lara, about burning your life down. Like if you’re, thinking you’re really sick of your spouse. Like, maybe take a week vacation on your own instead of asking for a divorce. Like, just put your feet in the water a little bit before you jump in the deep end because you know, maybe you’re just really irritated today.
[00:34:43] Rowan: Yeah, and I mean, there’s some responsibilities that we can’t just Nope. Out of entirely. No. Right. Like if you have children, you have children and Even if your children are adults, you’re still their parent. So , you’ve made a decision whether or not you feel it was the right.
Decision or not is entirely up to you, but you made the decision and this is your family. So, there’s certainly some attachment that has to remain. So burning things all down isn’t always the best course of action, but certainly as somebody who, is now, living life as a man when I didn’t for most of my life, is no longer in a marriage where I was in that marriage for 32 years and my children are all adults.
My children. Are still a big part of my life other than that, my life looks entirely different than it did three, four years ago. It is completely different. It is suited to who I am today, far more than it was, and I am looking forward to. The last few years, whatever that is. ‘cause we don’t know how long we have of my life living it in a truth that I wasn’t able to live before.
But I don’t regret. The last 40 something years of my life. I really don’t, I think I learned a lot. I think that I grew a lot as a person. I think I cultivated so much love in my life that is now staying with me, throughout this phase of it. And I am, very happy with that. So weirdly enough, even though I did things by the book in so many ways for such a long time, I think I’m actually a pretty good example of somebody who can switch things up later in a way that feels better and isn’t causing a lot of hurt and disruption and pain to the people
around me.
[00:36:40] Julie: Yeah,
that you’re stepping off the track was very mindful. nothing blew up. You made that choice.
[00:36:46] Rowan: Well, there’s a sense of responsibility, I mean, that’s what I’m talking about where it’s like. I also had to be mindful of the people around me.
And how my decisions might affect them. And, I again, don’t regret having children. I would’ve wanted children no matter what. I think I would’ve preferred to be a dad right from the start. But that is not how things. Started, technically, I guess I was always a dad, but I mean, like I went through the whole pregnancy and birth and everything else, which wasn’t the most comfortable, but also resulted in these beautiful people.
So I’m very, very happy about that. But yeah, certainly you can. Reevaluate the decisions you’ve made and go, yeah. You know, if I was born in a different time, if I had access to social media and I could have seen that trans men exist, if I knew back then that trans people could transition and also have families, wow, my life would’ve been so much different.
But it wasn’t because I was born in that time. When you do certain things and very few of us were stepping off that track in places where I could see them. So I think now it’s really important remind people they have those options.
[00:38:04] Julie: Exactly. That’s why representation is so important, is because you start seeing things and they start feeling more real, and they start feeling more real for you.
And that there’s that joke where the algorithm knows we’re queer before we do.
[00:38:20] Rowan: Yep.
[00:38:21] Julie: because we are drawn to certain things and we look for this representation wherever we can find it. So that’s why representation matters is because, you know, having known that we may have made different choices.
It’s okay that we didn’t, ‘cause we did the best we could with what we knew, but that doesn’t mean the choices we made were incorrect.
[00:38:39] Lara: And so hopefully people listening see a bit of representation here of not having to do with the traditional, conventional way that there are options, that there are people who are.
Choosing to go back to school later in life, or choosing to embrace granny crafts in a young age, whatever it is, right? there are so many options out there, and even if you haven’t witnessed somebody doing it, you can probably find somebody doing it if there’s an idea in your head. But also just being opening to hearing people’s stories.
Bring things to light that you never thought you could consider. And I think that that’s one of the reasons I love doing this podcast, and I love the power of storytelling is there are definitely things in my life that would have been different when I was younger, if I had ever seen somebody explain to me that I could have.
Something different until you know that it exists, how are you supposed to want it some of the time, and this is, everything about us personally and, getting to tap into what we desire and who we are and being true to that, but also in terms of age, it’s not too late.
To do things, and I think that’s something that comes up. Well, now it’s too late. I would’ve loved to, but now it’s too late. And so knowing that there’s all these different options and being able to take them into consideration and figuring out how it can be a yes and two things at once situation, how it can be a little bit at a time situation.
All of these things are what I’m hoping people take away from this conversation. Julie, I don’t know if you have any final thoughts that you wanna leave people with?
[00:40:25] Julie: One of the things that is hardest on us psychologically is not being true to ourselves. So even imagining how hard it is to kind of go against the grain and it feels like it’s easier, it’s not easier. Both things are hard, but being true to yourself always gives you the best chance of ending up where you want.
Of having the people around you that you want. Because if you’re pretending to be somebody else, you might have people around you who are invested in that person, not the real you.
So then what do you do? You play that part forever. That is so hard on people. Psychologically it is so hard.
and, you know, we’re talking about, people who are trans. That’s one of the reasons why when trans people are not affirmed. Their pronouns are not affirmed. Their transition is not affirmed, but they have so much higher suicide rate and that’s just a very specific example, but that’s what it is, is that not being true to yourself is so, so hard on you psychologically.
So even if you feel like you’re choosing the easy
way, you’re not, both things are hard. Yeah.
We can do hard things.
[00:41:36] Rowan: We can do hard things. Julie, thank you so much for joining us today. You have been fantastic.
[00:41:43] Julie: It was wonderful to see you both.
[00:41:45] Lara: I mean, you know, I always love talking to you and I always find there’s so many insightful things that I learned from you, so thank you.
[00:41:53] Julie: So happy to be here. I’m glad I asked and I’m glad you let me talk. I had some thoughts.
[00:41:58] Lara: Excellent.
