(bright music) - [Player] Two on two.

(ball clacks) - You can retire from a job, but you can't retire from life.

So you gotta find that avenue that really push you to where you wanna wake up the next morning.

(bright music continues) You wanna pop your eyes open, and you wanna get out of bed, and then you want to go see the people that kind of get your blood flowing, you know, regardless of what it is.

(bright music) - The real beauty of aging is that it gives us space to engage in things that we've maybe never had time to do when we were younger, busy with careers, or busy with raising children, or busy with, you know, just lots of other things in our lives, so it can be a time of aspiring to do those things.

- [Player] Oh!

Oh, yeah!

(player laugh) - This second act in life for me is playing out way better than I ever could have dreamed of.

I don't know that I have words to explain how good it is, you know, to be able to reach out and help others.

Yeah, yeah, you're gonna braid her on down.

- We are meant to be in community.

I feel very strongly that we don't do this life on our own.

We need one another.

That's what helps to bring meaning to our lives.

(pottery wheel) - [Jackie] I think it's important to stay creative at this stage in life, because life goes on.

There's more to learn.

There's always more to explore.

And whether it's big or small, whether it's writing poetry, or making things with your hands, or gardening, or doing things with other people, you know, with friends.

I think it's important, because it keeps us going.

- Find that point in childhood where you truly felt alive.

What were you doing?

Were you jumping out of a tree?

Were you dancing?

Were you singing a song?

Were you watching a horse run?

What is that feeling?

When did you pay attention to that feeling, and when did you ignore it?

I think every human being has in them that creative power, that creative impulse.

And if we can light it like a pilot light, that's the first step towards true healing and recovery.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Major funding for Aging Matters is provided by the West End Home Foundation, enriching the lives of older adults through grant making, advocacy, and community collaboration.

The Jeanette Travis Foundation, dedicated to improving the health and well-being of the Middle Tennessee community.

The HCA Healthcare Foundation on behalf of TriStar Health.

Cigna, together all the way.

Additional funding provided by Jackson National Life Insurance Company, the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee and by members of NPT.

Thank you.

(Velcro crunches) (birds chirping) (soft music) (roller skates rattling) - When I'm rollerblading, I'm alive.

And the thought in your head when you're a dancer is that's all there is.

Everybody else is called pedestrians, and we're this... Martha Graham used to call us the Acrobats of the Gods.

You know, but then rollerblading let me know, I can still do that.

I don't have to be in that world or performing.

I can still have what I call the kinesthetic yayas, that joy of movement just for myself.

(soft music) (audience applauds) When performing was no longer feeding my soul, and my body was also falling apart radically after 30 years of performing, I didn't miss the sound of applause, I didn't miss the ego gratification, but I did miss that full-out body movement, just moving freely with the wind blowing in your face.

It used to be blowing in my hair, but the wind blowing in your face (laughs).

When a friend of mine, my friend John O., introduced me to rollerblading, all of a sudden, I could feel that same joy, just moving freely through space with no boundaries.

(soft music continues) When you're a young dancer, you can really flip in the air, and you're just flying, and you never think that's gonna end.

But that feeling of being kinesthetically free is really joy.

(soft music) - Positive aging can be thought about in lots of different ways.

And one of the ways is that it's the habits and the things that we do in our life, so that we can have fulfilling opportunities as we age.

And so, really, I think about it as the whole of our being, as a biopsychosocial experience, where we are doing things, and caring for ourselves, and maintaining a lifestyle that helps promote positivity and aging.

And the other part of it really is how we think about ourselves aging, so not thinking and focusing on decline and disability, but on new possibilities, and the positive things that come with aging.

You know, focusing on things we can do for our physical well-being, but also for our mental and psychological well-being as well.

(bright music) - I love dancing.

I just love that world, where, you know, when the lights...

Even like this, when the lights are bright on your face, all you see is the other people and the music, and you're just moving, full and free, and I love that.

You know, I survived on the dancer diet of bourbon and cocaine and cigarettes, the three main food groups in a dancer's life.

And 32 years ago, I quit all of that.

You know, that's not really who I wanted to grow old as.

Good girl.

You wanna go this way?

Okay.

I always said, "Well, if I'm not performing, what do I do after ballet class?"

You know, I don't have to take ballet class if I'm not performing.

Like, the whole idea of having another life was foreign, because that was my whole life, but I went out very early on...

I think around 2000, I went out to Naropa, to the university in Boulder, a Buddhist-based university, and I took a Master's program called Authentic Leadership.

(soft music) There's always something going on here.

I call it experiential movement therapy.

The first thing you have to do is find your own center.

(soft music continues) I always say, "People who are centered all the time, we call them liars."

Nobody's centered all the time.

It's people who notice that they're off center and they have techniques to recenter themselves.

That self-awareness of listening.

You can do it through breath, through Chinese movement, through dance, through exercise.

What works for you to find your center?

Then you are, you can relate to another human being, maintaining your own center through mirroring, you know, reconnecting the mirror neurons of your brain.

Really finding your center, their center, and the center between the two of you, which is relationship.

(soft music) And I love to use the verb "allow" there, just to allow each person to be themselves.

Then the third part is we are.

How can you maintain your center and be part of community?

And I really do believe community is the opposite of trauma.

You know that when you can be yourself, grounded and centered with a community of people, then the real healing starts.

Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt a small group of people can change the world.

It's the only thing that ever has."

And frequently at my workshops, we just press our hands together like the stones in Machu Picchu and help each other balance.

And it's that simple.

We just help each other by being centered and together.

Rollerblading is an example I use a lot.

Frequently, in my workshops, I have five true things, and the first one is to find your center and listen to it.

Anything that nourishes that, anything that feeds that, do more of.

Anything that depletes that, do less of.

And so when I'm rollerblading, I'm alive; I'm whole; I'm full of joy; and I wanna do more of that.

(soft music) (vehicles screeching) (horn honks) (hand smacking) - I first started making pottery 10 years ago.

I was 58 at the time, and I had never done clay before.

It was my first time actually getting my hands in the mud, and it was a whole new experience for me.

(soft music) (water splashing) What prompted me to take pottery was just my husband saying, "Hey, let's take an art class."

So we picked pottery from the list of options that we had, and I took the class and haven't looked back.

(soft music continues) - Taking that pottery class really helped me focus on what I love to do creatively, which is to make new things, and try new things, and just explore art, and making art.

(soft music continues) - When my patients are considering retirement, I ask them, "What is it that you love?

What brings joy into your life?

What have you done in the past?

What haven't you done in the past that you really feel that you missed out on?

What would you like to do?

And how can you go about trying it?

As you prepare to retire, are there little bitty steps that you can take, so that on that first Monday of retirement you're not just at home thinking, "Okay, I wanna do something, but what am I gonna do?"

Maybe make a list, maybe start journaling a little bit.

What do I really wanna do with my life?

Your life is not over after retirement.

There are things that we can all do.

(clay sloshing) - Working with clay is like, imagine your childhood and making mud balls.

And I think as adults we tend to wanna keep our hands clean.

So it helps you tap into that childlike curiosity about what I can do with this and how I can shape with my hands.

And it took a while for me to get back into that playful kind of spirit with my hands, to be able to make new things.

Before I started doing pottery, I had been an actor for many, many years.

I did theater, I did film, some television.

I was in the acting world.

(bright music) I lost my mom in the early '90s, and totally unexpected, out of the blue.

And at that time, I was acting, and did a lot of theater and film, and I decided I was not gonna do that anymore, because she was my biggest fan, and I just wanted to let go of everything.

And that didn't really ease the pain.

In other words, I gave up too much.

And so gradually I started doing a little more.

But as time went on, I found that I could do other things.

I could express my grief through music.

I could express my grief in writing.

And those things kind of fed me and kept me going.

And gardening, which oddly is dirt, it was a little foreshadowing of what was to come, but I had no idea that I would end up doing pottery.

Now, my sister, who I recently lost, was probably one of my biggest fans, much like my mom was one of my biggest fans of my acting career.

And she was so encouraging and all of that, but I knew there was no way.

And I just kind of felt in my heart that she would wanna see me happy.

She would want to see me doing the thing I love to do.

(bright music) I often can imagine her wanting a copy of whatever I have just made, and, you know, encouraging me to make more.

(bright music) I would say that pottery helped me deal with life changes and loss, and that it was grounding.

I mean, literally grounding, because it's dirt, it's mud, but it helps me focus.

It helps me be creative.

It helps me be expressive.

And it is all about change.

If I break a bowl, if it doesn't come out of the kiln right, if something happens with a glaze, I can make it again.

And it took a lot to learn that because we get so attached to what we see as possible.

And I think when you're thinking of loss, and change, and all of that, pottery is so much all of that, because you deal with loss, you deal with change, and it helps you let go and helps you move forward.

(inspiring music) - I imagined my retirement as, of course, being with my husband more, and I like to garden.

I love to read.

I love to do some sewing projects, and I did love to crochet.

But never, never in my wildest dreams did I think this is what I was gonna be doing when I retired, but I'm so glad I am (chuckles).

We moved to Lafayette in February of 2016, and we started going to a church here in Lafayette.

They asked me to lead a craft group.

The only thing I knew to do well was crochet.

(inspiring music) And I knew I wanted to give back.

And one of our members of the craft group sent me a post on Facebook and said, "Look at this."

It was this organization making these beautiful wigs, princess wigs out of yarn.

And my first thought was, "Gosh, that looks like an awful lot of yard.

(Barbara laughs) And I don't know if we can do this, but if they're willing, we're gonna try it."

So I made that first one, and it had a lot of mistakes in it, but I came and I showed these ladies how to do it, taking it step by step.

And we were making these beautiful creations.

(inspiring music continues) I had these wigs and beanies, and, you know, I thought, "Where am I gonna send 'em?"

And I saw another post on Facebook that came up about a hospital in Texas asking for beanies for their children on the pediatric cancer floor.

I messaged 'em and I said, "Well, what about princess wigs and character beanies?"

And immediately got a response and said, "Sure, we'll take all you can send."

(inspiring music) It started from that.

That was Dallas Children's Hospital in Texas.

We now send to TriStar Centennial in Nashville, Vanderbilt.

The name of it is the Dream Makers.

We have made approximately 1,500 wigs and beanies.

There's no feeling like giving back, to see a child so sick and so sad and so withdrawn, to see their little face light up after we give them one of these.

It's just remarkable.

(inspiring music) It's just done a lot for me.

I didn't wanna sit around in retirement.

You know, it keeps me busy.

It keeps my mind sharp 'cause I have to remember a lot of things, but, yeah, it's helped me just tremendously.

- Having something to be excited about gives hope for the future.

We tend to get small.

We're used to being in this box: work, home, church, whatever it is.

Thinking outside of that box is important as we think and contemplate, "How are we gonna live well into retirement?

How are we gonna do it in a hopeful, encouraging way?

And what other people are we going to influence?"

We still can influence and be very important to other people.

We can serve other people.

(bright music) - If I was at home and not out here volunteering and serving others, I would focus on myself more, and sometimes I don't think that's good.

You know, you can get so self-involved that it's just not good for you.

(bright music) I think just to get out here and just give back is just the absolutely best thing we can do to give to others, and I think that's what we're here for, is to be kind to others, and help others, and make little kids smile (laughs).

- Sitting in your home is not gonna be a good way to age.

And we know that because of what we know around loneliness and isolation.

It's not good cognitively.

It's not good for us physically.

And it certainly isn't good for us for longevity purposes.

So, you know, having opportunities to not just engage in conversation but engage our brains, and that usually happens with other people.

- I will say, when we get together and meet, we laugh a lot; we talk a lot; we have fun.

And to get out in the community and serve with these ladies, you know, it brings us closer together.

I've got friendships that's gonna last me the rest of my life.

(bright music) - I was in the military 21 and a half years.

When I retired from the military and came to the civilian sector, the biggest thing I missed was the discipline.

And the camaraderie that we had in the military is a whole lot different than out here in the civilian world.

(bright music) In the military, you had each other's back, where out here, you really don't know.

It's a guessing game.

And that's what leads to a lot of anxiety and a lot of, you know, adjustments.

(door creaks) (bright music continues) (wind chime clacking) When I, you know, retired from the military and came home, I just had my children, and I wanted to keep them involved in something, so we found a football program here.

And so I got my kids in it.

And then once I started coaching football, you got all these kids, you know, that you're now, you know, responsible for.

(bright music) Those children kind of helped me, and being in that program kind of helped me put aside my military life and balance my home life and being a father.

(car engine roars) Well, fast forward 20 years later, we had the pandemic hit, and I was retiring, you know, from work and coaching football, and so that kind of left a void, which I had to find a way to replace it, because I felt myself reverting back to where I was when I got outta the military, you know, with the anger issues and stuff like that.

So I had to find a way to channel that somewhere else.

The gyms were closed, so I couldn't, you know, lift weights anymore.

(bright music continues) Zeros on the one.

(mellow music) I'm glad that Ron Williams reached out to me and introduced me to pickleball, because that's what replaced the camaraderie, the being, you know, just challenged.

(player laughs) - That's one?

- Yeah.

- Six, ten, on the one.

My favorite thing about playing pickleball is, you know, the people that you meet, the different ages.

I've come across 80-year-olds that could just, you know, push me all over the court and whoop my butt, so age is not a number.

I mean, it just depends on how you wanna approach it.

- [Teammate] Ah!

(teammate laughs) - [Player] Oh!

- [Alonzo] Good shot, Rob.

- When we think about second acts, and we think about, you know, ourselves as older adults, one of the things that can help with that is how engaged are we with people, organizations, and, you know, new experiences, but also older adults are absolutely capable of learning new complex tasks, and that we have an ability to retain that just as well as a younger person.

So, you know, engaging in social connections, hobbies, all of those things can really help our attitude and how we think about ourself as an older adult.

- I learned to play by watching people.

At first, the people in the group, in the program kind of took me on, you know, and showed me what to do, how to hit, how to hold my paddle, so that's what I like about the group.

There's a great bunch of people out there that's willing to help you no matter, whether you never had or did a racket sport in your life, or whether you just wanna get off the couch and do something.

- Ah!

- Oh, yeah!

- The way life has changed for me, since, you know, getting into pickleball, is that it physically transformed me.

You know, when I went into pickleball, I was 219 pounds, right now I'm 158, and that happened within a year of starting pickleball.

And I've been in it now for two and a half years.

It also medically changed me.

It got my blood work to where, you know, no blood pressure and medicine.

I take pills for uric acid, which is gout, you know?

And that's one a day.

I went from taking 28 pills a day, you know, to taking two in the last 18 months.

So it changed me not only physically and emotionally, if I wanted to release energy, I could do it through the pickleball paddle without saying a word.

- Yeah!

- You know, but it's easy, because the people in the pickleball program, there's a lot of soldiers in that pickleball program, you know, retirees, and people that only maybe spent a couple years, but we still all went through the same thing, so we all kind of... You know, you find that in there.

And even the ones that wasn't in the military, you still find out that there's still hardships, there's still poverty they came through, you know, and racial injustices that they came through, and, you know, a lot of things that they came through that still can give you the same problems that being in combat does.

And that's what I think a lot of people don't understand.

- Oh, last chance, Alonzo.

- Yep.

No, never such thing as a last chance.

Zero, one, one.

- When you're isolating yourself or you're not in community, we really think too much about ourselves, and we ruminate on hurtful things, on traumas, on regrets, whereas if we're with someone, if we're with a group of people, you're not necessarily focused on yourself.

There are other people in the room.

There are other people talking about other things.

It's a very healthy thing.

- The biggest thing is looking forward to meeting those people that you talk to every day.

And I mean, it may be the same thing that you talked about yesterday, but it's just actually seeing them and just bonding with them.

(opponent laughs) (paddles clack) - Good game.

- Good game.

- [Opponent] Good game.

- You know, they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Well, I put that to rest, because I'm an old dog, and they did teach me some new tricks playing pickleball.

So, you know, it kind of gave me a reason not just to get up in the morning, but it gave me a reason to go out and learn something new.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - [Narrator] Major funding for Aging Matters is provided by the West End Home Foundation, enriching the lives of older adults through grant making, advocacy, and community collaboration.

The Jeanette Travis Foundation, dedicated to improving the health and well-being of the Middle Tennessee community.

The HCA Healthcare Foundation on behalf of TriStar Health.

Cigna, together all the way.

Additional funding provided by Jackson National Life Insurance Company, the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee and by members of NPT.

Thank you.

(bright music)