Speaker 1: You're listening to a mother mea podcast. Mamma Mere acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
Speaker 1: is recorded on. Hello, my friends, I'm Holly Wainwright and
Speaker 1: I am mid midlife, mid family and mid post work fantasy.
Speaker 1: Today I'm bringing you a different kind of conversation, one
Speaker 1: with three couples who all live together. But please don't
Speaker 1: call them swingers. We'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker 1: We said we're going to drop you a few little
Speaker 1: extras in Mid this season, and this is one of those.
Speaker 1: As you might have noticed, this season of Mid has
Speaker 1: been supported all the way through by a ware super. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're like me, you might switch off a little
Speaker 1: bit at the word super. But then, also if you're
Speaker 1: like me, and as the year's click over, you are
Speaker 1: starting to wonder about what a post work life might
Speaker 1: look like. Yes, a post work life is what I'm
Speaker 1: calling retirement, because retirement can sound a bit passive, a
Speaker 1: bit retreating, a little bit like giving up, when actually
Speaker 1: this third act can be anything but retiring. Also because
Speaker 1: for plenty of us, giving up work entirely is not
Speaker 1: going to happen, maybe because of necessity, maybe because you
Speaker 1: love your work and it gives you meaning and energy.
Speaker 1: Maybe rather than not working at all, you just want
Speaker 1: the freedom to pick and choose when and weather you
Speaker 1: put the grind behind you. But maybe, of course you
Speaker 1: are dying to ditch anything and everything to do with
Speaker 1: work and focus on doing everything else whatever blows.
Speaker 2: Your hair back.
Speaker 1: But as part of these seasons of mid we're bringing
Speaker 1: you conversations with women who are doing their post work
Speaker 1: lives a little differently, not because you're there yet Mids,
Speaker 1: but for a little future in slow. If you've ever
Speaker 1: said to your best mate that when you're old you're
Speaker 1: going to live together, build a compound, or tear up
Speaker 1: the over fifties lifestyle village, this conversation's fee. It's with
Speaker 1: two women called Eve Grisbowski and Heather Bolster, two of
Speaker 1: the six people who are all living together on a
Speaker 1: beautiful property on New South Wales's Mid North coast. These
Speaker 1: three couples have been friends for years, and, like a
Speaker 1: lot of good mates, over the years, they'd go on
Speaker 1: holiday together every year. On one of those trips long ago,
Speaker 1: they began to talk about how they all saw their
Speaker 1: next phase and weather pooling their resources would make everyone's
Speaker 1: third act a lot more fun. This is the kind
Speaker 1: of conversation that women have with their girlfriends all the time.
Speaker 1: They say, when we're old, we should live together. Back
Speaker 1: to the sleepovers, back to the girl's trips. But how
Speaker 1: many of us might actually do it well with the
Speaker 1: right planning, As Eve and Heather are about to tell us,
Speaker 1: it's possible. So how the hell did they do it
Speaker 1: living in a purpose built house and a beautiful part
Speaker 1: of Australia. Well, they're going to tell us, and they're
Speaker 1: going to give us advice about how we could too.
Speaker 1: Heather and Eve, thank you so much for joining me today. Now,
Speaker 1: lots of people say that they would like to live
Speaker 1: with their friends when they get older. What took the
Speaker 1: idea that you guys have from an idea to a reality?
Speaker 3: Good question.
Speaker 4: We started as friends and we would get together. In particular,
Speaker 4: we got together around Christmas joenerally for a week or
Speaker 4: two and they were really sublime times.
Speaker 1: How long has it been that you guys have been
Speaker 1: hanging out together as a group.
Speaker 4: That was early in the century, so maybe two thousand
Speaker 4: and one, two thousand and two, two thousand and three
Speaker 4: like that. So that was the idea part of it,
Speaker 4: and then what took it to reality was, well, you know,
Speaker 4: one hundred meetings for one thing. We left our we
Speaker 4: left our last holiday having kind of generated the idea
Speaker 4: and talked it through a lot, and then we thought, well,
Speaker 4: we'll sit on it for a few months and see
Speaker 4: if anything incubates in this. And then sure enough, a
Speaker 4: few months later we said, well, let's get together and
Speaker 4: talk about it again. So that was kind of meeting
Speaker 4: number one.
Speaker 1: And this is the six of you, right, So tell
Speaker 1: me who's in the shatters?
Speaker 5: I have apart our husband and that's Daniel. So there's
Speaker 5: three couples that are the shutters. Probably at some point
Speaker 5: you need an explanation of what is a shudder? Yes,
Speaker 5: and then Heather and Rick a couple, and Michael and
Speaker 5: Judy are the third couple.
Speaker 1: And so the three couples would go on these holidays
Speaker 1: that you're talking about, and then one year you were like,
Speaker 1: you know what, maybe this would be it. Our six
Speaker 1: people is quite a lot of people to get to
Speaker 1: agree to see things the same way, to want to
Speaker 1: commit to have the same vision. Was it difficult for
Speaker 1: everybody to get on board or.
Speaker 5: We discovered that numerous times you've been looking through the keyhole.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, yeah, there were, I mean everything, just you
Speaker 4: and your partner. It's difficult to come to agreement about things.
Speaker 4: So when we started looking for property, looking for a
Speaker 4: place we were going to live, it was, you know,
Speaker 4: where do we want to be in the country or
Speaker 4: in the city, and how far in the country, and
Speaker 4: do we want to go north or south? And do
Speaker 4: we want you know, a little a little spot in
Speaker 4: a small town or do we want a massive acreage?
Speaker 4: And we had to work through all those decisions. And
Speaker 4: so the process of finding a place took us about
Speaker 4: a year and a half, and we looked at everything
Speaker 4: from little city lots to two hundred acre two hundred
Speaker 4: acre properties and we started to get an idea of
Speaker 4: what we didn't want and what we liked.
Speaker 1: And am I right in thinking that one she decided
Speaker 1: you guys were gonna live communally, I suppose is that
Speaker 1: you rented a place together to try it out in
Speaker 1: the city first.
Speaker 5: Yes, and one of us, Judy, remarkably found this place
Speaker 5: and it had three levels to it. It was a
Speaker 5: waterfront property in Sydney, and it meant that each couple
Speaker 5: could have a separate space like that, which is what
Speaker 5: we have now that we've purpose built the house.
Speaker 1: Obviously it went all right because you made the move,
Speaker 1: But how did you decide to and how did you
Speaker 1: choose where to go after that?
Speaker 4: Well, we'd been looking a number of places. We'd looked
Speaker 4: at a lot of places. Every week we would go
Speaker 4: out somewhere, we'd find something and research it. This area
Speaker 4: we liked. We we'ld gradually gravitating here, and we had
Speaker 4: a friend who lived on the island and she invited
Speaker 4: us to stay at her house, and we thought, well,
Speaker 4: this is all right. It was a beautiful place. And
Speaker 4: then something came out for sale here and we thought, well,
Speaker 4: we'll have a look at it. You tell the story
Speaker 4: from there, Eve, Oh.
Speaker 5: Yes. And the property that we got to look at
Speaker 5: with the real estate agent was four acres three and
Speaker 5: a half acres. It was very beautiful and it had
Speaker 5: a big green shed on it, and we thought that
Speaker 5: even if we didn't decide on a permanent move here,
Speaker 5: that it was a good investment. We got it for
Speaker 5: a good price, and that that shed could be the
Speaker 5: place where we got to come and have our Christmas holidays,
Speaker 5: Easter holidays. We called it the tow in the water, right,
Speaker 5: and every step that we took on this journey, even
Speaker 5: though it seems like a really radical thing for you know,
Speaker 5: retirees to do move in together, was very well prepared for.
Speaker 5: So it never felt like we were at a huge
Speaker 5: risk that we could always recover if, you know, like
Speaker 5: it didn't work out.
Speaker 1: It sounds like exactly the right way to do it,
Speaker 1: because this is a big commitment. Once you've decided that
Speaker 1: you're going to build a house on this beautiful spot,
Speaker 1: that's a massive financial commitment, a lot of logistics involved,
Speaker 1: So it's obviously sensible to do it in a step
Speaker 1: through way. But did you all fall in love with
Speaker 1: the place and was it an easy ish decision to
Speaker 1: build the house there?
Speaker 4: I would say so, yeah, Yeah, it was not without
Speaker 4: its challenges. You know, I think we all got cold
Speaker 4: feet about it at some point and it needed to
Speaker 4: push ourselves or push each other back into the a
Speaker 4: relook at what we were doing. Because that was the
Speaker 4: big step. We know it was going to be a
Speaker 4: sizeable house and a sizable investment and a direction for
Speaker 4: a whole the rest of our lives. So that was huge.
Speaker 4: And then once that DECEI was made and thoroughly made.
Speaker 4: Then then we just we just got into it. We
Speaker 4: just slid into it. We got the we found that
Speaker 4: just exactly the right designer and exactly the rate builder.
Speaker 4: And Rick and I retired the earliest of the lot
Speaker 4: of us. And so we were up staying in the
Speaker 4: green Shed, which was nice, nicely furnished little you know,
Speaker 4: it was almost a cottage, and we stayed there while
Speaker 4: the house was being built, and then as soon as
Speaker 4: it was done then I shall on the day that
Speaker 4: it was done, even Daniel moved up. And then a
Speaker 4: year or two after that, Michael and Judy moved out.
Speaker 1: Fully I'll be back with Eve and Heather in a
Speaker 1: moment right after this break. When I have this fantasy
Speaker 1: with my friends, and I know, as I say that,
Speaker 1: a lot of people do we go, Oh, maybe we'll
Speaker 1: live on a compound, you know what I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll have like little homes close together. How did you
Speaker 1: make that decision? Was it because of the way that
Speaker 1: you'd lived when you were in Sydney that you would
Speaker 1: live in one big house together? And what does a
Speaker 1: house that is going to be three different couples home
Speaker 1: need to have to make that work.
Speaker 5: Obviously, it's probably different for each group that would decide
Speaker 5: to do this crazy thing, but in our case, we
Speaker 5: have the most. Sometimes people call this an intentional community,
Speaker 5: I think is too formal a name for what we
Speaker 5: do and how we are.
Speaker 1: Is that it's an intentional community kind of like a commune.
Speaker 1: Is that a similar thing?
Speaker 5: Yeah, but we definitely we have lots of differences.
Speaker 2: An intentional community.
Speaker 4: The intentional would refers to kind of a purpose like
Speaker 4: you know, growing growing organic gardens.
Speaker 2: But we just wanted to hang out together.
Speaker 1: Really, so you knew you would all need your own
Speaker 1: spaces as such, and so that you would all be
Speaker 1: comfortable in your own spaces, and so you built this
Speaker 1: house that Do you all have a level each? Is
Speaker 1: that how it works?
Speaker 3: No, we have a suite of rooms.
Speaker 5: We have a bedroom, an office, an en suite, bathroom,
Speaker 5: and a deck, and each of those suites our designer
Speaker 5: faced them in different directions. So it's really a very
Speaker 5: clever design.
Speaker 1: So that you have privacy, Like you can sit out
Speaker 1: on your deck and it's not like you're sitting underneath heather.
Speaker 1: You can bet you're like, hey, that's so clever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really is one one floor, except that right
Speaker 4: now we're down in the basement.
Speaker 3: We relegated the TV to the basement.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's it was really an important question for us,
Speaker 4: the one the one that you just ask, like, how
Speaker 4: do you organize to give to live together? We share
Speaker 4: the kitchen and a large comfortable lounge room and living area.
Speaker 4: So and that's that's a significant thing to share. Really
Speaker 4: it is to three households with kitchens, but then we've
Speaker 4: got our own space. I personally thought at first, I
Speaker 4: sort of taking it for granted we have little cabins
Speaker 4: and then we'd have a central area that we might
Speaker 4: come to and share. But I softened to the idea
Speaker 4: of sharing in the more comprehensive way.
Speaker 5: It meant that the council was more friendly with that
Speaker 5: kind of construction. And also if something happened, as you
Speaker 5: know it does, that it had better resale value instead
Speaker 5: of having those separate accommodations.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking that because it works for different
Speaker 1: kind of configurations of family groups, really doesn't it's that
Speaker 1: a way. So how together do you live? Do you
Speaker 1: eat your meals together? Do you pull everything? Like how
Speaker 1: what's together and what's separate?
Speaker 5: That's probably the most common question that we did ask.
Speaker 1: Everybody's like, who's cooking?
Speaker 3: It's fun, isn't it? To getting a lot? It is
Speaker 3: food and shopping.
Speaker 5: I think we just worked out some of these things
Speaker 5: as we went along, and people sometimes buy cooperatively, you know,
Speaker 5: for various reasons. Well, we had established habits as being older.
Speaker 5: You know, we were sixty and then seventy years old together,
Speaker 5: and we already had our preferences in food. So when
Speaker 5: the pantry was designed, it has three separate areas for
Speaker 5: the kind of foods we like, but they're pretty common
Speaker 5: because we're all interested in good health and longevity. So
Speaker 5: we have a roster that goes up on a fortnightly basis,
Speaker 5: and on it it has everybody's name and a space
Speaker 5: for them volunteering whether they want to cook a meal
Speaker 5: or even whether they're going to be there for the meal.
Speaker 5: So we've done that and it's worked ever since we
Speaker 5: lived in the rental property.
Speaker 3: I think it's worked really well.
Speaker 4: It works just brilliantly. So the only meal that we
Speaker 4: have together is dinner. But if we're all here, and
Speaker 4: you know now that we're all living here and retired,
Speaker 4: most of the time. Most often we would be here
Speaker 4: and so one couple will will be responsible for a
Speaker 4: meal and generally we just roster it.
Speaker 2: It's just one two.
Speaker 4: Three, one two three, and so you only have to
Speaker 4: cook once or twice a week.
Speaker 2: And how good is that?
Speaker 4: And then you get to you know, you get to
Speaker 4: schmick it up a bit because it's fun to actually
Speaker 4: fun to design a meal and have four other people
Speaker 4: enjoying it. So that really works.
Speaker 1: So there isn't one person who is like the boss,
Speaker 1: who is the one who does the rosters that chases
Speaker 1: people up, that says, Daniel, you said you're gonna tidy this,
Speaker 1: you have a tiler.
Speaker 5: It doesn't work that way, you know.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work. That don't work very well that way.
Speaker 2: We try every now and then, but it doesn't work
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 4: We fall into responsibilities and accountabilities of course, so my
Speaker 4: husband Rick does the mowing every week, and Daniel does
Speaker 4: the whipper snipping, and even I look after the gardens
Speaker 4: and like that. So we have our accountabilities.
Speaker 1: But Blody your strengths as well, I assume, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's right, and interests.
Speaker 3: You know, we're doing things that we love to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what did your friends and family say about the
Speaker 1: choice for this community living. I think I read that
Speaker 1: somebody's adult child asked if you were swingers. Now, now
Speaker 1: that's none of my business whether you swingers or not,
Speaker 1: But have people been quite shocked about it? Do you
Speaker 1: think it's still something that people are a bit surprised about.
Speaker 5: I think people either love the idea, like you've spoken
Speaker 5: about it that way, it's great, or they're completely turned off.
Speaker 5: They would never even entertain the idea of living with
Speaker 5: other people. You know, they might be a couple, and
Speaker 5: then they wouldn't want to live with other couples.
Speaker 4: I can remember one of the women in Eve's women's
Speaker 4: group saying, I could throw up at the idea of
Speaker 4: doing this.
Speaker 1: Okay, strong Felix, So what you what would you say?
Speaker 1: I think I've read that you say in communication? Obviously,
Speaker 1: because for all shared living situations, no matter what, even
Speaker 1: when it's just you and a partner, and certainly and
Speaker 1: children and whatever, what would you say is the key?
Speaker 1: It must also be that you fundamentally have shared values
Speaker 1: or shared you know, have a shared sensibility. I think
Speaker 1: I seen that you were all you know, you came
Speaker 1: together because you were all interested in searching, exploring yoga.
Speaker 1: As you say health longevity, do you think that that's key?
Speaker 1: You've got to have shared value systems. What else do
Speaker 1: you need for this kind of harmonious living to work?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I think communication is really the main thing, and I
Speaker 4: don't know that we're especially great at it, but we certainly,
Speaker 4: we certainly understand that without it, without saying what you
Speaker 4: need to say and hearing what you need to hear,
Speaker 4: it's not going to work. So that commitment to communication
Speaker 4: is a really key thing. And also respect, just a
Speaker 4: commitment to respect for each other. What else would you
Speaker 4: say you.
Speaker 5: I think there's an expression, and I'll probably do a
Speaker 5: lot of damage to it, but it's like all ruugh
Speaker 5: stones get polished by rubbing against each other. And so
Speaker 5: I would say that from where we started, that we're
Speaker 5: better at communicating than we were in the early stages.
Speaker 5: And part of it, I don't know whether it's just
Speaker 5: about getting older and maybe wiser, that you don't want
Speaker 5: to carry things that are uncommunicated because it we'll interfere
Speaker 5: with your relationship with people that you know, we basically
Speaker 5: love each other.
Speaker 1: Of course, I wonder I don't want to project, but
Speaker 1: I know that for a lot of people, their later
Speaker 1: years can get lonely and isolating, right, I mean I
Speaker 1: often hear people talk about their lives getting smaller. Was
Speaker 1: part of the impetus for this idea of the communal
Speaker 1: living to sort of battle that possible loneliness. And has
Speaker 1: it worked that way?
Speaker 4: I would say that was ninety percent of where we
Speaker 4: started with it. It began well had we all had
Speaker 4: parents who were aging at that point and you know,
Speaker 4: looking at them and thinking about what worked and didn't
Speaker 4: work in their lives, and so we were very we
Speaker 4: were very attuned to, you know, for at least the
Speaker 4: active part of our lives, to be able to have
Speaker 4: people around to be stimulating our in that fashion. And yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it's worked out of site. It's been very
Speaker 4: very good for us to It's been very good for
Speaker 4: me to have to deal with things and now when
Speaker 4: I'm not feeling like catching up with anyone, to just
Speaker 4: be there, you know, and there's someone in the kitchen
Speaker 4: making coffee in the morning, and you know, you say hi,
Speaker 4: and that's gets today going.
Speaker 5: Absolutely in the beginning, I guess what we're talking about
Speaker 5: is something more aspirational. You know, we saw that that
Speaker 5: was a good idea, but then in the way that
Speaker 5: it developed, it meant that we have activities that we've
Speaker 5: been able to share with other people. Like we all
Speaker 5: of us belong in a community choir, and it doesn't
Speaker 5: mean that we go around doing the same things. It
Speaker 5: means that we share the stories and the inspiration that
Speaker 5: we get from our various activities with each other.
Speaker 3: It enriches our lives.
Speaker 1: I'll be back with Eve and Heather in a moment
Speaker 1: right after this break. I'd like to ask you your
Speaker 1: advice for anyone who's listening to this and who like me,
Speaker 1: might have had those conversations with their friends who go
Speaker 1: one day, you know, that's what we should do. What's
Speaker 1: your best advice? And on a very practical level too,
Speaker 1: And I don't want to pry into your arrangements, but
Speaker 1: is it like you all have to sort of be
Speaker 1: on an equal financial commitment. Is there a way that
Speaker 1: you know those kind of things like what would you
Speaker 1: say is the best advice to avoid conflict in this situation?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 5: No, you said some wise things there. Well, we usually
Speaker 5: what we say is start early.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you started planning quite early, didn't you, Like in
Speaker 1: terms of that you move, as you said earlier, Eve,
Speaker 1: moving from conversations on holiday to meetings about it to
Speaker 1: testing the water to the toe in the water, like, yeah.
Speaker 4: It took us a long time. We took many years.
Speaker 4: So patience is certainly is certainly a key ingredient, a
Speaker 4: key personal ingredient. You talked about finances.
Speaker 2: We early on.
Speaker 4: Decided we needed to have a conversation about our finances,
Speaker 4: a public conversation with each with each other about that.
Speaker 2: Which is not a normal thing to do.
Speaker 4: You don't tell people you know how much you have
Speaker 4: in your bank accounts and what our sets you've got.
Speaker 4: But we decided we needed to do that so we
Speaker 4: could understand where we were, where everyone was, and so
Speaker 4: it was helpful in that meeting to discover that we
Speaker 4: were in similar in similar positions. So there were no
Speaker 4: sugar daddies among us or vagrants or like.
Speaker 1: That, because those are the kind of things that can
Speaker 1: easily build resentment on there. If you'd need something doing
Speaker 1: to the house or even at the building stage, if
Speaker 1: you'd have wanted somebody wants this and somebody wants that,
Speaker 1: likely so you do have you had to be very
Speaker 1: honest I assume about laying out what everybody's expectations were.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think that one of the advantages to this
Speaker 1: for people is that by pulling resources like this, you've
Speaker 1: actually been able to have a better kind of lifestyle
Speaker 1: at this stage of your life than you may have
Speaker 1: been able to do by yourselves.
Speaker 3: Completely.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and especially if we tried to live in Sydney
Speaker 5: in the same kind of lifestyle that we have here.
Speaker 4: Oh we've got we've got four acres, we've got a
Speaker 4: beautiful property, we've got you know, six people to work
Speaker 4: on it together, and we've got one washing machine and
Speaker 4: one dishwasher. And yeah, it has saved us an enormous
Speaker 4: amount I would say, almost half what we would normally
Speaker 4: be spending in this time period to have a similar
Speaker 4: kind of lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 5: If that were your first reason in for doing something
Speaker 5: like this, it probably wouldn't work out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a very wise point. It's like
Speaker 1: if you were if you were sort of gritting your
Speaker 1: teeth to do it because you thought it was a
Speaker 1: smart financial choice. Is not enough of a reason.
Speaker 2: You don't want that driving though.
Speaker 1: No, to get you through those rough stone moments. That's right,
Speaker 1: and what kind of friends do you think can live together?
Speaker 1: Because here's something I was just thinking about. I was,
Speaker 1: I hope none of my friends are listening to this.
Speaker 1: There are some of my friends I would love to
Speaker 1: do this with, but I don't know i'd want to
Speaker 1: live with their partners.
Speaker 5: You've got a lot of communicating to you there, So
Speaker 5: you think it's the fact that the couples were friends
Speaker 5: is one of the things that has made this a
Speaker 5: successful mission. That's a really good question, and I think
Speaker 5: it hasn't been asked before. But what happened along the
Speaker 5: way was that one of the men discovery a men's
Speaker 5: group which has meetings once a week, invaded the other
Speaker 5: men to join, and so they had this group of
Speaker 5: men that they associated like really decent, good men, and
Speaker 5: I think that was a forum for them to be
Speaker 5: able to talk about things and you know, and have
Speaker 5: those conversations.
Speaker 3: But you know, if.
Speaker 4: I was just thinking about your question, and I was
Speaker 4: thinking of a couple of men that people's husbands that
Speaker 4: I could not live.
Speaker 1: With, you would not want to live with exactly you've got.
Speaker 1: So you can't be just like, oh, I'm sure I
Speaker 1: could put up with Bob, like I think that you're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to put up with somebody
Speaker 1: through this level of process, right, it has to be
Speaker 1: you have to be able to get along. Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Any other good advice you said? Start early? Communication is key?
Speaker 1: What else would you say to someone who's thinking, I
Speaker 1: think that would be great?
Speaker 4: I sometimes think the best thing we did was live
Speaker 4: together for two years. We gave it a really thorough
Speaker 4: road tests, and it's nice to say, you know, two years,
Speaker 4: we're going to do this for two years. You can
Speaker 4: put up with anything for two years, but at the
Speaker 4: end of that time, you can think do I want
Speaker 4: to keep.
Speaker 2: Doing this or not?
Speaker 4: That was I found that really a useful thing to
Speaker 4: be able to settle my mind into it, because then
Speaker 4: came the hard stuff, and at that point I'd thought, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: we can do this and be a great thing to
Speaker 4: just keep pursuing.
Speaker 5: And I think something about cultivating kindness and compassion and
Speaker 5: understanding for the other because we're not the same, the
Speaker 5: six of us. If that weren't the case, then we
Speaker 5: wouldn't be able to, I guess, learn from each other
Speaker 5: along the way, and so it's not always a helpful
Speaker 5: easy thing to practice. I have done a practice called
Speaker 5: loving kindness meditation, which is a Buddhist practice, and I
Speaker 5: think that's something that you can do on your own
Speaker 5: and doesn't have to involve other people, but it makes
Speaker 5: a huge difference in terms of how you relate to
Speaker 5: people because something in you shifts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's wonderful. Well, thank you very much, father I
Speaker 1: need for sharing this story with me. I find it
Speaker 1: really inspirational.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: And it looks like it looks like a beautiful life
Speaker 1: that you've built there, and no good luck to you.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you MIDS for hanging out with us for this
Speaker 1: conversation about what third acts might look like. I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how full of energy these two women were,
Speaker 1: how great they look, how happy and connected they all
Speaker 1: seem in their post work commune. I'm immediately making a
Speaker 1: list of friends whose partners I reckon I could stand
Speaker 1: to live with and who could stand to live with me,
Speaker 1: of course, and for more information about all the ways
Speaker 1: that Aware super makes your dreams for that part of
Speaker 1: life a little more attainable, please support Mid by following
Speaker 1: the link in the show notes or going to Aware
Speaker 1: dot com, dot au, forward slash retire, and a huge
Speaker 1: thank you as always to the MID team. The executive
Speaker 1: producer of this episode and all the shows is Niama Brown.
Speaker 1: The senior producer is Grace Rufrey, the producer is Charlie Blackman,
Speaker 1: and we've had audio production from Jacob Brown.
Speaker 2: Bye.