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Everything Podcasts (00:00.174)
There's a reason Landslide keeps finding its way back into our lives. It's not as nostalgia, but as truth. And I think that's where the third act of our lives begins. This song was written during a period of intense reflection for Stevie Nicks in the early 70s. It's a song about harmony, consistency, and coordination.
It's about standing still just long enough to admit when something no longer fits. And you know, there comes a moment when you realize you're done performing a version of yourself that once kept you safe, successful or accepted, but it no longer feels honest. And that realization can be unsettling because choosing change means giving yourself permission to want something different.
and then say it out loud. This is the space so many of us are standing in right now, writing our own story. It's not just the highlights, it's the beginning, the middle, and the chapters still ahead. I don't think we're winding down, but we are consciously deciding how the next chapter will go. And that's what this song really says, I think especially now. It says,
I still want things, even though I'm a little scared to admit it. It says I'm powerful, sexy, bright, intelligent, and funny, just not in the way that I was taught to be. And that's where the third act begins. I'm Cheryl Bichir. I'm 69, curious as hell, and not done yet. After decades leading not-for-profit organizations and hopefully driving some real change,
I retired and that lasted about five minutes. I've spent a lifetime asking hard questions of organizations, communities, and some remarkable people. So this isn't a retirement project. It's my next chapter on my own terms. In each episode, we dig into real stories of rebellion, reinvention, and resilience, and what it actually means to grow older in a world obsessed with staying young.
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This is Boomer's Revolt.
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Today's guest is the founder of Third Act Quest, and it's a platform dedicated to redefining what's possible in life after 50. After 40 years in a career spanning international advertising, a senior leadership role at AOL during the early days of the internet, and multiple entrepreneurial ventures, her path has been anything but linear.
but it was a series of life-changing lightning strike moments, including a cancer diagnosis, the loss of a business, and turning 60. And this led her to fully step into what she calls her third act. In 2018, she launched Third Act Quest. It's an organization that inspires and connects women as they reimagine and create their next chapter. Through storytelling,
coaching and community initiatives like the 333 collective, she brings together women who are choosing curiosity, creativity and possibility at any age. Her work is grounded in a powerful belief that our later years aren't about slowing down. They're about coming alive. Diana.
Welcome to Boomer's Revolt. How would you tell your story? I spent my life doing a lot of very different things. I, there was always a little bit of a connection with who I am and what turned me on. know, at agency, I'm creative. I love people. I thrive on, and that's what I've brought together here in my third act is that if you ask someone,
not only what makes their heart beat faster, but when they do it, they feel completely alive. It's connecting with other individuals and it's hearing their stories. I launched my business right before COVID. I was having retreats and in-person workshops and boom, thank God in a way, because Zoom came along and I started a storytelling event called Third Act Storytelling.
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started meeting all these amazing humans who were doing very different things at this time of life. So I got further and further inspired. then those people all fell in love with each other and crave to stay connected. So I created a community that I call the 333 Collective. it's, mean, there's...
I have a 90-year-old woman who just got back from Iceland celebrating her birthday by herself. I have a 74-year-old woman who's a filmmaker. I have people doing all sorts of things, and we share this curiosity about life. And we share a willingness to, and this is what I'm about in my third act, is celebrating the choices, the decisions, and the vibrance of what's possible at this time of life.
you know, maybe my body doesn't move as well as it used to. Maybe I can't be a prima ballerina anymore, but I sure as heck can dance. know, so anyway, so I hope my business is all about, I mean, I started it technically to reframe aging, both for those of us that are older and for those of us that are younger and for
all of us to internally fight our own ageism internally. So that's what I started it for and it's taking a lot of different forms and I love it. I love it, I love it. Every minute, I love every minute.
As a boomer woman in leadership, when did you first feel powerful and when did you feel dismissed? Wow. Well, the first thing that comes to mind, and don't worry, I'm not going to go across the whole trajectory of my life, but I will say that what as a boomer landed so
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I graduated from college in 81, and in those days, if you were a woman, you were sitting clearly in between two different wide array of choices. All the women before us worked so hard to give women an opportunity in the workplace that hadn't really been there before. It was like, you going to be a teacher, a nurse, or a mother?
And so as I left college, I felt completely disabled. So it was a conversation I had that made me feel a little glimmer of the beginning of my power, and that is my power to choose. So two girlfriends and I sat on a rooftop and said, what the heck are we gonna do with our lives? One said, my God, I'm just gonna meet a great guy.
get married, live in the suburbs and bake cookies. The other said, I'm going to rule the world basically. And I said, I
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want it all. I want it both. So over the course of time, a lot of what boomer women faced was uphill battles around sexism. And then later in our lives, as we're seeing now pretty rampant is ageism. So the isms got us, but
I will say the first moment I truly felt powerful was in a sexism kind of experience in that I was dreaming of working for this ad agency and I finally got a job. And even though I graduated from a really nice college with an advanced distinctive title after my graduating name, I had to start as a secretary in this ad agency.
That's okay, even though I typed for a guy who was my age with my exact experience, but I dealt with it. But at my first week, and this is where my power began to feel real, and that was it. We were at a party. The ad agency was wild. mean, think of Mad Men, that series. John Hamm. You don't have to be here. I do have to be here.
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because of some stupid idea from Danny who you had to hire because you stole his other stupid idea because you were drunk. Don't get personal because you didn't do your work. And by the way, I know it kills you, but guess what? There is no Danny's idea. Everything that comes in here belongs to the agency. You mean you. As long as you still work here. Is that a threat? my lord.
and it's the 80s, everyone is drinking excessively and my only friend and I were chatting and a man came and literally grabbed her and pushed her to the ground. Within a moment, I'm 22, I grabbed him by his collar and I said, get off of her. Later to find out he was the CFO of our company. Oh boy. And I never had an inkling that I had an HR person I could go to.
I tell the story only, it doesn't have to do with my power of success. It has to do with me saying, I'm here, this is gonna happen, but I'm gonna deal with it and I'm gonna be me. I'm not gonna cower to it. So that was the beginning and it really, it echoed. It really started. Yeah.
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You know, we grow up absorbing all these messages about how we're supposed to look, move, age, smile. It's like we're walking Pinterest boards instead of actual human beings. But if we're lucky, at some point we will hit that beautiful shift where we're like, this is my body, I live here, and I love it here.
And just when you get comfy in your own skin with your stretch marks and your laugh lines, life throws you a plot twist. A move, a divorce, a diagnosis, a reinvention. It's like you just figured out the rules to the game and the universe updated the software overnight. So what happens when everything changes? So first I'll just say, you know, we don't live this many years on this planet.
as boomers, whatever that age range is right now. But we don't live on this planet this long without having significant life disruptions, loss of jobs, loss of loved ones. And in my case, I had a lot of roller coaster stuff across life, but it wasn't until 2018, I'd started a business. I was working like a crazy woman. I was blessed that I'd had my daughter later in life. She was still at home.
I was about to empty nest, I was about to turn 60, I had this business flying and I got a really rare, weird head cancer. And literally, it stopped me in my tracks. I bet. And what happened after...
I won't go into all the details, but I am here today. But I will say what happened after as I recovered from that six months of treatment is that I sat in my chair and I said, man, I have a clean slate. I said, you know what, Diana, it's time to live your third act coming from who you truly are. No longer in the shoulds or the cultural narrative of what success is. You gotta be you.
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So that was huge. I call them lightning strikes. And this is an interesting metaphor because I found out that when lightning hits a beach, it turns the sand into little beautiful crystals. So for me, was like, I was so free for the first time, free to do and pursue what was truly mine.
Once you face the potential that your life is over, you do two things. You appreciate every single moment you're alive, and you also don't waste time doing those things that don't make a difference.
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Big life altering moments can really freeze people in place. Yep. Or it becomes a turning point where you don't freeze and you chose to keep moving. Looking back, how did those experiences change the way you now move through the world? Did they soften you? Oh man, this is a, I have this phrase I use, which are the aha moments of our lives. And you know, you don't have to be, you know.
Albert Einstein or Archimedes saying Eureka to have an aha moment. But all of us have them all the time. And there's one that keeps coming back and I have to keep relearning it every single time. And it plays into my period of getting ill, which I believe has a lot to do with overworking and overwhelming myself. So what I've had to try to soften is my tendency to be
I used to call myself a productivity junkie. Gotta do it all, gotta do it perfectly. So to slow down is the softening, which is, I struggle with, I'll be honest with you. It's something firmly ingrained. Like I would bet a lot of people, yourself included, have these, our neural pathways get set in a way of adjusting to and
being a part of or perceiving our responsibilities, our shoulds and all that. So that's my biggest, that's the work I'm doing now to try to soften that bit of me a bit.
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For a lot of women in our generation, productivity became a survival skill. Do more, don't slow down, don't complain, don't fall behind. And those rules got wired into us so deeply that they felt like some kind of character, not conditioning. So when you talk about softening now, about resisting urgency and perfection, that's not self-help, that's rebellion. We've been told a lot.
about who we're meant to be as women, and even more about who we're allowed to be, particularly as we
age. Looking back from where you are now, what's the biggest lie you were told about getting to the stage of life? Well, we were told a lot of things, but I think the biggest lie that we told ourselves is two things. You can do it all.
And I mean, you know, you really can't. But we also told that when we were of a certain age, we were going to be stepping back. I mean, that's what the culture has told the boomer generation. now's your time to retire on a golf course in Florida. And, you know.
Hey, live the good life. And so we saw that as the example ahead of us. And one of the things I love about the title of your podcast and also this beautiful energy I sense around me, not just with women, but with men, which is...
I don't use that reword. I use remember, reconnect, refire. I have about a list of like 30 rewords. Resilience? Retire is not a word that I choose because of the implications of a stepping back. No, I may not be working in a workplace formally, but I have my own thing. I will work until the day I die, I say.
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in some shape or form because I love what I do now. So retirement is not my goal. I will tell you that it's pretty clear to me as the end zone gets more sharply in view and it can be any day, any moment. I feel like I embrace that in the way I live. There's a quote from one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, that says, tell me what.
Is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? So for me...
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My desires are getting refined. I'm discerning. My boundaries about what I say yes to have gotten, you know, they're still a little thin, but they're getting thicker. I am, I test things out with my heart. Does it make my heart beat faster? The other thing is, is I had this event in 24 and I started the talk with, this is our time.
no matter how much money you have or don't, you have dreams, you have desires that you buried across your midlife and you've taken care of other people, you've had jobs, you've worn masks that weren't you, time to pull off the mask and unleash the dreams. And then I add to the end, especially the wildest ones. So for me, nothing is off the table. I'm not gonna climb Mount Everest. That's not a...
a desire of mine, but my heart's desire, and many of us, I believe, can look back to our younger selves for these clues. I want to make a movie. I don't have the money, I don't have the experience, but I have the ideas. So I want to make a film. Would it be a comedy, drama, action adventure, thriller, or sci-fi? I'd want it to be an action adventure. Why?
Well, because I believe that life is a great adventure if you let it be. And I could see a lot of fast car driving. I mean, I have this other metaphor I love to say, which is that, you know, when I'm on my journey in my life, I got to remember I'm in the driver's seat and I'm going to have a lot of passengers in my car, but fear, regret, and all that other.
stuff goes in the backseat. those other passengers hit So I would, I'd see we a lot, we'd be traveling around the world a lot. And at end of the day, we'd be doing good things. We'd be doing kind things in the world. It's kind of fascinating to imagine our lives as a movie, not just a highlight reel, but the emotional thread running through. Maya Angelou said, people will forget what you said.
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People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And that line sticks with me because it's true. When we look back, it's the people and the moments that shaped how you felt and that end up shaping who you became. As you think back on your own journey, the people who influenced you and the turns you never saw coming, what surprised you the most?
Well, I had a mother who was extraordinarily sad for most of her life. And thank God I had a grandmother who was vibrant. She was, you know, 80 years old and decided to go to Spain and learn Spanish. So I think what surprised me the most is not just that life
could get richer and better as I got older, but that it could be, I mean, sure, I had tons of fun as a younger person, but this stage of life I never knew would be so thrilling. Not like thrills and shills in my adventure movie, but literally so real and so feeling like it's right.
And feeling the blessing, as I mentioned, of simply being alive. I've done a lot more exploration into a lot of sort of off the mainstream kinds of things, but I am curious, I am happy. Everything doesn't always go my way. I have challenges like we all do, but that's a huge surprise to me. I thought that we were supposed to feel sad and disappear.
Basically. You know, I had a similar experience with my mom. I adored my grandmother too. She was the mover and shaker in our family. But when I reflect on it now, I sometimes wonder if my mom was thinking the same things I was, and she just never said them out loud. She's not here anymore. She's passed. But if I could go back and ask her one question, or a few, it would be,
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Did you want the same things as I do? Do you think the same thoughts as me? Or was it simply something you were never able to voice? It's often those relationships and the contrast between the people who raise us that leave the deepest imprint. You've spoken about a mother who carried deep sadness and a grandmother who brought energy and movement into the
So what did each of them teach you and how did those lessons shape the person you became? That's a beautiful question. I did a lot of soul searching because I had a lot of pain around the lack of emotional connection with my mother. So what she gave me in the end, I finally realized she gave me the information I needed to know what I craved is what I could give my daughter. So instead of resenting her,
like I did for most of my life, I said, thank God, because I have the most amazing relationship with my daughter. Then my
grandmother, she gave me a sense of, I mean, she didn't have a lot of money. She, like, I still have antiques of her around here. She loved beautiful things, but she always bought the ones with, that had been like the vase that was broken and had to be glued together. So what she taught me is to follow your heart.
She decided to become a painter and she painted like 80 paintings in 10 years. So they both taught me in different ways. And I wish, I wish more than anything. And I think as boomers who lose parents and grandparents, we wish we could all just sort of meet up with them and have a more real conversation about the love we shared. But like you say,
Our mothers deny themselves in that generation. They didn't really have as much opportunity at all.
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grew up watching the women before me manage the way they moved in life in very different ways. In what they revealed, what they hid, and what felt safe to carry in their bodies. And sometimes I wonder how much of that was choice and how much was survival. You've talked about learning early to hide your body because of the attention it drew.
How did that shape the way you move through the world? All right, so let me just say this. I covered up my body when I was young, because I was the girl that walked down the hall and people whistled at. And I covered it all up because I remember feeling diminished. I had an interview. I'd moved from Virginia to Boston. So I had my Southern accent.
I'm in this interview, I am smart, right? And the dude looks at me he goes, my God, you're just so cute. I looked, I literally, I just got shivers again. I just went, F you buddy. I'm like, I am smart. So I covered myself up as much as possible. I didn't dress up. I didn't, I tried to hide what people would say was, my God, she's so beautiful.
piss me off because I was perceived as a blonde bimbo as opposed to a smart, hardworking, valuable employee, let's say. So yeah, the Barbie thing is conflicting. So to me, a lot of women I know go, man, it really upsets me when nobody flirts with me anymore and you...
You're walking past the construction site and you get no whistles. I'm like, are you kidding me? I feel so free. I can do whatever the F I want. And I don't have to endure. I've had men say things that you would not believe in business. I thought I'd done a kick-ass presentation and I succeeded and we sold a $30 million campaign. I'm walking past, he was the president of the company. goes,
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Miss Dunbar, come into my office." And I'm like thinking I'm gonna get praise. There were three other men in there and he goes, Mr. Rabin would like to go to dinner with you. And I literally, that diminishment, and it had nothing to do with anything then. I was a 30 year old cute blonde girl, you know? Anyway, sorry, I sort of feel passionately about that I think.
There has been such a rising up of women speaking their truths and coming into their own, like Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis, both women who once seemed to have bought into that objectification. I wonder if they felt they had no choice. It's like there's a revolt happening for women. is so much attention to the positive.
There's activism and anger, yes. There's a lot of, and it's just like the feminist movement, the anti-ageism movement is there are all degrees of players in that shifting of the narrative. But what I love most is the fact that, and part of the reason I started my business was
I was afraid of just hearing stories. I mean, it happened sort of in the latter part of the 2010s that the media started paying attention to older women, but they were always the famous and the rich and the successful, the actresses, the Ruth Bader Ginsburgs and the, you know, Jane Goodalls, you know, Jane Fondas. And I said, how about the extraordinary?
ordinary women that are doing meaningful things on a small, medium, and large scale. So that's sort of what I'm about. And I think that's what you're going to find is, you know, when you have these conversations with boomer women is that we are a force to be reckoned with in a positive way. it's not that we're
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angry, at least most of the women that I hang out with, we're like, hey man, we are here to live this life and contribute in the world using the gifts that we've nurtured and the experiences we have. So let us. Take us seriously. Take us seriously. And at this stage in life, reinvention is the new rebellion.
So on that note, is reinvention an act of courage or an act of defiance? Well, I think I like to say reinvention is a more collective term. I use this line, you know, we're rewriting the story of life after 50. So I think all of us that are actively seeking ways to make a difference and following our hearts like you, like me,
That's what we're doing. But when I look at on an individual level, I don't call it reinvention. And again, another reword, I call it reconnecting and remembering, sort of swirling back in to my heart. Like, who am I? Who am I? I'm finding myself again. I'm expressing her.
And I love this thought and I think Brene Brown's book Strong Ground had a really good chapter about paradox. And to me, it's the both and of who we are. I love the fact that I can be all those things. I don't have to define myself. like, think your background is a lot in this field, but
I'd love to have been a sociologist. I would love to be an artist. I am this, I'm a connector, I'm a worker, I'm a lover. They're all there. Whenever a little twinge of regret comes up in me, I immediately try to flip it. Because I know if I think about wanting to change it or wish I hadn't decided that, done that, been that,
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I just sink into something and I try to flip it into an empowering thing. Like, should I have waited until I was 41 to have a child? Should I have like, my God, I almost didn't. She was my last imperfect egg. I'm
like, I wouldn't change it for the world because being an older mom with a young, a 24 year old is like insanely amazing.
Like my boys are in the 40s, but you've got, so we've got multiple generations. Wouldn't it be really interesting to talk to them now? mean, well, you know, it's interesting and I would love to know if you get the same from your boys. I, and many people could paint me a Pollyanna, but I will tell you that I have a sort of a vision that this world, no matter how crazy things are right now, I have.
great faith in the power of humanity, in the power of human connection, and especially in the power of so many of the younger people. I know I have a 24 year old, so I'm meeting a lot of 20 somethings and man, they blow my mind. And my daughter included, my daughter is one of the most wise souls I have ever met at any age.
So to me, I have this marvel around possibility. You know, if you look toward a lot of people's philosophies around our, you know, enlightenment as humans, I think we're witnessing it. We're on the edge of it right now, in my opinion.
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Listening to you talk about your daughter and this next generation, there's such a sense of wonder in it. Not nostalgia, not fear, but real belief in what's unfolding.
The idea that we might actually be standing on the edge of something more enlightened, more human. And that's really at the heart of the work that you've done, Diana. You are reframing what life looks like after 50. You've talked about this third act not as winding down, but as the most expansive chapter yet.
So here's the tension I hear so many boomers wrestling with. We have lived experience, we have hard earned perspective, and we have stories worth telling. So how do we share them without sounding prescriptive or condescending or slipping into that, been there, done that? How do we tell our stories in a way that invites connection instead of eye rolling? absolutely.
I think it all comes down to something, again, I love Brene Brown's honesty and her ability to be vulnerable. I think it comes to not talking about what I learned and why you do this. It's it's telling stories of failure. I mean, to me, that's what I do with my daughter and her friends. I will say I tried that and I had to shut down the business or I did this and I had to leave.
I tell them my failure moments, but mostly, and you alluded to this, the thing I'm most excited about in my life that will be my film, and maybe there's some aha, because aha moments are moments of clarity, knowing, and reconnecting, and some of them are magical. Some of them are, I wrote this line the other day that I'm gonna write a piece about. The universe has an algorithm system also, because I
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I know that whenever I need to be told to slow down or I need an inspiration, somehow magically it comes. So, aha moments I think are a great unifier of all ages. So, I can't wait to see how that will work. How that plays out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll be fun. Diana, thank you.
know, boomers revolt, I think is on a magic carpet ride. So thank you for sharing all your wisdom and how you feel about things, because vulnerability and sharing and caring and loving is all of it. And That's at the core of everything, isn't it? Absolutely. That's what it is. So I want to thank you for the love and care and passion you're putting into this podcast.
I really deeply admire you for that. Thank you. Well, I had so much fun. Thanks, Diana.
As we wrap this conversation, what stands out isn't just who we were, but how deliberately we've become who we are. Our lives were shaped by family, by expectation, responsibility, and living in eras that asked us to perform, endure, and keep going. And we did. We learned. We adapted. We survived.
But evolution doesn't stop with age. If anything, it becomes clearer. I think with perspective comes the permission to soften what no longer serves us. To shed versions of ourselves built for someone else's approval. And to choose harmony, consistency, and coordination over performance. As boomers, we don't fade quietly. We revolt. Not with noise, but with clarity.
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We stand strong because we've lived enough life to know what matters and what does not. We are beyond proving our relevance. We now embody it. The third act isn't about looking back with regret. It's about moving forward with intention, being strong, grounded, curious, and yes, still becoming.
And if there's one truth this conversation reminds us of, it's this. Growth doesn't have an expiration date, and neither does purpose. This is Boomer's Revolt. I'm Cheryl Bichir. Thanks for listening.
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