This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Dorty. Hi, I'm Margaret Chow. I am a guest host today on Let's Be Clear, and I'm excited to be here. You know, what a wonderful thing to be able to continue Shannon's work this way, and I'm so excited to do this. I think it's really an incredible thing. And you know, she's definitely part of my generation and an era where I just felt so I think I feel so nostalgic for which it may not have been the best time for women in the nineties. You know, it was like kind of really hard to even be seen as an actor, as an Asian American woman. It was really really hard to feel visible. I started doing comedy in the eighties and so I had a lot of a longer sort of time and show business. And then I think because I was beginning as a comedian, I didn't really know or understand how it would be when I came to Los Angeles and tart to be an actress. But I just couldn't get a role. I couldn't get apart there were no acting roles for Asian Americans at all, So it was just a very different time and I looked up to anybody who was on TV, and of course Beverly Hills nine O two one oh was it? That was this show. I remember just being so enamored with it and thinking, when are we ever going to see the Asian version of that? We still haven't. I would love to see that. There's I think there's a lot of Asians in school, so maybe that would be something in our future. But there's a lot better environment for Asian Americans entertainment today. But I think, yeah, Beverly Hills nine O two one oh was it and it was just such a culture old moment for them and so incredible. And I think about like back then also to now and looking at all of us, like we're all sort of still around. We're all sort of still here, like kind of trying to figure out how to age and be like older. And I know, like for a long time, like even in entertainment, like you just didn't see women age. Really It's so interesting how we're very like popular in our early twenties and then we sort of just don't see us we're like until our seventies and eighties or something like that. I'll always want to think about aging as being this really spectacular journey, and my journey really through life has been just like one day to time and just sort of seeing it. So for me, like now I'm in this season of talking about aging and thinking about being older and thinking about what I can impart if there's wisdom that I can impart. I want to talk about aging now. I am fifty five. I'm gonna be fifty six. It's so strange how when you get older time really speeds up in a way also slows down. It sort of just depends. But I will be fifty six, which is the shady side. I mean, I think when you're fifty five you could kind of claim youth because you're just on the verge. But then after fifty five, then you're now senior citizen. Like that's the beginning, not of the end, but of the golden years, the best time. I think. I really am lucky in that I am in really pretty good health. I have a strong meditation practice, which keeps me pretty even. I'm very regular on check up, some mimograms and things like that, which I think is really important. It gets more and more important when you get older. I'm also in menopause, which for me has been actually really grand. I think because we haven't heard about women. We haven't heard much about our stories or what's going on that we don't really know about menopause. It's like this speaks secret. Well the secret is out. It's great. I've been having the best time with it. And it's amazing not to have this surge of hormones, the cessation of the surge of hormones, the kind of like push and pull of the tide every month, and to be free of that. It's phenomenal because you don't have to really worry about whether your decisions you're making are your own or if they're part of some biological imperative set forth a billion years ago. You know, we don't have a control over We actually have control over our own decisions. I realize how much now, in my younger life and my younger body, how much hormones had control, which is so weird to think about that a bunch of chemical reactions dictated the circumstances that I would put my life in, like that, the circumstances I put myself in, the relationships I would surround myself with. So it's really amazing to now have control of that because of that, I just I have a good time setting boundaries, which I never had before. You know, when I was younger, if a guy asked me out on a date, I would just go probably move in with them, because I just didn't know. I thought that if somebody liked you, you had to just be with them, because I just was never I just wasn't in control. I didn't think I was in control of it, like I just thought I had to. It was so weird, like I just had such a low self esteem and such a low idea of myself that I thought, well, if somebody likes me, get I better hang onto that. I better make sure that I respect him and do what they say, you know, And so I would just get in relationships and marriages that I didn't want to be in at all, and be tangled up for years and years, which is so awful. So now I really am having a good time setting boundaries. And somebody asked me out on a date and I screamed, Now, like I literally screamed no, which is maybe not the nicest way to do it, but it was so funny because it was like it was almost like a toddler really putting your foot down to say oh, And it was felt so good to do that. Like, if I'm talking to somebody, like I'm this dating thing, I'm trying to date whatever, I to start talking to somebody on a dating app. This one person I was talking to, and after about four or five exchange, I knew that I was this person was not for me. So I just said, I have mental illness. I'm sorry I blocked him, which is so also not the best, but how freeing not to have to pretend that I'm interested in somebody because I don't want to. I want to spare their feelings. I want to look a certain way. I look look like I'm okay. I think it's really funny, and it's really fun. At least I'm not wasting my time, precious time that I don't necessarily have. You know, time is our most precious resource and it's not renewable. You don't get it back. So I'm so glad to be able to do that. I think it's just so incredible that it took me fifty six years to actually get there, and for me, it's like, what an amazing thing to finally realize that I can do that. Now that I can finally set these boundaries now. And also if there is a relationship in my future which could happen, I may find that man or woman, or a trans person or a non binary person who is the right one, then that's totally amazing, you know. But I don't have to waste my time with people that are not going to be that in order to make myself compliant to societies rules about women, societies ideas about women, especially aging women attempting relationship. I'm really happy to be exempt from that. And I really attribute that to menopause. I really attribute the clarity of purpose and mind to the cessation of all these hormones that were really clouding my airspace for so long. So I think that you know when you're going into perimenopause, and then you get into menopause, there's just such a feeling of like confusion, and there's a lot like people have lots of different symptoms, and I think it can be really confusing and really disturbing for some I didn't have a game plan because my mother and all of my female relatives in the sixties and seventies were getting hysterectomies, so they were experiencing an accelerated menopause that was way faster, and that sort of didn't really have sort of like the slowes cessation as opposed to what mine ended up being, So I didn't have them to turn to to advice and for advice. And then a lot of the talk about menopause was it really was and is really about how you kind of encounter insomnia and mood swings and there's a temperature thing is off and all sorts of stuff. And it actually, for me was symptom wise, was not bad at all. I don't know why I got lucky. So now I'm also on hormone replacement therapy, which I'm really lucky enough to receive, and it's actually really helped me. And what it does, it doesn't bring back menstruation. It doesn't bring back the level of hormones that we are, you know, when we're in that period of time, you know where we're still menstruating. It's totally different. It's just a very different component to my health that I found is just it's very energizing and it's very it supports me I think also emotionally. Also, it's not covered by insurance, which is unfortunate, so it is almost prohibitively expensive, like it's all I can afford it. But it's like not great, you know, But I've cut some other things out of my life to be able to afford this gender affirming care, and I feel like it's worthwhile to me. I think I'm just a little more prudent about my spending when it comes to my health. I think this is the most valuable thing. So I've just made those kinds of calculations in my head and thought, this is more valuable to me than not doing it. And I think it's really good. But I think that overall, like as an older woman, I just seek contentment, and I just seek happiness, and I seek comfort and joy, like I've always lived with somebody in my life, like we've always lived with a partner. I've always had a relationship, like and they've all been unhappy, and I've always had to share my space and it's always been miserable. Like my home life was never good because I was always sharing with somebody that I didn't like. And so now finally I've been living alone. I've been living alone for the last few years, and it is so wonderful, Like I just love being in my house. I love my animals. I love my home like I've decorated it to the way that I want. When I make a mess, it's my mess, so it doesn't it doesn't appear like a mess to me. You know, my messes are self made, so it's like I'll clean them up when I get to it, but which I usually do. Like I have my rituals where I close the house down at night, and you know, for me, the grand I think luxury of living alone and like sleeping in the middle of the bed and eating I eat barbecue Doritos for dinner, Like it's just so great to not to have to care for another person. And that's like, you know, I think a real luxury for women to not have to care because our were everybody is entrusted to our care, so we're always caring for people all the time. And that was me in every relationship I was in, I was always caring for somebody else, And like, to now not have to care for anybody else, What a gift. So you know, if I ever was in a relationship again, I think maybe it would be great to still maintain that autonomy of having my own home, having my own Netflix queue, like my, Like one of my algorithms are are of the result of anybody else. It's all mine, like my for you pay it is just for me. Like I've like I've just really come to appreciate that I've been able to finally bend technology to my whim also, And so it's a journey of truly getting to know yourself, know your body, know your mind without interference from others, without interference from having to care for another, without having to put a partner's needs first, because that's always what happened, you know, every time I was like in a relationship, I would always put their needs over mind. Always, even to the point of I had this boyfriend who was really threatened by my vibrator. He didn't want me. He would like cry because he was like not making me have an orgasm. A lot was like you realize that the orgasm is still valid even if the vibrator is there. You know, the vibrator isn't another person, it's a tool to use together. It's technology that's helping us be closer. Actually, But he was such a misogynist that it was like just really unbearable for him to see a woman in having pleasure and so what ended up happening is we didn't use the vibraty and I would just fake it so it would be over. And that's like so depressing, you know, but that in order to somehow safeguard his masculinity, it was imperative for me to just forego pleasure. And it's so gross for me to even acknowledge that happen, and me as a feminist woman, for that to have happened is in my body my lifetime is like so miserable. He's long gone. Also, he voted for Trump. We make these mistakes, and because I would just say yes to anybody who liked me, because I just thought, who am I to say no? Like who am I to say no? Having been raised to sort of bend to men's will no matter what. It was really just a disgusting thing that I put myself through, you know. And so you know, getting older, aging, it's really it's just like so freeing and so enormously enjoyable. I think that you know that's often given sort of thrown out as a threat to women. It's like you're going to die alone. Well I hope, so, I hope so because that I can't imagine anything better, Like how great? What a wonderful thing to look forward to? Because in like the aloneness, people can look at it two ways, like is it a isolation or is it solitude? I like to say solitude. Solitude is like the most beautiful expression of self. Isolation is kind of just like you're cast out. And I think the better way to look at it is really in the beautiful moments of solitude. It's really peace, it's really healing. It's healing the wounds of a lifetime of not being able to heal. So now finally to reach that point of healing. And I think we as a nation, we really need to heal. I think part of what's happening I feel like we're in an abusive relationship with our partner or an ex partner, and we've gone back with our ex partner to somehow make it right, you know, because your body and your mind are going to try to justify what happened. So you're going to go back to your abuser and try to somehow make it right. Not that that behavior is healthy, but that's often what happens if we're just left untreated. And so I feel like that's sort of when we treat kind of what's happening as like that, like the trauma of what's happening now with this administration and all of the nightmarish day, day to day headlines that get made, it's really that we as a nation are going back to our abuser because we just trying to make it right. So maybe someday we will all wake up to that. I don't know, but as a woman on the other side of abuse, to acknowledge it at least seems like it's part of the healing one of us can heal, maybe all of us can heal slowly together. It's so hard to know. I'm also very like heartbroken as I would have loved to have seen a woman president. I just feel like that's what we need. And it's also heartbreaking to think that there's so many women who don't want a woman president or that they can't envision that for themselves. I think countries with female leaders have done a lot better. That's just the truth, you know, and we could use that, but for whatever reason, we just can't right now. And the only way that I can combat that is to just make my life as good as possible, which I think I can I mean, I have a great deal of empathy for so many people, but there's so little you can do at this point. All we can do is just make our lives good. So I would just focus on, if you're an older woman, make your life good. And I've been able to do that. I've been able to do that because I am very aware of what's happening with my finances. I'm very aware with what's happening with my business. I'm very aware of what's happening with my health. I'm just in real communication with every aspect of my life, and I think that's super important. I think that also when we finally put ourselves first. People always think that's selfish, but really, like, when are you going to do that? When you put yourself first, you are finally able to be in the driver's seat of your own destiny. And this is what it's all about. So I'm all about aging. I'm all about like also not necessarily giving in to all of the pennets of aging. I have a very like advanced skincare routine. I haven't really done any plastic surgery, nothing like fillers. I have uh not tried. It's weird. I have I have like experimented a little bit with like filler. It didn't look right on me. I didn't. I just don't benefit from fillers. Really, I think it just doesn't look I don't know, it's never been anything that seemed to look good or seem to work. So I am very like I have, like it's not a ten step skincare routine, but it's advanced. I use a retinol, I use the vitamin C sierrum like I use serums I have, I put like I seal it all with zinc. Like it's like a very like like laborious thing, but I really love it. I do take a lot of like I take oral monoxtil from my hair. I have like just a whole like routine with that, which I think really helps. I think that when we just get very real about what we need physically and like doing what we want to do with our face and body, like, it's like I think it's it's all great. Just plasti surgery hasn't been an option for me just because it's prohibitively expensive. I think that if you get plastic surgery, you want to pay for it, like you get what you pay for. You can't you can't go anywhere like discount, like don't scrimp on that. Like I think that if I were ever to approach that, I would definitely pay for the best, not even, but even the best can't always have the best outcome. You know, you don't necessarily know what your skin is gonna do. You don't necessarily know your body's gonna do, you know? I just id it like so scary to me. So at this point, I haven't considered any real plex surgery, but that may change in the future, who knows. I think it's all up for whatever happens. You know, you you decide what you want to do. I mean, your body your choice. For now, at least it stands for now certain things like plastic surgery, not other things of course, as we know. But I think when the time comes, if I want to approach it may be very well, I don't know. I don't know. But for now, I just do a lot of like good skincare. I pretty much like I'm very like adamant about doing it, and I also switch it up, but ultimately I think that's like the most advantageous and also like try to be judicious about like what you're eating, like I think I eat pretty well. Also, I eat Doritos like I definitely have like a healthy junk food fascination, and I'm definitely candy obsessed. But I do get a lot of like greens in and I try to do a lot of exercise, so I think that also pays off as well. You know. For me, I'm just happy that I think is the best beauty treatment of all. And beauty has no age. Beauty is not about aging. Beauty is experienced at every point in life. And beauty also is not necessarily what people think is just in the magazines or online or on the baddies and Instagram. It's not that beauty is everywhere. I think we can all be beautiful. We can claim that it's yours to claim if you want it, it's yours to claim. It doesn't have any definition attached. It's really I think a beauty is really a state of being in the place that you want to be. And that's where I always feel like I'm always in the place that I want to be. And I've been able to negotiate that place because I still have fun by like eating junk food and watching trash TV and doing whatever, staying up late sometimes, but I also try to make it up, like I think sleep is like the most important thing. I do try to sleep about twelve hours a day, which I got in my head. This is because Lebron James when he's training during his training phase and like when they're playing games, he sleeps twelve hours a day, and I thought that was so inspiring, Like if an athlete like really like applies their body, like the most important training beyond the physical labor and beyond the table, the training table, it's the bed. Sleep. It's the most important thing. So sleeping about twelve hours a day for me is sheer joy because I sleep with my dog and three cats, and the bed is loud, it's buzzing, it's snoring. It's the most beautiful thing. Marlene Dietrich always said to sleep with somebody else, which whether that was a person or a dog or a cat, because then you all recharge your batteries together. So it's like my bed is like one of those like mag safe charging platforms, and we're all just getting our charge on together. It's really marvelous. I love my bed and I love being in it, and I love a cooling sheet and a buckwheat pillow, and I have like this machine it's called a sleep meet that pumps water into the surface of the mattress so it can either cool it or heat it up. Right now, it's heated up a little bit, which the cats and the dog really love. So sleep is the key. I love sleeping so much. I'm sure I'm going to really enjoy death. My advice to my younger self, I think that it's really I would not worry so much. Like I was so worried about everything and everybody, so concerned about the way that things were going and what things were going to be perceived at, and what job was I going to get, who was going to like me? And all this stuff, and all those things that I worried about, none of them ever were anything to worry about. It's so weird, how when you look back at those, like really things that we're so upsetting at the time, and now I look back and I'm like, oh, that was really nothing. And it really made it clear that almost everything, actually everything that I ever obsessed or worried about, things that I thought were gonna happen, nothing ever happened. The worst thing I've been through never happened. That's I wrote a song that's one of the lines is the worst thing I've been through never happened. My imagining of a future was so much worse than what the actual outcome was. So I think my advice to my younger self is don't worry. And it's always still like, don't worry. Don't worry. Also, like the bad things in life, you don't don't. You can't see him coming most of the time, Like you just don't. And even if you do, they often don't feel the same what you perceive them to feel, like you just don't have that sense. It's so interesting, like we just waste a lot of worry and breath and fear for things that we don't need to be afraid of. So that's my advice for my younger self, my advice for young women growing up now with such uncertainty, it's really we need to like band together and listen to each other to figure out how to fight all of the things that are coming for us, for coming for our rights, for autonomy, for our ability to travel, for our ability to speak, for our ability to own property, you know, like all the stuff like we and you as young women, as inheritors of this broken system and this planet, this very very barely hanging together planet, You're gonna have to figure out how to fix it and keep it going, you know. And it's sad because my generation and the generation before mine have really done a number on us. Of course, we also fought for our own rise, but unfortunately we're getting them removed now. So how do we get them back? I think young women need to believe in themselves. We were able to do it once, we'll be able to do it again. And so my advice is to don't worry, but also work. Also take care of yourself. Also, you know, when we're struggling, we need to just band together. We need to get together. We need to listen to each other, encourage each other, always encourage each other. Women have to be there for each other because we don't we don't know what's going to happen. We need to be close, We need to be tight. It's an incredible moment in history for women. We don't have to take this election result as any kind of defeat. We can do is making a call to action for all of us, young and old and in between, to just band together and get excited about what's possible. Everything is possible, and I'm so excited to see what we all get to do together. So I just I wanted to say thank you for listening to Shannon's podcast. Let's be clear, I'm so honored to be able to continue on with her legacy like this. It's such a beautiful way to remember her and her work. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram, you can follow me at Margaret Underscore Show. I have a new album called Lucky Gift. It's an album of music that's coming out on February fourteenth, so I'm really looking forward to having you hear it. But thank you so much and I will talk to you later. Thank you. H

This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Dorty. Hi, I'm Margaret Chow. I am a guest host today on Let's Be Clear, and I'm excited to be here. You know, what a wonderful thing to be able to continue Shannon's work this way, and I'm so excited to do this. I think it's really an incredible thing. And you know, she's definitely part of my generation and an era where I just felt so I think I feel so nostalgic for which it may not have been the best time for women in the nineties. You know, it was like kind of really hard to even be seen as an actor, as an Asian American woman. It was really really hard to feel visible. I started doing comedy in the eighties and so I had a lot of a longer sort of time and show business. And then I think because I was beginning as a comedian, I didn't really know or understand how it would be when I came to Los Angeles and tart to be an actress. But I just couldn't get a role. I couldn't get apart there were no acting roles for Asian Americans at all, So it was just a very different time and I looked up to anybody who was on TV, and of course Beverly Hills nine O two one oh was it? That was this show. I remember just being so enamored with it and thinking, when are we ever going to see the Asian version of that? We still haven't. I would love to see that. There's I think there's a lot of Asians in school, so maybe that would be something in our future. But there's a lot better environment for Asian Americans entertainment today. But I think, yeah, Beverly Hills nine O two one oh was it and it was just such a culture old moment for them and so incredible. And I think about like back then also to now and looking at all of us, like we're all sort of still around. We're all sort of still here, like kind of trying to figure out how to age and be like older. And I know, like for a long time, like even in entertainment, like you just didn't see women age. Really It's so interesting how we're very like popular in our early twenties and then we sort of just don't see us we're like until our seventies and eighties or something like that. I'll always want to think about aging as being this really spectacular journey, and my journey really through life has been just like one day to time and just sort of seeing it. So for me, like now I'm in this season of talking about aging and thinking about being older and thinking about what I can impart if there's wisdom that I can impart. I want to talk about aging now. I am fifty five. I'm gonna be fifty six. It's so strange how when you get older time really speeds up in a way also slows down. It sort of just depends. But I will be fifty six, which is the shady side. I mean, I think when you're fifty five you could kind of claim youth because you're just on the verge. But then after fifty five, then you're now senior citizen. Like that's the beginning, not of the end, but of the golden years, the best time. I think. I really am lucky in that I am in really pretty good health. I have a strong meditation practice, which keeps me pretty even. I'm very regular on check up, some mimograms and things like that, which I think is really important. It gets more and more important when you get older. I'm also in menopause, which for me has been actually really grand. I think because we haven't heard about women. We haven't heard much about our stories or what's going on that we don't really know about menopause. It's like this speaks secret. Well the secret is out. It's great. I've been having the best time with it. And it's amazing not to have this surge of hormones, the cessation of the surge of hormones, the kind of like push and pull of the tide every month, and to be free of that. It's phenomenal because you don't have to really worry about whether your decisions you're making are your own or if they're part of some biological imperative set forth a billion years ago. You know, we don't have a control over We actually have control over our own decisions. I realize how much now, in my younger life and my younger body, how much hormones had control, which is so weird to think about that a bunch of chemical reactions dictated the circumstances that I would put my life in, like that, the circumstances I put myself in, the relationships I would surround myself with. So it's really amazing to now have control of that because of that, I just I have a good time setting boundaries, which I never had before. You know, when I was younger, if a guy asked me out on a date, I would just go probably move in with them, because I just didn't know. I thought that if somebody liked you, you had to just be with them, because I just was never I just wasn't in control. I didn't think I was in control of it, like I just thought I had to. It was so weird, like I just had such a low self esteem and such a low idea of myself that I thought, well, if somebody likes me, get I better hang onto that. I better make sure that I respect him and do what they say, you know, And so I would just get in relationships and marriages that I didn't want to be in at all, and be tangled up for years and years, which is so awful. So now I really am having a good time setting boundaries. And somebody asked me out on a date and I screamed, Now, like I literally screamed no, which is maybe not the nicest way to do it, but it was so funny because it was like it was almost like a toddler really putting your foot down to say oh, And it was felt so good to do that. Like, if I'm talking to somebody, like I'm this dating thing, I'm trying to date whatever, I to start talking to somebody on a dating app. This one person I was talking to, and after about four or five exchange, I knew that I was this person was not for me. So I just said, I have mental illness. I'm sorry I blocked him, which is so also not the best, but how freeing not to have to pretend that I'm interested in somebody because I don't want to. I want to spare their feelings. I want to look a certain way. I look look like I'm okay. I think it's really funny, and it's really fun. At least I'm not wasting my time, precious time that I don't necessarily have. You know, time is our most precious resource and it's not renewable. You don't get it back. So I'm so glad to be able to do that. I think it's just so incredible that it took me fifty six years to actually get there, and for me, it's like, what an amazing thing to finally realize that I can do that. Now that I can finally set these boundaries now. And also if there is a relationship in my future which could happen, I may find that man or woman, or a trans person or a non binary person who is the right one, then that's totally amazing, you know. But I don't have to waste my time with people that are not going to be that in order to make myself compliant to societies rules about women, societies ideas about women, especially aging women attempting relationship. I'm really happy to be exempt from that. And I really attribute that to menopause. I really attribute the clarity of purpose and mind to the cessation of all these hormones that were really clouding my airspace for so long. So I think that you know when you're going into perimenopause, and then you get into menopause, there's just such a feeling of like confusion, and there's a lot like people have lots of different symptoms, and I think it can be really confusing and really disturbing for some I didn't have a game plan because my mother and all of my female relatives in the sixties and seventies were getting hysterectomies, so they were experiencing an accelerated menopause that was way faster, and that sort of didn't really have sort of like the slowes cessation as opposed to what mine ended up being, So I didn't have them to turn to to advice and for advice. And then a lot of the talk about menopause was it really was and is really about how you kind of encounter insomnia and mood swings and there's a temperature thing is off and all sorts of stuff. And it actually, for me was symptom wise, was not bad at all. I don't know why I got lucky. So now I'm also on hormone replacement therapy, which I'm really lucky enough to receive, and it's actually really helped me. And what it does, it doesn't bring back menstruation. It doesn't bring back the level of hormones that we are, you know, when we're in that period of time, you know where we're still menstruating. It's totally different. It's just a very different component to my health that I found is just it's very energizing and it's very it supports me I think also emotionally. Also, it's not covered by insurance, which is unfortunate, so it is almost prohibitively expensive, like it's all I can afford it. But it's like not great, you know, But I've cut some other things out of my life to be able to afford this gender affirming care, and I feel like it's worthwhile to me. I think I'm just a little more prudent about my spending when it comes to my health. I think this is the most valuable thing. So I've just made those kinds of calculations in my head and thought, this is more valuable to me than not doing it. And I think it's really good. But I think that overall, like as an older woman, I just seek contentment, and I just seek happiness, and I seek comfort and joy, like I've always lived with somebody in my life, like we've always lived with a partner. I've always had a relationship, like and they've all been unhappy, and I've always had to share my space and it's always been miserable. Like my home life was never good because I was always sharing with somebody that I didn't like. And so now finally I've been living alone. I've been living alone for the last few years, and it is so wonderful, Like I just love being in my house. I love my animals. I love my home like I've decorated it to the way that I want. When I make a mess, it's my mess, so it doesn't it doesn't appear like a mess to me. You know, my messes are self made, so it's like I'll clean them up when I get to it, but which I usually do. Like I have my rituals where I close the house down at night, and you know, for me, the grand I think luxury of living alone and like sleeping in the middle of the bed and eating I eat barbecue Doritos for dinner, Like it's just so great to not to have to care for another person. And that's like, you know, I think a real luxury for women to not have to care because our were everybody is entrusted to our care, so we're always caring for people all the time. And that was me in every relationship I was in, I was always caring for somebody else, And like, to now not have to care for anybody else, What a gift. So you know, if I ever was in a relationship again, I think maybe it would be great to still maintain that autonomy of having my own home, having my own Netflix queue, like my, Like one of my algorithms are are of the result of anybody else. It's all mine, like my for you pay it is just for me. Like I've like I've just really come to appreciate that I've been able to finally bend technology to my whim also, And so it's a journey of truly getting to know yourself, know your body, know your mind without interference from others, without interference from having to care for another, without having to put a partner's needs first, because that's always what happened, you know, every time I was like in a relationship, I would always put their needs over mind. Always, even to the point of I had this boyfriend who was really threatened by my vibrator. He didn't want me. He would like cry because he was like not making me have an orgasm. A lot was like you realize that the orgasm is still valid even if the vibrator is there. You know, the vibrator isn't another person, it's a tool to use together. It's technology that's helping us be closer. Actually, But he was such a misogynist that it was like just really unbearable for him to see a woman in having pleasure and so what ended up happening is we didn't use the vibraty and I would just fake it so it would be over. And that's like so depressing, you know, but that in order to somehow safeguard his masculinity, it was imperative for me to just forego pleasure. And it's so gross for me to even acknowledge that happen, and me as a feminist woman, for that to have happened is in my body my lifetime is like so miserable. He's long gone. Also, he voted for Trump. We make these mistakes, and because I would just say yes to anybody who liked me, because I just thought, who am I to say no? Like who am I to say no? Having been raised to sort of bend to men's will no matter what. It was really just a disgusting thing that I put myself through, you know. And so you know, getting older, aging, it's really it's just like so freeing and so enormously enjoyable. I think that you know that's often given sort of thrown out as a threat to women. It's like you're going to die alone. Well I hope, so, I hope so because that I can't imagine anything better, Like how great? What a wonderful thing to look forward to? Because in like the aloneness, people can look at it two ways, like is it a isolation or is it solitude? I like to say solitude. Solitude is like the most beautiful expression of self. Isolation is kind of just like you're cast out. And I think the better way to look at it is really in the beautiful moments of solitude. It's really peace, it's really healing. It's healing the wounds of a lifetime of not being able to heal. So now finally to reach that point of healing. And I think we as a nation, we really need to heal. I think part of what's happening I feel like we're in an abusive relationship with our partner or an ex partner, and we've gone back with our ex partner to somehow make it right, you know, because your body and your mind are going to try to justify what happened. So you're going to go back to your abuser and try to somehow make it right. Not that that behavior is healthy, but that's often what happens if we're just left untreated. And so I feel like that's sort of when we treat kind of what's happening as like that, like the trauma of what's happening now with this administration and all of the nightmarish day, day to day headlines that get made, it's really that we as a nation are going back to our abuser because we just trying to make it right. So maybe someday we will all wake up to that. I don't know, but as a woman on the other side of abuse, to acknowledge it at least seems like it's part of the healing one of us can heal, maybe all of us can heal slowly together. It's so hard to know. I'm also very like heartbroken as I would have loved to have seen a woman president. I just feel like that's what we need. And it's also heartbreaking to think that there's so many women who don't want a woman president or that they can't envision that for themselves. I think countries with female leaders have done a lot better. That's just the truth, you know, and we could use that, but for whatever reason, we just can't right now. And the only way that I can combat that is to just make my life as good as possible, which I think I can I mean, I have a great deal of empathy for so many people, but there's so little you can do at this point. All we can do is just make our lives good. So I would just focus on, if you're an older woman, make your life good. And I've been able to do that. I've been able to do that because I am very aware of what's happening with my finances. I'm very aware with what's happening with my business. I'm very aware of what's happening with my health. I'm just in real communication with every aspect of my life, and I think that's super important. I think that also when we finally put ourselves first. People always think that's selfish, but really, like, when are you going to do that? When you put yourself first, you are finally able to be in the driver's seat of your own destiny. And this is what it's all about. So I'm all about aging. I'm all about like also not necessarily giving in to all of the pennets of aging. I have a very like advanced skincare routine. I haven't really done any plastic surgery, nothing like fillers. I have uh not tried. It's weird. I have I have like experimented a little bit with like filler. It didn't look right on me. I didn't. I just don't benefit from fillers. Really, I think it just doesn't look I don't know, it's never been anything that seemed to look good or seem to work. So I am very like I have, like it's not a ten step skincare routine, but it's advanced. I use a retinol, I use the vitamin C sierrum like I use serums I have, I put like I seal it all with zinc. Like it's like a very like like laborious thing, but I really love it. I do take a lot of like I take oral monoxtil from my hair. I have like just a whole like routine with that, which I think really helps. I think that when we just get very real about what we need physically and like doing what we want to do with our face and body, like, it's like I think it's it's all great. Just plasti surgery hasn't been an option for me just because it's prohibitively expensive. I think that if you get plastic surgery, you want to pay for it, like you get what you pay for. You can't you can't go anywhere like discount, like don't scrimp on that. Like I think that if I were ever to approach that, I would definitely pay for the best, not even, but even the best can't always have the best outcome. You know, you don't necessarily know what your skin is gonna do. You don't necessarily know your body's gonna do, you know? I just id it like so scary to me. So at this point, I haven't considered any real plex surgery, but that may change in the future, who knows. I think it's all up for whatever happens. You know, you you decide what you want to do. I mean, your body your choice. For now, at least it stands for now certain things like plastic surgery, not other things of course, as we know. But I think when the time comes, if I want to approach it may be very well, I don't know. I don't know. But for now, I just do a lot of like good skincare. I pretty much like I'm very like adamant about doing it, and I also switch it up, but ultimately I think that's like the most advantageous and also like try to be judicious about like what you're eating, like I think I eat pretty well. Also, I eat Doritos like I definitely have like a healthy junk food fascination, and I'm definitely candy obsessed. But I do get a lot of like greens in and I try to do a lot of exercise, so I think that also pays off as well. You know. For me, I'm just happy that I think is the best beauty treatment of all. And beauty has no age. Beauty is not about aging. Beauty is experienced at every point in life. And beauty also is not necessarily what people think is just in the magazines or online or on the baddies and Instagram. It's not that beauty is everywhere. I think we can all be beautiful. We can claim that it's yours to claim if you want it, it's yours to claim. It doesn't have any definition attached. It's really I think a beauty is really a state of being in the place that you want to be. And that's where I always feel like I'm always in the place that I want to be. And I've been able to negotiate that place because I still have fun by like eating junk food and watching trash TV and doing whatever, staying up late sometimes, but I also try to make it up, like I think sleep is like the most important thing. I do try to sleep about twelve hours a day, which I got in my head. This is because Lebron James when he's training during his training phase and like when they're playing games, he sleeps twelve hours a day, and I thought that was so inspiring, Like if an athlete like really like applies their body, like the most important training beyond the physical labor and beyond the table, the training table, it's the bed. Sleep. It's the most important thing. So sleeping about twelve hours a day for me is sheer joy because I sleep with my dog and three cats, and the bed is loud, it's buzzing, it's snoring. It's the most beautiful thing. Marlene Dietrich always said to sleep with somebody else, which whether that was a person or a dog or a cat, because then you all recharge your batteries together. So it's like my bed is like one of those like mag safe charging platforms, and we're all just getting our charge on together. It's really marvelous. I love my bed and I love being in it, and I love a cooling sheet and a buckwheat pillow, and I have like this machine it's called a sleep meet that pumps water into the surface of the mattress so it can either cool it or heat it up. Right now, it's heated up a little bit, which the cats and the dog really love. So sleep is the key. I love sleeping so much. I'm sure I'm going to really enjoy death. My advice to my younger self, I think that it's really I would not worry so much. Like I was so worried about everything and everybody, so concerned about the way that things were going and what things were going to be perceived at, and what job was I going to get, who was going to like me? And all this stuff, and all those things that I worried about, none of them ever were anything to worry about. It's so weird, how when you look back at those, like really things that we're so upsetting at the time, and now I look back and I'm like, oh, that was really nothing. And it really made it clear that almost everything, actually everything that I ever obsessed or worried about, things that I thought were gonna happen, nothing ever happened. The worst thing I've been through never happened. That's I wrote a song that's one of the lines is the worst thing I've been through never happened. My imagining of a future was so much worse than what the actual outcome was. So I think my advice to my younger self is don't worry. And it's always still like, don't worry. Don't worry. Also, like the bad things in life, you don't don't. You can't see him coming most of the time, Like you just don't. And even if you do, they often don't feel the same what you perceive them to feel, like you just don't have that sense. It's so interesting, like we just waste a lot of worry and breath and fear for things that we don't need to be afraid of. So that's my advice for my younger self, my advice for young women growing up now with such uncertainty, it's really we need to like band together and listen to each other to figure out how to fight all of the things that are coming for us, for coming for our rights, for autonomy, for our ability to travel, for our ability to speak, for our ability to own property, you know, like all the stuff like we and you as young women, as inheritors of this broken system and this planet, this very very barely hanging together planet, You're gonna have to figure out how to fix it and keep it going, you know. And it's sad because my generation and the generation before mine have really done a number on us. Of course, we also fought for our own rise, but unfortunately we're getting them removed now. So how do we get them back? I think young women need to believe in themselves. We were able to do it once, we'll be able to do it again. And so my advice is to don't worry, but also work. Also take care of yourself. Also, you know, when we're struggling, we need to just band together. We need to get together. We need to listen to each other, encourage each other, always encourage each other. Women have to be there for each other because we don't we don't know what's going to happen. We need to be close, We need to be tight. It's an incredible moment in history for women. We don't have to take this election result as any kind of defeat. We can do is making a call to action for all of us, young and old and in between, to just band together and get excited about what's possible. Everything is possible, and I'm so excited to see what we all get to do together. So I just I wanted to say thank you for listening to Shannon's podcast. Let's be clear, I'm so honored to be able to continue on with her legacy like this. It's such a beautiful way to remember her and her work. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram, you can follow me at Margaret Underscore Show. I have a new album called Lucky Gift. It's an album of music that's coming out on February fourteenth, so I'm really looking forward to having you hear it. But thank you so much and I will talk to you later. Thank you. H