Friends Don't Let Friends Age Alone with Nina Lorez Collins
Show Snapshot:
Nina Lorez Collins is reimagining midlife and she’s bringing other women along with her—at both Revel and The Woolfer which offer events and community for women 40-plus. She is also the author of the midlife manual, What Would Virginia Woolf Do? And Other Questions I Ask Myself as I Attempt to Age Without Apology. We cover midlife pain points, the hard-earned confidence of midlife, divorce, online dating, and aging and raging gracefully.
In This Episode We Cover:
1. Charting a career of changes - from literary agent to the founder of a Facebook group for midlife women that went viral, and now Chief Creative Officer of Revel–Nina talks career evolution.
2. Real talk on midlife pain points: perimenopause, hormone disruption, angst about aging, transition and loss.
3. The duality of midlife – loss, poignancy, regret but also clarity, confidence, wisdom.
4. Why midlife is better with friends. How Revel is creating community for women 40+ both online and IRL events.
5. This Too Shall Pass. How midlife teaches us that no feeling is forever.
6. Author, podcaster, convener of women – how Nina mines the zeitgeist to create a shared space for women looking to navigate midlife in the company of other women.
7. On her radar – Revel events not to miss, a transformative read, the highs (and lows) of online dating.
8. Plus, HRT, hiking, and how to find the right therapist.
Quotable:
I had a bunch of years that I can now look back on and realize I was perimenopausal and depressed for good reason. I got divorced in my later thirties from the father of my four kids and I had sold my agency. That is when I started What Would Virginia Woolf Do? I also wasn’t sleeping well; I was in perimenopause and I wanted to talk to other women about aging and what the second half of our lives looked like.
I’m honestly amazed every day at how much calmer and happier I am than when I was in my twenties and thirties. I really feel incredibly grateful. My mother died when she was 46 and for me to be 52 and still alive and in good shape and able to support my children and to feel good in my skin, is something I really didn’t expect when I was 28, 35. I don’t feel like I have much to prove anymore. I don’t second guess myself.
More Resources:
Follow Nina on Social:
Nina’s Book:
What Would Virginia Woolf Do? And Other Questions I Ask Myself as I Attempt to Age Without Apology
Nina’s Podcast:
Don’t miss the podcast we cover on the show:
Online Dating, According to Middle-Aged Men
Find Revel:
Transcript
Katie Fogarty (0:04):
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you may know that I decided to launch A Certain Age as I approached 50. I had looked around for voices of women in midlife, of women who were saying, Hey, midlife is not the end of the line, we’re not done yet by any stretch. But we’re also a little, okay maybe a lot, gobsmacked by the way midlife is changing our lives, our looks, and even our livelihoods.
My guest today is a woman who looked midlife squarely in the eye and asked herself, What would Virginia Woolf do? Nina Lorez Collins is an author, podcaster, and convener of women. She is reimagining midlife and she’s bringing other women along with her. She’s the founder of the digital platform, The Woolfer, and is the chief content officer at Revel, a nationwide events and community platform for women 40-plus. She is also the author of the midlife manual, What Would Virginia Woolf Do? And Other Questions I Ask Myself as I Attempt to Age Without Apology. As a card-carrying member of team Age Out Loud, I am thrilled she is joining us today. Welcome, Nina.
Nina Lorez Collins (1:09):
Thank you so much, I loved that introduction [both laugh] And team Age Out Loud is awesome, I’m gonna make a bumper sticker.
Katie (1:18):
Yes! Exactly. I know, we have to get out, we’re not gonna change the narrative unless we can finally admit to how old we are. Age out loud is a hashtag that I use and I really launched the show because I had a number of women tell me they couldn’t admit publicly to being 50 and I thought, you know…
Nina (1:34):
Oh, God. You know, when I do Zooms in the community, I always ask people to change their name to name, age, city just because I think it’s interesting because we’re all over the country and the world and it’s always interesting to me that some women won’t write their age. I’m 52.
Katie (1:50):
Nice.
Nina (1:51):
I’m happy to say I’m 52. How old are you now?
Katie (1:52):
I’m 52 as well. I meant to launch the show when I was 50 and it took me until 35 days before 51 and I was finally like, you know what, I promised myself I was going to do this at 50 and I’m getting it done. I kinda squeaked it in under the deadline and I’ve been doing it for a year now, so I’m 52.
Nina (2:11):
That’s great. We’re both 1969.
Katie (2:13):
I love it, exactly. So Nina, you wear a lot of hats. I mentioned them in the beginning. You’re a founder, you’re a chief content officer, podcaster, author, right? And all of these designations came in midlife, after an age where culture tends to write people off, especially women. How and why did you carve out these new identities in your late forties?
Nina (2:32):
Yeah, it was actually really funny listening to your description I thought, you know what, I am doing all those things, that is so cool. [both laugh] My background is in book publishing. So, I spent my twenties and thirties in book publishing. I was always an entrepreneur, I worked as a teenager, I cleaned houses when I was in college and when I went into book publishing in my twenties, I worked for other people for about three years and then started my own company. So I was a literary scout for foreign publishers and film companies in my twenties. Then in my thirties, I had a literary agency.
And then I had a bunch of years that I can now look back on and realize I was kind of perimenopausal and depressed for good reason. I got divorced in my later thirties from the father of my four kids and I had sold my agency and was kind of you know, trying to take care of my kids post-divorce, not really sure how or in what way I would ever work again. I had gotten a divorce settlement, I couldn’t really think of a good next career. I went to graduate school in something called narrative medicine which is the study of death and aging really, at Columbia. So, I started doing some consulting in end of life care and thought, maybe I’d become a death doula or a divorce doula but in retrospect, looking back on those years, I think it was when I was feeling kind of demoralized about getting older; I was divorced, my kids were on the cusp of leaving home. And that is when I started What Would Virginia Woolf Do? I also wasn’t sleeping well, I was having some sort of perimenopause and I wanted to talk to other women about aging and what the second half of our lives looks like.
In retrospect, it all totally makes sense. My narrative medicine degree was essentially a degree in transitions of loss and how we deal with aging. I’d always worked in book publishing, I’d always been a huge reader of only women, pretty much. I went to Barnard, I’m a feminist. So, in some ways, all my interests really came together, but at the time I couldn’t really see it. I started this Facebook group just to talk to my girlfriends about aging in kind of a funny way and the idea was, should we kill ourselves in our fifties? [Katie laughs] Totally just a joke.
Katie (4:44):
I am not drowning myself in a river. [laughs]
Nina (4:48):
Well, I have to say, it is funny to look back. First of all, had I known it was gonna become a business I would never have called it that, it was really an inside joke. But it was like, we’re getting older and maybe the world doesn’t care, and should we just walk into the river with stones in our pockets? Of course, I learned, big resounding no. I was 46 when I started the Facebook community and it has taken me on this whole adventure that kind of brings together all my interests.
Katie (5:19):
I love this story. I love the story that you said...it’s not serendipity but you’re experiencing this moment and you were very open and authentic about it and connected with people and it grew and created this journey for you. Because you’ve really gained traction. You were once a private Facebook group but now you have a website, your community reach is 20,000 plus, you cover topics well beyond menopause; it’s lipstick, incontinence, latest Netflix series, empty nest, et cetera. So, what’s going on for The Woolfer these days? And how is your work with that separate from what you’re doing with Revel?
Nina (5:57):
Well happily, it’s all become entirely the same thing. So, What Would Virginia Woolf Do became a website and an app, a social platform called The Woolfer and that actually is about to close on December 1st because over the summer we merged with a great company called hellorevel.com. Revel is an event and community platform for women over 40 that started a couple of years ago. We’ve come together to essentially, it’s a grand plan, the idea is really to become a kind of Meetup meets Facebook for women over 40; Facebook without kind of the evil, spilling your data, no advertising to you endlessly and generally being bad for the world. Really our idea is kind of a good social platform for women in the second half of their lives. We have groups like on Facebook there are groups, you can create a group you can join a group. You can join things like The Woolfer, for example, still lives on Revel. Or Come Sew With Me is a group, or Revelers In DC, or Hiking Moms in Santa Monica. We have lots and lots of groups that you can join.
And then we also have this amazing ability for women to create events and attend events. So, if you want to find a book club or start a book club, or go for a walk around the lake in Chicago, or I dunno, go lingerie shopping in Atlanta with some girlfriends. You can find events, we have meditation, we have a lot of writing groups, we have so many things, discussions about finance, discussions about the empty nest. So, you can go onto Revel and one of the things I really love about it is it’s great for women who are really looking to find their tribe, and it’s also great for women who are looking to kind of create a following. Like, if you have a real passion about I dunno, literary novels from Italy in the second half of the century, you can create a group on that and women will come to your events and you guys can talk about these things and that can be your thing. So we really have a forum where women can find their people. It’s truly a community and events platform unlike anything else.
Katie (8:05):
And it sounds like it’s very much member-led, the members are the ones both opting into the programming but they’re creating it.
Nina (8:14):
That’s a really good point. So our goal right now, is we’re kind of thinking we expect about 80% of the events on Revel to be member-led, exactly. And then about 20% are what we call Revel HQ led, which I’m in charge of, kind of, programming. Maybe there’s a brand that we think women should know about, like Kindra or some sort of new company. Actually, I do a call every third Wednesday of every month that I really, really love, it’s a webinar with a therapist called Debbie Magids. Last month we were talking about boundaries. I think the month before we were talking about trauma. Debbie’s great. So, I do this webinar, members come, it gets recorded as our podcast. So, we have Revel HQ events, things we think the community will benefit by, and to some extent, probably also setting a little bit of modeling for what we hope to happen in the community.
Katie (9:08):
And does all this content live on the Revel website, or is this something that you need to have membership access to, to get?
Nina (9:16):
Well, you have to have membership access, but membership is free. It does all live on the website, I’m trying to think is the blog is public outside the membership? Probably not. I think you do have to become a member. We’re also on YouTube, we have a podcast that you can find, our podcast is called Raging Gracefully, that’s available anywhere you get podcasts. We get a newsletter that goes out once a week, you do not have to be a member to get the newsletter, that’s called “The Weekly Reveler” on Sundays. So no, the content is readily available but yes also, once you’re a member, it’s in the website.
Katie (9:50):
And so fantastic that this is free and that you’re building your network.
Nina (9:56):
Yeah, I mean right now we’re VC funded so our focus really is growth, proving that there’s a need for this and that we can build it. We will eventually have a sort of freemium model, similar to dating apps, which is the best way to explain it probably. We’re based on use. Maybe if you use it every day there will be some fee attached, ff you only use it once a week or once a month… We haven’t gotten there yet. Right now we’re very focused on growth. We know we can ultimately support it financially with sponsorship once we have enough women in there, that will happen. So yeah, it’s completely free.
Another thing I should say is that none of the events, right now, are paid for. You can’t create an event that you charge money for; we don’t want it to grow into like a giant MLM. We are introducing at the beginning of 2022, a kind of sliver of events called Revel Experts where members who really excel at what they do can apply to be a Revel Expert and offer a workshop which they will charge for and we’ll split that with them 80-20, so 80 to the expert, 20 to the company. We’re trying to do that because we want women who are super good at what they do, we don’t want to take advantage of anyone, we want it to be member-led and we want women to be able to share their loves and their passions and connect with each other. But if someone is really teaching something, it’s a lot of work. Maybe a good example would be a workshop on how to have a sane divorce by a divorce mediator, maybe you do a six-week workshop...
Katie (11:26):
.That is going to be very popular by the way. One of the most popular episodes on this podcast was about surviving divorce.
Nina (11:35):
Same. Our most popular episodes are ones on divorce, ones on vaginal dryness, and we have a really funny episode on internet dating, where we interviewed men, that’s very popular. We interviewed midlife men and some of them were super heinous, it was really very funny. [both laugh]
Katie (11:54):
Oh my gosh, I want to hear more about your podcast and that interview but first, we’re gonna take a quick break.
[Ad break]
Katie (13:02):
Okay, Nina, we’re back from our break and we were talking about your podcast and a recent interview you had done with some men on midlife dating. So, share a little bit about that and also what we can expect from the podcast and the content on Revel in general.
Nina (13:17):
Yeah, so when I joined Revel this summer, they actually didn’t have any content so it was a really exciting kind of match-up because we had a lot of content and we also have women all over the country. At the time Revel was mostly based in California with a smattering of people in DC. So, we’ve brought to them this newsletter which goes out every Sunday, “The Weekly Reveler,” the podcast which is called Raging Gracefully, we now have a very vibrant blog, we’re always looking for good writers if anyone wants to apply to be a writer, write to support@hellorevel.com we’re always interested in great content.
And the podcast I’m hoping will evolve. Originally when we started the podcast it was me and my partner Hillary Richard who was a devoted Woolfer admin and we did this kind of the two of us interviewing lots of guests which was super fun. During COVID because of being isolated, we kind of pivoted and the podcast is now mostly me interviewing guests. I’d like to go back to a more heavily produced version, sometime in 2022 when we have a little more time, right now we’re super busy with the integration of the two companies. But yeah, one of my favorite episodes was definitely the one where we interviewed men on midlife dating, that was an interesting one. We do all sorts of things...
Katie (14:30):
Did it make you want to get in or out of the dating pool?
Nina (14:33):
Actually, you know, I’m a big fan of internet dating. I have a lovely boyfriend I’ve been with for over 3 years who I met on Match and I think internet dating is totally the way to go, but I have to say, that interview made me glad I was not dating. [Katie laughs] We just happened to pick a few men who were, I dunno, they said some really ridiculous things.
Katie (14:52):
All right, I’m putting that episode in the show notes so people can go check it out for themselves. But let’s switch gears for a minute. I want to talk about your book. I know you wrote that in 2018. Both your book and a lot of the podcast topics that you cover really recognize that midlife is a time where women are focused on purpose and meaning, how to love themselves as they enter this second half of life. But both your book and your podcast recognize there’s a duality when it comes to aging. There’s hard-earned wisdom that we want to celebrate, but there’s also sadness. I would like to talk a little bit about sadness first. Not the kind of sadness that gets a lot of press like wrinkles, empty-nests, and sagging skin because those can bum us out. But what are you hearing from your community? What are the midlife pain points that you’re hearing from Woolfers and from the community at Hello Revel?
Nina (15:42):
It’s really been a big part of my mission with all of this to allow women to acknowledge the sadness that comes with aging and nostalgia. I always felt from the beginning that I didn’t want to community to be super, “You go, girl, we’re all fabulous,” because the truth is there are a lot of sad and heartbreaks about aging. I mean, you know there’s regret I think as we get older, one of the great things about genuinely feeling wiser, which I think is really true is I know I look back on things and wish I had done certain things differently. And there’s a sadness to that, a kind of feeling of you can’t go back and we’re not getting any younger, and this is only going in one direction. There’s a reality to impending death. So, I think regret is something that is real. You know, losing your children, having your children grow up, going through a lot of relationships can be really exhausting and hard.
Katie (16:38):
Losing your parents, having marriages dissolve, friendships change.
Nina (16:43):
Yeah, for a lot of people, you know, real financial reckoning I would say for a lot of people. If you haven’t done that well and you feel like your opportunities to make money are pretty much over, that’s a really hard moment to come to. So yeah, there are a lot more things besides kind of wrinkles and gray hair that I think are really real. Loss of friendships, you know. For women our age who had kids, when kids were young, that was an easier time to make friends but for a lot of women in our fifties and sixties, they find themselves more isolated, which is one of the reasons the community is such a great thing.
Katie (17:19):
Yeah, the loneliness epidemic that you hear about. I mean, we’ve all just come out of this two-year time where we were sheltering in place or very much, our normal social lives and work connections kind of really disappeared. We were having a loneliness epidemic before COVID.
Nina (17:42):
Before that, exactly. We’ve been having one for a long time. That is one of the great things about Revel. I see women make friends all the time. You really can find your people with just a little bit of effort and you can kind of go on and figure out what’s interesting to you and you can talk to women in the threads if you’re shy to go to an event at first. Because loneliness is real and as we know, we just published in our newsletter this week, two articles on friendship. One by a Woolfer actually who has made a lot of friends through the community post-divorce and has realized how it’s changed her life. And another about how to make friends after divorce. You know, when you lose a lot of relationships in the wake of a divorce, how do you kind of restart? Because there are a million studies that show that loneliness is a bigger killer than XYZ.
Katie (18:29):
Sure. It’s the new smoking, it’s the new sitting, all that stuff. And there are health benefits to being connected. Everything from longevity to better cognitive…
Nina (18:40):
Function. Absolutely, 100%. It’s crucial. And I think as women we see it, women generally have more connections than men do. I’m not in the business of convening men, but I do think men have this problem also kind of in spades.
Katie (18:58):
Yeah, absolutely. What do you see...we just covered sadness...what do you see as the joys or triumphs of midlife?
Nina (19:05):
Honestly, really the equanimity, the wisdom. I think we have so much experience now, I mean I’m honestly amazed every day at how much kind of calmer and happier I am than when I was in my twenties and thirties. I really feel incredibly grateful. My mother died when she was 46 and for me to be 52 and still alive and in good shape and able to support my children and be there for them emotionally and just feel good in my skin, is something I really didn’t expect when I was 28, 35. I really struggled a lot when I was younger.
And I think for a lot of people that’s true, I think reaching a point where you have more perspective. I don’t feel like I have much to prove anymore, I feel just much more comfortable in my skin. I don’t second guess myself. So, I think there’s a lot. I’ve also had a lot of therapy, which I think helped. And people tell me, what I learn from women in the community is it only continues to get better, which I now believe. I didn’t when I first started What Would Virginia Woolf Do? when I was 46, the older women which then, for me were in their fifties, were saying it gets much better when you get to the other side of menopause and I was like super defeatist about it.
Katie (20:24):
[laughs] You’re like, Really?
Nina (20:26):
I was like, really? You don’t look, I mean do we look better? I don’t know. And the fact is, it is so much better. I am really amazed actually on the other side of 50, how good my life is.
Katie (20:40):
Yeah, those are the themes that I hear again and again from women. That there’s this sort of hard-earned confidence. You said you struggled in your twenties and thirties and that some other people do as well and I would say most people struggle.
Nina (20:53):
I think so too, yeah.
Katie (20:54):
There’s not a single person that I know who hasn’t gone through something hard. And hard is different for different people but there’s job loss, there’s loss of children, there’s divorce, there’s you know, losing a parent, just sort of navigating so many challenges.
Nina (21:08):
And also just mental health. I have to say, I now work with a lot of women in their twenties and thirties and I have four kids in their twenties, three daughters. And just watching them all figure out how to navigate life is hard. There’s just a lot. A lot of people are anxious and depressed and they’re dealing with their relationships with their parents and they’re dealing with love relationships and they just don’t know as much. I look at younger people and I feel like, oh, you have so much to learn and you have to just go through it yourself.
Katie (21:38):
They have to go through those bruising times. I think getting to midlife, you really have been on the roller coaster and you have gone through the highs and lows and you know, one of my kind of unofficial mantras that I say to myself constantly is: this too shall pass. And I believe it now finally because I’ve experienced it enough. And when I say, “This too shall pass” I mean it as a double-sided coin; the hard stuff is eventually gonna resolve and you’re gonna move through it but some of the joyful stuff is gonna change as well. You really have to try to focus on what’s right in front of you and where you are. You only get better at being present.
Nina (22:21):
That really is I think the absolute best summary of it. I feel now when I have a difficult day I’m so aware that I won’t feel this way tomorrow. I don’t even have to think about it, I just ride through it in a much easier way. By the same token, the really beautiful, amazing moments, I kind of appreciate more. I realize I’m not going to be here forever and I’m lucky right now.
Katie (22:42):
Yes. You said something...I read your blog post about turning 46, the age that your mother had died, and in it, I actually wrote this down, you said, “I feel lucky and exhausted.” And I so connect with that because I feel like that should be the unofficial motto of midlife. [laughs] We are lucky. We’ve got to this phase and we know that we’re lucky, but there are times that we can’t sleep. You know, we’re dealing with a lot.
Nina (23:10):
Well I have to say, I went on HRT, so now I’m not even exhausted, I’m super rested. [laughs]
Katie (23:14):
Okay, that needs to be part of my regimen. It’s funny. It’s come up a couple of times when we’ve had doctors on the show and it’s on my very long to-do list is to dive into that but you’re inspiring me.
Nina (23:26):
Well, you have to do it sooner rather than later.
Katie (23:28):
I’m only 52 but you’re right. [laughs]
Nina (23:31):
I know, but after like, somewhere between 55 and 60 we can’t do it anymore. So getting it is good because you really sleep super well, I have to say.
Katie (23:40):
All right, Nina, you’re gonna check back in with me in a month, I promise I’m gonna get on that. [Nina laughs] So, before you do that, we’re about to wrap up but I do want to move to a quick speed round to end. I’ve been doing this to close all the shows and I love it so I hope you’ll play along with me.
Nina (23:55):
Totally.
Katie (23:55):
So, for the speed round, I just want a one or two-word answers to complete these sentences. My superpower at work is _____.
Nina (24:05):
Strength.
Katie (24:06):
My superpower at home _____.
Nina (24:08):
Clarity.
Katie (24:10):
The podcast topic I could talk about again and again _____.
Nina (24:15):
Online dating.
Katie (24:16):
Ooo I love it. If I never have to talk about this midlife topic again, I’d be thrilled _____.
Nina (24:24):
Hot flashes.
Katie (24:25):
[laughs] A favorite recent Revel event _____.
Nina (24:30):
Hiking. A breakneck hike we did in update new york.
Katie (24:34):
Lovely. An upcoming Revel event I’m really excited about _____.
Nina (24:39):
Debbie Magids on how to find the right therapist.
Katie (24:42):
On weekends you will find me _____.
Nina (24:46):
At the beach.
Katie (24:48):
Finally, we know that you’re a fan of Virginia Woolf, name a recent reader/writer that inspires you equally?
Nina (24:54):
Katie Kitamura. I just read her book called Intimacies and I thought it was amazing and I’m interviewing her on Wednesday. I liked it so much I went and ordered right away A Separation, her earlier book.
Katie (25:05):
Fantastic, I’ll put those all in the show notes and I’ll also include a link to that episode when it drops. Nina, thank you so much for coming to the show today. Before we say goodbye, how can our listeners keep following you and your work and your writing and learn more about Revel?
Nina (25:18):
Thank you so much, you’re really good at this, I really enjoyed it. You can find me, I’m Nina Lorez Collins, I’m on Instagram, I’m on Facebook. And you should find us at hellorevel.com. www.hellorevel R-E-V-E-L .com, it’s free to join, we would love to meet you. You can follow us in all the usual places also, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, et cetera.
Katie (25:41):
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Join me next Monday when I talk with networking pro Susan McPherson, author of The Lost Art of Connecting, who walks us through how to build meaningful relationships in your career and personal life.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time, and until then: age boldly, beauties.