Introducing Seasoned Voices: Flavoured with Insight, Infused with Heart
Painting by Pearl Richard for Seasoned Voices
When Helen invited me to join her and three other women - Tracy, Pearl, and Linda - I jumped at the opportunity! Being part of a small group of women passionate about writing our lived experiences of growing older felt exciting and meaningful. To be in the company of women who pour their hearts and souls into each and every shared word was an honor.
We came together with the idea of supporting each other but what I love the most is that we created a collaboration. A much needed space to explore ideas, open conversations and create space for the one thing I believe we all need as we age - connection.
Through many conversations we chose to call ourselves Seasoned Voices. We are women in midlife, with a distinct voice and style, each writing a blog that reflects her own perspective on the challenges, questions and experiences that come with this season of our lives.
While our writing is unique, we are connected by a belief that stories matter. Today we offer ours with the hope that you’ll recognize parts of yourself within them. Today we invite you to connect and come along with us on this journey.
I’m excited to introduce you to the members of Seasoned Voices below. I invite you to read the introductions, explore their writing/blogs, connect with them, and share their work. I’m confident you’ll find something familiar, recognizable, comforting, and inspiring in each seasoned voice.
We’ll be connecting with you again in mid-February but in the meantime, won’t you join us?
Introducing:
In 2020, when I launched Ageless Possibilities, I wanted to step into this later stage of life with intention, trusting that curiosity, passion, and a sense of purpose were not behind us - they were waiting to be claimed. I wanted to write about how life had shaped me as I stood on this threshold. I hoped to challenge the tired narratives about aging. And, I was looking forward to reflecting on the ageless possibilities that are open to us.
Fast forward six years. I am now writing about my lived experience as an older woman - someone who makes more intentional choices, has let go of long-held expectations, and now focuses on what truly matters. I am no longer trying to make sense of my journey rowing north. Now, I paddle these waters with more clarity about where I am going.
Ageless Possibilities is not a guide to aging well. It is my space for reflection. It is an invitation to join me in unfolding a deeper relationship with ourselves and with the lives we are living.
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I never set out to be a writer. But somewhere along the way, I realised that writing was a surprisingly effective way to make sense of our beautiful, bewildering world. Travel Bug Tonic emerged from that impulse, as a space to explore how travel and wellbeing braid together, especially as I navigate this unfolding season of midlife where everything seems to be shifting… including me.
Writing is how I slow down enough to hear myself think. It is how I collect the threads of meaning that would otherwise slip past. It is also how I turn experience into something that feels like an invitation rather than advice. On my blog, I experiment with weaving wellbeing into the way I travel, play with awe as a daily practice, and tell the truth about the missteps, detours, and the inevitable misadventures that often leave the deepest impressions and the most useful lessons.
Mine is not a blog about chasing countries or conquering bucket lists. Instead, I write to uncover curiosity, playfulness, and gratitude for the ‘tonic’ travel offers us, whether it’s across the globe or five minutes from home.
My hope is that readers will laugh, nod along, and maybe feel nudged to create their own small or big adventures, just as I’m learning to do in this season of life.
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There was a joke going around social media:
Them: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Me: “Retired.”
Ba dum dum. In my case, pretty accurate.
Retiring. That was the door that would open up space to consciously live the challenges and triumphs of later life. Retirement is a fresh, clean page, an expansive landscape on which to center the everyday fears, longings, musings, and choices that I believe I have in common with so many women of a certain age.
Writing. That would be my medium. I have flirted with being “a writer” since middle school. It started with a few poems, then pieces published in the high school newspaper. As a college English major, my passion for writing essays took top priority. Then the work world took over, and my love of writing took a backseat to the tasks of my profession. When I retire, I thought, I’ll have time to write.
Blogging. My first retirement goal was to set up my blog, "The Precious Days.” I write about my retirement as a journey to discovering new meaning in later life, exploring a self free from work identity, hustle culture, and pressure. It’s a blog about slowing down, examining life– past, present, and future–and living those precious days with curiosity, reflection, and gratitude.
It is my hope that through my blog, women will find ideas and experiences that resonate, along with “a lot of reflection and a little inspiration.”
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My blog, The Pits and Pieces, is where I can practice being a writer. It is a little corner on the internet where I articulate my thoughts, opinions, comment on books I’ve read, show my attempts at art (and even poetry). It is where I ponder this aging journey as a woman, and hopefully, connect with other women on a similar path of reflection and discovery. Some people create scrapbooks and photo albums, I journal and write and blog.
Blogging can be a vulnerable thing, in that you allow others a glimpse into your interior life. And that interior may be messy and chaotic, sometimes unpredictable, sometimes rich and meandering. You are allowing others to form opinions and judgements on that interior life. Writing is a solitary pursuit. But once you launch your words, not knowing where they may land, you expose yourself. You throw out thoughts and words, reach out a hand, inviting people to simply read, or read and engage, not knowing what may return to you. My hope is that I find myself in a network, perhaps an unseen community but a community nonetheless, that helps us thrive in this stage of life.
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Seasoned Voices. Five women writers, each coming to writing along differing paths. Five women eager to speak the truth about growing older.
Flavoured with insight and infused with heart, our words carry the simple belief that stories matter. Stories that bubble up as we reflect on the unexpected freedoms and surprising adventures at this time of life. Stories that break through the surface when we refuse to shrink into aging’s tired stereotypes. Together we draw inspiration from retirement’s blank canvas, filling it with broad strokes of wonder, truths told a little raw, and the vibrancy of possibilities cracked wide open.
We'll use the seasons to guide our shared blogging adventure, bringing our individual perspectives to common themes. Our hope is that our collaboration will feel like a conversation among women of a certain age – gritty and real in some places, lit by reflection in others.
We know there are many of you out there who feel the way we do, and we hope that our cross-pollinated blogging inspires a deep connection. So if you’re interested in the company of women willing to go there, join us back here mid-February when we’ll launch the first instalment of Seasoned Voices.
From all of us at Seasoned Voices,
Thank you!
