A Woman Over 50: A Life Unleashed | Connie Schultz | TEDxClevelandStateUniversity

[Music] four years ago when I was 55 years old I was standing in front of a bathroom mirror next to my four-year-old grandson Clayton and I was he was waiting for me to get done so that we could go play and I'm fussing around he says grandma what are you doing I said I'm putting on makeup honey it makes my face look better keep working it he keeps looking at me for about 30 more seconds and he says grandma when does it start working no way so I threw the makeup in the bag I said you know what you're right honey let's go it wasn't exactly an epiphany but it was a shock to the system and I was spending much of the day thinking so so why do I put on makeup right why do I well part of us I don't want to volunteer to be invisible I was starting to think about that a lot more I was sitting in a doctor's office a couple months ago waiting for an appointment and I'm sitting on my smartphone and I'm going through facebook posts and I see this story that a friend shared about nail-polish tips for women over 50 I didn't even know there was such a thing that's why that oh oh do tell so I hid it and apparently after the age of 50 women are not supposed to wear any bright colors on their fingernails we're supposed to be very neutral colors because if we don't were going to draw attention to our hands which are going to give away our age so the roadmap of lines on my face you are going to go right past those all those gray hairs waving like sea oats from my hairline we're going to see those there could be it was going to be my hands my hands were going to tip you off well my attitude is this if my hands are going to Telegraph something about me I'm going to wear the brightest color I can so today I chose purple young women often tell me that my generation of women aren't mentoring enough of them and I know they're right my sisters we must carry as we climb and the way I look at it is this they don't have we don't have their midriffs and they don't have our wisdom and apparently it was a trade-off nobody told us about and so they also don't have our hands and if our hands are an emblem for us I say go with the brightest color we can right let's let people know what they're getting into when they cross paths with us the trajectory of my career was never a straight line it was more like popcorn in a hot skillet I got my first full-time job as a reporter when I was 36 years old that's me at The Plain Dealer I was scared out of my mind I was joining a newsroom of more than 400 veteran journalists and I been a freelancer up to the moment when I got hired three months into it I became a single mother fun fun fun that's Andy and that's Caitlin my son and my daughter so about three four weeks even I don't think it was very long when I was working there when I got assigned to cover a story about a nine-year-old boy named Jake a Joey who was attacked and mauled by a Rottweiler because he had tried to protect a friend from being attacked I showed up at the hospital in an attempt to interview the mother and the child and I used my mommy credentials I had a daughter who was one year younger than he at the time and I'll never forget getting off the elevator in that hospital on that floor and I'm watching this woman this mother she's walking around like this and she's holding up this picture she's saying this is what my Joey look like this is what my Joey look like before that dog did him and when I rounded the corner and went into his hospital room I understood why she was doing that he looked like a little mummy he was face was completely covered in bandages and he was holding stuff funny and during the you know I was interviewing and when we talked about the bunny I'd go back into the newsroom and I filed my story and I shortly after that we used to call it the super collider in the newsroom where all the editors sat and I heard one male editor say to another male editor how did she know the name of the bunny and in that moment so much relief washed over me and I realized I was going to be just fine every minute that I had lived before I got into that newsroom which job experience and every mother knows the day it that a stuffed bunny has a name at age 45 I got my dream job I became a newspaper columnist at the Plain Dealer my mom was already gone but my dad was still living and I called him at his home in Ashtabula and I said dad dad I guess I'm going to be a colonist and he said he didn't miss a beat finally after 45 years of giving yourself in your opinion away for free you're going to get paid translation so proud of you honey when you are a woman paid to give her opinion you bring out the worst in a certain small percentage of men I am proud to say my favorite reader letter ever they will exchange actually with a male reader came from a man in Alabama during the 2012 presidential primary now as it was at that time I was also writing personal essays for Parade magazine and many papers ran both at the same time so there he is in Alabama mining his own business and my personal essay shows up and parade on the same day that my political column shows up on the op-ed page and his letters started his email madam I do not understand how a woman who can be so sweet to her puppy can be so mean to Rick Santorum so I wrote him back I said well you know we women we are complicated creatures we can hold more than one thought at a time in our heads and he wrote back with one sentence well now you're starting to sound like my wife the hate mail was fast and furious but so was the support and it was overwhelmingly from women and early in my career I started to notice a trend that lasted the entire time I was at The Plain Dealer I'm syndicated now but I still had a phone number The Plain Dealer and so many women many most of them my age or older would call after hours so they were hoping they wouldn't get me live at my desk right they wanted to leave a voicemail message and I could tell that so many of them were nervous so nervous even if they were agreeing with me that they were reading their response to me they had written it out before they called often early in my career when I was giving speeches as a columnist if the audience was full of women and we had Q&A inevitably one woman would stand up you know raise her hand or come to the microphone and in essence ask doesn't all this hateful response bother you and at first I used to say oh no doesn't bother me well there were two things wrong with that answer first of all it wasn't true it did bother me I mean even went after my pug and how are the life of a pug to begin with so it wasn't true the truth was yes it often bothered me but I didn't let it stop me but the other thing that was even more important I realize is if I tried to hold myself up as somebody who wasn't affected by any of this how was I ever going to hope to encourage any other women to speak their minds I wanted them to know I wanted to close that distance so fast and help them understand I'm just like you I just get paid to do this and shortly after I started writing a column I met sherrod Brown because my life wasn't complicated enough as a single mother and a columnist I decided to date a member of Congress we were longtime single parents who thought we would never get married again until we laid eyes on each other and I fell hard there was one snag in the plan however I had vowed to myself after a very difficult force marriage and a tough divorce and then being on my own for a decade I was never going to depend on a man for anything again sherrod had other plans about three months into our dating life in 2003 he offered one morning to make me coffee he just said there matter-of-factly I'm gonna go make your coffee and I immediately got up in the table said no no no no I can do it I can make my own coffee thank you I'm capable of making my own coffee slowly he turned and he looked at me and he said honey [Music] [Applause] we got a talk so we sat down at the kitchen table and he grabbed my hand and he leaned in and said honey you are not going to lose your right to vote or your right to own property if you let me make your coffee we were married 11 months later I kept my name shared kept his name everybody seemed fine with it until he decided to run for the Senate in 2006 and suddenly total strangers mostly men would come up to me and I'd say hi I'm Connie Schultz and they'd grab my hand yes I know and you should change your name I was yes I was rather stunned by that at first for the first 400 times but I finally figured out the right response I simply said but I've always been called Connie I was on the brink of 50 years old and something was coming over me I realized I did not want to become invisible more importantly I think of his thinking of a history of women and even in my own life I did not want to become like so many women in my mother's generation my friend Karen Sandstrom but it's so succinctly the other day to me she said you know I think most of the women in our mom's generation they either they greeted age 50 with either relief or resignation because nothing more was expected of them I remember in the last weeks of my mother's life as I said she died she died at age 62 we were in a car I was driving and I was taken to the doctor's office I was so full of emotion because I knew she would didn't have much longer and I said ma you know what I'm so sorry I'm so full of opinions all the time I've had Slee expressing him everybody's getting upset with me and she grabbed my hand and she said honey you're who I wanted to be remember this the Newsweek cover oh what fun 1986 it told us women if we weren't married by the age of 40 we were going to be doomed to a lifetime of single serving Lean Cuisines and screw-top wine before it was cool it got debunked long ago but all wasn't that anxiety fun when I see things like that when I recalled I think of a quotation from the black poet Lucille Clifton that has hung by my desk top for more than 15 years that she said in an interview with The Plain Dealer she said what they call you is one thing what you answer to is something else I am so lucky all of my adult life I have had women in my life who not only believe it is important never for us to be invisible at any age but who support other women including me and all of them live in the Cleveland area here which is my community that's Buffy Philip Elmer in our early 30s I have no idea why we are armwrestling but I'm sure I lost I always did Buffy had our founded her own company teamwork consulting after the company she had been working for told her she couldn't specialize in sports searches and I was a freelance writer and one day Buffy showed up at my house and her arms are full of boxes and she's banging on my kitchen door I'm looking at I opened the door and she lays them out on the counter it's just look at him I opened them and I see letterhead with my name and my contact information and I see envelopes and I say business cards and all of them have the same job title writer and she said now I'm taking your career seriously how about you that's Kaylee McCracken I was a writer Gailey was an artist we were both stay-at-home moms giving away our work for free and this picture we are working on the first letter of the new Cleveland Children's Museum and we are at a laundromat because my washer had broken when Gailey was in her early 40s right around 40 she said to me that her dream had always been to become a doctor nice let's let's do it she said the only problem Kahn is I'm going to be 50 by the time I'm a doctor and I said well you're going to be 50 anyway you may as well be 50 and a doctor that's dr. Gailen McCracken Kerin Sandstrom was a colleague of mine at the Plain Dealer as a writer and as an editor and then back as a writer and in her late 40s she decided to pursue her dream she wanted to be an artist and she went to art school and she graduated from art school and now she's working on her first Illustrated children's book when I talked to her last week about how do you do this how do you not let the negative you know those voices in your head she has you know what when I sit down at a computer or up my sketchpad I'm not 55 I'm just a woman with something to say earlene Santiago another colleague at The Plain Dealer and a dear friend merlene was part of the layoffs at The Plain Dealer the big big wave of layoffs and she was 50 years old and she told me recently that one of the things she kept telling herself in the beginning is my god I'm 50 years old I'm a 50 year old black woman with a Hispanic surname and no college education who was going to want me Cleveland City Schools as it turns out she works with children at risk and she starts every morning with 30 minute dance session she would be really embarrassed by my dance she does it much better and she's going to graduate from college in May she told me one of the things that keeps her going as she remembers that the flowers in our garden do not bloom at the same time that's Jackie Kucera nothing but trouble lucky me one of my favorite stories about Jackie is on my first date with sherrod on January 1st 2003 I was so scared to meet him that I pulled into the parking lot it was snowing out it's cold and I called her on the phone and I say I don't think I can do this I don't think I can go in there I mean it shows aw you're nervous I said yeah she was you're afraid this could be it I said yes she says and you're just not sure you can do it I said no and she goes all right listen to me honey you turn off the car you get your rear end out of the car and you get into that restaurant and I did Jackie has been in real estate for 30 years at age 62 she became vice president of education for Howard Hanna this is Jackie's wife Kate Matthews she married Sheridan E past Kate Kate decided in her late 30s that what she really wanted to do was go to seminary at age 62 she became Dean of Amistad chapel downtown here at UCC headquarters I always when I think of Kate I think of how often she is insisted on introducing me to my higher angels and then I feel emotional even seeing her face I know she's in the audience today this is sue Cline I have known sue Klein for so many years for twenty nine and a half years she worked for the same company she was one of those secretaries who didn't fit the title because most people just referred to her as the boss of them and when she was almost 50 she decided that she wanted to try something different she wanted a different kind of job and her boss essentially told her who was going to hire you a United States Senator that's who and for the fur and she's wearing that shirt because that was the Cavs parade day she was going she has for the first time in her life she has her own business cards and she's not a secretary anymore I interview Jane Pauley a couple years ago when her new book came out about what comes next in middle age and she said that by 2014 the youngest baby boomers will have turned 50 and the question we face is what am I going to do each of us faces this question what am I going to do for the next 40 years speaking of menopausal wails I love that did you know that the killer whale is the only other mammal that goes through menopause and did you know that after menopause she becomes the leader of the clan and she lives for 20 30 40 years as the boss of everybody you know what we could have a postmenopausal women be President of the United States oh there I am tired mommy Connie holding my ten month old baby Caitlyn on deadline as you can see the shower was yet to come if I could tell talked to her if I could reach back in time and talk to Connie I would tell her three things number one get rid of the glasses Oh number two you've got time you got time you got time to do all the things you want to do it isn't going to come to an end at 35 at 45 at 55 so don't listen to that hype as long as you wake up every morning with a new renewed sense of curiosity and you've got your own tribe of champions men and women you're going to be fine you're going to get to do all you want to do just not at the same time and as long as you don't listen to that voice of no in your head you're going to surprise yourself the last thing I would want to say to her is do not wait to be invited to make a difference in the world I'm reminded of a dear friend it was an assistant editor at The Plain Dealer and one morning I walked in and I could tell she was so upset she's standing there and she's just doing and I walked up to her and I said what's the matter and she pointed to a group of her male colleagues huddled in a corner and she said I'm trying to figure out why I'm not included in that conversation and I put my hand on her back and said as gently as I could I'm trying to figure out why you're waiting for the invitation if women waited for the invitation we still wouldn't have the right to vote remember Karen sash whom I told you about the artist this is my favorite piece of hers so far she calls it night sky I called the monster under the bed I love how the little boys invited him up to sit with them so they can become friends I have figured out who that monster has been in my life it's that voice of no it's the one that says who are you to think you're going to be able to be a columnist why would anyone care what you have to say so this hangs over my desk and now sometimes when I'm feeling a little nervous because I'm finishing up my first novel I pull up an empty chair and I invite him to sit down what the understanding is going to keep his negative view points to himself if I hear anything in my head I neatly turned to that empty chair and say what did I tell you nothing not a word because I'm going to turn 60 next year you understand and I've got plans and if anyone stands in front of me and thinks he's going to see right through me I'm going to stop him in his tracks I'm going to hold up my pretty fingernails and I'm going to say this sir is your new reality [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 771,501

Rating: 4.7889147 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Women

Id: 97d2P7U1Ukk

Length: 20min 50sec (1250 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2016