When the other Jeannie (Ralston), of the two of us who run NextTribe, and best friend Lori Seekatz launched NextTribe five years ago they knew from their own experience that women over 45, moving into the next phase of their lives, needed a better way to find their “tribe.” 

If we had children, they were growing up. If not, we were changing anyway. Maybe we were going through divorce. Maybe we were moving to new cities. Maybe we were starting over. And, perhaps hardest of all, we were almost certainly starting to become invisible. Screw that. 

An Endless Summer Sunday

NextTribe, the online magazine with great writers and edgy topics, grew to nearly a million readers a year. Virtual events and small gatherings in Austin were all great, but a local celebration in cities outside of Austin would give more women a chance to come together and celebrate our bold, fearless selves. Out Loud events are joyful, inviting, and purposeful: women who’ve attended tell us they walk away refreshed, moved, and open to new possibilities and friendships. LA Out Loud was a great example of that. 

September 18 was a beautiful, endless summer Sunday. We were one block from the ocean in the event space of Expert Dojo, a startup incubator (where I mentor startups from around the world, many of them women. The Dojo is known for its support of female founders). 

As guests entered the event, they were ushered along a red carpet to have black-suited paparazzi capture them, celebrity-style. Ooh la la. What a bunch of hams we have!

We have one more Out Loud this year. Be part of the fun in Austin on Wed. Oct. 19th. More info here. 

With Tito’s special cocktails in hand, the guests sampled JoySol CBD, chatted with Rancho La Puerta‘s reps about their new offerings (NextTribe spa trip to Mexico anyone?) and most important, met and mingled with the speakers, and with new women in their community.. 

One guest told me, “I just found out about this on Facebook and I can’t believe there’s a group like this! I’ve lived here for 20 years and LA is so youth-oriented. It’s refreshing to see all this gray hair!”

With LA still COVID-sensitive, the crowd was smaller than in the past but no less enthusiastic. A local producer told us “Nobody in LA goes out any more except to the Oscars and the Emmys.” Who needs that, when we had an Emmy winner and a nominee in the room with us?

Marta Kauffman: The Genius Behind Grace and Frankie

Writer-Producer Marta Kauffman, pictured at top, won an Emmy (and many other awards) for co-creating the monster hit prime time TV series Friends.  She is also the creative mother of  Grace and Frankie, which should be the theme TV show for women in NextTribe. 

“What was really fun about it,” Marta said, “was exploring some of those issues that people don’t talk about. I mean, no one talks about dry vaginas, right? This gave us the opportunity to say it out loud.” 

I want to explore new things. I want to make myself uncomfortable.

Jeannie Ralston, the OG Jeannie, asked her what the NextTribe tagline, Aging Boldly, means to her.

“There’s a certain element of Aging Boldly which is about saying no. I’m done with that shit. When I turned 60 I realized I don’t have to finish every book I start. Then I realized…I can do that with toxic people. Then I realized I can do that with my work. If I don’t feel it in my heart, I don’t have to say `yes’ to it. As we grow older, we begin to embrace who we are, and we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, which is something I fought against my entire life and at this point in my life, I’m like, you know what, I feel like crying, and I’m gonna do that with one of my friends and have her put her arms around me and it’s gonna be be awesome!”

Next up for Marta: some documentaries, a half-hour comedy, and science fiction. “I want to explore new things,”  she said. “I want to make myself uncomfortable. I want to look at that page and go, `I don’t have it. I don’t have it any more,” and then make myself do it.”

Actress Wendie Malick on Being a Misfit

Wendie Malick in green polka dots, surrounded by friends.

We’re all about giving women the chance to stretch themselves creatively and otherwise. That’s why we used this LA OutLoud event to launch the Sing Out Loud Challenge with NextTribe member Lurleen Ladd, who was seated in the front row. Lurleen just started singing professionally in her 50s, and she’s inviting women to submit tapes of themselves singing. From all the entries, we’ll pick a winner and fly her to Austin to perform onstage as Lureen’s opening act on  December 8th. Start warming up your vocal chords and send in those tapes!

Two-time Emmy nominee Wendie Malick, best known for her role in “Just Shoot Me,” as a has-been model, talked about how towering over her classmates in middle school earned her the nickname “Weed,” and made her feel like a misfit. But it also led to a five-year modeling career in her twenties, one that would take her “all over the world, and fill my wanderlust.”

Don’t try to replicate somebody else’s fabulosity; figure out what your own is.

Back in high school, she said, the misfits gravitated to the music and theater department, where she found a home among other equally awkward teenagers. “Realizing we weirdos have to stick together was one of the great first lessons of my life,” she said.

After a detour working as an intern in a Congressional office during Watergate, “Nancy Reagan came up with that campaign ‘Just Say No’ mine was ‘Just Say Yes.’ And pretty much from the beginning, any time there’s an opportunity to try something new that will stretch me, or scare me, I say yes.” 

“It was a fascinating time to be there. I learned what it is to be an intern. On Friday nights, the Congressmen, usually heavy, balding, older men would bring their young, pretty little things into their offices, dim the lights, and play Motown and slow dance with them. And then what happened after that, nobody mentioned a word about it. Because this was a different time. I was invited to play and I declined.”

She eventually made her way back to acting, getting her first big break and recognition of her comedy chops on “Dream On,” the innovative comedy series on HBO, created by Marta Kaufmann. (See what we did there?) 

But it was away from her acting career, with her “crush” Gloria Steinem, that she learned one of her most important life lessons. When she told Gloria she wanted to be like her when she grew up, Gloria told her never to say that, and that she had to find her own authentic voice. “That gave me another of the greatest life lessons. To try to find out not how to replicate somebody else’s fabulosity, but to figure out what your own is.” 

Julie Gordon White on Getting Quiet Before Getting Loud

Entrepreneur Julie Gordon White and some of her new fans.

Julie Gordon-White, the inventor of Bossa Bars, breakfast bars for women in menopause, spoke about her journey, which she divided into decades. She spent 10 years in the hotel industry, tried to buy a funeral home, brokered flower shops, started her own $5 million business selling companies. Then she lost it “overnight” in the recession of 2008. 

After her “pity party” she did a three-day silent retreat. “I highly recommend it, if you are in a transition in your life, searching for your biggest, baddest, boldest self. Get quiet. It’s the only time you can hear the whispers that are there for you.” The whispering voice in her heart told her to start a women’s wellness company, which led to the launch of her first product—included in the gift bags—Bossa Bars.

Did I forget to mention the gift bags? The value of the goodies in the bags was more than $200—not a bad exchange given that the cost of a ticket was only $39. The bags included Julie’s Bossa Bars, Empelle Eye Cream, a full-size tube of DefenAge Hand and Body Lotion, a two-month’s supply of Nutrafol, a 3-pak of JoySol CBD, a Rancho La Puerta Cookbook, a sizable discount on PeachSkin Sheets, and, for anyone starting up or starting over, my book! 

But the gift bags are just the glaze on the donut. The real reason women come to these Out Loud events is to meet new people, to learn something and be inspired, and to laugh.

The Gutsiness of Author Maggie Rowe

Maggie Rowe was one of the funniest speakers we’ve ever had, though the story she tells in her new memoir, Easy Street: A Story of Redemption From Myself, is deeply poignant and very timely, as well as a laugh-out-loud quick read. 

Maggie is an actor, and her husband, Jim, was a writer on “Golden Girls.” Maggie tells the story of how Jim befriended a homeless mother and her on-the-spectrum daughter and  invited them over for the holidays. When the mother died, Maggie became legal guardian for the 55-year-old daughter, Joanna. What a saint. Yet Maggie opens her book, and started her talk, by saying she is not a nice person. 

Maggie’s hero in Aging Boldly is Patty Smith, the singer, who grounds herself on stage in a wide stance.

“About five years ago, I started to become aware of the discrepancy between my outside and my inside, and my inside wasn’t all that pretty. So I started thinking about that word `nice’ and how I grew up with this word,” she said. “It was the highest aspiration for a girl. Agreeable, affable, accommodating, pleasing, sweet. I started noticing how I had ingested these words, physically.”

She talked about how women stand at a 45 degree angle, head slightly cocked, which says to men, “Don’t worry. It’ll be OK. Your ego’s gonna be intact.”

“It’s not the position a general or a field commander would use.” She took on the demure pose here. “Send in the troops.” She also noticed she stood with her feet together, and “this is a wonderful way to stand, unless you want to balance.” She also noticed the “head duck,” when women shrink a little when greeting others, as if to say “you can pat me on the head.”

Maggie recognized it’s because she was using other people as a mirror to reflect back her self-worth, and Aging Boldly, to her, is the opposite. Her hero in this is Patty Smith, the singer, who grounds herself on stage in a wide stance, drawing her voice up out of earth. “She’a standing in her own authority, taking her place in the world.” Maggie encouraged us to use these new watchwords in our vocabulary: Bold, Strong, Clear, Firm, Gutsy, even Righteous. 

“I think we can let go of these shackles of pleasing people, and with a little self-examination we can see how we’re still subscribing to an ideal we never consented to in the first place,” she said. Mic drop.

Here’s a video from the event, but it’s no substitute for being there. We hope we’ll see you in Austin next month for our last Out Loud of the year, or on a trip of a lifetime with other women who are living their best lives, like our four speakers in LA, and, we hope, like you.