Women Over 70: Aging Reimagined

<p>Writing has been a guiding force in Nancy Morgan’s life, woven together with her love of language, travel, and cross-cultural learning. Across a career in teaching, curriculum design, media production, and study-abroad leadership, writing has remained at the heart of her work.</p><p>Now retired, Nancy has turned more deeply to writing as a way to explore life’s complex and difficult questions. Drawing on personal experience, she writes fictionalized accounts about the impact of dysfunction, homelessness, and mental illness on family relationships. Curious about the emotional truths beneath the surface, Nancy strives to “get into the soul of her characters.” Homelessness, a central theme in her writing, is also at the heart of her volunteer work and social commitment.</p><p></p><p>At the center of Nancy’s life is family. She describes her husband, two daughters, and seven grandchildren as her greatest source of joy and grounding. Today, Nancy says simply and gratefully, “I love the life I am living.”</p><p></p><p>“Stories can help us understand what families often struggle to say out loud.” - Nancy Morgan</p><p></p><p>Connect with Nancy</p><p>Email: [email protected]</p><p>Thanking our Platinum Sponsor—AARP Illinois, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering people 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. With nearly 1.7 million members in Illinois, AARP volunteers advocate for better health, financial security, and stronger communities. Visit AARP.org/IL to learn more. </p><p>Shining the light on Age-Wise Collective—check out Boomer Banter with Wendy Green—it’s in a new chapter, with shorter solo episodes focused on her personal caregiving journey and the search for purpose in later life. Going deeper, her Substack, Thriving Through Time, by Boomer Banter is where she really opens up. Find everything on Wendy’s website, heyboomer.biz.</p><p></p><p></p>

<p>Kathy Bresler, founder of ALTAR Community in Chicago, has created a welcoming space where women of all ages come together to be seen, heard, and supported. ALTAR is a third space for women centered around meaningful gatherings, conversation, creativity, reflection, and authentic connection.</p><p></p><p>Through conversation, reflection, and shared experience, women discover what feels most true and meaningful in their lives and often experience profound personal transformation.</p><p></p><p>Grounded in curiosity, creativity, and compassion, Kathy brings together her background in interfaith and interspiritual ministry with years of corporate leadership experience to nurture both the heart and the practical realities of building community.</p><p></p><p>Kathy believes younger women are hungry for meaningful relationships with older women who embody a different way of aging — women who are alive, engaged, creative, evolving, and unwilling to disappear into society’s narrow expectations of later life. In turn, older women are renewed by being seen, valued, and welcomed into authentic intergenerational connection.</p><p></p><p>At the center of Kathy’s work is an invitation to cultivate what she calls “Vitamin J” — the practice of nurturing and extending our “joy-span” at every stage of life.</p><p></p><p>Connect with Kathy Email: [email protected] ALTAR Community Chicago: https://www.altarcommunity.com</p><p></p><p>Shining the Light on Age-Wise Collective—Women Over 70 is proud to be part of the Age-Wise Collective, a group of women podcasters championing pro-aging voices. We highlight Beverley Glazer, a transition coach and</p><p></p><p>strategic thinking partner whose podcast-AgingwithPurposeandPassion.com –showcases the raw, empowering stories of high-achieving women who have navigated the most extreme life transitions with unshakeable resilience.</p>

<p>At 80, Regan Burke is still organizing, advocating, and speaking out.</p><p>But her path to becoming a respected activist, columnist, memoirist, and political influencer was anything but straightforward. Before she found sobriety in her twenties, drugs and alcohol shaped much of her daily life. She attended five different high schools, searching for direction until one perceptive nun recognized her talent and changed the course of her future by encouraging her to write.</p><p>That spark ignited a lifelong commitment to telling the truth.</p><p>For decades, Regan immersed herself in political organizing, volunteering for campaigns she believed could make a difference. A devoted member of the recovery community, she carried the lessons of honesty and accountability into her writing, becoming a blogger, newspaper columnist, and memoirist known for speaking candidly about politics, power, and personal struggle.</p><p>Today, despite living with chronic pain, Regan refuses to retreat from public life. She organizes rallies for people with limited mobility, mentors younger political leaders, and works tirelessly to encourage civic engagement. While she may no longer knock on doors, her determination to create change remains as strong as ever.</p><p>In this conversation, Regan reflects on sobriety, activism, aging, courage, and why using your voice may be more important now than ever.</p><p>And when the work gets hard? She sings. Choir music helps ease her pain, sharpens her mind, and reminds her that community can be one of life's most powerful forms of healing.</p><p></p><p>"It’s risky to stand up - it takes bravery." - Regan Burke</p><p></p><p>Connect with Regan:</p><p>Blog: ReganBurke.com</p><p>Email: [email protected]</p><p></p><p>Shining the Light on Age-Wise Collective—Women Over 70 is proud to be part of the Age-Wise Collective, a group of women podcasters championing pro-aging voices. We highlight gerontologist Sally Duplantier, host of Wellness Wednesdays. These free and recorded webinars feature experts on topics about healthy aging. Visit MyZingLife.com to learn more.</p>

<p>For nearly fifty years, Sybil Kolon has devoted herself to protecting 79 acres of family land in Michigan’s Irish Hills. Originally owned by her grandparents, the property was placed under option with Legacy Land Conservancy in 1976 with the hope that it would someday become a nature preserve.</p><p>Now 72, Sybil spent her childhood exploring the farm’s woods and fields, developing a lifelong love of nature. After attending Michigan Tech and Michigan State University, she returned to live on the land with her husband, building a home there in 1983. Over time, she became the family’s caretaker of the property and felt deeply responsible for preserving it for future generations.</p><p></p><p>In 2015, Sybil and her husband created a living trust with Legacy Land Conservancy to ensure the land would eventually become a preserve. But Sybil decided there was no reason to wait. She began working to transform the property into a public nature preserve during her lifetime, including carefully deconstructing the old farmhouse so its materials could be salvaged and reused.</p><p></p><p>In June 2025, Iron Creek Preserve officially opened to the public.</p><p>Today, Sybil is leading yet another conservation effort after nearby land was sold to a gravel mining company, threatening both the preserve and surrounding wildlife habitat. What began as a personal commitment to family land has become a larger mission of environmental stewardship and community advocacy.</p><p></p><p>"Taking care of the land is important — but we have to take care of each other, too.” - Sybil Kolon</p><p></p><p>CONNECT WITH SYBIL:</p><p>Email: [email protected]</p><p></p><p>Shining the Light on Age-Wise Collective—Women Over 70 is proud to be part of the Age-Wise Collective, a group of women podcasters championing pro-aging voices. We highlight Beverley Glazer, a transition coach and strategic thinking partner whose podcast-AgingwithPurposeandPassion.com –showcases the raw, empowering stories of high-achieving women who have navigated the most extreme life transitions with unshakeable resilience.</p>

<p>Author and artist Jill G. Hall, 71, joins us with her luminous new novel On a Sundown Sea, inspired by the mysteries surrounding the visionary woman who built Lomaland—a utopian community near the home Jill grew up in. Fascinated since childhood by the stories whispered throughout her neighborhood, for more than a century, Hall spent five years researching the extraordinary life of Katherine Tingley, tracing her journey from Massachusetts roots to her profound spiritual and artistic influence on the West Coast.</p><p> </p><p>When Jill began writing after a twenty-year career as an educator, she never imagined she would become a novelist. Joining a prompt-writing group, she initially thought she might write children’s books or a memoir about teaching. Instead, unexpected characters began appearing on the page. Jill kept writing, and ten years later, when she was sixty, her debut novel, The Black Velvet Coat, was published. Two more novels completed the Anne McFarland Series with The Silver Shoes and The Green Lace Corset.</p><p>Jill has always been creative. Along the way, she’d been shaped by a series of mentors: her grandmother, a beloved fifth-grade teacher who nurtured her love of the humanities, and later, poets who helped refine her voice. Beyond writing, she’s also a visual artist whose mixed-media collages and mosaics blend found objects—especially silver trays transformed into wall-hung artworks—with words, tiles, and small artifacts. She studies modern dance, practices yoga, and takes long walks, all of which continue to enrich her life and work.</p><p></p><p>Now working on a collection of her nature-inspired poetry, Jill embraces aging with joy and curiosity. </p><p></p><p>“I feel like I am aging backwards!” - Jill G. Hall</p><p></p><p>Anne McFarland Series: The Black Velvet Coat, The Silver Shoes &amp; The Green Lace Corset</p><p>Biographical Historical Novel: On A Sundown Sea</p><p> </p><p>Website: www.jillghall.com</p><p>https://substack.com/@jillghall</p><p>https://www.facebook.com/JillGHallAuthor/#</p><p>https://www.instagram.com/jillg.hall/</p><p> </p><p>Shining the Light on Age-Wise Collective—Women Over 70 is proud to be part of the Age-Wise Collective, a group of women podcasters championing pro-aging voices. We highlight Beverley Glazer, a transition coach and strategic thinking partner whose podcast-AgingwithPurposeandPassion.com –showcases the raw, empowering stories of high-achieving women who have navigated the most extreme life transitions with unshakeable resilience.</p>