Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heart Radio podcast. This week's Whine About It Thursday Therapy. We've got doctor Gladys McGary. So she's one hundred and two years old and she has a book out called The Well Lived Life, A one hundred two year old Doctor's Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age. It's available now, Let's get her on.
Hello.
Hi, you can hear me, I can hear you, and I can see how beautiful you are.
Oh Hi, nice, you're pretty too.
Oh thank you. I'm feeling, you know, like a million bucks today. I'm pregnant and I'm just like everything kind of hurts today, but I feel like I can't complain. I'm really excited to talk to you, though, because I just when I was reading The Rundown, it says it says her book The Well Lived Life one hundred and two year old Doctor Six Secrets to Health and Happiness
at Every Age. It's available now, and I was just was, you know, reading the Rundown everything that you've done, and I'm just it's just I think it's just so beautiful and the fact that you are still you know, you're you're writing books and just still living such a full life is such a beautiful thing. And I'm curious do you ever get how do I say this when people are like, oh, you look amazing, because it's like, yes,
you're one hundred and you're one hundred and two. No do you get like, of course, I look, I've taken great care of myself or do you kind of get like why are you at? Like you know, because people always like you're forty years old and I'm like, well, am I supposed to look older than forty?
You know? Yeah?
So it's like it makes you feel old when people A'm like, oh my god, you're forty and I'm like, well, yeah, they're like I thought you were you know, late or thirties, and I'm like, no, I'm almost forty. But okay, but do you how is that for you? Are you like, do you like that when people say that?
Or yeah, people say it all the time. It didn't make much sense to me. You look like what you look like? You know, what are you going to do about it? And you can get a facelift, but that doesn't help.
Any temporary right well.
It just it doesn't say anything about who you are. I have a friend who is a speaker. She speaks all around every place. And she told me one time that she was in a a doing a talk in Hollywood, and when she had people ask questions, she didn't know who was asking the question, even if she could see their faces, because they all looked alike. They'd had so much in the way of facial surgery and so on
to look like what they should look like. And you know, instead of claiming what it is that you actually look like when you're this age, I mean, what are you going to do about it? When I was seventy having my seventieth birthday, by grandson was on the seat beside me and he says, how old are you, nanny? And I said, I'm seventy and he says, how old is that old? And I said, oh, I don't know, it's it's older. And he started pushing my face and he says, well,
what about these ruggles? And I said, don't worry about them. They don't worry young. They don't hurt on the inside. They look funny on the outside, but they don't hurt on the inside. They're all right. I mean, it's that kind of accepting who and what you are and making it do. I mean, we're not going to do a bit.
Right.
I mean, yeah, I mean that's a that's a good perspective on that too. And you know, is there something I mean, people obviously are probably like, you know, what's your secret?
What you know?
And is that why you're like, Okay, I'm writing this book because here are my secrets?
Yes, you know, here am I secret? Here?
I'm trying to tell you when I've written the book, is that this is I don't consider it good or bad that a person wants to look different from the way they are. I mean, that's all right, that's your choice, but for me that unnecessary. You know, it's just a waste of time to try and pretend that you look different from what you feel like you look like.
For sure. And I think it's hard too because in this era of social media, you you know, having the ability to change how your face looks with the tap of a little filter switch has been I think the most dangerous thing because you know, I've spoken on this like I've stopped using the certain filter that I used to use because I'm like, that's actually not what my nose looks like or what my face looks like. So I need to stop that because it's mentally not great.
Nor would I want my daughter to swipe on something that isn't what she looks like, because she's beautiful in my eyes, and I wouldn't want that or to promote that. Now. Sometimes, you know, it's nice to be able to go, Okay, here's a little I don't know if you're on Instagram, but like this softens it a little bit and makes
it look a little better. But so I for you, do you think it was maybe easier without the social media aspect growing up or having that comparison of things, or was that comparison of other people there just not on the public platform.
I think it's what every person wants to do with that.
I mean, I'll never look like Marilyn Mineral, I'll never look like Elizabeth Taylor. I don't need to look like them. I look like me, and they don't need to look like me. And so I'm me and you're you, and it's wonderful. And life goes on and you're going to continue to age properly adequately, and that's that's just fine,
you know. And you know, in the process of aging, my eyes have you know, they well, I can't see well enough to read, so I'm listening to audio books and getting a lot of really good stuff out of audio books. But it's it's my eyesight has diminished. It hasn't bothered my insight. In fact, my inside is better now when my eyesight is not so good that it was when my eyesight was good and I didn't have to pay attention to my inside.
Why do you think that is well?
Because I was busy doing what my eyesight could tell me. You know what I was looking for. I was looking for whatever it was. I was looking forward that I needed, which I'm not complaining about that now. Because I don't have my eyesight as good as it was, I can actually appreciate the fact that there are things I can understand that I didn't understand before because I'm not seeing
the things that I could see before. It's a sort of a juxtaposition of things that are going on life, and it's good whichever it is.
Yeah, through your life, is there one thing that you can look back and go I took that for granted.
Oh my, I just the fact that I breathe every day, the fact you know that I get up and walk, the fact that I used to be able to run up my steps, and now I have to just make myself walk up my steps. There are lots of things, but that doesn't make them worse or better. I'm grateful that I can get up my steps.
For your book, writing it, did you then have did you just voice the things you wanted to say and then you had someone just kind of write it out for you or how did that process work?
I worked with people, you know, we talked about things and disgust and because like I remember one day spending two hours trying to express in words what love is, and we tried one in try another, and after two hours of working with that, we finally realized that, you know, there are no words that can explain to a person what love is, because all the songs in the world, all the paintings in the world, all the stories in the world about love don't really allow a person to
experience love. Just like if a person is born blind and you try to explain to them what the color green is, if you have never experience instant, you don't know what it is. So it's that that ability to have things happen and you experience them and you feel them, and you allow it to come into yourself and you know that that then is a part of you.
That's beautiful. I love that one of your secrets that you put in was all life needs to move when obviously listeners are going to force them, not importantly, they all need this book. So I'm gonna highly encourage What do you mean though, by all life needs to move?
Exactly that? Because if life doesn't move, if it gets stuck any place, it dies. If you have rosebud, a rose climbing rose, and it gets stuck someplace up the trellis and it can't go any farther, it dies. Life has to move. We have to take our breath, each breath at a time and move in order for life to continue. If we didn't, if our blood didn't continue to circulate, if our heart didn't continue pump, if things didn't tote to continue to move on, we would die, right,
Just life has to move. Life and movement are part of what life is.
And then you know, being to on the more holistic side of medicine, has it been hard for you to kind of watch the new wave of things that have of medicine today's age, or like, what is your kind of take on that and and a second part of that is, you know, what is something to be mindful?
Like I I want to live the fullest, longest, you know life that I can and I want to instill that into my children too, with you know, health, eating and balancing, you know, in therapy and you know working out and you know, but is there something that people are missing in that that can additionally add to you know, is it something holistically or is it you know, not
having that glass of wine even though it's sometimes really nice? Uh, Because you know, I've talked to a doctor amen on here and he is just like, alcohol is the worse for you? And and I'm like, God, I'm hearing this, and I want to live a long life and I want to have great brain health, but I really also enjoy the glass of wine sometimes at the end of the night. And I'm just like, what's the balance.
I can't tell anybody what it is because it has to be personal thing. What works for me doesn't work for the next person. I have a son who can't eat garlic and onions, and the rest of us eat garlic and onions all the time for crying out loud. I was growing up in India Garlic onions Center. I can't understand this kid who is now a grown person, retired and all of that, but he can eat guardians and onions, and if I tried to teach him that
he had to eat garlic and onions. It's like my other son who when he was well, I don't know about five, told me that eggs gave him us a headache in his stomach. You know, well, I didn't make him eat eggs. He now eats eggs, but at that point, eggs get a headache in his stomach. It's that ability of us to understand ourselves and learn to love ourselves. There's always one person you can always love, and that's you,
because that person doesn't get away from you. And it's it's only not only, it's as we begin to find the the parts of ourselves that we can begin to understand and really think, yeah, that's that's good.
That's good.
I like that, and then incorporate that aspect of ourselves into something that makes us sing, makes us. I have my five l's. I've told you, have I spoken about this?
No you haven't. I'd love to hear them that.
The first one is life, life without love can't go any place. It dies, it doesn't even exist. You can have a shell, a seed in the pyramid, and it has a shell around it has all the life of the universe within it, but it can't do anything until love, in the form of water and sunlight and that kind of thing activates. It breaks the shell, so the life can then begin to move. Then life comes back. But you see, life without love is nothing, It's just stuck. And so in order for life and love to move,
it's like the sperm and the ovum. The ovum and the sperm need to connect in order for a person to become a person. It's the reality of that. The energy is those two energies which the words life and love are the same except for the letter I n oh, because the eye is the masculine, the oh is the feminine. It's the moving together of those energies that lets us live, and we live if we love, so that the words themselves can't be real until they actually, you know, become
the one unit, which is life and love. Anyway, so that you start there these five bells, life and love, and you have the one that is the two third one is laughter. Laughter without love is mean it's cruel. It's it. It hurts, it can be very painful. Wars are fought be you know. So laughter without love is cruel, But laughter with love is joy and happiness. It's the same thing, but it's how it's used. It's how how we take it in and how we are able to let it grow and become part of who we are.
The fourth l is labor. Labor without love is drudgery. You know, I gotta go to work. There are too many diapers. This is too hard. I don't like this. This is my job.
You know.
That kind of adjust a drudgery. It's just too hard. But labor with love is bliss.
It's why you do what you're doing.
It's why a paiger does what they paid, a cigare does why they say, you know, it's a very essence of our being is labor with love. And then the fifth one is listening. Listening without love is empty sound. It's the calling glaion, an empty sound. It's just it doesn't go any place. It's just there. But with love
is understanding. It allows as you begin to listen to what people are saying, and you're beginning to listen to what you're saying not just to the world, but to yourself that begins and begin to understand it, then you've got a really, really something, really important going on within you for sure.
Yeah, that listening piece is that's been something that I've had to learn and practice because I think I know other Yeah, I know I'm not alone in this, but I go quick to defend right instead of and through the years of therapy and past couples counseling, it's like, Okay, really listen, you know, because you might not understand it, you might not agree with it, but you still should listen, and that's gonna then grow. And but that's that's that's a hard one.
Sometimes it is a hard one. But one of the privileges of having children is being able to listen to what your children are saying. Why my third son, when he was four years old, came in one day and uh, he says, Mom, I know something, And I said, what's that?
Bobby? He says, if I make a friend and he makes a friend, and he makes a friend, it's going to go all around the world to come back to me. So, of course he's a psychologist, you know.
This is where was basically telling me that he was going to be working with people and tried to understand them and you know that whole process. And then my second son, when he was seven, comes in and he says, well, he says, I wish Jesus was here. And I said, oh, okay.
Well so do I. But why do you?
He says, because I've got questions? And I said, well try me. He said, but you don't have the answers. And I said, but just try me. See what. So he says, okay, how can God be if he never got started? And I said, well, you know, I took a deep breath and I said, well, maybe it's like a circle. It doesn't have a beginning, gir and and he says, oh, I knew you didn't have the answers at all, because so of course he's a retired president
and minister. I mean, you know when you listen to what people say and you took that away and think, well this is interesting, you know, this is really interesting, and then watch them grow into that it's it's just absolutely it's awesome.
I love that so much. And I cannot wait to read your book because you obviously have so much life experience and everything that you know you're I want to know the six Secrets to health and happiness, and so everybody grab her book, The Well Lived Life one hundred and two year old doctors Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at every age. It's available now. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
You're certainly welcome.
Thank you, you're a sweetheart. Thank you so much.