Wendy Alexander grew up under apartheid in South Africa. Until she was seven, she felt like most other kids. That changed the day the police insisted that she and her family get off a whites-only beach. "I was no longer a child," Wendy said. "Once you know racism and segregation, you know it."

Wendy's dream was to leave South Africa; while the dream was deferred, she and her family immigrated to Australia when Wendy was twenty. But it wasn't easy to acclimate to the newfound freedoms. It took over two years before Wendy felt relaxed, safe.

This should have had a happy ending. Sadly, it did not. A relationship with an Australian went bad, very bad. The man walked away, leaving Wendy with a mortgage and bills she couldn't afford, a baby soon to be born, and the scars of domestic violence. Wendy was devastated.

This episode traces Wendy's journey from deep emotional and financial depression to a successful succession of high-paying, high-pressure jobs that kept her financially secure until she left it all behind to expand her own business, the Happy Career Club.

What Wendy learned from her own experiences with corporations is shared with her clients, the vast majority of whom have gone on to professional and personal success. She has great advice for planning to "move on," getting to know prospective employers, writing a good resume, and all kinds of other dos and don'ts.

Her winning strategies complement the happiness that she values and the lessons learned.

https://happycareerhub.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendyaalexander/?originalSubdomain=au

facebook.com/happycareerhubcoaching

https://www.amazon.com/Internal-Uprising-Reclaiming-Through-Menopause/dp/B0BSD3LRJX

"So the light went off in my five-year-old head, and I said there must be something in stories that we need. Stories are like air or water. So, I decided right then and there that I wanted to be a storyteller, a writer." _______ Shelley Fraser Mickle

While her route was circuitous, as most journeys are, Shelley became an award-winning author and the storyteller incarnate for six years on NPR's "Morning Edition." The story she didn't tell often, though, was how, at age six, she was diagnosed with polio and taken to a hospital for infectious children, where she spent three months in isolation. Even more horrifying was that two of the children in her ward died right alongside her. There was an iron lung next to Shelley, poised to make her even more of a prisoner, but she bravely survived and rendered the iron lung unnecessary.

After such a horrifying trauma, how do you come around to humor? Well, Shelley explained, her mother was straight out of "I Love Lucy," a real hoot. She suffered from depression, and laughter was an elixir. Shelley came home with at least one funny story daily to entertain her mother.

Shelley had dreamed of becoming a cowgirl just like Dale Evans. (I hope that reference rings a bell.) She loved animals and, with her husband, bought a farm stocked full of all kinds of beloved creatures. And then along came Buddy, a neighbor's dog much more interested in spending time with Shelley than her owner.

Buddy became Shelley's beloved companion for ten years and saw so many things about her that she didn't see in herself. Theirs was a love affair.

"I'm 81 years old in this long life. I've had a lot of weird boyfriends, but I've never had the obsessive adoration that Buddy was offering me."

That special connection between a human and a dog is the overarching theme of Shelley's latest book, Itching To Love: The Story of a Dog.

Listen to NPR's "Morning Edition" emeritus and award-winning author as she tells her story of physical challenge, a career as a humorist, a dream realized to be a cowgirl, and the touching relationship with her dog, Buddy.

https://www.shelleymickle.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Itching-Love-Story-Shelley-Mickle/dp/1637633394 or wherever books are sold

https://www.shelleymickle.com/books

https://www.shelleymickle.com/book-clubs

“No Way Out of This: Living with a Partner with Alzheimer’s.”

Sue Lick’s husband was fourteen years older, but that didn’t seem to matter. Yes, she loved the Beatles; he listened to crooners. But they sang together, played music together, and shared a love of reading, travel, and so much more.

“I thought he’d live forever,” Sue said.

It was her husband Fred who first mentioned that his memory was slipping. Sue shrugged it off and blamed the trauma of his mother dying and the chore of cleaning out her house. But things spiraled down from there.

Sue, a journalist and semi-professional musician, journaled daily during Fred’s illness. It was the some thousand-odd pages that served as the basis for her memoir, No Way Out of This: Living with a Partner with Alzheimer's. She shares the heartache, the guilt, the loneliness but also the good times, the laughs, the happiness.

In this episode of “Older Women & Friends,” Sue and I take a deep dive into this horrendous disease, the challenges, and the tools to use for the caregiver to carry on. Unlike other memoirs about Alzheimer’s, Sue is not a self-sacrificing wife who gives up her life to care for her husband. She understands the necessity of maintaining her connection with friends and the importance of time away to, in her case, write and play music.