Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest Laura Lane, on air from November 30th
Having lost her own daughter to cancer, Laura specializes in supporting cancer moms who want to learn how to develop grace under pressure during the daily care of their child so that they can find hope in a hopeless situation.
My mission for caregivers is to be stronger, more hopeful, and loving in the care of their cancer patients. Being fully equipped mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Having grace under pressure. Giving their very best every single day. And not only that but they will also reach for the heavens and strengthen their relationship with God.
Laura Lane specializes in providing loving faith-based support for moms whose kids are fighting for their lives. Laura offers hope in a hopeless situation for caregivers who want to learn how to develop grace under pressure during the daily care of their child. As a professionally trained transformational workshop leader and cancer mom herself, she is there to support them along the way, help them learn needed skills and feel understood. Laura engages her audiences in deep spiritual conversations that help bring more joy and gratitude and a closeness to God during the dark nights of the soul.
According to the Journals of Gerontology, “one in three baby boomers falls into the category of separated, divorced, widowed, or never married.” Millennials are also following this trend; a recent Gallup poll indicates that 59 percent of the 73 million millennials are single and have never married.
Adding fuel to the fire is the caregiver crisis – the decline in the number of people available to provide in-home care, including family members. Longevity, singledom, and isolation is a recipe for disaster.
Who Will Take Care of Me When I’m Old?: Plan Now to Safeguard Your Health and Happiness in Old Age by Joy Loverde is a step-by-step guide to living the life you want for as long as possible.
Every day, I relive the critical decision I made as a fourteen-year-old attending Trinity, an all-girl’s Catholic high school in River Forest, Illinois. When Sr. Dorothy was looking for a student to visit nursing-home residents on Thanksgiving morning, I hesitated; then raised my hand to volunteer. That decision changed my life forever.
Upon entering the nursing home, I observed seven residents sitting motionless in the dark. No one was talking. No one was smiling. Everyone was staring into nothingness. I was shocked at what I witnessed, and immediately started grappling for answers to questions no one seemed to be asking:
Who are these elders?
What series of events led them to a life of resignation?
How did they end up isolated and alone in their old age?
And why are they not with their families on Thanksgiving Day?
Since that visit to the nursing home, I have never looked back. I vowed to find answers to these and other vital questions. For the next 40 years I would advocate and troubleshoot the causes, concepts, and needs of the world’s aging population. Especially people who are aging solo.
My career-path in marketing and media relations switched gears in the mid-1980’s when I became keenly aware of complex problems associated with populations of people getting older, living alone, living longer, and the need to care for them. Responding to this trend, I wrote my first boo, The Complete Eldercare Planner. Random House is the publisher. It is a best-seller in its category and in its sixth edition.
Ahead of the curve once again, my latest book, Who Will Take Care of Me When I’m Old? offers practical strategies on planning for old age and the possibility of aging solo.
“When we plan, we have choices.” This is the promise of both of my books.
During my career, I have been interviewed on the TODAY Show, Good Morning America, National Public Radio stations, SiriusXM and others. I have written hundreds of blogs and articles. I’ve been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, New York Times, Money Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Reader’s Digest, and a host of others. USA TODAY ran a four-part series on my family-caregiver programs.
Joy Loverde is a consultant, keynote speaker, and spokesperson for the mature-market industry. Her work has been featured on NBC’s Today Show, the CBS Early Show, NPR, and in USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. She lives in Chicago.
“Clear, practical, relevant, vital… this book engages readers to create
their own customizable plan for aging. An exceptionally worthwhile read.”
Bob Blancato, Chairman, American Society on Aging
“Your book is the support many are looking for.”
Sherrill Wayland MSW, Manager of National Projects
SAGE Advocacy and Services for LGBT elders
“This book effectively challenges the notion that aging means disability
and with that, stigma of being old.”
Dilip V. Jeste, M.D., Director, Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging
University of California, San Diego
“…thoughtfully discusses a wide range of crucial life issues with
deep understanding, complete candor, and inspired guidance for all.”
David Schless, President, American Seniors Housing Association, Washington, DC
Loverde has spent a lifetime interacting with thousands of true experts—old people themselves. Using their advice as a blueprint, Loverde outlines five sections to think about and get in order when planning for old age: personal readiness, housing, relationships (including beloved pets), chronic illness and health, and end of life.
All of our shows/interviews are done by donation, if you enjoyed this show please support us here with either a one-time donation or subscribe and support onPatreon.
In the fall of 2020, amidst riots, looting, and an alarming uptick in senseless killings, journalist Matt Rosenberg returns to his native Chicago to see if the city can dig itself out of the hot mess it’s become after decades of liberal governance. Our nation’s big cities are broken. Urban progressive government badly undermines those it claims to lift. Matt Rosenberg lived in Chicago for thirty years and came back to live there again amidst the turmoil of 2020. What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son exposes the roots of Chicago’s violent crime, failing courts and schools, rotten finances, and ongoing Black exodus, and proposes a rescue plan for this emblematic American city.
“What has happened to Chicago? That’s Matt Rosenberg’s question, and mine as well. His loving tribute to our hometown is a moving, sensitive, humane and trenchant critical assessment. Read it and weep.” – Glenn C. Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences, Brown University, author of “One By One from the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America,” and host of The Glenn Show at substack.com. “Matt Rosenberg writes about the Chicago Way in the Chicago Style of a Mike Royko…It’s a coherent, honest and balanced tour of the city’s perpetual corruption, unsafe streets, gawd-awful schools, ghost neighborhoods, financial legerdemain and the false Unified Theory of Systemic Racism that cloaks it all. Yet, What Next? is no helpless, hopeless wail, but a powerful and useful roadmap for a rebirth of a once-great city, based on the voices of Black families and others who don’t need academia to know what to do. Must reading for Chicago lovers.” – Dennis Byrne, former Chicago Sun-Times editorial board member, author of “Madness: The War of 1812.” “Not since author Alex Kotlowitz ventured into Chicago’s Henry Horner housing projects has an author offered such a thoughtful and thorough first-hand analysis of the state of urban disrepair. Leaders from cities across America would be well served by reading Matt Rosenberg’s account of what’s happening in Chicago and how not to make some of the same mistakes.” – Cyrus Krohn, former Publisher, Slate.com, author of “Bombarded: How to Fight Back Against the Online Assault on Democracy.”
“Matt Rosenberg came of age in Chicago…and “What’s Next, Chicago?” is about his return…to see for himself what’s gone so terribly wrong in the town once regarded as America’s model metropolis. The answer…is…cronyism on a gargantuan scale. Endless race hustling of the ugliest kind. An education system that has given up on the underclass. Corruption (that’s) deep and intractable…But Rosenberg’s scrupulous investigation is full of unexpected turns, and along the way he encounters those of every station who offer at least some reason for hope. Indeed, notwithstanding his clear-eyed record of the city’s decline…his love of the city and its people shine through this brave and important book.” – Harry Stein, author, “Why We Won’t Talk Honestly About Race.” “Matt Rosenberg digs deep into the reasons why a city with such a strong economy can nonetheless lose its moorings. His take on Chicago’s politicians, schools and crime rates is caustic and impossible to ignore…Rosenberg’s chapters grab hold of you, again and again, as he ranges across the most ravaged neighborhoods of the South Side, appreciating the never-quit determination of barbers, donut stand operators and gang members turned Uber drivers.” – George Anders, Senior Editor-at-Large, LinkedIn, and author of “The Rare Find: How Great Talent Stands Out.” (Review)
Rosenberg drove a Yellow Cab in Chicago; worked on the Better Government Association/Chicago Sun-Times Pulitzer-finalist Mirage Tavern probe; helped elect reform alderman Marion Volini of Edgewater to the Chicago City Council; cut his teeth as a suburban reporter for Lerner Newspapers covering regional airport issues; and was a point man for suburban mayors battling Daley II on airport planning. He did airport-related work in Seattle; was a Seattle Times op-ed columnist and a national writer; and a blogging pioneer regionally and nationally. He worked at a Gates-funded surface transportation think tank which helped bring to life a new deep-bored tunnel and road-charging policies. He founded and guided news advocacy start-ups supporting the Washington State business community; and was senior editor of a Mozilla-backed online daily global news magazine promoting open systems and open government. An inveterate hiker in the PNW and Mountain West, he has worked in public policy, advocacy, journalism, and communications for more than three decades.
Their Stories Matter/Authors Kiss, with Sara Troy and her guest Charlie Sheldon, on air from October 19th
“I believe it was the telling of stories that made us modern humans, because a story can carry lessons and history one generation to the next. I believe something happened around 70-100,000 years ago when two different types of ancient hominids bred and their offspring’s brains were wired differently, enabling those offspring to imagine and tell stories, recounting of the past, imaginings of the future, rules to live by. This, I believe, is what happened and from which flowed art, burial of the dead, religion, and culture – the first origins of ancient truth, legends, and myth, carried among us still. It was the telling of stories that made us human, and is still. My Strong Heart Series, in some small way, imagines how this might have happened, and how people today could have made such a discovery.”
Every great scientific discovery began as a heretical, outrageous idea dismissed and condemned by all. Those ideas that today are considered foolish, even dangerous, may turn out to be true, given evidence, often much evidence, to counter the huge power of the status quo. I write fiction about these issues, often with a touch of magic realism, even a breath of fantasy, for only in those realms can the reader accept and truly imagine what today might be considered impossible.
I have always been a writer, always a hiker, trained as a wildlife biologist, living in the Pacific Northwest, a husband, father, grandfather, and friend. In my work life I was a graduate student teacher, a commercial fisherman, a house painter, a fisheries consultant, a treasure hunter, then a planner, a construction manager, a project manager, even an executive for various seaports – for 28 years. During my years working for seaports I was involved with several difficult environmental cleanups, including Superfund sites, and for many years I worked with local tribes negotiating fishing agreements between their salmon fishermen and harbor operations in Seattle. After I retired from port work at age 65 in 2012 I went back to sea as a merchant sailor, container ships and military reserve vessels, as a watch stander and able bodied seaman, for four years, then quit for good to write these books about Olympic National Park, the Gulf of Alaska, a certain ornery young girl, and ancient history – I call it the Strong Heart Series.
For several years I performed maritime poetry at the Fisher Poets festival in Oregon and similar events near Seattle.
During my work life I spent more time than I care to admit before groups of people speaking, presenting, often before hostile crowds; I was a certified teacher for a private company teaching decision making and problem analysis for over a decade; and after retirement have conducted book readings and discussions at bookstores and retirement communities throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Before writing my latest series of books I did years of research into human origins, archeology, geology, ice ages, and climate change to develop the foundation for my Strong Heart series of books, which ask the question: could the ancient legends of most First peoples of North America that they have always been here – always – be true? Along the way I have learned much about what we know, and how much more we do not know, plus a healthy dose of aversion to zealotry and people who are absolutely convinced they know what is best for the rest of us.
I’d love to discuss how one’s personal experiences become the foundation for what they write about, and the relationship between one’s training and values and what emerges from the point of the pen. In my Strong Heart series, in addition to exploring ancient legends and the origins of “modern humans” about 70000 years ago, I also explore the struggle between development and preservation, the dangers of zealotry, coming of age, and what makes a family and a home. Along the way there is much I can share about hiking, backpacking, the Pacific Northwest and Olympic National Park, seafaring, and survival. I am also a water dowser – true – with some stories about that, too.
Went to Yale, UMass for an MS in wildlife biology, then went to sea as a commercial fisherman. Spent 30 years working for ports, then back to sea at 65 as a merchant sailor. Came ashore for good in my 70th year in 2016 to flog my tales and write. I live in Tacoma Washington, hike the Olympics whenever I can, cook for my wife, and row on Puget Sound in my Adirondack guide boat.
CHARLIE ENCOURAGES YOU TO SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BOOK STORES WITH THE ABOVE LINKS. BUT FOR AMAZON GO HERE
Free Giveaway: I will send you a full ebook file of my first tale in the series, Strong Heart, for you to read on your Kindle, phone or Ipad if you EMAIL ME AT
Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest Hampton Conway 111, on air from September 28th
ABUSED MEN ANALYST:Hampton Conway III, is the Executive Director of the Movement Ministries, Hampton is a father of ten and an educator of many. He has over 20 years of experience in education and even more in ministry and in service to others. Hampton is passionate about using his gifts and talents to uplift and inspire others.
Will The Department of Justice Believe Them? Drawing from his own experience as a battered husband and as a father of 10 children who also endured abuse, Hampton is passionate about empowering others to effectively deal with all forms of domestic violence. Hampton says, “I am passionate about advocating for all victims and survivors of domestic violence but due to my experience, I also focus on male victims and survivors. I have collaborated with another organization and mental health experts to start a support group for male victims and survivors. I am working with other local organizations as well to bring more awareness re: male victims and other populations of victims that are not as talked about. The other organizations include Sisters4Sisters, Moving4Jesus, DC Alliance for Empowering Homicide Survivors (DCAEHS), and Voices Against Domestic Violence (VADV). VADV in particular seeks to replicate a transitional housing program for female victims that they have done in West Virginia. The project here in the DMV will support male victims and their children. My non-profit, Movement Ministries, focuses on supporting victims and survivors of domestic violence, returning citizens, and low-income families.
Hampton E. Conway III is an Instructional Technology Specialist for Prince George’s County Schools. He has been a teacher and principal during his over 20 years in education. Hampton has been trained by Faith Trust Institute and is actively working to address domestic violence throughout the DMV. He is also a member of the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence, Interfaith Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and S.A.F.E. (Stop Abuse for Everyone). He has also volunteered with Prison Fellowship Ministries, run mentoring programs and volunteered and mentored at juvenile detention centers. Hampton strives to provide hope and help to those that are in need.
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