Ageless Living with Ruth Yunker: Paris, Kids, and Modeling After 70

Ruth Yunker, a 73-year-old woman determined to prove age is meaningless, embarks on an unexpected and daring journey into the world of modeling, challenging her preconceived notions of herself and society's stereotypes to discover the beauty of agelessness. Show Notes | Transcript "I'm always big on saying take on the new thing. Be brave, be open, be curious. Whatever age you are, you have to fit it into what you're already doing." Ruth Yunker Ruth Yunker is a writer, humorist, traveler, and fledgling model. She has written for 40 years and has published three books of her own, including her current book, Baby, I'm the Boss of Me: My Journey to Ageless. When Ruth turned 70, she felt a sudden awakening, understanding the idea of agelessness and aging. Through her experience, she learned to embrace the joys of being alone and became determined to share her journey with others. With the help of her friends, she began her journey into the world of modeling and found a new passion in life. Now, at 73, Ruth is turning her experiences into a book, showing others that age is just a number. In this episode, you will learn the following: Aging with Confidence: Ruth Yunker's Journey to Agelessness Falling in Love with Paris: Why Ruth changed her mind about this city. Exploring a Career Change: From Writer to Modeling Living Alone and Enjoying the Freedom: Ruth's Experience Living Without a Pet or Someone Else in the House. Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy: Follow Your Dream at Any Age In this episode, Robert shares what prompted him to become a musician in his sixties, and why he's inspired to help others follow their dreams. Reinventing Yourself after 50 with Eva La Cuz & Jennifer Ladd Running her own clothing design business was always Eva's dream, and after facing a lot of challenges, she finally made that dream come true. Creating Happiness Habits with Barbara Ellison In this episode, Barbara shares the challenge she faced after becoming a widow, and how she became a transformational life trainer. Resources mentioned in this episode Connect with Ruth here Follow Ruth on Instagram here Join the Soulful Women's Network here Send me a message here ☕ Support the podcast here ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here Connect with Gloria: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter TRANSCRIPT Gloria Grace Rand Namaste. I am Gloria Grace Rand, and I am so delighted to be with you for another edition of Live. Love. Engage. And we've got an amazing woman on the show today that I can't wait to chat with and to learn more about her and have her share her story with you all. So I want to welcome first of all, Ruth Yunker to Live. Love. Engage. Ruth Yunker Well, thank you for having me. Gloria Grace Rand Well, I am very pleased to have met you virtually here for a moment because I'm really excited to learn more about you. But let me tell our listeners and those watching on YouTube what you've been up to. Ruth is a writer, a humorist, and traveler, and she is also a fledgling model at the young age of 73. She's been writing for 40 years and has published short stories, magazine articles, and book reviews, and also three books of her own as well. Her first two were about her stays in Paris, and her current book is called Baby, I'm the Boss of Me: My Journey to Ageless, which consists of stories of her life and how now she's facing the third trimester of life. And there's a copy of the book right there she was showing. She's doing it with joy, personal power, and above all, a healthy sense of humor. And there's more there, but I'll maybe let you share a little bit more of that. So let's see. I'm trying to think where to start, and I know a lot of times when I'll have guests on, I ask them about what got you to where you are today. So maybe I'll ask you, why did you decide to write this latest book? And we'll start with that. Ruth Yunker Okay, well, I've been writing forever, and I stopped writing fiction pretty early on, and for the last 20 years, I've just been writing about my memoir essay type stuff. So it was a change of genre, but it was also I reached the age of 50, and I stopped drinking, which was very important, needed to be done. And at that point, first of all, I taught yoga for seven years. I couldn't pick up a pen for seven years. But I decided to start writing exactly what I want to write, and what I wanted to write was humor. And so I also then, at that time, began traveling to Paris and by myself and staying in an airbnb and having to go to the grocery store and the laundromat. And in the end, this has been like, for almost every year for 16 years. I have a whole social life over there, thanks to social media and a normal life, you know, I mean, I did the tourist stuff. I don't do that anymore. I go over there and just live there. I love it. But then I turned 70, and that totally freaked me out. Carrying things too far. I remember turning 60 and having a beautiful birthday party for myself. All women people give you great presents when your birthday has a zero at the end of it. Oh, this one's important. Okay. And a friend of mine at that time who was older than I am, said, come on in, the water's fine about being 60. So when I turned 70, the number just didn't flow. I personally don't care, but I knew exactly how it looks to the world or how you say, if I'm 70. I mean, people have stereotyped reactions to it. So why? Quite obviously because there I was having a meltdown on my 70th birthday quietly in the country somewhere, you know, and then suddenly I was 71 and then 72. I mean, and I didn't feel any different. The morning I woke up when I was 72, I looked in the mirror and I thought, I now understand the meaning of the word ageless. This is called my journey to ageless, baby I'm the boss of me. I understand it because I didn't personally feel what my stereotypical idea of what 70 would be like. I didn't look like it for all the various reasons. And all of a sudden, I understood my age was meaningless. And anyway, at that point, I've been doing memoir essays all along, but I decided to put it specifically in a book and write about how I'm aging and how I feel about it. And if anybody likes what I have to say, then they can do it too. Gloria Grace Rand I like that. I can relate. Now, as we're recording this, I'm two weeks away from my 60th birthday. Ruth Yunker There you go. Have a big party. You'll get great gifts. Gloria Grace Rand Well, I tell you what I decided to do was I for years had wanted to host a retreat, and I, for one reason or another, never did it. And I said, you know what, screw it. I'm going to host a retreat this year. And so I'm doing it like the weekend before my birthday. There was a full moon that weekend, and I just thought, oh, this is perfect. That's what I'm going to do. So I totally get that you do want to celebrate those milestones. And I can also understand 70 kind of being strange because I know well, because, I mean, my mom passed at 78, and so I'm sure when I hit 70, I'm probably going to start wondering about it myself a little bit. But I don't feel like 60. And yet I remember when I was a kid and you would see people who were like 60 or 65 and oh, they were so old. But I don't know if it's because we are baby boomers that it's different now. We're living differently, I think, too. And then our our parents or grandparents did tell me a little bit about because I love I've seen some of you. I know you got like, an Instagram account, and you've got pictures on there. And so tell me about this modeling that you are doing us that I love. So you'll have to check around, tell everyone, like, what your your Instagram is? Ruth Yunker Well, it was a challenge. I wanted to be a model when I was 16, and this life interfered, and, you know, and I didn't. Yeah, my mother said, oh, well, send you to New York then. But I spent I'd had a peripatetic childhood, lived a lot of places. I didn't want to go anywhere, and I knew I wasn't tall enough at the time, didn't have quite the right look. I just knew, no, don't bother. Anyway, so life goes on and on, and I was having dinner with someone in January. He's kind of a marketing person. We're friends. And I was saying, yeah, you don't make a whole lot of money writing books, and you get a lot of personal satisfaction. And I said, yeah, so I'm going to be in doing the speaking thing now. The speaking thing, now that the pandemic is over, that kind of thing. And he leaned back and said, you said you wanted to be a model when you were a teenager. If you want to make some money, why don't you model? There's a whole huge world for they call them silver models. All those women who keep saying on Instagram and keep saying, I began transitioning into my gray. And I'm thinking, do they know anything about transgender issues going on these days? And what they sound like compared to what these people are going through with just going gray, for God's sake. And they usually have gorgeous heads of hair, too. So I couldn't go gray if... I don't want to go gray. So not now white. My hairdresser is saying, we're pretty close to white. And I'm saying, when I turn 80, I'll go white. Gloria Grace Rand There you go. Ruth Yunker Yeah. So he said, Why don't you try it? And I said, Well, I don't have a clue how to get started. I live in L.A. That's just like a hopeless situation. He said, well, you should try it. You should try it, the speaking thing. You're not going to like it, and I just know you. And they said, but get professional headshots. And therein began in February my journey into this whole modeling world and also being out here in Los Angeles that involves the Hollywood world and the Hollywood mindset. And I am not looking to do fashion modeling in fashion magazines. Obviously, I'm not old. I mean,...