Meet the 65-year old creating a buzz with trustworthy info about aging

In this episode, Jean Anne Feldeisen talks with Connie Zuckerman, Managing Editor of the weekly newsletter agebuzz. In her late fifties, Connie started a small online newsletter for her circle of friends and family. Eight years later, agebuzz has grown to 50,000 subscribers.

Before agebuzz, Connie spent years as a lawyer, bioethics consultant, and writer. Her career includes studying and making decisions about issues related to aging in settings like nursing homes, care facilities, and hospitals. 

Did all that prepare her for living under the same roof with four generations of family? In the second half of the episode Connie shares her thoughts about the challenges of The Club Sandwich generation, including what it takes to make an intergenerational home work for a household with ages ranging from young kids to ninety-year olds.

Agebuzz is a weekly newsletter that pulls together all the latest information on topics of interest to older adults: nutrition, exercise, balance, fall prevention, loneliness, etc. 

The information the editors provide has been carefully curated to be reliable, useful and accessible to older adults. The material in each newsletter is easy to understand but also provides links for further research. To sign up for the free weekly newsletter, or just check out all the good info, go to agebuzz.com.

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Transcript

Connie Zuckerman: “I have occasionally felt myself being in the club sandwich generation rather than the sandwich generation, because I'm literally navigating four generations at once. You know, myself, my 96-year-old dad, and my 96-year-old father-in-law, and my daughter, and I also have a son and his wife who live about 10 minutes from us, and then my grandchildren. And so on any given day, these different needs intersect."

Intro: This is Crow's Feet, a place where we ponder the question, are these our golden years, or does aging just suck? Well, yes, getting older is not for the faint-hearted, but aging also brings wisdom and humor, a finely tuned perspective on life. In our podcast, you'll meet writers and others rethinking our later years, people who inspire us to reimagine our future.

Jean: I'm your host, Jean Anne Feldeisen. If you're like me, you truly appreciate the ability to look up answers to all your questions on the internet. But these days, the quality of the information you get is often questionable for different reasons.

Does it accurately reflect the facts, or does the writer have some sort of political or financial agenda? Who's funding the research? And, of course, how much of this was written by AI?

I often wonder if I can believe what I'm reading. My guest today, Connie Zuckerman, is a lawyer, bioethics consultant, and a writer. She has expertise at gathering and curating information, along with a lifetime studying and making decisions about issues related to aging.

Lucky for us, she decided, in her 60s, to ensure that everyone can access good quality information about aging through her online publication, Age Buzz. It's my pleasure to welcome Connie Zuckerman. Connie, could you give us your elevator pitch, just in two sentences? What is Age Buzz?

Connie: So our mission is to really provide essential and reliable information on all aspects of aging. We try and keep up with everything that's out there, which is admittedly a bit challenging. And then the goal is to give readers access to additional information and resources if they want to go further on the topic.

So really, it's all about curation of what we believe is important information and expertise. And I want to emphasize that our expertise is not necessarily the same as AI machine thinking. Our expertise comes from human experience, and human expertise, really lived experience.

So we provide a lot of concrete information, but it's also curated by the insights and wisdom that we've developed over time.

Jean: What led you to begin this publication?

Connie: I'm now 65, but in my mid-50s or later 50s, I started really dealing with some of these. I've always dealt with these issues professionally, but I was dealing with them a lot personally. I think my peers and my family members, we were all beginning to really grapple with some of the nitty-gritty, especially of aging relatives.

And I am sort of the go-to person in my orbit to ask these questions. And I kind of decided, you know, there must be information on the Internet because, you know, people just must not be aware of what's out there. And so I began to do some research and realized that a lot of what's out there, if you don't ask the right questions or you haven't dealt with this before, you may not get the answers that are useful for you and you may miss a lot of what's valuable out there.

So I decided to start a little newsletter for a couple hundred family members and friends. And here we are many years later, eight years later, and I have about close to 50,000 subscribers. And I feel pretty good that I'm giving people useful, valuable information based upon my insights.

And I think the results show that people are hungry for this information. And we now have subscribers from all over the country. It's well, well beyond my network of people.

And I think I'm providing useful information. And I think the fact that we keep attracting more and more readers and subscribers every week, sort of demonstrates that.

Jean: Well, I've certainly found all the articles that I've clicked on very useful. But I particularly enjoy the quality of the information on Age Buzz.

Connie: I do want to emphasize one thing, which I think is in our favor also, which is I try very hard to make the information factual, as well as non-judgmental and non-partisan. I sort of believe that everybody, no matter where you come from, or what you believe, or what your background is, we all share these same issues. We may approach them and deal with them differently, but nobody escapes these issues.

And I particularly want to be non-judgmental, because I feel like some of these are really intimate family issues that I try very hard not to cast judgment about how somebody approaches it, but just make useful information available so that they can craft the best solution for their loved ones or for themselves.

Jean: Have any of your readers talked about what kind of impact age buzz has made on their aging?

Connie: Not surprisingly, the large majority of our readers are female, and that tracks with typically who makes health and care decisions and families, both for individuals and for spouses and partners and children. It's usually women. So that makes a lot of sense, although I would say a significant portion of most of our information is applicable to men or women.

But it's usually women who receive the information and act on it. The majority of our readers are 65 or older. And we have a sizable percentage of readers well into their 80s and even beyond, which both shows you that people are living longer and people are interested in being healthy and staying healthy as they live longer, which I think is great and good for our health care system because as a larger percentage of the population ages, the costs of care skyrocket as most of us know.

So the fact that there's a significant number of people who are trying to do it in a way that keeps them healthy and gives them a good quality of life is great for themselves and for society at large. So a lot of our readers are most interested in our content that has to do with healthy aging. So our most popular articles tend to do with exercise, balance, and fall concerns, nutrition, brain health.

Although I will say the occasional article on makeup or hair, people click on as well. We're all human. We all have that interest as well.

But clearly people are hungry for information on healthy aging.

Jean: Connie, you've been involved helping people deal with issues of aging for your entire professional career. In all different kinds of ways. Tell our listeners just a little bit about your professional experience.

Connie: So even though I was trained as a lawyer, went to law school, I've really spent my entire career in the healthcare arena and focused on healthcare and decision-making, mostly with geriatric patients. Rather than some of the more traditional legal routes dealing with healthcare such as malpractice or injury, I've tried to really focus on the intersection of medicine, law, and ethics. And so I've worked in hospitals and nursing homes and medical schools and policy organizations, and I've been a project manager, I've been a consultant, I've been teaching, researching, writing, really focusing mostly on decision-making and palliative care and end-of-life decision-making, the sorts of issues that arise with geriatric patient care.

So really as a professional, I've dealt my whole career with issues that involve older adults and their families. And as people are living longer, more and more issues are surfacing, which I've been dealing with.

Jean: You've also had some personal experiences working through difficult situations with aging relatives.

Connie: I've dealt with older relatives who have been in need of hands-on care as well as management of care. So I've been at the bedside and in the homes of my two aging grandparents for whom I was doing hands-on caregiving as a law student. I've dealt with other relatives for whom I functioned as a surrogate child.

I've dealt with my own aging parents, still dealing with my dad who's 96 and my father-in-law who's 96. And in my personal orbit with family members and close friends, I am sort of the go-to person for issues around dealing with aging, whether it's yourself or your aging loved ones, and whether it's long-term care or issues of decision-making capacity. I sort of regularly get called into these conversations, both because of my professional experience, but also because of my hands-on personal experience, which I use the phrase experiential wisdom.

That's sort of what I've acquired.

Jean: I recently dealt with the death of both of my parents, and as my mother lived to be 96 also, and it was really difficult trying to decide what to do about her care, because she didn't want to go into care. I can empathize with our listeners' difficulty in trying to make decisions for someone else. That's a hard thing.

When do you take over and when don't you? When do you let them have autonomy?

Connie: That actually is one of the biggest sort of hurdles, which is figuring out what are the parameters of your decision-making versus allowing your older loved ones to make their own decisions. Everybody has the right to make the wrong decisions if that's what they choose and they understand the consequences. So, there's a constant balancing act that's going on.

It helps if you understand the parameters of that, but inevitably conflicts and dilemmas arise.

Jean: Today, I'm talking with Connie Zuckerman, attorney, writer, and producer of the online magazine Age Buzz. In a moment, we'll learn about her experience living in an intergenerational home and what it's like to be what she calls one of the club sandwich generation.

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Jean: So Connie, I understand that you and your husband have been successfully living together with your daughter and her family for several years. Tell us how your living arrangement got started, and what did you think about in setting up housekeeping together?

Connie: Yeah, I think at least among my peers, my husband and I are a bit of pioneers when it comes to how we're living. So right before COVID, my daughter and her family who had been living out in Arizona, she's married and she has two daughters. They were about to transfer to New York from Arizona because my son-in-law was going to be entering the finance world.

And my daughter is a full-time working parent. She's an attorney as well. And when my husband and I heard that they were planning to move to New York, we knew instantly some of the challenges that they were going to be facing, given the cost of living in New York, given the pace of life in New York, given the demands of the industry that my son-in-law was going to be entering.

We thought, wow, that's going to be a stressful life. So a little bit off the cuff, my husband and I offered to have us all live together, so that we could sort of be a set of extra hands for them. And to my surprise, they agreed.

Jean: Wow.

Connie: I would say it wasn't a thoroughly thought through decision on our part. But it did happen. So my husband and I had been living in Manhattan at the time.

And to accommodate the need for more space and to accommodate the need for child-oriented activities in schools, we decided that we'd be better off settling in Brooklyn. So in the fall of 2019, we all moved in together into a large apartment in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn. And I thought it would be great because everybody else would be going off on their days, and I'd have the apartment to myself, do my work, and little did we know that a few months later, we'd all, all six of us would be home 24-7 for many, many months, which actually turned into an interesting opportunity for us all to spend a lot of time together.

I would say overall, it's been just a wonderful experience, really a privilege to be with my granddaughters every day. We had breakfast together, we hang out together, my husband and I occasionally take them to activities. And it's been a pretty lovely experience, I would say, overall.

Jean: So what has it been like?

Connie: I think this is a very challenging time to be raising young kids, very different than when our kids were younger. I mean, I certainly didn't have to deal with the internet and social media and all of the stresses and pressures that that brings onto young kids and young families. So that's been a fascinating thing to watch and occasionally navigate.

Overall, we've been very fortunate. There are days when I'm juggling different things at once. And I think that I have occasionally felt myself being in the club sandwich generation rather than the sandwich generation, because I'm literally navigating four generations at once.

You know, myself, my 96-year-old dad, and my 96-year-old father-in-law, and my daughter, and I also have a son and his wife who live about 10 minutes from us, and then my grandchildren. And so on any given day, these different needs intersect. I'll give you a perfect example.

Recently, my husband and I were at our younger granddaughter's birthday, and we were there both to enjoy the birthday party, but also to be an extra set of hands. And in the meantime, my 96-year-old dad had just been diagnosed with COVID and flu, and I was juggling dealing with the party and being available at the party while I was talking to his caregiver and trying to set up a way for him to get medical care on a weekend. My head was sort of spinning thinking, oh my gosh, I'm dealing with both ends of life here.

And nothing stops for the other, so you just have to figure out how to juggle both of those at the same time. So occasionally there are challenges, but those are definitely outweighed by the joy I get in being with my grandkids every day. And I guess in terms of challenges, I would say I'm very aware, and I think my husband and I are both very aware, of needing to ensure that everybody has their sort of spaces to retreat to, and their privacy, and their ways of being discrete families while also having joint time joint time together.

Jean: Yeah, very important. Yeah.

Connie: So I would say on weekends especially, when my daughter and her husband and the kids are home, my husband and I try and retreat to our own lives a little more. So we'll go out and do things on weekends that we typically wouldn't do during the week, which is very easy to do in New York City. We're very fortunate.

There's lots of cultural things we can do. And that also gives my daughter and her family's time to have their own space and be their own family without us interfering. And the sort of boundaries are challenging.

Fortunately, we all, I think, get along well. We're flexible. We have a lot of space.

We're very fortunate. A couple years after starting to live together, my husband and I made the decision we needed more space. So we literally bought a brownstone in Brooklyn.

So now the six of us have a whole house together rather than just an apartment. So we have more space. And I think our daily habits and our flexibility and our budgets and our personalities are all allowing us to mesh in ways that feel pretty smooth. We're pretty fortunate about it.

Jean: So if I could summarize it, maybe some advice that our listeners might want to hang on to would be that you really need enough space for everybody. You need some individual spaces. And you want to allow time for families to have a discrete time together as a family, as a generation, or mother, father, and granddaughters, apart from you and your husband.

Connie: That sounds like good advice. Yeah. And also just the general concept of having boundaries and respecting each other's boundaries.

Yes. I think that's been probably the biggest challenge. I think there are things in your life where not everybody needs to know everything, and I think you have to respect that.

You know, I am very aware of the need to respect the way my daughter and son-in-law are raising their kids. I can't say every decision I think is fabulous, but I also can unequivocally say it's not my place to make those choices.

Jean: Good for you, Connie.

Connie: So I cry very hard. It would be interesting to ask my daughter if she thinks I'm succeeding. I mean, that being said, I think my daughter is an amazing mother, and my son-in-law is an amazing dad, and I feel like my grandkids are very lucky.

But I also make a very deliberate decision to try not to overstep my bounds in terms of how they are choosing to raise their kids. You know, it's not my place.

Jean: So I wondered, Connie, if producing agebuzz has changed the way you think about your own aging, or the way you're approaching caring for yourself.

Connie: Irony is I spend so much time doing the work to produce age buzz that I don't always take care of myself. I do feel like I'm much more proactive now and focused on preventive measures, rather than responding to things that come up. So I try and focus on exercise every week, and I try and focus on healthier eating.

Sleep is really important for me. I'm really a cranky person if I don't get sufficient sleep. And I try and engage in social and brain stimulating activities, which is critical as you get older to keeping your brain functioning well.

And a lot of what I'm doing is sort of sourced from the information I read. So I feel like I'm fortunate to be exposed to all of these insights and wisdom, because I'm definitely in a better place than I otherwise would have been.

Jean: So before we end, I'd like to ask you three questions that we ask each of our guests. So first of all, what surprises you most about aging?

Connie: For me, it's been how quickly it's come upon me. I mean, in my head, I'm still 25, which clearly my body doesn't listen to that. And even with as much good information and insight as I have, I've been surprised at how much I'm not entirely in control of.

You know, I feel like my diet is good, my exercise is good, and yet things crop up that, you know, things happen. I've been surprised at how things have come on and sometimes quickly come on without me really anticipating them.

Jean: What would you tell your 25-year-old self if you had that opportunity?

Connie: Oh, wow. I would probably say that don't assume at 25 you really understand what life is like, because every age that I've been, things have arisen that are new challenges and opportunities, but not what I would have expected at 25. So I guess a little humility maybe.

You're not going to know what's ahead of you and just be flexible and be wide and be wise and be informed.

Jean: And what are you still trying to figure out about aging or about life?

Connie: Yeah. I could say what do I want to be when I grow up? I'm still trying to figure that out.

Not 100 percent sure. But I think for me, it has to do with learning how to have a little bit more fun, be a little bit less serious and be open to new things. I think still at my age, it's really important to be open to new experiences and new opportunities.

But really in areas that as a younger person, I didn't really give myself the opportunity to explore, like the arts and culture. And I feel like there's a lot out there that I would love to be exposed to, and I just need to be more open to it.

Jean: Before we end, I wondered if there's anything you'd like our listeners to know about how to subscribe to AgeBuzz, or what's your website?

Connie: It's very easy. It's www.agebuzz.com.

No cost to subscribe. The subscription option is at the top left-hand corner of the website, and there are other opportunities within the website as well. If you subscribe, you'll get a weekly newsletter that highlights our most recent posts, and the website itself has additional resources and product recommendations, and you can read every post that's in our newsletter is also on our website.

So it's very easy to access our information, and we are not charging anybody, and I hope people avail themselves of the opportunity, because we work really hard to produce something that I think is valuable, and the price is right.

Jean: You've been listening to my guest, Connie Zuckerman, producer of Age Buzz, on the Crow's Feet podcast. I'm Jean Anne Feldeisen. I want to thank the Crow's Feet podcast team. Nancy Peckenham, our founder, Rich Halten, sound editor and designer, Nancy Franklin, our marketing and public relations expert, with additional support from the Crow's Feet writers and editors who make up our team. Betsy Allen, Lee Bench, Melinda Blau, Jan M. Flynn, and Jane Trombley. Our Crow's Feet original theme music was composed and performed by Rand Bishop.

Outro: Thanks for joining us on this episode of Crow's Feet, Life As We Age. Don't miss any of our great stories. Subscribe to Crow's Feet wherever you get your podcasts.