Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host psychotherapist, coach and empowerment expert, Beverly Glazer.

Beverley Glazer: 0:37

How can a full-time caregiver become an international viral sensation? Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast for women over 50 who are ready to stop settling and live life on their own terms. Each week, you'll hear raw conversations, inspiring stories and get practical tools to help you reignite your own fire. I'm Beverly Glaser, a reinvention catalyst for women who are ready to step up and stop settling, and you can find me on re-inventimpossiblecom. Rami Little is an accidental photojournalist, a reluctant best-selling author and an unintentional creator of a social media frenzy around the world, all in the name of protecting her mental health while caring for her 90-year-old mother-in-law with cancer. Rami didn't set out to be noticed. She just stepped up when life demanded, and sometimes the most extraordinary lives begin when we stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for permission. Keep listening to this exceptional story, Rami. Welcome.

Ramie Liddle: 1:49

Thank you, I'm really happy to be here.

Beverley Glazer: 2:01

It's a pleasure meeting you so far back. You reminded me that it was Episode 21. And oh my goodness, that was a remarkable journey back then. And before we catch up, let's circle back. You and Tim never looked for attention, never. The two of you chose to live off the grid. That's how you didn't want attention. Chose to live off the grid that's how you didn't want attention. And then you were nomads, and that was before. Even van life was cool, like what was going on. Why did you decide to kind of live off the grid and just travel, live your life so freely?

Ramie Liddle: 2:42

Well, it went way back to before Tim and I met each other. We learned later, once we met each other, that we had both chosen to live in our vehicles. This is in the 1980s. I was just really tired of paying rent and I thought that was a silly way to spend your money is just to give it away to somebody else when there were other options. And I worked in a YMCA so I bought myself. When all my friends were getting their first cool car, I bought a minivan and I turned it into a little camper for myself and stayed in the YMCA parking lot. No one knew the difference. I'd go to work, take a shower, and there I was.

Ramie Liddle: 3:26

And I met Tim many, many years later and learned that he had kind of the same idea and lived in his pickup truck as he was remodeling homes around the country. So we were kind of two like-minded souls that found each other, fortunately in that regard. And then over time we've lived in several different homes, remodeled different homes, and every time I was working as a school counselor and so I would have breaks, and every time our break whether it was spring break or fall break or summer break or Christmas or whatever it was like where are we going? What are we going to do? And we had a little old Airstream at the time and we would hop in the Airstream and go. And it got to a point where we realized that we would much rather live on the road than be in one place all the time. And so we did it kind of as an experiment, and we've been doing it ever since. So we're coming up on 22 years of nomadic living. One way or another, yeah, one way or another.

Beverley Glazer: 4:32

For sure we're going to be doing this nomadic life. It's incredible. Yeah, so you and Tim were on the road. How did you support yourselves?

Ramie Liddle: 4:43

Well, like I said, he remodeled homes for a living and so he was able to save a lot of money. We've been debt free since we got married and it's just been really important that you know. People ask us all the time how do you do this? And really it's no debt and no kids. Kids are expensive and so and we're super frugal and so we just continue to do that. Now We'll probably talk a little bit later. We have a book out and so that's supporting us as well financially, but certainly it's. It's been our lifestyle and just kind of our frugality that's afforded us this lifestyle.

Beverley Glazer: 5:22

So you were traveling around and did you know that Tim's parents were sick or did you go specifically to see them? What went on there?

Ramie Liddle: 5:33

So every summer we kind of made this loop around the country every year and this summer we always found ourselves in northern Michigan, where his aging parents lived, and we would spend, however amount of time there and doing their kind of honeydew list and they were doing okay, you know, physically, and we would make sure that we would go every year and we'd pull into the driveway and Tim's dad would help us back up.

Ramie Liddle: 5:58

He was very particular, wanted us to be parked, just so, and Norma would come out with cookies that she baked, and that was our routine every year, and this was the summer of 2015. So now, 10 years ago, we pulled into the driveway and they didn't come out, and so we were like that's odd. And we had talked to them the day before, said we're on our way, and they were excited, and so we got into the house and right away realized something was wrong. We smelled something burning in the oven. They weren't in their lazy boy chairs, which is where we would have usually found them, and Norma had her cane in one hand and Leo kind of in the other, with her arm around him, helping walk him through the house from the bathroom, and he was in extreme pain and we just happened to show up right at that moment and realized that something was very wrong, and so that was kind of the beginning of a shift for us into a caregiving role.

Beverley Glazer: 7:05

And how long did you stay?

Ramie Liddle: 7:08

Well, leo ended up dying about 10 days later. And, yeah, and two days after that, well, while he was in the hospital and getting transitioned into hospice, norma kind of leaned over to me she was in one of those giant hospital chairs, you know, for the guests in the room and and she said, can you take me downstairs? I have an appointment. And I was like sure, you know, here we go. And so I, I took her downstairs at one o'clock and and we went and, you know, had this appointment and, um, it turned out that they needed to run some more tests and eventually we learned that two days after Leo died, we learned that she had uterine cancer, and so that was, you know, a lot of decisions needed to make in a short period of time. And so we asked her, we said, you know, when the doctor gave her the diagnosis, he went through this process of, okay, we're going to do a hysterectomy, she was 90 years old, we'll do a hysterectomy and then we're going to do some radiation, then some chemotherapy, and then we'll put you in a long-term or into a therapeutic nursing home for a while and then into long-term care. And so there it was. They laid out her entire rest of her life. And he said so, mrs Bowershman, what would you like to do? And he didn't give her any other options. He just put out those options and then said when should we schedule the hysterectomy? And so she sat up in her wheelchair.

Ramie Liddle: 8:47

We had had this conversation ahead of time, so we knew what was coming. She sat up tall in her wheelchair and she said I'm 90 years old, I'm hitting the road. And the OBGYN looked right at Tim and he was like what is she talking about? And he said well, we kind of live out of the box. We live in a little Airstream travel trailer with our 73 pounds standard poodle and we travel around. And she doesn't, she can't live at home by herself, she is not interested anymore. She said no more poking and prodding, I don't want any of the treatment. And so she decided she wants to. She wanted to come live with us, like like a lot of adult kids with aging parents, you know, bring your, bring your mom home, um. But our house had wheels and she was, she was all for it and and so we decided to. I mean, tim, really Tim and I hadn't talked about a pro and con. What is this going to do to our marriage, but we had already put it out there. And so here we go. We're going to take this 90-year-old mom who now has a cancer diagnosis on the road.

Ramie Liddle: 9:57

And we asked the doctor. We said you know, we do live a little differently and perhaps we're being irresponsible, and can you give us a little reality check on this? And he said you know, as doctors we see this every day. She's very frail. The side effects from the surgery and then the treatment following that are not going to be friendly to her and it's likely that this will be the best day of the rest of her life, like she will only go downhill from here. And he said so if it were me and I was in this situation, I would want to be in that motor home.

Ramie Liddle: 10:35

And so there was the blessing from the doctor and we were like, okay, let's give it a try. And then we said what happens when she starts declining on the road? And he said well, if she happens to die in her sleep in the Walmart parking lot somewhere, then just call 911 and they will help you. If she starts to decline and you need additional support, we have no medical background at all. And he said just call hospice wherever you are in the country and they will help you. And he said just call hospice wherever you are in the country and they will help you. And so we felt like we were armed with these two options and we went for it.

Beverley Glazer: 11:14

Well, now you're in a very enclosed space. You're kids living, yes, yes, it sounds like it's easy. The woman is 90 years old. She's also grieving. How did you go through that?

Ramie Liddle: 11:32

I thought I had it nailed. I was like we can do this. So we bought a bigger rig. We lived in a little 19-foot airstream that wasn't going to work. And so the three of us sat down and said what's it going to take for us to live together? And we had this great conversation and wanted, you know, separate living spaces and a bathroom that we didn't have to walk through the other person's bedroom to use. And, and Norma said what if we got a washer and dryer? And I was like whoa, that's revolutionary. So we got this, this motor home, and I was like we can totally do this. It's twice the size of anything we've lived in for a long time. And so off we went, and well, I should say, you know, it took us about five weeks to get this all together before we pulled out of her driveway. And during that five weeks she caught a cold and we thought that's it, she's going to die before we leave. You know, we had no idea what we were dealing with. And um, so she, she got over that cold and and we finally left.

Ramie Liddle: 12:34

But but by this time I'm a little bit nervous, like maybe I am over my head, and and our first stop was in um Mackinac City, Michigan, and it was at this beautiful campground that overlooked Lake Huron and there's a big for those, your listeners, who know anything about that area. There's a giant bridge that goes from the lower peninsula to the northern peninsula of Michigan, and it happened to be really windy when we were there and so they closed the bridge and we couldn't go across the bridge for three days, and during those three days I just started melting down Like what have we done? I had the whole year planned out. I knew where we were going to sleep every night, I had it all. I was really organized and then immediately was not, because everything had to get thrown out the window, because we were stuck, and so my very familiar feelings of depression and anxiety just trickled right in and I was like what am I going to do? How am I going to do this? We never had kids. I don't know how to care for somebody.

Ramie Liddle: 13:46

And here we are, and Tim, he was so sweet and he said he said, honey, you love to take photographs, so we're going to go to some beautiful places. Keep your camera. This is before you know. I had a cell phone in my pocket all the time. He said keep your camera handy and take that as your self-care is, to go and take these pretty photographs of the natural world that we're going to be experiencing. I was like, okay, I'll try that.

Ramie Liddle: 14:13

So I walked around the campgrounds, windy and rainy and I'm taking pictures of rocks and flowers and stuff, and then we made our way on the road, we got over the bridge and off we went and we ended up eventually in Minnesota, in Blue Earth. Minnesota, which not many people know, I don't think is the home of the world's largest Jolly Green Giant statue. And so we're parked in a parking lot across the street from this Jolly Green Giant statue and I said, hey, norma, let's go check this out. So we got her in her wheelchair and wheeled over to the statue and she locked the wheels of her wheelchair, grabbed her cane and stood up and walked over in front of the statue. And then she happened to have a green sweater on that day she put her hands on her hips, just like the Jolly Green Giant does, and she posed in front of the statue.

Ramie Liddle: 15:09

And I had my camera with me. So I took this photo and immediately realized I don't need to be taking pictures of flowers and rocks. I need to be taking pictures of Norma and I had no idea that she was a ham and had this in her at all, and so that just kind of started an uplift for me to be able to say, ok, this will be fun. If she's willing, this could be really fun. So that's kind of how things started.

Beverley Glazer: 15:41

And she did. She stepped up to the plate all the time.

Ramie Liddle: 15:45

She did. And you know what's funny, bev, is that prior to that, for the 20 years that I knew her before, she was always like oh, I don't take a good picture, don't take a photo of me, I just look terrible in photos. And she really did. We went back through her photos and she just was like, hmm, and something changed, and we like and and something changed and and we, um, we have a few really sweet pictures of her. Oh, yes, yeah.

Beverley Glazer: 16:12

So you were posting them on Facebook. Is that what happened?

Ramie Liddle: 16:22

I used to keep a travel blog just of our travels with Tim and I and and it was way too cumbersome to keep up with that blog there's a lot of, you know, layouts and stuff so I thought I'll just throw it up on a Facebook page so my mom and some of our friends who like to know what we were doing could follow along. And so we started this Facebook page. It was called Driving Miss Norma and there were 12 people that followed it and those 12 people were just like way to go, that's how you do, you know, end of life care, and and they were super supportive and so I kept, I kept doing that and that's. That's. That was the beginning, yeah.

Beverley Glazer: 16:55

So how did you go from 12 to millions?

Ramie Liddle: 17:01

Well, our, our friends started sharing it a little bit, Like our one friend, susan. She said you guys put it on her Facebook page. She goes check out my friends, look what they're doing. It's really cool. And so she would share it.

Ramie Liddle: 17:15

And then we got started getting people that we didn't know you know they were friends of friends and Susan popped back on and she said we were at like 88 people and she said let's see if we can get Ms Norman to a hundred people. And we were like, yeah, we'll send you a postcard from wherever we are If we get to a hundred. And we're kind of rolling our eyes, you know. And and so we did, and we sent out a postcard from Estes park, colorado and the Rocky Mountains and we continued to go and about six months in, we started to notice that the people on there were no longer like friends of friends. They were people that we had no connection to at all and every now and then when we were on the road doing something, people recognized it. Norma was having a great time, we were having a great time and they're like boy, you guys are what are you up to you?

Ramie Liddle: 18:11

know, and it would just be wheeling her down the street. But I guess there was something that people recognized. And so about six months in we had 500, I think 520 followers and we were laughing. We sat down to breakfast and we were like I don't know 500. Tim and I are introverts.

Speaker 1: 18:31

I don't know 520 people Do you and he's like no, norma, do you.

Ramie Liddle: 18:34

And she's like I don't even know five people. And so we just couldn't believe it. And right at that same time there's an organization called GNN it's the Good News Network instead of CNN. So they heard about our story and so they did a little story on GNN and we had a conversation as a family Do we want to do this? Do we want to put ourselves out there? And Tim was like, oh, I don't know, this doesn't sound good to me. And Norma said you know, I think the world needs some more good news, don't you? And so we were like okay, if Norma wants to do this and is willing, then we'll go ahead and do it. And so this story came out from GNN and they sent me a note and said you know, it's up on our page now, if you want to see it and send a link to the to the story. And we read it and was like oh, that's a nice story, that's great. And if it's GNN, nobody knows about GNN, We'll maybe get 50 more people, or something like that. And so then I went from that to our Facebook page and my computer was flashing. It was like 520, 612,. It was like 520, 612, 738, 850.

Ramie Liddle: 19:44

And by the end of that day we had CBS Evening News calling they wanted to do a feature story on it. Journalists wanted to embed with us and our whole life exploded and I couldn't breathe. Tim was like make it, stop, we can't do this. Unplug the internet, Stop, stop, stop, stop. And we were just terrified and there's no way you can really stop the internet, and so it just went from there. My best friend was a teacher of gifted students and she sat them all down and opened up our Facebook page and said, okay, let's talk about statistics and how things go viral and what that means mathematically. And they were just enthralled viral and what that means mathematically. And they were just enthralled with the numbers that were happening.

Beverley Glazer: 20:30

And so now you were recognized everywhere.

Ramie Liddle: 20:33

Everywhere. Yeah, people were dropping to their knees and weeping when they saw us walking down the street.

Beverley Glazer: 20:41

Oh, my goodness, so did they invite you to their towns, like how, that's what?

Ramie Liddle: 20:49

happened. That's what happened. Yeah, it was unbelievable. We got invited to. She got invited to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game. She got invited to be the VIP at the Atlanta Hawks basketball game. She got invited. So there was like big things like that, or someone that would write and say we have the best ice cream in the entire country. You have to come have a cone, you know. Just all those kinds of invitations were happening, and so we, from that point on, we were riding a wave of love across the continent. That was just incredible. And then, hearing from people all around the world, it was unbelievable how significant our little decision was to other people. We're still blown away by it 10 years later.

Beverley Glazer: 21:40

And then you had to make the decision. Hospice. What was that day like?

Ramie Liddle: 21:48

Well, we were in San Juan Island, washington, which is closer to Canada than it is to the US. It's off the coast of northwest Washington state and we had friends that lived there and they invited us to come and go whale watching and there is a beautiful lavender farm there and they said we have a great spot for you to park your rig, just hop on the ferry. And we were like, oh, this will be amazing. And so we got there and we were ready to do all those things. And it was right at that time where she just really started to decline and it started getting the caregiving started getting really hard and it kind of transitioned from we're on vacation with her and managing this viral craziness to it's time to really buckle down and understand what caregiving is. Because she was, she was going downhill. And then we remembered hospice and and here we are more remote than we could possibly be on this little Island and sure enough they had this wonderful hospice. The nurse would come in on the ferry. They had local people that that were supportive and and um, so we had to go to their little health center, um to get her, um kind of prescription for hospice from from a doctor there. And so we did that and it and we knew it was coming, but it was still heavy, you know when you have to go through the process. And so we're like, okay, she's enrolled in hospice.

Ramie Liddle: 23:30

And that happened to be the first day of the San Juan County Fair, and so we were wheeling through the parking lot back to our car after getting this hospice recommendation and I said, norma, do you want to go back to the motor home or the county fairs in town? Do you feel like going to the county fair? And she said, do you think they have elephant ears at the county fair? I haven't had one in years. And so we said, well, let's go figure, find out. And so we drove straight to the county fair from her hospice I keep losing the word, but her, you know, hospice referral and sure enough, they had elephant ears and goats and chickens and pigs and cows and all that stuff. And we wheeled all around. We were like this is hospice, miss norma style and um. And so that was, that was a big outing and we had a couple more um before before. Things kind of demanded that she stay at home.

Beverley Glazer: 24:34

Yeah, beautiful closure to the story. Beautiful, but the story didn't end. And then I think it was Harper Collins you were invited to write a book. What happened so?

Ramie Liddle: 24:53

this is another thing of Tim. Like honey, we are not writing a book. Everyone's telling us write a book, you have to write a book. There's a great story we can't write a book, we don't know how to write a book, and, and then we really got convinced that, um, that we needed to write a book. And so we did, and, and we, we, we wrote it through Harper Collins, which was such an honor, um, one of the biggest publishing houses in the world, um, and so we spent our time her last days while she was still alive. We were trying to meet these deadlines, and the last couple of chapters were written live while she was dying, and so there's no kind of surprise ending there. We all know that's what all of us are going to do, right, and so we wrote this book. We went on a 15-city book tour. It ended up getting published in 10 languages around the world and was really quite successful. And so then the next question was what do we do now?

Ramie Liddle: 26:02

Our last stop on our book tour was at the Little Public Library in Northern Michigan, where Leo and Norma checked out books every week of their last 30 years. They knew them very well, and so we went there and exceeded the fire codes and had this wonderful book, talk with a lot of friends and loved ones, and then the next day we were sitting in their driveway in our motor home that we had done this big adventure with, and it and all of it hit us like it was delayed grief, um, about a year after the, um, the well, yeah, about a year after Norma died. And we were like, what do we do now? Yeah, what do we do? You know, like like there was so much enthusiasm around our story and our book and so much attention and interviews and all these things, and now it was all over and we didn't know who we were. We didn't know how to act. We really have had lost ourselves, and I've learned since that that's. That's what happens with caregivers, right, no matter what, whether you have this fantastical experience or not, you lose yourself a little bit and sometimes a lot, and so it's time for some real big decisions and some thinking and some reinvention and things like that.

Ramie Liddle: 27:30

And we just couldn't imagine crawling back in that motorhome and driving around. It just didn't make any sense to us at all. And so I was just being a total smart aleck, because Tim was in a funk and I said why don't we just escape it all and go live on a boat somewhere? And neither of us know how to drive a boat? We've never. Tim doesn't know how to swim. It's not something that is part of our being. And he was like what? And I said yeah, we could go down the Mississippi River. I was just being totally silly, trying to lighten up the mood.

Ramie Liddle: 28:11

And then I checked in with him later in the day and he's on a deep dive on the internet looking for boats and and we we actually, when we were with Norma at one point we were at this little marina and there was a rendezvous, these certain little boats and and we were like, oh, that that looks like living in an RV, only on the water.

Ramie Liddle: 28:33

And so he remembered that brand and so looked them up and the name of the boat is called a Ranger Tug and he found this article that said Ranger Tug dash the Great Loop. And we didn't know what that was. But he was very interested and we learned about America's Great Loop, which is a 6,000 miles circumnavigation of the U? S and Canada, eastern U? S and Canada by waterway and it takes about a year to to do this loop and we were like I think we could do that. And and we were. We decided let's see if we can find a boat. So we did. We sold our motorhome this is the short version Sold the motorhome, bought a boat. Two weeks later we're on the great loop, on the 6,000 mile journey, learning every single day.

Beverley Glazer: 29:22

You did nothing, nothing, so how did you learn?

Ramie Liddle: 29:27

this when we bought the boat. Part of the package from buying the boat is that we got four lessons from a captain a teaching captain and I started getting a little anxious again. My anxiety was coming in, and Tim's been the driver of our motor home for our entire lives, and so I sometimes felt like a passenger in my life and I was like I don't want to feel that way again, and is that going to be more of the same if we do this boat thing? And I'm just sitting beside him as he's driving the boat, and so I told him, I said I really would like to be the captain, and he said I love that idea.

Ramie Liddle: 30:12

And so the four lessons were all handed to me and I learned the basics of how to operate this boat, and then I taught myself navigation, and then it was really like I have a few advanced degrees and this was no joke much more difficult than any graduate school that I've been through, right. And so every night it was like a study session of OK, we made it 30 miles, and now what does tomorrow look like? And it was this series of one day trips and and we crossed Lake Michigan, went through downtown Chicago and down those rivers all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. And, and by the time we got to Florida, there were other captains following me, because they were like boy, you really seem to know what you're doing, and I was like okay.

Beverley Glazer: 31:08

So From van life it was, boat life it was it was boat life, it was, it was boat life and then the pandemic hit.

Ramie Liddle: 31:17

Yes, and what happened. So we lived on the boat, for we did the loop. It took us about a year. So we lived on the boat for three years total and and we really, by the end of three years, we're feeling quite confident and and feeling like we were ready for another boating adventure. And so our boat is trailerable, and so we decided to call a trucking company and have it shipped to the West Coast and we were going to go back to the same area where Norma died, in the San Juan Islands, and then we were going to go up the inside passage to Alaska on our boat. We were very excited about that. A friend of ours was going to go with us. They bought a boat too, and the four of us were going to have this adventure to Alaska.

Ramie Liddle: 32:07

And right when we were getting ready to put the boat on the truck is when everything shut down, including the Canadian waters, and so even if we got our boat out there, it wouldn't have, we couldn't have gone anywhere because we couldn't go into the Canadian waters. So at that point we sold our boat. Our friends, the same people that that we were at their, at their place when Norma passed, said why don't you come on out here and wait for this to pass and then see what happens. And that's when it became really clear it's not going to pass anytime soon. So we sold our boat at that point and ended up living in their barn on San Juan Island for two years waiting for it to pass.

Beverley Glazer: 32:53

And now you're not in a barn, but you are in a ranch.

Ramie Liddle: 32:57

Yeah. So now full circle back to caregiving. A dear friend of ours, who is a horse breeder in Arizona and significantly younger than us, got a really nasty cancer diagnosis about a year and a half ago and she's a single mom. She's we call her badass. She's just amazing what she does and how she works with these animals. And that knocked her down and we were coming back around to pay a visit there for a couple weeks and realized that she needed help and her, her ranch was really in in disrepair and there was just way too much that that that needed to be done. That she certainly couldn't do and she had some support for some from some other friends.

Ramie Liddle: 33:47

But we were like, you know, we don't have an agenda right now, why don't we just stay? And so we decided to stay here and become ranch hands, and so that you know, caregiving looks different sometimes. Right, it's not always a medical thing, it's how can you support your loved one in whatever aspect that they need? Like she had the medical support, she had the familial support, but she didn't have someone that was there, you know, training her horses and shoveling the stalls and just making sure that the day-to-day operations mending fences, all that stuff. And so we were like well, we can learn how to do that if we can learn how to do all these other things. And so we've been here helping with the ranch, and this week a new foal was born, which was a big first experience for me too, so that was wonderful.

Beverley Glazer: 34:41

Wow yeah, how has caregiving shaped your views on aging, Ramie?

Ramie Liddle: 34:49

You know we're all going there and I remember looking at Norma at one point, at you know we're all going there. And I remember looking at Norma at one point at you know, 90, 91 years old, and and looking at all the creases and wrinkles in her face and thinking, oh my God, she is so beautiful. And that was a huge shift for me. You know I'm in my fifties at the time and thinking, oh, you know every little you know you get, you get to that place in life where you're picking yourself apart and, oh, I'm trying to keep those wrinkles and and and the hair and all that stuff. And then I was like you know what? I think the older you get, the more beautiful. Like there's, there's this wisdom that comes into your face and that this wisdom that comes into your face and that really hit me. You know I let my hair go and I'm embracing this gray thing now. I am recognizing the joy that can come with aging and I'm also really seeing that. You know it's not over. There's so many things.

Ramie Liddle: 35:54

Our next thing we're going to leave the ranch here in September and we're going to travel around the world.

Ramie Liddle: 35:59

And so we started studying up on the places that we wanted to go and realized that transportation in a big part of the world is by motorcycle, and if you want to see the cool things, you need to ride a motorcycle. And again, no clue how to ride a motorcycle. And so, at 60 years old, I just got my motorcycle license and have been riding my motorcycle. I bought a motorcycle Tim and I both did and we're practicing that so that we're ready to go when we're traveling in these other countries to be able to live like the locals and see what they see. And so those are all lessons of. You know, when I was 30, would I have ever thought that at 60, I was going to hop on a motorcycle and, you know, travel in Thailand or something like that? No, and so just that kind of permission to continue living as long as you can and, and with great joy, and, and, and, yeah, yeah for someone, unintentionally, who made a difference to millions all around the world.

Beverley Glazer: 37:07

rami, what would you tell our listeners about stepping up and saying yes?

Ramie Liddle: 37:12

Oh, that's well, you just said it is say yes. You know there's so many ways to come up with ideas of oh, that's not, that's not really practical, or I could, I could never do that. But if it's really in you, if it's in your heart and your soul, and or you're just super curious about something, go for it. Go for it. Oh my gosh about something.

Beverley Glazer: 37:38

Go for it. Go for it. Oh my gosh. There's so much to do out there. Oh my gosh.

Beverley Glazer: 37:47

Rami Little is a speaker, a world traveler and a virtual book club guest. She is widely regarded for her storytelling authenticity and insight into caregiving and what matters at the end of life. Rami's adventures have touched the hearts of millions. In her 50s, she learned to captain a boat and took off on a 10,000-mile journey, and now, at 60, she bought a motorcycle and she's planning her next grand adventure in Southeast Asia and traveling the world. Here's some takeaways from this episode Saying yes can change your world.

Beverley Glazer: 38:22

Caregiving can be a burden, but it can also be a gift, and you're never too old to reinvent yourself and live the life of your dreams. If you've been relating to this episode, here are a few things that you could do for yourself right now. Be courageous in micro moments. Speak up, take the wheel, ask for help and say yes to one small thing today, even if it scares you. Thing today, even if it scares you.

Beverley Glazer: 38:57

If you've been relating to this episode and want to hear more about Rami Little's journey with her incredible mother-in-law, ms Norma, and Tim and we didn't mention her as therapy dog Ringo. Check out episode 21 of Aging with Purpose and Passion, and if you love podcasts of older women, you may also enjoy Older Women and Friends with award-winning host Jane Leder. Jane takes a deep dive into the joys and challenges of being older, older Women and Friends, sets the record straight, dispels the myth and explores the contribution and wisdom that women are anxious to share. That link will be in the show notes here and so, rami, where can people learn about you and Norma and, of course, ringo and all of your amazing adventures?

Ramie Liddle: 39:49

I need to say one thing about Ringo. At end of his life he was he at 12. He decided to be a formal hospice therapy dog, and so that was when we were on our boat. We would go from hospice to hospice and Ringo would would be the therapy dog there. So we miss him dearly, but you can learn more at, of course, the Facebook page at Driving Miss Norma and MissNorma. com are the best places to find us.

Beverley Glazer: 40:19

Yeah, all of Ramie's links, missnorma. com and everything about her is on that website, and it will also be on ReinventImpossiblecom. And so, my friends, what's next for you? Are you just going through the motions or are you living a life that you truly love? Get my free guide to go from stuck to unstoppable, and that's also in the show notes too. You can connect with me, beverly Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook, women Over 50 Rock, and thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please subscribe and help us spread the word by dropping a review, sending it to a friend, and remember you only have one life, so live it with purpose and passion, and passion.

Speaker 1: 41:16

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, reinventimpossible. com and, while you're there, join our newsletter subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion and celebrate life.