free your mind
One of the people who generously shared her wisdom when I was writing Radiant Rebellion is Ashton Applewhite, the anti-ageism activist and author of the book This Chair Rocks. Ashton was one of the first folks I interviewed, and I must admit that I had gone into writing my own book pretty smugly — I’m not a person who has ever worried about getting older, so I thought I was immune from internalized ageism.
Ashton set me straight.
“One thing I hear people say all the time is ‘I don’t feel old,’” she said.
“I say that all the time,” I said. “I DON’T feel old. Why is that bad?”
“Well,” she answered. “I suspect what you really mean is ‘I don’t feel invisible.’ Or ‘I don’t feel unsexy.’ Or ‘I don’t feel unmotivated.’ And I don’t know about you, but I felt invisible or unsexy or unmotivated when I was THIRTEEN. Those words aren’t age-related. We use ‘young’ as a shorthand to mean ‘good’ and ‘old’ to mean ‘bad,’ and we don’t even realize we’re doing it.”
🤯
I felt like Neo taking the red pill: it was in that moment I realized how positively steeped we are in ageist culture, and how complacent I had become in questioning it. And just like The Matrix, once you’re aware of how pervasive it is, you can’t *not* notice it. That conversation with Ashton was the perfect foundation for all the work and experiences I created for myself in writing the rest of the book. Because forget “young” and “old.” What I wanted to go for — what I think we *all* want to go for — is “radiant.”
Would you like to help spread the word about Radiant Rebellion? Click here to join the Radiant Rebellion Launch Team! In this private community, we’ll brainstorm all the ways that we can disrupt the conversation around aging. We'll chat, I'll share news about the book and book tour before I go public, and I'll even do a few private readings before the rest of the world gets a chance to read the book.
The Launch Team is open to anyone and everyone, wherever you are in the world. So I hope you’ll join me.
(And of course — don’t forget to preorder a copy of the book for yourself or a friend!)
A little about the new book.