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Originally posted at: Erika Girardi’s Season 15 Reunion Look

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There’s something I’ve noticed over the years.

People don’t usually welcome new things. Not at first.

They question them. Push back. Sometimes reject them outright. And only later – when those same things quietly begin to help – they reconsider.

I’ve seen it happen with technology, with music, with ideas. And now, I’m watching it happen again with artificial intelligence.

I Understand the Hesitation

There are real concerns. We’ve all seen examples where AI has been used in ways that mislead, confuse, or distort reality. That part deserves attention. It should be questioned.

But I’ve also had a very different experience – one that I didn’t expect.

Over the past few months, I’ve been creating music in a new way. Not replacing anything I’ve done in the past but expanding it. Taking lyrics I wrote years ago – some going back decades – and bringing them to life in a way I simply couldn’t before.

And what surprised me most wasn’t the technology.

It was the feeling.

The Songs Didn’t Feel Artificial

The songs I created didn’t feel hollow or manufactured. In many cases, they felt more complete – more expressive – than anything I could have done on my own at this stage of my life.

That realization stopped me for a moment.

Because it raised a question I hadn’t considered before:

What actually makes something “real”? Is it the method used to create it? Or is it the emotion it carries?

There’s another part of this that I’ve had to think through carefully.

It’s easy to sit at a computer and ask an AI model to write a song. You could type something as simple as “lost love” and receive a finished piece in seconds.

But then a quiet question follows:

Is that song really yours?

Can you honestly say, “I wrote this”?

For me, the answer depends entirely on how it’s used.

The Creative Partnership

I don’t approach it that way. I use it more like a creative partner. In my mind, it’s closer to having a McCartney to my Lennon.

I bring the foundation – lyrics I may have written decades ago, ideas shaped by real experiences. I’ll enter them and ask simple questions: What might strengthen this? What feels incomplete? Sometimes I’ll just ask to see it laid out clearly.

Then I step back and read.

If something doesn’t feel like me, I change it. I adjust the words, the tone, the direction. Then I go back again. It becomes a process – back and forth – until the song feels right.

Until it feels like mine.

What comes out of that process isn’t something handed to me. It’s something I’ve worked through, shaped, and recognized.

And the listener, in the end, benefits from that extra layer of attention.

Not because the tool created it – but because it helped me see it more clearly.

I Began to Notice Something Else

I also noticed that when people listened to the music, they didn’t ask how it was made. They didn’t question the process. They responded to the feeling. They played it again. They shared it. They connected to it.

And that connection was genuine.

It reminded me that we’ve always accepted forms of expression that aren’t strictly literal.

We read novels written from perspectives the author never lived.

We watch films where actors become people they are not.

We listen to songs that tell stories shaped, refined, and sometimes imagined.

And yet, when something moves us, we don’t stop to question its construction. We accept it.

Not because it’s factual – but because it’s truthful in a different way.

That’s where my thinking began to shift.

I realized that the value of what I was creating didn’t come from the technology itself. It came from the intent behind it.

If something is made to deceive, it carries that weight.

But if something is made to express, to reflect, or to connect – it carries something entirely different.

The tool doesn’t decide that.

The person does.

Voicing Silent Thoughts

In my case, what I found was a way to give voice to things that had been sitting quietly for years. Words written in another time, now able to be heard in a new one.

There’s a certain kind of satisfaction in that. Not because it’s new, but because it’s finally complete.

And maybe that’s the part that matters most.

We often resist what we don’t yet understand. That’s human nature. But sometimes, if we stay with something long enough, we begin to see it differently.

Not as a replacement.

Not as a threat.

But as an extension.

A way to continue creating.

A way to continue expressing.

A way to continue being heard.

I don’t think artificial intelligence is inherently good or bad. I think it reflects the intention of the person using it.

And when used with honesty – when it’s grounded in real experience, real emotion, and a genuine desire to connect – it can become something unexpectedly meaningful.

Not because it replaces what came before.

But because it allows something that was already there… to finally arrive.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you use artificial intelligence as a tool in your daily life? What do you use it for? How has AI helped you with your creative projects?

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My granddaughter is drawn to anything sparkly. If it’s pink or purple – or both – all the better.

One afternoon, I set my jewelry box in the middle of the bed. She climbed up next to me, legs tucked under, already reaching.

We went through it together. I told her about the pearls I wore on my wedding day. My Delta Gamma pin. The garnet ring my husband – her Pops – gave me for my very first Mother’s Day, for our January baby.

She listened, but only for so long.

“Ooh, Cookie, what’s this?”

Her finger landed on a couple of bracelets tucked into the back corner. I hadn’t seen them – much less worn them – in decades.

My charm bracelets. Both were silver.

Memories of Middle School

I handed her the clunkier one first. This heavier, sturdier one was a middle school Christmas present. I remember my dad at the kitchen table, soldering each charm on the bracelet as I got them.

The charms jangled softly as she turned the bracelet over in her small hands. She fingered the megaphone, and I told her about my days as a cheerleader.

“Like me?” she asked, turning the swimmer around.

“Like you,” I said.

A peace sign. A mortarboard. A cross.

Then the little diary.

“Ooh! This one opens!”

Inside, still tucked in place, a picture of me as a teenager.

“And this book – is it for the one you wrote?”

“No,” I said. “That one’s just because I loved to read.”

There was a palm tree from the beach trips we took every summer. Two days in the car, two weeks in the same place. Nothing fancy, just what we could afford. My grandmother brought me back an Aztec calendar from one of her adventures.

I hadn’t thought about any of it in years.

Bracelet of Married Life

Then the other bracelet. The one my husband gave me after we got married. When I seemed too old – too adult – to wear high school jewelry.

A wedding bell. A cable car – we were living in San Francisco then, in a tiny apartment. A little house, from when we finally scraped together the money to buy one. A sea turtle from our honeymoon in Hawaii. A gingerbread man to represent the houses I began making years ago and still do every Christmas. Assorted charms from our travels – a Patriot hat from Boston, a Philadelphia Liberty Bell. A crown from our first trip abroad, to London.

And a baby shoe – her dad.

And then the charms stopped. The bracelet just ended.

At some point, I must have taken it off and put it away. Probably when our two small boys consumed my time and energy, and sporting a delicate bracelet didn’t seem practical for my new phase of life.

And then I forgot about it.                                   

I Was Someone Before I Was Her Cookie

She sat beside me, turning the bracelets in her hands, seeing something I don’t think she’d considered before – that I was someone before I was her Cookie.

Not just a grandmother.

A girl. A young woman. Someone who had her own things going on, long before she arrived in the world.

A New Bracelet for Her Own Journey

Now she wants a charm bracelet.

She’s already decided what charms she needs. A swimmer. A ballet dancer. A book. A bike.

I can’t wait to wrap one up for her next birthday.

And maybe someday, years from now, she’ll pull it out of a box and show it to someone else.

And when she does, she won’t just be telling stories about the charms.

She’ll be remembering where she started.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Did you have a charm bracelet? Do you have a charm bracelet that you wear now? Do you remember a favorite charm?

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I have a cart full of art supplies to the right of my desk. To my left, there’s a stool with more supplies precariously balanced on top of it. And, front and center on my beautiful mango wood desk: my monitor, keyboard, mouse, and laptop.

That image pretty much sums up my retirement so far.

When I have open time – no coaching sessions, no workshops, no deadlines – I go upstairs to my study and work on my coaching practice. I tell myself it’s necessary. And sometimes it is. But I also know the art projects I’ve been dreaming about, the creative writing I keep meaning to start, the books stacked on my nightstand – those things don’t have the same gravitational pull as a task list. Working on my coaching practice feels productive. Opening a sketchbook feels indulgent. And for women who spent decades earning their worth through output, that distinction is hard to shake.

Last week I finally moved the laptop off the desk to make room for an art project. I had to physically relocate the keyboard, the mouse – all of it. And when I did, it felt – I’m not exaggerating – like I was finally liberating and respecting myself.

Which told me something I needed to hear: the thing I kept calling productivity was actually avoidance.

I was wrapping up a workshop on the emotional side of retirement – 144 women on Zoom, half of them more than two years into this chapter – when I heard it named out loud for the first time.

I’d asked everyone to drop one word into the chat to describe how retirement actually feels. Some women wrote freeing, wonderful, liberating. Others wrote scary, disorienting, now what, free fall. My favorite: “Scary and lovely at the same time.”

Then one woman added, almost as an aside, that she’d been staying very busy – teaching classes, taking classes, filling the calendar – and then wrote: “I think I stay busy to avoid the problem.”

Four other women immediately responded with some version of: same.

That’s the busyness trap. And it’s more common – and more understandable – than most retirement advice acknowledges.

Busyness Feels Like Proof You’re Doing It Right

After a career built on productivity, calendars, and measurable outcomes, a full schedule can feel like evidence that retirement is going well. If you’re busy, you must be enjoying yourself. If you’re busy, you can’t possibly be struggling.

But there’s a problem with that logic, and I see it in coaching sessions regularly: a woman can stay genuinely, relentlessly busy – volunteer commitments, fitness classes, grandchildren, travel – and still feel a low-grade emptiness she can’t quite name.

Busyness and fulfillment are not the same thing. Staying occupied is not the same as living well.

The distinction matters because if you don’t know you’ve fallen into the trap, you can’t find your way out of it.

What Busyness Is Actually Avoiding

The woman in my workshop was more self-aware than most. She knew she was using busyness to sidestep something. But most of us don’t name it that directly – at least not at first.

What is busyness avoiding? In my experience, it’s usually one of a few things.

Having Free Time

Sometimes it’s the discomfort of open, unstructured time. Many professional women have spent decades operating under the implicit rule that rest requires justification – that you earn your downtime. A blank calendar, then, doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels like a warning. Like if you stop producing, you might stop mattering.

Fear of Losing Identity

Sometimes it’s the question that surfaces the moment the noise stops: Who am I now, without the role and the work and the status that came with it? That question is real and it deserves a real answer. But it’s also uncomfortable enough that staying busy can feel like a reasonable alternative – at least for a while.

Just Having the Need to Feel Productive

And sometimes – as I can personally attest – it’s simply that one thing feels justified and the other doesn’t. Working on my coaching practice feels productive. Opening a sketchbook feels indulgent. So I reach for the laptop.

The Research Backs This Up

Psychologist Martin Seligman’s PERMA framework identifies five ingredients that research consistently links to wellbeing: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.

Here’s what makes retirement uniquely hard: in a single transition, you can lose all five at once.

Your structure disappears – there goes Engagement.

Your role disappears – there goes Meaning.

Your colleagues disappear – there go Relationships.

Your achievements stop being measured – there goes Accomplishment.

And when all of that happens simultaneously, Positive Emotion tends to go underground too.

Busyness can substitute for some of these – it can create a sense of Accomplishment and fill your calendar with other people. But there’s a difference between being around people and actually feeling connected to them. You can have a full social week and still come home feeling a little off, because they weren’t quite your people. And no amount of busyness creates Engagement (the kind where time disappears because you’re absorbed in something) or Meaning (the felt sense that your life stands for something beyond the to-do list).

The Difference Between Filling Time and Designing It

There’s nothing wrong with being busy. Experimentation – trying out volunteer roles, joining groups, testing new routines – is genuinely useful, especially in the first year or two. Some experiments work. Many don’t. That’s how you find what fits.

The problem is when busyness becomes something you do to avoid the blank spaces rather than because it’s actually filling your cup.

A question I often ask clients: If you cleared your schedule for the next two weeks, what would you actually want to do? Not what you think you should do. Not what would look like a good answer. What would you want to do?

For many women, that question is harder to answer than it sounds. After decades of equating busyness with doing life right, the more essential question – what do I actually want? – can feel almost foreign.

Designing your time in retirement means making deliberate choices about what gets on your calendar – and, just as importantly, what doesn’t. It means including a few things you already know will fill you up, not just fill the hours. And it means leaving enough space to actually notice what you’re feeling, what you’re craving, what you might be avoiding.

What It Looks Like to Choose Differently

I’ve been trying to practice what I preach. Not perfectly – the laptop is still winning more days than I’d like – but I’m making small moves.

Recently, I joined a Facebook group for women over 60 who are trying to connect. One woman posted asking if anyone was from Colorado. I mentioned my town. Three other women immediately replied – they live in the same town.

So, I did something that felt, honestly, a little scary: I asked if they’d like to meet for coffee.

One of them already wrote back. “I’m in! I still work, so it’s weekends for me.”

Here’s the thing about that moment: it felt risky. Meeting strangers is a bit like a blind date – it could be a bust, or it could be the beginning of something. Most of my close friends have either moved away or are still working full-time, and I feel that gap more than I expected to. The art, the writing, the friendships – those are what actually fill my life. Yours will look different. But the only way to get there is to show up for the things you want, even when it feels uncertain.

That’s the shift. From filling time to choosing what you actually want, even when it feels uncertain. The art supplies instead of the laptop. The coffee date instead of another hour in the study. The thing that requires you to begin – without any guarantee that it goes well.

A Place to Start

If any of this resonates, I want to offer a simple reframe.

The goal isn’t to do less. The goal is to choose more intentionally.

That starts with slowing down long enough to ask a few honest questions – not in a grand, dramatic way, just as a practice. What did I do this week that actually energized me? What felt like obligation? What am I putting on my calendar out of habit, and what am I choosing on purpose?

You don’t have to have the answers yet. But the willingness to ask is where it starts.

Want Help Getting Clearer on What You Actually Want?

If you’re in the middle of figuring out what a fulfilling retirement looks like – what to keep, what to let go of, and how to build days that actually feel like yours – I created a free resource that might help.

The Retirement Vision Starter Kit walks you through five steps to start imagining the lifestyle side of retirement with more clarity and intention. It’s free, it’s practical, and it’s a good place to start if you’re realizing that staying busy isn’t quite enough.

Download the free Retirement Vision Starter Kit here.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What’s one thing you keep meaning to do in retirement that keeps getting pushed aside? I’d love to read your comments.

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Let’s talk about genetics – that mysterious deck of cards we’re all dealt at birth. Some people get a royal flush. Some get a pair of threes and a dream. And some of us get… well… a mixed bag with a few jokers thrown in for flair.

In my case, both of my parents were medical professionals. You’d think that would mean I grew up in a house where people sprinted toward preventative care like it was a Black Friday sale.

Oh, sweet summer child. No.

Dad: The “If I Ignore It, It Can’t Kill Me” Approach

My dad was brilliant, compassionate, and absolutely allergic to going to the doctor. The man once knew he was having a heart attack and still waited to go to the hospital. He survived that one – probably because God looked down and said, “Sir, absolutely not. Get in the car.”

Then came the skin cancer.

He ignored it.

We begged him.

He ignored us.

We begged louder.

He ignored louder.

By the time he finally got it checked, it had metastasized. And that was that.

It turns out even people who know the most about medicine can be Olympic‑level avoiders when the spotlight turns on their own health.

Mom: The Gold Star Student of Preventative Care

My mom, on the other hand, was the poster child for Doing Everything Right.

Regular checkups? Check.

Balanced nutrition? Check.

Exercise? Check.

Vitamins? Probably alphabetized.

And it helped – for a long time. Then she had strokes, and her memory took a hit. It was a reminder that even the most proactive among us can’t control everything.

So What About Me?

Cue the existential midlife moment where I stare at my family tree like it’s a medical bingo card and wonder:

Am I genetically doomed, or can I actually do something about this?

Some people shrug and say, “When it’s my time, it’s my time.”

I respect that philosophy, but I’m more of a “God also allowed us to invent healthcare, so maybe let’s use it” kind of girl.

Here’s where I’ve landed:

• Genetics matter
• But they are not the boss of me
• Lifestyle matters
• Screenings matter
• Paying attention matters
• And pretending nothing is wrong is not my ministry

I can’t rewrite my DNA, but I can absolutely influence how loudly it speaks.

Why I’m Choosing the Proactive Path

I want to be here – really here – for my daughter.

I want to be the mom who’s still showing up, still laughing, still telling stories, still causing mild chaos in my fabulous 70s and 80s.

So, I’m choosing to be proactive.

Not paranoid.

Not obsessive.

Just intentional.

Because I’ve seen what happens when you ignore the warning signs.

And I’ve seen what happens when you fight like hell to stay healthy.

And I’m choosing the middle lane – the one with balance, awareness, and a little sass.

It’s not just about me wanting to stick around for the long haul – I want my loved ones right here beside me, laughing, adventuring, and causing trouble well into our golden years. So yes, I absolutely encourage the people I care about to be proactive about their health too. Not in a bossy, “Did you schedule your colonoscopy?” way (okay… maybe sometimes). More in a “Hey, I love you, and I want you around for a very long time, so let’s not play chicken with our arteries” kind of way.

Because life is better when the people you adore are healthy enough to enjoy it with you. And if I can nudge them toward a checkup or two along the way, consider me a very enthusiastic nudger.

Final Thought

I’m not doomed.

I’m not powerless.

And I’m not repeating anyone’s story.

I’m writing my own – one checkup, one walk, one good meal, one laugh, and one brave choice at a time.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you go to regular medical checkups or are you scared of any kind of doctor? What’s your family health history like and what’s your approach?

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Originally posted at: The Valley Season 3 Episode 2 Fashion

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