Episode 17: Amy Wilderson and David McNally

What if creativity is not a pastime but a lifeline? 

In this energizing episode, host Frank Sentwali talks with bestselling author and speaker David McNally and Minneapolis jewelry artist and COMPAS teaching artist Amy Wilderson about how making things keeps us curious, connected, and fully alive at every age. David shares how purpose shapes his mornings, why he journals daily, and how a simple message about encouraging dreams reached hundreds of thousands. Amy shows how transforming discarded objects into wearable stories helps older adults reclaim confidence and identity, leading to first exhibitions and new artist entrepreneurs.

Together they explore intergenerational exchange, the shift from being called seniors to being seen as elders, using creativity to move through grief, and the idea that there are no mistakes in the studio, only material. You will leave with sparks you can use right away: write a page a day, begin a short reflection practice, make something from a found object, and tell someone that their dream matters. This conversation is a joyful reminder that the creative spirit does not retire, it regenerates.

About COMPAS
COMPAS (compas.org) is a nonprofit with 50 years of experience delivering creative experiences to millions of Minnesotans of all ages and abilities, particularly those from historically marginalized communities. COMPAS connects professional teaching artists with students, older adults, and other community members to inspire creativity and empower voices.

About Creativity on Tap
Creativity on Tap is produced by COMPAS. In each episode, Creativity on Tap brings together educators, entrepreneurs, elected officials, parents, and other community leaders to discuss creativity and answer the question: What is creativity, and how can it solve the unique challenges facing today's world?

Creativity On Tap is part of Creativity Saves the World, an initiative led by COMPAS to explore, celebrate, and emphasize the pivotal role creativity can and must play in shaping a world that prioritizes equity, justice, and inclusivity.

Theme music (played at the end of the episode), "Krank It," was produced by COMPAS Teaching Artist Bionik.

Transcript

Creativity on Tap Podcast - David and Amy

Welcome to Creativity on Tap. Creativity on Tap is a series of conversations produced by Compass about the value and importance of creativity. For more information about Compass, visit c-o-m-p-a-s.org. I am your host, Frank Cintualli, and I hope you enjoy this episode of Creativity on Tap.

What's up everybody, what's up, what's up, what's up? Today's episode explores the role creativity plays in the lives of older adults, not just as a pastime, but as a force for connection, growth, and purpose. We'll talk about how creative practices can fuel curiosity, challenge assumptions about aging, and remind us that older adults aren't winding down, they're still building, making, and shaping culture in real time. Their creative work enriches their own lives, and it strengthens the fabric of our shared world.

Our guests today are David McNally and Amy Wilderson. David is a best-selling author and acclaimed speaker whose books and films have inspired millions around the world. A member of the Speaker's Hall of Fame, David now focuses on the power of purpose in later life, helping people turn their next chapter into their best yet.

And that's only a glimpse of the depth and impact of his life's work. Amy is a Minneapolis-based jewelry artist who creates conversation-starting jewelry art that taps into memory, culture, and heritage. She revives forgotten treasures, along with discarded items and reclaimed metals, and connects them to gemstones that are associated with myth, power, and healing to create wearable living stories.

As a teaching artist, Amy is trained in creative aging, vitality arts, artful aging methods. Please welcome David and Amy to Creativity on Tap. What's happening, party people? Hey, hey.

Hi there, David. Thank you guys for both joining us. So happy to have you here.

Let's start at the beginning. A question to both of you, and we'll start with Amy and then go to David. Why is it important to talk about creativity and aging? Oh, it's absolutely important.

So many of the participants that I teach workshops and residencies with start off saying, oh, I'm not that creative. I never was, I'm not artistic. And as they get in, they discover not only that creativity, but more about themselves.

And as we age, I would say I'm leaning somewhat toward women and being a little bit invisible in the larger society. Finding our footing, finding who we are is a continuous process. We don't stop at 20 or 30 or 40 or 50.

In the 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s onward, we can always tap into some part of ourselves that we never knew we had or never had the opportunity to learn about and keep on going. And that's also important to reflect to younger people. A lot of my classes have been intergenerational and for younger people to witness and be in community with more mature people has been enriching all the way around.

That is awesome. You made me think, I like to kind of tell some of the young people even that I'm working with that if you're not living and learning and imagining, then you are not living. And if you're not living, you are dying.

And so I don't think that there's a particular number you can put on that process of continuous learning. David, I'm gonna throw the same question at you. Why is it important to talk about creativity and aging? Well, I'm kind of very much aligned with what Amy is saying.

And the simple answer is that if we're not creating, we're not experiencing the happiness and the joy that we can get out of life. And that's what creating does for you. And so I wrote a book called Mark of an Eagle, How Your Life Changes the World.

And in that book, I said the creative spirit expires only when you expire. So creating in the latter stages of our lives, opens us up to possibilities. And that's one of the great joys of getting older is that we can let go of so much of the work world that we lived in often, where we didn't have the chance to think, the chance to reflect.

And we can take this time in our lives as an opportunity to discover hidden gifts and talents that we thought we might've had, but we just didn't have the time to explore. So, I look at getting older as this great time of regeneration, the excitement of exploring things that we never had that chance to do before. So creating is the very process of life itself.

Woo, this is gonna be a heavy podcast already, I can tell. To follow up with that, David, as someone who writes and speaks about creativity later in life, what does that look like for you personally? How does that manifest maybe tangibly for you personally? Well, it does it in two ways. So let's be specific.

In about three weeks, I'm gonna turn 79 years of age. Congratulations. So I begin, in a way, my 80th year on the planet and so what that means is that I still need a purpose for my life.

I need to wake up in the morning and feel like I have a reason to live. And most importantly, the way I, Frank, identify that right now is how can I contribute? And what I call people who are senior citizens, I like to call us elders. And the reason for that is I think senior citizens is such an unimaginative label, whereas when we look at the concept and notion of elder, which is respected all around the world, it means bringing our wisdom to those who follow us.

And I think that's one of our greatest responsibilities. So while I have the capacity, I use my creativity to write. I have a YouTube channel called The Inspired Elder.

We produce videos and they do very, very well. People want to be inspired. They want to engage that spirit within them and that's what art and creativity does.

Beautiful, beautiful. I love it. Amy, as someone who works closely with older adults through your teaching, how has that shaped your own understanding of creativity and aging? Oh, I absolutely have.

I'm 63 and I have five young people now when they're children. I learned patience very early on because I homeschooled them and I ran, I had a bookstore. So I homeschooled them in my shop.

And so it was always a juggle between, you know, customers coming in and getting the store ready and teaching them. And I translated that and transposed that into teaching with elders in a way that, again, allowed for the patience that we need as we're stepping into something new. And one of the things about being of these ages is that the mind and hand coordination, the challenges get really exercised, especially with jewelry making or any kind of creativity.

You're working with parts of yourself that you might not have done before. And sometimes that can be frustrating. And honestly, I tell my classes all the time, it's like, I build challenges, frustrations into there so we can figure things out.

Nothing is ever easily laid out. And I want them to be able to go through the process, learn, but also explore and expand in a safe place where they feel comfortable and confident so that when they continue to make jewelry elsewhere, they can do that. It's just been, it's been a wonderful experience for me, especially as I'm aging, as I'm maturing to know, it doesn't end.

And at one point I couldn't see past, basically it's past 33. And so I have this whole entire life. I didn't decide, admit to being an artist until I was in my fifties.

And it was after a series of shifts in life and everything. And finally I said, okay, there's no more hiding it. And just stepping into that role, that acknowledgement shifted my entire life.

And I love to share that with people. I love to share that so they can find their own way. That's awesome.

You talked about helping, maybe helping elders reclaim some of the parts of themselves that maybe they've set aside. You talked about gaining confidence. You know, and that's mental, right? And emotional.

And you talked about just the development of fine motor skills, which is very much physical. And I'd say to both of you, are there some other ways that your respective practices have helped elders reclaim parts of themselves that maybe they had set aside? And do you ever get those moments of discovery from them where they're like, oh my goodness, thank you because you just made me realize. So it's kind of two parts, but yeah.

Are there other ways, examples you can give of ways you've helped those that you've worked with reclaim kind of that identity and that vigor and then has anyone really expressed that to you directly? Oh my gosh, absolutely. I just completed a year long residency. It was funded through the Minnesota Humanities Center through Compass.

And I taught at the Minnesota African-American Heritage Museum and Gallery. And the name of this residency was Treasures Reviving Forgotten Memories. And what I had everybody do was bring in an item, an old earring, a belt buckle, a piece of a key, anything that was important to them that was part of their past, part of their history.

Some people brought in things from their relatives that had passed on. Some brought in pieces that were important to them as younger people. And so I taught the basic wire work techniques and we took these elements and reworked them into new jewelry.

And as we're doing this over this year long process because we started at the very beginning where people never even knew what the tools for making wire work jewelry were to creating the pieces, speaking the stories. We talked to each other and said, oh my goodness, I remember X, Y, and Z. And I want to add this other bead or something that my aunt or my uncle or somebody had. And then we had an opportunity to, two wonderful opportunities.

One was to exhibit for the month of January at the Minnesota African-American Heritage Museum and Gallery. So these are people who had never touched tools and didn't know that they were jewelry artists to go to being full exhibitors, being invited to that, being paid, which was really wonderful for them. I call them my dear artists now.

And then after that, we were invited to exhibit at UROC, the University of Minnesota Center. And so from those experiences, four particular artists decided to pivot. One was saying, oh, later on in life, I want to make more jewelry.

One said, well, why don't we do it now? So at the event that we were at on Friday, Frank, those ladies that were with me were all from my class and have decided to delve into being artist entrepreneurs. Two of them are on arts commissions in the state of Minnesota, and serving in leadership positions, all because they found this new love and dedication and just a connection and alignment, not just with jewelry, but with art in itself. And they came with like, oh, well, my book club is gonna join, so we're gonna all do this together kind of thing.

I think it was never gonna be what it's turned out to be. And I'm just so proud of them. And others are telling other people, so they're coming back for more.

But the real reason I, and I'm talking about, the real reason I started that particular workshop was as a young person, one of my relatives and I did not connect whatsoever. And I missed an opportunity. She was trying to tell me some very important information about the family history.

And when I realized, I thought, oh gosh, if we just had something between our two personalities that we could have just focused on and not her, not me. And so again, creating these pieces, these legacy pieces, work as conversation starters within the family, with other people. Some of the people in my classes tend to be a little bit, I wouldn't say shy, but reluctant to engage.

But invariably someone walks in, oh my goodness, that's a beautiful pair of earrings or beautiful necklace. And I always say, and we respond with, thanks, I made it. And that becomes the conversation from there.

So yeah, it started with my own lack of patience and understanding and has blossomed for everybody else. Yeah, and now you're spreading that joy and opening up portals for others. Indeed.

David, I'm gonna kind of repeat the question for you. How have your practices maybe helped those that you worked with reclaim parts of themselves that they may have set aside and maybe even didn't even realize it. And then has anyone specifically shared that with you, that your work helped them rediscover something inside themselves? Yeah, I mean, that's what my work is actually about.

It's self-discovery, it's self-awareness and starting to truly understand who you are and what you wanna create in this beautiful session that we're having. And aiming to use the word before confidence and confidence is built through a series of accomplishments no matter how small they might be. It's that willingness to take that first step towards accomplishing something.

And just like Amy, my own experience in life helps me today. For example, when I go back to look at writing my first book which was written over 30 years ago, I had no idea that I could actually write a book but what motivated the book was that I had a consulting practice in the business world and back then, and even today, but back then a book gave you a tremendous amount of credibility. So there was a great motivation for that reason, a good sort of bottom line reason.

But I was also inspired. I like to make a difference between motivation and inspiration, right? And I was inspired to see, could I write a book? Could David McNally write a book? And so I said, okay, let's see, what would you love to communicate? What's important to you? What are your values? What do you think is important in life? So I wrote that first book. Now it took me four years.

Sounds like Amy and I have some parallels here. I have five children and they were very young at the time. And so I was getting up at four o'clock in the morning just to find some quiet time to write.

But one word at a time allowed me in the end to finish that book, trying to have it rejected by many people which I think is really important as well to know but eventually to be published and that was a success. Well, that is confidence building. And since then I've written a total of five books.

So why am I saying this? Well, what's important is this, is that people say I've always wanted to write a book. That's what they say to me. And so I say, well, why don't you? And they say, well, I don't know how to get started.

I don't know whether I can and all that. And so I just say to them, here's what you do, right? The way to get started is this, is to do it one day at a time as a good philosophy of life, right? One day at a time. And here's my suggestion.

You write just a minimum of 300 words but write 300 words and get started on whatever it is that you feel it's important to communicate in any genre of book. And then, but do that like all writers do, they discipline themselves every day to write a certain amount. Well, if you can only get another 300 words out, do it the next day.

Now, why am I saying 300 words? Because in normal books, it's about 300 words is on a page. So you've written a page. So if you did that for 30 days, you would have written 30 pages towards a book.

The most important thing about it also is that you don't edit it. You don't criticize it. You let this stream of consciousness come through you and you keep writing and you keep writing.

My goodness, if you kept that going for a year, I'm serious about this, you would have 365 pages, which today is far too long for any book, but at least you have something to whistle down in that. So if you do that every day, then you will be surprised. All of a sudden, my goodness, you have a book.

And so what you said that you couldn't do, you have done. I think that's fascinating because, you know, we're having this conversation and we're really talking about, you know, how we age and maintaining creativity and maintaining purpose. And, you know, words like confidence and words like discipline and commitment, words like inspiration.

You know, you guys are a little bit older than me. I'm 52 in September. And I even find myself struggling with some of these notions as I get older and thinking about how, you know, when I was 26 and, you know, writing three, four poems a day and then getting with my collective of friends and we're, you know, we're bouncing poems off of each other and then going to open mics.

And, you know, I could memorize things in two days, you know, forget about that. But, you know, and then as I've gotten older, I'm right where you talked about, David. I'm like, man, I have produced five albums.

I've never written a book. All five of my albums are partnered. I've never done my own solo project.

And I find myself wondering, am I too old to do these things? And just listening to you all talk right now is just like, no, I just need to get on it, right? And just be inspired and don't look for motivation, look for inspiration and let the inspiration be the motivation. So already these words are helping me and I hope they're helping our listeners as we continue with the podcast because these are precious gems that I think you guys are delivering in conversation. So I really appreciate you all.

I want to keep it moving forward. I had to throw that personal nugget in there because now I'm like, I got to get going on my book. And we appreciate it.

That's the thing. This intergenerational discussion really touches points for everyone. When you said motivation and David mentioned criticism and rejection.

Yeah. I talk a lot about that with my classes. I was just in an exhibition.

I was invited to it and I applied for another one and was rejected. And I came and said, oh, I say not a rejection, not now. They'll come back around or something else will open up.

And that criticism, our self-criticism can really control us, can really shut us down. And when David said about just right, without editing, without, I do the same with my class. Oh, I made a mistake.

There's no such thing as a mistake. It's something else we can work with or leave it to the side and move on to something else. Come back to it and create something else out of it.

But a mistake doesn't happen because you're learning from it. There's never a mistake. Something that you decide that you wanna use elsewhere or not, but keep on moving, keep on moving.

And again, I just think that's awesome because I think that's something that you guys are, that's timeless. There is no age limit on that because even in my writing residencies, I tell my students never erase. If you don't like something, put a strike through because you can probably find somewhere later that you'll use it.

And so here that we still need these reminders as we age and that you all are helping remind those that you work with that these very fundamental things that maybe somebody said to you when you were nine still apply when you're 79, right? David, what are some of the biggest misconceptions you've encountered about aging and creativity? Well, I think that the ageism is a fact. There's no question about that. I do feel, however, for example, in the business world that a lot of companies are starting to understand that they're losing a lot of intellectual capital by not having older people who are really committed to their work.

They have those sort of values participating in the businesses. So the misconceptions are that we have gone beyond our value as contributors where the truth is we're only just getting started because we have a wisdom and I say that not in any arrogant way, but we do. We have a wisdom.

What we know, we've got to that point, Frank, where we know what matters and what doesn't matter. And so we're focused now on what matters in our lives. So for those of us who are willing to listen, there's an extraordinary amount of things that we can contribute.

I'll give you something phenomenal that has happened to me in the last 30 days. I recorded one of my YouTube videos. It was called Encourage Their Dreams.

And I took that from a wonderful book, one of my favorite books of all time called The Sage's Tao Te Ching, written by William Martin. I've read this book over and over again for 20 years. It's a daily reading.

And this one reading is Encourage Their Dreams. And it talks about the role and responsibility we have as elders to encourage the dreams of the young. And I think that's a really powerful role and we can do that.

Here's the deal. That video, I have my grandson who is my social media guru. He's posted it on Instagram and then boosted it on Instagram.

Do you know how many views that video has had? 400,000. Wow. Wow.

Wow. Congratulations. The whole thing went viral.

I can't explain it. I really got blown away by it myself. But there was something in that, whatever it was, that message that resonated with people, both young and old, that it went viral.

So that's the sort of thing, Frank, that I believe that people like Amy and myself, and Amy, of course, being a youngster compared to me. Hi, Amy. Hi.

But that's what we can bring. You guys are reminding me of so many things that have just come up in my sphere in the last week or so. I can't remember who it was that just said this to me.

It might've even been our previous podcast guest, but I just heard recently that somewhere in Africa, and I can't remember all the details, but I remember the proverb that they said that there's a proverb that when an elder dies, the library is burned down. And making the relationship that when an elder passes away, that library of wealth and knowledge that they have is now gone. And so to that extent, perhaps we need to visit the libraries as much as we can while they are still standing.

And then just yesterday, I even posted on my own Facebook page, I saw KRS-One from Boogie Down Productions. Now we're getting into hip hop. My lane.

And I'm gonna paraphrase, but he was saying that when the youth listen to the elders, they grow faster. It expedites their maturity and growth for their future. And when the elders listen to the youth, it expedites the elder's growth in the current of what's happening right now.

And so he was talking about the importance of intergenerational conversation, intergenerational sharing. And it just sounds to me, it's beautiful because what you all are doing is you are helping elders see their value and their worth, which then they can go out into the world and whether it be through art, whether it be through conversation, however they're using creativity, then when people feel like they have something to offer, then they're more excited about sharing. And it just seems to me like you guys are really empowering the elder community and reminding them that you guys have so much wealth and information to share that you should be confident, you should feel empowered and you should wanna go out in the world and share because it's how we help to raise up us young pups like myself.

Amy, you've led some powerful intergenerational residencies. What happens when older adults tap into creative practices tied to cultural change? What types of transformations do you witness when you're helping the older generations really tap into that heritage and identity? Those experiences are, and I have done this from time to time is record just our conversations. We've talked about, what is that? What's the term? When you, oh gosh, I'm losing it.

When you're not feeling that confident, imposter syndrome. Oh, okay. I had a friend play this.

I had a friend had a IG post on imposter syndrome and it really struck me because I was hearing that with a lot of the women in this particular residency. And there were younger ones who were, I could notice were listening and picking up cues. And again, the fear of being an elder and being forgotten, not having the so-called vitality of youth was kind of seeping in on both sides.

And we get to, there's a lot of laughter and we always start our sessions with hugs. And someone will come in and say, I'm having a really rotten day. I need a hug.

And everybody would get up and just give hugs. And this has happened kind of organically because I'm like big hugs and warm smiles. But so they got in the habit of expressing themselves.

And it's about 15 to 17 women in this particular residency. It happens in all of them. Community is formed that way.

And eventually we start sharing about where we were as young women to the young women and how that has changed over life. And some people are just stepping into the acceptance of being mature, of being elders. It took me a lot of life changes to say, I have my silvers, my wisdom hair, I haven't dyed it.

And I made that decision because I was like, I earned this. I'm here in this world at 63 years old when that might not have been the case for a lot of. And so I take that and say, this is who I am now.

And younger women and younger, I'm just saying younger participants, they're taking notice. Even when we don't think they are, they're taking notice. And what you said about the transference of information both ways is so important.

Some will say, oh, you know, I have this and this, this, and someone else will say, oh, but this happened in my life and this is how I handled it. And we had no, the history gets lost. The information gets lost because we're not felt to be important.

And so it works both ways where people are sharing. And this is all happening while we're creating jewelry. This is, all these conversations are happening while our hands are busy at work creating something.

And then someone, and this happened in one of my classes, unfortunately I did record it. She's like, oh my goodness. She was having such a difficult time with a particular technique.

And it was a younger woman. And she goes, oh my goodness, look what I did. Look what I did.

I am the ish. She's all these things. And everybody came around and supported her in that and said, because it was, she was getting kind of frustrated and everything.

And she felt confidence, confident enough to explain I'm not feeling this. I'm not getting this. Like, I think I should.

And there's no such thing as that. We all have our own pace. And then when she did, I want to share my achievement with everyone.

And it's just been wonderful. So again, both having that happen both ways has been intergenerational work is just, is wonderful. Even when I have classes with called artful aging or more mature, at some point we bring in younger people, children, teens, young adults to share in those experiences.

And again, that thanks, I made it part comes through. Like you did this, how did you make that? So it just goes across the board that way. I hope I answered that.

I, you know, go off on a tangent. No, absolutely. And it also made me think that, you know, one of the things I've noticed as I've started to mature is that there really is, I think that, you know, the knowledge gap between a 20 year old and a 30 year old to me is not as vast as the knowledge gap between a 50 year old and a 60 year old.

And so when you're talking that intergenerational work, I think as you're working with, you know, to 80, there, you know, that's still intergenerational. You have, you know, obviously I've been around for 50 years. I like to think I've learned a thing or two, but then if I'm around, you know, someone that's 60 or 70 or 80, just that wealth of information is just amazing to me how much I don't know still, right? And how much yet I still have to learn.

And so I think even when we speak of older and younger, I think sometimes we forget that, you know, for me, 50, you know, I'm young to David, I'm a whippersnapper. David, you've said that after losing your wife, you're no longer ambitious, but you are passionate. How has grief shaped your sense of purpose and creativity in this chapter of life? And what might that say to others navigating loss as they age? Because obviously as we age, loss is a very frontal reality.

Yeah, grief is a showstopper. There's no doubt about that. In fact, I have lost two wives.

One, the first one when I was 56 to ovarian cancer, and then two years ago in my second wife to Alzheimer's. So yeah, grief, I mean, it still affects me today. I mean, I, you know, I wake up in the morning and I know despite what I write, that doesn't mean I jump up and out of bed saying, oh, what a marvelous day.

You know, that's just not the way it is. Life is always about managing your feelings and transcending your feelings often. And that's the beautiful thing about creation and being creative is that it helps you move beyond feelings.

And when I say move beyond the sadness, I'm talking about moving the sadness because when you're in creation, that's the best way to access joy. So out of the sadness comes the joy, which is a miracle to me. To be able to sort of sit down, start writing, and all of a sudden I go from having feelings so bad to be feeling, oh my God, you know, life is worthwhile.

I know it sounds strange, but that's the way creation does it for you, right? So, and one of the best pieces of advice I've had over the last two years is this. A woman wrote a beautiful article about losing her husband and she said, I am always asked when I'm gonna move on. And she said, I answer it this way, I will never move on from the love I had for that man, but I can move forward.

And she said, that's my commitment. I will endeavor to move forward. And that is what I do every day is I say, okay, how can I move forward in some way, whatever that might be? And so I'll give you an example of that because I wanna go back to the intergenerational thing.

Now, because I think that's so important because we talked about what we as elders can contribute to the younger people, but the younger people keep us alive. They keep our imaginations and they also give us hope. My best example is sitting down six years ago, just before my 72nd birthday.

And I was doing an exercise that we get others to do in our work and it's called one day I'm gonna. We all have a one day I'm gonna list, right? I grew up in Australia. People say to me, oh, I always wanted to go to Australia.

One day I'm gonna go to Australia. So I did that to myself. I said, what is the top of your one day I'm gonna list? And the answer that came back was go to college.

I had never been to college, written five books, produced documentaries, but I never stepped foot in a college classroom. So I enrolled at the University of Minnesota as a 72 year old that fall and became a freshman. And I started going to classes and I was just one class a semester getting credit for it.

So I had to study hard, but here's what happened. Those young people, that interaction with them was incredible, was absolutely incredible. I was blown away by their wisdom that how, I said, how do you know so much as an 18 year old, seriously, and then the interactions with them.

And so the other thing that helped me was that it gave me hope for the world. It gave me hope. And although our bodies, as we get older, we cannot deny what our bodies are doing.

Even you, Frank, at 51, can't do what you did at 21, right? Absolutely, you are so 100% spot on. So I can't do things that I used to do back then, but what we can do, and this is what Amy is doing with her work, is we can keep our minds vibrant and alive and our brains active. And it's not about staying young, it's about just staying engaged as much as we can with the life itself.

I'll finish with one thing. One of my greatest theologians is a guy called John O'Donohue. He was 19 years a Catholic priest, and he's just a marvelous man and writer, a huge international following.

But he said, you know, he says, as I've got older, he said, obviously as a priest, I knew the will of God. Oh, I thought I did. He said, but as I get older, here's what fascinates me.

He said, what fascinates me is the imagination of God. As I connect into that whole infinite creation that exists out there that you and I get to tap into. Yeah, it's interesting that a priest would say that and say as they got older, my father was a heavily spiritual person, may he rest in peace.

And I guess I was blessed because that's what I was raised with was to imagine the unimaginable and then accept that it's unimaginable and the awesomeness of that, right? And that is a great statement. You dropped so many jewels in there talking about creativity, reminding us that there's joy, finding joy in creativity, even during grief. My youngest daughter lost her mother two years ago.

And I don't know, Amy, if you've met Laila or not, but you love her. She's a painter. She paints, she loves jewelry making.

She has to do with art. And when her mother passed away, I mean, David, at least two or three paintings a day. Thank God our printer broke down because we needed something to do with all that printer paper.

And boy, did she find it. And still to this day, she goes to therapy and every therapy session, they take time for her to paint. That has been the hand that she has held through this whole process for two years now is creating.

And so I think that grief strikes us at no matter what age, right? Grief strikes us all at any age. Death doesn't give us an advanced timestamp. And I think what you said is so important, using creativity to stay joyful, to remind ourselves that joy exists even in darkness and to stay joyful.

So thank you for that reminder because you brought my daughter and that one hit me right in the heart, man. So thank you. Mm-hmm.

As we wind down, we have about 15 minutes left here. Amy, I wanna ask you, your work involves turning discarded and overlooked objects into something beautiful. Is there a metaphor there for how society tends to view older adults maybe? Oh, for sure.

And it's one of the ways that I determined that I was going to be an artist as opposed to a jewelry designer or jewelry maker. I had applied for a grant, kind of a business grant with a supply company. And at the time, because I'm raising five children and had a life situation, I didn't have a lot of money for my own materials.

So I would find anything. My then husband and my children were notorious for frying all of their electronics. So I would take them apart and strip the wires and use those.

I would cut their motherboards, the computer elements from the pieces and suspend them in rosin and then cut copper pipes. We had old piping around and just use those for bails, bezels, excuse me, and whatever I could do. So I applied to this particular project knowing that when I won it, I would convert my work into silver because it was a silver supply company.

And I realized very quickly from the rejection letter that I was not of their demographic in any way, shape or form. I was too old. I'm a black woman.

I didn't reflect what they wanted their brand to be. But the rejection letter I got was exquisitely vicious. Told me my work wasn't hobby-worthy, that I should just stop.

That maybe this wasn't really something that was marketable in anything else. And I'm screeching at this rejection letter thinking, who do you think you are? I will continue to X, Y, and Z. You have no idea. And to this day, I use pieces, on my website and on the Compass page, a lot of my collar necklaces use discarded bra under wires for the frame.

I still use computer elements. I do teach a class called, You Made It Out of What? Because I challenge people to find things around their homes and not, and if we come together in a workshop, not use that yourself, but to give it to someone else and take someone else's trash. Because in those discarded items, there is so much gold, so much treasure.

And another thing that I'm continuously working on is my own collection called, At Peace and On Fire. So about three, four years ago, I had a major surgery that went horribly wrong, horribly wrong. I was not given enough anesthesia.

And so when they cut into me, it was just a really bad, really bad situation. So I've been going through four years of reparative surgeries. I have a few more, but within that, because I had to stop manipulating, using hammers and everything.

And it's like, what am I gonna do? So fortunately I have Compass. I was teaching and everything, but I was also creating smaller pieces. And I would ask the surgery, the surgical doc to give me the sets of tools, surgical tools.

So I have scalpels and everything. For every surgery, give me what you used on. I wanted the originals with all the gore on it.

They wouldn't give me that, but he gave me another set so that I can take this pain, take this part of me that was not valued, meaning myself. And turn it into something else. Again, we're talking about grief and loss with both of you.

And so in my own work, it's called At Peace and On Fire. And that at peace was, I was seeking peace because I did not have it, but everything was on fire and chaotic to becoming at peace and on fire. I am at peace and I have this fire moving me forward.

And within that, I also divorced, which was a good thing for me and a freeing thing. So there's loss, but there's also onward. And again, this is what we talk about in my classes as we're creating.

Grief and loss and being considered, letting someone else consider you not useful, is their, that's their stuff. We don't subscribe to that. Even within all those things that are sitting in your junk drawer, sitting in your jewelry chest that you haven't thought of, taking off raw underwires because we can't get through airport security.

Those things are still, and that's what I had a whole pile. People still give me like, oh, I have these, they're so painful, they stab me and everything. So I collect underwires and use them in my jewelry, in my art, because they're not going into a landfill and they're part of our landscape as people.

And so again, those are elements that I just refuse to be, I don't have to be in the limelight. I don't have to be up front, but I am here. And I want that to be for everyone who comes to my class.

We're doing things personally and to share with everyone else. And not to be overlooked. Not to be overlooked.

I dare you. David, we've been talking about how your work highlights, how, you know, getting later in life can be a time of creative reinvention, right? And my question to you is, you know, we've been, well, we've already kind of touched on it, but I would like you to touch more on how creativity itself can be an act of empathy towards oneself, but also toward the world. The, yeah, it's a very powerful question.

And I'd kind of like to leverage on what Amy was saying, because there's a big word there, which she was using for what she uses, Amy, for your art. And that is discarded. What is discarded and which can be transformed into things of beauty.

And I'll get a little emotional here because I think of the human beings that are discarded, you know, and who are just looking for someone to value them, right? As it's been said, every human being needs someone who believes in them. And I'll give you an example of just something I've got involved with in the last few months. There's a, I'm training to be a facilitator for a group called Right to Hope.

And what they do is that they go into jail, not prisons, but they go into jail where the detainees are in virtually a place of limbo. They often, you know, don't know what's gonna happen to them or they may know what's gonna happen to them, but nothing's been determined as to where they're going. So they're just walking around in limbo with often very little support.

And in a way they are the discarded people of our society. And what happens is that we go into for an hour and we may have six or eight people and we get them, we give them a prompt and they write something, whether it's about their life or something else. And initially it can be difficult because they may never have written much before in their lives.

But that opportunity to be able to sort of write, even if it's a paragraph and some people go crazy and they'll write a few paragraphs. But then what happens as a result of that, when they then read what they've written and then we have a conversation about it, it comes back to that classic thing that so many of us have heard about. And that is, I feel heard for the first time.

Yes. I feel like someone respects me, that someone cares for me. And ultimately it's, you've given me hope.

I have some hope. So that's a very powerful way, if I may answer that question of yours. Again, coming from the work that we do, who are those people? And I love that word, again, what Amy is doing because I think it's a metaphor for so much.

Because if we say something is ugly, for example, that's a perception. Who says it's ugly? I might say sorry, but that doesn't necessarily make it ugly. And so I choose not even to use that word anymore because I realize it's somebody's opinion of something else.

And there is beauty in everything. There is beauty in everything, believe it or not. There's beauty in everything.

And it's how do we get into and find that beauty and pull it out, pull it out and draw it out. And so it can be visible to everyone. And I think that's important because with the question talking about how can creativity itself be an act of empathy towards oneself and the world.

When you look for the beauty in things, then you can empathize, right? Because beauty is universal, something we can all emotionally and psychologically connect to. So when you're looking for the beauty, now you're looking to connect with an empathetic lens. I think that's a great way of putting that.

So we got about four minutes left and I have a couple of questions that I wanna get to. And then I also wanna leave you all both time to mention your website. And David also, if you will mention the book that you talked about earlier for our listeners in case they didn't catch it.

So we'll wind down with those things. But this is a question for both of you. And David, you can start with this one.

What's one creative idea, project or practice that you think more older adults should try? Not because it's trendy, but because you know it opens something up. For me, I've had a practice of for over 40 years where I make sure that the first thing I do in the morning is spend time in reflection. I spend time in reflection.

And I have journals that go back 40 years. And those journals are not diaries in where I'm recording what I did, but they are journals about how I feel my life is, what I've been experiencing and how I'm transitioning into the next stage of my life. And I also read something that's inspiring.

I mentioned a book earlier on called The Sage's Tao Te Ching. I read that every day because it talks about getting older and getting wiser. But I have other readings that lift my spirit and take me to a whole new realm.

So I'm now looking at the possibilities of the day. So I'm breaking through rather than just getting through. You sound like my dad.

He'd get up at four in the morning and I'd be like, why on God's green earth is anyone up at four in the morning? And then he would run himself a hot bath and he would meditate and he would read. And it was just in the last couple of years that I figured it out because I also am a father of six. And I figured it out.

It was the only time of day that he could do the things that you talk about, where he could just kind of meditate and put positive energy into the universe to start his day and read because by six o'clock when everybody else is up in a household full of five, six, seven people, it's a wrap, right? And any peace of mind you wanted to get for yourself is gone. So you reminded me of my father with that answer. I'm gonna pose the same question to you, Amy.

What's one creative idea, project or practice you think more older adults should try? Not necessarily because it's trendy, but because it opens something up in your opinion. Well, I would agree with both of you. Having that, finding that moment again, five kids homeschooling them 24 seven.

And there was, I always worked behind everything else that everyone else needed for years, for decades. And finding those little moments were quite important, but they also felt rushed. I think to go in another direction, we've talked about this kind of roundabout, but community, connection through community, through like several of the women, this last one we're in a virtual book club.

And then they all decided, oh, well, we've not, this sounds interesting. You know, one says, let's come here. And from there, I would take them all the entire group to other artists exhibitions, places they never would have thought of going on their own.

I do, I moderate a lot of artists talks myself. So I say, oh, come on, do this. Something that is outside of that comfort zone, but not super challenging.

We're gonna feel uncomfortable, but maybe in community. And I think that there's a level of discovery, self-discovery that can happen, just walking around a gallery, not saying, oh, ah, yes, I understand. No, I don't like that.

Or this is interesting. Come from what you're feeling, but in a place where you're not by yourself has been quite important. You bring up something, a thought of mine.

I would love to see older adults collectively do a mural. I think that a lot of times when you're looking at muraling, you're looking at young people's artwork, but I would love to see a group of maybe 60 plus put together a mural, because I can only imagine the stories that would visually come out of that, all of those years of experience. Because David mentioned earlier, as you get older, you get a grasp of what's important and what's not.

And I can only imagine that a group of older adults would put together a mural that symbolically would be of things that are just important. Because I think that's what would come out. So anyway, whole nother project.

I'm not a muralist, I'm a poet. So it wouldn't be a project. I would facilitate, but the combination of your answers, I think that brought that to my mind.

That would be a cool project. Do you have any final thoughts? And we'll start with Amy and then go to David as we close up. Do you have any final thoughts on creativity and aging that you think people should hear? Just kind of a final nugget that's like, to summarize it, this is what people need to hear as it relates to aging and creativity.

In our own time and our own space. In my classes, there's no competition, no comparison. In fact, the jewelry that people have made, they've all started with the same tools and techniques, literally the same tools and techniques.

And it's been astounding and just warms my heart how everybody has found their own flow, their own style. And we have the same a bangle and everybody's made it differently because they've found that, I don't wanna do what this person is doing. I wanna figure out what I'm doing.

No mistakes, just flow with it, yeah. Yes, and David, same to you. Final thoughts on creativity and aging.

Well, I think what's really important to me is to understand that our next years can be some of our best years, that they're not behind us, that they can actually be some of our best years. And to understand that, I believe that the purpose of life is to continue to learn and grow and contribute. I always love the quote by Pablo Casals, who was 85, the great cellist.

And the reporter said to him, Mr. Casals, why do you still practice five hours a day? You're the world's greatest. He said, because I think I'm getting better. And I think that's the answer to it for all of us, no matter how old we are, that we can, and it's not about that we're not good enough, it's just that we're growing and learning.

Yes, yes, always improving. Always. Really quickly, I would love it if both of you, and we'll start with David and then go to Amy, would mention your website for our listeners, because I am sure after this conversation, lots of people are gonna wanna discover more about these amazing humans.

So David, can you please give the listening audience your website and then Amy will have you give them yours as well? Yeah, my website is davidmcnally.com. My latest book is, If You're Alive, Your Mission on Earth Isn't Finished. I like that title. Reminders, note to self.

Exactly. And Amy, your website? And mine is amyajewelry.com, amyajewelry.com. And same with Instagram, right there as well. All right, well, David McNally, Amy Wilderson, thank you guys so much for joining us on Creativity on Tap.

This has been another amazing conversation, so much wisdom, just you guys are my elders. So I have learned so much in this conversation as well as have given the ability to take pause and reflect on some things that have connected directly to my life. So thank you all so much for taking your time out and joining us here on Compass's Creativity on Tap.

Just wonderful conversation, truly appreciate it.