'This is not the rest of *your* life'
An 84-year-old on the advice she stopped taking that made her life richer.
Gloria Feldt, 84, used to hate exercise, and now she doesn’t. (Thanks, Jane Fonda.) She loves New York City and spending time with her great-grandchildren. She stays curious. Her passion for women’s rights has never wavered.
After over 25 years with Planned Parenthood, including more than eight as the national president and CEO, in 2014 Feldt co-founded Take The Lead, an organization working to eliminate the gender gap in executive leadership across the United States.
I spoke with Feldt for a series we are launching here, connecting with people over 75 about what they’ve learned and all the good stuff that comes after the midlife crunch.
“Advice is worth what you pay for it,” Feldt warned me — but she was game to chat about how she’s changed, how she hasn’t and the advice she stopped taking that made her life richer.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How old are you and what is the best thing about being the age that you are?
I am 84, and the best thing is being able to concentrate on the things that really matter and not worry about the things that don’t matter, things that would have bothered me in the past but not just kind of can roll off my back because, like, who cares?
This is the rest of my life. This is not the rest of your life. It’s the rest of my life and I want it to be good.
The things that matter most to me right now are, in no particular order, raising a whole ton of money so that I can put Take The Lead on a sustainable path and enable myself to really pass the baton.
The other thing that’s very important to me is that I have two amazing, little, small great-granddaughters. I just feel like I’m more thoughtful about it at this stage of my life, really wanting to make memories while I can and be present.
The other thing — and this is the selfish part here, which is perfectly fine to have because I think we should be selfish at some times in our lives — is that I really love being in New York. I love the energy of New York. I love the diversity. I love being able not to drive and get to go wherever I want. I love that I’m looking out at Central Park right this minute and I can walk there every day if I want to. I love the theater very much. And I love the fact that people here are intensely interested in everything that’s going on in the world.
What led you to found Take The Lead at the time in your life when you did?
I had wanted to be a writer since I was 5 years old. I would carry my little notebook around and write stories. But then life got in the way.
After I left Planned Parenthood, I wrote a book called “No Excuses: Nine Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power,” about a big meta study on how despite women being half of the workforce, women were stuck at 18 percent of the top leadership positions across every single sector.
I looked at the research and the research said — which is bullshit, in my opinion — that women have less ambition than men. I just knew this wasn’t the case.
I did quite a bit of research and came to the conclusion that actually, it has to do with our culture, that women learn ambivalence about power. So I wrote this book.
Other people recognized that it was actually a leadership book, and not just a social commentary, and started asking me to teach workshops using it. I realized that I was on to something that could really help women if I could scale it. So that’s basically when I turned the book “No Excuses” into the organization Take The Lead.
What was the hardest thing about being younger and what has made you feel the most proud as you have gotten older?
My late husband and I, we always used to have a laugh about this, because we both came to the same conclusion that 35 years old was exactly the perfect age, because you’re old enough that people have some respect for you and young enough that you can still do everything well.
Well as it turns out, the same things are true when you turn 50. And it’s not far off when you turn 60, if you’re lucky.
I was recruited for the national Planned Parenthood position when I was 53. The first time they tried to recruit me, I said no. But the second time they tried to recruit me, my husband was actually the one who said, “You need to do this. You’re the one who knows how to do this.” And he was right. It was the right thing at the right time.
I was old enough that people respected what I had accomplished and believed in what I could do and my judgment and my leadership, but I was definitely still young enough to have the energy and the ability to work 20 hours a day, which I did for way too long.
What are you the most proud of about how you have changed as you have aged?
I was somebody who never played sports, never had any physical prowess. And now I find that a day when I can start my day with a five-mile walk and then have a Pilates class later in the day is a perfect day.
When I was in my 30s, jogging became a thing. I tried jogging. I hated it.
I never consistently did exercise, but then I got to be in my 40s and two things happened.
Number one, I started doing Jane Fonda videos. She changed my life with those exercise tapes.
Number two, that was also the age when I started to feel like I was losing some muscle tone. In my early 40s was about the time I started having grandchildren and I actually hired somebody to teach me how to do weightlifting, because I felt like I needed upper body strength to keep up with them. I had just a couple of private sessions and I’ve continued to integrate that into my routine ever since.
What are you the most proud of about how you have not changed as you have aged?
What has stayed the same is my passion for making sure that women have an equal place in this world. That has been the driving force for me. Everything I have ever done has been in service of that mission and I’m proud of that mission and I’m proud of the progress that has been made.
I am of course distressed right now by some of the backtracking that’s happening, but I have the blessing of seeing how the arc of change happens. You do go backward sometimes, but you’re never going back — we are never going back — to where we started.
What are you most excited about what’s still ahead for you in life?
I’m going on a writer’s retreat this summer because I know in my gut that it’s time for me to start working on the book that I have been avoiding, which is more of a memoir. You have got to tell your own story because your story is going to get told and don’t you want to be telling your story the way you want to tell your story?
And my grandsons are likely to get married in the near future — I actually got to officiate at one of my grandson’s weddings a couple of years ago. I loved doing that. I’m hoping that somebody else asks me to officiate.
What I’m most excited about is seeing how this next generation is — having grandsons who are very much assuming that they’re going to be equal partners, no question, in their marriages.
What’s the advice that you are most grateful that you did not take?
I’ll say that the worst advice that I’m glad I stopped taking was the kind of advice that said, “You can’t. You’re a woman.”
The problem is, I did take that advice for a while — for years. But by the time I got to be in my late 20s and 30s, I did not take that advice anymore and I’m very glad I didn’t.