My Road to Sage-ing® Or How Sage-ing Helped Me Steer my Life in a New Direction

When COVID hit, my world turned upside down. While planning to glide into retirement, all my professional work went away. Additionally, all my volunteer work with seniors, kids and my community disappeared. Then I got COVID 3 times and faced major surgery.

I was a race car on a track, and suddenly I ran out of gas. I was feeling lost, lonely, and isolated. During that time, I reached out to people I know and trusted to discover what was living in my box of uncertainty and explore the potential resources to get me out of my funk. I had many deep exchanges.

I had not dealt with this level of funk ever before. I was trying to go back to doing all that I used to do to re-define my identity. That did not work as times had dramatically changed. I had to discover my true self and do a personal re-start. In my research, I ran across the word Sage. Initially, I had no idea what it meant until I read From Age-ing to Sage-ing. It really resonated with me. This resonance led me to join Sage-ing International as a volunteer on the Multi-Gen (Multigeneration) team in the fall of 2023.

Sage-ing International may not have been a race car, yet it certainly ran out of gas when COVID hit. It had to move all offerings on-line via Zoom. The organization did as good as any I have seen by pivoting to re-invent its program delivery system. It was with that spirit of reinvention that I connected.

As a newbie, I was invited to help Sage-ing International bring months of highly inclusive strategy development work to a place where the Leadership Circle (as we call our Board of Directors) unanimously approved 5 core strategies late in 2024. Then I was asked to consider accepting the nomination to be a Co-Chair. It was a humbling ask, and my response required much discernment. So here I am with my gifted Co-Chair, Katie Lieberman.

Since then, it has been a renewed learning journey for me. I have met and learned from and with many wonderful people who have been with the organization from the beginning, as well as some gifted younger people with whom I found much in common. One of those lessons has been how each of us is both a “Sage” and a “Seeker,” and how we can co-create a way of not just surviving but thriving in an increasingly chaotic world.

So, I am getting my mojo back and finding a sense of purpose by hanging out and having real conversations, certainly with some gifted Elders, and with people of all generations. We support one another through listening first, challenging one another second, and mixing it up respectfully to co-create solutions to issues we face as uniquely gifted humans. We will always honor the wisdom of our founder who was a Rabbi—one of the most ecumenical people I have ever known or read about in my life. I share his commitment to inclusiveness.

Sage-ing International has become one of my Islands of Sanctuary in the crazy world we live in. My personal vision, not one I will ever impose on others, is for Sage-ing International to become a global clearing house of practical insightful resources for Spiritual Eldering for the 21^st Century, while realizing many of these resources increasingly apply to all generations. The solutions to the challenges we face require co-generational mentoring and sharing of wisdom as one generation can no longer address this in isolation. Loneliness, isolation, and funk are not the sole property of any generation.