Thursday - June 25th, 2026
Apple News
×

What can we help you find?

Open Menu

Crafting Your Best Later Life with Erika Andersen

  1. Crafting Your Best Later Life with Erika Andersen Jane Leder 41:29

In this episode of Older Women & Friends, Jane Leder welcomes bestselling author, leadership expert, and Aging well advocate Erika Andersen for a thought-provoking conversation about what it truly means to create your best life after 60.

Drawing from her acclaimed book, The New Old: Crafting Your Best Later Life, Erika shares a practical roadmap for aging well, finding purpose, embracing change, and staying engaged, curious, and fulfilled in later life. Rather than viewing aging as a period of decline, she challenges women over 50 to see it as an opportunity for reinvention, Growth, freedom, and possibility.

Erika explains why becoming the boss of your own life is one of the most important keys to healthy aging. She discusses how creating a personal vision, building meaningful Relationships, overcoming ageism, and maintaining a strong sense of purpose can dramatically improve happiness, emotional Health, and overall well-being.

She also shares fascinating research showing that people with a positive mindset about aging can live significantly longer, while offering practical strategies for strengthening confidence after 50, managing self-talk, practicing mindfulness, cultivating gratitude, and adapting gracefully to life’s inevitable transitions.

The conversation explores loneliness after 60, community for older women, life after Retirement, active aging, emotional resilience, lifelong learning, and finding joy in new experiences. Erika reveals why your 60s, 70s, and beyond can become some of the most meaningful, productive, and rewarding years of your life.

Whether you’re navigating a major life transition, searching for deeper fulfillment, building a new chapter after retirement, or simply looking for inspiration on aging gracefully, this episode is filled with practical Wisdom, encouragement, and actionable insights.

Jane Leder Podcaster & Author

I am an award-winning author of books about teen suicide, siblings, and men and women during WWII. My feature articles have appeared in publications from Psychology Today to the Chicago Sun-Times. I enjoy the journey of writing, the process. But as I celebrated my seventy-seventh birthday, I wanted a change of focus and turned my creative energies into launching "Older Women & Friends," a podcast. The challenge has been exhilarating and will certainly help me make it through the dead of winter in the Midwest.