In this episode of Revolutionize Your Retirement, host Dori Mintzer talks with Helen Hirsh Spence, founder of Top 60 Over 60, about reframing aging in the 21st century and confronting both external and internalized ageism. Helen shares her own story of becoming a social entrepreneur in her late 60s after a 35-year leadership career in education, and how subtle experiences of invisibility and lowered expectations led her to recognize ageism in herself and in the culture around her.

The conversation dives into what ageism looks and sounds like, everyday comments, workplace nudges to retire, birthday-card humor, and “senior moment” jokes, and why these messages quietly erode confidence, opportunity, and health. Helen introduces the idea of “longevity literacy” and a “longevity mindset,” noting that we now live 20–30 years longer than previous generations and need a new life map beyond the old “learn–earn–retire” model. She and Dori discuss how people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond can pivot, re-skill, and design non-linear lives that include multiple purposes and periodic reinvention.

Helen also talks about her work with individuals and organizations: helping older adults surface purpose, strengths, and an “entrepreneurial mindset,” and helping employers become age-ready by recognizing the value of older workers’ experience and institutional knowledge. She emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, stepping out of one’s comfort zone, building multi-generational connections, and cultivating supportive networks that challenge limiting beliefs about aging.

About the Guest – Helen Hirsh Spence

Helen Hirsh Spence is a trailblazing advocate for longevity literacy and a leading voice in the fight against ageism. She is the founder of Top 60 Over 60, a niche consultancy and thought-leadership platform that challenges outdated stereotypes about aging and showcases the value of older adults in today’s workforce and society.

Before launching her social enterprise in her late 60s, Helen spent more than 35 years as a senior leader in public and private education, including roles as a language teacher, secondary school principal, founding executive of the Ontario Principals’ Council, and head of an all-girls school in Ottawa. A lifelong learner and traveler, she has done volunteer advisory work in Honduras, Bolivia, the Canadian Arctic, India, and Bhutan, and even climbed Kilimanjaro at 58.

Key Topics We Cover

• Longevity literacy and the new map of life: living 20–30 years longer and outgrowing the learn–earn–retire model.
• Longevity mindset: reframing expectations, health span, and the opportunities of extra decades.
• Purpose in later life: self-awareness, revisiting values, multiple evolving purposes, and getting out of your comfort zone.
• The entrepreneurial mindset (for business or life): creativity, spotting opportunity, re-skilling, and embracing change.

Connect with Helen Hirsh Spence

• Website & Resources: Top 60 Over 60 – articles, talks, media, and program information.
• LinkedIn: Age Sense - Fresh perspectives & insights on shifting demographics, longevity & age inclusivity, reflections

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition
• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

In this conversation, host Dori Mintzer welcomes Dr. Connie Zweig back to explore how “shadow work” can become a powerful inner practice in midlife and beyond. They discuss what the “shadow” actually is, how it forms in childhood, and the many ways it shows up in later life through self‑sabotage, repeating relationship patterns, addictions, moods, and projections onto partners, adult children, and political or religious “enemies.”

Connie explains her practical method of identifying “shadow characters” using thoughts, feelings, and body sensations as cues, then naming and dialoguing with these inner figures to discover their valid, often hidden needs. Through vivid examples, the “foodie,” the inner critic, and the controller, she shows how greater awareness can transform blame into responsibility, especially in long‑term relationships and marriage. She and Dori also explore “shadow marriage” vows, how couples and families can consciously honor each other’s shadow characters, and how elders can use shadow work for reconciliation, forgiveness, and a more peaceful final chapter of life.

The discussion widens to the collective shadow, including how projection fuels polarization, dehumanization, and war, and how leaders like Donald Trump have “weaponized” shadow projection on a mass scale. Connie offers a different vision: inner work as a spiritual and social responsibility, combined with daily contemplative practice, so that each of us contributes less to the darkness and more to the light in this “crazy moment” of history.

About the Guest – Connie Zweig, PhD

Connie Zweig, PhD, is a retired Jungian psychotherapist, author, and teacher known as a pioneering guide to the human shadow across the lifespan. She is co‑author of the classic anthology Meeting the Shadow (new expanded edition) and author of Romancing the Shadow, which presents her method of working with “shadow characters” in individuals, couples, families, and communities.

Her award‑winning book The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul extends shadow work into midlife and later life, reframing aging as a spiritual practice that includes life review, reconciliation, and releasing the victim narrative. In Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path: The Dance of Darkness and Light in Our Search for Awakening, she turns to religious and spiritual communities, illuminating how idealization, projection, and abuse of power create “spiritual shadow” and religious trauma, and how disillusioned seekers can reclaim their own light.

Key Topics We Cover

• What the “shadow” is and how it forms in childhood.
• How shadow material erupts as addiction, procrastination, criticism, and repetitive conflicts.
• Using shadow work in couples, including “shadow marriage” vows and reducing blame in long‑term relationships.
• Shadow in families, adult‑child relationships, and the life review process in later life.

Connect with Connie:

• Website with events, videos, and resources: ConnieZweig.com
• Podcast with her husband: Dr. Neil’s Spiritual Awakening to Non‑Duality (all major platforms).

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition
• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

Author and activist Ashton Applewhite joins Dori Mintzer to expose how ageism, more than aging itself, undermines health, purpose, and connection across the lifespan. Drawing on her book This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism and her decades of work at the forefront of the anti-ageism movement, Ashton explains how internalized, interpersonal, and structural ageism show up in everyday life and what it takes to challenge them. She also introduces YODA (Youngers and Olders Dismantling Ageism), a new initiative inviting people of different ages to come together, talk about power, and build alliances for a more just, age-inclusive world.

What We Talk About

• How Ashton first “woke up” to aging and discovered how wrong most of our assumptions about later life really are.
• What ageism is, where the term came from, and how it operates alongside racism, sexism, and ableism.
• Internalized ageism and the everyday language and beliefs that limit both “youngers” and “olders”.
• Chrono normativity and why life is not a linear timeline with fixed ages for work, family, and retirement.
• Why the U.S. is highly age-segregated and how mixed-age relationships reduce prejudice and enrich everyone’s lives.
• The origins of Old School: The Anti-Ageism Clearinghouse and its evolution into the Old School Hub.
• YODA: what Youngers and Olders Dismantling Ageism is, why it centers conversations about power, and how anyone can try it in their community, workplace, or family.
• Practical ways to respond to ageist comments, question generational stereotypes, and design more inter-age programs and communities.

About the Guest: Ashton Applewhite

Ashton Applewhite is an internationally recognized expert on ageism and the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism. She is the co-founder of Old School, a global hub that curates free, anti-ageism resources and convenes people working to advance age equity around the world.​

Ashton speaks widely at venues including the United Nations and the TED main stage, and has been a leading voice in making age a recognized dimension of diversity. In 2022, the United Nations named her one of the “Healthy Aging 50,” honoring 50 leaders transforming the world to be a better place to grow older.

Connect with Ashton Applewhite

• Website: This Chair Rocks
• Book: This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism
• LinkedIn: Ashton Applewhite

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition
• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.