Transcript
[theme music]
Mindy Fried: Today I'm honored to welcome a number of the founders of Our Bodies Ourselves, a book that many women still call their Bible on health, sexuality, and reproductive justice. Our Bodies Ourselves started as a book in 1970 and today it’s a fully online portal based at Suffolk University, in Boston Massachusetts. Providing links to articles, podcasts, videos, and more.
The original founders and a new generation of researchers and activists have now joined together to produce a powerful resource for women, girls, and gender expansive people. When these women started, most of them were in their twenties and thirties, and now they’re in their seventies and eighties, and some of them are even in their nineties. They’ve been sharing their knowledge, their opinions, their insights for decades. And for this, our last episode of the season, I wanted to talk to them about growing older.
[theme music]
Welcome to Next Chapters, a new podcast that explores the remarkable landscape of growing older for women – from relationships and sexuality to health care, housing and retirement. Next Chapters is proudly sponsored by Our Bodies Ourselves, a globally renowned resource for the health and sexuality of women and gender-expansive people. I'm your host, Mindy Fried.
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Joan Ditzion: Hi. I am Joan Ditzion and I'm one of the original founders and I joined this project, you know, in 1969, 70. [music] Well there was this really wonderful women's conference, the one of the first, and it was at Emmanuel College in Boston, and Miriam Holly gave a workshop there on women and their bodies primarily focusing on childbirth and pregnancy. I wasn't there, I was still living in Washington at the time, and the conclusion of the people who were there was, well, we just have to find some good doctors to really help us understand this. Most doctors would talk about women's experience from their point of view, not women's point of view, and so there was this huge gap in information for every single woman. And then that summer in thinking about it, they realized that, no, we need to learn for ourselves.
So the women decided, well, we'll start researching these topics. And then the decision was made to put it in a little course called Our Bodies Ourselves. Now, this is the early day of the women's movement and there were consciousness raising groups all over the place. You know, just raising women's awareness about the impact of sexism on their lives. And it was like all of a sudden. It was realizing that this was information that was vital for everybody.
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Vilunya Diskin: I'm Vilunya Diskin. I was there from the beginning. I went to that historic conference at Emmanuel College, 79, right., no, 69 of course. Very exciting conference. And the group grew out of that, although it took quite a while. You know, at first I was very interested in pregnancy. I had had a couple of pregnancies and they were very difficult. And, I lost a baby and I had a late miscarriage. So all of that made me, you know, very interested in health. I really loved the whole process of women coming in, talking about their bodies and their healthcare, saying that they weren't very happy with it. And, what could we do about it? And, you know, what we figured out is one of the things we could do about it is make a list of all the topics that we wanted information on and weren't getting anywhere. And. Do it, you know, research it and see where we could go. And because we were all in our twenties, we thought we could do anything. We were just invincible. And so, you know, we had this list that was an arm long and, you know, little by little, we did do it. Joan: We were living in Washington at the time.
Mindy: This is Joan again.
Joan: And there was an Anti-Nixon inaugural event. A group of women stood up and they said, we are from Boston, and we don't wanna just make coffee and take notes. We really have ideas. So I said to Bruce, my husband, I said, when we get back to Cambridge, I'm gonna find out more about this. There was an ad in the Old Mole, which was a sort of an underground newspaper, and it said, a, women in their Bodies course is gonna be offered at MIT. So I joined and it was like, electrifying. You know, there were women sitting around 50, 60 women. Some were breastfeeding. I'd never seen anyone breastfeed. You know, the first topic was sexuality, talking about various orgasms. I'd never heard any of this in public. Every topic was, you know, amazing. Wendy Sanford: I joined. Back when I had just had a baby, my son, and was going through a very, quite a serious for me postpartum depression, no hospitalization, but I lay around on the living room floor a lot, hoping he wouldn't wake up from his nap yet.
Wendy Sanford: I joined back when I had just had a baby, my son, and was going through a very, quite a serious for me postpartum depression, no hospitalization, but I lay around on the living room floor a lot, hoping he wouldn't wake up from his nap yet.
Mindy: That’s Wendy Sanford, an original founder. From 1973 to 2011, Wendy co-authored and edited many versions of Our Bodies, Ourselves/
Wendy: And, my friend Esther Rome, who I knew through my husband's work, told me about a new group that was meeting at MIT, one evening a week, and that I should go. And I was too depressed to go. I just, you know, when you're depressed, you just don't get out the door. So the next week she sent someone to pick me up. Bless Esther. So I walked into a room at MIT, a large lounge full of women, some on the floor. I remember Ruth was in, blue jean overalls. Very pregnant, lounging on the floor, leaning up against somebody else. I mean, it was, and in the front of the room there was a woman talking about the clitoris. Now that's a word I had never even heard out, said out loud. I just got immediately kind of mortified and shy and I just sat down, um, and listened.
And then later, uh, we broke into small groups, which I had never done either. It's a pedagogy that was new to me. And there I'm in this, in this small group in a classroom, and with Miriam, who was Nancy at the time, and Paula Doress, now Paula Doress-Worters. They did talk about sexuality, and the politics of telling our men, because we were all involved with men at that point, what we liked. Um, but then we started talking about postpartum depression. I listened so hard and I understood that it was, not just my fault, that there were so many social and sociological reasons. My loneliness, my isolation, what, whatever it was. And, um, I just left that meeting so energized,
Joan: The course was terrific and you know, people really bonded and, and really responded to the importance of this information. And then the decision was made, well, let's maybe do a pamphlet so we could spread the word wherever. And initially it was called Women and Their Bodies. And then we said, Hey, hey, you know, it's really our bodies ourselves.
Mindy: The very first edition of Our Bodies Ourselves was a 193-page stapled, newsprint booklet, published by the New England Free Press in 1970. A few years later, Simon and Schuster offered to publish a hardcover of the book, which would expand the audience exponentially. The contract included a large discount for health clinics for low-income women, and a provision for a U.S. Spanish translation. For forty years, Our Bodies Ourselves was updated and revised nine times - roughly every four to seven years, until its final edition in 2011. As of January of 2025, Our Bodies Ourselves has been adapted into 34 languages, which is how our next founder first joined the group.
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Ayesha Chatterjee: So my name is Ayesha Chatterjee. I joined Our Bodies Ourselves also in my twenties, but a few decades after Wendy and the rest. This was in 2006. I had moved from India to Boston in 2005, and was looking for work and Our Bodies Ourselves was really the first place I applied to, partly because. I had had my run in with OBOS many years prior when I'd finished my masters in clinical psych and decided I never wanted to work in a clinical setting ever again. And I joined at the time, an organization in Delhi called Tarsi, which was the first sexuality helpline for women in the country.
Mindy: Mm. Wow.
Ayesha: I remember my training week and my supervisor gave me an addition of OBOS and said, you need to read this cover to cover - every edition that comes out. Start with this one. And I used it as a resource right through, working on reproductive health and sexuality in India. And then when we moved in 2005 I found Sally, Sally Whalen and she was at the time, managing the global translation and adaptation program. And she needed somebody to help her so I joined them in January of 2006 and I stayed for a, for a little bit, just working on a lot of the cultural adaptations of the additions that came after.
Wendy: Could I say one thing about the decision to expand the Founders group?
Mindy: Sure. Sure.
Wendy: For a long time there were women working in the Our office on really important things including the global adaptations. And, people who interviewed us just kept wanting to talk to the people who were back there at the beginning, like we were the founders. And we gradually understood that all the people who had been working as long as Ayesha had on important projects that put the book out in the world and enabled other women to adapt the book. Every one of us was working in some way to get this book usefully out there, and so we really wanted to recognize that we were all founders. That’s how we made that change.
Mindy: Yeah. That's beautiful. I mean this may sound audacious, but you've all made history. You all worked on something that made such a difference to so many women and girls and, um, and now it's carrying on and, and you're thinking people, you're critical people. You've all been involved so deeply in women's health issues and now you're older. Just like me. And so the question that I have for you, um, is what are the issues that you care deeply about? What are your concerns about growing older?
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Judy: My name is Judy Norsigian. I'm one of the co-founders, although I wasn’t at that historic conference in 1969 at Emmanuel College. I joined in the fall of '71 and later on became the executive director and was part of our transition. Now we are based at Suffolk University. I have to say that the older I get, the more I realize some things are within our control and some are not. And sometimes we face losses that we can't control, people we love. Sometimes we have disabilities or health crises that are not transient. They last and they require that we change the way we live our lives. So I've been one of the lucky ones. I had a congenital condition in my hip, which was resolved by a hip replacement. And so I, you know, got a new lease there.
And I have such good health that I can keep up a pretty, uh, intense pace, although not quite what it used to be. And because we live in a world that is so chaotic now, I, I can say in my almost 77 years, I've never seen anything like what we're witnessing now. And so I feel like it's all hands on deck as much as you can. And I am blessed to be in a number of wonderful communities and I still play a role at Our Bodies, Ourselves. I feel passionate about climate change, so I've become active with Mothers Out Front. I, um, have been active in the stop private jet expansion, um, effort at Hanscomb Field and near Lexington, Massachusetts. And I just love being an activist with all these groups who are doing such great work.
And I'm also excited that I can play more of my grandchild Zola, who will be, uh, seven years old in July and who's an non-binary, so that makes my brain work a little harder to remember they, and fortunately, this kid is wonderful. It's okay to say they or he, just not she. So I have a really easy time with that. If I remember, great. If I don't, great. So these are some of the ways I stay engaged, and I have to say it really helps to have the people you love around you care about these things too. You can't do any of this alone.
Mindy: So what do you do in your spare time?
Judy: Uh, since Covid, I've watched more TV than in my whole lifetime, Mindy: Okay, so you're human. Judy: I find that you have to do this. If you don't find your ways to escape, the bad news will just bring you down. Bring you down too much.
Mindy: I mean, one thing that just in listening to you, Judy, one thing that strikes me and I've known you for a long time, um, is that staying involved with all these activities that are meaningful to you and give you a sense of purpose, is really critical. You know, many people as they age, as they retire, feel very alone, and I don't hear that from you at all.
Judy: No, I'm very grateful for the wonderful people in my life.
Vilunya: You know, I think we're a very unusual group, because first of all. As you pointed out, we've been together for decades.
Mindy: This is Vilunya again.
Vilunya: I noticed that I didn't hear anything about aging with Judy because Judy is an activist from the time she was five and she's still continuing being an activist and, you know, just has added on more and more and more stuff and, uh, you know, I think it's amazing. Just amazing. [music]
Vilunya: When I got to be 70, I'm going to be 84 next week, but when I hit 70, I thought, okay, this is different than it was before. That is, my body wasn't moving, moving as fast as it usually did. I, I'm a fast walker and a fast talker, and, you know, and I could feel I was slowing down. Uh, not too much, but enough so that, I talked about it in therapy all the time.
You know that, that wonderful saying, uh, aging is not for sissies. Uh, well that became my motto. So throughout my seventies, I was just aware of small things. Like I would pass a window, I'd be walking downtown, I'd pass a window, and I'd think, who is that person? I didn't recognize myself because I had an image of myself as you know, quick, tall, taller than my shrinking self. And, that's not what was reflected in the windows. And I thought, whoa. When you can recognize yourself. I felt it as a real loss. Now, I also felt like, well, you know, it's a loss, but there will be something new, you know? Another self will emerge as indeed it did.
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Vilunya: Laya, my daughter's, upstairs. My granddaughters grew up upstairs. They're now both, uh, away, uh, in college and out of college. But you know, they come home, they come home for Passover, they come home for birthdays. And my whole neighborhood is a very close political solidarity neighborhood, and we talk a lot about, now about resistance and the things that we'll do, and are doing to, you know, resist what's going on in our country. And, and so it's very, it's political, it's alive. And that's, that's very good. So I continue being active, but I am as active as I want to be.
You know, I don't feel like I have to do everything. In fact, now I read a lot about what's going on and I give a lot more money than I gave before. I also do go to demonstrations, but I don't go to them every week, you know? So, I definitely feel differences and some of them are liberating in the sense that, you know, I don't feel like I have to say yes to everything. In fact, I don't feel like I have to say yes to anything, and I don't explain, you know, when, when people say, oh, let's do this and this and this, I say, no, I can't, and I don't, you know, when I talk to Jane [Pincus] sometimes she's asking me, you don't tell them why. I said, no, I don't wanna explain why I don't wanna do something. Sorry, I just don't wanna do it.
Mindy: The liberation of growing older.
Vilunya: Yeah. The liberation of feeling confident to say, no thank you. So it's a, you know, it, it's a process.
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Joan: Growing older for me is an adventure in the sense that, uh, I really wanna age with as much engagement and purpose as possible at this time in my life. And we've entered into a new era of potential longevity, so that sort of got me into being interested in aging issues, which I find fascinating and a really important focus. I'm living in a continuing care community at this point, which is wonderful, you know, because it's a great community of people at all stages of aging. And so I'm in a place where people are from like early seventies to 108 and really opens up the nuance and the subtlety of all the kinds of growth and development that goes on within these decades, you know, rather than, people are old, period. Uh, I find it fascinating. Yeah.
Mindy: Yeah. So that's been a good thing.
Joan: And my family, I mean, I have two sons married to lovely, marvelous daughter in-laws, and three grandsons. I'm a feminist with a lot of men in my life. Mindy: And they're feminist men, right? Joan: Right. And they're very supportive and available and, you know, just lots of, you know, friends and family. So I feel, you know, supported and community is very, very important.
Mindy: But feminism isn’t the only “ism” the founders are thinking about as they get older. When I invited Wendy to join this conversation, her mind went to the effects of racism as we age.
Wendy: I thought of my friend Mary, who lives in Virginia. A black woman, dear friend. And how different our health is at this point in our eighties. I did some reading in Arline Geronimus, who's a sociologist who did really important work on what she calls the weathering effect of living with racism in this country. It's like that the chronic exposure to, um, social and economic disadvantage actually accelerates your aging, in ways that she understands the science of, and I don't. My general healthiness, which I've been blessed with and also I think comes from my race and class and the kind of preventive care that I had and the dental care that I had and all of that prepared me to age as well as I, as I have and we say it's a blessing or I'm lucky, or whatever. And then when you look more deeply. It's actually programmed into our, the life that we live in this country, with racism, so entrenched at so many levels.
So it breaks my heart to see Mary, who is, um, you know, she's in her mid eighties now, but she is struggling with kidney failure. Heart attack, stroke. So, so many different things and the quality of her life has been challenged for several years. And, uh, we were, you know, we get together once a year if we can. And I, we were visiting her in in December and we just look different ages. We don't look 80 and 84. We look 75 and maybe 90. And that's the weathering effect. And it just, it, I, I nearly cry thinking about it. I mean, it's like crying isn't so helpful. What political action is much more helpful, but I just, I feel it in my whole self.
Mindy: And when the two of you get together, do you talk openly about that? Wendy: We do, we do. It's, you know, we've been blessed with 60 some years of friendship and uh, so each year I think we talk a little more honestly with each other, which is a blessing. She, um, often will blame herself. I'm so lazy, I can't get out of bed today. I'm so lazy and I say. Mary, you're not lazy. You're not well, you know, it's like, there's stuff that we've both internalized
Ayesha: I just wanna say Wendy first, that I really appreciate your mentioning weathering. It is something that I look at a lot in the work I do, uh, when I'm working with birthing parents and postpartum specifically just the effects of weathering on. The experience of pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes and postpartum care and access I'm continually disappointed at how little progress we have made. And how much work needs to be done. I have a lot of common concerns with the other founders, but I'm, I'm also, I'm a young parent. I'm parenting a young child. I have a 13-year-old daughter, and especially now,
I just worry. I just worry about everything. I worry about her. I worry about her out in the world. I worry about the world that we are creating and leaving for them. I just, it's a constant worry. And not just, not just girls, but just all of our children, however they identify, like how can we raise them safely and fearlessly, in this current situation.
Wendy: Oh boy. And I'm really glad you mentioned the, um, the times that we're in because all we have learned together in our work on our bodies, ourselves and our separate work, is in danger by this administration. We've made some progress or worked for some progress. I assumed, and we were in our third twenties and thirties doing this work that we were making changes that would last.
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Mindy: So, um, Paula and Hannah, do you wanna chime in a little bit about what life is like for you right now?
Paula Doress Worters: Yes, I think so. Right?
Hannah Doress: Sure.
Paula: Yeah. So my name is Paula. Now I have other names.
Hannah: Do you wanna say your full name, mom?
Paula: Yeah. Paula Doress Waters.
Mindy: Paula and Hannah live together, so that Hannah can support her mom in accessing activities that are now harder for her. The goal is for Paula to enjoy her life and stay connected with people, ideas, culture, politics, and other things that are important to her and to both of them.
Paula: So my name is Paula Doress-Worters and, um I'm not aging yet. I have a lot of things to do when I go, I go to the program, to, to, you know, to Rosner house and, getting things going with people.
Hannah: She has good friends there and she particularly likes the improv. They do improv almost every Monday. Yeah. And she'll even change her hat for the occasion because she's very much a hat lady.
Paula: But I do have a hat.
Hannah: Many hats.
Paula: Many hats. That's true.
Hannah: And then we protest. We do a lot of protesting. We go protesting together. I started bringing a chair because. Especially if we walk there, which is a good 15 minutes, and then to have a chair where mom can relax so she doesn't wanna stand up the whole time and she has her own sign.
Mindy: What do, what do your signs say, Paula?
Hannah: It says, my body myself, hands off.
Mindy: Perfect. Absolutely.
Vilunya: And to the point.
Mindy: Yeah. That's great. Well, you're still protesting.
Vilunya: That’s great, yeah, yeah.
Hannah: Another thing that we do every Saturday that I think has been really helpful to mom's aging is Pilates. So we do a double Pilates session every Saturday for an hour. And I think it's amazing because, a lot of times when people get older there's a lot of assumptions about what they can and can't do. And boy does Pilates show you that you are a total bruiser. Yeah, she's so strong. I mean, it's unbelievable what she can do in Pilates and I never would've thought to ask.
Mindy: Yeah. Do you like the Pilates, Paula?
Paula: Yeah, I can...
Mindy: Can you tell that you're getting stronger?
Paula: I, I don't know, not really. Am I getting stronger?
Hannah: Well, I think she just is strong and so it's like maintaining that strength and flexibility and balance and other.
Paula: And Hannah comes with me and we, we do all these things with, with this guy and he's a really nice guy. He's a sweetheart.
Mindy: Oh, that sounds fantastic.
Paula: Yeah.
Vilunya: I'm also doing, a lot of exercises now because, the mobility isn't as swift or as easy as it as it was, you know, I can get down on the floor, but it takes me a lot longer to get up and I think, whoa, this is not acceptable. So I've begun this wonderful, uh, series of exercises and discipline called. Gyrotonics.
Mindy: Oh yeah, I’ve heard of it. Right.
Vilunya: Well it's a Pilates-plus it's working on your muscle structure, the interior muscles, and it, it's vigorous exercise and it's fantastic. But all these things that I used to do without thinking about them, and now I, not only do I have to think about them, but I have to do something about them.
Mindy: Yeah.
Vilunya: And I have to say, sometimes it pisses me off. I just think I'm spending too much time on maintenance. You know, there are things I wanna do. There are books I wanna read. There are people I wanna see. There are places I wanna go to. So I'm very conscious of that.
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Mindy: I think what just strikes me with all of you is that you've been committed feminists and activists since you were very young, and that thread has continued throughout your life. And here you are, all of you still doing your thing, right? And um, but you know, over the years you've developed I'm sure more wisdom and understanding and, you know, you, you bring that to the work that you're doing as well.
Vilunya: Yeah. And more discrimination of where you wanna put your time and your effort and your energy because I don't have the same energy I had 20 years ago.
Mindy: Mm. You can't do it all. Maybe just Judy can do it all.
Vilunya: Well, exactly. That's what I was thinking. Not all of us are like Judy, right? None of us are like Judy.
Paula: Judy's the youngest too, so you gotta take that in into...
Vilunya: That's true. That's true.
Mindy: Oh, there you go. And Judy is what?
Vilunya: 76.
Mindy: Oh, a child.
Vilunya: Wait, I'm not either, 76 or 78, you know.
Mindy: It's so very, it's just very funny when y'all say like, oh, Judy's very young. She's still young. She's just 76 or 78. Wait, wait till she hits her eighties. Then she's gonna feel it.
Vilunya: Probably not.
Hannah: I wanted to add something just from an outsider perspective, which is that I really - it's really beautiful to see how much founders are aging with their families. There's really a strong theme. And so, whether those founders are, you know, feeling very healthy or active or dealing with more significant diagnoses, they're really often doing it either living with their kids or very closely tied to, uh, their children being involved in their care and support and helping them actualize what it is that they wanna do. The context of aging in family is that you have shared memory and so that creates an opportunity to like scaffold and reinforce the things that that person wants and likes that they may or may not be able to do them all by themselves anymore.
Mindy: Yeah. Yeah. You guys have a really great situation. Isn't it wonderful that you're living together?
Hannah: It is wonderful, right across the hall. And I think somehow, I'm not sure exactly how, but somehow I think that's part of what we learned from this whole, Our Bodies, Ourselves experience about, empowering ourselves and each other. I think that inspires us to really be there inter-generationally to learn from each other and support each other to have the best life, that we can have together.
Vilunya: I think that's absolutely true, Hannah.
Mindy: So before we say goodbye, is there any last, any last words that you'd like to share?
Vilunya: I always thought uh, while we were working in those early years, I always looked forward to aging. I remember my, um, mother's friends, uh, lamenting the fact that they were aging. Of course, when they were 60, they felt old. And we live in a time when I still don't feel old. And I don't think of myself as old. And not only that, but I, but I identify with younger people and I have many friends that are in their twenties, forties, fifties, on our block, for instance, the people that I hang out with and that I do stuff with and that I talk to are much younger so I, I think the activism and the being interested in politics, has made it easier to age and to remain active.
Joan: To me, combating ageism is the thing that really is my primary, you know, real major focus in terms of my, in my activism. When I started aging and into my sixties and seventies, I realized that I wasn't being supported to age with purpose and power and engagement and all the kind of ageism and attitudes towards older adults and older women was things I began to encounter. And so anytime I would encounter anything like that, I'd say, Hey, that's an ageist attitude. It doesn't have to be this way. So I think that was like one of the awakenings for me and you know, we certainly know this now, you know, we have to protect Medicare; we have to protect social security; and there's a huge amount of stuff that impacts older adults in all sorts of ways that are critical.
Hannah: The other thing too that I think is really interesting that's kind of like it's a little bit of a challenge to the rest of society is that these women are essentially celebrities. So everywhere Paula goes. If we tell them who she is, people respond very enthusiastically and very excitedly and with great respect, and that really changes the dynamic because it absolutely flies in the face of the horrific ageism that really is one of the key drivers of people having bad experiences as older, particularly older women. And so I would just challenge everybody to treat every older person as a celebrity. And you just haven't found out why yet.
Mindy: Can we, can we bring you everywhere we go, Hannah? Paula: Exactly right, I like that summary.
Mindy: Yeah, Look, it was great talking to you. What a pleasure. And, um, I'm really hoping that this is the first season of a series of seasons, of Next Chapters, because we're, we're touching the, we're just touching the surface of these issues. And so it's, uh, it's an honor to have you be a part of it. It's great. Thank you.
Paula: Thank you so much. Great to see you guys.
Mindy: Yeah. Great to see you.
Vilunya: Thank you, Mindy.
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Mindy: Do you have a story to share about growing older? We’d love to hear from you. Our phone number is: 1-8-6-0-8-0-0-2-1-3-0. That’s 1-8-6-0-8-0-0-2-1-3-0 or e-mail us: at [email protected]. That’s [email protected].
Next Chapters is co-produced by me and Karen Given, who was also senior editor and engineer. Thanks to our project advisors from Our Bodies Ourselves, including Christina Barmon, Toni Calasanti, Joan Ditzion, Kim Hunt, Laura Prieto, Wendy Simonds, Taura Taylor, Dr. Imani Woody and Erreannau Zellous. Thanks to Jonese Austin, Eva Parker Passalacqua, and Kiki Zeldes for their work on creating the podcast website. Music is from Blue Dot Sessions.
For more information about the show, go to ourbodiesourselves-dot-org-slash-nextchapters. While you're there, please consider donating to keep the show going. You'll find the link at our website. The address again is ourbodiesourselves/nextchapters.
I’m your host, Mindy Fried.
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