00:00:11:14 - 00:00:31:14 Unknown Hi, I'm Catherine and I'm Gail. And welcome to women over 70. Aging reimagined, our award winning weekly podcast. Visit women over 70.com and learn how you may become engaged with our community through an aging, reimagined circle. We hope to see you at our next online monthly program. 00:00:31:14 - 00:00:39:00 Unknown And today we're delighted to be talking with Sophie Burnham, age 88, who says, all I do is write 00:00:39:00 - 00:00:41:24 Unknown as the bestselling author of 17 books. 00:00:42:03 - 00:01:08:20 Unknown Sophie's writing spans many genres fiction, nonfiction, short stories, poetry, award winning plays, films, radio plays, and scores of articles. Sophie's credited with starting the angel awareness phenomenon with her New York Times bestseller, A Book of Angels and subsequent writings about angels. She became a Reiki master and with gifts that came later in life. 00:01:08:20 - 00:01:15:11 Unknown She does intuitive and psychic readings, and she works as a medium between the two worlds. 00:01:15:11 - 00:01:44:07 Unknown Sophie's 2025 book, The Wonder and Happiness of Being Old is, quote, a love letter of hope and inspiration to younger generations, through which she shares her inner experience of being old. And most importantly, this book is about, again quote, about love, love of self, of life, and of still being here to tell your stories. So, Sophie, welcome to women over aging. 00:01:44:09 - 00:02:07:10 Unknown You're an inspiration for imagining a remarkable life. We're happy to have you. I'm honored to be here. It's just wonderful. Thank you. I do. So let's, let's start with a little bit about your upbringing and education that prepared you for this incredible life journey that you're on. 00:02:07:10 - 00:02:11:17 Unknown I don't think anything prepares us for that. 00:02:11:17 - 00:02:15:00 Unknown I think it just happens to us. 00:02:15:02 - 00:02:43:05 Unknown I grew up in Maryland, in the horse country, and I had a very happy childhood. This was before the first, the Second World War, I, before the First World War, before the Second World War. I was born. And during the war we had horses and a pony to play with. But we lived out in the country and very isolated from other people. 00:02:43:08 - 00:02:47:15 Unknown I went to girls boarding schools. I went to Smith College. 00:02:47:15 - 00:02:57:13 Unknown did my studies in Italian language and literature and went to Italy for a junior year abroad. But that was merely. 00:02:57:13 - 00:03:21:01 Unknown Time wasting. If I could say it wasn't about what I was about. Even even then, I knew something of what I wanted. I couldn't voice it necessarily, but I knew that I was until I was probably 22 or 3. 00:03:21:01 - 00:03:30:13 Unknown I was treading water. And then I got married, had two children, and began to try to write. 00:03:30:13 - 00:03:43:00 Unknown had already been a successful film producer, director, writer at the Smithsonian. They let me write films and 00:03:43:00 - 00:03:55:10 Unknown and I thought, oh, I guess I'm going to be a film producer. And then I went to New York when my husband changed jobs, because in those days, of course, you followed your husband wherever you went. 00:03:55:12 - 00:04:22:00 Unknown And I discovered that young girls do not write and produce and direct films. And so I decided to teach myself to write. And I would do it not by taking classes. I would just pay someone to teach me to write. By writing for magazines and that's what I did. And that someone came along and asked me to write a book about one of the articles that I'd 00:04:22:00 - 00:04:23:23 Unknown published in New York magazine. 00:04:23:23 - 00:04:40:08 Unknown And I wrote that book, and it was a huge New York Times bestseller, and I ran away. I knew I wasn't ready for celebrity and fame. So was that your book about angels? 00:04:40:08 - 00:05:03:11 Unknown I, we moved back to Washington, and when I was in my 40s, I began to write about the strange and mysterious coincidences and accidents, manipulations of time and space that I that had come to me and that became a book of angels. 00:05:03:13 - 00:05:32:10 Unknown One of the experiences, of course, was having my life saved by an angel very dramatically. And I wrote about that in a book of angels. It was a ski accident, and I'd fallen and I was going to fall off a cliff, when suddenly I was stopped by a man. He looked like a man. But there were many, many incredible things that happened. 00:05:32:11 - 00:06:06:16 Unknown And so I was falling down the slope. The sky opened up and it was so exquisitely beautiful. My heart wrenched out of my body and I thought home. And I thought also, it doesn't matter if I die. And then boom, I was stopped by this man who had ski passed my husband down this slope. I must have been going 20 miles an hour and he was going faster. 00:06:06:18 - 00:06:11:23 Unknown Stopped. I fell against his legs. 00:06:12:00 - 00:06:45:00 Unknown In what should have had us both fall down the hill in a tumble of skis, and instead he didn't even hop. And neither did I have a her neck from falling headfirst into his legs. And then I looked at him, and his eyes were pools of love. So in an in grief, he skied up and away, and I never saw him again. 00:06:45:02 - 00:07:32:02 Unknown And I was looking for this pools of love for much of my life. I was 28 at the time and I did not believe in God, so I just put it away. That didn't happen. It was much easier to to believe in the ghosts that I saw after that. So anyway, all my life I've had these extraordinary metaphysical experiences and I think that possibly that spiritual search has something to do with why I find this period of my life of being toward the end of my life. 00:07:32:04 - 00:07:33:14 Unknown So. 00:07:33:14 - 00:07:35:11 Unknown Oh, 00:07:35:11 - 00:08:11:07 Unknown it's fascinating to be looked at from the outside as I watch myself. It's fascinating to see my own ageism, my own cultural conditioning of not liking age. And yet it's one of the happiest periods of my life. And if I could say something about that in in this wonderful little book, wonderful book, because it's very short. 00:08:11:09 - 00:08:43:02 Unknown There is a chart and then chart. I don't know if you can see this. Can you see that chart? Yeah, it's from the Brookings Institution and it shows happiness over here at the bottom. It's when you're a child and up here at the top is when you're 95 and you just get happier and happier after the age of 40. 00:08:43:04 - 00:08:49:01 Unknown 40. Is that hard, hard age added to a past that. 00:08:49:01 - 00:08:56:03 Unknown So what is it? What is it about being in this phase of life that is a source of happiness for you? 00:08:56:06 - 00:09:15:14 Unknown I have a great community now. I can only speak for myself. I'm not a I'm not an impoverished woman or someone fleeing war and torture. I need a very privileged life. I have enough money. 00:09:15:14 - 00:09:19:22 Unknown But that's not a reason to make you happy. Money does not make you happy. 00:09:19:22 - 00:09:23:24 Unknown lack of money can make you very unhappy. 00:09:24:01 - 00:10:06:07 Unknown So I'm aware of that. I'm aware of so much, Catherine, that I wasn't aware of when I was young. One thing is, I have the privilege of the shadow of death at my shoulder. And everything, therefore, is more precious because I know it's temporary. And that's all that life is. It's all impermanent, including me. And once you accept that and accept that the losses that come with aging also have great benefits, there's always something in their place. 00:10:06:10 - 00:10:10:21 Unknown And at that point, the whole world opens up. 00:10:11:03 - 00:10:25:23 Unknown Can you give an example from your own life of losses that have become benefits, have turned into benefits? Well, an obvious one is divorcing my. How is a all relate to that one? 00:10:26:11 - 00:10:53:21 Unknown But, Yes, eyes and ears go. Your sense of smell goes. Yeah. No. And those are serious losses. I think the eyes are easy. Glasses and surgery can solve most of the problems with eyes. Hearing is quite a significant loss. 00:10:53:21 - 00:11:21:08 Unknown And loss of energy. But on the other hand, I have time to look. And I'm looking at the world in ways that I've never noticed before. It's not I've not been aware enough rushing through my life and trying to accomplish things, stopping and looking is one of the great things that I have discovered. 00:11:21:10 - 00:11:54:17 Unknown Look at that leaf. It might be the only leaf. I'll see. I might die in a minute. Let me look at that leaf and just everything becomes a miracle. Everything. And my children. Oh, what a miracle. But miracles I might. The loss of my youth. I don't regret the loss of my youth any more than someone in his prime of life is regretting his childhood. 00:11:54:19 - 00:12:07:12 Unknown But I do know people who do and who make themselves unhappy. Therefore always looking backwards, always thinking it would have been better. 00:12:07:12 - 00:12:18:02 Unknown You say you're an ordinary person, just like your readers. Yeah. What do you mean by that? You talk about risk taking, 00:12:18:02 - 00:12:23:12 Unknown I'm aware that I have all of the human failings 00:12:23:16 - 00:12:57:06 Unknown I have gifts, and but so does everyone. So I have gifts that came late in life. The gift of being psychic and having mediumship. They came late in life because I never dared to use them. And and at the same time, I don't know how I'm doing it. I don't know how I do most of the stuff I do are you do have clients, do you? 00:12:57:06 - 00:13:18:14 Unknown How do you use your psychic gifts and your oh, I do. I have clients from all over the world, all over the world, and I can't keep up with them because I can't do more than a few sessions a day. They're. Each session is an hour long, and it covers. 00:13:18:16 - 00:13:38:11 Unknown What the person is doing in their life journey and what they have to look forward to. Work responsibilities, children, love affairs. It covers all sorts of things. How I know these things. I cannot tell you. 00:13:38:11 - 00:13:51:18 Unknown In that way, I do believe that we're all psychic. We just don't get the chance to test it out and become confident. Everybody has hunches. 00:13:51:18 - 00:13:57:15 Unknown Everybody says, I knew I shouldn't have gone down that path, and I didn't listen. 00:13:57:15 - 00:14:18:11 Unknown Your your ability, your gift seems to be true to to be psychic about another person that you are able to almost read. Another person. Yes. Yeah. That's one of my, one of my gifts. The other one is to write. I was a writer when I was a child. 00:14:18:13 - 00:14:53:21 Unknown I'm happiest I'm more completed myself when I'm in the middle of a project. I just love expressing myself in writing, more than in words, because I can always rewrite and say it better. And there is the music to the language that is very important to me, and I'm very proud of what I've written. I, I look back and I think, wow, that's great. 00:14:53:21 - 00:15:11:17 Unknown How did I know that? But I think it's all part of this being spoken through. I don't know that it's me that is writing. Isn't that a curious thing to tell you? It's. 00:15:11:19 - 00:15:42:15 Unknown Your thing. What? So your your new book, The Wonder and Happiness of Being old. What what what else can you tell us about that? I will tell you that it began with with a question. I was in Paris having an espresso at a sidewalk cafe with my young cousin, and she said to me, suddenly, I'm 59. What's it like in six? 00:15:42:15 - 00:16:00:16 Unknown In. In a few months I'll be 60. What's it like to be? And then she choked on the word old, and I said to her, oh, Eleanor, you won't even notice your 60s. And then I told you what my aunt had said when I asked her about moving from the 50s, the 60s, and she said the same thing. 00:16:00:18 - 00:16:25:11 Unknown She said, now at 90, you begin to slow down. And and I told Eleanor at that time that this was one of the happiest and most fascinating periods of my life. And then I went home and I started thinking about, well, what is it about being old? The very questions you're asking me, what's it like to be old? 00:16:25:13 - 00:16:51:11 Unknown And I began a series of letters to Eleanor, and I wrote to her for a year. I didn't send the letters, but I wrote about what was going on with me that related to being old. So that it was kind of not a diary. It's not a memoir. 00:16:51:13 - 00:17:33:03 Unknown It's short reflections, really, and some show how stupid I am. And vulnerable and and struggling to the very things and the other other passages maybe offer hope and joy and, I don't know, wisdom. What what is it like to be old? The very question holds within it my own interior ages. I would never have thought of writing. What's it like to be 33? 00:17:33:05 - 00:18:15:09 Unknown Is it like to be in your but everybody years old? I was talking to my nine year old grandson a few years ago and I said, you're nine years old. What do you have to tell your younger self, your five year old self? Now from this great age of nine? And what he told me was so amazing. He had so much wisdom and we had an incredible conversation about it and I don't know, it old is someone who is older than you. 00:18:15:11 - 00:18:55:16 Unknown That's my definition of old. I love that I want to run and do that with my grandchildren right away and ask them that question. What do they think of the younger selves? Yes. The other thing that I did, I don't mean did that hug the conversation, but I want to tell you, when I was 21 and had about to have my birthday, had my 21st birthday, I guess I was 20, I was sitting at the scarred wooden desk in my dorm at Smith, and I wrote myself a letter to be opened when I was 42. 00:18:55:18 - 00:19:27:03 Unknown 21 years later, and in the letter, I wrote down my thoughts on who I was and why I was here born what my purpose was and any thoughts that I had for myself 21 years from then. And then when I was 42, before I opened that letter and read it, I wrote another letter to be opened at 21 and at 63 I wrote the one for I wrote three letters. 00:19:27:03 - 00:20:07:12 Unknown At 63, I had so much to say at 63. And then a few years ago, I wrote the last letter at 84 that I will probably not to read. And that letter, curiously, was to my younger selves. I wasn't writing to my future, but writing. And this is another thing that happens or has happened to me, at least as I've gotten older, a sense of deep compassion for the people that raised me offended me. 00:20:07:14 - 00:20:29:14 Unknown You know, my mother was only 31 when she made this comment that so offended me. I held onto it, cutting it for a lifetime and and such warmth and understanding and compassion comes as you get older and have already lived through those lives. 00:20:29:19 - 00:20:33:10 Unknown So what is it about travel that you love so much? 00:20:33:10 - 00:20:48:10 Unknown Travel and opens your heart to how we're all alike. At the end. We humans. It's so hard to be a human being. That's why we have angels to help us. 00:20:48:16 - 00:20:50:11 Unknown I have so many questions for you. 00:20:50:11 - 00:21:06:13 Unknown One is going back to the angels. Told us about your experience of being saved by an angel in the sky accident. But what it tell us about angels? What what what are you. What are they? What does that mean to you? What made it mean to anyone else? 00:21:06:13 - 00:21:11:20 Unknown Well, I grew up an Episcopalian, so we did not have real angels in my religion. 00:21:11:20 - 00:21:40:11 Unknown Not like the Catholics do or Islam, but I always liked angels. I like the idea of angels. I believe now that we live in a spiritual dimension, the way fish live in water and the way fish don't know that they're in water until they're hooked and brought out into the air. We don't know that we're in a spiritual dimension unless we have glimmers of it. 00:21:40:13 - 00:22:20:20 Unknown And most people have glimmers of something bigger. Everyone deciding to be born. Or having the privilege of being born. I'll say it's a real you have to earn it as a spirit. Has two angels that come with you, and they can call on a multitude of other angels necessary. And one is your protector angel, and the other is your. 00:22:20:22 - 00:22:54:13 Unknown Not your guardian, but your comforter. And also also the one that leads you to discoveries that you need to make or to understandings. So there are best friends and helpers, and they're with us all our lives. And in fact, we'll help us leave the body when it's our time to shed the physical form and go back into the spirit. 00:22:54:15 - 00:23:23:08 Unknown Occasionally they allow themselves to be seen. And if you want to see your angels, it's so simple you ask for it. Catherine. You say, show me. You challenge God, challenge your angels, and then watch out because they will show you. But it won't be long on your time, and it won't be the way you expect, but it will come to you. 00:23:23:08 - 00:23:48:16 Unknown a one friend of mine in Kansas I had told this to and she said, okay, I'm going to try this. And she sat and meditated cross-legged with her hands on her elbows on our on our knees and nothing happened. And finally she thought, well, I'll take the dogs for a walk. 00:23:48:18 - 00:24:21:04 Unknown That down in this woods behind your house. And then she says, all of a sudden her husband's uncle, who hits on her every time, and she's alone in the woods, and she does not want to meet him. But to her surprise, he turns off on another path and goes away. And later there's a big family birthday party. He comes up to her at the party and says, who was that gigantic man that you were walking with today? 00:24:21:06 - 00:24:36:02 Unknown She said, oh, he said, he must have been six and a half, seven feet tall, walking beside her. And she thought, oh, my angel, she could see him, that he could 00:24:36:06 - 00:25:02:12 Unknown A book of angels is filled with stories. It's just I'm a storyteller, really. And so it's full of stories and it's full of questions. Why do angels come one time and not another? Why do they come to children more than adults, to women more than men? Do they come to women more than? Or is it just that men can't see them? 00:25:02:14 - 00:25:05:22 Unknown I have many more questions than I have answers to. 00:25:05:22 - 00:25:33:04 Unknown I just started reading a book about wonder and the way you're talking about happiness, about seeing angels, being with angels. It's just reminds me of just when I'm starting to read about, which is that openness to experience and noticing and, being in awe. You've talked about all those things this morning, today it's giving me a new appreciation of wonder. 00:25:33:04 - 00:25:37:09 Unknown I appreciate hearing more than ever before because I don't have it anymore. 00:25:37:09 - 00:26:07:18 Unknown I wanted to hear a little bit from you about the mediating between worlds. Oh, when I'm giving a reading, I always begin with prayer. And I'm praying for myself to have clarity and and an open heart. And to see with the eyes of God, and to hear with the ears of the Holy Spirit, and to see with my heart. 00:26:07:20 - 00:26:38:03 Unknown And I'm praying for the other person that they hear what they need to hear in him. And occasionally, but not always, because they're not our slaves. A spirit comes in when a spirit comes. I am acting as a medium between the two worlds. When no spirit comes, I'm acting as a psychic. I make sense. 00:26:38:05 - 00:27:13:00 Unknown And I am not in control at all of when a spirit comes at all. When an angel comes. Sometimes I can see the angels around the people and sometimes I can't. I don't know who I. It may have to do with how tired I am that day or something like that. I don't know, but there was one occasion where I was giving a reading to a woman I didn't know, and she had asked if her husband could also come. 00:27:13:02 - 00:27:42:03 Unknown This was when I was giving readings, mostly in person. Now I do it over the phone and she came and sat down and hardly had sat down when I had this huge headache, I was just nauseous. I thought, I will not be able to give this reading and then just then a spirit appeared right at my shoulder and I said, wait a minute to the spirit. 00:27:42:05 - 00:28:04:20 Unknown I'll come to you in a minute and finished what I was saying. And then I said, and by the way, you have the spirit here. And she's saying, mother, you're her mother. She said, I don't have any children. I said, well, I can't be responsible for that. She says, you're your mother. And she said, what she dressed in. 00:28:04:22 - 00:28:28:21 Unknown I said, she's wearing a brown jumpsuit, not very handsome. Went boots and oh, she also has a little baby next to her about knee high. And she said, let me get my husband. And yes, comes from the spirit and the husband comes in. This spirit was his daughter. And she threw herself in her arms, put her arms around his neck. 00:28:28:23 - 00:28:51:01 Unknown All three of us were in tears and it turned out that she had died of a lightning struck when she was in the army. She was moving from one barracks to another when lightning struck and hit her, and she was pregnant at the time. So the baby was born on the other side. 00:28:51:01 - 00:28:58:18 Unknown Isn't that interesting? Or else the baby was there as a a test of who she was. 00:28:58:20 - 00:29:29:05 Unknown After a while she had to go. They can't stay for very long. Just very briefly. But if they relationship, it's been good and there's nothing to clear up, they don't need to come. If you've done all the all the work and during your lifetime and we hope you have and you don't need to see your mother, she's with you all the time anyway. 00:29:29:07 - 00:30:00:23 Unknown You don't need to see your husband or your brother. I think Hale and I are both getting a little teary eyed here, though my could wrong. It was lovely. This lovely. Unfortunately we need to close soon, but want to thank you for, reaching out to the younger generation and helping them to see, you know, the the miracle of being the old and back. 00:30:01:02 - 00:30:04:10 Unknown And just I think it's so important that we 00:30:04:10 - 00:30:17:08 Unknown bridge those worlds. Also, the young and the old, I think it is tremendously important to everyone is so afraid of being old. If you can live long enough. This is such a privilege. 00:30:17:16 - 00:30:20:17 Unknown There's a reason for being old. 00:30:20:17 - 00:30:51:10 Unknown And you don't want to miss it. Sophie, thank you so much. This is just been. I don't even know. I'm awestruck. Thank you. Oh. Thank you. And anything that you could do to help me get my hands into the right people I'm most grateful for. It is certainly. Well, well, now, in five countries and will be translated into Japanese and Brazilian and Spanish. 00:30:51:12 - 00:31:23:08 Unknown Wow. And and it's in the two English speaking countries. So I'm very, very happy about it. That's wonderful. Thank you again. So much. And thank you for your work. Catherine and Gayle. Yeah, it's a privilege to be so happy to have you and listeners, we hope you'll look at women over 70 aging reimagined women over 70 that come and visit our aging reimagined circle. 00:31:23:08 - 00:31:26:15 Unknown We'd love to have you. When we do programs monthly, 00:31:26:15 - 00:31:28:06 Unknown Thank you,