Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Springsteen, Storytelling, And Starting Again with Anne Abel
A stadium full of strangers rose to their feet, Bruce Springsteen smiled into the camera, and Ann Abel felt something she hadn’t in years: possibility. What followed wasn’t a fairy tale; it was a series of small, stubborn yeses that moved her from severe, recurrent depression and ECT-induced memory loss to a late-life surge of storytelling, two memoirs, and a social media community of more than 720,000 people.
We sit down with Ann to trace that path with honesty and heart. She shares how a reluctant first concert at 59 cracked open a window of hope, why quitting a draining job demanded a new kind of structure, and how she designed a solo trip to Australia around anchors—eight Springsteen shows, daily workouts, and early-morning writing. You’ll hear how watching people in hotel lobbies became fuel, how a thousand candid trip emails turned into the spine of a book, and how stepping onto a Moth stage helped her break years of writer’s block through live feedback and human connection.
Ann talks about going from “nothing interesting to say” to viral videos, bestsellers, and messages from listeners who find her voice calming and brave. Along the way, we dig into practical strategies for navigating depression: build routines that move your body, choose environments that give you energy, keep creative commitments small and repeatable, and ask what the real worst-case scenario is before you say no. If you’ve ever wondered whether a second act can start at 59—or 72—this is your sign to follow whatever gives you life, even if it begins with a single song.
If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review to help more listeners find stories like Ann’s. Your next yes might be closer than you think.
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Well, hello, and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today we've got a very special guest. Her name is Ann Abel, and she's an author, a storyteller, and an influencer. Her first memoir, Maddie, Milo, and me, in 2024, was inspired by her Moth Story Slam win in New York City. She holds an MFA from New School for New for Social Research and an MBA from the University of Cholera of Chicago. Sorry, my reading skills are lacking today. And a BS in chemical engineering from Tufts. She's freelanced for multiple outlets and featured in Newsweek's Boomer Story about how she met her husband of 45 years. Captivates Internet. Her new book, inspired by her moth story Slam win in Chicago, is High Hopes, a memoir. And I think that's enough of an intro. Welcome to the show. Um, I hope I didn't screw that up too bad. I'm dealing with a chemotherapy rebound, and my brain is coming back into my head. Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you very much. It's really good to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Wonderful, wonderful. Well, um, you have a compelling story, and I always like to find out uh from our guests kind of how you came to here. And by that I mean I know that your story uh talks about uh a Bruce Springsteen concert and all that. I don't know if your story goes back before that, but why don't you kind of share how did you get to this place?
SPEAKER_00:All right. Well, I think in my next time I do a bio, I'm going to say I'm a late-in-life author, storyteller, and interpretation.
SPEAKER_01:There you go.
SPEAKER_00:Because my I suffer with severe, severe, severe depression, severe current depression. And um, you know, I've had ECT electroconvulsive therapy three times. You know, you know, I really, really was depressed, and I still depressed. I don't think you're ever cured of depression, but um at the age of 59, I had never been to a concert.
SPEAKER_01:My parents Oh, nowhere.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, I know it's so weird. When I first started telling the story, people, how could you not be to a con go to a concert? And it never, I was like, What do you mean? How could I never have gone to a I mean it never occurred occurred to me, but at the age it as a matter of fact, in 1964, when 73 million people tuned into the Ed Sullivan show to watch the Beatles, 12-year-old me wasn't one of them. My mother saw me turn on the television, and she said, It's a waste of time. Go to your room and do something constructive. Wow. And I just want to say before I get started on the story, that my story shows that it is never too late to start to feel better, start to move forward. I mean, that's something that I've learned now. Um, so that was so that was at the age of 59. I had never been to a concert. And then my Labor Day weekend, 2012, my son and daughter-in-law came at the last minute to Philadelphia to visit so they could go to a Bruce Springsteen concert. I knew nothing about the man and I had no interest in seeing him. But a few hours before the show, I pushed myself up off the couch to go because I wanted to spend time with my kids. Now, that summer I had undergone my third regimen at ECT, and the treatment had to be stopped halfway through because I didn't, I was losing my memory. And as a result of the memory loss, I didn't remember the July wedding of my son at Donald, the ceremony, the guests, anything. So that's why I wanted to be with them. And um, so but now we were together at the stadium when we got to our seats, they started telling me wedding stories and showing me pictures on their phones. And in one picture, they're Lindsay and Robert, they're flanked on one side by her parents, and the other side by my husband, Andy. Me, they're beaming, her parents are smiling, my husband's smiling. I'm just staring into the camera, trance, like vacant. I'm not smiling or frowned, I'm not there. And looking at that photograph, I just felt a jab in my heart. I felt like a tourist in my own life, and then all of a sudden, the crowd at the state, 40,000 people just furiously rose in unison, and I rose too. And again, I knew nothing, nothing. Um, and up on this giant screen was the face of a man with the biggest kindest smile I had ever seen. And my heart just opened for him and the 40,000 people around me, and I was swaying you know, his energy filled the stadium, and his energy filled me, and I was swaying and clapping and smiling. And this man who had 62 and three years older than me did not stop. And if he could keep doing it, so could I. Three plus hours, Bruce Springsteen's energy, enthusiasm, and humanity lifted me for three plus hours. He made me feel like I had a chance, he made me feel alive. I had never, when the concert was over, I just looked down at the dark stage, just shaking my head in disbelief that it was possible to feel so good, so happy, so energetic. And it was the opposite of anything I had ever felt before. Then a year later, um, after having one desk too many thrown at me at the community college where I had taught for five years, I just walked out the door and thought, that's it. I'm never coming back. But as soon as I was in my car heading home, I was panicking. I was terrified that without the structure and focus of the classroom, I'd slide back into the abyss. And I wasn't doing ECT again. That had the last time had been a disaster. And I knew I had to think outside the box and grab onto a lifeline fast. And I somehow had seen that Bruce Springsteen was going to be touring in Australia in four months, and I remembered how hopeful and alive I felt. I'd gone to a few more of his concerts the previous year, how hopeful and alive. And as I remember exactly where I was, you know, merging onto the expressway. I thought, I know I'll go to Australia in February and follow the High Hopes Bruce Springsteen tour. Now, I have to tell you, I hate to travel, I hate to be alone. And remember, I hadn't known who this guy was a year earlier, but I really was fighting for my life, and I'm not the kind of person who can go, you know, my kids are grown, my husband travels. I could sitting in the family room of an empty house, I'm not the kind of person I need to be moving. I knew I needed so I went home and booked the trip. Within a week, the trip was booked and paid for eight concerts, five cities over 26 years. Wow. And I was terrified. I was terrified. If I could have just disappeared from the world in a wisp of smoke and not left anyone sad behind me, I would have preferred that. But that wasn't a choice. Right. And I went, I mean, I was really, really terrified. And I did not go on this trip to change, but I came home a different person. And that was just the beginning. Um, I for the first time in my life when I came back, the first time I had a positive ball of energy and a story about me that I was proud of. You know, a story I wanted to tell. And I suffered with severe, severe writer's block. But we ended up moving to Chicago for what was supposed to be four months, but I liked it. There's so much. I stayed there for two and a half years, and my husband, after six months, commuted from Philadelphia to Chicago. I found a storytelling community. I had never heard of storytelling, and I had never, but I started telling, you know, I knew I had this one story and I just wanted to learn how to tell it. And then I um one thing led to another, and I now have two books. I mean, you know, the transformation that began with that trip continues 12 years later, a year ago, when the first memoir, Maddie, Milo, and me came out. The publisher said I should go on social media to promote it. And this seemed daunting. I someone had put me on Facebook 15 years ago. I didn't know what to do, but it now we're living in New York. Another dog walker came in. I said, Do you know anyone who does social media? And she gave me the name of this 19-year-old computer science major at CUNY here who did social media for her. And I now call him Maestro or Steven Spielberg. We've had 26 viral videos. I have over 720,000 followers. And these are people who and my parents, until the days each of them died, told me not to talk to them because I had nothing interesting to say. But then we started doing the social media and people started writing. You're in your voice is soothing, your voice is calming, you're inspiring. It was surreal. Like I didn't understand it. But you know, I've been doing it now. And um, so this trance, this is all just you know, certainly in the last 12 years and a lot of in the last three years. So I say it's never too late to start to feel better. I mean, I I still wake up in the morning with a thud, but you know, you just keep um you just keep persevering and you just and I say you have to be open. Like if I gone to that first concert, I didn't care about Bruce Springsteen and his music. I just wanted to be with my kids. And if when the concert started and everyone was into the music, if I just crossed my arms and said, Okay, I I can't stand this, you know. But but you know, if you're open as you go through your and I didn't want to go on this trip, but at home people rolled their eyes that I was chasing this rock star across this aging rock star. But in in um Australia, many people called me courageous, and young people told me they couldn't get their mothers off the couch to do things they had done before they retired. And each time someone said something positive to me, as disbelieving as I was, I would step outside myself and try to see the me they were seeing. And I'm not saying every song and every concert was about depression, but Bruce Springsteen did have songs that resonated with me and that I found validating. And of course, he's fun. I had never done the three-letter F word until I went to one fun to one of his concerts. But so there were things that you know got me, kind of woke me up a little bit on this trip, even though that wasn't why I went. And it was just it's been baby step. It's just I don't, you know, and I don't know what the next thing is for me, but it's just been baby steps and being open. I never say no when someone asks me to do something, even if I have no, I'm doing a TEDx talk next week. When they asked me to do this in September, I was like, I have no idea how to do this. I don't say no, I don't say no. And then I just it's sort of like you jump and figure out how to land, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it's so funny. Just a couple of days ago, I saw an old Jim Carrey movie called The Yes Man, and it was about what you were just talking about. He went to some you know motivational speaker, and it was all about just say yes to everything. And I have to watch that, I love him. It was transformative, you know, for his character, but it sounds like you live this. And um I I'm I'm kind of the same way. My wife is always saying no to everything, and I'm always the one that says, sure, let's do it. Right.
SPEAKER_00:You know, my husband's like that too. Everything's he's and I'm like, what's the worst that will happen?
SPEAKER_01:What's you're never gonna know unless you try, and right, you know, I I think that when you say yes, you open the door for something positive to happen. And if you fail, exactly you pick up yourself up and do it again. You know, you say I did my best, and if that's not good enough, we'll go find somebody else.
SPEAKER_00:And I actually, that's one of my sayings is that really one of the strongest things you can do is just try your best. Because if you try your best and you don't and you don't succeed, well, you have the self-respect that you've tried. And you can no one could do more than try their best. That's right.
SPEAKER_01:No, 100%. And I think that when you try your best, you put yourself in a position to get even better. Like, you know, if a bodybuilder only lifts the same amount of weight every day, they'll never get stronger, but they always try to beat their best. You know, the runner always tries to get a little faster, the whatever, you know, you always try to do a little better than you did before. And it's that pushing, you know, the human spirit has the ability to transcend where we've been. And I think that that's it all comes from that place of saying, all right, I'm going all out, I'm gonna give it all I got. And then when I think I've given it all I got, I'm gonna give it a little more. And if it doesn't work out, so what? You know, right.
SPEAKER_00:I I as someone who suffers with depression, and I think people who suffer with that, one of the hard things is motivating yourself because you you know, you feel stuck and you don't have energy and you don't have energy and it and you feel hopeless, it's just you know, so it can be so I also say about that, just take you know, the mouth most powerful thing any of us can do is to take that first step toward a connection to someone or something, just one step, just take one step towards something.
SPEAKER_01:And so with depression, I I've been fortunate in my life, I've never suffered depression except for brief moments of you know, tremendous failure, and you get a just a moment of being down, but but I know plenty of people who do suffer depression, and I I understand the reality of it, even though I I've not experienced it. And I I I know that like you can feel stuck in a where where you just like you were saying, you just don't want to move, you don't want to just want to lay there and and just disappear. And when you get on a trip, you know, I've traveled around the states quite a bit and the world a little bit, but when you travel, you find yourself in the midst of all these people you don't know. And you know, I'm kind of even though you know I do this all day long and I interview people I don't know and I talk to people I don't know all the time, I'm good at it, I like it. But my natural instinct is just to stay in my own little show. Like I don't go out and generally start a conversation with somebody. Whereas my wife, she walks right up to everybody and she's just has no problem talking to anybody. I I would imagine if the depression was, you know, prevalent and you're in a uh a place with lots of people. Like, I know you must have met a lot of people on this trip. Tell me a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a really interesting point. Now, first of all, we used to think I was an introvert, but since I came back on my trip, I took a Myers-Briggs test, and it turns out I'm an extrovert. So I was an extrovert in depressed people's clothing. Wow. But um, so first of all, on this trip, to be honest, it was 26 days. Um, and really, except for people I was sitting next to at concerts, the only people I talked to were people that like I was paying for a service for a ride or for a meal. And over the course of 26 days, uh I mean, I got exponentially more lonely. And I was also having issues, and this is in the book, with one of my sons. So I, you know, there were times where I really could feel myself being pushed closer to the abyss, but then I would, and the reason I went on the trip was that for the structure and focus of the trip. And and I and now one thing I've always loved to do, even when I was at home, my kids had left home in the afternoon when I feel really dip, like just really, believe it or not, I'd get in my car and drive to the Whole Foods parking lot, and I would just watch people. I would it would be fascinating to see them. What cars did they get out of, and how they walked into the store and how they walked out, and you can sometimes see their groceries, and you know, just I I just found that I love being a fly on the wall. And when I got to Australia, it turned out I stayed in the same hotels as Bruce Springsteen and a lot of the band, E Street Band. So I had never been a fly on an A Street, an A-list wall, and I'm also invisible. I found out. So I would literally, like in one hotel, it was just this tiny lobby, and two of the bandmates and the manager were sitting on this bench. I just went and sat next to them. My our shoulders were touching, they don't even notice me. And I would listen to the conversations, and that would give me energy. And there were times, you know, there was one incident in the book where I had an interchange with my son, and I just uh I ended up falling asleep, which I never sleep, that's not my thing in the afternoon. And I decided I wasn't gonna go to the concert that night, I just wasn't in the mood. I did, and then I ended up going, you know, I got to I've got a my a driver, and I said, Okay, you can drive me there, but I'm probably gonna leave early. He said, Oh, I've never heard anyone leaving a Bruce Springsteen concert early. And as we're driving there, he was talking to me. He knew about the music industry, and by the time we got there, the 15 minutes of just talking to him had given me energy. And when I got out of the car, I said, you know what? I think I'm gonna stay. Um so that part of it was, you know, so even though I didn't necessarily talk to people and I did get lonely, when I needed energy, I would I could go down to a lobby and just watch. Um, I'm not really into sightseeing, so I didn't do any of that.
SPEAKER_01:So you would like you would like connect to somebody's energy and and without purposefully engaging them, you were able to just just feed off of their surroundings.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, just what listening to what they were saying, and even it wasn't even just the band members. Sometimes I'd be like a young couple who had had just gotten married. This was their it was just like as a sociocultural anthropologist, it was just interesting for me to listen to all these very different conversations, whether in a dining room or in a lobby. And it I I and actually, I told the travel agent when I booked the trip I only want to do three things. I want to go to eight concerts, work out, because that that's the only thing that has ever helped me with my depression. And I want to write. And I suffer with severe writer's block. So I was I was surprised to hear myself say that because I'd been teaching English for five years at this community college. And in those five years, I'd just been happy teaching other people to write. But as I was thinking about the trip, my will to be happy or my instinct to survive had bubbled up and told me, reminded me that I want to write. And every morning I would go to breakfast at like 6:30 and I'd read my newspapers, and then 12 people at home asked me to send them emails and tell them about my trip. And that was all I needed to help the like if I think someone's interested in hearing what I have to say, I wrote over 26 days, I wrote a thousand pages of emails. You know, there was stuff happening, some of it was about what I was, but I was also thinking and reading a lot and thinking about, you know, you're alone for 26 days, you have time to do some pretty deep thinking. And I actually, when I finally got around to making myself sit down and write high hopes, which you know, it took some it I came home from that trip in 2014 and I sat down to start writing it in 2018, maybe. Um I had printed out all these emails and I just started not and started there.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. You'd already told the story.
SPEAKER_00:You sort of yeah, I mean, and that wasn't the whole story, but that was you know, it helped it it helped me a lot.
SPEAKER_01:So when did you first um realize that you like to write? You know, was it something that you did early on in life and just you know, because I've always written, I never published anything, but you know, I've always journaled and I've always liked to write, but I never, you know, I never felt the need to get it out there for anybody else to read.
SPEAKER_00:Well, believe it or not, when I was a junior in high school applying to colleges at the last minute, which for reasons I will not go into here, my father, who never talked to me and told me I had nothing interesting to say, remember, said, came to my room and said, if you want us to pay for college, you will go to engineering school and major in chemical engineering. And I my father was not someone you spoke back to. He threw my dog down when I was seven down the stairs and killed them. I mean, he was a scary guy. Yeah, he was a scary guy. My mother was what I now know is called a dark triad. So my father wasn't someone you talked back to, but I said, Dad, I've never gotten above a C in math or science. But you know, I went, I just wanted to please my parents. I kept thinking if I did everything they wanted me to, eventually they would accept me, which never happened. But I got the engineering degree, I got an MBA East you read all that stuff. And finally, um, when my second son was born, I just I I just I read a book by Ann Beatty called Pictur, and the main the protagonist was a photographer, and she would go, and I thought, that's what I want to do. I can be a fly in a wall. You go to PTA meetings, you go to weddings, you're a photographer, you get to see everything. So I studied photography for four years, two years, and I liked it, but I hated, believe it or not, the camera. Like I hated having the camera between me and the person, and plus, it's a lot of pressure if you don't get it in that moment. It's not like writing where you can think about it. So, and then one day toward the end of the program, this young, I was in my 40s, this young 18-year-old who was really, really good, said to me, You should spend more time in the dark room. And I had spent my whole life doing shoulds, and I didn't like the dark room. So I just left the I went downstairs, it was in March, the middle of a spring semester at this community college. I knocked on the creative writing teacher's door and said, Can I sit in on your class? And the next day I sat down in her class and it was like, oh my god, I felt like I was home. Wow and um, and so I got an MFA, and I could write anything anyone asked me to write. Like if an editor said, Write about that tree in your backyard, I want 5,000 words, he could have it the next day. But if I looked out the window and thought, oh, I love that tree, I want to write about it, after one minute, I'd say, so what? Who cares? And I couldn't do it. So I could write for other people, but I couldn't write for me. And that was why it was like so remarkable that I finally was able to do this high hopes. And and then what happened was I was in the middle of writing High Hopes. It was during the lockdown, and an editor had it, and she was sitting on it forever. And a friend kept saying, Write about Milo, write about Milo, who was this really I ended up falling in love with him, but he was a rescue dog, a really aggressive rescue dog I got by accident but couldn't return. And I said, I can't write. And then I found 50 pages I had written about him right 15 years earlier when he died, and I quickly had a beginning, middle, and end. And I thought, you know, I'll try to get this one out into the world, and then I'll go back and work on high hopes, and that's what happened. So that's how I thought too.
SPEAKER_01:Now, storytelling as as a performance art is I would think much more difficult than writing because writing you can go over and over again and edit, and you nobody's watching. You might have a deadline, but you still you you have the ability to hit the rewind button if you want to. Whereas if you're sitting in front of an audience and you're telling a story, like you got one shot, it's live, and and you're a performance artist at that point. It seems like that would be the most difficult element of from being depressed to sharing your life in a vulnerable way. Um, how did you make that leap?
SPEAKER_00:Well, that was actually the bridge that got me over the writer's blog. We got to Chicago, and um, I knew I had this story to tell about my like I finally had a story about me that I was proud of. It was the first time in my life, the story about the trip. But I have this writer's block, and then the first day there, our dog, I said, I said to my dog, What do you do when you're not walking dogs? And she said, I host a storytelling open mic, and I also tell stories at the moth. I had never heard of storytelling or the moth. But I knew I had a story to tell. I'd never stood on a stage or in front of a mic, but I forced myself to go to open mics and tell the story. And the thing that's amazing though, you're right, you're right there in front of people. But the good thing is, unlike writing, if you tell an okay story or people come up and they say nice things, you know, positive things to you, which you don't get when you're sitting by yourself writing a story. So that was like amazing to me, you know. That was amazing that people would say, and soon people were asking me to be in their story, you know, their shows. And then I went to the moth, and then a friend took me to the moth, which I'd never been to. When we got there, he said, you have to put your name in. And I was terrified, but I did it. And then I got called that night as the last storyteller. And I was, you know, I stumbled, I tripped on the you can go to my website, the story's there. I told the five-minute story about Australia, and um, I tripped up the stairs going there. The lights are so bright, I couldn't see the audience. Wow, but as I started speaking, I you know, I could hear people laughing and gasping and connecting, and then I won. And like, you know, that gave me again. My parents had told me I had nothing interesting to say at the dinner table. My father used to say, you can listen, but don't speak. But now people were saying, you know, the audiences were telling me something different. And when I went on social media last year, that was people. I'm telling you, it was at first, it was just unbelievable. And I didn't understand, I couldn't understand it when they'd say your voice is soothing. I would just be sitting there telling a story, and they'd write, your voice is soothing, calming, you're inspired, inspiring. You know, I finally one of them I said, what do you mean? And she wrote to me and she said, I'm in my 80s, I'm in late stage uh um lupus. I have late stage lupus, but you listening to you inspires me to get up in the morning, you know. So you know, it's the validation, you know, so many of us are struggling. And you know, uh one of the Bruce Springsteen moments at a concert, he went back and forth on the stage saying over and over, how do you get through the day and stay alive inside? And when I heard that, I thought, well, if he can say this to an arena full of fans, I must not be the only one feeling like this. It's okay to struggle and to try and try again. And for it helps to feel valid, you know, knowing you're not the only one struggling, whatever it is, you know, if you're sick or you're mentally ill, you know, it's okay to keep trying and struggling. I I don't know, somehow it helped me and it it it it helps my followers.
SPEAKER_01:So these two books that that you've published, where are those that's that's your body of published work? Are the the Maddie Milo and me and High Hopes a memoir?
SPEAKER_00:Those are the two books. I mean, I did freelance for years and years, and some of that's and I did some articles for magazines last year, it's all on my website. I mean, for years I freelanced, I you know, sure.
SPEAKER_01:And I how how have the books been received?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I will tell you something really crazy. So I told you the the publisher said to go on social media while um so the book came out in April. We started doing social media later that you know, during the summer. In November, we had I've had now had 26 viral videos in a year. The first viral video we did, people wanted to see my apartment. I'm like, are you crazy? Okay, okay. Well, the video went viral in a million, I forget how many, maybe a million views, too many, and a thousands of comments. I'm buying your book, I'm buying your book. The book's been out four or five months. And do you know that book, Maddie Milo, and me, is now the publisher's all-time bestseller. Every time I would have a viral video, the book sales, you could see it on Amazon two days later. If you looked at the ranking, you you know, so social, you know, it there's a lot of bad things about social media, but it's it's really helped me with the book, with my book. It gets people to know about it.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Well, it sounds like this is a very recent story of transformation. I mean, you know, in in your life, this is really it's only been a little while that that all of this has happened. And where do you see yourself going from here? I mean, you know, you've just gotten started on this incredible journey of of you know being able to uh let your voice reach many, many people, and and you're you've been held in an inspiring role. You're doing a TEDx talk. Where do you go from here?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's a little scary, actually, to be honest, because you know, I've had these two books, and you know, that's very structured, and you, you know, and to be honest, I mean, it's it's really and I I will use the word terrifying because I'm not good because I have I would love to write a third memoir. I've written parts of it when I work out every day, but I'm 72. There are days when I, you know, I have Achilles problem, I have to, I can't work out, you know, various spine surgeries. And then I force myself to sit down and write. So I would love to write a third memoir called She Tried and She Tried and She Tried, because that's what I do. Um, but again, I have to fight this really horrible writer's block, but that's what I'm trying to gear up for right now. And to keep it the social media. I mean, I hate to travel, but my husband had to give a paper in June last um in Paris last June. He was supposed to give it in last September, but he had surgery, so he went in June. I would never have gone, but people we started doing posts around New York City and people love them. So someone said, Ann, you should go to Paris, maybe. And I went to Paris, and now you can believe it. I'm going to Japan in May.
SPEAKER_01:Nice.
SPEAKER_00:That's someone, because it's viral. So so I I don't like to travel, but look, if I don't do it now, when am I gonna do it? Right?
SPEAKER_01:I love it, I love it. Well, it sounds like um yeah, you have a uh a message of of hope and infinite possibilities.
SPEAKER_00:And don't give up, and don't give up, it's never too late. That's all I can say.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is like, you know, you have this background of depression, and I'm sure, like you say, it's always sort of there, but you you deal with it. What would you say, you know, to our listeners that are dealing with depression or think they might be dealing with depression and and they're feeling you know lost or or not feeling like doing anything? What would your message be to them?
SPEAKER_00:Well, just try to find one thing that interests you or gives you energy, whether it's sitting in a Starbucks and watching people, or just if you need to get out of the house, if if you're an extrovert, you know, if that would help. I mean, you can get help. I you know, help is always good to get help, professional help, but don't give up. Just keep trying and keep asking and keep trying to figure it out. And really, I'm proof. I'm 72, and so much has happened to me in the last few years, never mind the last 12 years, and take a chance if you have to. What's the worst that's gonna happen?
SPEAKER_01:I love it. That's a beautiful message. Well, how does somebody get a hold of you, find your information, your social media, all of that? It sounds like there's gonna be people that are like, Well, I want to hear what she's up to. How do they do that?
SPEAKER_00:Um, I'm on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, and it's Ann Sema Abel. That's my name. A-N-N-E-S-I-M-A-A A-B-E-L is my hand, I guess you call it a handle, and my website, it everything's on my website, is Ann Abel. So it's A-N-N-E-A-B-E-L author.com. And everything is there that you can.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and I I want to thank you for joining us today. And um, as always, well, as as often is the case, uh, conversation seems like uh we never get all the way through everything. And I'd like to invite you anytime you see fit to come back and and continue sharing your story with us. And uh just want to thank you for uh for being here with us today.
SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you so much. And when you want me, just let me know.
SPEAKER_01:I certainly will. Excellent. Well, this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and I want to thank all of our listeners for making this show possible, and we will see you next time.
