Welcome, Late Boomers! We're Cathy Worthington and Merry Elkins, and this week, we set sail on a truly transformational journey with Alison Gieschen—author, former horse farm owner, educator, and intrepid world sailor.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to leave everything behind and follow a lifelong dream? In this inspiring episode, Alison shares how she dared to reinvent her life, selling her horse farm and embarking on an adventure with her husband to sail around the world. From the lush hills of upstate New York to the remote islands of French Polynesia, Alison opens up about her life's boldest moves, the storms she’s weathered—physically and emotionally—and how it all fuels her work as a writer.

We dive deep into Alison’s bestselling books, The Seven and A Mermaid’s Tale, the profound lessons she’s learned traveling to over 49 countries, and the universal themes of courage, culture, and resilience that weave through her stories. You'll also hear incredible anecdotes, like surviving life-threatening storms at sea, encounters with solo sailors, and how her lifelong love of horses continues to inspire her writing—even while anchored in paradise.

Key Takeaways

1. Reinvention Is Possible at Any Age: Alison’s journey from horse farmer to global sailor proves it's never too late to answer the call of adventure.
2. Facing and Managing Fear: Learn how Alison turned fear into fuel, surviving tumultuous ocean storms and emerging with a deeper understanding of her own resilience.
3. The Transformative Power of Travel: Discover how experiencing different cultures shaped Alison's worldview and the authentic characters in her novels.
4. Writing from Life: Hear how personal stories, hardships (like her son’s bullying), and the solace of animals are woven into her fiction and children’s books.
5. Simplicity Breeds Joy: Alison discusses the happiness she’s witnessed in communities with few material possessions, offering a powerful message for all of us in the West.
6. Finding Community on the Water: Even in the vastness of the ocean, Alison found deep connection and camaraderie with fellow sailors from around the world.
7. Actionable Inspiration for Listeners: Alison encourages everyone to carve out distraction-free time to pursue creativity—and to be brave enough to make the leap toward that “someday” dream.

Ready to be inspired for your own third act—or maybe just to ignite your curiosity about life’s possibilities? We invite you to:

1. Subscribe to Late Boomers wherever you listen to podcasts (Apple, Spotify, etc.) so you never miss these empowering conversations.
2. Check out Alison Gieschen’s books, especially The Seven, A Mermaid’s Tale, Sienna, Riding the Waves of Reality, Blue Ridge, and The Legend of Altor—perfect whether you’re a horse lover, adventurer, or in need of a dose of hope.
3. Visit our website at lateboomers.us for more inspiring content and to get in touch.
4. Share this episode with a friend who needs encouragement to take that leap into their own new chapter.

Remember, it’s never too late to reinvent, to set your course in a new direction, and to live your adventure with style, power, and impact.

Stay curious. Stay bold. And join us next week for another episode of Late Boomers!

With love,

Cathy & Merry

Mentioned in this episode:

Late Boomers is part of the eWomenPodcastNetwork.

eWomenPodcastNetwork

Welcome to Late Boomers, our podcast guide to creating your third act with style, power, and impact.

Hi, I'm Cathy Worthington, and I'm Merry Elkins. Join us as we bring you conversations with successful entrepreneurs, entertainers, and people with vision who are making a difference in the world.

Everyone has a story, and we'll take you along for the ride on each interview, recounting the journey our guests have the path they've taken to get where they are, inspiring you to create your own path to success. Let's get started.

Hello everyone and welcome to Late Boomers, the podcast where we talk about reinvention, curiosity, and what happens when you decide it's not too late to do something bold. I'm Cathy Worthington.

And I'm Merry Elkins. And today's conversation is truly about bold moves, the kind that made people say, Wait, what?

So many people dream about changing their lives completely, but very few actually do it. They stay put, they talk themselves out of it, or they say maybe someday.

Uh-huh, that's true. Our guest didn't say someday, she said now. She sold her horse farm, let go of the life she'd built, and set sail literally around the world.

And along the way, She's written novels that reflect adventure, humanity, and deep inner transformation. Her books include The Seven and A Mermaid's Tale.

Alison Gieschen is an author, sailor, former educator, former horse farm owner, and a living example of what can happen when you trust the call to reinvent.

Alison, welcome to Late Boomers. We're so happy to have you.

Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

It's great to have you. So Allison, what made you decide to sell everything you owned, including your horse farm, and sail around the world?

Well, it actually started when I was about 8 or 9 years old and I lived on a 100-acre farm in upstate New York. And the only body of water that was anywhere around me was a pond. And I knew nothing about sailing. I mean, just wasn't even a thought in my mind until one day I was walking across the field with my bare feet. I remember the grass and the feel of the grass under my feet. And I don't know what animal I was going off to feed because we had a huge farm. But I got this, I want to say, like a premonition or like a dream. And I found myself standing on the front of a boat.

Moving across water, and I was mesmerized. I thought, this is the most incredible feeling in the world, being on a boat powered by sails going across water. And I thought, how cool would it be to sail around the world someday? Because I pictured the Earth and being covered, you know, by mostly by water. I'm like, what, how incredible would that be? So I ran in the house and I said to my mom, Mom, I want to learn how to sail. And she's like, okay, honey, that's nice, you know, whatever. So fast forward to college where I started competitively sailing in North Carolina on Lake Norman, which is this 80-mile man-made lake. And friends of ours got into sailing and I decided to take it up because of course I had this dream when I was a child and I fell in love with it. And then my mom and dad retired and they moved to the coast of North Carolina where my mom decided she was going to become the fastest woman skipper in the Pamlico Sound.

Wow.

However, there were no other women skippers, so she just decided she was going to be the fastest sailor, period. So she started taking names and winning regattas and had all these— her room full of trophies. And I would go on weekends and sail with her sometimes. And then she had this big, uh, regatta called the Michelob Cup, and it was like, you know, the be-all and end-all for the season. And of course I had to be there. Now, meanwhile, my cousin worked with this really handsome eligible bachelor up in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard who was a Merchant Marine, a naval engineer, and a 3-time sailing champ, dinghy sailing champion. And he said to him, hey, you want to come down to North Carolina and meet my eligible, um, cousin and be in a sailboat race? And he's like, sure, absolutely. So he came down, and that weekend we sailed, we windsurfed, we We scuba dived, we canoed, we did every sport activity that I absolutely love.

And we were at a bar the night before— he was going back to Philly and I was going back to Charlotte— and he said, my dream is to sail around the world someday. I said, mine too, let's get married. So we did that. Yeah, he asked me to marry him the 4th day after that that we were together, and I said yes. And his dad was a Lutheran minister, so we couldn't tell anybody. We just had to keep it secret. But, uh, his dad married us on the lawn where we met less than a year later.

Oh, what a story.

So romantic.

Yeah.

So of course, it— when we got married, we had to— I apologize for all the lights changing. My boat is doing this in the harbor, and as we do that, the, uh, sun shifts. But anyway, um, I had to move up there with him because he had the stable job and I came with horses, so he built me a horse farm, and then we had children right away. So it wasn't until 30 years later when my last son got married that he said to me, you know what, Derek is married now. Let's make our 5-year plan and let's do it.

Wow. Tell us where you're coming from today too.

Today I am in the beautiful Marquesas Islands, which is in the French Polynesia, is part of the French Polynesia. And unfortunately our engine is broken, so we can't go anywhere at the moment. And we're waiting for a part from Tahiti to be shipped here so we can fix our engine. But then we'll be exploring the rest of the French Polynesians, Tahiti, Bora Bora, all the Tuamotus and the atolls and all the beautiful things to see here.

Oh, I love it there. That's wonderful.

Gorgeous.

And I have a question for you. What's the most unexpected lesson you learned about yourself while sailing through a storm, and how did it shape your writing?

Um, I guess I learned how terrified I could be and how I would be fearing for my life, because I actually worked really hard to prepare for this. I actually did a 1,000-mile training passage with— on a sailboat, uh, with a very, very experienced man who teaches people how to be blue water sailors. That's what you call yourself when you, you know, go offshore is blue water sailing. And, um, the very first time we tried to cross the Atlantic, uh, we got caught in like— I don't know if you've seen the movie A Perfect Storm where the two fronts converge and the waves get bigger and bigger. When we got caught in that scenario and we had $14,000 worth of damage to our boat, our dinghy got ripped right out of the handles, right out of the deck, and my husband had to go up and cut it free on these 20-foot waves or it would have demasted us. And when he cut that dinghy free and I saw it disappear in like absolutely one second, like if he goes overboard, I'm just going to jump in and go because I am not staying on this boat by myself. And it just was horrible. We lost a solar panel and a titanium whisker pole and all our scuba gear.

And it was, it was devastating. And, um, I thought maybe I can't do this. Maybe I don't have what it takes. And then I got PTSD. And every time we'd go out, we eventually did cross again, but every time the weather started getting rougher than predicted, I would have anxiety and panic attacks. So we got to the Caribbean and we got to the island of— which island was it now? One of the Caribbean islands. And we pulled into a harbor with 100 boats. And because everybody kind of congregates in the same popular harbors, so we put down anchor and 3 boats away— I'll never guess who was 3 boats away.

It was the man that I did the 1,000-mile training passage, my mentor. And the chances of him being in the same harbor as I was was just astronomical odds.

Wow.

So we called him on the radio and we're like, John, we're— this is Dan and Allison, we're 3 boats away. And he's like, oh, come over for happy hour. So we get in our dinghy and we go over to his boat and we're, you know, greeting each other and everything and having happy hour. And then finally he turns to me and he goes, so how's it going? And I just start tearing up. I'm like, oh my God, it's so bad. We got caught in this really terrible storm and this and this. And I tell him the whole story and he starts laughing and I'm going, why are you laughing? And he said, do you know how lucky you are? I'm like, no. He goes, most people, if that had happened to them, they would have gone straight to shore, sold the boat, never got back on it again.

But you never made it.

Your husband did great. Your boat did great. And you're still out here. And the chances of that happening again are probably zero. So congratulations, you are going to be fine. And he was the only person in the world that could have looked at me and told me that, and I would have believed him because he was— he's written 5 books. I've read every one of them. He's my idol, and he was 3 boats away, and he talked me down out of a tree.

So I guess that was a really long-winded way of saying that I had a lot of self-doubts, and I learned to live with them. I learned that I am fearful. I'm probably the bravest chicken in the world. A lot scares me. I mean, a lot scares me. But I've learned how to manage my fear. And it wasn't something that I thought I would have to do.

Wow. Great.

And how did it shape your writing?

It gave me— well, actually, more than just that storm, but the whole process of— I mean, we've been to 49 countries and 4 continents. So seeing how people live in different parts of the world and how in the US we're just in this bubble, you know, we just take so much for granted and we have so many things and so many distractions. And the happiest cultures are the ones with the fewest things. Like this little island here, there's maybe 1,200 people on the island and they're the happiest people I've ever seen in my life. And they have nothing. When you walk by one of their homes, it's usually a little cement square, maybe, you know, 30 by 40, and you look inside, the only thing in there are mattresses on the floors. They don't have any decorations, they don't have any furnishings, they don't have anything, and yet the women are beautifully dressed. They're impeccable.

They always have flowers in their hair. The children run barefoot through the town. They go barefoot to school, and every night, every single night on shore, you will hear the groups of the children and the young people together and singing and the drums playing, and they just have the guys doing the drums and the beautiful vocals of the women and their voices blending together. And they do that every single night. If you just go sit there and you look at the expressions on their faces and the way that they flow when they dance and they move, you can just tell they're joyful. And it's because they have so little.

That's a message to the West, isn't it? I was actually interested in how the cultures that you've encountered across the 49 countries that you've visited How, how has that influenced the characters in your fiction and your books?

Well, that's really interesting because The Seven was a novel that I put out this past year, and it was actually inspired by a dream. Because unfortunately, being on a farm, even though I'm not near that farm, I still have to take care of the animals all night long when I sleep, and it really drives me crazy.

All night long while you're sleeping?

Yes, I have dreams that I have to feed something. Somebody's out of hay, somebody doesn't have grain. Oh my God, I've got to do this. And I'm running around taking care of everybody all night long.

Well, I was going to say, is it better than counting sheep? I don't know.

Yeah.

No, but sometimes I count my goats because I had a lot of dwarf Nigerian goats, which I milked and made yogurt and cheese. And, you know, they pop in my dream a lot. So I'm counting them sometimes. They're not sheep, though. But anyway, yeah.

How about characters?

So for the 7.

So the 7. So anyway, I had this dream and normally it's the horses that I own that I'm taking care of. And this time in my dream, it was horses I didn't know. And I was really taken back. Back because there was something different about these horses. And what I discovered in my dream is they could see inside the human soul. And they were determining if you were a good person or a bad person, if you appreciated the gifts of the earth or if you didn't. And they were judging humanity.

So I woke up from that dream and I said to my husband, Dan, oh my God, this was the most amazing dream. I have to make a book out of it. So I chose 7 characters from around the world, all different remote places. And every character or every location that character comes from has a special meaning to me. So, but I did research the history behind each of their cultures because they all come from cultures that you probably don't know about or wouldn't recognize. I mean, I certainly didn't know about them. So I heavily researched the geography, the cultures, the history of each of these people and the breed of horse that's associated with that part of the country or that part of the world. So it's almost like a historical fiction in some ways because everything you read about is actually true except for the storyline obviously isn't true.

So that— Oh, I can't wait to read it because I used to breed horses myself. I had a horse farm and I also had horses that were closer to Los Angeles that I could ride separate from that. And I do think that horses do look at people inside?

Well, you know, it's been scientifically proven that they influence a human's heartbeat. So people who have anxiety, horses are used in therapeutic riding programs because when you get next to a horse, their heart is so strong it will magnetically change the rhythm of your heart to match theirs. So they're great for, you know, when you're sad and you're standing next to a horse, they'll walk over closer to you. And I've had them just like put their head on my shoulder and, you know, you can feel their comfort and it's just incredible. So it was really interesting because one of my characters, I'll give you a hint, was a sailor and he ended up on an island in the French Polynesians, which made me really excited to get here because I had, I wrote the book before we actually arrived here. And so when we got to our first island of Hiva Oa and we're walking around this, you know, island with very little civilization, there's a herd of horses and they're just standing in the road. And I ran up to them and they were friendly. I could pet them and I'm hugging them and I'm going, I know where your ancestors came from.

I know how you got here. And I was so excited because I know how the very first horses landed on the Spanish ships that, you know, got caught in storms or shipwrecked and the horses all swam to shore. So I knew their history and I was really excited to share that with them.

Oh, I bet they were happy to see you too.

They were.

And, and you, since you are a former horse farm owner, as I am too, How did your bond with horses inspire your storytelling? You've touched on it a little bit. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Well, I've owned horses all my life. I never did not have a horse. Like, I even took my horses to college with me. And I actually qualified for the Junior Olympic screening trials in eventing. And my stirrup leather broke over the cross-country course. So I couldn't finish the course, but I would have been in the top 10. Like I was easily making the qualifying round, but that one moment changed the course of my life and is the whole reason that I started sailing and I met my husband. So it wasn't meant to be that I did a profession with horses, but they're in my soul to the point where my boat is named Equus, which is Latin for horse.

And we have a giant spinnaker that has a horse head on the front. So when we're going downwind and I put my giant spinnaker out, I have this, you know, 20-foot horse head in front of me taking across— taking us across the oceans.

So I love that.

That'll keep you safe.

Yes. So there are horses in several of my books. I have a book called Blue Ridge, which is where I kind of— the second half of my childhood spent in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and they fascinated me. So there's horses in that story, and there's horses in The Seven, but those are the only two books that actually have horses in them. Well, actually, I have a nonfiction, Heart of a Champion, but that's no longer in publication because the publishing company went out of business.

Oh, well, you have to move on to another one.

Well, someday. I'm just, I'm always, I'm always writing is the problem. I mean, I actually ghost, I'm actually ghostwriting my first like paying ghostwriting job for a new riding program. So, um, they're developing this new system of training horses for, uh, collection and extension and all this kind of stuff, like a real natural way. And I'm ghostwriting that right now.

Nice.

That's— it sounds like you, you apply your, your horse training to your writing.

I try.

So, um, I'm curious, what, what is one moment from your travels where someone's story, a stranger's story, changed your perspective on humanity?

I would have to say It was a solo sailor, and these people are crazy. I can barely get across oceans having somebody with me. I can't imagine being out there and on the ocean for a month with no other human being. And we met a man in— on the island of Crete in Greece, and he helped us get our boat. It was a really difficult place to bring your boat up to the dock, and he came running over in just a pair of shorts and was grabbing our lines and getting us all and I wanted to thank him. And his name was Nicholas. And I said, you know, why don't you come over and I'll cook you dinner tonight? Because I found out he was all by himself on his boat. So he came over and he told us stories that absolutely floored me.

For instance, he had a tattoo of this beautiful young girl on his chest, very large tattoo, very realistic, beautiful. And I had to ask him, okay, who's the tattoo? And he goes, well, it's my daughter. And then he told me this story of how he was crossing this Pacific Ocean that we just crossed with his wife who was 8 months pregnant, and she was planning on giving birth in French Polynesia. However, the baby came a week early and they weren't there yet, or it came a week before they got to land, and he delivered his baby girl out at sea. So his wife is screaming, you know, and she's pushing, and he's yelling, it's okay, honey, scream as loud as you want, there's nobody here to hear you. So He gets the baby in his arms and it's a beautiful evening and he walks out to the bow, to the stern of his boat and he takes his brand new baby and he dips her in the ocean and washes her off. And I'm just horrified because I'm like, oh my God, what if you dropped her? You know? Yeah. But anyway, he made it sound very, very romantic and very, you know, life-changing moment.

The moment that he held his baby girl and dipped her into the ocean, which was his love.

Wow.

And anyway, he had all kinds of very poignant stories, some, you know, near catastrophes and things. And he has rounded the planet 5 times by himself. He's gone around the globe 5 times. And I can barely get around once. So for him to do it by himself 5 times is absolutely incredible.

And I think after that, his wife didn't want to get in the boat with him.

They did get divorced. So apparently it wasn't, you know, a.

Match made in heaven. Wasn't her dream.

So I asked him, I said, how do you do it? How do you, how are you out to sea by yourself with nobody to talk to and nobody to interact with? And, you know, I just wanted to know. And he goes, well, that's easy. He said, I have a hat and I put it on my starboard winch, which is the thing you put the handle in and crank the sails in and out. He's like, put that on the winch and we have conversations. I'm like, okay. And he goes, you want to know why I don't talk to the port winch? I'm like, yeah, why? And he goes, because it won't talk back.

Huh.

Oh my gosh, what a spirit. Yeah, what a spirit.

His last journey, his last crossing, he was, um, I guess maybe 150 miles from shore and he got hit by a bolt of lightning and it disabled all his electronics. Did— or he did? His boat did. And it's really bad because you lose all your electronics when that happens. And because I was asking him, I said, have you ever been afraid? I want to know if you've ever felt fear. And he says, well, not really fear. But then he goes into the story about being 150 miles from his fifth crossing and his boat gets hit by lightning. And I'm, oh, you know, what were you scared of? And he goes, well, I thought maybe the boat would sink because it wasn't the strongest boat in the world and there might have, you know, been some structural damage when that lightning bolt hit. And I'm going, really? So anyway, um, he had to pull out the sextant and he had to navigate by the stars and he couldn't sleep.

He couldn't go to sleep because he had to hand steer the whole way. And, you know, he was absolutely exhausted when he pulled in, but he made it. So, um, I learned a lot from Nicholas. And, um, and every time I'm gonna— go ahead. Every time I'm in a situation where I start getting frazzled and start getting afraid, I think of Nick and I'm like, you know what, Nick wouldn't be afraid. If Nick can do it, I've got a great boat. My husband is like MacGyver at sea. He can— we've been sinking twice and he's actually like stopped us from sinking.

Um, if there's— I should not be afraid. Like, I should not be afraid.

Well, what was the biggest challenge transitioning from life on a farm to sailing the world, and how did it fuel your passion for writing?

Well, it made me more introspective and it gave me different, um, different viewpoints and different philosophies. Like when I was writing some of these characters in The Seven, I could sympathize more with where they were coming from, being the cultures that they came from, because I think until you step outside your own culture, you don't have that perspective. So, um, and my biggest challenge personally. Um, was missing my family because my, our, my 3 children were each a year apart in school, you know, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. And we did everything together. Everything was centered on our farm. Like all their friends came and they had all the same friends and we were just the place to hang out. And our favorite thing in the world was our vacations with our kids because we all skied, scuba dived, um, windsurf, sailed.

We did everything together and we were all really great buddies. And it was so hard, especially as they started having babies. And my grandson was 2 years old when we left. I'm like, is he even going to remember me? And then they've had 4 more since then. So, whoa, that's a big— not being near my children and my grandchildren has been really tough. But thank goodness we have Starlink now, so we can do FaceTime, and I get to talk to every one of my grandchildren at least once or twice a week. So that's been very helpful.

Do they love to sail too?

Well, little Orion, um, he stayed with us when he was about 2 and a half for, I want to say, 2 weeks, and he never asked for his mom and dad once. And he was up there every morning at 5 AM, and we were still at anchor, and he'd take the winch handle and he'd winch, and then he'd look out like he's looking and looking at the sails, and he'd practice again. And he just was watching what his grandpa did, and, you know, couldn't wait to actually get those sails up. And, um, he, he just absolutely was captivated and loved sailing at you know, like 2 and a half. And then he came and stayed with us in the Bahamas for a week and a half. And when he was a bit older, and I think they will all love being with us and meeting us places when they start to get a little older and can travel more.

Yeah, yeah, there's something— there's definitely something in your DNA.

Absolutely.

Yeah, my— well, Dan's father was a sailor, and that's how Dan learned to sail. And my mom, it was competitive sailor up until her 80s. She's 95 now, still lives on her own, and at 91 broke the North Carolina national bike record for 5K biking at 91. I love her.

I do too. That's hope for all of us.

91. Amazing.

And going strong.

Yeah, she's 90. She'll be 96 in June, and she's on zero medication. She does not take one single medication, and she can do 100 of these little push push-ups a day, and she walks a mile a day. How many? 100. She does them in 3 sets of 25, but she does 25, 25, 25, and 25.

Okay, Cathy, time to start working out like that.

Yeah.

So I was going to ask you a little bit of a different topic, um, but you mentioned that you, you weren't ever feeling alone because you were with your husband, but How, how does one balance the solitude of sailing with when you're actually working as a writer and out there, not sitting there at your typewriter or your computer, but being with people, the collaborative nature of it? How do you balance that? And do you have tips for aspiring writers?

I would say the thing that inspired my writing the most is getting out and living life. And having adventures and traveling and meeting people and talking to people because you're just so myopic when your only world is your home and your job and, you know, where you get your gas and where you do your grocery shopping. And there's so much out there to see and do. And there's something out there that is going to resonate with you on a level that you never realized. And when it hits you, you're going to be like, have your aha moment. Okay, this is what I want to write about. And then the more engrossed you become in it and the more you live in it, the more your words just flow onto the paper. I sit down and I write the movie that's playing in my head.

I never outline. I never pre-think anything. I just sit down and I start and the stories come to me and it's an incredible feeling. And it's, they're just like stories waiting to be born.

Do you write every day? And, and do you have like a discipline of getting up in the morning at a certain time and writing?

I do. I write mostly during the afternoons. Um, my husband is always repairing things and fixing things and cleaning things and doing that, and so I have like 3 or 4 hours that I just sit there and write. The only time that I can't write is if we're on passages and it's rough out, because I can't have the computer doing this and trying to type.

But we spent a lot— I think we forgot to mention to our listeners that you call yourself the nautical The Nautical Novelist. I love that.

He designed me a beautiful logo with a horse and a boat, and it's just really pretty, and I love it.

As a former educator, how do you use storytelling to teach lessons about culture or resilience in your writing and on your blog?

Oh, for instance, my son was bullied horribly in school. I wrote The Legend of Altor as a— I mixed in magic and wizards and really fun things, but the whole message is even though she finds this magical talisman that helps build her self-esteem, when she actually has to do away with it, she finds her own strength from within. And it's all about— she's the daughter of a minister and they moved because she was bullied really horribly. And then when they got to their new town, it just started all over again. Which with my son, I thought he changed schools and went to middle school, it would be over, but no, it started all over again. So the actual stories of her getting beaten up are the actual accounts of when my son was beaten up on the school bus and things like that, and books being knocked out of his hands in the hallways and things like that. So I like to take some truth and put it into my fiction. So all of my fiction stories have elements of truth and real people in them.

Because I just find that so motivating to be able to take things that are real and turn them into fantasy, or, you know, really make them more dramatic and bring them to life. So I love taking my— and I do that for every single one of my fiction books. Sienna I just published, which is a mermaid book, and obviously there I have not yet encountered a mermaid, but all of the sea life in this story is real. So all the sea creatures and the interactions that she has when she's down below the sea being the guardian of the sea It's all real, all fact-based. And in the back of the book are actual photos of each of the sea creatures with facts about them. And since I was a teacher, I have teacher's manuals to go with my children's book. So Sienna has a teacher's manual to go with it.

Oh, ideal. Very.

I wasn't thinking that it was a children's book. I was excited to read it myself.

Are you finding a marketplace for that? Because of the teacher manual and stuff? Is it getting into the places you need to sell it?

Well, marketing has been difficult for me. If I was on land, I'd be doing book tours. And when we did go back for November and December this year, I did, I think, 5 stops with my books and sold them and did book signings and all that kind of stuff. But when I get back to my boat, all I can do is kind of promote it here or there, or, you know, put it on social media. And I'm sure that I'm getting a fraction of what I could be getting if I was on land engaged and, you know, doing the marketing the whole time. But I'm okay.

You're having a life. You're having a better life.

I'd rather have a life and do what I'm doing. And then when this is all done, take the time to do that. So I'm comfortable with what I'm doing. I'm doing what I can and I'm okay with that.

Yeah. And certainly you can do it all remotely too, like you're doing with us from the Marquesas. So in a way, you answered this question that I had about the connection you found between the freedom of sailing and the discipline of writing. But what's the most surprising connection you found between that, the freedom of writing, the freedom of sailing, and the discipline of writing? And how can our listeners apply that, whether writers or Anyone in any sort of job or life, wherever they are, how can they apply that to their lives?

That's kind of tough because when you're in a house, you have to grocery shop, you have to go fill your car up with gas, your phone rings, you have to take care of your pets. You have so many distractions. And the more things you have, the more distractions you have, the more you're complicated your life becomes. When you scale it down to when you're living on 43 feet and everything you own could fit in one suitcase, like everything that's meaningful to me can fit in one suitcase, we have no distractions. I mean, we have to go to shore and go grocery shopping, but that's usually a 5-minute walk to a, you know, a little store or something. Um, and other than that, we've got the wind and we've got the sun. The sun powers us and the wind moves us. And writing, you can do it on a whole different level because you don't have that distractions.

And I don't know, other than moving to a cabin up in the mountains somewhere or turning off all of your phones and your electricity and just living in the moment. I know I wasn't capable of that when I lived on land. Um, there are animals, kids, jobs, husbands, all those things. I think it's almost impossible. To find what I have in a home situation, in a house on land. And I wish I could, like, say that there's something they could do other than just carving out a chunk of time and having consistency and not letting distractions pull you away from it. Because, you know, I can sit down for 4, 5, 6 hours and not leave my chair. And I don't know if everybody has that luxury.

It is a luxury. I'm a writer too. And Boy, the distractions are out there every second, and it's, it's tough. It's very tough.

Yeah, especially if you're writing on computer and stuff is popping on your phone and popping on your screen. Yeah. Well, Allison, many of our listeners feel the pull to reinvent. This is what we always talk about on our podcast, and I think that's what people resonate with us when they think of our podcast. But sometimes people are afraid. So what would you say to someone who feels the call but doesn't know how to begin?

I say that you have to go for it because if you don't, you're going to regret it. And as you're laying there and your life is coming to its end and you look back at the decision you made not to go for it, you're going to have some serious regrets. And I'm not going to say that it's easy and I'm not going to say that it's not scary, but I am going to say it is so worth it. Like, I wouldn't trade this experience that I'm having for anything in the world. I mean, there's 0.1% of population of the human race ever gets on a boat and goes out and crosses oceans. And it's really amazing that I have— you know, I'm in a harbor with 20 boats, and, and we're all from different countries. You know, there's very few Americans, so they're from Germany and Switzerland and South America and The Netherlands, and when we get together, there's an instant bond, there's an instant camaraderie, and you just have this kinship that's incredible. And there's no politics, there's no, uh, messy stuff.

It's just you're human beings and you all have the same problems and you all have the same goals, and you're kindred spirits out here on this ocean. And you develop stronger bonds with these people than than I ever did with people on land. Like the friends that I've made out here are just incredible. They're like my sisters and brothers.

I can imagine that. Okay, looking back, was there one moment when you realized you were exactly where you were supposed to be?

Well, a very common theme in my book is we're exactly where we are when we are meant to be there. And it's a theme that occurs over and over and over again. We get pulled away, we get set on different courses. We've never yet been anywhere we thought we were going to be when we thought we were going to be there. Like, my husband planned our route out perfectly. I mean, sometimes we're not even in the same country that we thought we were going to be, and we get turned around and sent in a totally different direction. So, um, I just— in my books, I have two, two books out about our sailing journey, the first three years, and then the next couple of years in the Mediterranean. And time after time after time in those books are instances of meeting somebody or something happening that tells us we are exactly where we need to be at that moment.

And it's an overwhelming theme in my, in my biographies or whatever, I guess you call them.

Yeah, I love that. I love that, Alison, because it's my motto when I'm driving in Los Angeles traffic. So if I'm stuck in traffic or the light changes or somebody cuts me off, I go, that's okay, I'm meant to be here right now.

That's great.

It's much easier to— you're never running late because you're meant to be there. So if you hit a red light and you have to sit there for 3 more minutes and it seems like forever, uh, it doesn't matter because as long as you have that concept, you know, I, I— that gets me through.

A lot of time and That's a great, great concept. And it's not for just us, it should be for everybody. Like, you can't stress about not being where you think you're going to be. You've got to understand there's a reason why you're there right now, and you just embrace it.

Yeah, and thank you. That's a good takeaway for our listeners today. Yeah. And Allison, thank you so much for sharing your journey, your stories, and your courage with us today.

And Allison— cowardice.

Yeah, well, your life is so inspiring, and it's such a powerful reminder that reinvention, change, and finding a new place to be, it never has an expiration date.

And we encourage our listeners to read Allison Gishin's novels The Seven and A Mermaid's Tale. And what else? What are the other titles?

Sienna's the children's book. Siana is the children's book. That's an early reader chapter book. And then Riding the Waves of Reality 1 and 2. And then I have Blue Ridge and The Legend of Altar.

Nice. Well, we urge listeners to read those and follow her adventures.

Absolutely. And to our audience, thank you for listening and watching Late Boomers, and please subscribe and share, and join us again next week.

And until then, stay curious, stay bold, and remember, it's never too late.

Never too late.

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