LISTEN to the podcast of this blog post on Spotify:
WATCH the podcast video on YouTube:
Before I dive in to producing the full podcast & Blog, I wanted to give people a look into My Story and my heart behind serving people through nestage.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- My Story
- The Purpose of NESTAGE
- Why to check out my website
- What to expect from this podcast
Here’s my journey to gerontology –
My Story
Leaving high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life of what to go to school and study.
At that time, I was listening to my dad and his siblings start to worry about how they were going to support my grandparents for the coming winter.
My grandparents were 89 and 92 at the time, living in their rural, family farm house, 3 provinces away from any immediate family. Snowplows getting to their dirt road and nursing home care making it to them became a worry for the winter.
I think my dad mentioned…”Jess, you’re not in school or committed to anything, you should go live with them.”
I’m not sure whether he remembers that, or whether he was serious, but I took that to heart and I ended up flying to them the first week of January to spend the winter.
It was a bit of transition for both me and my grandparents as you can imagine. They were set in their ways around the house; my grandmother had built this house with her siblings and parents as a child and lived in it all her life, so of course she had every right to be set in her ways.
But I gained so much from that experience that I hadn’t expected. I genuinely believe that I gained so much more from them than I provided to them.
I lived with them until May that year and then went back home, but visited them again in the summer. Then I spent a second winter with them Jan-May and again through parts of the summer.
Before living with them, I already had a deep interested to study the human body through movement and health care, but I realized I had developed such an interest for aging specifically and it hit me that this experience with my grandparents was all leading me to study aging.
Jess Davis
Since then, I’ve completed diplomas, degrees and courses in Human Movement and Health, Gerontology, Retirement Communities Management, End-of-Life, Senior Home Safety, and Adaptive Home Renovation.
I have volunteered and worked in physical training, aging rehabilitation, hospital, care homes, aging-sector consulting, and social-aging research.
So, I’ve really tried to see and gain experience with a broad lens in the sector and it has allowed me to have a very holistic view and understanding on the needs of aging.
And through 10 years of working in all these different areas of the aging sector, I continuously saw the same thing…which brings me to, the purpose of NESTAGE.
Purpose of NESTAGE
Over and over again, I was watching families struggle through challenges of the aging journey, many of which could have been avoided by proactive planning and conversation.
But no one is teaching us how to plan for aging.
No one is guiding us through the conversations we need to be having about aging.
We’ve created this society where everything is about the individual. I go to school, I get a job, I start a family, I buy a house, I buy the groceries, I find the childcare, I plan my finances….
There is little to nothing that we do as a multigenerational family in the 21st century. But how recently has that changed happened in our western society?
How did people live 100 years ago? How do people and families live in other countries and cultures today?
We use to have multigenerational living. We use to have multigenerational responsibilities. We use to have a strong sense of reciprocity between generations.
Jess Davis
So I am creating a business and a movement that reminds YOU how we as humans were meant to live and age.
Not as the individual, but as the multigenerational family and community
And I strongly believe that the root of that, starts with conversations.
The kind of conversations that most of our families are completely missing. Or the conversations are being FORCED to happen when it’s pretty well too late.
And this is how I serve people through NESTAGE – coaching people through the conversations and their future needs of aging from a holistic perspective, to create OPTIMAL AGING for them.
The foundation of Optimal Aging – aging in a way that feels autonomous and independent, full of dignity and joy and purpose, and passion to live. Because living and aging is a privilege. Not everyone gets to age into their eldest years.
It is proactive and intentional conversations between multiple generations of your family that will create an Optimal Aging experience for the eldest generation.
Let’s define family, because family looks different for everyone. It doesn’t have to mean your blood, biological family, it’s whatever definition of family you have of people who are closest to you; cousins, neighbours, friends, etc.
And let’s define multiple generations and why – I have a framework around the multigeneration concept that is in my AGEUCATION MINI-COURSE. Basically as we move through life, we are experiencing the people around us aging.
How we perceive other people aging, molds how we ourselves will age, and we have very quickly changed (in our western society) how our new generations view aging.
This comes down to the simplest of things…..for example, we now create and sell wrinkle creams. Which I think is bonkers, because in some cultures, wrinkles are a sign of a life of smiling and joyfulness and wisdom, knowledge, clarity and value.
We, as a western society, have completely degraded the VALUE of AGE. And the value of life experience.
All to say…the multigeneration view of all this is really important.
Thought Behind the Name
I named the business NESTAGE because through the experience I had with my grandparents, I came to believe everyone deserves to have the autonomy to choose to live and remain in the comforts of their home or their ‘NEST’ for as long as they want to.
So the word NESTAGE, means a place or group of nests which brings the community aspect to the name that I’m so passionate about
And then you can separate the word into NEST and AGE which of course both have significant meaning that I’ve just described.
Check Out NESTAGE.ca
I would encourage you to go check out my website to see what I’m currently offering as workshops and coaching and different services.
I won’t list anything specific here because I sense having a lot of iterations and growth as I gain clarity to the needs of the people and families I’m serving.
My website will always be kept up to date with whatever I have to offer and serve you
What to Expect on this Podcast
This podcast will also likely morph and grow, but the first number of episodes here, I want to share real life stories and solutions of families that I’ve worked with or talked to (names and details will be changed or not even included so everything will be very confidential).
I just want to open the conversation for us all to realize that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Hearing other people’s challenges and the things they tried or the solutions they came to will be SO VALUEABLE to you, and you will see parallels that you can take into your own life.
Because the challenges of aging that you are struggling with are not unique to you. The details may be unique to you but at the root of it, we’re all there.
We’re all aging. The world likes to tell us how different we all are but our human needs are the same at their core.
Jess Davis
So jump into these episodes – I pray that they enlighten you and heal you and open your eyes to concepts and ideas that are missing puzzle pieces for you.
Thank you so much for listening and I’ll catch you in the first episode of The Ageucation Podcast.
I have 3 reminders before you go –
#1. Go check the show notes for any resources or links I mentioned in this episode that peaked your interested.
#2. Please share this episode with a friend whom you think it would bless. Because in order for more families to benefit from my Age Planning resources, I need listeners like you to spread the word.
And #3. I would love to hear from you – email me with your thoughts on this episode, or to suggest a topic you’d like to hear on a future episode. Find my email in the show notes.
And remember, we’re all aging. Aging is the same as Living. And it is a privilege to live and to age.
Jess
