Weekly Newsletter

#54: Perspectives on Life from my 97yo Grandmother Therese Grossman

I’ve been interviewing my 97yo grandmother over the past several years each time I visit her in Savannah.

Therese Grossman was born May 6th, 2025 in Savannah, GA.

Recently she has started having dementia, which is normal in someone her age. The brain starts to fade as the body begins to make it sway towards the end of living in this lifetime.

I just got back from visiting her, and wanted to share some of the wisdom that I’ve gathered.

There is something magical about sitting across from someone that has been through:

  • Women being allowed to vote
  • Stalin gaining a leadership role in the Soviet Union
  • The Great Depression
  • Seeing a black ma hanging from a tree when walking home from Kindergarten
  • World War II
  • Hitler creating the Nazi Party
  • The first McDonald’s
  • Pearl Harbor
  • D-Day
  • Korean War
  • First hydrogen bomb
  • DNA 🧬 awareness was born
  • End of racial segregation
  • Castro takeover of Cuba
  • JKF assassination
  • MLK assassination
  • First Moon landing
  • Roe vs. Wade abortion made legal
  • Personal Computer
  • Aids
  • The internet
  • Amazon.com
  • Cloning
  • Google
  • ISS
  • War in Iraque
  • Hurricane Katrina
  • 9-11
  • War in Afghanistan
  • Outliving 3 husbands and 1 daughter
  • The iPhone
  • First black President
  • First woman Vice President
  • Nasa flies by Pluto

The first thing she wanted to share was how to live to 97.

3 Ways to Stay Young:

  1. Attitude & belief system
  2. Eat healthy
  3. Exercise

She then shares with us what her exercise and movement program looks like weekly:

1. Exercise Class that she leads (she's the oldest one there!)

2. Zumba class on a DVD

3. Qigong in the park

4. Exercise bike

She’s outlived 3 husbands, several lovers, and a daughter. Lots and lots of friends.

She only recently retired her sex life. She told me at 90 that she was complete in that department.

I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to a very long life filled with love, and happiness, pleasure, lots of sex, and creating some amazing memories. I want to learn, and laugh and love so hard that at 90 I can say “ok, I am complete”.

XO,

Jen