Today we’d like to introduce you to Sieglinde Othmer.
Hi Sieglinde, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
One morning I woke up and I was eighty. Eighty! Not in a celebration mood! And my husband of 55 years had just died. My three children lived far away. What was I to do?
I remembered a time in my youth when I traveled in Western Europe, learning languages, getting to know other cultures and their traditions and dances. I loved my independence then. How could I recapture that spirit – living life with gusto?
Then Covid hit. Fear. Isolation. I turned gray. Silver gray. What was I going to do with myself? So I watched opera every night on my computer, the best productions from the Metropolitan Opera in New York and I learned that Verdi wrote his opera Falstaff at age eighty. But opera every night? I needed some other things to do with my evenings.
When spring came, my garden woke up and so did I. I thought about things that had brought me joy in the past and I did the research. “Joyous Longevity. The A – Z Field Guide” is a collection of 26 practical tips. This book busts the myth that older age is bad, shameful and to be feared. Instead, I say, older age is a badge of honor, something to be proud of and to be enjoyed. Aging unites us all just like breathing.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It took me over two years to write this book, but I stuck with it, kept it brief and added illustrations created by my daughter Julia Othmer, the singer/song writer. I also commissioned a theme song for my website from my son-in-law James Lundie: “Lets Hear it for the Trees.” So my work turned into a joyous family affair.
“Joyous Longevity. The A – Z Field Guide” is the shortest book on longevity there is.
It won the 2025 NYC Big Book Award – Distinguished Favorite for Health and Fitness.
A special challenge was to record my own audio book with I did with my accent. Never done something like that before. You can listen for yourself!
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’ve been writing all my life, mostly academic work in European history about Human Rights in the 18th century (that book is in German) and about interviewing in psychiatry. Those books got translated into other languages including Farsi. I also published contemporary fables for children, where five dogs and two cats, tired of being just pets, become artists and travel the world to entertain their fellow beasts.
‘Whims, Wits, and Whiskers. A Californian Pet Tale” and
“New Zealand Adventure. Beneath the Totaras.”
I worked at Washington University in St. Louis in research at the Psychiatry Department, ran a sleep lab at the University of Kentucky in Lexington KY, and did investigational drug studies at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, KS. My business experience came from running a psychiatric outpatient clinic in Kansas City MO.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
In 1948, my mother decided to escape the Soviet grip of occupied Eastern Germany. I was seven years old. Leaving everything behind, apartment, family, her own history, she and I joined my father in the West, where he had been a prisoner of the British and was released.
I remember the night – a full moon, an icy path, pulling a green handcart, the two of us, by foot. People at the border knew the guards’ habits. On New Year’s Eve 1948, they were drunk with celebration, and at the midnight shift change there was our chance to slip through a hole in the fence.
I grew up in Hamburg, Germany as a refugee, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and at the University of Hamburg, where I earned my PhD in social sciences.
Then I fell in love with an adventurous man and we decided to come to the United States for one year. Quite an endeavor to leave post – war Germany, where we had university jobs lined up for when we would return. But here was America, that beautiful place where we could rent a house, job opportunities plenty, and my neighbors told me my children were beautiful. We loved it in St. Louis. That one year stretched to a life time.
Pricing:
- $ 13,99 for the book on Amazon
- $ 6.99 for the audio on Amazon
Contact Info:
- Website: www.joyouslongevity.com
- Instagram: @joyouslongevity
- Facebook: Sieglinde Othmer
