02/08/2025
I am writing and trying to finish my latest book called Emotionally Healthy Aging. If you can think of a better title, I welcome suggestions. Here is one chapter:
Mary says: I have been inspired by Matthew Wilder, a songwriter and singer, who, when I finally found his sound Got to Keep Moving on YouTube and struggled for over an hour on how I could download his song to my website emotionally healthy aging, eventually found myself on his website and was enthralled with his story.
Although I have never met him, our lives are parallel to one another.
Roll back to the days when, while scream-singing and dancing with my friends in the dorms to the Beatles' “I Want to Hold Your Hand!”, the radio broke in that our President had been shot. I was 18 and Wilder was 11 years old in New York and listening to them too. Wilder’s story is that later he was to fall in with the same manager who had once managed the Beatles!
He told his story of moving to Manhattan at 13. My own move at 13 was only moved from one part of Chicago to another, from a big Catholic school to one that only had one eighth grade where most of the students knew each other and I was the new kid on the block.
Wilder tells of the fast pace of his life as a musician and reading between the lines it looked like there were many triumphs and a few huge disappointments. I loved the two songs his sons sang and want to get them to play again and again. Matthew Wilder is a three time Grammy Nominee
Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated Writer and Producer.
As an old timer who loves many forms of music and was used to playing a CD over and over again, I am now at the mercy of Alexa, who recently couldn’t even find the song I was trying to play over again, the “Nothin’s going to break my stride, I gotta keep a-movin’! The familiar upbeat beat and chopping off the ends of words lifted me up and inspired me to keep moving! We Chicagoans, at least from the west side, love to leave off endings off, shorten sentences to two words and mush together words. Howya doin? Good, you? Yah, good.” New Yorkers seem to talk the same way. I’ve only been to Manhattan once, but I love watching films that show my favorite moments at Times Square on a way to a musical, and Central Park, where we took the buggy ride.
My greatest admiration goes to Wilder who has continued to perfect his passion in the music industry. We have that in common, maintaining interest in and working on that which we love. I too have now spent 40 years as a therapist, co-founder of a nonprofit for counseling families, a clinical supervisor teaching new therapists the trade, a writer of a couple of self-help books and now work from home seeing clients online. I admire Wilder as a fellow septuagenarian who lays out his story on his website and continues to uphold our hippy mentality. Though Wilder is very famous, I feel an affinity to him, his work and his devotion to his family.
As for myself, I yearned to be a hippy but kept having children one after another in the 60’s, keeping me off the streets from being part of the movement. Now as I cherish these five full grown 50-something offspring who have gifted me with 15 grandkids, and wouldn’t exchange those years for a minute, I still have that part of me that yearns to shout out for the underserved and have a great kinship with those who have and continue to stand up for what they believe in. The kind of music Wilder created and sang lifts my soul, spurs me on, gives me hope, and helps me to be connected to my like-minded humans.
Wilder is my new hero of the ages.
