FEARLESS at 50
To TV personality and Alzheimer's advocate
Leeza Gibbons, age is just a number
by Chris Mann
Hollywood’s not kind to the maturing woman. Nobody knows this more than Leeza Gibbons. In her decades of
interviewing entertainment celebrities, she must have witnessed countless beautiful starlets who were later
pushed aside at the first sign of a sag or wrinkle.
This all-too-common age bias is what makes her turn on “Dancing With the Stars” last year so refreshing and brave.
Within days of hitting the big 5-0, the perennially active media maven chose “not to sit out but to dance”— even if it
meant exposing her middle-age milestone to millions of armchair critics.
“My friends called me and said, ‘Are you out of your mind? Who announces their 50th birthday, especially on
national television?’” recalls the amiable TV and radio host turned entrepreneur and caregiving advocate, who
became the reality hit’s then-oldest female competitor. “And I went, ‘Well, you know, I think that’s one thing that’s
wrong with our culture.’”
And so, as she often does, the former “Entertainment Tonight,” “Extra” and daytime talk-show host bared her soul
— and her still-taut midriff — to help change an outmoded social stigma. She also faced what she feared most: donning semi-scanty costumes while hoofing her half-century-old heart out on live TV.
“I did want to be fearless at 50,” Gibbons says. “And I think we teach the thing that we need to learn. I figured, If I need
to find peace with and celebrate my forward march through time and space, then I need co-conspirators. So I decided I’d
elicit the support of everyone watching.” Her message: Give everyone permission to decide what it looks like to be 30,
40, 50 … you get to decide whether you want to express yourself at any point in your chronological advancement.
And express she did — even in a leather miniskirt and half-top. But after four weeks of foxtrotting and other rugcutting, Gibbons was voted out. Even in defeat, though, the gal who’s jumped out of planes, wrestled alligators, raced
cars, hang-glided and interviewed Hollywood’s hottest stars crossed a threshold. “This was my most vulnerable, and
yet a really powerful experience for my family to be supportive and see me take my lumps and get knocked down and
get back up. And I discovered the answer to lifelong questions that many women out there have: Am I enough? Am
I pretty enough? Am I strong enough? Am I brave enough? Am I skinny enough? Am I talented enough?’ All of these
things that we ask ourselves at various intervals. And it truly taught me that, yes, I am enough,” she says.
“I had to laugh about it because I’m standing there hearing from these judges how I’m not enough. The judges don’t vote
for me, America doesn’t vote for me, but I leave the show going, ‘What a great test in realizing that despite all of that and regardless, I’m enough.’ It was very cool. I realized how much I could take and how much I had to give.”
Dancing for a Greater Good
Giving and living actively comes naturally to
this devoted mom of three and daughter of a
once-robust woman whom friends called
“Jean, Jean, the Dancing Machine.”
“My mom had no training as a dancer, but
she always wanted to dance and one day
decided to take belly dance lessons. You’d
think she was part of a big harem, she was so
into it,” recalls a chuckling Gibbons, who
shares her 72-year-old mother’s birthday and
danced in tribute to her spirit and strength.
Sadly, Jean Gibbons is likely unaware her
courageous offspring mamboed in mom’s
honor. Now in hospice care and unable to walk
or speak for years, Jean was diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s disease in 1999. Three years later,
Gibbons left her high-profile hosting gig to
start the nonprofit Leeza Gibbons Memory
Foundation and open Leeza’s Place, which
offers “an oasis of support, nurturing and comfort” to the newly diagnosed and caregivers for
those with memory-loss disorders and other
chronic diseases. Now with eight locations
nationally, Gibbons hopes one day “to have
one in every county in every state,” she says.
“My mother made me promise that I would
tell her story and make it count. And so I’ve
kept that promise by opening up Leeza’s Place
and using my mother’s story to educate and
inspire, which is really what she wanted
most,” Gibbons says. “We looked at my mother’s courage. She came from a small town in
South Carolina, where there’s still a lot of stigma
around memory loss, and a lot of misplaced
shame. And my mother wanted to shed some
light on it. She wanted to let people know that
they’re not alone. Memory loss has got to be
the most fearful journey anybody can take —
it’s death in slow motion. Our job is really to
say to the newly diagnosed and caregivers
alike, ‘You’re not alone. We’ve put together a
team of people, and one day at a time we’re
going to help you breathe, and we’re gonna
get you through it.’”
Gibbons and her team of professional life
coaches give what she calls “family first
responders” a community of companionship
that helps caregivers take care of themselves
as well. “These caregivers never give themselves permission to celebrate. And so it was
lovely that after ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ we
were able to do a program called ‘I’m Dancing
as Fast as I Can.’ And it was all a great example
to say, ‘Your family members may all be holding up 7’s and judging you and saying you’re
not good enough. And you go through your
life and you’re dancing your waltz and you
know the steps — 1, 2, 3; 1, 2, 3 — and then
without notice, suddenly your music changes.
Because your husband got sick or your wife
has a disease or your child has diabetes —
whatever it is, suddenly your music changes.
And then you’re stumbling through.’”
Gibbons says her transformative reality
experience served as a template for her philanthropy. “The huge lesson for us,” she says,
“is that you have to be the one to bring yourself to the dance first. And when you forget
your music, or when your music changes,
there’s a support center out there that will
sing it back to you. That’s what a real friend is
— someone who, when you forget your music, will sing it back to you, will sing back the
music of your life. Leeza’s Place is all about possibilities and getting back your personal power. It’s
all about honoring memories and lasting legacies.”
Dancing is more than just a healthy metaphor in
the fight against chronic disease. Research shows
that exercise not only treats but also helps prevent
the progression of Alzheimer’s and other memory
disorders. “If it’s good for the heart, it’s good for the
brain,” Gibbons says. “And exercise is at the top of
the list of how we should be gifting ourselves with
the best possible defense against disease. Clearly,
eliminating stress and reducing inflammation are
two of the most important proactive steps you can
ever take for Alzheimer’s disease and a myriad of
others. So exercise is the best weapon that we have
in stress reduction and oxygenating the brain. And
learning new things does help maintain our brain
and keep those neurons firing.”
Bringing awareness to her mother’s story on
“Dancing” gave viewers a hopeful new outlook on
a disease that has left many feeling paralyzed. “We
know that ballroom dancing, of all forms of exercise, has been shown to be the most effective at
building a defense against memory loss,” Gibbons
adds. “And they think it’s because of the socialization aspect, because of the physical contact with
another person and because of the complexity of
the steps. Isn’t that cool?”
Transformational Energy
In sharing her mother’s journey, Gibbons took
important steps in finding her own empowering
new pathways. Starting her foundation “was also a
shield for me,” she says. “It was a way to get busy and try not to stay in that victim energy. So, selfishly, that was very helpful for
me. I knew that I couldn’t continue on
my career path and pace, and also create
something that had far greater purpose
for me personally.”
Her interest in health and helping has
opened new doors for the self-described
“social entrepreneur.” Last December,
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
appointed Gibbons as an Alzheimer’s
advocate to the Independent Citizens
Oversight Committee, which oversees
the California Institute for Regenerative
Medicine, the state’s stem-cell research
agency. In this layperson capacity, she’ll
help oversee grant applications and be a
voice for her cause. “It’s a tremendous
opportunity to effect change and influence the future,” she says.
Gibbons also hosts the syndicated
weekly radio show “Hollywood Confidential” (for which she interviews celebs
ranging from Barbara Streisand to Brad
Pitt) as well as the Sunday-morning
Lifetime TV series “Health Corner,”
another outgrowth of her care-giving cause.
Additionally, her award-winning and star-
studded infomercials for her mineral-based
makeup line, Sheer Cover, make her a trusted
face of natural health and beauty for both
day and night.
But her desire to inspire goes well beyond
skin-deep. Sheer Inspiration, another Gibbons
venture, is a Web-based life-coaching business
that “really reflects my life-mission statement
of adding value to the lives of women and their
families. The idea is that we have three Web
coaches from coast to coast, and you connect
with your coach personally via e-mail and
phone, so you’re getting specific answers to
your questions the moment they arise.”
So where does she find the energy — let
alone the time — to balance her projects with
raising daughter Lexi, 18, and sons Troy and
Nathan, 15 and 9 respectively, all of whom
help with foundation fundraisers and have
their own service-oriented causes? “My kids
actually are more likely to be coaching me
than vice versa,” Gibbons says with a laugh.
“But I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit
and a high tolerance for multiple spinning
plates. I used to kind of fight that. But somewhere along the line I realized that that’s my
gift and my joy. So I’ve always loved business.
I love ‘the deal’ — I think deals are very seductive. Because what you’re really talking about
is a promise. You’re talking about expectations
and possibilities and promises, and that’s
transformational energy. At the core of everything I do is that transformational energy —
really speaking to this whole notion that you
can have custody of your life, and you can
co-create your reality.”
In fact, Promise, the maker of heart-
healthy butter spreads, liked her message so
much that they joined forces with the Leeza
brand in their recent Heart Coach Program.
“The Promise people called me and said,
‘We really like what you say about keeping a
promise to yourself.’ They built a coaching
platform with this nutritional coach, fitness
coach and me. We’re giving information
online, but we’re also personally involved
with four contest winners who are getting us
in their faces and in their ears all the time. It’s
making changes to their body, changes to
their cholesterol, more heart health and
more stress-free living.”
One of Gibbons’ favorite life coach tips:
Own your own life. “And I always think owning your life means you have to reinvent it
constantly. If you’re not fluid, you’re going to
tend to be rigid in the current of life. You have
to stretch and bend, or you will break.”
Stepping up to fitness
Leeza Gibbons’ daily workouts
need to be both compact and
effective to fit into her busy
schedule. And it helps that
she’s made her fitness activities a matter of habit.
“I have particular things that
I do that have become routine
for me,” she says. “In the morning, right after I brush my teeth,
I do my armbands. I get my
reps in for my arms without fail
because I have my armbands
hanging right there on the bathroom door. Throughout the day,
by my phone I have my free
weights, my 3-pound dumbbells; when I’m on the phone,
I’ll be doing those. I put
reminders of fitness in my path,
so I definitely get my workout.”
Also, she confides, “I’m a
freak for exercise gear. I have
a Pilates ring and I put it in the
kitchen so if I’m chopping vegetables — and I know this
sounds sick — I can be exercising my thighs. That’s awesome.
And I just got the Red Exerciser,
that swivel chair, and I put that
in my bedroom. So right before
I go to bed, I feel like, Wow, I’m
really doing something.”
And when she has an uninterrupted half-hour or more,
she takes full advantage of her
home gym. “I have everything
— a treadmill, an elliptical,
Pilates Performer, a Spinning
bike, a punching bag. So it’s
easy for me to find time in my
day because it’s very convenient. And it works out great. But
my favorite thing to do — and
I think it’s a good example for
my kids because they really do
what they see their parents
doing — is hiking. I’ve found
that it really grounds me; it’s
more of a spiritual retreat.”
These physical boosts give
Gibbons a psychological and
soulful lift over life’s obstacles
and challenges. “When we
change our physical states, our
emotional states get stronger,”
she says. And in fearless words
that would no doubt make her
mother’s spirit dance, Gibbons
promises to keep putting her
energy to good use.
“Women are the change
agents of the world,” she
observes. “I always talk about
mothers and shakers, and
women really being the people
who get it done. So I love working with women, especially
moms, because I understand
what that’s all about. And the
power of momentum in anything
can’t be overstated. Once you
begin a process, once the first
step happens, you can just run.
And I love seeing that because
it never fails.”
Chris Mann is a writer and art director based in
Santa Barbara, Calif.
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