How a Florida Centenarian From Brooklyn Turned Her Humor into Inspiration

One-hundred-year-old Mildred Kirschenbaum is not slowing down anytime soon.

With her 101st birthday approaching in July, Kirschenbaum decided to team up with her daughter to create a book of her quirky and clever one-liners. In her spare time. She is still an active travel agent in South Florida.

“The words just come out of my mouth, and my daughter puts them down,” Kirshcenbaum said in a phone interview. “In other words, I don’t sit with a pen or a typewriter, and think about what I’m going to say. My daughter will ask me something, I’ll give her a one-liner, and she writes it down.”

But, the release of this book, Mildred’s Mindset: Wisdom from a Woman Centenarian, is not Kirschenbaum’s first brush with the public.

A video shot by Kirschenbaum’s daughter, Gayle, went viral almost two years ago, and the pair have been making Tik Toks and Instagram posts ever since. With more than 100,000 followers, Kirshenbaum’s daughter says the supporters are their driving force.

“Her fans are phenomenal. Her photos, her accent. She just says what’s on her mind, with no censor, and they love it,” says Gayle Kirschenbaum.

Gayle, who put the book together, says it contains her mother’s witty quips, as well as an extensive photo gallery that features her mother’s annotations.

“My mother lives life to the fullest. She is not riddled with fear. Her sense of adventure has inspired me, and I know how it can inspire others,” continues Gayle.

The pair have not always been as close as they are today.

For decades, they did not speak, but through the aid of time and therapy, they grew stronger than ever before.

“It took three steps for me to resolve my relationship with my mother. The first one was: I needed to understand her…Essentially, the childhood she never had. Step two: I reframed how I looked at my mother. I changed my expectations of her. I rendered her abuse powerless, once I saw her as another wounded little girl, just like me. And, through that work, I was able to come to the last step: forgiveness,” Gayle said in her 2017 TedxTalk.

The mother-daughter duo worked collaboratively on Gayle’s critically acclaimed 2015 documentary, Look at Us Now, Mother!, which explored the family’s complex relationship, and path to reconciliation.

The book Mildred’s Mindset: Wisdom from a Woman Centenarian is available where books are sold. Click here for more information about the book, other projects and upcoming events.