There’s something happening in midlife that women talk about with each other but almost never say out loud to the men involved. It usually comes up after a glass of wine (or a cocktail if you’re like me), or during one of those conversations where someone finally admits something slightly horrifying and everyone else immediately says, “OH MY GOD, SAME.”

The topic is not affairs. Not finances. Not even the emotional stuff people expect.

It’s… the bodily commentary.

Because somewhere around midlife, many men appear to enter a phase where they become deeply, passionately interested in narrating what is happening with their bodies. Not in a vague “getting older” sense. In a forensic sense. A play-by-play sense. A level of detail that feels less like intimacy and more like an unsolicited medical podcast.

And the timing is often spectacularly bad.

The New Love Language: Medical Updates

Many women in my circle will say things like, “He just spent five minutes explaining what he flossed out of his teeth and then leaned in to kiss me.” Or, “He lifted his shirt to show me a rash and then asked if I wanted to go upstairs.” One friend described her husband casually announcing a prostate update while they were literally getting into bed. Another said her partner will periodically say things like, “Feel this weird bump on my back,” and then look confused when the mood does not immediately become electric.

None of this is malicious. In fact, that’s part of what makes it so funny. Most of these men think they’re just talking. They think they’re sharing. They think they’re being transparent and communicative, which for decades women have been begging them to do.

But the problem is not the sharing itself.

The problem is the content and the timing… aka the context.

Things Women Do Not Need to Hear Before Sex

Somewhere along the way, the nightly conversation has drifted into territory that could best be described as medical adjacent.

For example:

• what was discovered during flossing
• a detailed report on digestion
• the newest knee or back pain
• dermatology findings unveiled under bright lighting
• the ongoing documentary series known as hair loss

Hair loss alone seems to inspire a surprising amount of discussion. Not just quiet acknowledgment, but analysis. Angles. Demonstrations in bathroom mirrors.

“Look right here,” they’ll say, pointing at the crown of their head as if unveiling a geological formation. “See how it’s thinning?”

Yes. We see it.

We also remember when this conversation was about kissing and foreplay!

Meanwhile… The Female Libido Situation

Meanwhile, the women I talk to are sitting there thinking something they would never say out loud: our midlife libido is already fragile.

Hormones are shifting. Sleep is weird. Stress is high. Our bodies are doing their own set of strange recalibrations. Many women (me included, by the way) are already negotiating a delicate internal ecosystem when it comes to attraction, energy, and wanting to be touched at all.

So when the environment suddenly shifts into a detailed report on what someone just removed from between their molars, the remaining spark does not stand a chance.

The difference is that most women have developed a quiet editing instinct about when and where certain updates get shared. There’s usually an unspoken understanding that the pre-romance atmosphere is not the moment to debut a dermatology discovery.

For reasons that are both biological and cultural, some men (not all, so don’t come for me all crazy-like) don’t seem to make that distinction.

Why This Is Happening

Part of this is simply that midlife is the first time many men really notice their bodies changing.

For decades the male body tends to operate like reliable machinery. Recovery is quick. Strength holds steady. Things hurt… and then stop hurting.

And because men historically weren’t encouraged to talk about their health or vulnerability very much, all of those observations usually come pouring out once they finally do.

Another reason is that many men genuinely believe this is what good communication looks like. They have spent years hearing that women want more openness, more emotional presence, more honesty about what’s going on internally. So they deliver exactly that.

They just happen to deliver it in the form of a nightly status report on their sinuses, their digestion, and the texture of their toenails (yes, these topics really did come up in my field research!).

The Comfort Trap

There is also the quiet creep of comfort that happens in long relationships.

Early attraction runs on mystery, presentation, and a little bit of performance. People curate themselves. They dress with intention. They flirt.

As relationships settle into the long middle years of mortgages, grocery lists, and shared logistics, that layer of seduction can slowly dissolve into something closer to roommate energy.

And roommates, unfortunately, do show each other strange lumps on their elbows.

How Women Can Survive This Phase

Supporting a partner through a knee surgery or a new medication is one thing. Pivoting from a ten-minute conversation about bowel regularity into spontaneous sex is another category entirely.

The mental transition required there is heroic.

What I hear from women most often is not cruelty or rejection, but bewilderment. They’ll say things like, “I was actually in a good mood until he started describing his foot fungus,” or “I might have been open to the idea of sex until the dental excavation story.”

And again, this isn’t because women don’t understand bodies changing. We’re living it too. It’s simply that the timing of these updates can quietly drain the atmosphere of anything remotely romantic and sexy!

The good news is that this is fixable. A few small strategies help:

• move health updates to daylight hours
• gently redirect the conversation when it gets… anatomical
• reintroduce flirting before medical commentary
• remember that mystery is still attractive at 50, 60, 70…+++

None of this requires therapy or a relationship overhaul.

It mostly requires a little more awareness in the moment.

A Final Public Service Announcement

There is nothing wrong with discussing health updates, aches, weird moles, or the mysteries of digestion. Those are all normal parts of being human in midlife.

Women have our own growing list too. We just tend to save those conversations for friends, doctors, or daylight hours.

But perhaps those conversations belong over coffee, fully clothed, and several hours away from the bedroom.

Because nothing in human history has ever successfully bridged the sentence,

“Look what I just pulled out of my teeth…”

with the sentence,

“So… you want to have sex?”

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife #MidlifeMen #MidlifeSex #Libido #TMI

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There was a stretch in midlife where I thought my libido had quietly packed a bag and left the building.

Not dramatically. Not with a slammed door. Just… diminished. Blurry. Harder to access.

Seven years post-menopause, a few recent hormone tweaks have absolutely helped. Thank God for science. And for doctors who don’t gaslight women into thinking dryness and disinterest are personality flaws.

But hormones weren’t the whole story.

My Aussie man and I finally started getting real language around desire after reading Miranda July’s book All Fours and realizing that what we were feeling wasn’t “broken.” It was unspoken. There’s a difference. Once we had words, things shifted. Not instantly. But honestly.

And then I got introduced to Jana Danielson - movement educator, author of The Sacred Woman’s Guide to Moving Better, pelvic floor advocate, and founder of Bloom Better and the Cooch Ball - by Andrea Claire of the Fxck You 50s podcast and Dr. Trina Read, sexologist, author of The Taboo Show, and host of the Sensational Sex and Pursuit of Pleasure podcasts.

When women I trust start talking about pelvic floor health, empowerment, and actually feeling again, I pay attention.

Because here’s the truth: midlife sex doesn’t have to be dead. But it does require us to stop pretending we can think our way back into desire. We have to feel our way there.

Jana is here to help us take even more control…not just of our pelvic floor, but of our pleasure, our presence, and the narrative that says this part of life is supposed to shrink.

Let’s get into it.

1. Midlife is often framed as a time of sexual decline. From your work, what actually changes—and what wakes up—when women stop performing sex and start listening to their bodies?

Jana: I LOVE this question! I am 52 years old and a few months ago was talking to my friend Amy St. Germain, the Founder of Oboo, and she was telling me that she saw a stat that said that 50% of women over 50 do not have any form of intercourse or self pleasure! WHATTTT! For someone like me whose tagline is “Waking Women Up One Cooch at a Time” that stat made me sad at first, and then it motivated me to make an impact on women and decrease this number!!

What changes physiologically is real, hormones shift, tissues change, nerve sensitivity fluctuates. But what wakes up when women stop performing is self-awareness. They start noticing what they actually feel, what they actually want, what has never actually worked for them but they did anyway. That’s not decline. That’s data.

And here’s the piece that almost no one talks about: the ability to receive.

Dr. Mindy Pelz speaks to this beautifully in Age Like a Girl, when a young woman first encounters her hormones and gets her period, her brain literally reorganizes itself. It shifts from a “self-first” orientation to one where she feels most validated, most seen, when she is caring for others. That’s not a flaw. That’s biology. But it means that for decades, most women have been wired to give, to tend, to anticipate everyone else’s needs, including in the bedroom.

Then midlife arrives. Hormones reset. And for the first time since adolescence, the brain begins returning to self. It’s a biological invitation to come home to your own experience. But here’s the thing, you can’t just flip a switch after thirty years of conditioning. Unlearning takes time. It takes practice. It takes someone saying out loud: your pleasure matters.

Not as a reward. Not as a bonus. As a birthright.

So many women have quietly filed pleasure under “optional” or something to get to if there’s time, if everyone else is okay, if they’ve earned it. Midlife is the moment to cross that out entirely. Pleasure isn’t optional. It’s physiological. It’s psychological. It is, in every sense, your right and reclaiming it starts with finally being willing to receive it.

2. Many women come to midlife disconnected from their pelvic floor, often without realizing it. What are the most common myths you see about pelvic health and desire that keep women feeling broken or “past it”?

Jana: The biggest myth? That Kegels are the answer to everything. They’re not, and for many women, they’re actively making things worse. Here’s why that matters.

Most women arrive at midlife carrying decades of holding. Holding stress. Holding grief. Holding the weight of being everything to everyone. The clothes and the shoes that we wear very much impact the pelvic floor in a less than optimal way and we do not even realize it! And so much of that holding lives in the pelvis and the pelvic floor. When we guard, protect, and brace through this part of our body for years, we tap directly into the sympathetic nervous system. Fight. Flight. Freeze. The brain starts operating as if we are constantly running from something. And when that’s the baseline, we can’t even meet our most fundamental need: safety.

So the pelvic floor becomes a rock wall. Tight. Armored. Holding onto stress and emotional residue that has nowhere else to go.

And then we cough. We sneeze. We laugh too hard. And we leak. Our rational mind immediately says, okay, do more Kegels. But that’s the trap. The traditional Kegel of ‘stop the flow, start the flow, squeeze and hold’ only adds more tension to a muscle that is already over-tensed. And here’s the truth that changed everything for me: a tight muscle is not a functionally strong one. Tension and strength are not the same thing. I learned this early in my life, at 21 years old when I was on 11 medications for gut pain, headaches and joints that felt like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz after a heavy rain, I peed my pants everyday and I was not a new mom nor was I in menopause. This turned out to be a gift as it was the inspiration that brought me to create the Cooch Ball over 20 years later (but I digress, let’s get back to this answer!).

So before we strengthen these 14 muscles, we have to release these 14 muscles. Pelvic floor physiotherapy is one of the most powerful ways to begin that process. So is the Cooch Ball, a pelvic floor fitness tool that I created! It works with movement and breath to create the kind of dynamic, functional engagement that actually restores the pelvic floor rather than gripping it tighter. When I discovered the research from Dr. Bruce Crawford showing that 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction is a movement and fitness issue, not a medical one, that was the moment I knew I had to create a fitness solution. Not another squeeze-and-hold protocol. A movement practice. The Cooch Ball was born!

The second myth is that disconnection is just “getting older.” No. Disconnection is the result of decades of not being taught to acknowledge and love this part of our body. We were taught to manage it, contain it, or ignore it entirely.

And the third myth, the one I want to dismantle loudly and clearly: that leaking, pain, numbness, and pelvic floor dysfunction are normal. They are not normal. They are common. Those are two completely different things. Common means many women experience it. Normal means it’s supposed to happen. It is not supposed to happen. It is simply what occurs when a whole generation of women was never given the tools, the language, or the permission to care for this part of themselves. That changes now.

3. You talk a lot about sensation, presence, and embodiment—not performance. How does reconnecting with the pelvic floor change the way women experience desire, pleasure, and even confidence outside the bedroom?

Jana: The pelvic floor is the physical center of the body. It’s connected to your breath, your nervous system, your posture, your core, your voice. When it’s tight, guarded, or numb, that energy doesn’t just stay in one place, it radiates outward. Women feel it in how they carry themselves, how they show up in meetings, how present they feel in conversation. Embodiment isn’t a concept. It’s a felt experience. And once you feel it, you can’t unfeel it.

But let’s go even deeper because this is where it gets both scientific and revolutionary.

According to Dr. Sara Reardon in Floored: A Woman’s Guide to Pelvic Floor Health at Every Age and Stage, in order to orgasm, the pelvic floor muscles need to contract and relax (turn on and off) anywhere between 2 and 32 times. That’s not passive. That requires intelligent, responsive, well-trained muscles. Which means orgasm isn’t luck. It isn’t reserved for a special category of women who somehow won the genetic lottery. It is a physiological capacity that every woman has and like any capacity, it responds to awareness, practice, and training. When I say we need to know our bodies, this is exactly what I mean. We don’t just want strong pelvic floors. We want smart ones.

And then there’s the piece that stops me every single time I talk about it, the pudendal nerve.

The pudendal nerve is the primary motor and sensory nerve connecting the brain to the genitals and pelvic floor in both men and women. It carries everything sensation, pleasure, pain, signal, response. It is the communication highway between your mind and your most intimate self.

And its Latin root? Pudendal means an area of shame.

Let that land for a moment. The main nerve responsible for bringing pleasure from the pelvic floor to the brain is literally named after shame. And according to Dr. David R. Hawkins’ research on emotional frequency, shame is the single lowest-vibrating emotion a human being can carry. It sits at the very bottom, below grief, below fear, below anger. It is the heaviest thing we hold.

So when women feel disconnected from desire, from sensation, from their own bodies it is not weakness. It is not dysfunction. It is, in many cases, the accumulated weight of shame that has been layered onto this part of us for generations. Culturally. Religiously. Relationally. That shame lives in the nerve itself, etymologically, historically, and somatically.

Reconnecting with the pelvic floor is therefore not just a fitness practice. It is an act of reclamation. Every breath that softens this area, every intentional movement that restores sensation, every moment of curiosity instead of avoidance, it is a woman choosing a higher frequency. Choosing herself. Choosing pleasure over shame.

That is what changes outside the bedroom too. When a woman stops carrying shame in her center, she stands differently. She speaks differently. She takes up space differently. That’s not a metaphor. That’s the body, finally free to move.

4. Menopause and perimenopause can bring pain, numbness, or fear around sex. What do you wish more women understood about what’s happening physiologically—and what isn’t actually permanent or inevitable?

Jana: I wish women knew that dryness, discomfort, and numbness are physiological responses not punishments, not the end of the story. Estrogen decline affects vaginal tissue, yes. But tissue responds to blood flow, and blood flow responds to movement, stimulation, and hydration. We can influence this. More than most women realize.

And I wish more women understood the fear cycle because this is where so much unnecessary suffering lives. Fear creates tension. Tension creates pain. Pain creates more fear. It is a loop, and it is absolutely breakable. Breath work, pelvic floor release, proper lubrication, and when appropriate, hormone support can interrupt that cycle at any point. None of this is inevitable. Some of it is just unaddressed. There is a massive difference between those two things.

Which brings me to the tool I wish every woman in perimenopause and menopause had in her hands immediately: her own breath. Specifically, her diaphragm.

Here’s what most women don’t know, the diaphragm and the pelvic floor are biomechanical partners. They move together. When you inhale and your diaphragm drops, your pelvic floor gently descends and lengthens with it. When you exhale and your diaphragm rises, your pelvic floor naturally lifts. They are in constant conversation. But the vast majority of women are neck and chest breathers, short, shallow, upper-body breaths that never reach the diaphragm and therefore never reach the pelvic floor. The partnership goes silent.

When we learn to breathe diaphragmatically, fully, slowly, letting the belly expand on the inhale and soften on the exhale we are doing several things simultaneously. We are directly activating the parasympathetic nervous system, pulling the body out of fight-or-flight and into rest and restore. We are taking in 600% more oxygen into our cells. We are increasing blood flow to the pelvic region, which is exactly what tissue needs to stay healthy, responsive, and lubricated. And we are creating a gentle, rhythmic release in the pelvic floor the kind of release that no Kegel, no gadget, and no supplement can replicate on its own.

For women experiencing pain or fear around sex, diaphragmatic breathing is often the very first entry point because it is safe, it is always available, and it begins to rebuild the conversation between the brain and the body before anything else is asked of either one.

You don’t have to fix everything at once. Start with a breath. A real one. All the way down.

5. There’s a big difference between “having sex” and feeling desire. For midlife women who say, “I don’t want sex anymore,” how do you help them untangle whether it’s hormones, resentment, exhaustion, conditioning—or something else entirely?

Jana: I always start by asking: When did you last feel desire for anything? Not just sex but anything. A meal. A conversation. A creative project. If desire has gone quiet across the board, we’re usually talking about nervous system depletion. The body has nothing left to give. That’s not a libido problem. That’s a load problem.

But if desire shows up in other places and just not here then that’s important information. That points to something relational, or historical, or rooted in how sex has been framed for her entire life. Was it ever for her? Or always for someone else? Untangling that honestly, without shame, is where real change begins. Hormones are one chapter. They are not the whole book.

And here is the framework that I come back to again and again when working with women on desire because I believe the pelvic floor is not one thing. It is a trifecta.

The first layer is the physical - the muscles, the fascia, the nerves. This is where most conversations about pelvic health begin and, unfortunately, end. But it is only the foundation.

The second layer is the emotional - this is where we hold. Where we protect. Where we store what we never processed, never said, never let go of. Decades of stress, grief, resentment, and unmet needs don’t just live in our minds. They live in our tissue. The pelvis is one of the body’s primary storage units for emotional residue, and until we acknowledge that layer, no amount of physical work will fully unlock what’s possible.

The third layer is the energetic - and this is the one that changes everything for women who have tried everything else. The sacral chakra sits in the pelvic bowl. I call it the sacred chakra because that feels more true. This is the energy center where sensuality lives. Where creativity lives. Where the capacity to feel, to flow, to generate and receive lives. When this center is blocked, stuck, or simply ignored, the impact ripples far beyond the bedroom. Women notice it in their creative life, their joy, their sense of aliveness in the world.

So when a woman says I don’t want sex anymore I don’t just hear a libido question. I hear a woman who may be physically tight, emotionally guarded, and energetically shut down in her center. And the path back isn’t a single solution. It’s tending to all three layers with curiosity, with patience, and with the radical understanding that desire isn’t a luxury. It is life force. And it lives right here.

6. Cooch Balls are often misunderstood as just another wellness gadget. How do you explain their role in healing, pleasure, and nervous system regulation—especially for women who feel intimidated or skeptical?

Jana: I get the skepticism. The wellness industry has handed women a lot of things that promise transformation and deliver very little. So let me be direct: Cooch Balls are a tool for proprioception which means helping your brain reconnect to a part of your body it may have lost the signal to. That’s not a gadget. That’s rehabilitation.

But before I explain what the Cooch Ball does, I want to talk about what it restores because that’s the real story.

Blood flow is Queen.

I mean that with every ounce of conviction I have. Blood flow is our body’s life force. Oxygen-rich, nutrient-rich blood is how tissue heals, how nerves communicate, how muscles function, how sensation returns. Without it, everything downstream suffers quietly, gradually, and in ways we often chalk up to aging or bad luck rather than stagnation.

And here’s the reality for so many midlife women: the pelvic floor is one of the most blood-flow-deprived areas in the body. We sit for long hours. We hold tension without realizing it. We stop moving this part of ourselves intentionally or we never started. Over time, fascial restrictions build up around the pelvic floor muscles like shrink wrap, slowly suffocating them from the circulation they need to stay healthy, responsive, and alive. When we believe this is just my life now and we stop engaging, that stagnation becomes the new normal. And the whole body’s systems feel it.

This is exactly what the Cooch Ball was designed to address.

Sitting on the Cooch Ball which has been specifically engineered to work with the body’s tissues and nervous system, not against them for just three minutes a day begins to melt through those fascial restrictions. It creates gentle, targeted blood flow back into a region that has been starved of it. The pelvic floor muscles receive nourishment. Sensation starts to return. The brain and the body begin talking to each other again.

The gentle weight and movement also create proprioceptive feedback, your pelvic floor has to respond, adapt, and engage in a way that passive Kegel squeezing never achieves. And because the pelvic floor is so intimately connected to the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system, that engagement has a regulating effect on the whole body. Women tell me they feel calmer. Clearer. More themselves. That’s not marketing. That’s nervous system science.

It is done at home. Fully clothed. Three minutes a day.

I call it CPR for your pelvic floor because that’s exactly what it is. You are bringing something back to life that was never meant to go quiet. You are restoring circulation to your center. And from that center, everything changes.

Start with curiosity. You don’t have to commit to anything more than that. Three minutes. That’s all. Your body will do the rest.

Bonus Question

7. If a midlife woman feels disconnected from her sexuality but isn’t sure she even wants to “get it back,” what’s the smallest, least-performative place you’d invite her to start?

Jana: Breathe into your belly. Slowly. On purpose. Right now.

That’s it. That’s the first move because breath is the fastest bridge between the thinking mind and the feeling body. You don’t have to want anything yet. You don’t have to fix anything or reclaim anything or show up for anyone. Just breathe. Let your belly soften. Let your pelvic floor release on the inhale.

Do that for two minutes a day for two weeks and tell me nothing shifts. I’ll wait.

Connection always starts smaller than we think. And it almost always starts with breath.

And here is what I also want every woman reading this to hear, the reclamation is real. The reawakening is real. Women experience it every single day and it moves me every single time. But so is the disconnection. And here’s the thing about that: it’s okay. More than okay, it’s necessary.

That’s the contrast of life. If we were always turned on, always connected, always humming with aliveness we wouldn’t actually know what any of it meant. We need the quiet seasons. We need the moments of I don’t even know what I want so that when the signal returns, we can feel the difference. We can actually receive it.

So if you are in a season of disconnect right now please don’t freak out. Don’t make it mean something is broken or gone or your fault. Ask instead: what is this season showing me? What am I being invited to release, to rest, to reconsider?

Disconnection is not the end of the story. It is often the very thing that makes the reconnection so profound. You are not behind. You are not broken. You are in contrast and contrast is how we learn what we truly desire.

Breathe. Begin there. The rest will find you.

The Bottom (no pun intended) Line:

If you’ve been waiting to feel like yourself again, this is your reminder that nothing about you is missing. Midlife doesn’t take desire away. It asks us to participate in it differently.

That shift can start small. With breath. With awareness. With learning what’s actually happening in your body instead of assuming the story you’ve been handed is the only one available.

Jana’s work gives women practical ways back into sensation, strength, and connection… not through performance, but through presence. If this conversation sparked something for you, here are a few easy places to start:

• Start with the basics - Explore the Terrain Fitness Bundle here.

• Learn about the Cooch Ball - A simple daily tool to restore pelvic floor connection https://bloombetter.life/angela.

• Join her guided membership space at The Bloom Room community.

• Explore menopause-specific support programs and education for this stage of life here.

And if you want ongoing insight into pelvic health, embodiment, and what’s actually possible in midlife, follow Jana on Instagram; she shares practical education there every day.

Midlife doesn’t always take desire away… it changes how we learn to find it again.

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #Midlife Desire, #MidlifeSexDrive #Libido #RGG

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For most of my adult life I’ve been oddly committed to understanding my personality. Not in a deeply clinical sense, but in the very practical sense of taking every personality test the internet has ever produced.

Myers-Briggs? Done.
Enneagram? Obviously.
Corporate color wheel personality profiles? Of course.
Leadership styles, emotional intelligence inventories, strengths assessments… if someone sent a link, I took it.

And here’s the obvious part: the results were almost always the same.

Different systems. Different language. But I kept landing in the same general personality neighborhood.

On the Myers-Briggs, I’m an ENFP. On the Enneagram, I’ve consistently tested as a 9. On the various corporate color systems, I usually fall into the warm, relational, harmony-seeking categories.

After a while I realized these tests were all describing some version of the same person.

Someone who is naturally curious about people. Someone who connects ideas and humans easily. Someone who tends to lead with optimism and emotion first. Someone who prefers collaboration to confrontation and would generally rather keep the peace than start a fight.

In other words, the personality tests kept confirming what I already suspected: I’m wired as a connector and someone who sees patterns quickly. Many of those profiles suggest a big-picture thinker who starts with possibility and figures out structure later. There, though, I’m almost the opposite. I need to see the structure first. Once the framework is clear, that’s when I start seeing all the potential inside it.

That description felt right for a long time. It fit the way I worked, the way I built relationships, and honestly the way I moved through most of adulthood.

But recently I’ve started noticing something interesting.

I don’t think the core personality has changed, but I do think something new is getting louder.

For most of my life my instinct in almost any situation has been to explore, to understand, to find the common ground. I was usually the one asking questions, connecting dots, looking for the collaborative path forward.

Lately, however, I’ve noticed a different instinct showing up alongside that one. Instead of endless exploration, there’s more decisiveness. Instead of smoothing things over, there’s more clarity about what I will and will not tolerate. Instead of waiting for consensus, there’s a stronger impulse to simply act.

Out of curiosity, and because apparently I will never stop taking personality quizzes, I recently took another one. This time it was an archetype test, which looks less at personality traits and more at the energetic roles people tend to embody.

You can take the same one here if you’re curious:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/cmc33/12-archetypes-quiz

My result surprised me a little but definitely tracks: I scored as The Warrior.

If you had asked me ten years ago whether “warrior” described my personality, I would have laughed. I’ve always thought of myself more as the diplomat than the fighter.

But when I read the description, it was hard to ignore how much of it felt familiar.

The Warrior archetype isn’t really about aggression. It’s about clarity and protection. Warriors tend to move toward challenges rather than around them. They are motivated to defend what matters, set boundaries, and take action when something needs to change. They are comfortable making decisions, cutting through noise, and stepping forward when leadership is required.

In other words, they spend a lot less time negotiating their own authority.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

Midlife seems to do something interesting to many of us. The traits that helped us navigate our twenties and thirties (collaboration, flexibility, patience, diplomacy) don’t disappear, but they start pairing with something stronger.

The connector learns how to confront.
The peacemaker learns how to protect.
The big-idea person learns how to execute.

What used to be harmony-seeking slowly grows a backbone.

Maybe that’s the real midlife personality shift. We don’t become completely different people. The core wiring is still there. The ENFP curiosity is still very much alive. The Enneagram 9 instinct toward peace hasn’t vanished.

But something else has joined the party.

There’s more willingness to say the uncomfortable thing. More confidence in setting boundaries. Less patience for unnecessary nonsense. A growing comfort with taking the lead instead of waiting for permission.

The personality tests that once described us so neatly might not be wrong. They might just be incomplete.

Because midlife doesn’t erase who we’ve always been. It simply activates parts of ourselves we didn’t need earlier.

And if the new version includes a little Warrior energy alongside the curiosity and connection, I’m starting to think that’s not a bad upgrade at all.

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #PersonalityTest, #NavigatingMidlife
#TheWarrior, #Curiosity, #Connection #MidlifeMood #RGG

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And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

For a long time, my competence was my identity.

If something broke, I handled it. If a light blinked on the dashboard, I Googled it. If the sprinkler system started hissing like it was possessed, I became the suburban water system whisperer.

Divorce will do that. Solo living will do that. Being the grown-up in the house will absolutely do that.

And here’s the thing: I can fix the toilet. I can figure out why the oil light is on. I can track down the rogue sprinkler head flooding the hydrangeas like it’s auditioning for a disaster movie.

But lately, as my Aussie Man has been around more, something hit me.

I don’t actually want to.

Not because I’m incapable. Not because I’m playing small. Not because I suddenly believe women shouldn’t know how plumbing works.

I just… don’t care to.

There is a difference between empowerment and exhaustion.

I fought hard for my independence. I built a life where I don’t need anyone to survive. That matters to me. That’s radical midlife self-possession. That’s earned.

But self-possession also means I get to decide where my energy goes.

And I have zero spiritual calling to understand the internal mechanics of a toilet tank.

If I had to? Of course I would. If he wasn’t around and the thing imploded (like can they even do that??!!)? I’d YouTube the hell out of it. But if he’s here? And willing? And frankly better at not spiraling over blinking warning lights? I gladly hand it over to you, sir.

There is something deeply powerful about saying, “I can do it. I just don’t want to.”

We’ve been trained to prove we can carry everything. Every task. Every emotional load. Every practical burden. The invisible labor and the visible labor and the “well if you don’t do it, who will?” labor.

Midlife has been teaching me something quieter: Independence doesn’t mean omnipotence. Partnership doesn’t mean regression. Delegating is not surrender.

It’s discernment.

Now, before anyone writes me a think piece: this is not about weaponized incompetence. It’s not about pretending I don’t know how to change a lightbulb. It’s not about shrinking.

It’s about choosing.

Choosing not to spend my finite midlife bandwidth diagnosing sprinkler valves. Choosing not to research oil viscosity ratios. Choosing not to become emotionally entangled with the inner architecture of porcelain.

And while we’re here, let’s be clear about one more thing.

If there is a dead rat or mouse involved? Absolutely not.

Rodents sit firmly on my list of irrational fears… right next to chickens. Yes, chickens. I was repeatedly chased through an orchard as a child taking a short cut to my best friend’s house and I’ve never fully recovered. Feathers + flapping + unpredictable aggression? No thanks, Tom Hanks.

That is firmly on his list. In permanent ink.

Here’s the point.

For years, independence was about survival. Now it’s about preference.

I don’t need to know how everything works. I need to know how I work.

And I work best when I get to choose what I carry.

That’s the shift. That’s the growth. That’s the relief.

If you’re in midlife and quietly realizing you don’t actually want to be in charge of every blinking, leaking, scurrying thing in your house anymore… you’re not regressing.

You’re refining.

Tell me: what’s officially off your list these days? And what are you happily keeping? Come confess in the comments.

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #SelectiveIndependence, #MidlifeShift
#EnergyIsCurrency, #NotMyJobAnymore, #RefiningNotRegressing

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Every so often I throw a few Ask a Real Girl questions out to the RGG community, not because I’m looking for scientific data, but because I’m curious about the quiet patterns that show up when midlife women answer.

The results are rarely shocking. But they’re always revealing.

Here’s what this round of polls says about where we are right now.

We’re Done With a Lot of Things

When I asked about confidence, the winner wasn’t subtle. 50% chose “Zero patience for bullshit.”

That tracks.

Another 29% said their current confidence looks like saying no without writing a whole essay to justify it.

Translation: midlife confidence isn’t about becoming louder or shinier. It’s about becoming clearer. Less explaining. Less negotiating with nonsense. Less performing patience for things that drain us.

Turns out the most powerful glow-up might just be a boundary.

Sleep Is… A Situation

In the sleep poll, our most common “routine”? The 3 a.m. wake-up (43%).

If this is you too, congratulations - you’re in excellent company.

Close behind was “all of the above” (29%) - which apparently means a nightly grab bag situation - and a healthy portion of what someone perfectly labeled “hot–cold chaos.”

In other words: midlife sleep is less routine and more interpretive dance.

And yes, some of you admitted to doing what I call midnight life math… that moment where you mentally review every decision you’ve made since 1997 while staring at the ceiling.

We’re Craving New… But Not in a Hard Hustle Way

When asked what kind of “new” people want this year, the results were refreshingly sane.

The top answer: Learning something just for fun (34%), closely followed by less doing, more space (31%).

Only 7% voted for doing just one new thing total this year, which feels like the most accurate answer of all.

The takeaway here is interesting: midlife curiosity is still very much alive. But the appetite for constant productivity? Not so much.

We’re not trying to optimize life anymore. We’re trying to actually live it.

Our Quiet Joys Are… Delightfully Boring

One of my favorite questions asked about the midlife joy nobody really understands except you.

The winner: The bedtime beverage ritual (33%).

Tea. Magnesium cocktails. Whatever concoction signals that the day is officially over and no one is allowed to need anything else from you.

Driving in silence came in close behind at 29%, followed by the comfort of rewatching the same shows again and again.

Apparently the midlife nervous system loves two things: predictability and quiet.

And honestly? Same.

Beauty Has Entered Its Practical Era

When it comes to beauty essentials, the community delivered a very realistic starter pack.

Top vote: Cream blush for a natural glow (50%).

Runner-up: Concealer for the no-sleep face (25%).

Because if the sleep poll taught us anything, it’s that concealer is now a public service.

Readers and big sunglasses also made the list, which might be the most realistic midlife beauty routine of all: see better, hydrate the face, and hide behind giant frames when necessary.

PS: If you want some product ideas, check this list of our fav RGG obsessions.

And Finally… Resolutions Are Out

When asked about New Year’s resolutions back in January, the winning answer was clear: a collective hard no (43%).

Another 39% said they might set intentions instead, which feels like the diplomatic compromise.

But overall the vibe was unmistakable: midlife women are not interested in becoming a project again.

We’ve spent decades trying to improve ourselves.

Now we’re mostly trying to live in peace with the people we’ve already become.

The Real Pattern

If you zoom out, all of these answers point to similar shifts:

1. Less tolerance for nonsense.

2. A deeper appreciation for quiet joy.

3. Curiosity without pressure.

4. Beauty routines that work with reality, not against it.

5. Sleep that…well…exists on its own terms.

In other words: we’re not falling apart. We’re just done pretending everything has to look polished to be good.

If the Year of the Fire Horse is supposed to bring boldness and independence, midlife women appear to be right on schedule.

Which might be the most midlife thing of all.

P.S. I’m hosting another Goodreads giveaway for the #1 bestseller Real Girls Guide to Midlife. This time, 20 paperback copies are up for grabs for women who are tired of pretending they’re fine and ready for the real conversation.

Enter now and share with a friend here.

Giveaway runs March 16–26!

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #RealGirlsPolls #NoBS #RGG #MidlifeSleep

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
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And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

One of the most humbling shocks of parenting is realizing your kids are wildly different humans. Which, duh, makes total fucking sense… and yet somehow still blindsides you.

When they were little, I thought of my three as “The Boys.” One strategy fits all. If something worked on one, it should logically work on the other two. I assumed those differences would mellow out by 18, that adulthood would smooth the edges and align them into some cohesive outcome.

Wrong. Hilariously, epically wrong.

They are even more different as young men - emotionally, energetically, and especially in how they want (or don’t want) me involved in their lives.

One kid is basically me with better sneakers. He tolerates my lists, my nudges, my obsessive reminders. Sometimes he even thanks me. It feels familiar, like parenting in a language I’m fluent in.

Another one? Look, I love him (all of them) deeply, but my mom “superpowers” don’t always land the same way with him. I’ll send a thoughtful message with a light splash of unsolicited advice and get back “ok.” Or sometimes nothing at all. Once, after I (gently, I swear) pressed him about a school decision, he took a little space from me for a week. I stared at my phone more than I’d like to admit.

That quiet wasn’t rejection. It was a boundary. And it made me pause. My bigs are stepping into their own lives while I was still holding onto an older version of them… the ones who needed more from me than they actually do now.

And then there’s the youngest: suddenly taller than me, calling me “bruh,” launching himself through the house like gravity is optional. Basically every teenage-boy reel on Instagram… living in my kitchen.

Parenting (young and emerging) adults flips everything. The old instincts (hover, manage, fix) are suddenly the wrong ones. My reminders are ignored. My opinions are tolerated on a good day. My role is being rewritten in real time, and I don’t always get a draft copy.

When Their Futures Don’t Match the Ones You Imagined

Another emotional curveball is watching them build futures that don’t quite resemble the ones you once pictured. Maybe you imagined college, a straight line, something steady and predictable. Their version? Gap years. Creative paths. Nontraditional routes.

As for me, my boys are charting their own courses, and none of them look anything like mine.

As for my two bigs, one is studying fashion. He’s found his thing, and he’s good at it. When people say, “He’s lucky you let him do that,” I have to laugh a little. Let him? It was never mine to decide. My role is simply to cheer him on… and yes, occasionally write the checks.

Another is finding his way at his own pace. And that pace sometimes stretches me. I see so much in him and have to remind myself not to project my urgency onto his process. Watching him move through uncertainty isn’t difficult because he’s failing; it’s difficult because I’m learning that my definition of progress isn’t the only one that counts. Maybe progress is quieter than I expected. Maybe it’s simply continuing to try.

And of course there are moments when the familiar parental voice creeps in… the one that wonders if we should have done something differently, pushed a little more here or worried a little less there. I asked my mom once if she ever felt that tension between what she hoped we’d become and who we actually turned out to be. She laughed gently and said, “Of course.” Then she reminded me that what matters most is that they grow into good people.

Their paths aren’t mine. And if I keep gripping the stories I once wrote for them, I’ll miss the lives they’re actually living. I don’t want to be so focused on imaginary outcomes that I overlook the real wins unfolding right in front of me.

At the end of the day, I don’t want to be the mom who made them feel like they had to earn my pride. I want to be the one who showed up for who they are - fully, fiercely, and without hesitation.

Motherhood, Mafia-Style

A little confession time: when my kids are hurt, I don’t instinctively reach for calm or reason (though I promise I do get there, eventually). I go straight to vengeance. Mafia-style. If you come for my kid, we have a problem. I’ve clearly never acted on it (thank you, self-control and a strong desire to avoid prison) but the instinct is bone-deep.

It’s probably why my middle son once told me I remind him of Beth Dutton. After I finished a full season and tallied her felony count, I gently suggested we might need therapy.

This is also why my kids send me the same Instagram reel on repeat.

It’s some over-the-top, feral, badass mom moment where a woman absolutely loses her mind defending her child. Every time they tag it: “This is you.”

They’re not wrong.

And yet, I have a softer side.

My Love Language? Mild Panic and Asking If You’ve Eaten

No matter how old they get or how independent they become, if I hear even the slightest shift in their voice, I default to the same question I’ve asked since they could chew: “Did you eat?”

It doesn’t matter if they’re at work, on vacation, or literally mid-chew. I need to know they’re not starving or spiraling. Their answers range from “Yeah” to “Mom, I’m literally eating,” but I still press. Because “Did you eat?” has never really meant food. It means: Are you okay? Are you taking care of yourself? Do you know someone is still watching out for you?

Maybe one day I’ll stop asking.

But not today.

When the Kid You Raised Shows Up for the Woman You’ve Become

During that quiet week with one of them, the other big showed up for me in a way I’ll never forget. He sat with me while I turned the conversation over in my head… replaying it, second-guessing myself, reaching for explanations that probably weren’t there.

Gently, he reminded me that the situation wasn’t as simple as I was making it. That his brother wasn’t angry or unloving… just overwhelmed. He helped me see that sometimes being the “safe one” means you absorb the unfiltered frustration, not because you deserve it, but because they trust you enough to let it out.

He didn’t try to fix anything or take sides. He just stayed steady. And in that moment, I realized something I hadn’t expected: the kid I raised was now capable of showing up for the woman I’ve become.

Still Paying. Still Praying. Still Wishing They’d Answer My Damn Texts.

Parenting adult children isn’t empty-nest tips and cute checklists. It’s bite marks and receipts. It’s paying the phone bill and still getting sent to voicemail. It’s watching them stumble, soar, ghost you, love you, and drive you slightly insane (sometimes all before noon).

It’s biting your tongue until it’s metaphorically bloody, resisting the urge to fix, and loving them through fires you’re not allowed to put out.

You don’t stop being a mom when they hit adulthood. You just enter the boss-level phase. You’re still the anchor, still the fridge full of their favorites, still the soft place to land. You’re also learning, sometimes painfully, when to step in and when to step the fuck back.

Parenting doesn’t end. It sharpens. Turns out raising adults requires as much heart and late-night crying as the toddler years… just fewer Goldfish crackers.

Tell me how you’re navigating this stage. What’s working? What’s not? What still wrecks you a little?

We’re still their moms. We’re still learning. And we’re not going anywhere.

P.S. I’m hosting another Goodreads giveaway for the #1 bestseller Real Girls Guide to Midlife. This time, 20 paperback copies are up for grabs for women who are tired of pretending they’re fine and ready for the real conversation.

Enter now and share with a friend here.

Giveaway runs March 16–26!

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #RealGirlsParentingAdults #LoveLanguage #RGG

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
Let’s connect: Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Website | Book

And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

What if midlife isn’t something to fix, but something we finally claim?

I’m hosting another Goodreads giveaway for the #1 bestseller Real Girls Guide to Midlife. This time, 20 paperback copies are up for grabs for women who are tired of pretending they’re fine and ready for the real conversation.

If this sounds like you (or someone you love), tag her so she doesn’t miss it.

Enter now and share with a friend here. Because none of us are meant to figure this out alone.

Giveaway runs March 16–26!

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #RealGirlsGiveaway #GoodreadsGiveaway #RGG

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
Let’s connect: Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Website | Book

And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

We’re back! No trend chasing. No affiliate circus. Just the things that are actually earning space in real life.

These are the accounts we stop scrolling for, the products that survive the bathroom purge, the food that gets requested again by the people who live here, and the books that don’t collect dust on the nightstand.

Nothing aspirational. Nothing sponsored. Just what’s holding up.

People We’re Following

Lacy Counts (@lacycounts) – Everyday chaos, zero polish, all truth.

Why we’re following: Lacy’s feed feels like someone finally turned the camera on real life instead of the curated version. Working mom energy, survival-mode humor, tiny wins that deserve confetti… she captures the in-between moments that most of us live in but rarely document. It’s not aspirational. It’s recognizable.

And yes, there’s one reel of hers (I’ll link it here because you need it) that I’ve watched an embarrassing number of times (ie. way more than thrice). At this point it’s less “content” and more emotional validation on demand. It made me laugh, then pause, then send it to an unsettling number of friends with “this.” Which, frankly, is the highest compliment.

Erin Wesley Jones @erinjoneswesley – Pop culture, daily life, and media feels all in one place.

Why we’re following: Erin’s IG is equal parts pop culture commentary, personal moments, and thoughtful takes on entertainment. She effortlessly blends film & TV enthusiasm with everyday snapshots, whether it’s a meaningful life moment or a fun observation about the things she loves. She’s the kind of creator who makes her hot takes (I’m obsessed with her Bravo ones) feel smart and relatable, and whose content you enjoy because it’s thoughtful, not overly curated.

Products We’re Loving

Michaels of Brooklyn Pasta Sauce – The vodka sauce took the crown.

Why we love it: I hosted an Italian family dinner night recently and the Michaels of Brooklyn vodka sauce won without debate. Rich, balanced, no strange sweetness, no “this came from a jar” aftertaste and a simple list of ingredients you can actually name and pronounce. It tasted like someone’s actual Nonna (or Noni like my great grandmas were named by us kids) was in the kitchen eyeing our plating and insisting we needed to “mangia.”It’s earned a permanent shelf spot.

Doich Foods – Clean, delish, and apparently teenage-approved.

Why we love it: I bought Doich (follow them here on the ‘gram) thinking it would be mine. Healthy, satisfying, not pretending to be dessert while secretly being cardboard. Instead, my 15-year-old claimed it immediately. I genuinely could not keep it out of his hands. And if a teenage boy voluntarily chooses the better-for-you option? That’s a five-star review.

My favorite flavor is Basic B#tch… which is deeply ironic because I assure you, I am anything but.

Also love that the brand gives back… every purchase supports organizations like Best Buddies and HelpCure HD. Snacks that do some good in the world are always welcome in my pantry.

Beauty Staples Saving the Day

Omnilux Red Light Mask – Low drama, high payoff.

Why we love it: The Omnilux mask is technically very flashy: glowing red like something out of a sci-fi movie and mildly terrifying if you walk into a room wearing it unannounced. But beneath the drama, it’s actually the opposite of gimmicky. It’s consistent. It’s science-backed. The kind of skincare that quietly does its job if you keep showing up for it. My man got me the Contour Face… and then surprised me with the bonus neck-and-chest version — and I’m not being dramatic when I say both are elite. Skin looks calmer, more even, less “life is happening and it’s all showing up on my face.” It’s subtle, steady, and quietly doing the work… which honestly feels like the most attractive quality in a device… and a partner.

REFY Face Primer – Smooth without suffocating.

Why we love it: REFY Face Primer is the skincare-meets-makeup hybrid that understands texture is different now. It hydrates, smooths, and gives that subtle glassy finish without pilling, sliding, or settling into places that didn’t exist in 2003. It makes skin look quietly refined — not filtered, not frozen, just… pulled together. The kind of base that says, “Yes, I slept,” even if you were up reorganizing your life at 1:17 a.m.

What We’re Reading & Listening To

It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica - Psychological tension without theatrics.

Why we’re reading: Mary Kubica doesn’t rely on cheap twists or shock value. She builds tension the slow, intelligent way through character, doubt, and the creeping sense that something is off but you can’t yet prove it. It’s Not Her pulls you in quietly and then tightens its grip chapter by chapter. It’s the kind of book where you tell yourself you’ll stop at a “natural break” and suddenly it’s midnight and you’re suspicious of everyone, including fictional neighbors. Smart, unsettling, and deeply readable.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg – Behavior, decoded.

Why we’re reading: This isn’t motivational fluff. It’s behavioral wiring. Duhigg breaks down the cue-routine-reward loop in a way that makes you realize most of your day is running on autopilot… and that’s not a personality flaw, it’s design. The book walks through how habits form, how they stick, and more importantly, how they shift. It’s less about willpower and more about systems - which feels especially relevant in midlife when you’re re-examining what you carry, what you repeat, and what you’re finally ready to interrupt. Practical, grounded, and oddly empowering once you see the pattern.

Cake for Dinner Podcast with Keesha Scott on YouTube (because I love a good video pod…and the Apple pod link) – No filters. No performing.

Why we’re watching and listening: Keesha brings real-life conversations to the mic — motherhood, marriage, sobriety, mental health, identity — without polishing them into inspiration porn. She’s a mom of three and a certified parenting coach, but this isn’t expert-on-a-pedestal energy. It’s raw, layered, grown-woman dialogue about burnout, resentment, partnership, and rebuilding after hard seasons. The kind of conversation that lingers — thoughtful, grounded, and real enough to make you exhale. And follow her on IG too. You won’t regret it!

BONUS: I’ve mentioned author Liz Alterman and her fantastic books here before, but her blog is just as entertaining. She recently featured me (!!) as a guest, which was such a fun surprise. Her writing is witty, funny, and refreshingly honest… very much our vibe here at Real Girls Guide. Definitely worth subscribing if you like smart humor and relatable life commentary.

That’s Part 5. No hype. No “must-have before it sells out.” Just the accounts, books, and products that are actually earning their keep in real life.

If something has taken over your group chats, your bathroom counter, your dinner table, or your 10:42 p.m. scroll sesh, send it. We’re not curating perfection… we’re curating what holds up.

The full, growing Real Girls Obsessions archive lives here.

We’ll keep paying attention. Keeping what works. Letting the rest fall away without apology.

Because at this stage? If it doesn’t earn its place, it doesn’t stay.

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #RealGirlsObsessions #MidlifeMustHaves #Influenced #MidlifePodcast #MidlifeWriter #MidlifeFun #RGG

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
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And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

If you read my piece about being the unpaid Chief Operating Officer of everyone’s calendar, you already know I have strong feelings about invisible labor.

That post was about logistics - schedules, coordination, the thousand small decisions that quietly stack up.

This is different.

This is what happens when the logistics calm down and the emotional math becomes harder to ignore. I’ve been thinking about this dynamic a lot lately… not just in relationships, but while building a leadership workshop on the invisible load high performers carry. Different context, same pattern.

Recently, I had a chance to connect with Charlie Bauman, whom I quote in my book and who has spent decades studying family systems and relational patterns. We weren’t dissecting one spectacular relationship. We were talking about themes.

And the themes felt… familiar. Not explosive. Not scandalous. Structural.

The Social Engine No One Acknowledged

Here’s the pattern Charlie said he sees a lot of: Midlife couple. Long history. Shared everything.

She has friends. Real ones. Women she texts without drafting it three times first. Women she meets for dinner and actually laughs with. Women who know the unfiltered version of her life.

He has… community-adjacent energy.

His social life exists, but it often runs through her. If she plans the dinner, he attends. If she sends the group text, he replies. If she stops? The friendships don’t fight to survive.

Charlie calls this “borrowed community”... when one partner’s social life is largely sustained by the other’s relational labor.

They simply fade.

Charlie framed this in terms of socialization. Many men were raised to compete, achieve, provide, endure. They were not raised to build emotionally intimate, individuated friendships. No one taught them how to initiate connection without a structured activity attached to it. No one handed them the playbook for calling another grown man just to talk.

“Relational skills aren’t instinctive,” Charlie says. “They’re socialized. And women are typically trained early to carry them.”

So when they partner up, their wife often becomes the bridge to connection.

Most of us were trained early to equate love with usefulness. To believe that being needed meant being valued. So when we become the bridge, the planner, the emotional translator, it doesn’t feel like over-functioning at first. It feels like intimacy. It feels like being essential.

And because she’s good at it… because she’s been good at relational management her entire life… she carries it.

Not consciously. Not maliciously. But consistently.

Competence Is a Hell of a Drug

This is where it threads into something bigger.

Being capable feels powerful. At work, it got me promoted. I was the steady one. The closer. The person leadership trusted when things were messy. I absorbed chaos and handed back calm.

At home, it looked similar. I smoothed tension. I remembered birthdays. I checked in on the friend who seemed off at dinner. I managed the emotional weather report for the entire household.

No one sat me down and assigned this. I was just good at it. Capability became currency. Slowly, it became identity.

The problem isn’t competence. The problem is when competence turns into quiet over-functioning. Charlie describes this as an imbalance of emotional labor — when one partner regulates the system and the other regulates themselves.

When I was the emotional regulator at work and the social infrastructure at home, I wasn’t just participating in the relationship… I was powering it.

For a long time, that felt fine. Productive. Necessary. Even virtuous.

Until midlife.

When the Shared Project Ends

At some point in midlife, the noise shifts. For some women, that shift comes when children grow up and no longer require constant coordination. For others, it arrives when careers stabilize, caregiving seasons change, or the external intensity of building a life eases just enough to create space.

Whatever the catalyst, the shared project that once organized daily life… raising kids, building a career, managing chaos, surviving demanding decades… begins to recede. The house may get quieter. The schedule may open up. The urgency softens.

And when that happens, what remains between two adults becomes clearer.

Sometimes what’s left is real connection: curiosity, shared growth, mutual expansion.

Sometimes it’s comfort and familiarity.

And sometimes it’s the subtle realization that one person has been evolving, expanding, building friendships, doing the inner work, while the other has remained largely unchanged.

This is where many women begin to admit, often quietly, that they feel like they are the only one growing. Not because their partner is cruel or malicious, but because they themselves have been carrying the relational momentum.

They are the ones initiating dinners, maintaining friendships, suggesting therapy, translating feelings into usable language, and managing the emotional temperature of the room. And when they imagine stepping back from that role, an unsettling question emerges: what would actually hold?

These aren’t dramatic questions meant to provoke an exit.

They’re structural questions about how the relationship has been functioning all along.

“It’s Better Than Being Alone”

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable.

Many midlife women are not afraid of loneliness. They have friendships. They have careers. They have rich interior lives.

What they are afraid of is the story attached to being single.

Culturally, partnership still signals success. A long marriage signals stability. Divorce in midlife still carries whispers… even in progressive circles.

So the internal equation becomes: this may not be great, but it’s stable. It’s familiar. It’s intact. And, “it’s better than being alone.”

On the surface, that sounds mature. Measured. Responsible.

But when you zoom out, it can also mean: I am willing to keep carrying this system because disrupting it feels riskier than staying tired.

And that’s the invisible labor piece no one talks about in marriage. Not just cooking dinner. Not just managing the calendar. Managing the emotional ecosystem of two adults.

And I know that role well. I lived in it so long it felt natural. When the exhaustion crept in, I didn’t question the structure. I questioned myself. Was I less patient? Less generous? Less in love? We’re told love should feel fulfilling. So when it starts to feel depleting, we assume something is broken inside us… not in the design of the arrangement. That misdiagnosis keeps women carrying far longer than they should.

Burnout Isn’t Just Corporate. And It Isn’t Just Marriage.

I saw this same pattern recently with a leadership workshop I led for a corporate client on the invisible load high performers carry. Different setting, same dynamic: the most capable people quietly absorb complexity, coordination, and emotional management until responsibility expands by default. Eventually the system depends on them… and exhaustion gets framed as a personal resilience problem instead of a structural one.

At work, we are finally naming burnout as structural. We’re admitting that when expectations increase and recovery time disappears, that’s math… not weakness.

In relationships, we rarely apply that same logic.

If you are the only one building friendships, the only one initiating growth, the only one suggesting therapy, the only one maintaining connection… that’s not just personality difference.

That’s load imbalance.

And load imbalance, over time, erodes intimacy. You cannot admire someone you are quietly over-functioning for. You cannot feel deeply partnered with someone who is emotionally downstream of you.

That doesn’t make your partner a villain. It does make the system unsustainable.

The Math of It All

Midlife has a way of stripping away denial. Not dramatically. Not explosively. Just steadily.

You start noticing where you’re carrying by default. Where you’re smoothing by reflex. Where you’re building connection because if you don’t, it won’t exist.

This isn’t a manifesto for leaving. It’s an invitation to check the math.

Are you partnered, or are you managing? Are you choosing this dynamic, or maintaining it because it’s familiar? Are you staying because it’s aligned… or because it’s less disruptive than change?

Being capable isn’t the problem. Believing you have to be the entire emotional engine of your partnership might be.

Midlife is when many women finally look at the numbers and realize the math doesn’t math.

If this hit, forward it to the woman who keeps everything running. Or reply and tell me where you’re tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix.

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #InvisibleLabor. #MidlifeTruths, #EmotionalLoad

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I wrote a chapter about grief in my book while watching women around me mourn things no one sends flowers for.

Not just death. But divorce. Estrangement. Empty nests. Careers that quietly stalled. Bodies that changed without asking permission. Dreams that expired without a formal announcement.

And here’s what I kept noticing: change feels like failure. Different feels like failure. And failure comes wrapped in shame, fear, and guilt.

We’re supposed to “be positive.” We’re supposed to “be grateful.” We’re supposed to handle it well and not make anyone uncomfortable. But grief doesn’t care about optics. It doesn’t care about your LinkedIn bio or your family group chat.

As grief therapist Claire Bidwell Smith says, grief is anything you lose that mattered: your marriage before resentment, your ambition before burnout, your body before babies. That’s real. And pretending it’s not is how we stay stuck.

And sometimes grief isn’t metaphorical. Sometimes it’s brutal and immediate. I lost a friend recently after a short, lethal battle with cancer. She hadn’t even hit 45. One minute she was making future plans. The next, she was counting weeks. Watching someone vibrant and unfinished disappear like that rearranges you. It strips the illusion of “later.” It makes every quiet resentment feel small and every unresolved conversation feel urgent. It’s rocked me in ways that frankly I’m still untangling.

When author, Real Girl and total badass Diane Heiler lost her husband of 25 years, people told her to “buck up.” Even before he died, they insisted he’d get better. But the doctor had been honest — there was no cure. After he passed, the casseroles came. Then they stopped. The grief didn’t. What she needed wasn’t optimism. It was space. Permission to collapse. Permission to not be strong on command.

Midlife has been mislabeled for decades. What gets framed as decline is often something else entirely: a collision between who we’ve been and who we’re becoming. Dr. Nivedita Nayak calls it sacred tension… the push and pull between mourning and becoming. When we allow ourselves to honor what we’ve lost, we actually create room for what’s still unfolding. But first, we have to stop labeling every change as a personal failure.

The Stuff No One Warns You About

Grief doesn’t always show up in black dresses and casseroles. Sometimes it shows up in a comment like, “Did you forget to have kids?” Sometimes it arrives in your inbox with a cheerful “Welcome to AARP!” and you feel personally attacked. Sometimes it looks like fighting with Spanx in your bathroom and realizing you are too grown to be wrestling nylon to prove you still qualify as sexy.

And then there’s this: Diane fell in love again at 80. Not quietly. Not apologetically. She talks openly about passion, sex, and choosing joy after devastating loss. She didn’t shrink. She didn’t disappear. She lived.

And sometimes it’s quieter. It’s standing in front of the mirror and not quite recognizing the woman staring back at you.

Often the grief isn’t just about what ended. It’s about who you had to become to survive it.

I grieved the version of me who stayed quiet to keep the peace. I grieved the tightly wound, spreadsheet-carrying control freak who believed certainty equaled safety. I grieved the woman who shrank to be digestible.

Losing those versions hurt. But what emerged was bolder, clearer, and done shapeshifting.

As one Real Girl from the book put it, “The woman I was at 30 would be shocked by the woman I am now. And honestly? I love that for her.” That’s not denial. That’s growth with teeth.

Real Girls Reality Check(list): Grieve Well. Grow Anyway.

Here’s your midlife gut check. No candles. No worksheets. Just truth.

1. Name what you’re actually grieving.

Be specific. Not just “the divorce,” but the identity you built around being someone’s wife. Not just “the job,” but the sense of relevance and power that came with it. Not just “my body,” but the ease, the invisibility, or the attention it once carried.

When you name the real loss, you stop fighting a ghost and start facing something tangible.

2. Stop calling change a personal failure.

Different does not mean defective. Outgrowing something does not mean you ruined it. Choosing a new direction does not mean you lacked grit.

Sometimes it simply means you evolved. And evolution is not a character flaw.

3. Let the shame surface… then interrogate it.

Charlie Bauman reminds us that many of us still operate from old family roles: caretaker, peacemaker, achiever. When we start behaving differently, the scrutiny can be immediate. The shame can feel intense.

But that shame is often just freedom dressed in discomfort. It feels wrong because it’s unfamiliar, not because it actually is.

4. Stop editing yourself for approval.

You are not required to stay small in order to stay lovable. You are not obligated to be universally palatable.

If the real you makes someone squirm, that doesn’t automatically mean you’re too much. It might just mean you’ve stopped performing.

5. Take off the metaphorical Spanx.

If you are fighting your clothes, your calendar, your relationship, your public image, ask yourself why. Who are you still trying to impress? Who are you trying to prove something to?

Acceptance is not defeat. It’s permission. Permission to choose comfort, truth, and ease over performance.

6. Prioritize yourself without apology.

Our friend Diane Heiler said the greatest gift she gave herself after loss was learning to like herself fully and unfiltered. That’s radical at any age.

Self-prioritization isn’t selfish. It’s survival. If you disappear inside everyone else’s needs, there’s nothing left of you to love.

7. Honor the version of you that got you here.

You don’t have to hate who you were in order to grow beyond her. She carried you through what she knew how to survive.

You’re not abandoning her. You’re expanding her.

8. Decide who you are now… on purpose.

Not by default. Not by inertia. Not by someone else’s comfort level.

Midlife isn’t about clinging to who you were. It’s about consciously choosing who you’re becoming.

Here’s the truth, Real Girl to Real Girl:

You can grieve the girl you were and still love the woman you are. You can miss what was and refuse to go backward. You can feel shame, fear, and guilt and still move forward anyway.

Grief doesn’t make you broken. It makes you honest.

And on the other side of that honesty? Power.

So if you’re standing in front of the mirror wondering whether you’re too old, too loud, too different, too much… you’re not too much.

You’re finally just enough.

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife #RealGirlsRealityCheck(list) #MidlifeGrief

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Over the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to join several podcasts and conversations centered on midlife. You can listen to them here.

No matter where the conversation started, it often circled the same tension: the lifelong pressure to be “good.” Good daughters. Good partners. Good mothers. Good employees. Good at aging. Good at not needing too much.

I showed up expecting to mostly give and to share stories, offer language, and name things I’ve spent years thinking about quietly. What caught me off guard was how much came back in return. Not praise, but perspective. Simple reminders about how deeply the “good girl” conditioning runs… and how expensive it becomes in midlife.

On the Gen X Juggler Podcast, Deb and I unpacked outdated expectations, perfectionism, and the subtle ways women disappear over time, and how to catch yourself before you fade into the background of your own life.

With Forward From 50, the focus was clarity over chaos. Rest as necessary, not lazy. Boundaries without dissertations. Reinvention that doesn’t require blowing everything up, just releasing what no longer fits.

On The Natalie Tysdal Podcast, we stayed practical. Self-advocacy, asking better questions, and refusing to quietly power through discomfort when something feels off.

The conversation on F*ck You 50s went exactly where you’d expect… and further. Yes, we joked about “personal gardening (aka the bush),” but underneath it was medical gaslighting, suppressed rage, desire, and what happens when women stop accepting dismissal as normal.

Jessica Long from Midlife Advice and I tackled the trifecta: menopause, divorce, dating. No gloss. Just what shifts in your body, your tolerance, your expectations, and why dating after all that feels like a different sport entirely.

On Midlife Audacity, we zoomed out: identity waves, parenting grown kids, the internal committee that keeps women small, and what it takes to stop self-abandoning and start telling the truth.

With Heather Carey on Real Food Stories, the lens was nourishment. Food myths, emotional eating, and learning to support your body instead of fighting it.

On Your Spectacular Life with Jodi Weitz, the focus turned inward. We talked about personal growth without turning it into a performance, self-awareness that isn’t about impressing anyone, confidence that doesn’t need to be loud, and assertiveness that isn’t aggression.

Victoria Byrd from Women Mastering Midlife and I skipped the glow-up narrative and went straight to the reckoning: perimenopause, divorce at 45, identity loss, and the missing manual for what midlife actually feels like. We talked sovereignty over self-improvement, rest over performance, and why this season isn’t about fixing yourself — it’s about refusing to shrink.

On The Aging Well Podcast with Dr. Jeff Armstrong, we talked longevity with honesty, money, blended families, purpose, and the quiet grief of becoming someone new.

And with Mindi Lobuzzetta, host of the The Unapologetic Midlife podcast, we zeroed in on the invisible rule book women inherit… the unspoken expectations about likability, ambition, aging, and staying palatable. We talked about the cost of following rules you never agreed to, and what shifts when you stop asking for permission.

One of the most grounding conversations came through Dr. Alexis Dunne’s Book Club which we did as a live event. We first connected on Instagram @dunnewithmenopause, and she gave our book so much love…

If you don’t follow her, you should fix that now. She’s smart, direct, and refreshingly real. She read the book, chose it for her club, and invited me into a live conversation with women who had truly spent time with the material. Hearing passages read back… then questioned, challenged, and applied to their own lives was humbling. We talked about the book’s origin story, the midlife myths many of us absorb without realizing it, the grief that can surface when you admit things are changing, and the personal contract you write when you decide being “good” is no longer the goal.

Across all of these conversations, the same themes kept resurfacing:

• Midlife isn’t about fixing what’s broken - it’s about reclaiming what was always yours.

• Rest isn’t laziness; it’s necessary.

• Saying no doesn’t require justification.

• Desire doesn’t retire.

• Being “good” was never the same as being free.

• And what so many women think is “just me” is anything but.

What stayed with me most was how often people named things out loud that many of us have carried quietly for years. The resentment. The fatigue. The want for more. In those moments, the conversations stopped feeling like interviews and started feeling like permission… permission to be honest instead of agreeable.

I’m grateful for that. For hosts who make room for nuance. For women willing to sit with the complicated parts of midlife without smoothing them over. And for the reminder that sometimes the bravest shift isn’t reinvention.

It’s deciding you’re done being good at your own expense.

#RGG, #RGGtoMidlife, #MidlifePodcast, #MenopausePodcast

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
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And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

I’m teaming up with Womaness again to give three readers a curated bundle of my favorite Womaness products (and a few extra Real Girls Guide goodies) because midlife care should be smart, effective, and actually designed for women like us.

If you’ve been curious about Womaness, this is a great place to start. These are products I genuinely use, love, and recommend: Let’s Neck Serum, Coco Bliss and The Works. Plus, I’m adding a few of our RGG faves to the mix!

Three winners. Five days. Current Real Girls Guide subscribers, great news: you are automatically entered! Here’s how it works:

• Subscribe to The Real Girls Guide to Midlife if you aren’t already

• Follow @realgirlsguide55 on Instagram or Facebook

• Like, comment on or share this post on any channel

• Tag a friend who’d love this giveaway (1 tag = 1 entry; unlimited tags allowed)

• Bonus: Share the giveaway post to your IG or FB story, tag @realgirlsguide55, and add the hashtag #RGGgiveaway for an extra entry

• Every action = another chance to win

Disclaimer: No purchase necessary. Open to residents 18+ (or age of majority in your country). Giveaway runs February 24, ends February 28, 2026 at 11:59 PM Pacific Time. Three winners chosen at random and contacted via direct message or email by March 6, 2026. By entering, you agree to the full rules here. This giveaway is not sponsored, endorsed, or administered by Instagram, Facebook, or any other social platform.

#RealGirlsGuideToMidlife,#MidlifeFun, #RGGgiveaway, #Womaness

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
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And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

I met Becky Parker through an introduction by Heather Danby, host of the Sharing Out Loud Podcast. Our first conversation felt real in the way that makes you sit up straighter because something in you recognizes the truth before your brain has time to argue with it.

We talked about all of it: midlife, self-awareness, body and sexual changes, and the quieter shifts that happen inside long-term relationships. The kind that doesn’t explode but settles in, reshaping what you tolerate and what you want.

Most of us don’t wake up one day and decide our relationship is broken. It happens more quietly than that.

Tolerance drops. Attraction shifts. Conversations feel heavier. The same arguments replay with different details. And somewhere along the way, the question changes from “How do we fix this?” to “Is this really it?”

That’s where Becky’s work lands.

She doesn’t treat relationships as static commitments or moral achievements. She looks at them as living systems shaped by belief, habit, and the recalibration that happens in midlife whether we invite it or not. What once felt manageable can start to feel impossible to ignore. The strategies that kept things running begin to feel like self-erasure.

We don’t need romantic optimism or cute “5 rules for better communication, better sex, better listening - better everything.” It’s about why what once worked suddenly doesn’t.

That shift is often mislabeled as grey divorce. What’s really happening is less dramatic and more unsettling. What we’re looking for is clarity. And for many women, clarity makes it harder to keep managing discomfort just to keep the peace.

I wanted to talk with Becky about what actually changes in midlife, why long-term relationships so often hit friction, and what it takes to move from quiet endurance to intentional choice,whether that means repair, renegotiation, or something braver.

This conversation isn’t about saving relationships at all costs. It’s about understanding what’s real and deciding what you’re willing to do with that clarity.

1. Your work is grounded in both personal experience and behavioral science. How did your own journey shape the way you understand why relationships drift, stall, or fracture over time?

Becky: My understanding of relationships didn’t come from studying them first — it came from living inside one that, at times, felt confusing, disconnected, and quietly lonely. Like many couples, we weren’t fighting constantly… but we also weren’t deeply meeting each other. And what I’ve learned — both personally and professionally — is that most relationships don’t fracture overnight. They drift slowly through small moments of misattunement, unspoken needs, unaddressed resentment, protective behaviors, and the assumptions we start making about one another.

For a long time, I thought relationship health was about communication skills alone. But behavioral science helped me see something much deeper — that the way we show up with a partner is often shaped by our nervous system, our attachment patterns, and the strategies we learned long before the relationship ever began.

In my own journey, the turning point wasn’t learning how to argue better… it was learning how to feel safer being seen (and no more score board keeping). And when safety increases, defensiveness softens, curiosity returns, and connection has space to rebuild.

Today, the work I do is grounded in that dual lens — compassionate understanding paired with practical behavioral insight. Because relationships rarely struggle from a lack of love; more often, they struggle from misunderstood protection.

When people begin to recognize the patterns beneath their reactions — rather than judging themselves or their partner — change becomes not only possible, but sustainable.

2. You talk a lot about internal state—brain chemistry, hormones, nervous system responses. How do those shifts quietly change what we tolerate, want, or resist in long-term relationships?

Becky: One of the most important things I help people understand is that we don’t show up in our relationships as logic alone — we show up as biology, history, and lived experience. And much of that operates quietly beneath our awareness.

Over time, shifts in brain chemistry, hormones, and nervous system regulation can subtly influence how safe we feel, how easily we access patience, how open we are to touch, and even how much emotional bandwidth we have for repair after conflict.

What I see many people do is personalize these changes — assuming something must be wrong with the relationship or with their partner — when often the body is signaling a need for support, attunement, or recalibration.

For example, when the nervous system is chronically activated, the brain naturally scans for threat. In that state, neutral moments can feel loaded, bids for connection can feel like pressure, and small disappointments can carry disproportionate weight. Not because someone is failing — but because the body is working very hard to protect.

On the other hand, when the internal environment feels more regulated, people tend to interpret one another more generously. Curiosity increases. Flexibility returns. Repair becomes easier.

This is why I believe relationship work isn’t just about learning better communication — it’s about understanding the internal conditions that make connection more accessible in the first place.

When individuals begin to recognize these quieter influences, something powerful happens: they often move out of self-blame and partner-blame, and into a more compassionate, informed way of relating.

And from that place, change tends to feel less forced… and far more sustainable.

3. “Grey divorce” is often framed as impulsive, selfish, or even an inevitable side effect of menopause. From your perspective, what’s actually driving these later-life separations—and what are we getting wrong about them?

Becky: I think one of the greatest misconceptions about so-called ‘grey divorce’ is that it happens suddenly — or that it can be reduced to a single life phase like menopause. In reality, most later-life separations are less about impulsivity and far more about accumulated emotional distance that was never fully addressed.

By midlife, many individuals have spent decades showing up for responsibilities — careers, children, extended family, shared logistics — often becoming highly effective partners in managing a life together. But emotional connection requires ongoing attention, and it’s remarkably easy for couples to become organized around function rather than intimacy.

At a certain point, something shifts internally. Sometimes it’s hormonal, sometimes developmental, often existential. People begin asking quieter but very honest questions: Is this how I want to live the next chapter? Do I feel known here? Have we continued growing together, or simply alongside one another?

What I believe we often get wrong is assuming these separations are driven by selfishness. More often, they reflect a longing for aliveness, authenticity, and emotional companionship — needs that don’t expire with age.

At the same time, I hold deep respect for the complexity of long-term partnership. Many relationships are far more resilient than they appear, and with new awareness, couples can reconnect in ways that feel surprisingly vital.

So rather than viewing grey divorce as inevitable, I see it as a signal — an invitation to examine whether two people are still consciously choosing one another, and if not, whether the relationship can be reimagined with greater honesty, safety, and mutual engagement.

Because while longevity is meaningful, what most people ultimately long for is not simply staying together, but feeling truly met within the life they’ve built.

4. When people feel chronically dissatisfied but can’t name why, what’s typically happening beneath the surface? What do we often mislabel as a relationship problem when it’s actually something else?

Becky: Chronic dissatisfaction in a relationship is rarely about one obvious rupture — more often, it’s the quiet accumulation of needs that were never fully named, alongside parts of the self that were gradually set aside.

Many people assume that if something feels off, the relationship itself must be failing. But what I often see is less about incompatibility and more about disconnection — sometimes from each other, and sometimes from one’s own evolving identity.

Over the years, roles solidify. Responsibilities expand. People become extraordinarily skilled at keeping life functioning. Yet beneath that competence, there can be a subtle drifting away from aliveness — from playfulness, curiosity, sensuality, creativity, or honest self-expression.

One thing I gently remind clients is this: the absence of crisis does not always mean the presence of vitality.

So what gets misread as a relationship problem is often a signal that something internally is asking for renewed attention — growth that hasn’t yet been given language, desires that feel unfamiliar, or emotional needs that have matured over time.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about awareness.

Because when individuals reconnect with themselves — their voice, their longings, their emotional landscape — the relationship often shifts as well. Not through force, but through the natural energy that returns when someone feels more fully alive.

And importantly, dissatisfaction isn’t always a warning sign that something is broken. Sometimes it’s simply an invitation — asking whether the life two people built still reflects who they are becoming.

5. Instead of talking about “communication” as a catch-all, what do you see as the real mechanics of connection breaking down—and what actually helps rebuild trust and momentum?

Becky: Communication is often treated as the solution to relationship strain, but in many cases it isn’t the starting point — it’s the reflection of something deeper already happening between two people.

When connection begins to erode, it’s rarely because partners have forgotten how to speak. More often, the underlying sense of emotional safety has been compromised in small, almost invisible ways.

Over time, people start protecting themselves. They soften their truth, avoid certain conversations, grow quicker to defend, or assume they won’t be fully heard. And while these adjustments are usually unconscious, they gradually reduce the openness that connection depends on.

One perspective I often share is this: most communication struggles are not skill problems — they are safety problems.

When someone doesn’t feel emotionally safe, even the most thoughtful words can land as criticism. But when safety is present, conversations tend to become more generous, more curious, and far less adversarial.

Rebuilding trust, then, is less about mastering the perfect phrasing and more about restoring the conditions where honesty feels welcome again. That often begins with smaller moments than people expect — responding without immediate defensiveness, repairing misunderstandings sooner, allowing space for one another’s emotional reality without rushing to correct it.

And just as importantly, trust rebuilds through momentum. Not grand gestures, but consistent experiences that remind each person: we are still on the same side.

Because, ultimately, connection isn’t sustained by how perfectly we communicate — it’s sustained by how safe we make it for each other to be fully known.

6. For someone standing at a crossroads—knowing something needs to change but unsure whether that means repair, renegotiation, or leaving—what does a bold but grounded first step look like?

Becky: When someone finds themselves at a relational crossroads, the impulse is often to search immediately for the ‘right’ decision — to stay, to leave, to fix, to redefine. But clarity rarely emerges from pressure. It tends to unfold from steadiness.

So before any external move is made, what I consider a bold but grounded first step is this: creating enough internal space to hear one’s own truth without the interference of fear, urgency, or imagined outcomes.

I often remind clients that decisions made from emotional reactivity tend to narrow our perspective, while decisions made from self-connection expand it. And when perspective widens, people are far better able to discern not only what hurts, but what is still possible.

Another perspective I hold deeply is this: you don’t have to rush clarity — but you do have to become honest.

Honest about what feels sustainable. Honest about what has been attempted. Honest about whether both partners are willing to participate in growth.

Because relationships are remarkably resilient when two people remain engaged. And when repair is possible, it is often far more transformative than people imagine.

At the same time, there are moments when acknowledging that something has run its course is the most respectful choice for everyone involved. Not as a failure — but as an expression of self-respect and relational truth.

So rather than asking, ‘What should I do?’ I gently encourage people to begin with a quieter question: ‘What becomes clear when I stop abandoning my own knowing?’

From that place, the next step — whether repair, renegotiation, or release — tends to reveal itself with far less chaos, and far more self-trust

In the end, midlife has a way of stripping away denial. What once felt manageable starts to feel misaligned. Relationships stop coasting, and the explanations we relied on stop working.

Nothing is suddenly “wrong.” What’s changed is awareness… and with it, tolerance. That shift leaves a choice: keep managing discomfort, or get honest enough to act.

We’re not interested in preserving appearances. We’re interested in agency and the courage to decide what comes next. Becky meets people right at that moment, when pretending is harder than telling the truth.

Because insight doesn’t need drama. And action doesn’t have to be reckless. But ignoring what’s changed? That’s what costs the most.

If this hits, save it. Send it to the friend who’s circling a decision. Or drop a quiet “ready” below… sometimes naming it is the first move. And Becky and I are here for it all!

#RGG, #RGGtoMidlife, #MidlifeClarity, #RelationshipsAsSystems, #QuietTruths, #EmotionalSafety, #WomenInMidlife

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
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I can’t quite decide if I keep things too long or clear them too fast.

The truth is, I’m situationally both.

I hate outside clutter. Hate it. Visual noise makes my nervous system twitch. I want countertops clear, floors visible, and surfaces calm. I want my house to look like no one lives here… despite the very real evidence that many people absolutely do.

Open my pantry, though?

That’s where the illusion starts to crack.

Because while the outside looks serene, the inside tells a different story. Cabinets and closets look like the aftermath of two raccoons fighting over unresolved childhood issues. Drawers don’t open so much as exhale. Things fall out that I forgot I owned, needed, or emotionally assigned meaning to in 2007.

And then there’s the garage.

Recently (and before he broke 7 ribs and shattered a collarbone), my Aussie Man led a full-scale, no-nonsense garage takeover. I mean massive clean-up. Organization. Systems. Zones. Shelves. The kind of effort that makes you feel both grateful and slightly exposed.

But here’s the part that matters: I dove in too. Not delicately. Not nostalgically. I purged shit I’d been holding onto not just for years, but for decades. Not everything (I’m not a monster) but enough that we had to call in a hauler. That felt both unhinged and incredibly right.

There were moments of hesitation. A few “wait, do we need this?” reflexes. But mostly? Relief. Physical, emotional relief. Like I was finally agreeing to stop storing old versions of myself in boxes.

I was impressed with us. Proud, even.

Then later, I changed out of my work clothes (aka jammies) and into real clothes (actual hard pants)… and reached for my favorite belt.

A belt I bought at Marshall’s when I was fifteen.

It’s from the late-ish 1900s (you know, the mid-80s…which sounds fake, but here we are). Black. Covered in grommets. Extremely adjustable. And yes, I still have it. Yes, I still wear it. Because it still works. Because it still fits. Because apparently this is where my inner minimalist draws a firm boundary.

So what is that?

It’s not logic. It’s not style. It’s not even sentimentality in the Pinterest-memory-box sense.

It’s midlife.

I’ve let go of a lot. Old reminders. Old versions of myself. Painful things that carried more weight than wisdom. I’ve released relationships, roles, expectations, and entire identities that no longer belonged to me.

That kind of purging feels sacred.

But physical stuff? That’s where it gets nuanced.

I’m deeply sentimental about kid things… and also deeply relieved when I let them go. Some objects feel warm and alive. Others hold weird, sticky energy… memories I’ve already processed but apparently boxed up anyway.

Releasing them isn’t sad. It’s clarifying.

Objects carry stories. Not in a woo-woo way (although maybe a little). In a “who was I then, who am I now” way. And sometimes clearing a shelf clears something emotional you didn’t realize you were still holding.

Recently, I toured a house for sale where the owner was organized in every way. Every drawer. Every closet. Every label facing forward. It was… impressive.

And a little unsettling.

Not because it was bad… but because it felt so tightly controlled it made me feel something I couldn’t quite name. Awe? Suspicion? The urge to open a random drawer just to see if anything was human in there?

There wasn’t a single junk drawer (yep, I checked). Not one. No obligatory catch-all. No “I don’t know where this goes yet but future-me will decide” space. It felt like a home that had skipped an important developmental milestone.

Meanwhile, my house has very clearly demanded the function of a few junk drawers. Not chaos… purpose. Drawers that know their role. Batteries. Rubber bands. Mysterious keys. Takeout utensils. That one tiny screwdriver that somehow rules us all.

Those drawers don’t just exist. They tell you where to put things. They offer relief. They say, “you don’t need to solve this right now.”

Standing in that perfectly organized house, I realized I don’t want a life with zero junk drawers. I want just enough places where things can land without being interrogated.

That’s when it clicked.

Midlife isn’t about minimalism or maximalism. It’s about discernment. It’s about knowing what brings calm versus what brings connection. What needs structure versus what needs grace. What stays because it still feels alive, and what goes because it belongs to someone you used to be.

I don’t want everything. I don’t want nothing. I want what fits for me now.

And occasionally, that includes a 40-year-old grommet belt, a pantry that looks fine until you open it, and the knowledge that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is call a hauler and let it go.

If this hit a nerve, open one cabinet or drawer (even a junk one) today. Keep one thing that still feels like you. Let go of one thing that quietly doesn’t. And if you want, come tell me which one surprised you most.

#RGG, #RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #Purge #JunkDrawer #MidlifeDiscernment #EmotionalDecluttering, #JunkDrawerWisdom

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
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And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be loud or romantic to matter. Sometimes it’s simply about choosing something thoughtful, something that lands quietly and stays with you.

It’s been two months since this book stepped into the world, and what’s surprised me most isn’t the milestones… it’s the response. The notes that arrive quietly. The messages that start with “I didn’t know how much I needed this.” The recognition that shows up again and again in the form of a simple, steady me too.

So as Valentine’s week approaches, this felt like a natural moment to pause and say thank you. From February 10 through February 14, the Kindle edition will be available for $2.14… not as a push, but as a simple way to share it, gift it, or spend some time with it yourself.

I’m deeply grateful to everyone who’s spent time with these pages and helped the book find its place.

#RGG, #RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #Valentine #2.14 #MidlifeKindle #kiss

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
Let’s connect: Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Website | Book

And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

I got to spend a few weeks and more time than usual around my Aussie Man™ and our combined kid crew, whose average age is 20. Which meant I was fully immersed in live, unfiltered teen and just-past-teen language, whether I asked for it or not.

This is part two. Apparently the first one hit harder than I realized because I still get DMs about it. Grown women asking me to explain words they heard in their own homes. Men admitting they Googled slang and still felt lost.

So here we are again. Same confusion. Same commitment to trying. New words. Same sustained bewilderment.

I try to stay current. I really do. I listen. I observe. I nod like context is happening.

And then a teenager (or… what the entire fuck… an adult) says “67” with full confidence and walks away, leaving me questioning language, numbers, and my place in society.

Below is our short guide to the newest slang, written by someone who is based… and permanently a step behind!

Based

A stamp of approval for someone who says the real thing without flinching. Unbothered. Somehow correct. No checking the room. High praise. Rare energy. No ick or try-hard detected.

67

No explanation. No origin story. Just a number dropped with authority. My confusion is sustained. Even more confusing is watching grown-ass adults start using it with the same confidence, as if we all agreed on the meaning in a meeting I clearly missed.

Gyatt

An exclamation. A reaction. Usually loud. I do not love it, but I understand it enough to feel uneasy.

Skull

Not death. Means laughing but emotionally finished. This one feels earned.

NPC (non-player character)

A person with no original thought. Efficient. Brutal. Slightly alarming.

Delulu

Delusional, but with hope. Dream big. Ignore facts. Honestly relatable.

Ate / Ate that

You did well. You succeeded. You left no crumbs. Clear. Decisive. I respect it.

Bussin

Extremely good. Usually food. Occasionally confusing when applied to humans.

Touch grass

A suggestion to log off and rejoin the physical world. Rude. Fair. Necessary.

BONUS: That’s loud

A critique of behavior that’s performative, unnecessary, or doing too much… giving “you could have kept this to yourself” energy.

In conclusion: I’m still stuck on “67.” If that makes me a NPC, fine. Drop the slang I need to know before Part Three. This post is based… for real!

#RGG, #RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #TeenSlang #WTFis67 #Gyatt #NPC

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
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When I started writing here on Substack, I didn’t have a strategy. No content calendar. No growth plan. No clear idea of what this would become.

I was in the middle of writing the Real Girls Guide to Midlife and needed a place to think in public. To try out ideas. To see if the questions I was asking made sense outside my own head. To get a feel for what landed… and what didn’t.

So I started posting. One piece at a time.

Some of the posts were polished. Some were rough drafts with feelings. Many were written between appointments, flights to and from Australia, projects, and the low-grade exhaustion of life.

I didn’t always know where I was going. I just knew I couldn’t keep everything inside.

Now, nearly 100 posts in, here’s what I’ve learned.

Naming things doesn’t weaken them. It sharpens them.
Writing helped me see patterns I’d been living inside without naming. Beliefs I’d inherited. Rules I’d never agreed to. It helped me sort what still fits from what I’m ready to leave behind. That unlearning changed how I move through my days.

Connection doesn’t always show up loudly.
It’s often quiet. A thoughtful reply. A message that says, “Same.” Or, “I didn’t know how to say this until now.” The way so many of you read closely, push back gently, or add something honest of your own. I could not have imagined how much each and every one would mean.

Consistency isn’t about discipline. It’s about permission.
I didn’t write more because I tried harder. I wrote more because I stopped waiting to be finished. I let myself show up unsure and a little scared. Midlife doesn’t reward perfection. It responds to honesty.

This space shaped the book more than I expected.
Your reactions helped sharpen chapters. Slow others down. Rethink tone. You showed me how women want to be spoken to, not fixed, not rushed, not talked at. Because of that, the book became clearer and more grounded and still more me.

Writing here changed me too.
I care less about being palatable (as my Aussie Man can confirm!). Less about getting it right. More about telling the truth and letting it stand. This practice didn’t give me answers. It gave me steadiness.

So if you’ve been here for one post or nearly all of them, thank you. Thank you for reading. For responding. For digging in. For helping me think more clearly by thinking alongside me.

This never felt like an audience. It felt like a room. And I’m grateful you’re in it.

#RGG55, #RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife, #MidlifeWriting, #CreativeProcess
#WomenSupportingWomen, #FindingYourVoice

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
Let’s connect: Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Website | Book

And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

To keep the tradition alive, we’re back with Part 4, our first Obsessions list of 2026.

These are the accounts we actually stop scrolling for, the products we keep within arm’s reach, and the reads and listens we send to friends. Nothing aspirational. Nothing sponsored. Just things that earn their place by being genuinely useful, funny, sharp, or calming.

People We’re Following

The Midst (@the_midst_life) - The questions we’re all asking without the panic.

Why we’re following: The Midst names the thoughts most people keep private: identity shifts, ambition fatigue, relationship recalibration, and deciding what stays versus what goes. The writing is reflective without spiraling, thoughtful without preaching, and always feels like it’s coming from someone paying attention.

Mitchell Little (@mitchlittleacademy) - Familiar humor with a side of sanity.

Why we’re following: Mitch’s content works because it feels real. He shares everyday moments with his wife, honest dynamics, and humor that lands and is totally recognizable. Underneath the laughs is a steady message about movement, food, and habits that fit into actual lives… not influencer fantasy. It’s light, grounded, and quietly reassuring.

BONUS: Colleen Landry (@colleenlandrycomedy) - Midlife comedy that hits because it’s true.

Why we love her: Colleen pivots midlife like a mic drop, turning everyday chaos into perfectly timed, laugh-out-loud sketches. After years teaching English in New Brunswick, she transformed her side-hustle humor into a full-time career, building a massive following fast. Her signature “sniff” lands every punchline with a sly wink and a gut punch. She tackles mammograms, lost keys, and midlife meltdowns with deadpan comfort that makes you laugh and think, oh thank god, it’s not just me.

Products We’re Obsessed With

Shebang - Well-designed. Grown-up. No embarrassment required.

Why we love it: Shebang was built to normalize pleasure, not package it as a trend. Thoughtfully designed, science-backed, and made to support women through real life stages, their products do exactly what they promise without gimmicks or awkwardness. Everything feels intentional, confidence-forward, and refreshingly grown-up.

And as a bonus, founder Laurie Mintz generously shared her story in the Real Girls Guide to Midlife, which makes loving this brand feel even more personal.

Thrive Causemetics Liquid Lash™ Extensions Tubing Mascara - Lengthening, thickening beauty that holds up in real life.

Why we love it: Thrive Mascara understands what beauty needs to be now: easy, dependable, and wearable. The tubing formula lifts and defines without smudging or flaking, and it comes off cleanly at night. No drama. No raccoon eyes. Just lashes that look good and feel effortless.

The values behind the company are what truly set it apart. Thrive is built on the belief that beauty can be high-quality, intentional, and meaningful. Every purchase helps support one of their 550+ nonprofit partners across the U.S., turning a daily routine into something that gives back. Thoughtfully made, science-backed, and purpose-driven… this is beauty that works in the real world and does some good while it’s at it.

BONUS: Tweezer Guru Pro Illuminating Eyebrow Tweezers - Because daylight is no longer enough

Why we love them: These lighted tweezers were a Christmas gift from one of my Real Girl besties, and they’ve become an unexpectedly essential part of my routine. Even with microbladed brows, there are always a few rogue stragglers and the occasional facial gray that appears overnight like it’s testing me. The built-in light exposes everything, which is equal parts helpful and rude, but it gets the job done. A little humbling. Extremely effective. Zero regrets.

What We’re Reading

Geezer Magazine - Aging, examined, not softened.

Why we’re reading: Sharp, funny, and culturally aware. Geezer doesn’t romanticize aging or wrap it in clichés. It examines it. Essays and interviews that feel current, intelligent, and refreshingly uninterested in tidy narratives. And if you want more context on how it came to be, I recently sat down with founder Laura LeBleu for a candid Q&A.

Life Branches by Ellen Scherr - Quiet clarity that stays with you.

Why we’re reading: Ellen Scherr writes with restraint and precision. Her work explores change, self-trust, and recalibration without motivation-speak. The kind of writing that slows you down and lingers after you close the tab.

What We’re Listening To

20 Minutes with Bronwyn - Smart conversations that respect your time.

Why we’re listening: Hosted by Bronwyn Saglimbeni, who also shared thoughtful insights in my book, 20 Minutes with Bronwyn is grounded, thoughtful, and refreshingly free of fluff. Bronwyn brings a sharp communications lens and real-world perspective to conversations about work, confidence, and leadership, many of which she also explores in her Substack.

In a recent episode “Just Because You’re Afraid Doesn’t Mean You’re Disqualified,” author Patty Azzarello talks candidly about fear, credibility, and why discomfort isn’t failure but often is proof you’re doing something meaningful which are ideas she explores in Why Is SHE Still Here?: My Ungraceful Journey from the Playground to the Boardroom. Practical, validating, and grounded in lived experience from two badass women.

Gen X Juggler Podcast with Deb Foster - Real conversations for the next chapter.

Why we’re listening: Deb brings curiosity and warmth to every episode, whether she’s unpacking happiness, exploring holistic retirement planning, or talking resilience with guests who know how to start again. Insightful, useful, and delivered with humor and heart, and I was honored to be a recent guest.

That’s it for Part 4. No trends. No hype. Just the people, ideas, and things that are genuinely earning their place in our days right now. As always, we’ll keep paying attention, sharing what holds up, and leaving the rest behind.

Got an obsession we should add next? Tell us… we’re listening.

The full RGG Obsessions lives here here. No gatekeeping.

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife #MidlifeObsessions #MidlifeTips #MidlifePeople #MidlifePodcasts #MidlifeReading

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
Let’s connect: Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Website | Book

And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on Amazon helps keep it moving.

I keep noticing how often a woman’s worth is still quietly tied to motherhood.
And for women without children, there’s a particular reality they are expected to navigate quietly: the comments, the assumptions, the cultural idea that a life isn’t “complete” unless it includes kids. Some women don’t become parents by choice, timing, biology, heartbreak, clarity, or simply because the rhythm of their life moved in another direction. And yet, they are often expected to explain themselves. To justify. To reassure others that they’re okay. To make their lives make sense to people who have only ever imagined one version of womanhood. But their lives are not unfinished, paused, or lacking. They are whole. Textured. Meaningful. Chosen.

My Story Could Have Gone Either Way

Life rarely follows the script we were handed at 22. Identity isn’t linear. We shape ourselves through desire, capacity, timing, disappointment, joy, and the lessons that changed us.

I grew up thinking I wasn’t going to get married or have children. Not out of fear or avoidance, just a quiet understanding I didn’t see myself in that role. Motherhood didn’t become real to me until I met my ex. We had two kids and I thought, okay, this is our path. But there was a pull inside me… not toward “more,” just toward something that felt honest to me alone. Something I needed to follow, even before I had the words for it.

And so at 40, I had my third J boy. A leap that made emotional sense even when it didn’t make logical sense at all.

But here is my truth: If things had unfolded differently, I could easily have been a woman without children. And that version of my life would have been full and whole too. Motherhood is not the universal source of meaning. It is one expression of it.

The Look, and What Happens Next

I have watched women I love face the look… the pity, the confusion, the “Oh… I’m so sorry” head tilt. Sometimes it comes with questions; sometimes it comes with silence. And more often than not, the woman without children ends up comforting the other person about her own life.

The pity says more about the other person’s story than it does about the woman standing in front of them.

And I’ve seen what happens next.

When the babies arrive, women without children are often slowly moved toward the edges. Invitations shift. Conversations narrow to daycare, milestones, nap schedules, orthodontists, and GPAs. Group chats morph. Identity recalibrates… but only for some.

Years later, when the fog lifts and kids become more independent, friendships often return. The circle opens up again.

And now, for many of my most fave women, it’s happening a second time… as their friends become grandparents. The circle closes again, quietly, almost invisibly, with the same message implied:

“You wouldn’t understand.”

But they do. Often more than anyone realizes.

Not Missing Anything

One of my closest friends, a powerhouse executive with a tender heart and a quick laugh, didn’t become a mother. Not because she forgot. Not because she ran out of time. Not because she chose career over family. Her clock simply never turned on, and her partner was always a clear no on having kids. So between 35 and 40, she sat with the question honestly: Is this the life I want?

She realized she wasn’t grieving a child who never existed. She wasn’t waiting for something to shift. She was already living the life that fit her. Fully. Clearly. And she stands in it with steadiness… not regret, not longing, not unfinished space.

And from that clarity, something else emerged: a deep, steady capacity for connection.

She’s the one who shows up without being asked. She’s the Auntie who does not miss… ever. She shows up every damn time: for school plays, first crush meltdowns, hard days, big wins, and all the tiny in-betweens. She is the one they trust. The one they lean into. The one they remember.

This is not secondary. It is not lesser.

It ripples. It lasts. It matters. And it is an inspiration to me and so many of us lucky enough to call her our friend.

Motherhood is not the only vessel for love or legacy. Care is not limited to biology. Family is not just what you are given; it is what you choose.

A Letter to the Women Without Children

So, to the woman reading this who did not become a mother… for whatever reason: Your life is not an almost or an almost-was. You are not living in the margins of someone else’s story. You are the author of your own. A life shaped by intention, depth, curiosity, commitment, and love that expands beyond bloodlines. You have built relationships, work, meaning, home, identity. You have taken your life seriously in the ways that matter. Not everyone can say that.

You weren’t on the sidelines. You were in the arena, choosing yourself, choosing your life, choosing what made sense for you. You have lived with both hands on the wheel, quietly, steadily, bravely. Nothing about your life is missing or half-done. You built something real. Something with depth. Something that has touched more lives than you know.

And from the bottom of my heart, we are better because you are here.

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife #WholeWithoutChildren #ManyWaysToLive
#WomanhoodRedefined #LoveBeyondMotherhood

We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
Let’s connect: Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Website | Book

P.S. I’m giving away 50 Kindle copies of my #1 best seller Real Girls Guide to Midlife on Goodreads. Honest, real, and made for us right now. Giveaway runs Jan 12–22.

Enter Here!

I first met Laura LeBleu in 2015, when we were working together and both firmly inside our careers… capable, busy (!!), and doing what we were good at. We weren’t talking about reinvention. We were talking about work, deadlines, projects, and execution. Life was full.

What I didn’t know then was that years later, Laura would go on to create Geezer—a print magazine, delivered to your mailbox, which feels almost legendary in itself—that refuses to soften, sanitize, or shrink aging into something polite and palatable. Not to inspire. Not to reassure. Just to tell the truth about what it actually feels like to be here.

Geezer didn’t come from a tidy plan or a moment of clarity. It came from paying attention… to what felt off, what felt missing, and what no longer worked. It came from that quiet midlife knowing that most of the time doesn’t announce itself, but that sits with us and doesn’t go away either.

Our conversation is about what it looks like to listen to that pull… and follow it… without waiting to feel fully ready.

Here’s what Laura had to say:

1. What was missing from how we talk about aging that made you feel compelled to start Geezer—not someday, but when you did it?

I’ll never forget getting my first AARP flyer right around the time I turned 50 and feeling a visceral, indignant anger. Who did they think they were, showing up in my mailbox with their free branded cooler and early bird discounts?! My own reaction made me curious, and it soon became clear that there was a massive hole in the Gen X aging dialogue. I simply didn’t see anyone stepping in to have the kind of raw, real conversations I was looking for—so I did it myself!

Geezer magazine approaches midlife with a fun, subversive tone—think your favorite zine moving out of the basement and getting a production budget—but we are also serious about exploring how our generation is aging differently. So you won’t find any top 10 lists on where to retire (like Gen X is ever retiring. Ha!) or long-term care program comparisons. But you will find people our age revealing themselves and sharing the truth of their midlife experiences.

2. Starting a magazine in midlife isn’t exactly the safe move. What fears showed up early, and how did you keep going without waiting for certainty or permission?

Ha! Yeah…and starting a PRINT-ONLY magazine is even riskier!

Funny, though, I didn’t really have any fears going into the creation of Geezer. That’s the thing about having a creative vision—I believed in the potential, maybe even the inevitability, of its success immediately. Once I committed to it, things started falling into place.

The only thing I’m afraid of is that I won’t be good enough at promotion and social media to get the word out! Still, I’m putting everything I’ve got into Geezer because I thoroughly believe it is what people want and need—a well-crafted, print magazine that speaks to who we are today because we share a common past.

3. You didn’t come from a traditional publishing background. What skills or instincts from your past ended up mattering more than you expected once Geezer became real?

This might surprise you, but the skills I learned doing theatre—producing and directing theatre, specifically—have been invaluable.

Putting together a magazine takes a strong central vision and the ability to get people to buy into that vision, which is exactly what a director does. Then, you have to coordinate a million different things, from photo shoots to getting the printer paid, which is exactly the kind of thing I did when I was producing theatre in NYC. So, while I am a professional writer and creative director, it’s the skills I’ve learned over a lifetime in the theatre that have really helped me transition into magazine publishing.

4. Reinvention is often sold as empowering, but the process itself can be grinding. What tested your grit the most... and what stopped you from walking away?

I’ve jumped through a few rings of fire since I turned 50, for sure. First in deciding to leave a long-term marriage, and then eventually splitting with a man I was dating who is also part of Geezer. (Ours was a long-distance relationship, which became hard to sustain over time.) We’re still working together and we make a great editorial team—but I’d be lying if I said it was easy to navigate the professional landscape in the wake of our personal history.

But I love Geezer too much to let my emotions get in the way of its success. And that’s the beauty of maturity, right? If I were younger and less experienced, I would have allowed my hurt to call the shots. But the years have taught me that pain isn’t permanent and persistence is rewarded, so I can put aside my feelings and focus on making something that brings me—and, hopefully, a lot of other people!—joy.

5. Now that Geezer exists in the world, how has this experience reshaped the way you think about risk, ambition, and what’s still possible at this stage?

Risk has never daunted me—I’m an inveterate optimist, wired for leaps of faith. If anything, the overwhelmingly positive reception Geezer has received makes me want to push even harder!

I think what has changed is that I am much more likely to ask for help and trust people to show up for me if and when I need them. My ego is a lot less a part of my decision-making process these days, which allows me to listen more openly and be less defensive (something I’m still working on, btw).

I’m not going to say that anything is possible, but Geezer has taught me that if you broadcast on your own, authentic frequency, people will tune in.

6. Bonus Question: What’s one rule about aging or success you stopped following once you started Geezer—and you’re not going back to?

Well, I don’t know if I ever followed this rule in the first place, but the rule that success comes from having a fully fleshed out plan (business or otherwise) in place before you act is not one I am inclined to follow. I’ve seen too much paralysis in the corporate world, and it drives me absolutely bonkers.

I’d rather learn by taking action than meticulously plot out my every move. And once I put the first payment on paper for 5,000 copies of issue #1, the only way to go was forward! Let’s hope that enough people pick up what we’re putting down so that Geezer becomes as successful as I believe it will be.

You Don’t Have To Blow It Up To Move Forward

Sometimes the step isn’t a launch or a bold declaration. Sometimes it’s saying yes to something you almost talked yourself out of. Booking the trip. Letting go of the thing that’s quietly draining you. Writing a book (wink). Taking drum lessons (double wink; more on that later). Or saying out loud—to yourself or someone you trust—“I think I want to try something different.”

Sometimes it’s even smaller than that. Just admitting the truth to yourself. Or letting a thought exist without judging it or shutting it down.

None of that requires confidence. It just requires honesty. And at this age, that’s enough.

Got a “small step” right now… even if it’s just a thought you haven’t said out loud yet? We’re here for all of it.

And that’s exactly the space Geezer holds. Subscribe at Geezermagazine.com and follow them on IG @geezermagazine!

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife #GeezerMagazine #MidlifeQ&A #Grit

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We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
Let’s connect: Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Website | Book

P.S. I’m giving away 50 Kindle copies of my #1 best seller Real Girls Guide to Midlife on Goodreads. Honest, real, and made for us right now. Giveaway runs Jan 12–22.

Enter Here!

And if you’ve read the book and loved it, a quick review on either Goodreads or Amazon helps keep it moving.