What I Learned From Interviewing Experts and Why Women Deserve More
Midlife, unfiltered, and finally explained.
When I started talking to experts for the Real Girls Guide to Midlife, I wasn’t looking for advice. I wasn’t hunting for a framework or a five-step plan. I wanted to understand why so many of us were falling apart quietly: in bathrooms, in cars, in grocery store aisles, in office hallways, under the covers at 3 a.m. I’ve been right there more times than I can count.
Because the truth is, midlife women don’t always get real information.
We get brushed off. We get patted on the head. We get told to “hang in there,” like we’re children holding a balloon in a windstorm.
So I went digging. And here’s what I found. Messy, uncomfortable, oddly comforting, and completely human!
We’re not losing our minds. We’re drowning in thoughts no one taught us to question.
One expert called it our “insane thought generator,” and honestly, that feels generous. It is the voice that tells you you’re failing at everything, even on the days you’re keeping ten worlds alive. It isn’t truth. It’s conditioning pretending to be a fact.
We’ve evolved, but a lot of our lives still haven’t caught up.
Women have earned seats at tables, built careers, raised kids, kept households running, and swallowed oceans of emotional labor. Inside our homes, though, many of us are still living a version of 1955, carrying roles we never agreed to yet somehow inherited anyway.
Our bodies change and everyone acts like we should just roll with it.
The skin, the sleep, the libido, the weird aches, the hormones that feel like tiny arsonists. Nobody prepares us. All we want is for someone to look at us and say, “I see you. And you’re not crazy.”
Desire doesn’t retire.
One expert said, “Your needs are real. Start there.” Midlife isn’t the end of pleasure. It is the end of faking things to make someone else comfortable. And if your desire looks different now (more, less, or not at all) that’s real too. It doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re human.
Divorce in midlife is a whole new sport and no one tells you the rules.
The emotional part is brutal enough. The legal and financial landmines are something else entirely. Terrifying. Women deserve to know what they are walking into.
Most of us are winging it (I know I am).
One expert basically said, “Nobody knows what they’re doing. Some people just stopped pretending.” Midlife is the moment you realize competence is a scam and bravery is just moving through your day while the ground shifts under you.
Grief sneaks up in places nobody warns you about.
Not just death or divorce. Sometimes it is the career that didn’t happen, the kids who grew up, the marriage that changed shape, the identity you can’t crawl back into. It is grief for the version of life you thought you were heading toward. And it is legitimate.
And yes, love and sex are absolutely still on the table.
Sometimes it starts with sleeping in the middle of your bed, blasting your music, or taking up space in your own life again without asking permission from anyone, including the voice in your head. Desire can change, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone. It just means it gets to look different - if you want it to.
None of these conversations were tidy. None of them were polished. They were human. They were raw. They were the exact opposite of the glossy, shrink-wrapped version of midlife we’ve been handed.
And they changed me.
They are woven through the book, not as lessons but as proof that we are not unraveling. We are waking up.
If you haven’t bought it yet, go get the book now. Share it with your people. Every paperback and Kindle order helps push this conversation into the hands of the women who need it.
#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife #ExpertsWhoGetIt #RGGtoMidlifeBook
We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
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