This conversation with Emily Tisch Sussman is one I think about often. If you've ever felt stuck inside a chapter of your life that no longer fits — a job, a relationship, a city, an identity — and quietly wondered whether you're allowed to change it, this is the episode I want you to hear.

Emily has built a career around studying how people actually reinvent themselves. Not the curated, after-the-fact version of reinvention that gets posted on LinkedIn, but the messy, uncertain, often-frightening middle of it — the part where you're not who you used to be and not yet who you're becoming. She makes a case that completely reframes how most of us think about big change: the moments we're conditioned to read as endings are very often the openings of something we didn't know we needed.

We talk about why pivoting is so hard, why it feels so isolating in the middle of it, and how to recognize when what feels like the end of something is actually the start of something else. Emily walks through the specific patterns she's seen in people who navigate these transitions well — and the very different patterns she sees in people who stay stuck inside chapters that are clearly over. The difference isn't intelligence or courage. It's permission. Specifically, the permission you give yourself to change while you're still figuring out who you're changing into.

If you've been carrying a quiet sense that your current chapter is closing — or that one already has and you've been refusing to name it — this conversation will help you find your footing again. You are allowed to change. The thing you've been treating as an ending might be the launching point you never knew you needed.

This episode originally aired on Hitting Rock Middle, the show that has since evolved into The Sallie Ogden Show.

Connect with Emily:She Pivots podcast — https://www.shepivotsthepodcast.com/

About the show:

The Sallie Ogden Show is for the woman who's already built something — and is stuck at the plateau where the old playbook stops working. Tactical when you need a number. Honest when you need a mirror. Hosted by former lawyer turned consultant Sallie Ogden.

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