Grown-Ass Woman's Guide

Lisa Steadman's mother made her a marriage counselor when she was 12 years old — crying, then problem-solving, while she was still playing with Barbies. Forty years later, she's built five bestselling books and a career on studying why relationships work and why they don't. This episode, she brings that same clarity to something we don't talk about enough: friendship in midlife.

We get into how to actually make friends after 40 when nobody's inviting you to anything. What it's like to lose a friend who won't tell you why. The friendship that ended over a text about a 401k match. And what happens when you lose weight and an old friend from 20 years ago resurfaces just to tell you that you've changed.

We also get honest about the tiniest, most privileged-sounding advice that's still true: take care of your health, save what you can, and stop waiting for permission to be brave. Lisa left a corporate job in her 50s to make a short film that premiered at Cannes. She'll tell you exactly what that free fall felt like — and why she jumped anyway.

There's a version of motherhood nobody prepares you for: the one where your kid becomes an adult and the rules you spent twenty years mastering stop working overnight.

Pam Tronson didn't sign up for this. She built her whole coaching career believing she had no real wound to work from, until an email from her own adult daughter proved her wrong. What followed was a full rebuild, of the relationship, and of herself.

In this conversation, Pam and Jackie get into:

• Why "having your own back" isn't the same as letting yourself off the hook
• The plate-throwing story Jackie tells on herself, and why owning it changed everything with her kids
• Why estrangement isn't the buzzword social media makes it out to be, and what actually predicts reconciliation
• The difference between raising kids and raising adults
• Why "what if nothing's gone wrong?" might be the most useful question a mom can ask herself

Pam Tronson is a certified life coach and certified mother-daughter coach who helps women rebuild connection with their adult daughters through her coaching programs and workshops. Find her at pamtronsoncoaching.com.

Pam's running a free three-day workshop starting July 29th for moms who are second-guessing themselves with an adult daughter and are ready to stop. Details can be found here.

Ever notice how quick we are to call ourselves lazy or scattered, and how rarely we claim that we're badass and grown-ass?

The words after "I am" are some of the most powerful in the universe, and this week's guest built her whole career around them.

Mindi Huebner is a subconscious rewiring and identity expansion expert for high-achieving women (yes, I make her break down exactly what that means). We get into why mindset work without identity work is like putting "lipstick on a pig," what to do when the roles that have defined you—mom, career woman, caregiver—start shifting, and the tiny "votes" you can cast today toward the woman you're becoming.

In this episode:

• Why every identity is "a role with a goal" — and what happens when we get stuck in one
• The difference between mindset work and identity work (and why affirmations alone don't stick)
• How to stop shaming yourself into change and start casting micro votes instead
• What to do when the people around you won't let you change

The gap between who you are and who you're becoming is smaller than you think. This episode is your first vote.

Work with Mindi: grownasswoman.guide/mindi

Today we're talking about something most of us actively avoid thinking about, until we absolutely cannot avoid it anymore.

Maria Fraietta was 50, a high school teacher, a single mom, and a real estate agent. That is already so much to juggle. But when her father passed, she also became the person responsible for untangling an entire life, with no roadmap and no one to call. So she did what many grown-ass women do in a moment of chaos: she got resourceful. She built a box. Then a friend wanted one. Then the hair lady wanted one. Now it's a multi-million dollar company called the NokBox.

Here's the thing about this episode—it's not really about death. It's about the relief of knowing where everything is—the will, the passwords, the spare key, and the one Christmas ornament box that actually matters, so that you and the people who love you aren't left standing in a hotel room with a shoebox and a lot of questions.

Find your NokBox at grownasswoman.guide/nokbox.

By the time you're in your early 50s, the odds of a new cancer diagnosis are 1 in 35. One in four people in their 50s and early 60s will have a physical or medical condition that limits their ability to work. And most of them have no idea how exposed they actually are.

In part two of our insurance series, Wallis Wilkinson Tsai, founder of AboveBoard Financial, is back to talk about disability insurance — what it actually does, where your workplace plan is probably falling short, and how to make sure your bank account doesn't take a 40% hit when life hits the fan.

We talk about the tax trap hiding in most employer benefit plans, why your benefit period matters more than you think, what happens to your coverage when you leave a job, and the business-owner mistake that trips up even the most financially savvy women.

This is the episode your HR department never gave you.

Get the Insurance Cheat Sheet!

Wallis Wilkinson Tsai is the founder of AboveBoard Financial, specializing in life, disability, and long-term care insurance for individuals, families, and business owners. She spent over 10 years on Wall Street, including at Goldman Sachs, before starting her own firm. She also happens to have a deeply personal reason for caring about this stuff — which she shares in this episode.

The Stats That Should Get Your Attention From the US Cancer Statistics Working Group:

• Ages 25–29: 1 in 331 chance of a new cancer diagnosis
• Ages 40–44: 1 in 86
• Ages 50–54: 1 in 35

And it's not just cancer. 1 in 4 people in their 50s and early 60s will have a physical or medical condition that limits their ability to work. Disability insurance exists for exactly this scenario.

What Disability Insurance Actually Does If you're too sick or injured to do your job and your income suffers as a result, disability insurance steps in and pays you a monthly benefit. The goal: smooth out your take-home pay whether you're healthy or not.

Some policies also cover partial disability — meaning if you can only work part-time due to illness, you can still collect partial benefits.

The Workplace Plan Gap (This One's Important) Most employer disability plans cover 60–66.7% of your income on paper. But here's what most people miss: your employer is almost certainly paying the premiums themselves to claim the tax deduction. That means you owe taxes on any benefits you receive. Do the math:

• 60% of income covered
• Minus taxes you still owe on that benefit
• = You could net as little as 40% of your take-home pay

For most people, a 40% drop in take-home pay for any extended period of time is a serious problem.

Individual Policies: The Better Play When you own an individual disability policy and pay the premiums with your own after-tax money, the benefits are tax-free. If you're getting $5,000/month in benefits, that $5,000 is yours, no taxes owed.

Bonus: individual policies aren't tied to your job. They travel with you. They also often give you the right to increase your coverage later without re-qualifying medically — which means locking in coverage sooner gives you more freedom in your career down the road.

How to Think About Benefit Period Disability policies come in different lengths: 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, or through age 65, 67, or 70. The longer the benefit period, the more expensive the premium. The practical reality: the average disability leave is just under 3 years.

Wallis's take: if the full-career plan isn't in budget, start with at least two years. It gives you runway — time to understand your diagnosis, make decisions about what comes next, and avoid the worst-case scenario of dealing with a health crisis and a financial crisis at the same time.

One important caveat: you cannot extend your benefit period once you're on claim. The plan you pick is the one you're locked into.

Timing: When to Get Coverage

• Get it while you're actively employed—carriers want to see your most recent pay stub
• Thinking about quitting? Get coverage first, announce later
• Already have an offer letter? You can generally apply for coverage now, before you start
• Switching to your own business in a related field? Some (not all) carriers will still cover you

The Business Owner Trap If you're a business owner who minimizes taxable income (and a lot of us do, legally), know this: disability carriers underwrite you based on your reported net income, not gross. If your tax advisor has gotten your taxable income down to nearly nothing, your disability benefit would be based on nearly nothing. Talk to someone before you apply.

Free Workplace Plan Review: AboveBoard Financial will review your existing workplace disability plan for free, no strings attached. They'll tell you exactly what you have, where the gaps are, and what to expect if you ever need to use it.

Do you think your elderly parent could be talked into a financial scam?

I asked this recently in the Grown Ass community. 43% said they already worry about it. For 28%, it's already happened in their family. And the stories that came in were from people who described themselves as sharp, aware, and not the type—and it happened anyway.

Because that is exactly who these scammers target. Not only the people who are vulnerable, but also the people who believe they aren't.

Today's guest (we'll call her Stephanie) watched her mother, a woman who had been happily married for nearly 70 years, become the target of a calculated scheme that could have absolutely taken everything. What started as a chance meeting in a supermarket aisle turned into eight months of isolation, love bombing, and financial manipulation — and the one thing that stood between her mother and losing it all was a decision her family had made years earlier.

We're talking about what the red flags actually look like, why smart people fall for this every day, what elder abuse really means legally, and why a trust isn't just for multimillionaires; it's a financial speed bump that could save your family.

This episode is not legal advice. It is one family's story. And it is absolutely worth hearing.

If you've ever dreaded Mother's Day, felt blindsided by grief, or wondered why missing your mother never quite goes away, this conversation is for you.

Whether you lost your mother years ago or just recently, your relationship was loving or messy (or somewhere in between), this time of year has a way of bringing everything back up.

Join Jackie MacDougall and Hope Edelman—NYT #1 bestselling author of Motherless Daughters and The AfterGrief—for the conversation nobody prepares you for: grief, going on without Mom, and how to stop dreading the second Sunday in May.

Links referenced in this episode:

• grownasswoman.guide/adminnight
• grownasswoman.guide/nokbox
• grownasswoman.guide/trustandwill
• grownasswoman.guide/motherlessdaughters

You've got the list. You know what needs to get done. And somehow another week goes by.

This isn't a laziness problem. According to licensed therapist Melody Murray, it's a nervous system problem—and there's a very specific reason so many women feel stuck, scattered, and perpetually behind right now.

Melody Murray is an LMFT, child mental health specialist, former reality TV producer, and author of Mourning the Living. She's been on The Today Show, The Doctors, and featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, and more. She has also nearly died twice in four weeks, which, as you'll hear, changed everything about how she thinks about self-dismissal.

In this episode:

• Why chaos feels oddly familiar (and what that actually means)
• How your coping mechanisms are still running on a five-year-old's operating system
• The social media check nobody talks about
• Why protecting your peace is now an act of rebellion
• Practical ways to regulate your nervous system today, not eventually

Plus: the closet you don't actually care about, the pervy uncle who started it all, and why self-care has nothing to do with a manicure.

Free workshop: Handle Your Sh*t — live April 18th. Grab your spot: grownasswoman.guide/handle

It's a tale as old as time. Four male investment managers try to tell a woman that a product she's interested in doesn't exist. How does she know they're wrong? She literally traded them when she worked at Goldman Sachs. That's just one moment that inspired Wallis Tsai to start her own company, AboveBoard Financial, built on the idea that you deserve straight answers about your insurance.

We get into red flags to watch for when choosing an agent, the real difference between term and permanent life insurance, why your workplace coverage probably isn't the deal you think it is, and what to do if you're in your 40s or 50s and haven't tackled this yet.

Don't want to take notes? We did it for you. Grab the cheat sheet that covers all three episodes.

"Health is the unbecoming. So much of the work around health is unbecoming the beliefs that were never yours." — Courtney Townley

What if getting healthy wasn't about doing more but about finally putting some things down?

In this episode, Courtney Townley, health and self-leadership coach, author of The Consistency Code, and host of the Grace & Grit podcast, drops some midlife truth bombs we absolutely need to hear. We cut through the noise of wellness culture, talk about what consistency actually means at this stage of our lives (hint: it's not doing the same thing over and over until you die). And we dive into why outsourcing to the "experts" might be the thing holding you back.

If you're looking for an episode to guilt or shame you around diet and exercise, you've come to the wrong place.

In This Episode

1. Why the first thing women need from their health is relief, not results
2. How to stop outsourcing your life choices
3. What changes when you finally do it for yourself
4. Pre-deciding: why planning doesn't require charts, graphs, or a color-coded notebook
5. Grace vs. excuses: two questions that help you tell the difference

Free Resource:

The Grown-Ass Woman's Health Cheat Sheet: screenings, labs, vaccines, hormones, HRT, and supplements all in one printable checklist. Download it at grownasswoman.guide/myhealth and bring it to your next appointment.

About Courtney Townley:

Courtney Townley is a health and self-leadership coach, speaker, and host of the top-rated Grace & Grit podcast and the author of The Consistency Code. She helps midlife women cut through the noise of wellness culture and lead themselves with less overwhelm and more confidence. With over 30 years in the wellness industry, Courtney blends neuroscience, behavior change, and straight talk to show women that deep health isn’t about following someone else’s plan... it’s about learning to trust and lead yourself. A sought-after speaker and educator, she is known for her grounded, no-nonsense approach to sustainable change. When she’s not coaching or podcasting, you’ll find her salsa dancing, traveling, or soaking up time with her family and her Great Dane, Sully.

Resources & Links

1. The Consistency Code by Courtney Townley
2. Grace & Grit Podcast
3. Courtney on Instagram
4. The Grown-Ass Woman's Health Cheat Sheet
5. The Grown-Ass Woman's Guide on Instagram