Not Alone

"If I give you that, you'll look like an alien. A hot alien, but not you."

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You do everything right. The blackout curtains, the tracker, the supplements, the cold room. And you still wake up exhausted, check your sleep score, and somehow feel even worse.

I know, because I started performing sleep instead of actually sleeping. Nobody tells you that part.

I found Lauren Sudellko because a cherry-red box that looked like a pack of cigarettes stopped me mid-scroll. It turned out to be a sleep aid. I took it on a red-eye to Paris, it worked, and Gary and I wrote a check that same afternoon. Full transparency, we're now proud investors in Sleep or Die.

But the reason I wanted her on Not Alone has nothing to do with the box. Lauren grew up watching her mom rely on prescription sleeping pills, which turned into an addiction and a few painful rehab stays. In her mid-20s, after a concussion, her own doctor handed her the very same pill. She looked at it and saw her future.

Here's what I actually think. Women aren't sleeping, and the things we reach for to fix it are quietly making it worse. Every woman Lauren asked was taking something. One had been on Advil PM every night for two years.

Sleep is the only thing you can't white-knuckle your way through. Which is wild, because white-knuckling is the one thing most of us are really good at.

We got into sleepmaxxing and why optimizing your sleep can be the thing that ruins it, the melatonin myth, and whether we've made being tired a personality trait. There's also a strip club story. I did not make the rules.

And then Lauren got emotional, which neither of us saw coming. We talked about chasing her parents' approval all the way to Google, feeling empty once she got there, and the LinkedIn post that ended her corporate self.

This one is for the woman who hasn't slept properly in years and quietly ran out of things to try. And for anyone with an idea she can't stop thinking about.

If this is you, tell me in the comments. And if it helped, subscribe, that's what tells the algorithm to bring more women like you here.

Follow Lauren & Sleep or Die:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/haveyouslept/

Substack (Sleep or Die Diaries): https://laurensudeyko.substack.com/

Shop Sleep or Die: https://sleep-or-die.com/

Follow Valeria:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog

Follow Not Alone:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod

Podcast: https://www.notalonepod.com/

Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky

What we talked about:

0:00 – Trailer

1:33 – Meet Lauren Sudeyko

3:05 – What is sleepmaxxing?

4:12 – How Valeria found Sleep or Die

6:13 – Lauren's mom and sleeping pill addiction

7:36 – Prescribed the same pill 20 years later

8:36 – Growing up with an exhausted mom

10:17 – Building a gentler sleep aid

12:07 – 1 in 3 adults can't sleep

12:51 – Why women struggle with sleep more

14:21 – Performing sleep instead of sleeping

16:41 – The melatonin myth

18:39 – What the sleep aisle gets wrong

25:05 – A world of well-rested women

27:02 – Is being tired a personality trait?

32:32 – Motherhood and sleep

36:06 – Making sleep sexy

37:26 – Sending husbands to the strip club

38:47 – Raising $1M+ as a founder

41:10 – Fear vs. gut instinct

44:35 – The Jay Shetty story

47:03 – Letting go of approval

50:23 – Raising money is like dating

55:54 – The LinkedIn post that changed everything

59:08 – Rapid fire

1:00:23 – What women aren't saying out loud

Disclosure: Valeria and Gary Lipovetsky are investors in Sleep or Die. Some links in this description are sponsor or affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a credit or commission at no additional cost to you.

#NotAlonePodcast #ValeriaLipovetsky #Sleepmaxxing #WomensHealth #SleepOrDie

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You learned early that it was all on you, so you worked harder than everyone around you, and it worked. Somewhere along the way you stopped asking what you were actually trying to prove, or who it was ever for.

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It's just me today. No guest, no questions. Just me and everything that's been sitting in my head since my birthday.

Here's the thing about turning 36. I thought I didn't want anything. No plans, no production, phone off, in my robe by 9pm. Then a small part of me panicked that maybe I was supposed to want more.

And then the day fell apart on its own, nothing went the way it was meant to, and it landed as exactly what I needed. Which caught me off guard, because a year ago I would have planned the whole thing down to the minute and called that self-care.

And that turned out to be the theme of the whole year, not just the day. I don't want every year of my life to be preparation for a better one that's always a little further up ahead.

So in this one I get into the rest of it. The work summit where I walked into a room full of people who knew more than me, and for the first time the what-am-I-doing-here voice just didn't show up.

The morning I realized I'd been checking an app to find out how I slept, when I was the one who slept.

The strange freedom of not totally knowing who I am right now, and being more okay with that than I expected to be.

And the three words I'm carrying into this year, which are very much not the ones I would have picked five years ago, back when my only word was more.

Nobody tells you that the thing that got you here isn't always the thing that gets you where you're going next. That's the part I'm still in.

This one's for the woman who did everything right and still feels like her real life is somewhere up ahead. You're not behind. You might just be allowed to enjoy the one you're already in.

If that's you, tell me in the comments. And subscribe if you want more of these. It's the thing that tells the algorithm to send more women like you my way.

FOLLOW VALERIA

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky

TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog

FOLLOW NOT ALONE

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod

TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod

Podcast:
https://www.notalonepod.com/

SHOP MY LOOK FROM THIS EPISODE

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WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT

0:00 - Just me today, no guest
1:00 - What I thought I wanted for my birthday
2:30 - The day fell apart and became exactly what I needed
4:00 - Don't celebrate me, but also celebrate me
5:30 - Nobody can read your mind, not even a man in a chef costume
7:00 - I can buy my own flowers, I just don't want to
8:30 - Your partner needs the update
10:00 - The investing panel, and the room full of people who knew more
12:00 - The what-am-I-doing-here voice that finally went quiet
14:00 - Qualified and a beginner in the same room
15:30 - The opposite of a thought leader
17:30 - Less sure of myself, and happier for it
19:00 - The energy healer and the Oura ring
21:00 - When taking care of myself turned into grading myself
23:00 - My easygoing era was a performance
25:00 - No is a complete sentence
26:30 - The nails post, and what do you mean I have a choice
28:00 - Rosh Hashanah, and the word around the table
29:30 - The men said business, the women said play
31:00 - Taking the permission to play, and booking Paris
32:30 - The three words I'm carrying into this year
34:00 - The thing that got you here isn't what gets you there next
35:30 - You might just be allowed to enjoy the life you're in

DISCLAIMER

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You built the life you were supposed to want. The career, the wins, the whole thing. And lately you've been quietly wondering why you don't want it anymore, and then feeling insane for wondering, because nothing is technically wrong.

You're not insane. It's happening to almost every woman I know.

Krista posted a reel about it that went viral, and the second I saw it I thought, there it is. That's the thing. Every woman she knows is pivoting. Walking away from careers they spent a decade building, from lives that looked good from the outside, toward something they can't fully explain yet.

And I couldn't scroll past it, because it's happening everywhere I turn. My friends. The group chats. Me. So I brought her in, because we had to talk about it.

Here's what we got into.

So much of what we've been calling ambition our whole lives was never ambition. It was a trauma response in a nice outfit. We performed. We over-functioned. We achieved, and got rewarded for it, and quietly ran ourselves into the ground doing it.

Nobody tells you the thing that built your whole life can be the same thing making you disappear.

We got into the difference between being called to leave something and just running from it, because they feel identical and they are not the same thing.

The pieces of ourselves we left behind chasing all of it, and how a lot of us are quietly going back to get her. And then female friendship, which is where I cried, because that's the part nobody prepares you for either.

This one is for the woman quietly outgrowing her life who hasn't told a soul. The one running a life that fit her five years ago and doesn't anymore. And the one starting to suspect that the ambition that got her here isn't the thing that's going to take her where she actually wants to go.

If this is you, tell me in the comments. And if it helped, subscribe. That's what tells the algorithm to bring more women like you here.

FOLLOW KRISTA

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/kristawilliams

Almost 30:

https://almost30.com/

FOLLOW VALERIA

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog

FOLLOW NOT ALONE

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod

Podcast:

https://www.notalonepod.com/

SHOP THIS EPISODE

Shop my look:

https://shopmy.us/collections/7925852

Amazon Storefront:

https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky

WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT

2:00 The pivot every woman is quietly making

3:08 The year and a half we've been circling this

4:30 Beyond achievement, beyond what everyone told me to be

5:42 When ambition is really a trauma response

7:03 Playing the roles: mom, wife, the woman who has it together

8:18 How our relationships are changing too

9:19 The marriage that ended at thirty-four

11:52 Why women are done performing

13:47 You don't have to fix everything

16:24 What the twenty-year-olds are eating up

18:30 I want visibility: the wanting we perform at work

20:58 I love everybody, I'm having the best time (are you?)

22:22 Giving your emotions to your little girl

25:00 Sometimes it's a gift, sometimes it's a lot

28:20 What her flow actually looks like

30:40 The leadership coach, and doing the work

33:00 Called to leave, or running away? They feel identical

33:59 What do I actually want?

35:15 Why the saying-no conversation triggers her

36:07 Can I? Should I? Do I even want to?

38:40 Loneliness, and what it's really telling you

40:00 How to truthfully answer what you want

43:50 You're becoming a whole new woman

45:53 Watching it happen to the women around her

48:48 The divorce phase, and coming out the other side

51:20 How she showed up in the hardest times

54:00 The premonition, and trusting what she knew

57:36 Holding good and grateful and still wanting more

1:00:00 Female friendship, and learning how to receive love

1:02:30 When we feel like we're overdoing something

1:05:00 Her village of women

1:07:17 Making your next choice a soulful one

1:08:30 The women over fifty living the most beautiful lives

1:10:54 A decade in spirituality, and what it taught her

1:13:00 The need to optimize, and letting it go

1:15:00 Rapid fire

1:16:00 What women aren't saying out loud

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A four-year-old boy who can't sit still for circle time used to just be a four-year-old boy. Now it's an evaluation, a diagnosis, a meeting where you nod politely and then cry in the car. That's where this conversation started, and it's the one I've been wanting to have for a long time. I'm a mother of three boys, and Dr. Michael Milobsky said the thing I've felt in my body for years: most of the boys who end up in his office are completely normal. The label is the problem, not the boy.

He's a pediatrician of thirty years and a father of seven, and he told me he learned more from raising his own kids than from any of his training. He changed my mind on things I walked in sure about, which I don't say often. We get into why our boys are in crisis and what mislabeling does to a boy by the time he's fourteen. What our daughters actually need to grow up confident, which is not the conversation girl moms are being handed. Why he calls ADHD an operating system and not a disorder. And the one thing a father gives a child that a mother can't, which, to my surprise, is not discipline. It's regulation.

Then it turned, the way the best ones do. He told me about the pain he carried in his body for years and refused to look at, until it cost him his leg, and what he found waiting on the other side of finally listening to it. His line for it: losing his leg let him grow wings. I came into this conversation thinking about my children. I left it thinking about myself.

This is for the mother who has been told her child has a problem. For the one quietly certain she's doing all of this wrong. For the one who keeps promising she'll get to herself later. Our kids are not broken. A lot of what we're labeling in them is really just what we haven't looked at in ourselves, and you being okay is the single most powerful thing you'll ever give them. This is Dr. Michael Milobsky.

New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

This episode touches on postpartum depression and maternal mental health. If you or someone you love is struggling, Postpartum Support International can help: call or text 1-800-944-4773, or visit postpartum.net.

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You've been called too much your whole life. Too loud, too opinionated, too intense, too independent, too picky. You've done the work, sat through the dates, read the books, and still gone home wondering what's wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you. You've just been looking in the wrong places.

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We live in a world that has made being a founder a whole personality: move fast, be visible, build in public, become the brand, and make sure everyone sees how hard you're working. Dianna Cohen built Crown Affair by doing almost the exact opposite.

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A while back I posted something about my kids, and a woman sent me a DM that has been quietly sitting in the back of my mind ever since. She said, it feels like you resisted motherhood for a while and now you've fully embraced it. What changed? And here's the honest thing. If that message had landed in my inbox two years ago, it would have sent me straight down a dark hole. It would have fed the mom guilt so well I'd have needed months to climb back out.

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There are people you meet once and think about for years. Codie Sanchez is one of mine. She is the founder of Contrarian Thinking, a Forbes 2026 Top Creator, and one of the most powerful voices in business on the internet, the rare person in her world who says the quiet part out loud instead of selling you the highlight reel. A New York Times bestseller with a nine-figure portfolio of businesses most people will never see the inside of, and a way of talking that makes you sit up straight.

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