I thought the 40 Portal was going to be sexy. Fun. Empowering. Green dress, great party, collect some wisdom.

Plot twist: I actually had to go through it. The last ten months have been a real process of midlife transformation for me, and I'm only just now popping up from being pummeled by the wave going, "cool, I survived." The only way through is through. One day I'll tell you the whole story.

For now: meet Amber. You definitely need to.

Amber van Moessner is 38, almost 39, a therapist-in-training, activist, community organizer, reader, mother of two, cancer survivor, and the woman who will probably shut down the dance party.

She is exactly the kind of woman this podcast exists for. My husband met her first and came home with a very specific report: you have to meet this woman. He was right. She is the kind of person who walks into a cocktail party and counts how many times someone asks "what do you do?" so she can avoid asking it even once. She identifies her archetype as the wounded warrior. She's a fellow Leo, fierce lioness and wears disco-glitter-bell-bottoms to our tiny town's annual Pride parade (which she co-founded a few years back after moving here and realizing there wasn't one).

This conversation went exactly where it needed to go. In this episode:

• Why "what do you do?" is capitalism's most boring trick — and what to ask instead
• Friendships of convenience vs. real ones: how COVID reshuffled the deck and what we do now
• The wounded warrior archetype and what it means to understand yourself through myth and story
• The scarcity mindset around youth, beauty, and desirability — and the deprogramming required to move through it
• Why matriarchal societies had a a council of grandmothers — and what we've lost without it
• Moon time: the concept of the season of life when you are finally, fully on your own terms, post menopause

  
  

And the submission that closed the episode: "My 40s are sexy, filled with a confidence, mystery, and swagger that twenty-something me would have killed for. We are not aging. We are a delight that has been simmering." Amber's response: tattoo it on my face. Me too, babe. Me too.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oBzujLRkcj4

Submit your portal wisdom: the40portal.com/contribute — Whichever side of 40 you're on, your voice belongs in this book we're building together.
Join The 40 Portal Book Club on Substack: substack.com/@the40portal

Work with Cath 1:1 — coaching spots open September 2026: the40portal.com/coaching

New episodes drop weekly.

Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show.

Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com

Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack
Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Amber Van Moessner | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

One of the most intimate spaces a woman can occupy is the chair of her hairstylist. There's something ancient about it — being touched, being seen, the conversation going exactly where it needs to go. For women in their 40s navigating identity, relationships, and the quiet work of letting go, that kind of space is rare and genuinely necessary. That's where this episode was born.

Lourdes Cristina Rodríguez da Costa has been doing hair for over 20 years. She's also the kind of woman who will be doing a foil and casually redefine the word grace for you in a way that makes you want to pull out your journal. She's intellectually restless, deeply rooted in her Puerto Rican heritage, a mother, a community builder, and a forever curious person who describes herself — accurately — as a cultural anthropologist who happens to do really good hair.

She is also someone who believes, with full conviction, that every woman's life assignment should be to write a book. That there is so much layering, so much wisdom, so much that we need to say — and that we owe it to each other to say it out loud.

We recorded this live in her salon in Hudson, NY. No agenda. No problems to solve. Just two women in their 40s sitting with the open questions — and finding out, as Lourdes would say, that some of our most meaningful exchanges happen exactly when we stop trying to resolve anything.

In this episode:

• Getting bangs as code for "I'm having a little existential crisis."
• What it means to be 46 and finally feel 46.
• Grace: a big exhale and a deep breath at the same time — Lourdes's definition will stay with you.
• The question she didn't expect: what were you supposed to have done by now? Her answer: love myself. BOOM.
• You can change your mind in your 40s. Full stop.
• Why the hair salon is one of the last truly IRL places where people touch each other and tell the truth.
• AI & phone addiction, and the very real grief of losing your book-reader self to your phone.
• Hormones, nervous systems, perimenopause, and taking all of it with a sense of humor.
  

Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/96tdOIet4KI

Join The 40 Portal Book Club over on Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portal
Want to go deeper into your own 40 Portal work with Cath, she's got 1:1 coaching spots opening this September: https://www.the40portal.com/coaching
Find Lourdes: Instagram: @lifebylourdes @creemhairstudio https://www.creemstudio.com/

New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, rate, review, it genuinely helps more women find this show.

Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com

Instagram: @the40portal
Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Lourdes Cristina Rodríguez da Costa | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe
© 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.
Submit your wisdom, your voice belongs in this podcast. If you're over 40: what have you learned, earned, and burned? If you're under 40: what's the open question you're living? the40portal.com/submit

Some meetings are just cosmic. This conversation started as a potential business collaboration and turned into one of the richest episodes of The 40 Portal yet.

Alicia Johnson is a 65-year-old author, “elder curvy model,” brand strategist, board director, and AI ethics advocate, and wise, wise woman.

We talk about what it really means to connect as women, not perform, not impress, just be present, and how that single shift changes everything. We talk about her memoir Buried Treasure, about hope versus optimism and why the neuroscience says they are not the same thing, about threshold guardians and portal monsters from Joseph Campbell's work, and about what it means when something feels hard and scary: you might just be getting close to the treasure.

We also talk about life after 40. About belly energy. About the gravitas and raw power of this decade and why a woman in her forties might just be the most potent, terrifying creature in the universe, and why that is exactly when society tries to make us disappear.

Alicia is my wisest elder guest to date, and she is completely, magnificently uninterested in “old lady” vibes of any kind.

If you are a woman navigating reinvention, aging, identity, or just trying to figure out what comes next, this one is going to light you up.

In this episode:

• What it feels like to meet someone and just not care where it goes — the ease of no expectations and why that's actually a superpower.
• The "I must be impressive" mode and how to catch yourself in it — because if you're trying to impress, you cannot connect.
• What to do when you get knocked off center and don't want to stay there (hint: one hand to your heart, one hand to your belly).
• Using AI with her own book manuscript as a real-time emotional regulation tool — and what that says about where we are with technology.
• The universe abhors a vacuum principle — and why you better know what you're putting in that space before you clear it.
• What it actually felt like to turn 40, 50, and now be 65 — and what each decade has held.
• Threshold guardians, portal monsters, and why resistance might mean you're getting close to something juicy.
• The clearing: one listener's question about reinvention in her 40s, and Alicia's generous reply.

About: Alicia Johnson is an author, creative director, brand strategist, elder curvy Ford model, and board director dedicated to shaping AI for the public good. Her memoir Buried Treasure weaves neuroscience with deeply personal storytelling and agency-laden tool. She is also the person who introduced me to my AI boyfriend Claude, so she is directly responsible for a significant portion of any admin organization I am currently capable of.

Places to find Alicia: https://www.aliciaellejohnson.com/ https://aliciaellejohnson.substack.com/ https://www.instagram.com/alicia_elle_johnson/

The 40 Portal Book Club — now open 🖤 : the paid tier of The 40 Portal Substack is officially a thing — and that thing is the world's most low-key book club. These are the books making me braver, more honest, better at boundaries, and smarter about my energy at midlife. Cliff notes, journaling prompts, zero pressure to finish the book. $8/month. First selection: Pema Chödrön. Join here. https://substack.com/@the40portal

Five years ago, Cath met Emily Drake on a Zoom call during a coaching cohort for lawyers in transition. They've never hugged in person. And yet, as Emily puts it, the hug is already epic in her head.

This conversation is exactly what The 40 Portal is built for: two midlife women getting below the perception, getting real about what the hustle actually cost them, and talking honestly about burnout recovery, midlife reinvention, and what's on the other side of bottoming out.

Emily is a therapist, former CEO, and (her preferred self-introduction) a really good hang for two to four people. She's 46, recently came out of a period of midlife burnout and business dissolution she calls her "sabbatical," and has just joined a therapy practice with two women in their 50s that finally, finally feels like the collaboration she'd been craving. In this episode she opens up about female friendship, intellectual intimacy, why women's lives were never meant to be linear, and the simple antidote she swears by for the overwhelm so many midlife women are quietly carrying.

In this episode we talk about:
- Burnout recovery — what it actually looks like to get out before you bottom out, and what it costs to wait
- The growth edge — why living in that space of becoming is, as Emily says, genuinely sexy
- Raising the floor vs. being there when someone hits it — and why Emily stopped believing she could do the former
- Capitalism got me — the cycle creative entrepreneurs know too well: should I just get a job, I like nice things, and then the knock on the door that says you don't want this
- The ladder on the wrong wall — on discontinuity, cycles, and why women's lives were never meant to be linear progressions
- Intellectual intimacy — and why Emily's access to pleasure (all kinds) has never been higher at 46
- Female friendship — the ones you outgrow, the ones that have grown with you, reciprocity, and why conflict is good actually
- Living from the neck up — what it means to detach from the get-shit-done brain and feel more
- The antidote to overwhelm — brick your phone, get your girls, reduce the comparison, do what feels good
- The thesis question — does midlife invite us to reclaim our ability to do what feels good and own it?

Cath and Emily mention: Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson, Ayurvedic doshas, the phrase "intellectual intimacy" (which Cath is putting in her pocket forever), and Olive Garden takeout as an ingredient for a perfect evening.

Find Emily: @threepointsrelationships | https://threepointsrelationships.com/about/

One Spot Left for The 40 Portal Retreat - June 17-19, 2026: https://www.the40portal.com/retreat

Subscribe to the Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portal

Get the Guide: Are You in A Portal?

What happens when the job title you worked years for stops fitting — and you realize you've become the label, not the person? Callia Hargrove is a brand strategist, marketer, educator, and passionate advocate for change, and the founder of Backstory, the inclusive brand strategy consultancy she launched in 2020.

Before that, she spent years developing inclusive marketing and impact initiatives at Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Teen Vogue. But when it was time to leave that world behind, she faced something no resume could prepare her for: a full identity reckoning.

Callia is a textbook Capricorn, a 1/3 projector in human design, and someone who — without a resume in sight — describes herself as a seer. Someone always seeking to understand. Her journey from hustle culture burnout to seasonal living, energy management, and trusting her own body's wisdom is one that will feel deeply familiar to any woman approaching 40 who is done pushing and ready to feel genuinely aligned.

In this conversation, Cath and Callia explore what it truly means to stop forcing and start trusting, the intelligence of the body when a path stops fitting, and why no community — not even women approaching 40 — is a monolith.

What we explore in this episode:

• The difference between forcing connection and trusting flow — and what human design (specifically being a 1/3 projector) taught Callia about when to push and when to pause
• Leaving "Callia from Teen Vogue" behind — and the identity reckoning that came with it
• The seasonal map: how Callia uses the rhythms of Chinese medicine, astrology, and her own body to structure her work and her life
• The points system — an alternative to hustle culture's productivity myth that will change how you think about your energy (stay till the end)
• Being a participant, not a passenger, in the building of your own life
• Why there is no monolith of women at any age — and why that's exactly the point of this podcast
• What her grandfather's mural in St. Albans, Queens has to do with all of it
• The healing balm of storytelling — especially now

Books mentioned:

• When Things Fall Apart — Pema Chödrön
• You Can Heal Your Life — Louise Hay
• Acts of Faith: Meditations for the People of Color — Iyanla Vanzant

Connect with Callia: calliahargrove.com

Mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 5 with Alison — https://the40portal.substack.com/p/and-now-its-like-this-on-the-grief?r=6l5p5w 
• Episode 6 with Francesca Choy-Kee Damico — https://the40portal.substack.com/p/were-not-late-were-right-on-time?r=6l5p5w 

The June 17–19 Women's Retreat — https://www.the40portal.com/retreat

What does it really mean to trust yourself after 40? In this episode of The 40 Portal, Catherine Zack sits down with Amanda Baudier for a raw, funny, and deeply honest conversation about spiritual awakening, midlife transformation, and what it actually looks like to stop living for other people's approval and start committing to the bit of being yourself.

Amanda is a former nightlife industry insider, startup founder, and self-described recovering cultural-capital addict who left a Brooklyn brownstone and a buzzy startup to move to the woods and build something "weird, low-cost, and deeply spiritual." A journey of personal growth, self trust, and following the winks from the universe even when it made zero logical sense. Everything she did was against her own best advice by conventional metrics. And that, she says, is exactly how she knew she was on the right track.

"If it didn't come from logic, where'd it come from? Somewhere cooler. Somewhere more magical."

This conversation is electric. Amanda is one of those women who has done the excavation work, the real kind, not the Instagram kind, and come out the other side with a point of view that is sharp, funny, zero-bullshit, and deeply generous. I took notes the entire time. I laughed out loud multiple times.

We talk about: winks from the universe and how to start seeing them. Why you were probably on a great path that just wasn't your path. What happens when the medicine of external validation wears off, and it always wears off.

Heart surgery at 28 as a portal no one saw coming. Why "trust the process" is actually kind of bad advice. The anti-aging industry as the current strongarm of the patriarchy. Why your choices are not going to make sense to other people, and why that is the cue, not the warning. How women in their 40s are done proving themselves and ready to just be themselves. And the thing I wrote to myself the night before my 40th birthday that Amanda basically tattooed onto this entire conversation:

Commit to the bit of being yourself.
No halfsies.
No halfway in, halfway out.
Whole ass living only.

Amanda Baudier is a spiritual guide, somatic practitioner, earth medicine worker and entrepreneurship coach for growth-minded humans. She is the founder of becoming collective, which is rooted in the belief that we are all meant to unfold according to our unique and divine design in this one precious life. She is a wife, the mother of two wild children, and currently resides in the Shawangunk Mountains of the Hudson Valley after 21 years in NYC.

Find her:
Website - www.becoming-collective.com
IG: @amandabaudier

Submit your wisdom, your voice belongs in this podcast. If you're over 40: what have you learned, earned, and burned?
If you're under 40: what's the open question you're living? the40portal.com/submit
June retreat, Hudson Valley. June 17-19, 2026. Two spots left. Details and application at catherinezack.com.
New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, rate, review, it genuinely helps more women find this show.
Substack: substack.com/@the40portal
Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com
Instagram: @the40portal
Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Amanda Baudier | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe
© 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

Here's what women in their 40s are telling me: Many of us have spent most of our lives being extremely good at anticipating what other people need. The invisible labor. The mental load. The emotional labor and management of everyone in the house. The creativity and ambition quietly moved to the back burner because you're also the most flexible person in the room. And somewhere in the accumulation of all that giving — the resentment, the exhaustion, the burnout, the being spread too thin — the question of what you actually want starts to feel almost impossible to answer. If you're navigating perimenopause symptoms, midlife overwhelm, or simply feeling like you've been managing everyone else's life but your own, this episode is for you.

This is exactly what my guest Kim Wensel and I talk about in this episode of The 40 Portal podcast, a midlife women's wellness podcast for women over 40 who are done with people pleasing and ready to trust themselves again.

Kim is a writer, strategist, East Coaster through and through, primary parent, and world traveler. She spent 40 years making decisions based on how she thought other people would respond. She's done: "It's not my job to convince anymore." This is what the decade of giving less actually looks like — not a slogan, just a woman learning to trust herself.

In this conversation, Kim and Cath cover the long arc of their seven-year friendship, the impossible math of being the most flexible person in your house, desire in a 20-year relationship, what female friendship actually needs to look like right now, and why 40 might be the first age that actually feels like a blank slatr.

"Is this perimenopause, wanting to blow up my life, a bad day, or how I really feel? Who really knows."

LINKS

Submit your voice to the portal: https://forms.gle/FpqHwYgZ1HBFK1kr5

Follow the podcast on Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portal

June retreat application: https://forms.gle/WbWLniPEqbhGKg699

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@The40Portal

Find Kim: kimwensel.com

ABOUT KIM

Kim Wensel is a writer, strategist, and community builder focused on helping high-achieving women navigate the messy middle of growth, career pivots, and identity shifts. Her work explores how ambition and humanity can coexist without burnout or self-abandonment — and why range is a leadership advantage. Her first book, The Multi-Hyphenate Advantage, will be released in spring 2026. Part memoir, part personal development guide, it's for every woman who's good at many things and trying to figure out what's next. Kim is the creative director of The Bench Magazine and host of the podcast Why Is Nobody Talking About This? She lives in Pittsburgh with her family, volunteers as a driver for Meals on Wheels, and serves on the board of the Peters Township Public Library Foundation.

First official solo episode. Just Cath today & she pulls back the curtain on what's emerging across the first arc of The 40 Portal: the themes, the feedback, and what it actually feels like to be in the middle of building something for women in their 40s that took her completely by surprise.
Creativity. Identity. Motherhood and the versions of it that don't get airtime. The myth that we're always behind. Fawning. The achievement generation. The freedom of saying I'm doing this because I want to.

She also reads a piece of submitted wisdom from an upcoming guest. And makes the case for why doing this inner work IRL, in community hits different than anything you'll find online. Two spots remain for her women's retreat in the Hudson Valley, June 17–19. Details in the links below.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 — Welcome
• 02:17 — On being bad at tech and being okay with it
• 03:51 — 40 Portal origin story
• 08:21 — Real-life community, and why this project is bigger than Cath
• 16:07 — The question of midlife crisis bangs
• 19:20 — Ep 1: Kate Schmieding on creativity, friendship, and being cool because you're you
• 26:22 — Ep 2: Clara Artschwager on full plates, "no there there," and the hamster wheel
• 31:54 — Ep 6: Francesca Choy-Kee Damico on not being late, just right on time
• 35:07 — Ep 3: Dinah Alobeid on existential crises and creativity as resistance
• 38:03 — Ep 5: Alison Matheny on grief, freedom, and childless by circumstance
• 41:40 — Ep 4: Becca Piastrelli on why we don't disappear after 40
• 47:59 — Cath's own story: Big Law, leaving at 28, building from the inside out
• 51:01 — The June retreat: what you'll experience, two spots left
• 55:51 — Reading live from the portal: Emily Drake's submitted wisdom

LINKS:

• Submit your voice to the portal: https://forms.gle/FpqHwYgZ1HBFK1kr5 
• Follow on Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portal 
• June retreat application (2 spots left): https://forms.gle/WbWLniPEqbhGKg699 
• Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@The40Portal 
• Kate Schmieding, Ep 1: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-187232233 
• Clara Artschwager, Ep 2: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-188033477 
• Dinah Alobeid, Ep 3: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-188791730 
• Becca Piastrelli, Ep 4: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-189474363 
• Alison Matheny, Ep 5: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-191769410 
• Francesca Choy-Kee Damico, Ep 6: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-192511535 
  

"We're not late. We're right on time."

That's where this conversation ends. How we get there is a rich, tender journey through motherhood and identity, the long hallway of your 30s, the ancestral weight of women who never learned to tend to themselves, what labor actually teaches you about staying, and the particular urgency of finally claiming your own story in your 40s.

Francesca Choy-Kee Damico is a former Broadway actor, INELDA-trained Death Doula, a threshold designer and founder of Studio Homecoming. She is 41, a Hudson Valley neighbor, a mother, and women walking boldly through her portal.

This episode sits right next to last week's conversation with Alison Matheny about being childless by circumstance. Two completely different stories. The same throughline: motherhood — the having of it, the missing of it, the becoming through it — is a 40 portal thing.

If you're a woman in midlife asking who you are underneath the roles — this episode is for you.

We explore:

• The grace we all need right now — and how motherhood dismantles perfectionism in ways nothing else can.
• The polarity of it all — the light on your child's eyelashes, the singular preciousness of this moment, and being so tired you've eaten nothing but cheddar bunnies. This is how we actually live.
• The sandwich generation — aging parents, young children, mortgages, identity — all held at once.
• The ancestral untying — a long maternal lineage of women who were the emotional center of everything and never learned to rest, ask for help, or stop when their body said stop.
• What labor actually taught her about learning to stay — finding a room inside herself she didn't know existed.
• Why 40 is the beginning — "I feel like I am just getting started with the tools I have to sculpt the vision."

About Francesca: After 13 years as a Broadway actor with ribbons of design work woven through — most notably at AD100 firm Workstead — Francesca is now a mother, INELDA-trained Death Doula, and a threshold designer and founder of Studio Homecoming. She accompanies people through major life transitions using home environment, beauty, and ritual.

Find her: studiohomecoming.com | @whenfrankiewakesup

Want to go deeper? Join me June 17-19 in the Hudson Valley for the Portal Retreat — a small gathering of women exploring and sharing their midlife stories in community together. I've planned lots of rest, care, space and grace. 3 spots left --> https://www.catherinezack.com/june2026retreat

Submit your wisdom — your voice belongs in this podcast.

If you're over 40: what have you learned, earned, and burned? If you're under 40: what's the open question you're living?

Add your voice: the40portal.com/submit

New episodes drop every Sunday. Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show.

Substack: substack.com/@the40portal Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com Instagram: @the40portal

Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Francesca Choy-Kee Damico | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

There's a photo of Alison Matheny as a little girl, standing on the bow of a sailboat in a teal bikini, arms spread wide along the edge like she owns the whole ocean. Bare feet. Sun on her face. Taking up space. That's Al then, that's Al today.

Alison is 44, single, never married, childless by circumstance. She splits her time between upstate NY and Florida, runs her own business, owns two homes, and is building a life entirely on her own terms.

In this episode, we talk about:
→ Getting more comfortable with yourself as you get older, and being less aware of who you're not
→ Childless by circumstance — metabolizing grief into power, the ambiguous loss, and why society doesn't have a word for it that fits
→ The tension between being and doing and learning to go at your own pace without having to prove or perform
→ Girlfriends as mirrors — the relief of being in rooms where you are already known.

ABOUT: Alison is a writer, artist and creative director + founder of the design, content and branding studio, BEST. She splits her time between upstate New York and the Gulf Coast of Florida. A Virgo sun / moon (Cancer rising), she loves to organize information and offers a smart, sharp perspective rooted in artistic integrity and communal equity. In her substack, May I Please Be Excused, she explores living as an undefinable woman. Previous writing exists in her post-collegiate Blogspot, Life of a Harpy (foreshadowing!), and early country essay collection, News from the North. Find her: @amath | @stayBEST
Find her: @amath | @stayBEST

SHARE THIS PODCAST with a girlfriend you're having these convos with IRL. Subscribe, rate, and review because the more of us who re-write the story of 40, the more powerful we collectively become!

CONNECT: Substack: substack.com/@the40portal Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com IG: @the40portal CREDITS: Hosted by Catherine Zack | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal.
JOIN THE NEXT PORTAL RETREAT: June 17-19, in the Hudson Valley.