Women Around a Table Eating Food (WTF): Unfiltered talk about this curious midlife. And food.

What if the thing standing between you and the performance of your life isn't more effort, it's the noise in your own head?

In this episode of Women Around a Table Eating Food, Lisa MacDonald—the world-record powerlifter Instagram knows as Lisa Maximus and our dear friend—has never had a work ethic problem. She's coached since she was 19, out-trains pain most of us will never fathom, and squats numbers that could stop a train. But meet after meet, she'd get to the platform and freeze, with a ready body and a mind that hijacked her moment. She'd tried the breathing drills, the sports-psych talk, the mindset hacks. None of it moved the needle.

And then, there was Nic.

Our very own resident therapist (and Lisa's friend AND coaching client) handed Lisa a recording and said listen to this at night. Barely able to stay awake for it, a handful of sleeps later, she walked up to the bar at her next record-breaking conquest calm, clear, laser-focused…and had the best powerlifting meet of her life. She thought something was wrong with her. But it was Nic’s hypnosis, and it worked.

In this episode, Lisa and Nic trade places as the strength coach becomes the student inside Nic's own practice, Tranceform Performance, where they let us watch the reversal up close. Nic explains what hypnosis actually is (a focused, relaxed state where the mind gets open to change) and what it isn't (mind control, swinging pocket watches, clucking like a chicken). They get into why insight isn't a prerequisite for change, the belt cue Lisa didn't know she'd been given, and why Nic told a powerlifter to “channel her feminine.” And because this is WTF, there's a green-drink debate, a steak-marbling metaphor for an MRI, and an impromptu pelvic-tilt clinic for Jen's cranky back.

If Nic can move a wall for Lisa Maximus, it's probably worth the rest of us leaning in. Calling all moms, managers, and anyone who's ever gone blank when it counted, you don’t have to be an athlete to add a new coping and healing tool to your toolbox. Come ready to be inspired.

Content note: this conversation touches on OCD, anxiety, and exposure therapy, and describes personal experiences with hypnosis. It's one athlete's story, not medical or psychological advice.

Zero-Hype Takeaways:

• Hypnosis, done well, is closer to being absorbed in a good book than losing control — a focused, relaxed state where the mind is open to change.

• You don't need to understand why a pattern started in order to interrupt it. Insight is not a prerequisite for change.

• The most disciplined people often hit walls that effort can't fix, because the block is in performance, not preparation.

• A tool that feels "too simple" can still be the one that finally works (and skepticism doesn't disqualify you from benefiting).

• This isn't just for elite athletes: the same nerve that freezes a lifter freezes a presenter, a parent, a beginner.

Follow these phenoms!

💪🏻 FIND Lisa MacDonald ("Lisa Maximus") and her Maximus Strong Training Program at www.lisamaximus.com

💪🏻 FOLLOW her at @lisamaximus

💪🏻 FIND Nic at https://www.tranceform-performance.com

What happens when a surgeon/former engineer/board-certified OBGYN spends years learning to tell women to "run more and eat less"…and then realizes, Wait: That’s absolutely NOT the answer? She builds an entirely new model of care from scratch.

In this episode of Women Around a Table Eating Food, Jen and Nic welcome Dr. Diana Kumar: co-founder of Gliss Wellness, menopause specialist, former industrial engineer, and the kind of doctor who has officially added "please don't put your estrogen patch on your necklines" to her patient intake form. (True story.)

Dr. Kumar dreamed up Gliss Wellness with co-founding partner-in-shine Dr. Teresa Walsh on a flight to Paris, and then spent a year burning 100 hours a week to build it. Their mission? Offer evidence-based, personalized menopause care (even for women who live far from their providers) with no waiting rooms, no paper tables, and no seven-minute appointments.

(She's also Nic’s and Jen’s actual doctor, which means this convo goes where some pods don't.)

We get into…

❗️Why Dr. Kumar’s menopause training in medical school was "near zero” (her words)

❗️How a flawed 2000s study canceled HRT for nearly an entire generation

❗️ The symptoms nobody talks about (burning tongue, neck sensitivity, eczema flares, and ears like the Red Hot on Jen’s gingerbread cookies)

❗️ Why race and ethnicity change everything about how menopause shows up; and

❗️ The "Walmart of menopause" problem quietly taking over telehealth.

This one's for errywoman who’s ever walked out of a seven-minute appointment feeling more lost than when she walked in, and every person who loved her and had to deal with her rage. Dr. Kumar is warm, articulate, funny AF, and has wicked strong opinions about burn books, educating men about perimenopause, and the fact that oral sex ONLY gets better in your 40s and 50s. (We confirm!) Food at Dr. K’s table? Matcha…ceremonially prepared, hoarded from a tiny Tokyo subway shop. (Because, tastemaker.)

🌿 Book a free 15-minute consult with Gliss Wellness: www.findgliss.com

🎙️ Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

📲 Follow us on Instagram: @womenaroundatable

(Also...reviews will SO help us grow! If you remotely liked what you heard or think this pod could lift someone up, like us, share us, and let folks know what you thought.)

We appreciate you!

https://www.findgliss.com/

@glisswellness

@glissspot

So what happens when a lifelong word wrangler decides she's done pretending that menopause is a graceful transformation? She writes a trilogy about it—sharp, snarky, and wickedfuckting honest—and then she shows up at our virtual table to talk about all of it. 🫶🏻

In this episode of Women Around a Table Eating Food, Jen introduces to Nic her dear friend and author Kennerly Clay: a 25-year veteran of writing and digital strategy, a memoirist, and the kind of woman who, at the height of her midlife unraveling, kicked her son's door off its hinges, told her kids she needed some space, and checked herself into a self-described trashy Pennsylvania hotel room. And they all survived and loved hard through it.

Kennerly is the author of Letters from East of Nowhere: Daddy's Words to Live, Drink and Die By, a deeply personal memoir about growing up in the orbit of an absent, addicted father and the letters he left behind. She's also the self-published author of the Menopausal Woman's Guide trilogy: three snackable, profanity-forward books about losing your shit, dealing with your shit, and figuring out who you are on the other side of alla dat shit.

Together, Jen, Nic, and Kennerly get into…

✨ writing as catharsis versus craft

✨ what it actually feels like to stop recognizing yourself

✨ the big diff between wanting a solution and needing to complain for a minute, and...

✨ the quiet devastation (and hard-won triumph) of nearly walking away from a marriage and choosing, in the end, to stay.

(We also talk codependency, ketamine therapy, the family meeting nobody asked for, and what it means to raise boys who know how to hold mirrors up to themselves…and to you.)

This is SO not a wellness ep! It's a convo about what happens when the life you built cracks and you decide—sometimes quite literally kicking and screaming—to rebuild. Pull up a chair. The food of choice this time is a clean bowl of white rice and miso soup. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what this conversation feels like: simple lessons at the core, warming, and deeply nourishing.

Links:

📚 Buy Kennerly's books here: https://kennerlyclay.com/

Divorce may happen on paper, but as our dearest of the dear friends Carrie Rosenbloom knows, the real work happens in the family system. The court can divide assets, approve parenting plans and make things official, but it most certainly can’t regulate your nervous system, heal heartbreak, or transform two furious humans into emotionally evolved co-parents by next week.

In this episode of Women Around a Table Eating Food, Jen and Nic sit down with Carrie, an attorney, licensed marriage and family therapist, divorce coach and founder of her practice Divorce Beyond Court, to talk about what divorce really asks of people: legal clarity, emotional stamina, co-parenting maturity, deep self-honesty, and the ability to make major decisions while your inner world does jazz hands in a burning building.

Carrie started her career as an Assistant State’s Attorney in Cook County, Illinois (the narcotics bureau!) before moving into nonprofit work, family mediation, therapy, and divorce coaching. (For the Julianna Margulies fans keeping score at home, that means our real-life Carrie worked inside the actual Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, made famous—fictionally and scandalously!—by The Good Wife’s Peter Florrick.)

Today, Carrie brings lawyer brain, therapist heart, and a whip-smart, ready-fire-aim approach to problem-solving when that’s the tactic the moment calls for. Together, we talk co-parenting, kids, anger, grief, identity, boundaries, and why divorce isn't simply the end of a marriage. It's the start of a whole new family OS...which makes it deeply at home in the Messy Midlife, where reinvention rarely arrives with clean edges or a court-approved timeline.

(And because this is WTF, we deliver up laughs, lasting friendship when the chips are down, chai-related digestive truth, and Carrie’s proud epiz-ending carbivore confession: bread, butter, salt, Pringles, pasta and, ideally, a lychee martini.

⚖️ Find Carrie: https://www.divorcebeyondcourt.com/

So, Friends: What do we do with all.our.stuff—and all of our PARENTS’ stuff—and all the weird feelings we have about the stuff we have?

On this week's Women Around a Table Eating Food podcast, we invited professional organizer Tracy Hoth (rhymes with “both”) to help us better understand the psychology around clutter, and within minutes it was clear this convo was about way more than junk drawers. 

For a lot of Messy Midlifers, ”housekeeping” has turned into the management of what we keep, what we’ve inherited, and how hard it can be (especially as adult kids) to help aging parents sort through a lifetime of belongings without sounding like Daughter Dictators.

Through her company Simply Squared Away, Tracy teaches that organization ain’t about pretty bins and perfection; it's about creating a space that actually works for you in all your youness. And with humor, compassion, and real-world tools for becoming someone who can find the damn thing when they need it, this episode’s super useful, and just the thing if you’ve ever wandered around your house wondering what the actual org is going on here?

(Also on the table? Tuna talk, protein-shake prowess, benevolent eggs, sacred sourdough, and Jen’s truly committed relationship with apple cider vinegar.)

Fun Stuff:

👉🏻Find Tracy at her website Simply Squared Away

👉🏻Listen to Tracy's podcast The Organized Coach here.

🎧 Subscribe for more episodes of Women Around a Table Eating Food (WTF)

🍴 Follow us @womenaroundatable on Instagram

Former television sports producer-turned-physical therapist Bridget Twedt, PT, DPT, knows a thing or two about reinvention. In this episode of Women Around a Table Eating Food, Norwalk, Connecticut's High Road PT co-owner dishes with Nic and Jen about her path from covering the Olympics to physical therapy, entrepreneurship, and helping people move through pain with more strength and trust in their bodies.

We get into running gait analysis, vertigo, balance training as we age, tendon injuries in midlife women, and why recovery is as mental (and emotional) as it is physical. Bridget also shared listener-friendly insights on why rest alone isn’t always the answer; why appropriate weight-loading matters; and why losing our mobility can feel like a gut punch to our identity.

It’s a smart, grounded conversation about healing, movement, and wanting your bod to feel like home again. Also on the table: Nic’s perennial pod-ending question: Bridget’s desert-island “forever food pick” (and the recipe Jen owes everyone)!

(Like what you're hearing? Please follow us and consider writing a review. Help us spread the good word about the importance of connecting at ALL stages of life...and eSPECially in the middle of it!)

Find Bridget: https://www.highroadpt.com/

Learn From Bridget: @highroad.pt

What if your symptoms are not signs that something is wrong with you, but signals that something in you needs care?

In this episode of Women Around a Table Eating Food, Jen and Nic welcome marriage and family therapist, somatic practitioner, and all-around healing force Heather Waxman, LMFT, (who also happens to be Nic’s wife).

Together, we talk about burnout, over-responsibility, nervous system regulation, attachment wounds, and why so many high-functioning, midlife women can look fine on the outside while feeling completely fried on the inside. Heather brings a whole-person lens to healing—one that makes room for the body, the psyche, the relational world, and the truth that insight alone doesn’t always change how we live.

(THEN Heather lands the line that basically became the spine of the episode… maybe 2026: Symptoms are sacred messengers.)

This one is warm, funny, wise, and wildly validating. It’s about learning to treat your symptoms less like proof that you’re broken and more like signals that something in you needs care, rest, nourishment, or simply a softer way forward. Come for the nervous system wisdom, the chemistry, Heather’s wit, and her desert-island food. Stay for the feeling that maybe healing doesn’t have to be one more impossible thing on your list.

(Love what you heard from Heather? Learn more about her here at www.heatherwaxman.com.)

Jump To The Goods

00:00 Welcome + introducing Heather Waxman

05:05 Heather’s origin story and “the wisdom inside my wound”

08:21 What talk therapy does beautifully—and where some people want more

12:09 Why insight doesn’t always translate into lived change

17:44 Why so many high-functioning midlife women feel chronically dysregulated

18:44 “Symptoms are sacred messengers”

22:16 What that actually means in real life, especially with burnout

24:49 Why healing should feel more like an invitation than a psychobabble goose chase

26:02 Over-responsibility, caregiving, and the toll on women’s nervous systems

33:13 What nervous system regulation really is—and why it does not mean being calm all the time

40:49 Gentle starting practices: orienting, inner anchors, and slow nervous system support

46:13 How Heather helps people feel safe in their bodies again + where to find her

Friends! We’re back for Season 2 and we’re easing in the only way we know how: “Hey girl, hey,” a little chaos, and an honest check-in about what midlife is really doing to us.

In this Just Us episode, we talk midlife feelings, women’s health, and friendship…starting with the story behind Nic’s surprise basal cell carcinoma and Mohs surgery (which turned into a much bigger facial deal than expected) and what the aftermath felt like physically-emotionally-existentially. From there, we tumble into the tender: why mortality starts whispering louder at this age, the weird dread Jen feels when Parker simply leaves the driveway, and how we’re all just trying to stay present instead of panicked.

Then we zoom out: What surprised us most about Season 1, what made us proud, and what we want Season 2 to look like (Spoiler: More women, reality, laughs and lived experience, and more “you’re not broken” energy.) Plus, the dream guest list is revealed. It’s spicy!

There's an amazing lineup of guests coming up. Pull up a chair or put us on in the background, grab a sip or a snack, and join us.

Fun Timestamps

00:00 Welcome back + “Hey girl, hey”

01:36 Nic’s Mohs surgery + “surprise, it’s more invasive”

05:44 Mortality + the “is this the last kiss goodbye?” dread 

09:16 “50 & Feral” + Season 2 kickoff energy 

11:03 Season 1 reflections: the best part was…seeing each other weekly 

13:50 What made Nic proud: feedback + “it’s like a warm hug”

15:11 Dream/reach guests: Sarah Silverman, Tig Notaro, Brené Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, and morrrrre.

20:45 What we want Season 2 to bring: women’s voices, midlife support, the big questions

One year ago, this podcast was just an idea and a table. Now it’s a season and a ritual, with new people in our lives who feel like friends.

In this "Just Us" season finale of Women Around a Table Eating Food, Jen and Nic gather with Nic’s wife Heather and Heather’s bestie, Samantha, family to dish on what the past year actually cracked open: sacred rage, creative risk, midlife bods, chosen fam, grief, joy, perimenopause, and the radical act of staying present when everything in you wants to check out.

This isn’t a neat little wrap-up. It’s a toast…to female friendship that saves you, to projects you don’t overthink into oblivion, and to the next year being just a little more honest, a little more brave, and a lot more delicious.

Pull up a chair. We really did this.

Stuff we love:

Sam’s fam’s kickass Connecticut-based food empire: https://www.laylasfalafel.com/

All the timestamps!

17:00 — “We Birthed a Podcast”

From “let’s just try this” to realizing they created something real.

18:45 — “The Year That Dug a Hole… and Found the Sun”

Reflecting on surviving a brutal year and finally seeing light again.

20:30 — “Friendship That Saves You”

A raw moment about being picked up at rock bottom—and not forgetting who carried you.

22:50 — “Your 50th Year Is a Launch, Not a Landing”

Why this next chapter is about catapulting forward, not slowing down.

25:15 — “Joy Doesn’t Have to Be Loud”

Redefining happiness as presence, not performance.

27:40 — “Chosen Family Hits Different”

What it means to have people you’d call at 2 a.m.—no questions asked.

30:10 — “Content Is Not a Dirty Word”

A surprisingly deep defense of being satisfied and still striving.

32:45 — “Being Present Is a Full-Contact Sport”

Phones, work, hormones, grief—and why attention is the real flex.

35:30 — “The Practice of Being With Yourself”

Why presence with others starts with presence alone.

38:20 — “Four and a Half Listeners (And We’d Do It Anyway)”

Gratitude, jokes, and the softest possible mic drop.

40:00 — “Season One: We Really Did This”

Closing toast, dance party energy, and what’s coming next.