Women in the Middle®: Loving Life After 50 - Midlife Coach Podcast

Do you feel stuck in midlife because you're waiting for more clarity before making a change? Maybe you want to figure out what's next with retirement, relationships, work, or simply how you want to spend your time. You keep thinking, researching, journaling, and talking about your options, hoping you'll eventually feel certain enough to move forward. But what if you've got the order backwards? What if taking your Next Best Step is actually how you create more clarity?

In this episode of Women in the Middle, I'm sharing one of my favorite coaching principles for getting unstuck in midlife. You'll learn why you don't need a perfect plan to start moving forward, how new experiences give you valuable data about yourself, and why self-trust is so important when you're figuring out your next chapter. I'll also share a fun Slinky analogy that explains the difference between looping and learning versus spinning in confusion. Most importantly, we'll explore why participating in your life while you're figuring things out matters just as much as reaching your destination.

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Do you notice yourself rushing in life? In this episode of Women in the Middle, we take a closer look at my tagline, "It's time to stop living like time doesn't matter, because it does" and how it does NOT mean that living this way is a call to hurry.

For many women in their 50s and 60s, busyness starts to feel like proof that life is being lived well. We unpack the gap between how you're spending your days and how you'd spend them if you were committed to your priorities. We also explore the cycle of feeling busy in detail, so you are better prepared to notice it in your life.

Drawing on personal examples (specifically, gardening, mindful doodling and the Zentangle® Method, and my infamous "mango moment,") today's show highlights how we rush through ordinary routines and even the things we love, placing all the reward at the finish line.

Several reflection questions and "Life Leadership" prompts are offered to support the question, "Am I spending my time on my priorities?". The episode closes with a simple practice for slowing down and coming back to the moment you're in.

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Today we're talking about why our sibling relationships might be the longest and least understood relationships of our lives and why that's so important.

My guest today is Catherine Carr, an award-winning documentary maker, presenter, and podcast producer with over twenty years in audio, including work for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service through her own company, Pocket Productions. She's the middle child of three, which led her to create the podcast Relatively, dedicated to sibling relationships.

Her first book, Who's the Favorite?, argues that our brothers and sisters shape us as much as our parents do. Sibling relationships often outlast every other bond in our lives, yet we rarely talk about them beyond childhood squabbles.

Drawing on over seventy sibling interviews from her podcast, along with psychology research and pop culture, Catherine explores the roles we get assigned, the friendships and rivalries, the shared history, and the estrangements, and makes the case for building stronger relationships with our siblings going forward.

This episode is easy to relate to, so please enjoy this interview!

Listen to the full interview here!

You can, but do you want to? Women over 50 are often incredibly capable. You know how to handle things, solve problems, take care of people and get stuff done. But after decades of being the woman who can, it's easy to stop asking a completely different question: "Do I actually still want to?" In this episode, we explore the difference between capability and desire and also why something doesn't have to become unbearable before you reconsider it.

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Today's guest did something unexpected when she chose to leave her judgeship and follow a new direction in poetry. Her name is Jacqueline St. Joan.

Jackie is a retired lawyer, judge, and law professor, as well as an early feminist activist, community organizer, memoirist and novelist whose path to the bench was anything but planned.

She started her career as a secretary, went to law school at 28 as a divorced mother of two, and ended up representing domestic violence survivors before becoming the first judge in Denver's centralized protection order court. Her outspoken feminism brought public scrutiny though her rulings were consistently upheld and she was voted back into office.

Her shift away from law began after her father's death, when she started writing about their complicated relationship. A trip to a writers' conference in Aspen turned that project into a lifelong pull toward poetry, then fiction. Jackie stepped down from the bench gradually, working part-time as a mediator and law professor to stay financially stable while building a writing career.

Her memoir, Your Verdict: A Judge's Reckoning with Lawand Loss, (Golden Antelope Press) was recently published. Jackie is also the author of two novels, My Sisters Made of Light and The Shawl of Midnight. Jackie served as a Denver County Judge from 1987-1994. Jackie was also recently inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.

Please enjoy this fascinating interview here!

Being intentional about the kind of daughter you want to be with your aging parents is important. While we're busy noticing our own aging, our parents are aging too, and that realization tends to sneak up on us.

This episode moves past the logistics of caregiving (appointments, prescriptions, forms) and into the relationship underneath it. We need to ask ourselves an important question and it's not "what does a good daughter do" with senior parents. Instead, a better questions is "what kind of daughter do YOU want to be" with your aging parents.

Discover how my regret-proofing framework can work to support you during this time of your life. Learn how to become intentional in a relationship you can't control, with the person aging in front of you. This is a great way toregret-proof your life!

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In this episode, you'll learn from Fredrik Härén, "The Creativity Explorer," a Swedish creativity expert who has spent 25 years traveling to 75 countries interviewing people to learn as much as he can about human creativity.

Fredrik is the author of ten books, including "The Idea Book," which was included in "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time," and he has been invited to speak more than 2000 times in 75 countries on six continents. As The Creativity Explorer, he aims to discover more about creativity, be it from innovators in Silicon Valley or nomads in the desert of Mongolia. His latest book is called "The World of Creativity" – a journey across 37 countries to discover the secret of creative minds.

You'll also discover how a mispronunciation from his young son led to his signature nickname, and why he believes "explorer" captures the creative mindset better than "expert" ever could. Along the way, you'll pick up the etymological roots of curiosity across English, Icelandic, and Bulgarian, and understand why questioning, rather than answering, may be the real engine behind creative thinking.

Finally, you'll come away with an unconventional philosophy on timing and opportunity, including the surprising nautical origin of the word "opportunity" itself. The conversation closes with a preview of his new book, The World of Creativity, and his core piece of advice for women navigating midlife.

Are you really older and wiser? Research suggests that wisdom doesn't automatically increase just because we get older. Age gives us experience, but experience and wisdom aren't the same thing.

Wisdom grows when we pay attention to our experiences, reflect on what they're showing us, and allow what we learn to influence how we understand, trust, and lead ourselves. And this matters so much in midlife because by now, you have an incredible amount of data about yourself. You've had decades to discover what energizes you, what drains you, what you love, what you tolerate, what you regret, what you keep coming back to, and what keeps getting your attention.

Learn more here.

Today we're talking to a guest who helps professionals with personal alcohol concerns create a new relationship with alcohol withalcohol moderation coaching as an alternative to abstinence-only treatment.

My guest today is Michele D. Perron.

Michelle was originally a guest on Ep 134 of my sister podcast, the Women in the Middle Entrepreneurs, which is about the reality of running your business after 50. Her story of resilience is so compelling and interesting, I couldn't resist sharing here as well.

Michele's career path has been quite a diverse, unusual journey.

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For decades, I told myself I was creative. But not really creative. I could do lettering and calligraphy. But I couldn't draw or paint. So being creative became something I did on the side of my life instead of something I let myself really own.

In this episode, I'm tracing that belief all the way back through a bathroom valance I made just because I wanted to, a plain Ikea table turned into a chessboard, and years of doodling whales I love so much I bought a domain for it. Then something happened. It felt like the summer that cracked creativity open. It centered around a cancelled Grand Canyon rafting trip, a friend's art studio, and a decision to create something rather than have a summer with only sadness.

This isn't a story about becoming an artist. It's a story about giving yourself permission and about one of the most common regrets I hear from midlife women: not letting yourself be happy. Please enjoy!

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