Watch the podcast, above, or listen below. 

This week, I am joined again by my friend and colleague Sarah Baillie, N.D. to talk about the practical steps women can take to avoid hitting an emotional rock bottom in midlife. Research suggests that most people are at their unhappiest in their forties, but that this continues to improve as they age.

Sarah and I believe there are ways to speed that process up!

As more of our clients come to us looking for support in pro-actively making their midlife easier and happier, we have identified five key areas women can address to help create space for themselves during the time in their life when their energy and happiness are statistically at their lowest. 

Whether you’re preparing to head into the bottom of the u-curve of happiness, or if you’re already there, these suggestions can help you and the people around you create more peace and joy in your life.

Topics include how to cut back on your to-do list,...

 Watch the podcast, above, or listen below. 

Today I talk with Jay Fields, an educator, coach, and author who has taught the principles of embodied social and emotional intelligence to individuals and organizations for twenty years.

If you’ve ever wondered how to get better at sitting with your emotions, instead of drinking, eating, or scrolling to escape them, Jay’s got the practical three-step solution.

We discuss the importance of feeling your emotions instead of “fixing” them, and how learning to do this using Jay’s approach allows us to respond instead of react, which in turn leads to deeper, more meaningful connections and personal relationships.

Topics include:

- how people-pleasing arises from a common childhood blueprint (“never make anyone else feel uncomfortable”)

- how trying to “fix” an emotion instead feeling and accepting it can lead to overwhelm and burnout

-...

Watch the podcast, above, or listen below.

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Today’s conversation around the value of meaningful female friendships in midlife is especially poignant for me and my co-host Sarah as colleagues who have also become very good friends over the course of the last few years.

We discuss how picture-perfect social media feeds can often lead to comparison and feelings of inadequacy, and how that can keep women from reaching out when they need more connection. 

But with midlife there’s a sense of coming home to oneself, and with that, a level of honesty that can make women finally feel they can admit when things are imperfect. Being able to build these deeper, more vulnerable friendships nurtures our energy.

Midlife is also a time when many women feel they now also have time for themselves, and these high-value friendships that could have been put on the back burner while they were prioritizing their family’s growth. 

If you have a story...

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Scott Pinyard is the owner and coach at Modern Coparent, a company dedicated to helping people find peace while coparenting. He has years of coaching experience both in private practice and as the Head Coach of This Naked Mind. Scott’s focus is in helping people through challenging growth with compassion, patience and humor.

Scott shares his personal story of modern coparenting and how he came to be a coach in this area. He explains how our lives are built on story and how these stories inform how we parent and coparent. Scott and I discuss some of the most common coparenting stories, why we often get stuck in patterns that don’t serve our kids, and how we can step into personal responsibility once we get clear on our stories and replace them with new beliefs that serve us better as individuals and parents. Scott provides some accessible, practical tips for parents who are currently in conflict and seeking more peace around...

Watch the podcast, above, or listen below.

Amanda Lee is a domestic abuse survivor and the author of the new book One of The Lucky Ones. 1 in 3 women have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner. This extraordinarily common form of abuse silences victims and paralyzes them with terror, a pattern Amanda is all too familiar with.

In this episode, Amanda shares her dramatic story. Like so many women, over time her fairy-tale romance became increasingly turbulent and violent. And like so many, she felt at times that her future looked bleak, but through courage she eventually found freedom.

Amanda is a sixth-grade teacher and lives with her two children in Fairfax County, Virginia, where she pursues her passion for writing and advocating for fellow victims of domestic abuse.

Amanda and I discuss non-physical forms of domestic abuse like gaslighting, belittling, and emotional abuse; why it can feel impossible to leave an abusive partner; how to support a loved one...

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My best friend Megan and I, who have five young adult children between us, reflect on our transition to an empty nest together this fall. We share the story of our unique lifelong friendship, and our shared experience entering motherhood, midlife, and now empty nesting together. We recount some of our favourite parts of living without kids again and some of the unforeseen challenges (or are they perks?) like chocolate-covered peanuts for lunch and key lime pie for dinner, playlist control (Piano Chill, anyone?), finding a “new normal” with your partner, and the lack of any requirement to follow a routine.

We discuss the toughest parts of not having your children close by and share what we did to find our own sense of purpose before our nests emptied and how that has helped to make this a surprisingly joyful time of life. We explore the idea of anticipatory grief and provide some very helpful insight into how to...

Watch the podcast, above, or listen below.

There's also a new Bite-Sized Balance Episode today, and it's a really special one. 

My sister Meg and I share our recent experiences in the “sandwich”- raising a herd of teens while caring for a dying parent.

The last few years of our Dad’s degenerative condition included a medi-vac flight home from Florida, a grueling touch-and-go 4-month hospital stay, a year of around-the-clock in-home care, and our Dad's eventual passing two years ago. 

We share our most important lessons learned around navigating the care system, supporting each other and our mom, protecting our own wellness and fulfilling our many other responsibilities as parents and business owners in the process.

While there were lots of tough moments in those few years for our family, there were also so many unexpected gifts, including lots of very funny stories, many of which we share in this episode. 

...