Butterfly Days w Tami Jorden

What if the thing you refuse to say out loud is quietly running your life? So many of us learned young to keep the lid on. Don't make a fuss. Keep the peace. Maybe if you never say it, it won't be true. In this solo episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden gets honest about the silences midlife women carry and what they cost. Through a 1980s memory of Paul Sebastian cologne, a friend who made sandwi...

A year ago, Tami Jorden hit record without knowing whether anyone would listen. Fifty five episodes and twenty three remarkable women later, she is not doing a highlight reel. She is handing you the map. In this first anniversary solo episode of Butterfly Days, Tami names the five lodestars from year one: the fixed points of light that showed up in her solos and in every guest conversation, over a...

Memento mori. Remember that you will one day die. It sounds grim until you have sat in the room where it actually happens, and then it turns into the clearest instruction anybody ever gave you. In this one year anniversary mashup of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden pulls together what her favorite guests have taught her about living like the clock is real. Abbe Large explains the difference between a b...

Aging parents. Adult children who still need you. And you somewhere in the middle, holding all of it together. If that is your life right now, you already know that nobody handed you a manual. This is part of the one year anniversary of Butterfly Days, and it is the most practical hour this show has produced. Nicole J. Smith describes becoming a caregiver as learning four new languages at once, un...

You can't make new old friends. Tami Jorden says it as a warning, not a poem, because the friendships that will carry you through your seventies and beyond are being built or neglected right now. And most of us are far too busy to notice. In this one year anniversary episode of Butterfly Days, Tami brings back the guests who taught her the most about finding your people. Florence Ann Romano, autho...

A financial coach. A somatic healer. A therapist. A co-parenting expert. A dating coach. And a woman who teaches boundaries for a living. Different fields, different decades, same wound. In this one year anniversary episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden pulls together the moments from a full year of conversations where guest after guest said a version of the same thing: nobody taught me I was all...

Ever catch your reflection and think you are the faded version of the girl you used to be? Copy of a copy of a copy, each one a little fainter than the last. That ache is real, and almost nobody says it out loud. In this solo episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden takes apart the lie hiding inside it. Every version of you, the girl, the young woman figuring it out, the one who built the career and...

What happens after the part of your life you planned for is over? What comes next? Are we just done? For a year now, Tami Jorden has been asking women a version of that same question. Not one of them said we're over. This is the one year anniversary of Butterfly Days, and it is a mashup of the wisest things this show has learned. You will hear Simone Knego on the tiny word women use to shrink them...

You know the conversation. The one about your parents' money, their care, what happens when they can no longer manage on their own. You have started it in your head a hundred times and never once out loud. In this episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden sits down with Abbe F. Large, CLU, CLTC, Abbe has spent nearly thirty years helping families protect what matters. Then her own father was diagnose...

You cannot eliminate difficulty. You can only try to navigate it well. And in midlife the hard seasons get specific: the house went quiet, a parent is slipping, your body has started renegotiating the terms, and you have begun burying people you love. In this solo episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden refuses to tiptoe around any of it. She names what makes a hard season dangerous rather than sim...

Somewhere along the way, the part of you that used to make things went quiet. Most of us assume that is just what aging looks like. Ashley Rogers thought so too, until she was 75. In this episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden sits down with Ashley Rogers, a writer, award-winning documentary filmmaker, former network television producer, and real estate entrepreneur based in Cuenca, Ecuador. Ashle...

You knew something was wrong before you could explain it. You felt the room turn before a word was said. And when you spoke up, someone asked you to prove it, so you filed it away as being too emotional. In this solo episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden makes the case that the read, the gut, the pattern you catch before you can name it, was never the lesser kind of intelligence. It was ranked th...

When someone you love is dying, nobody hands you a map. You are guessing about the medication. You are guessing about the restlessness. You are quietly terrified you are doing this wrong. In this episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden sits down with Margaret Pasquesi, a certified music-thanatologist, vocalist, and harpist who serves as president of the Music-Thanatology Association International. ...

Nobody reaches the end of their life wishing they had pleased more people. Tami Jorden has spent hours in rooms with the dying, and what she hears instead, again and again, is this: I wish I had realized what actually mattered. In this solo episode of Butterfly Days, Tami unpacks the scorecard GenX and GenJones women were handed before they were old enough to question it.  She explains why it kept...

Your group chats are blowing up about aging parents. The house full of stuff. The car keys. The "maybe we need some help at home" conversation nobody wants to start. In this episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden sits down with Kirsten Mau, founder and creator of Who Gets the China?, the podcast, Substack, and website dedicated to helping sandwich generation women save their sanity while navigatin...

If you are the one holding it all together for someone who cannot carry themselves right now, this episode was made for you. In this solo episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden draws on her hospice and vigil work to name the two traps waiting for midlife caregivers: the old one that turns selflessness into erasure, and the new one that dresses up desertion as protecting your peace. Tami walks thro...

What would you do if your whole life blew up in 48 hours? In this episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden sits down with Lindsey Goldstein, author of the debut novel Gap Year. It tells the story of Jane, a 46 year old CPA whose daughter leaves for a year abroad, whose husband leaves her for another woman, and whose boss hands her an ultimatum, all within two days. Instead of staying stuck, Jane boo...

What are you carrying just because it was handed to you? What baggage could you ditch at this age? And do you have room left for what matters to you? In this solo quickie episode of Butterfly Days, Tami asks the questions that might be the most useful ones you ask yourself all year. She gets honest about the loads midlife women carry without ever choosing them: the family peacemaking, the office m...

Have you ever wondered if it is too late to start protecting your brain? In this episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden sits down with Christine Despres, a registered nurse of over 30 years and founder of The Wellness Navigator, to talk about why midlife is actually the most powerful window you will ever have to transform your brain health. Christine shares her own story of discovering she carries...

Wellness culture is everywhere. Optimize your body, extend your life, chase the protocol. But what if midlife is asking us a completely different question? In this solo episode of Butterfly Days, Tami gets real about the wellness and longevity industrial complex and what it quietly sells to women in midlife: the idea that aging is a problem to solve. She makes the case for ikigai, the Japanese con...

Are you tired of the hot girl hamster wheel? The endless products, the procedures you heard about from a friend, the serum you bought because an influencer said so? And still not loving what you see in the mirror? In this episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden sits down with Dr. Mary Alice Mina, a Harvard-trained, double board-certified dermatologist and host of the globally ranked podcast The Ski...

What would you do if you knew exactly how much time you had left? What would you finally say? What would you stop tolerating and what would you stop postponing? In this solo episode of Butterfly Days, Tami draws on a decade of hospice volunteer work to ask the one question that has the power to cut through all the noise. She explores what the Stoics knew about facing mortality, why the dying teach...

Have you spent decades producing, achieving, and saying yes to everything and everyone except yourself? In this episode of Butterfly Days, Tami Jorden sits down with Johanna Danaher, founder of Anchor to Aspire and former 25-year corporate leader at Pfizer, to talk about the pivot that so many midlife women are standing at right now. Johanna shares how to grieve what you are leaving behind, redisc...

You asked, and I listened. After Episode 36, AI Is Not the Enemy, the response floored me. Women came back in droves with questions, concerns, and stories of trying AI for the very first time. In this follow-up solo episode of Butterfly Days, Tami tackles the three biggest concerns head-on, including the tough one about energy and land use, and then keeps moving because your time is valuable. She...

What if the answers you've been searching for have been inside you all along? In this episode of Butterfly Days , Tami Jorden sits down with Carla Calderas, counselor, healing coach, and author of Healing Is Within You , to talk about what it really means to heal in midlife. Carla brings together therapy, coaching, and her own lived experience to help women move from stuck and surviving to free an...