Late Bloomer Living Podcast

I’m 58. I broke my arm last fall, and I’m rebuilding my strength one five-pound curl at a time. So when Cat Corchado and I went live for Salty Sisters on International Ageism Awareness Day, I brought all the questions I’ve been quietly googling. Cat is a 20-year Air Force veteran, a former bodybuilder, and the founder of Small Space Pilates, and she doesn’t sugarcoat anything. We cover whether it’...

Somewhere around 40, I started catching my reflection and thinking, "Wait. Who is that?" It wasn't a curious question. It was more of a flinch. Eighteen years and a lot of unlearning later, I mostly like the woman looking back. That took some work. And yet…. Even after all these years, I’m not immune to wanting to look younger.  This episode starts off with my own confession.  Kat Miller knows tha...

What if the voice telling you you're too old isn't really yours? On this Salty Sisters replay Cat Corchado and I talk with Wendi Knox, author of The Way of the Dragonfly: Flight Instructions to Transform the Way We Age. At 50, Wendi was the only female SVP/Creative Director at one of LA's biggest ad agencies. Then she was laid off without warning. She ended up sobbing in her backyard and asked the...

Cat and I have a confession. The word "self-care" makes us both cringe a little. That phrase is pushed in our faces so often that it's starting to feel like one more thing on the to-do list. So in this replay of our Salty Sisters livestream, we call it "the S word" instead, and we talk about what taking care of yourself looks like in midlife. It's not all bubble baths and spa days. Some context: A...

Valerie Thurston never planned to write a book when she was 78, but after the death of her husband 17 years ago, a story stayed with her until she finally gave herself permission to write it.   In this episode, Valerie joins Yvonne and Cat to talk about grief, legacy, self-publishing, and her novel Food Poisoning: A Family Saga of Love, Betrayal, and the Fight for Legacy.   This is a grounded, hea...

Nobody's ready. I'm still not ready to do half the things I do.   I'm Yvonne Marchese, and this week my Salty Sister Cat Corchado and I get into where confidence actually comes from, which is not where most of us keep looking for it. Confidence is the receipt. It's not the ticket that gets you in. Cat learned an entire business late in life by pushing buttons until something worked. I sat on the i...

Six years. 281 episodes. And today I'm shaking it up like a snow globe. Not because it's broken. That's the part I want to talk about. For the next three months or so, Wednesdays on Late Bloomer Living belong to Salty Sisters — the live show I co-host with Cat Corchado. Same feed, same day you've always found me. There's just going to be a second voice in it now, and I think you're going to like h...

If you've ever caught yourself thinking "I'm too old for that" — this one's for you.   After six years of hosting a podcast about ageism, I still catch myself having ageist thoughts. About myself. And I think that's worth talking about honestly — because the truth is, none of us chose these beliefs. We absorbed them. Long before we were old enough to question them, we were being taught what aging...

At what age are women officially supposed to stop starting new things? According to Trish Appello, never. At 55, Trish gave herself permission to do the thing she'd always wanted — and what followed was background work on Orange Is the New Black, a film producing certificate from UCLA at 62, and eventually creating The EffYou 50s, a comedy series about four women who decide the rules of midlife si...

When was the last time something changed in your life and you just... moved on? Didn't name it, didn't sit with it, just kept going? That's worth a second look. Kathy Mela spent 45 years in the NICU before becoming The Grief Navigator. Her take on grief will probably surprise you. Because she's not just talking about loss through death. She's talking about the grief of an empty nest, a career that...

What if the questions you're asking right now are actually working against you? Six years into this podcast, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the power of curiosity. And then Larry Robertson showed up in my inbox — through our mutual friend Lynn Borton of the Choose to Be Curious podcast — and I realized I'd only scratched the surface. Larry is an innovation advisor, Fulbright Scholar, and...

You look capable. You hold it all together. But somewhere along the way, you started leaving yourself behind — one small retreat at a time. Vera Knight calls it the half-second exit. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. After a burnout and a cancer diagnosis cracked her open, Vera stopped managing her life from a distance and started actually living it. Now she helps high-functioning women fin...

Here's the podcast description: Have you ever had a role or title that felt so much like you that losing it felt like losing yourself? Maybe it was a career you'd built over decades. A relationship that defined you. A version of yourself you'd outgrown but didn't know how to leave behind. Whatever it was — when it disappeared, the question that remained was the hardest one of all. Who am I now? Dr...

What if the biggest thing standing between you and the life you want isn't your age — it's the story you're telling yourself about your age? Sally Duplantier started her first business at 28, retired twice, went back to school in her mid-60s, earned a master's degree in gerontology, published seven peer-reviewed research papers, and is currently finishing her doctorate at 75. And she'll be the fir...

What if the thing holding you back isn't fear — it's the story you've never let yourself tell? Karen Rae knows that feeling. After 27 years as a stay-at-home mom, an unexpected divorce, empty nest, and menopause all arrived at once. In a therapist's office, she and her counselor held up pieces of paper at the same time. They had written the same word: invisible. That moment became the spark for ev...

Have you ever been in a room full of brilliant, accomplished women — genuinely inspired, genuinely moved — and then found the comparison spiral creeping in when you were alone with your thoughts? That's Comparanoia. And I had a bad case of it recently. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak at Quest, a remarkable storytelling event for women in their third act created by Diana Place of Thi...

Beauty culture is loud. And most of us have been listening to it for so long we've forgotten it was never actually our voice. Writer, meditation teacher, and midlife coach Skylar Liberty Rose joins me for a conversation that kept surprising me. We're talking about beauty standards, the invisible pressure women carry around their appearance, and what it feels like to finally start shedding expectat...

Have you ever had one embarrassing moment — one failed public speaking experience, one bad drawing, one time you couldn't keep up — and quietly decided that was just who you are? That's what this episode is about. After a conversation with psychologist Gail Rice about re-storying our lives, something clicked for Yvonne — and it came straight from her work as a photographer. When she shoots headsho...

Scaring Yourself Alive: How to Re-Story Your Life at Any Age with Gail Rice What does it actually look like to choose expansion over disappearance — not just as an idea, but as a daily act of courage? This one is for the woman who has ever felt the pull to play it smaller, quieter, safer. The one who wonders if her best chapters are behind her. The one who's tired of waiting for permission. Spoile...

A sixth-grade teacher told Patricia Lee Lewis her story "could never have happened." She stopped writing creatively until she was in her forties. At 88, she just published her debut historical novel, Thorns of the Mesquite — 15 years in the making. In this conversation we talk about the writing workshop that cracked her open in her mid-forties, why treating your pain as fiction can set you free, w...

When you finally decide to make a change… and life has other plans. In this episode, I’m joined by Beth Schillaci, creator of Roaming Yeti and host of Pop Culture Passport, for an honest conversation about what it looks like to reinvent yourself in midlife—when things don’t go the way you imagined. Beth left behind 25+ years of client work to pursue a more creative, freedom-filled life. But just a...

What if the clarity you've been grinding for has been waiting for you in the quiet all along? Theresa Crisci has years of experience helping people reconnect with their bodies — first as a massage therapist, then as an interfaith minister — and she's learned that our most important insights rarely arrive when we're pushing harder. They arrive when we finally stop. In this conversation, Theresa sha...

So many of us arrive at midlife carrying parts of ourselves we've never quite made peace with. The shameful parts. The doubting parts. The ones we've spent years trying to fix, hide, or outrun. What if those parts aren't the problem — and accepting them is actually the key to feeling more free? That's the heart of my conversation this week with Dana Hilmer, coach, positive psychology practitioner,...

Have you ever sat down to do your work and wondered… how does any of this matter right now? That question shaped this conversation. Before creativity consultant and author Melissa Dinwiddie and I even hit record, we found ourselves talking about something that didn’t fit neatly into a typical interview. With so much happening in the world, it can feel strangely difficult to focus on the work we ca...

The world feels heavy right now.   In this conversation with award-winning filmmaker Sky Bergman, we explore how storytelling — especially across generations — can remind us that we’re not alone.   Sky shares what she learned while filming The Jollytologist®, her new documentary about humorist Allen Klein, and reflects on why humor, curiosity, and connection matter even more in difficult seasons....