Not Done Yet: A Podcast for Midlife Women

Nobody really warns you that friendship changes in midlife. When our kids were younger, connection often happened automatically. We met other moms at preschool, soccer games, school events, birthday parties and carpools. We didn't necessarily have to go find our people. Life kept putting us in rooms together. And then one day, the scaffolding that held those friendships together starts disapp...

Everyone talks about midlife like this magical space is supposed to open up. The kids get older, our roles change, and suddenly we have all this time to figure out what we want next. Except nobody told my family. The day I planned to record this episode, every single person in my family needed me . At the same time, I had deadlines, was adjusting to a new work schedule, and had just launched somet...

What if the thing you want is still completely possible, but the way you get there looks nothing like what you imagined? This episode started with a conversation about my son choosing a college major and my sudden realization that my husband and I were giving him advice based on the tiny database of possibilities that we know exist. And then I realized something slightly uncomfortable. I do the ex...

We say we want a sign. From God. From the universe. From our intuition. Anything that tells us, Yes, this is the thing. Go do it. But if we’re being real, most of us don’t actually want a sign. We want a freaking billboard. We want to know what to do, how to do it, whether it will work, what people will think, and preferably how the whole thing turns out before we take the first step. In this epis...

At some point in midlife, your body starts doing things you definitely did not approve. Suddenly you need physical therapy even though you didn’t actually injure yourself. You own approximately 95 pairs of reading glasses. Heels have been replaced by sneakers. Random hairs are showing up in places nobody invited them. And apparently sneezing is now a full-body event. But underneath all the WTF mom...

When was the last time you asked yourself what you actually want? Not what your kids need, what makes the most sense for your family, what you should do next, or what everyone else thinks is a good idea. What do you want?  I’ve been sitting with that question after someone recently told me I still wasn’t choosing myself. My first reaction was, are you kidding me? I left a seven-figure business at...

Who decided I was behind? If you've ever looked around and thought... "Everyone else seems further ahead than me." This episode is for you. This week, I'm unpacking something I've been quietly carrying myself: the feeling that somehow I'm behind. Behind financially. Behind professionally. Behind compared to everyone else who seems to have life figured out. But after a...

Have you ever felt like your brain has 27 tabs open before you've even had your first cup of coffee? One minute you're thinking about your body. The next it's your kids. Then money. Then your parents. Then retirement. Then your marriage. Then the question that never quite goes away... Who am I now? This episode was inspired by something a friend texted me: "I think five people...

Rachel's parents are downsizing, and they just handed her a manila folder full of old report cards. Reading them out loud cracked open a story she didn't know she was still carrying: one teacher's comment, repeated year after year, that quietly followed her into every business she's ever built. In this episode: The report card folder that cracked open a revelation The same two...

This one gets a little woo, and I'm not sorry about it. I've been doing deep subconscious work lately, and something came up that genuinely surprised me. I thought I was choosing myself. Turns out, on a much deeper level, I wasn't. This episode is me being fully transparent about what I found, why it matters, and how it might be showing up in your life too. In this episode: The ener...

This episode almost didn't happen the way you're hearing it. I scrapped the first recording after a rough weekend and came back with something more real. It's a love letter to every midlife woman doing more than anyone gives her credit for, and a reminder that showing up in the middle of the chaos is its own kind of superpower. In this episode: The funk I couldn't explain on Th...

Rachel cracks open the belief that keeps showing up disguised as concern, judgment, or a raised eyebrow: that a midlife woman saying "it's my turn" is somehow too much. It started with a TikTok clip of Michelle Obama answering one question with one word, me, and the eye roll that followed from another woman watching. Rachel unpacks why that reaction lands so hard, why women dismiss...

Rachel sits down with Dr. Shannon Cothran, a board-certified gynecologist who left 15 years of private practice to build Menostart, a direct-to-patient practice designed entirely around perimenopause and menopause care. They get into the real reason Shannon walked away from the traditional system, the messy history behind hormone replacement therapy, and why so many women are told to just take mor...

Rachel cracks open one of midlife's most disorienting experiences: the moment the world stops noticing you. Not because you've changed, but because the culture has decided you're no longer the most interesting person in the room. In this episode, she names the thing a lot of women feel but don't know how to say, and then reframes it in a way that might change how you move throu...

Rachel sits down with master certified life coach Katie Pulsifer for a conversation about the thing most midlife women never say out loud: that the life that looks fine from the outside doesn't always feel fine on the inside. They get into the silence, the guilt, the hollow spaces, and what actually becomes possible when you stop filling them with yes. In this episode: The basement stairs mom...

Rachel shares a story she almost didn't tell, about a post she almost didn't publish, and the ripple it set off that she never saw coming. This episode is about the difference between confidence and courage, and why waiting to feel ready before you say yes might be the most expensive thing you're doing right now. Rachel unpacks what her sister's story reveals about every woman...

Rachel cracks open a reel that's been quietly giving midlife women anxiety everywhere: the idea that after 50, the milestones just stop. Birthdays, graduations, the whole checklist — done. So now what? Rachel takes that fear head-on and names what's actually happening: the milestones haven't stopped, they've changed. This episode is about why "I don't know what I want...

Rachel sits down with her friend Sheri Johnson, co-founder of Midlife Women Rising, for one of those conversations that starts with matching outfits and ends with you rethinking everything you believe about aging, exhaustion, and why you still can't say no. Sheri spent 20 years in corporate, hit 45, and decided there had to be another way. What she found was that the symptoms every midlife wo...

In this episode, Rachel takes apart the phrase that quietly ends more midlife dreams than any other: "I could never." It feels like a fact. It's actually one of the lies your brain tells you, and Rachel makes the case that you're not lacking confidence at all, you're just lacking the belief that courage is enough. She gets honest about leaving her seven-figure partnership,...

In this episode, Rachel cracks open the quietly destructive habit most midlife women don't even know they're doing: handing out permission slips for their own life. The "this might sound silly" cycle. Waiting for a coach, a partner, a parent to bless the idea before we move on it. Rachel connects self-dismissal and permission-seeking as the same thing in different outfits — and...

In this episode, Rachel pulls apart the one belief that quietly steals more midlife dreams than anything else: I'm too late. It feels like a fact. It's actually a story. And it's costing you the version of your life that's been waiting for you to show up for it. Rachel shares the moment she almost let the "too late" story stop her from stepping into the work she'...

What would change if you stopped waiting for someone else’s approval and just… did the thing? In this deeply personal episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on the story I've never fully told publicly, the one I wrote in a book chapter about giving myself permission to create. From a tiny kitchen moment at age five that quietly taught me staying small was safer than wanting things, to bui...

When was the last time you described something you did with the word "just" in front of it? I just raised my kids. I just managed the house. I just got through a really hard season. That word. That tiny, sneaky, completely devastating word. It's doing so much damage and I don't think you even notice when you're saying it anymore. Because here's the truth: you didn&apo...

Has the aliveness you used to feel about your own life gotten quieter? That forward-leaning sense that things were possible, that there were things you were genuinely excited about... it's just not as loud as it used to be. And underneath that quiet is a fear most women never say out loud: what if my spark is just gone? She's not gone. She didn't disappear. She didn't leave. Sh...

If you've been feeling like something in your life is shifting... like everything looks fine on the outside, but something feels different on the inside... this episode is for you. Rachel Perry introduces the Not Done Yet movement, shares her own messy, real midlife reinvention story, and sets the tone for what this podcast is all about: community, courage, and the second act you didn't...