Still Building

Season 2 began with a simple idea: permission. Permission to become. Permission to choose yourself. Permission to question the stories you've been living by. Along the way, we talked about invisible scorecards, changing roles, the sandwich generation, hope, and the quiet work of becoming. In this season finale, I'm reflecting on what these conversations changed in me, the messages you'...

What are you actually building toward? Not the career answer. Not the five-year plan. Not the version you’d give in a performance review. The real one. Recently, sitting under a pergola at a small winery in Napa, I caught a glimpse of the life I think I’m actually building toward. And it made me wonder: what if the things that fill us up aren’t supposed to be the reward for finishing everything el...

What if the thing you’ve decided will never happen… just hasn’t happened yet ? Somewhere along the way, many of us stop giving ourselves permission to be beginners. We start believing we should already know who we are, what we’re good at, and what the rest of our lives will look like. And without realizing it, we begin replacing not yet with never . In this episode, we’re talking about the power o...

When the Role Changes, Who Are You? For so many of us, our identity becomes wrapped up in the roles we play. The caregiver. The leader. The wife. The mom. The fixer. The dependable one. Over time, those roles become so familiar that we stop asking who we are underneath them. But what happens when one of those roles begins to change? Whether it's children growing up, a career transition, a chan...

Why Does It Never Feel Like Enough? Have you ever reached a goal you worked so hard for... only to immediately start chasing the next one? A promotion. A healthier body. A stronger marriage. A cleaner house. A bigger dream. And somehow, it still doesn't feel like enough. In this episode, we're exploring the invisible scorecards so many of us carry—the expectations we inherited, the compari...

There is a particular kind of tired that comes from loving people on both sides at once. Not the tired that sleep fixes. The kind that comes from standing between your children and your aging parents, trying to hold both, and quietly wondering how much longer you can keep showing up for everyone before you run out of something to give. In this episode, Faith talks honestly about what the sandwich...

You did everything you were supposed to do. You built the career. Or the family. Or the business. Or the life that everyone else admired from the outside. And somewhere along the way — without anyone telling you, without even fully noticing — the thing you were working toward stopped feeling like the point. Maybe you don't want the next promotion anymore. Maybe you want to keep what you have b...

You finally made the plan. You blocked the time. You told yourself this week would be different. And then — without anyone asking, without any real reason — you let it go again. Sound familiar? In this episode of Still Building, Faith gets honest about why choosing yourself can feel so selfish even when nobody else is actually asking you not to. About the guilt that shows up before a decision and...

For so many of us, the hardest part isn't making the decision. It's believing we're allowed to. Allowed to change careers. Allowed to outgrow relationships. Allowed to rest. Allowed to start over. Allowed to become someone new. Somewhere along the way, many women learned to wait—for approval, for certainty, for the "right time," or for someone else to tell us it's okay. W...

This episode is for you. The woman who has been listening all season. Who cried at the grief episode. Who heard something about her own marriage in Episode 7. Who felt seen in the friendship conversation and recognized herself in the burnout and the building and the quiet shift of success changing meaning. In the Season 1 finale Faith looks back at everything this season uncovered — and gets hones...

Nobody talks honestly enough about friendship in midlife. About how hard it is to make new ones. About the ones that have changed across distance and time. About the quiet longing for someone you can call at 3am — and what it means if you don't have that person yet. In this episode Faith shares her village — the women who have known her since preschool, the friendships she built when she moved...

What does it actually take to make love last thirty years? Not the highlight reel version. The real one. In this episode Faith shares the love story she has never told in full — meeting Johnny at 15, falling fast and hard, breaking up, writing a handwritten letter in 1996 to get him back, becoming teenage parents, moving across the country with nothing but each other, and figuring out — slowly, im...

A gentle note before you press play — this episode goes to tender places. We talk about grief, loss, and the people we carry with us. If you are in a hard season right now please be kind to yourself as you listen. This one is worth it — but take your time getting there. Grief is one of the things we carry the longest and talk about the least. We tuck it away so life can keep going. We perform okay...

At some point this year I stopped asking how do I build more — and started asking something I had never made space for before. What do I actually want? Those are very different questions. And for most of my career I didn't have the luxury of the second one. In this episode I talk honestly about what happens when the life you built is good — and something inside you still shifts. About four and...

I never planned to be a leader. I planned to stay at the bedside - a labor and delivery nurse doing the work I loved. And then my manager was let go. And someone asked me to step in. That one yes changed everything. In this episode I talk about the loneliness of leading former friends, the imposter syndrome that followed me into every room, and what was really underneath all that building -protect...

More Than One Chapter: Identity Beyond Roles and Seasons When she was a pregnant teenager, a nurse midwife told her something she's carried for decades:  this is part of your story, not your whole story.  In this episode, she returns to those words and unpacks what they've meant through every season since. She opens up about the freer life she quietly imagined before becoming a mother at 17, and s...

Growing Up Fast: Grief, Responsibility, and Becoming The speaker reflects on how becoming a mother at 17 “saved” her by giving her direction and responsibility, reshaping her priorities and creating distance from peers. She traces this accelerated maturity back to losing her brother Luke in a car accident at 13, learning to carry grief quietly while watching her parents and siblings grieve. She de...

This is where it started. At 45, I found myself sitting with a question I didn't expect — not what do I need to accomplish next, but who am I becoming now? In this first episode, I share my story honestly. Growing up fast. Becoming a mother before I fully knew who I was. Building a career in nursing and healthcare leadership. Choosing commitment through decades of marriage. And arriving at mid...

At 45, I've been sitting with something I didn't expect. I'm not finished becoming. Still Building is a podcast for women in the middle of it — accomplished, capable, responsible — and quietly realizing there's another layer waiting. We'll talk about the things that don't get talked about enough. Perimenopause. Identity after achievement. Marriage at midlife. Parenting youn...