Late Bloomer Living Podcast

Welcome to Season Three of this podcast!  Today’s guest is Beth Barany, an award-winning novelist and certified creativity coach for writers.  She has an online school for fiction writers and a 12-month group coaching program to help them get published.  When she's not helping writers, Beth writes magical tales of romance, mystery, and adventure that empower women and girls to be the heroes of the...

Sue Mell is a writer from Queens, NY.  Sue is 65 years old and started writing later in life.  She balances her writing time with being the primary caregiver for her mom.  Her debut novel, Provenance, was just released in July and won the Madville Publishing’s 2021 Blue Moon Novel Contest.  She earned her MFA from Warren Wilson, and was a 2020 BookEnds fellow at SUNY Stony Brook. Her collection of...

Holly Totten had been teaching for 30 years with no plans to retire.  She loved her work.  Life threw her some curveballs forcing her to have to make a spur of the moment decision to leave a job she loved to care for sick family members.  When you’re not prepared for a major life change it can be unsettling and leave you wondering who you really are.  With loads of support from family and friends...

When was the last time you surprised yourself?  It gets less frequent as we get older doesn’t it?  Leslie Kain supported her family as a single mother working in business development in AI and government Intelligence.  After her kids were grown and flown, she returned to her roots working in her first love, psychology and serving as director in nonprofits focusing on mental health. Having written...

Sometimes life comes crashing down around you and you are forced to dig deep to find resilience you didn’t know you had.  Sometimes you are the driver of that change.  My guest this week is Maria Leonard Olsen and she has been on both sides of that equation.  In her 50th year she felt lost as she was going through empty nester syndrome, getting a divorce and entering into recovery for alcoholism. ...

Lydia Kang is a practicing physician who started writing in her mid thirties but had to overcome some fear about even starting to write.  It wasn’t her area of expertise and she was afraid that she’d be laughed at for even trying.  Now, at the age of 50 she’s written 10 novels and her most recent novel is The Half-Life of Ruby Fielding.  Our conversation covers a lot of territory around the idea o...

Ronnie Loaiza found a passion for learning about health and wellness and decided to get certified as a personal trainer at 46.   She also realized that she wasn’t happy in her career anymore and decided to go into personal training full time where she found that she was coaching her clients on mindset.  People kept telling her she should be a life coach, so now at 57, she’s pivoted her coaching pr...

At 65 years old, Melissa Davey made the decision to leave her successful corporate career and become a filmmaker. Now almost 72, Melissa’s first film, Beyond Sixty, is in distribution and she has completed filming her second film which is in post production. Her films focus on the resilience and continued relevance of older women.

Gail Gould is known as the CPR and Safety Lady.  She’s been a professional CPR instructor for over 30 years and trained 10k people to save lives. Before the pandemic she was doing it all in person and then… well you know what happened… she had to figure out a way forward.  She tapped into her sense of purpose and resilience to find a solution...  just like she did when she became a first time mom...

Lisa Strom is a 30 year veteran teacher and Chair of the English Dept at Norwalk High School in Norwalk, CT.  For her 50th birthday. She set herself a goal to complete 50 acts of service for her 50th birthday, or as she calls it….Mitzvah 50.  She wanted to find a way to incorporate service learning in her classes in a way that highlighted the availability of education in the U.S. compared to acces...

This marks 100 Episodes of Late Bloomer Living... Celebrate with me... Take the 100 Day Challenge!

Karen Herbert is a certified professional wellbeing coach, the founder and CEO of Themelios Coaching, and the creator of the Life In Abundance 6-month coaching program for midlife women, where she helps women find the purpose they crave as they transition to an empty nest. She started her coaching journey as she struggled with chronic Lyme disease and battled the mental health system for her famil...

In a career that’s included work as a journalist, a psychologist, and the founder of a national art consulting company, Maggie Smith now adds novelist to her resume with the publication of her debut, Truth and Other Lies.  She never considered herself creative, but signing up for a creative retreat opened new worlds to her. 

Today is Day One of the Midlife Uprising Summit.  This is a short episode with some inspiring sound bites from our speakers accompanied by an original song composed by Dana Benningfield who started composing music in midlife. 

What does Star Wars have to do with Late Bloomer Living?  Listen to this super short (and silly) episode to find out!  Hint: It has a little something to do with embracing your “weird”.

Michelle Oliver has been building businesses, professionally training, and coaching within the small business sector for 34 years. An avid student of personal development for more than 30 years.  She offers a transparent conversation and relevant, valuable content with the intention of benefiting women in mid-life as they learn to value and bet on themselves and take the Entrepreneurial Leap.

Lori Saitz is the CEO of Zen Rabbit and host of the podcast “FINE is a 4-Letter Word.” She’s an award-winning writer, speaker, and broadcaster as well as a nationally recognized expert in using gratitude and meditation as shortcuts to success.  Mourning the loss of both her mother and the end of her business had her questioning everything.  After 22 years of marriage and life, she was wondering wh...

Julie Scott is a Self-Expansion Guide, Speaker and Author.  Her mission is to help mature women prioritize their needs and gain confidence so they can stop worrying about "being enough" and just start living life.   After years of struggling with body image, people-pleasing and over-giving, Julie learned to uncover the beliefs and patterns that were holding her back. In doing so, she turned her li...

If you could design a best friend who was equal parts motivational speaker, beauty expert, style coach and comedian, then her name would be Jen Robinson. After turning 50 this year and being constantly discouraged by the messages projected to women over 40, Jen set her intentions toward creating social media “playgrounds” that celebrate women—and Making Up for Glossed Time was born. A rally cry fo...

Jaime Legagneur aka Producer "Jemmy” discovered podcasting in 2014 and has grown her business, Flint Stone Media (along with the Florida Podcast Network), hosting/producing podcasts and managing podcast networks. She is a podcast producer, coach, speaker, and industry expert who earned the privilege of being the first Podcasting Instructor for the Connecticut School of Broadcasting and was the rec...

Is losing weight one of those things that’s constantly on your mind? Have you lost weight only to find that it comes back? Have you ever gotten to the point where you don’t even enjoy food anymore because there’s so much shame attached to it?  Jill Cruz, MS, CNS helps women over 40 that hate dieting to lose weight and feel great without being deprived. Jill has a Master of Science degree in Human...

Kim White is the Founder & Fierce Leader of the My Sexy Business Team.  She’s a serial entrepreneur who has spent her life doing things no one gave her permission to do.  She found true love at 50, and travels full time across the US with her sexy cowboy in an RV.

Elysha Lenkin is a personal fashion stylist who helps women look current, feel confident and stay true to themselves. For over 20 years, she’s worked as a stylist on photo sessions with a wide variety of well-known brands, celebrities and publications.  Over time she realized that she wanted to bring a more holistic approach to styling to help real women use the clothes in their closet as a tool t...

Caroline Nadine Helsing has an adventurous soul.  She gets that from her mother.  Caroline began her varied career path as an international model and actress.  Before she turned 30, she founded an internationally renowned pet products manufacturing company. After selling the company, she parlayed what she learned in front of the camera to her work behind the lens for leading philanthropic organiza...

Eileen Sinett, is a Leadership Communications Specialist and Speech & Presentation Coach who facilitates workshops to help professional leaders and knowledge experts  “up their presentation game”.   Eileen is 71 years old and recently sold her marital home MANY years after the actual end of her marriage.  She’s moved to the country and has plans to travel and do a little personal exploration.  She...