The 40 Portal

When we met, it was a moment in time. Not as cool as 1968 Haight-Ashbury, not quite 1920s Paris — but it was DC in the early 2010s, and it was its own thing. Hustle culture before hustle culture had a name. We were all riding bikes to yoga and listening to Alt-J and none of us knew who we were going to become yet. Some of us became people the world would actually come to know. Jessica Carson is on...

I have a working thesis. A woman over 40 is the most powerful, creative, vivifying, wise, and possibly terrifying creature in the universe, and this episode is one of my biggest pieces of proof yet. Meet Leah Rubin-Cadrain. She works in wearable technology, designing the experiences. She is a writer, an artist, a wife, a mother, she runs a poetry Substack called Lullabies for Robots, where she kee...

We met on the internet, which I say as the highest compliment. There was an online community of independent practitioners — smart, weird, building things — and Lia Zneimer showed up in it and I immediately thought, yes, her. That is how it works sometimes. The internet at its best is a place where you find people you would never otherwise cross paths with, and you just know. She came to a virtual...

Out of every guest I've had on this podcast so far, I have known this one the longest. We met in 2010 at Flow Yoga Center in Obama-era Washington, DC — up the stairs from P Street in Logan Circle. She was behind the front desk with her grounded, earthy, ageless warmth. I was arriving every single day with a ginormous Louis Vuitton bag, straight from Kirkland & Ellis, transitioning from lawyer...

I thought the 40 Portal was going to be sexy. Fun. Empowering. Green dress, great party, collect some wisdom. Plot twist: I actually had to go through it. The last ten months have been a real process of midlife transformation for me, and I'm only just now popping up from being pummeled by the wave going, "cool, I survived." The only way through is through. One day I'll tell you the whole story. Fo...

One of the most intimate spaces a woman can occupy is the chair of her hairstylist. There's something ancient about it — being touched, being seen, the conversation going exactly where it needs to go. For women in their 40s navigating identity, relationships, and the quiet work of letting go, that kind of space is rare and genuinely necessary. That's where this episode was born. Lourdes Cristina R...

Some meetings are just cosmic. This conversation started as a potential business collaboration and turned into one of the richest episodes of The 40 Portal yet. Alicia Johnson is a 65-year-old author, “elder curvy model,” brand strategist, board director, and AI ethics advocate, and wise, wise woman. We talk about what it really means to connect as women, not perform, not impress, just be present,...

Five years ago, Cath met Emily Drake on a Zoom call during a coaching cohort for lawyers in transition. They've never hugged in person. And yet, as Emily puts it, the hug is already epic in her head. This conversation is exactly what The 40 Portal is built for: two midlife women getting below the perception, getting real about what the hustle actually cost them, and talking honestly about burnout...

What happens when the job title you worked years for stops fitting — and you realize you've become the label, not the person? Callia Hargrove is a brand strategist, marketer, educator, and passionate advocate for change, and the founder of Backstory, the inclusive brand strategy consultancy she launched in 2020. Before that, she spent years developing inclusive marketing and impact initiatives at...

What does it really mean to trust yourself after 40? In this episode of The 40 Portal, Catherine Zack sits down with Amanda Baudier for a raw, funny, and deeply honest conversation about spiritual awakening, midlife transformation, and what it actually looks like to stop living for other people's approval and start committing to the bit of being yourself. Amanda is a former nightlife industry insi...

Here's what women in their 40s are telling me: Many of us have spent most of our lives being extremely good at anticipating what other people need. The invisible labor. The mental load. The emotional labor and management of everyone in the house. The creativity and ambition quietly moved to the back burner because you're also the most flexible person in the room. And somewhere in the accumulation...

First official solo episode. Just Cath today & she pulls back the curtain on what's emerging across the first arc of The 40 Portal: the themes, the feedback, and what it actually feels like to be in the middle of building something for women in their 40s that took her completely by surprise. Creativity. Identity. Motherhood and the versions of it that don't get airtime. The myth that we're alw...

"We're not late. We're right on time." That's where this conversation ends. How we get there is a rich, tender journey through motherhood and identity, the long hallway of your 30s, the ancestral weight of women who never learned to tend to themselves, what labor actually teaches you about staying, and the particular urgency of finally claiming your own story in your 40s. Francesca Choy-Kee Damico...

There's a photo of Alison Matheny as a little girl, standing on the bow of a sailboat in a teal bikini, arms spread wide along the edge like she owns the whole ocean. Bare feet. Sun on her face. Taking up space. That's Al then, that's Al today. Alison is 44, single, never married, childless by circumstance. She splits her time between upstate NY and Florida, runs her own business, owns two homes,...

Becca and I spent last summer voice-memo-ing each other deep questions and raw answers in the weeks before we each turned 40, two days apart from each other. Somewhere in those exchanges I felt it — a collective quickening. Real women standing at the threshold, telling their stories. Worthy not because of what they’d accomplished or achieved or could put on a resume. Worthy simply by virtue of bei...

There's a photo of Dinah at age one, in Syria visiting family. Her hands are full of freshly peeled orange, juice glistening, about to drip off her chin. Direct eye contact with the camera. Fully present. Her zest for life started early — hands always full, finding the sweetness, already deeply committed to connection. She hasn't changed. Dinah Susan Alobeid is 39, turning 40 this summer — and she...

Life is full. Your plate is full. You're doing the dance. In this conversation, Clara Artschwager and I talk about what it means to navigate the fullness of midlife — the work, the kids, the relationships, the inner reckoning — without emotionally freaking out all the time. We met four years ago. Clara wasn't married yet. She didn't have kids. We clicked on business stuff. Now we're walking throug...

You start to see with your ears and listen with your belly. That's how my first guest, Kate Schmieding, describes what happens when you turn 40. Forty is your sixth sense — you begin to recognize what you already knew but can now KNOW. Really know. In this conversation, Kate and I talk about: → Friendship in your 40s (her 3-strikes rule, why reciprocity matters, how to stop forcing connections tha...

Welcome to the trailer episode of The 40 Portal podcast, a coming of aging story, told by 40 real women. Host Catherine Zack shares the origin story: how a sketchbook at her 40th birthday party turned into something bigger. She asked inspiring women to write their wisdom in her notebook instead of signing a card. What she got back was raw, honest, beautiful — the kind of truth that doesn't show up...