The Midlife Edit

Who have you become to keep a relationship working—and how much of her is actually you? This week, I’m joined by author, relationship coach, and Love By Design podcast host Joan Nwosu for a conversation about the invisible scripts we carry into love. Joan shares what eight engagements and a divorce taught her about choosing partners, trying to earn love, and saying yes to someone else while saying...

Salt-N-Pepa told us to talk about sex in the '90s, and somehow we're still embarrassed to bring it up at the doctor's office. So today we're talking about it. My guest is Lana Kerr, founder of CO2Lift® and author of the new book HERgevity™: The Missing Science of Female Longevity: Skin, Sex & Strength. We recorded on the day her book came out, and the conversation got personal fast. Lana share...

What happens when a comedian can’t make her own mother laugh? When Dani Klein Modisett’s mother became withdrawn while living with Alzheimer’s, Dani hired another comedian to connect with her. Watching them laugh together became the beginning of Laughter On Call—and a business Dani started at 54. In this episode, Dani joins me to talk about finding moments of joy when life is painful, showing up f...

Have you ever been excited about an idea, only to talk yourself out of it before you even started? You’re not creative enough. You’re too old. What if somebody thinks it’s stupid? Yeah. We get into all of that. Writer and creativity teacher Allegra Huston joins me to talk about finding your own voice after years of living with other people’s expectations. Growing up in the well-known Huston family...

Jackie Popovec used to sneak her own songs into sets without announcing them. If someone asked afterward what that song was, she’d tell them it was hers. For someone so comfortable onstage, sharing her own writing felt surprisingly vulnerable. That’s where we go in this conversation. The lead singer and songwriter of The Vindys joins me to talk about how her songs come together, the personal story...

What if the point of midlife isn't to “find yourself” again? Because honestly, which version are we even looking for? After The Ghostwriters and The Blank Page , I've been thinking a lot about what happens when you finally get the pen back. And my first instinct was exactly what you'd expect from me: figure out the plan. What's next? What am I becoming? What am I supposed to write on this blank pa...

For five episodes, we named the ghostwriters: the family, the culture, the relationship, the caregiver, and the job. But what happens when they finally put down the pen? Taking it back is supposed to feel like freedom. Sometimes it does. Other times, it feels like standing in front of a blank page with absolutely no idea what to write. In this episode, Jen explores the uncomfortable space between...

What happens when what you do becomes who you are? In the final installment of The Ghostwriters series, Jen takes on one of the sneakiest ghostwriters of all: the job . The career, role, title—or simply the thing you do every day—that slowly becomes tangled up with your identity, your worth, and your sense of being needed. Fresh off a bucket-list trip to The Gorge, Jen asks a question that sounds...

There's a version of you that only exists in the two seconds before anyone else in the house needs something — before the day remembers you're in it and hands you the list. In Episode 4 of Ghostwriters, Jen goes after a ghostwriter that doesn't sneak in at all. This one gets invited. This one gets thanked. It shows up wearing a name tag that says Mom, or Stepmom, or Daughter, or Sister, or "the st...

Episode Description There's a version of every relationship where two people pick up the same pen and write a better story together than either one could have written alone. But sometimes the pen changes hands — quietly, one dropped opinion at a time — until "we" stops meaning two people writing together and starts meaning one person's handwriting with the other person's name signed underneath it....

Episode Description It never met you. It didn't raise you. It doesn't know your name. And it still had an opinion about who you should become — your body, your ambition, exactly how much room you're allowed to take up. In Episode 2 of Ghostwriters, Jen goes after the second ghostwriter: The Culture. Jen traces three decades of a very specific kind of noise — 80s and 90s beauty standards, a rotatin...

Who wrote the story you're currently living? Not you — probably someone else. In this first episode of a brand new series, Jen introduces Ghostwriters: the five recurring authors — The Family, The Culture, The Relationship, The Caregiver, and The Job — who script women's lives without their consent. Episode 1 starts where it all begins: The Family. Jen breaks down the roles we get cast into before...

Not a One-Hit Wonder Recorded from a hotel room in San Antonio after a 2:45am wake-up and a 5am flight — thirty minutes from skipping the week entirely before deciding she couldn't. This week's episode was supposed to open the Ghostwriters series, but instead Jen gets honest about burnout, perimenopause, and the exhaustion of a summer that included Mason's 21st birthday celebrations, stepkids' pac...

Audra Phelps grew up Mormon, married in the temple at 20, and spent the next decade doing everything right — and doing everything she was told. On today's episode she and Jen skip the standard "growing up in the church" recap and go straight for the good stuff: the moment she realized she didn't even like the apple pie she'd been baking every Thanksgiving for her husband, and what came unraveling...

Before Lauren Tetenbaum was the therapist and author everyone wants to talk to about menopause, she spent fifteen years as someone else's voice — literally. As an immigration attorney, she represented abuse and asylum survivors in cases where the stakes were life and death. She fought for parental leave policy at a time when asking for it made her a problem. And somewhere in the middle of writing...

A Hold the Pen Story — Follow-up to Episode 75 A few weeks ago, Jen told you to hold the pen. This week, she's naming who's actually been holding it. The pen doesn't get handed over all at once — it's passed quietly, decision by decision, season by season, until one day you look down and realize the handwriting isn't yours. In this episode, Jen breaks down the five ghostwriters that show up again...

Terry Tateossian's life reads like three different biographies stitched together — refugee at 11, tech entrepreneur through the dot-com boom, Forbes contributor and 40 Under 40 founder running a 40-person agency, and now a health and mindset coach after her own body forced a reckoning. Jen and Terry talk about what it actually felt like fleeing communist Bulgaria as a kid, why Terry never internal...

When was the last time you made a decision nobody else influenced? Not your husband, your kids, your job, or your therapist...just you. This week, Jen shares the story behind a line that came out of nowhere on July 4th and cracked open something bigger: the difference between a permission question and a desire question, and why so many of us stopped noticing we'd handed our pen to someone else. Th...

This week starts with a mirror. Jen catches her own reflection mid-morning-routine and doesn't recognize the woman looking back - not because she looks older, but because she looks unedited . That moment cracks open two things Jen's been sitting with: why women apologize for wanting more in midlife, and what it means when you stop recognizing yourself. She names the "guilt tax" that comes with eve...

What if what everyone calls a midlife crisis is actually a return to yourself? In this episode of The Midlife Edit , Jen sits down with entrepreneur, Harvard graduate, endurance athlete, and joy-seeker Nicole Canole for a deeply honest conversation about achievement, worthiness, grief, reinvention, and learning to receive. Nicole shares how losing her father to suicide shaped her relationship with...

Don’t Be Afraid: Music, Reinvention & Finding Your Way Back to Yourself with Debora Masterson What happens when you stop letting fear make your decisions? This week on The Midlife Edit, Jen sits down with debut novelist, musician, educator, producer, and lifelong creative Debora Masterson for a conversation about music, reinvention, grief, creativity, and learning how to say yes to yourself at...

What if the reason women are reconnecting with boy bands, 90s music, and nostalgia has nothing to do with the music itself? In this episode of The Midlife Edit, Jen sits down with author Jenifer Goldin to talk about motherhood, identity, burnout, friendship, social media pressure, and the versions of ourselves we thought we lost forever. Inspired by her novel Moms Love Boy Bands , Jenifer shares h...

EPISODE DESCRIPTION Think of a song. Not your current favorite. Not the one you'd put on a playlist to impress someone. The one from when you were 13, 14, 15 years old. The one you played so many times the tape warped. The one that felt less like entertainment and more like survival. This episode is about that song. And about why you needed it. In this solo episode of Hot, Hormonal & Highly Op...

What if the key to changing your life wasn't burning it down — but making a small edit to the story you've been telling yourself about who you are? This week I'm sitting down with Ellen Baker, novelist and founder of Next Chapter Studio, and this conversation is one I know you're going to want to come back to. Ellen's own life is a masterclass in reinvention: she landed a two-book deal with Random...

Episode Description You're not crazy. You're not lazy. And you're definitely not the only woman who has sat in a parking lot after a doctor's appointment wondering why you somehow left feeling worse . Women are being dismissed in exam rooms, overwhelmed by conflicting information online, and told to "just manage stress" while their bodies are clearly changing. So today we're getting into the how —...