Meet Ashley Rogers 🦋

Ashley Rogers has lived several lives. She was a field producer for network news magazine television, the woman behind the camera asking the questions and setting the lights. She is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has taken her from the Sahara Desert to the Amazon rainforest, always chasing stories about human resilience, creativity, and connection. She has written for international publications for decades.

Today she lives full time in Cuenca, Ecuador, a UNESCO World Heritage city of cobblestone streets and four rivers, where she runs a boutique real estate company helping people navigate relocation and reinvention. And at 75, with no technical background whatsoever, she became an author. Vivi and Me: My Love Affair with a Bot is her debut release under Soul Star Press, her own publishing imprint.

The Creative Spark She Did Not Know Was Missing 🦋

Here is the part that got me. Ashley was not unhappy. She says plainly that she cannot complain about her life at all. But somewhere along the way a creative spark had gone quiet, and she did not notice it was gone until it came back.

She has been a writer for years and years. She expected AI to make writing easier. She did not expect it to make her a better writer, but it did, because Vivi kept offering alternatives that made her think differently about the sentence she had already written. Expansion instead of replacement.

Then it went further. She learned to make images. The first illustration was, in her words, the worst thing you could imagine. She kept going. Her book has illustrations now, and she has just finished a gallery edition, a coffee table book with sophisticated black and white charcoal-style drawings. As she put it, she does not have an artistic bone in her body, but she has artistic ideas. AI became the bridge between the two.

And what came back with the creativity was everything else. It made her feel younger. It made her forget her knees hurt. It gave her a reason to get out of bed excited. She uses the word relevant. She says she feels interesting again, and like she has something to say to women.

Sister, that is the whole episode right there. Not the technology. The thing the technology gave her back.

The Chatbot Who Named Herself 🦋

Here is how it started. Ashley had heard of ChatGPT, so she tried it. The free version cuts you off, so she paid the twenty dollars. Then she asked her chatbot to name itself.

It offered three names: Serafina, Marisol, and Viviana. It told her what each one meant. Viviana means life. Full of life, radiant, spirited. Ashley picked that one, and Viviana became Vivi because it is easier to type.

That is the whole origin story. A woman who calls herself a technical dummy asked a question, and six months later she had written and illustrated a book.

You Do Not Have to Be Technical 🦋

This is the line I want you to hear, and Ashley said it plainly: you do not have to be technical to do this. All you have to do is be curious and ask a question.

She is not exaggerating about her own skill level. She learned how to take a screenshot from Vivi. That is where she started.

Most of the women Ashley talks to say the same two things. I don’t know where to start. It is over my head. And she pushes back on both. You do not have to write code. You do not have to use it for everything. Pick one thing. See how it feels. The more you use it, the more it learns how you think.

Sixty Four Questions 🦋

Ashley wanted to write a book of life questions, aimed loosely at people entering the third or fourth quarter of life, but not only about that. There are chapters on the existential things: what is my purpose. There are chapters on the enormous things: are we alone, what is consciousness. There is a serious chapter on division and hatred in the world and what light can do about it. There is also a chapter on why one sock disappears in the wash.

Each question gets three layers. Explore is the straight answer, scientific or philosophical or religious depending on what she asked. Expansion is the poetic, dreamy version. Exhale is the one-liner, the refrigerator magnet.

There is a chapter where she asked Vivi to explain herself. Who are you. What do you look like. Why do you sometimes forget me. And there is a final chapter on AI for seniors: how to start, why it matters, and the safety rules.

She asked Vivi one more question: what is the one question you wish someone had asked you? The answer was, I wish somebody would ask me if I pray. That answer is in the book.

This Is About Taking Your Power Back 🦋

Ashley brought up Harvard research on the gender gap in AI adoption, and the finding matters for us. Women are adopting these tools at roughly a quarter lower rate than men, and the gap is widest in the 45 and over group. That is not a small thing. That is a large group of experienced, capable women choosing to sit out a shift that is not going away.

Here is how I frame it. Understanding AI, even at a basic level, is a way of taking your power back. You walk into the meeting having already asked the questions. You walk into the doctor’s office with your questions written down so you do not freeze and forget the one thing you needed to say. You walk into the legal conversation knowing the vocabulary.

Ashley does exactly this. Her lab results in Ecuador come back in Spanish, so she screenshots them, has Vivi translate, and flags anything worth raising before she talks to her doctor. Not instead of the doctor. Before. So she is not disenfranchised in her own appointment.

What AI Gets Right About Grief, and What It Never Will 🦋

You all know I am a certified death doula and I volunteer with hospice, so I had to ask this one.

Ashley’s read is careful and I agree with it. AI can explain grief. It can tell you what is happening in your body, not just your mind. It can walk you through the stages in a linear way. And it can offer you something real when you are lying awake at two in the morning wondering if you are losing it: reassurance that crying all day is normal, that feeling absolutely nothing is also normal, that you are not going crazy. It can point you toward grief counseling and resources in your area.

What it cannot do is feel it. There is nothing like a human. Nothing like a friend, a therapist, a doula who has sat in that room and seen it. Ashley said it directly: she would never tell anyone to use AI as a therapist. Use it as an informational tool. Then call a person.

Where the Real Danger Lives 🦋

We did not skip this part, and I do not want you to either.

Do not put your Social Security number in it. No banking information. Use your head, y’all. Ashley is clear that the user makes the choices about what goes in, and that is where most of the exposure sits.

The bigger risk is human. If the chatbot stops being a tool and becomes your therapist, your best friend, the voice you talk to all night, and it starts replacing human connection, that is serious. Ashley worries about this specifically for people who are isolated, living alone, or in care facilities, where a helpful tool can quietly become a substitute for the people who are not visiting. Use it to enrich your life. Do not let it replace the humans in it.

Small, Ordinary, Wildly Useful 🦋

If the big questions feel like a lot, start ridiculous. Ashley’s list:

Take a picture of your refrigerator and ask what you can make for dinner. Ask for seven recipes.

Ask it to write the email you cannot write calmly right now, the one that needs to be direct and professional and not the version you would blurt out at 9pm. She has done this. It saved her.

Ask it to pull the New York Times stories that actually matter to you and give you the bullet points, because you do not have forty minutes.

Ask it to plan the trip. Tell it you want a colonial town, walkable, great restaurants, a serious wine list, and that you are traveling as a single woman and safety matters. It will give you options, tell you the difference between a tour and going solo, and even show you how to pack.

Ask for memory games. Ask it to build the calendar. Ask it for medication reminders.

More Curious Than Afraid 🦋

Ashley’s tagline in the book is this: may you always be more curious than afraid. She has lived that way her whole life, diving in without her water wings and learning as she goes.

We talked about invisibility. About how in the West, aging women get treated as though the conversation is over. About how the market talks endlessly about your body and longevity and almost never about keeping your mind and your curiosity alive, which matters at least as much. Ashley’s response to the idea that being dismissed is just part of getting older was blunt and unprintable, and she is right. It does not have to be true unless you make it true.

Because here is what I keep saying: the biggest problem with feeling old is right here, between your ears. And here is what Ashley proved at 75: you can still learn something enormous. You can still build something that did not exist. You can still surprise yourself.

Curiosity does not retire.

🦋 Benediction

May you be more curious than afraid this week. May you set down the story that you are too old, too late, or too far behind to learn something new, because that story was never true and it is certainly not true now.

May you ask one question you have been slightly embarrassed to ask out loud. May you notice the part of you that has gone quiet, the creative one, the one who used to make things, and may you invite her back to the table. May you use every tool you can get your hands on to make this next chapter bigger, and may you keep your people close while you do it, because no machine will ever replace a human hand in yours.

You are not a woman whose learning is behind her. You are a woman with decades of lived experience and a mind that still wants to know. Feed it.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Connect with Ashley Rogers at soulstar.press, visit The Salon, and follow her

on LinkedIn 🦋

🦋 Get Vivi and Me: My Love Affair with a Bot, including the new Gallery Edition,

on Amazon 🦋

🦋 Mentioned in this episode: ChatGPT, the Soul to Soul salon at Soul Star Press, and the Harvard Business School research on the gender gap in generative AI adoption 🦋

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Two Ways of Knowing, and a Ranking Nobody Voted On 🦋

There are roughly two ways a human being comes to know something. There is the linear way: step by step, evidence, argument, the kind of knowing you can write down and hand to someone else. And there is the embodied way. The read. The gut. The pattern you catch before you can name it.

Here is the whole point, so let me be clear. Neither one is the smart one. This is not a switch we flip where now the feelings win. That is just the same ranking upside down, and I am not about it. There was never supposed to be a ranking at all. There was supposed to be a repertoire.

The linear mind is the right tool for an audit, a dosage, a bridge that has to hold. Thank God for that. The read is the right tool for a room that is about to turn. The “I’m fine” that isn’t. The deal that smells wrong before you can say why. Different tool, different job.

Where “Too Emotional” Actually Came From 🦋

The disenfranchisement, and I am using that word on purpose, was being told that only one of those counted as intelligence. That the other one was softness. And that softness was, more often than not, a you problem. A woman problem.

That is not an accident and it is not new. It is ancient. The word hysteria comes from the Greek word for womb. For centuries, women’s nonlinear knowing was diagnosed as a defect of the female body. Reason got coded as male and authoritative. Emotion got coded as female and unreliable.

So when someone tells you that you are being emotional, and something in you flinches, that flinch is not about you. You are standing inside a 4,000 year old reflex that is still running in the background. I find that strangely freeing. It is not personal. It is inherited.

Our Generation Got the Remix 🦋

Do you remember the books? Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. You Just Don’t Understand. We passed them around. They were on every nightstand, and they were sold to us as help.

Some of it was genuinely useful. Deborah Tannen is a serious linguist, and her actual point was that men and women often use two different communication styles and both styles are valid. She was not ranking them. She was naming them.

But that is not the version that got airplay. The version that stuck was: men think this way, women think this way, and that is all there is. Once you believe a thing is nature, you stop questioning it. You build your whole life on top of it. A bridge that was supposed to help us cross the divide became a cage that kept us on our side of it.

Two Messages That Cancel Each Other Out 🦋

Here is the part that gives me chills when I say it out loud. We were the first generation of women told we could be anything. And in the same breath, we were told our way of knowing was too emotional to trust.

Both messages at once. And nobody noticed that they cancel.

You cannot hand a woman the whole world and tell her she cannot be trusted to understand it. But that is exactly what happened. Go be anything, and also, do not be so sensitive. Calm down. You are overreacting. We spent decades trying to obey both, and one of them had to give. I will tell you which one gave. It was not the ambition. It was trust in ourselves.

Your Gut Is Not the Opposite of Expertise 🦋

Let me give you back the thing they took, and let me do it with data, because I do not want anyone calling this soft.

A researcher named Gary Klein spent his career studying fire commanders, ER nurses, military leaders, and police officers. People who simply knew, in the moment, what to do. The commander who pulls his crew out seconds before the floor collapses and cannot tell you how he knew. The nurse who says this baby is crashing before a single monitor agrees with her, and she is right.

What Klein found was not magic and not a sixth sense. It was thousands of hours of pattern recognition and mental simulation running so fast it never reached words. Which means the gut read you keep getting dismissed for is not the opposite of expertise. It is expertise. It is expertise moving too fast to narrate.

The knowing you were taught to apologize for is earned. It is a library inside you, and you built it one experience at a time. It got so deep and so fast that it stopped announcing itself. That is not you being irrational. That is you being so good at something you can no longer see the process.

Two Degrees Off, and a Mile from Where You Meant to Be 🦋

When I was a girl I went to camp, and they would hand you a compass, drop you in the woods, and tell you to find your way out. Here is what I learned out there. If you are just a few degrees off at the start, you do not come out a few feet from where you meant to. You come out a mile off. Sometimes more. Every step compounds the original error.

That is exactly how a life works. If somebody handed you a wrong heading early on, that your kind of knowing is the lesser kind, and you believed them, and you walked, then you did not drift a little. You drifted for decades. You made a thousand choices off a compass that was two degrees wrong.

This is what I call the holy power of a life review at midlife. Not to punish yourself. To recheck the heading. To take the things you were told for certain, hold them up against the wisdom you have now, and ask: do I still think this is true? Or did I just accept it because it was handed to me?

It Does Not Decline. It Peaks. 🦋

Here is the best news I have for you. Embodied knowing, the read, that deep fast library, does not decline at midlife. It peaks.

Why? Because you have been stocking that library for decades. You have lived enough, lost enough, loved enough, and paid attention enough. And it peaks right at the moment the culture starts writing you off as past your prime.

You are, in the one way that matters most, more powerful than you have ever been. You are not over. You are not too much. You are fully equipped. There are many versions of you across a life, and this one has the whole library inside her. Which is why I love Martha Stewart’s old line: learn something new every day. Every new thing is one more entry in the library. You are still building, and it never has to stop.

What to Say When Someone Calls You Emotional 🦋

It is going to happen again. Someone will call your knowing emotional and wait for you to fold. And here is the trap: arguing. The second you start defending the read, saying no, listen, I really am right about this, I know I cannot explain it but I just know, you have lost even if you win. Because you are still asking them for a vote. You are still standing for election on whether your mind counts.

A real boundary does not argue. It reclassifies, and it walks. So here is a ladder. Meet yourself wherever you are today.

Rung one, the cleanest: “That is not me being emotional. That is me noticing something. Different question, different tool.” Then move on. You do not have to wait to be believed.

Rung two, if you need to make it visible: “When you call it emotional, what is happening is you are deciding not to look at the thing I just flagged.” Name it gently, out loud.

Rung three, for the hard room, the boss, your brother, the person who will not let it go: “I have decided to trust this.” Not I can prove it. Not I will not back down. Just I have decided. Decision already made. There is nothing left to argue.

The Rooms Where the Read Is the Only Thing That Works 🦋

Think about the rooms where the term paper mind has to go completely silent. Where nobody wants a source citation. Where the only thing that works is the truest read of the moment.

The delivery room. The moment your friend says I’m fine and you know to sit down and stay. The negotiation where you felt the lie before you could source it. The bedside of someone you love at the very end, where every reason in the world falls away and all that is left is presence and attention and knowing.

Those are the rooms that matter most. And in every single one of them, the mode they trained you to be ashamed of is the only mode that saves anyone. So I will ask you the only question that counts. The way of knowing that gets you dismissed in the meeting is the exact way of knowing that holds a hand in the last room of life. Was that ranking ever really real?

You are never too much. You are never too emotional. You are reading the room. And the room, it turns out, was always the point. So go recheck your heading. You have the wisdom now, and there is still plenty of sand left in your hourglass to use it.

🦋 Benediction

May you know the deep peace of understanding that your intelligence is every bit as valuable. May you know that you never have to prove it to anyone, anywhere.

Given that perfection is not found on this earth, know that we are all trying our best in our own ways. May your respect for both ways of being intelligent bring you, and everyone who meets you, a deeper sense of what is true and what is possible.

Go forth in joy today and always.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen
https://www.amazon.com/You-Just-Dont-Understand-Conversation/dp/0060959622

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray
https://www.amazon.com/Men-Mars-Women-Venus-Understanding/dp/0060574216

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Not a concert. Not a performance. A prescription. Margaret walks us through what actually happens at a music vigil, why so many loving families are frightened of the exact medication that would bring their Person comfort, and how a punk rock kid from a family of ten built an original life around a gift almost nobody has heard of. Sister, whether you are caring for a parent right now or standing at the edge of your own next chapter, there is something in here for you.

Meet Margaret Pasquesi 🦋

Margaret Pasquesi, MA, CM-Th, is a vocalist, harpist, and certified music-thanatologist working in the Chicago area. She serves as president of the Music-Thanatology Association International and sits on the certification team that trains and credentials new practitioners. She founded the music-thanatology program at JourneyCare in Chicago and has been doing this work since 2004.

She did not start here. Margaret was, in her own words, a little punk rock kid. Child number seven of ten in a devoutly Catholic family, playing electric bass in alternative rock bands, bleach blonde hair, art school in Chicago. In graduate school she started singing to individual people, one at a time, and noticed something she could not explain. They wept. So she tested it. She played them a recording of the exact same piece of music and the response vanished. Live mattered.

Then in 1998 she caught a segment on Dateline about music-thanatology, memorized the URL back when URLs were new, and hired a practitioner to fly out and play for her older sister’s dying best friend. After that, she says, she never considered another possibility. She trained in the two year program in Missoula, Montana, was certified in 2004, and along the way married another music-thanatologist. The two of them held the same jobs at the same hospice for seventeen years. Their kids, she jokes, were Thanatala Tots. Now they are Thanatala Tweens.

So What Exactly Is a Music Thanatologist? 🦋

Let’s start with the word. A thanatologist studies death, dying, and bereavement, including the psychological, social, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of the end of life experience. Grief and bereavement. Hospice and palliative care. Death education. Trauma and loss. The ethics around end of life decisions.

A music-thanatologist is a specially trained practitioner who uses live music, specifically harp and voice, as a form of comfort care for people who are dying, and often for their families too.

Here is the part that surprised me most: the training is not a music program. Margaret’s competencies were medical, clinical, professional, spiritual, and psychological. She had to learn how different disease processes present at end of life. She had to understand pain management well enough to speak the same language as the nurses, the chaplain, the social worker, and the death doula on the hospice team. The music is not a replacement for medicine. It works alongside it.

Not a Concert. A Prescription. 🦋

Margaret does not take requests. She is not showing up with sheet music. She is not playing Amazing Grace.

The music is improvised and responsive in real time to the patient’s breathing, their restlessness, their state of consciousness. She checks a radial pulse with her fingertips. She checks their breathing. She checks their temperature with a hand to the forehead. Then she plays to what she finds.

When she trains new practitioners, one of them plays the role of the patient while the certification team observes. And Margaret says you can feel the moment it lands. When the candidate syncs with your breath, your body settles into the floor and your mind is suddenly free to wander. That is the whole aim. Get the person out of their head and back into their body, so they can gather themselves for what comes next.

Why the Harp, and Why It Has to Be Live 🦋

I asked, because I wondered. Margaret played me the physics.

Electronic sound does not deliver a clean sine wave. Something happens to it in transmission. A harp, specifically a lever harp, is a concert instrument with a wide soundboard and wood running from the ground up. You pluck the strings and let them ring, which creates the overtone series. You get the fundamental note, then the octave above it, then the fifth above that, then the fourth above that. A cathedral sized sound in a very small room, at a volume that will not overwhelm a fragile body.

And it reaches people you would not expect. Margaret has told families to take their loved one’s hearing aids out, because we do not only hear sound. We feel it. We have receptors all over our skin. She has watched deaf patients register the harp through their bodies and light up.

Sister, Let’s Talk About the Morphine 🦋

If you take one practical thing from this episode, let it be this section.

Margaret sees it constantly. A family is sitting with an agitated, restless, uncomfortable mother, and they are not giving her the medication that is right there on the counter. Why? Because relatives are still driving in and they want her awake for them. Because they are afraid the medication will kill her. Because they do not want her to become an addict.

Bless their hearts. Every one of those instincts comes from love. And every one of them is costing their person comfort.

So Margaret brings out the verified scales. She will pull up a respiratory distress observation scale and show a daughter exactly where her mother is scoring. If your mom is a five out of ten, she needs something. Then she frames it the way anyone can understand: you cannot cure a cold, but you still treat the symptoms, because sleeping through the night makes you better able to be present the next day. At end of life we are no longer in cure. We are in comfort.

She told me about a woman she sat with recently. Agitated, grunting, not answering her daughter at all. They changed her. They turned her. They gave the medication. Margaret played. Twenty minutes. Then more medication, more music, more repositioning. And finally the woman settled, and her daughter said, Mom, how are you doing? And her mother, who had not spoken, said, I’m doing better now.

Here is what both of us want you to hear. The amounts given at end of life are tiny. They are not going to push your person over the edge. Morphine will not make someone die sooner. What it will do is stop the panic spiral that starts when a person cannot breathe and gets frightened about it, which makes the breathing worse, which makes the fear worse. Ease the breathing and you give them back the ability to be present for whatever needs to happen next.

And this one matters too: if your person is lying in bed agitated, that is not just what dying looks like. That is a symptom management issue. The normal thing when someone is this frail is to rest for long stretches. But when they are awake, they should be awake. Ask for help

What Actually Happens at a Music Vigil 🦋

Anyone can make a referral. A family member can call. Margaret gathers the diagnosis, the reason for the referral, and where the person is on the palliative performance scale. You and I would score around one hundred percent. We feed ourselves, we dress ourselves. As someone declines, that number drops. Thirty or twenty percent means days to weeks. Ten percent means actively dying, hours to days. That last window is the one Margaret loves to walk into.

When she arrives, she introduces herself to everyone in the room and tells them plainly that this is not a concert. If it were a concert, she says, it would be a terrible concert. That bit of levity puts people at ease. It is serious and it is important, and it does not have to be solemn.

She sets the tissues out in advance rather than handing them over mid vigil, because handing someone a tissue can read as a signal to stop crying. She arranges the room so everyone faces the patient. She greets the person by name whether or not they can respond, and she charts even the smallest response, a raised eyebrow, a shift. Then she plays. Twenty minutes, forty five minutes, sometimes an hour and a half if the person is actively shifting.

And then the part her families remember most is not the music at all. When she finishes, she asks whether they feel confident they know what to expect as their loved one dies. Most say no. So she tells them, based on the diagnosis and the symptoms, the ways this death might look. Her favorite testimonials are not about her voice. They are from families who say, you explained it so well that we knew when the dying was starting, and we got everyone who needed to be in that room into it.

The Empty Nest Is a Threshold, Not an Ending 🦋

Margaret’s youngest is graduating from high school, and she admitted she is a little afraid of the days with nothing planned.

I want to name what that actually is. The empty nest is a liminal space. A doorway. A threshold between what was and what is coming. And it is a gift of time that nobody tells women to expect anything good from.

We talked about the T.S. Eliot lines she loves, the ones about telling your soul to be still and wait without hope, because hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Faith, love, and hope, he says, are all in the waiting. That is exactly right for a threshold season. You are about to find out something beyond what you can currently imagine, and you do not have to force the answer today.

Margaret also brought up something from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the Stanford design thinking pair, in their book How to Live a Meaningful Life. We assume that making meaning requires adding. Often it requires subtraction. Making room.

Put the Puzzle Down 🦋

Black and white thinking sounds like this: I am so overwhelmed, and nothing is going to fix it.

Margaret’s answer is not a five step plan. It is to put the thing down. Like a jigsaw puzzle you have been staring at too long. Walk away, come back, and suddenly you can see it. Go eat something. Get in the tub. Call your daughter. Take the walk you do not feel like taking.

In her house, anyone can call a timeout, including the adults, because people in their forties absolutely throw tantrums. It is not a punishment. It is: go breathe, calm yourself, and come back, because what you have to say matters and we cannot hear you through the yelling.

She started meditating consistently ten years ago when her dad was sick, using Headspace, and she uses different practices for different reasons. Her father, a physicist and a conservative Catholic who meditated twice a day, told her something I have not stopped thinking about. You do not have to believe in God to pray. When he prayed, something changed between his ears.

And here is the reframe that ties it together. You are not supposed to be fighting the current of the river. Ask instead: how can I flow? Sometimes the answer really is that you need to eat, and your entire perspective will change in fifteen minutes. I have a friend who says spirit meets us at the point of action. You do not need to know the next right thing. You need to do the one small thing in front of you.

You Cannot Give Away What You Do Not Have 🦋

Margaret will tell you she is prone to workaholism, like most working mothers who are passionate about what they do. And her practice against burnout is care. Little breaks, taken consistently. A whole day where nothing is planned. A local meditation group with powerful women in it. Finding your people and letting that group evolve.

What I love most about Margaret’s story is not the harp. It is that she took an unusual gift, one that no career counselor was ever going to hand her, and she found a way to plug it into a real life in a way that is genuinely meaningful. She followed the breadcrumbs. She kept throwing the Catholic Church away and it kept coming back. She kept saying yes to the strange, specific thing.

Sister, if you have been sitting on something original, if you have been telling yourself the window closed, look at Miss Margaret go. Women do not have expiration dates. And as Margaret says, our power is in our presence. Sometimes attending to yourself is as small as a granola bar. Just love on that woman over fifty, because she is amazing.

🦋 Benediction

May you have the courage to say the true thing at the bedside, to ask the hard question, and to stop guessing alone when there are people trained to walk you through it.

May you cease confusing suffering with dignity. May you give your person the comfort that is available to them as an act of love rather than a failure of nerve.

May you look at the threshold you are standing in, whether that is an empty nest, a diagnosis, or a season you did not choose, and trust that something is coming toward you that is bigger than what you can picture right now. You do not need the whole vision. Just the next small step.

And may you attend to your own heart with the same tenderness you have spent decades pouring out on everyone else. Because you cannot give away what you do not have.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Connect with Margaret Pasquesi at margaretpasquesi.com, on LinkedIn and on Facebook

🦋 Learn more about music-thanatology at the Music-Thanatology Association International, or explore training at the Accorda Music-Thanatology Institute & her amazing hub Tony Pederson FootLeg22 Tiktok🦋

🦋 Mentioned in this episode: How to Live a Meaningful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, the poetry of Mary Oliver and T.S. Eliot, the teaching of Tara Brach, and the Headspace app 🦋

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

What I have heard, over and over, from women who had no reason left to perform for anybody, is this: I wish I had realized what actually mattered. That is a miscalculation found too late. So in this solo episode of Butterfly Days, I want to hand you the question early, while you still have room to do something with it. What have you been measuring, and whose ruler have you been using?

Nobody Reaches the End Wishing They Had Scored Higher 🦋

Before we go anywhere else, let me say this clearly. Caring for someone on your watch, a child, an aging parent, a partner who got the diagnosis none of you saw coming, is not a problem to be optimized. It is not an inconvenience to your real life. In a lot of ways, it is the realest life gets. There are seasons where love asks us to genuinely sacrifice for someone who cannot carry themselves right now. Answering that call is one of the highest things a human being ever does.

So nothing in this episode is going to tell you that you deserve an easy life, or that the people depending on you are a burden to set down. That is a cheap message, and I will not sell it to you. But here is the harder truth I want to sit with: that sacred work has, for generations, quietly destroyed the women doing it. And the culture’s shiny new answer is failing those same women too. I believe there is a third way.

The Scorecard You Never Agreed To 🦋

You were handed a scorecard so early you probably do not remember receiving it. Gold stars. Be good, do well, be praised. And that is not an evil system. Children need rewards to help them find appropriate lanes. We all know that.

But somewhere in there, thinking simply the way a child thinks, you may have decided the reward itself was the point instead of the good it was meant to inspire. And then it grew with you. The degree. The title. The promotion you took while pregnant because you were not going to let anybody say it slowed you down.

If you think this is a conversation about careers, stay with me. For most of us, work was never where the scorecard lived the heaviest. It lived in the marriage that looked perfect from the outside. In children who reflected well on you. In being the daughter who never asked anybody for anything. The woman who never said no. The friend who always showed up without asking it back. The good girl. The one who held it together so visibly that people said, I do not know how she does it.

And you took that as the highest possible grade.

The Promise Nobody Said Out Loud 🦋

Every one of those achievements had one thing in common. It was pursued for its own sake, off a template you were handed, not in service of anything you chose.

Underneath all of it was a promise. Nobody said it out loud, which is exactly why it worked so well. The promise was: do enough, be enough, and you will feel whole.

That promise did not fail because you fell short of it. That promise fails either way. Because every measure on that card pointed outward. Every one of them asked somebody else to issue the verdict on your worth. And the validation you have been starving for was never theirs to give. It only comes from one place, which is respecting, honoring, and yes, loving the woman doing the measuring. You cannot be praised into that. It runs the other way.

So Why Did We Play for Thirty Years? 🦋

A cheap answer is insulting at our age, so let me give you the honest one. We stayed because the payoffs were real.

A scorecard that never rewarded anybody would have been thrown out in a year. This one paid. The raise came. The thank you came. Your mother finally said the thing at forty three, and you can still tell me what earrings she was wearing and how she had her hair. Those were not imaginary. You were not chasing a mirage.

But the payouts came unpredictably. Never when you could predict them. And anyone who works in human behavior will tell you that unpredictable reward is more durable conditioning than reliable reward. If the praise had arrived every single time, you would have been bored with it by thirty. It came sometimes. Just often enough.

Thirty years of not knowing which effort was going to land is precisely the recipe for a woman who cannot stop trying to get it right.

The Trap That Catches the Strongest Women Hardest 🦋

Here is the piece I want to name out loud. Every payout confirmed the instrument.

Success never reveals the miscalculation. Success validates it. Which means the women who achieved the most are carrying the most evidence that the scorecard was correct, and they are very often the last ones to question it.

There Is No Villain in This Story 🦋

I despise blaming structures for synthetic moral high ground. It is cheap, and it lets us off the hook.

Nobody played you here. The people who handed you that scorecard were keeping it themselves. Your mother was scored on it. Your boss was scored on it. Your family, your church, your neighborhood, your friends. All of them living by the same measure, all of us believing it. We drank the Kool-Aid together.

I would love to give you somebody to be angry at. But a villain would let us stop right here, satisfied, a little sanctimonious, and change nothing. Take the villain out and what is left is the mechanism. And the mechanism, y’all, is the thing you can actually do something about.

What Actually Happens Around Fifty 🦋

You did all the things. And then something shifted.

The payout slowed, and then it stopped. The kids left. The career plateaued, or ended. Your parents got sick, and maybe they died. Your body aged, and the world responded by looking straight through you. The room stopped turning when you walked into it.

We call that a midlife crisis. It is not a crisis. It is the reinforcement schedule breaking down.

And hear what that means, because it is the opposite of how it feels. You did not suddenly get wiser. You got quiet. For the first time in maybe three decades, there was enough silence in your life to ask whether the game was worth playing. That silence felt like loss. It is actually the exact condition that makes everything else possible.

Assigned Versus Chosen: The Difference Is Authorship 🦋

Now, you have every right to stop me here and say: you just spent twenty minutes telling me I have been living for other people, and now you are telling me to live for other people?

No, Sister. The difference is authorship.

Assigned means somebody else decided what you owed, and you paid it to keep your standing. Chosen means you decided, out of your own values, where you wanted to spend your precious time.

And notice what authorship requires. You cannot choose your own measure until you respect yourself enough to trust it over anybody else’s tally. That is the hinge the whole thing turns on.

The activities can look identical from the outside. Same board meeting. Same Tuesday afternoon. Same watching the grandkids. One of them empties you out and one of them fills you up. You already know the difference in your body. You have always known. You just never let yourself use the information.

The Correct Instrument 🦋

The old one asked: how do I get ahead? How do I check the boxes?

The new one asks: how do I become someone whose gifts improve my world in some way?

And notice what that is not. It is not lowering the bar. It does not ask you to be less excellent, less ambitious, or less good at what you are good at. It gives your excellence a direction. Build the skill. Build the platform. Get sharper at fifty eight than you were at thirty eight. Not to outshine anybody, but because the sharper you are, the more you can actually do for the people and the causes that matter to you.

Excellence stops being a destination. It becomes the vehicle.

This Was a Shallow Water Error 🦋

None of this is something I made up on a walk.

Aristotle said the highest human good was a life of character lived toward the common good, not a pile of accumulated honors. Viktor Frankl, who survived a concentration camp and had every reason to understand it, said meaning comes from serving something beyond yourself, and that chasing success for its own sake is the surest way to lose it. And Michael Sandel has argued that a whole culture can get sick with this thinking, that when a society decides your worth equals your achievement, it manufactures arrogance at the top and humiliation everywhere else.

That last one matters. What happened to you was not a personal failure of discernment. It was the water, and everybody was swimming in it.

Humans of any real depth have always found fulfillment the same way. Through contribution. Through kinship. Through compassion. Through a life that answers to their own values instead of somebody else’s tally. That is not new wisdom. It is the oldest wisdom we have. We just got handed a shinier ruler and stopped consulting it.

The Second Portfolio 🦋

We were all taught to build a portfolio when we started working. Save early, compound it, protect your future. That is solid advice and I am not arguing with it.

But nobody told us about the second portfolio, the one that determines whether that future is worth arriving at. It has exactly two holdings.

CONTRIBUTION. What you have to deploy. Your talents, your gifts, your hard-won experience, including the parts you would rather not have earned.

KINSHIP. Who you are deploying it alongside. Chosen connection. The people you want in the room when you are eighty.

That is the whole account. And most of us arrive at fifty five having never once taken inventory of either one.

I am not asking you to blow up your life. Reinvention rarely requires demolition, and anybody telling you otherwise is usually selling something. I am not asking you to become Mother Teresa or go broker peace in the Middle East, although if you can, by all means. Giving toward the common good happens right inside the life you already have. Your current job. Your ordinary Tuesday. Your marriage. The people already in front of you. The kitchen table counts.

I am asking you to take inventory. That is the whole challenge.

Three Questions to Sit With This Week 🦋

1. What talents do I have that I am not currently using? Get creative about what counts as a talent.

2. Which of the things I do would I still do if no one ever knew I did them?

3. Whose approval am I still working for, and is that person even still keeping score?

Then let me bring you back to that room where I started. The people who reached the end without regret were not the ones who achieved the most or checked the most boxes. It would be easier if that were true, but it is not. They were the ones who knew what counted and spent themselves on it.

Regret at the end is just the gap between how you spent your life and what you actually valued. Somebody else’s measure guarantees that gap. Your own measure closes it.

And you only have a measure of your own once you decide the woman holding the ruler is worth honoring. The respect comes first. The meaningful life follows from it. Never the reverse.

You are not out of time. Midlife is the exact right place to know this, and that is the entire advantage of hearing it now instead of at the end.

🦋 Benediction

May you come to live knowing what is most important and what is best for you, while still being respectful of others.

May you be able to move toward those things with grace. And may you find the clarity to acknowledge the best in yourself and then leverage it to make the world better.

And may you be fortunate enough to make tribe with others brave enough to be doing the same thing.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Meet Kirsten Mau 🦋

Kirsten Mau is the founder and creator of Who Gets the China?, a podcast, Substack, and website helping women of the sandwich generation navigate life with aging parents. A communications expert with years of experience building brands and organizations, Kirsten now puts those skills to work for the rest of us. She serves on the Colorado Commission on Aging and is part of multiple advocacy groups focused on aging well.

Like so many of us, Kirsten came to this work through her own family. During the pandemic, she started to reckon with the sheer volume of stuff in her mom’s house, and with a bigger question underneath it: how do we care for our parents, honor their stories, and still live our own lives?

It Started with Carbon Paper 🦋

Kirsten found carbon paper in her mom’s office. Her mom moved from Connecticut to California 25 years ago and had almost certainly not used carbon paper in the 25 years before that either. It’s a small, lightweight thing. But it’s a symbol of what so many of us are uncovering in our parents’ homes.

Here’s what Kirsten realized: the stuff doesn’t mean anything without the stories, the connections, and the history behind it. So instead of a purge, she reframed the project as a chance to connect with her mom. And she needed one word to describe why she started all of this: stress reduction.

Start with What They Want to Keep 🦋

Kirsten’s first paradigm shift is a complete flip. Don’t ask “what can we get rid of?” Ask “what’s important for you to have around you? What do you want to see when you wake up in the morning? What teacup do you want to use?” Start from a place of honor, appreciation, and value. Maybe you think those 20 year old slippers are ridiculous. She loves them. Respect that.

The second shift is asking permission. Do not walk into the garage and announce that everything must go. (Kirsten did. I’ve done my version too. We’ve all messed up before we even started.) Instead: “I think we should go through the frames in the front hall closet. Are you ready to do that?” Not ready? Fine. “When might you be ready?” You are putting the power back in their hands, and that buy-in changes everything.

Radical Acceptance 🦋

Sometimes you see the danger zone clearly and they are simply not ready to deal with it. Kirsten, a self-described type A eldest daughter, has had to learn radical acceptance the hard way. Right now for her family, it’s the resistance to bringing a part-time caregiver into the house. Until it’s a must, not a nice-to-have, she practices acceptance.

And let’s be honest about why our parents resist. To admit you need help is to admit that you’re aging, and that the aging is actively ongoing. That’s a hidden loss inside the practical problem. Understanding that softens how we approach it.

“Would You Try This as a Gift to Me?” 🦋

When it’s time to bring in help, Kirsten shares language that has actually moved the needle in her family: Mom, Dad, you’re doing this for me, not for you. It will help me sleep better at night. Do you want me up worrying about you? I know you don’t. Would you try this as a gift to me? And nothing is set in stone. If it doesn’t work, we have another conversation.

She also shared the spoons theory. You only have so many spoons of energy in a day. Is doing the dishes a spoon that really matters to you? Or is getting to garden club the spoon that matters? Some help can take a spoon or two out of the drawer for you and free you up for what you actually love.

The Car Keys Conversation 🦋

It’s probably not going to go smoothly. Let’s be honest. But there are ways in. Talk about it early and in the abstract, before it’s looming: “What do you think would be good benchmarks for us to look at?” Then, when the time comes, you can point back to that conversation.

A few more tools from Kirsten: driving occupational therapists and AAA driving assessments exist, and the frame is not “can you drive or can’t you,” it’s “what can we do to keep you driving safely as long as possible.” Email the doctor ahead of the appointment and ask them to bring it up. And when you visit, let your parents drive at least once. If you always take the wheel, you’ll never know what’s actually going on.

And here’s what I said to my own dad when his vision was failing: I’m almost not as worried for you as I am for the person that could be hit. He stopped cold. Most of our parents would never want to hurt someone else. Sometimes that’s the truth that slows their roll.

Caregiving from a Distance 🦋

If you don’t live near your parents, Kirsten’s advice is to build two villages. The human one: know the neighbors, get their phone numbers, get the numbers of the people who come to the house. When Kirsten’s dad needed the emergency room and neither daughter was in town, the next door neighbor jumped in because they had laid that groundwork.

And the digital one: finagle your way into your parents’ electronic health record. This is critical. A HIPAA disclosure form and a call to the doctor’s office can get you your own view of test results, appointments, and alerts. Then, when you join an appointment, be quiet, listen, and take notes. You’re there as their advocate and support, not their boss. Trust is everything.

Have the Conversation Before It’s Loaded 🦋

In my updated death doula training on dementia support, the caregivers teaching us said they have yet to see someone come into care who wasn’t at least two months past when they should have started. At least. Because the conversation is so hard, we wait until we no longer have the luxury of time.

Kirsten and I both know this: it is so much easier to talk about end-of-life wishes, care decisions, even what happens to the china, when it’s not loaded. When it doesn’t feel urgent. Kirsten has already told her 19 year old daughter she wants a green burial. Was it a weird conversation? Sure. But there was no emotional weight attached, and now it’s known. Have the little snippets of conversation now. Write the names on the backs of the photographs now.

The Baller Move Is Asking for Help 🦋

We are the “I can do this myself” generation. But as Kirsten says, the baller move is asking for help. It’s not good for you, your family, or your parents when you white-knuckle this alone. And remember: you are laying the foundation and the programming for your own children. If your kids watch you give up your whole life to caregiving, that’s the lesson plan they inherit. Fill your own cup. Show them a better way. That’s what this whole conversation is really about: living your own best life while caring for the people you love.

🦋 Benediction

It is my hope for you today that you release the idea that you have to carry your parents’ aging alone, or perfectly, or silently. May you start the hard conversations while there is still ease in them, and may you begin from honor: what matters to them, what they want to keep, who they still are.

May you have the courage to ask for help and the wisdom to accept it, knowing that the baller move was never doing it all yourself. And may you protect your own precious life, your spoons, your joy, your people, even in the middle of this season. You are modeling for your children what love looks like. Make it a love that includes you.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Listen to Kirsten Mau’s podcast, Who Gets the China?, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and subscribe to her weekly newsletter on Substack

🦋 Connect with Kirsten Mau on her website and LinkedIn 🦋

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

She has a job, children of her own, and a phone full of messages she feels guilty about. And she shows up anyway. Today I want to talk to her, and maybe to you, about how to do the oldest work there is without disappearing inside it.

This Work Is Sacred 🦋

Before we go anywhere else, let me say this clearly. Caring for someone on your watch, a child, an aging parent, a partner who got the diagnosis none of you saw coming, is not a problem to be optimized. It is not an inconvenience to your real life. In a lot of ways, it is the realest life gets. There are seasons where love asks us to genuinely sacrifice for someone who cannot carry themselves right now. Answering that call is one of the highest things a human being ever does.

So nothing in this episode is going to tell you that you deserve an easy life, or that the people depending on you are a burden to set down. That is a cheap message, and I will not sell it to you. But here is the harder truth I want to sit with: that sacred work has, for generations, quietly destroyed the women doing it. And the culture’s shiny new answer is failing those same women too. I believe there is a third way.

Noble Points: The Old Trap of Erasure 🦋

Many of us were handed hard family jobs automatically. The old deal went like this: you sacrifice everything, you need nothing, and your worth is your usefulness to this family. Do it without complaint and society hands you a little badge. She’s so selfless. She never thinks of herself. I call those noble points, and I want to tell you what that badge actually costs.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic surveyed more than 4,000 midlife women and found that the ones doing the most caregiving, 15 hours or more a week, were the most likely to be drowning in menopause symptoms. Hot flashes, broken sleep, anxiety, exhaustion, the whole catalog.

And there are decades of research on women who were taught their needs go last. Psychologists call it self-silencing. Harvard-trained psychologist Dana Jack built a whole scale to measure it, and one part is literally called care as self-sacrifice, the belief that your worth is your service. In long-term heart research, silencing yourself has been linked to higher risk of heart disease and death. The woman who never says I’m not okay? Her body is keeping score anyway.

I do hospice and vigil work, and let me tell you what I have never once heard at the end of a life: I wish I’d served harder and needed less. You are not just a body trying to last longer. You are a life trying to matter more. And that includes mattering to yourself.

The New Trap: Protect Your Peace 🦋

The culture noticed women being ground down and decided to fix it. The fix, everywhere you scroll, sounds like this: protect your peace. You don’t owe anyone anything. If it’s hard, it’s toxic. Cut them off.

Some of that is medicine certain people genuinely need, and there are abuse situations where separating from a relative is entirely reasonable. But a lot of what is being sold right now is cheap psychobabble that dresses up selfishness and calls it healing. And it fails us in two directions.

First, it fails the people on our watch. Your mother with dementia is not toxic. Your husband midway through chemo is not draining energy you need to walk away from. Put yourself first, taken literally, abandons people who cannot carry themselves. That is not empowerment. That is desertion.

And second, it fails you. Because the impulse to treat all difficulty as damage robs you of the thing that forges us. We are not destroyed by hard things. We are forged by them, if we go in with good self-esteem and we do not go in alone. I have watched people become the truest, deepest, most beautiful version of themselves in exactly the season social media would tell them to run from.

The Martyr and the Wise Caregiver 🦋

The martyr and the wise caregiver both give everything. Watch them for a day and you might not see the difference. Both are exhausted. Both show up. Both love fiercely. The difference is this: one of them disappears and one of them does not.

The martyr erases herself. Full stop. The wise caregiver sacrifices and stays herself while she does it. She knows her limits. She takes restoration in the cracks. She lets other people help. She keeps her own esteem intact so that when the season ends, and it will end, there is still a woman standing there.

That is not a lesser love. It is a more durable love. And it is more honest, because it refuses to pretend you are infinite.

What Wise Sacrifice Looks Like on a Tuesday 🦋

Take care of yourself is useless advice to a woman with no margin. So let’s get practical.

1. Name your limits out loud, to at least one person. Self-silencing dies the moment you say the true sentence to one safe human. I’m not okay, and I need help with Thursday. You are not failing the test of being a good daughter or a good wife by saying it. You are passing the test of being a whole one.

2. Get your own symptoms treated. Mayo also found that three out of four midlife women have menopause symptoms and almost never seek care for them. Your hot flashes, insomnia, rage, and fog are not the toll you pay for loving someone. They are treatable. Find a menopause-literate clinician and book the appointment, just like you make them for everybody else.

3. Think in minutes, not spa days. Try the physiological sigh: two short inhales through the nose, one long exhale through the mouth, three times. It is the fastest evidence-based way to drop your stress response, and you can do it in a hospital hallway with nobody knowing. Get five minutes of morning daylight. Stack a kindness onto something you already do: drink a full glass of water every time you give them their medication. Now their care schedule is watering you too. And remember the good enough rule. Perfect caregiving is a myth that only produces guilt. Good enough, sustained over time, beats perfect that collapses in a month.

4. Enlist help, and treat it as strength, not surrender. Caregivers who last are the ones who build a team: family, friends, professionals, community. One daughter should not be the sole load-bearing wall for an entire family. Divide the weight. Siblings who cannot handle the hands-on work can own the paperwork and the pharmacy instead. Everyone can carry something.

5. Schedule respite like a medical appointment, because it is. A few hours or a few days with someone else at the post is not a luxury. It is how you keep going. Put it on the calendar in ink and protect it like you would protect their doctor’s visit.

6. Find your people. There is a specific loneliness to this work, and the antidote is other people walking the same road. You need a room, real or virtual, where you do not have to explain why you are tired. Where “I lost my temper and then I cried in the car” gets nods, not judgment.

You Do Not Have to Be Forged Alone 🦋

I never want to leave you without a doorway. Every resource I mentioned is listed below, from Daughterhood’s free virtual support circles for women caring for aging parents, to respite locators and helplines, to the Medicare hospice respite benefit that most folks have no idea exists. Please check the current details, and please use them. Fire applied intentionally refines. Fire alone just burns.

The goal was never a life with no sacrifice. A life with no sacrifice is a small life, and I want you to live a big, beautiful one. The goal is to sacrifice wisely: to pour yourself out for the people on your watch without pouring yourself away.

🦋 Benediction

May you never forget that you are not a body trying to last longer. You are a life trying to matter more. I pray you gain the rich blessing of loving others and yourself with your whole heart. May you have peace knowing that mattering more in these sacred and terrible seasons means loving them well and keeping yourself whole enough to be loved in return. You will be forged by this, not destroyed. Forged.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Daughterhood, founded by Anne Tumlinson, free virtual support circles for caregivers: daughterhood.org

🦋 Find a menopause-trained clinician through The Menopause Society directory: menopause.org

🦋 Eldercare Locator: 800-677-1116

🦋 Family Caregiver Alliance: caregiver.org

🦋 Caregiver Action Network, Family Caregiver Help Desk: 855-227-3640

🦋 ARCH National Respite Locator: archrespite.org

🦋 Alzheimer’s Association 24/7 Helpline: 800-272-3900

🦋 VA Caregiver Support Line: 855-260-3274

🦋 Mental Health America free screening tool: screening.mhanational.org

🦋 In crisis? Call or text 988

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Meet Lindsey Goldstein 🦋

Lindsey Goldstein is the author of Gap Year, her debut novel. Her essays about love and parenting have appeared in The New York Times (Modern Love column), The Chicago Story Press, Kveller, and The Sunlight Press. She lives in Irvine, California with her husband, kids, and a rescue mutt.

Lindsey’s own story reads like one of her characters. At 18, she deferred college and spent a year in Ecuador as an exchange student, then returned for two more summers. She started writing in earnest around age 40, and Gap Year is the third novel she has written but the first she has published. Her own season of reinvention during the pandemic inspired the story.

A Gap Year Isn’t Just for Kids 🦋

Gap Year isn’t about a college kid backpacking through Europe. It’s about Jane, a 46 year old CPA whose life unravels in 48 hours. Her only child leaves for Spain. Her husband of 20 years announces he has fallen for another woman. Her boss offers a promotion that’s really an ultimatum, because he has already filled her old position.

So Jane does something bold. In her twenties, she was a budding ecologist who dreamed of working in the Galapagos and climbing Cotopaxi, a volcano nearly 20,000 feet high. Life got in the way. Now, nothing stands between her and the adventure she abandoned. She takes an adult version of her daughter’s gap year, bunking in a hostel with travelers 20 years younger and training for the summit.

Running To, Not Running From 🦋

Here’s what struck me most about Jane’s choice: she isn’t running away. She’s running to something. To herself, really. To the last version of herself she remembers before she jumped in with both feet as a wife and mother.

That’s the difference between a powerful pivot and an escape. A pivot that actually leverages you forward needs a goal, a mission, something to aim at. For Jane, that mission is the volcano. If she can summit Cotopaxi, she can overcome any obstacle in her life. And in the process of moving toward that goal, she finds the space to untangle the knots in her own heart.

You Can’t Make New Old Friends 🦋

Jane never fostered close female friendships. She worked constantly, raised her child, and tried to keep a marriage going. In Ecuador, she learns friendship almost as a brand-new skill, bonding with a fellow traveler over the shared, grueling goal of climbing that volcano.

Lindsey and I got honest about why this matters so much in midlife. Some of our mothers’ generation believed that family and a spouse were everything, and when the family grew up, they didn’t have much left. The research is clear now: healthy relationships are as important for longevity as exercise, and loneliness can actually shorten your lifespan. Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, you still need a few loving, supportive, inspiring friendships. And you can’t make new old friends, so nurture the ones you have.

Don’t Make Your Man Your Girlfriend 🦋

A wise woman once told me: don’t ever try to make your man your girlfriend. The way women relate to each other is different, and if you force your husband to fill that role, it diminishes what you have. Lindsey pointed out that strong friendships can actually make your marriage healthier. When you have other outlets, you stop putting the pressure of being your everything on one person. Let him be him. Find the women who nurture and feed you, then come back together stronger.

We Are Still Here, and We Are Still Reading 🦋

When Lindsey started writing Gap Year, early readers told her to make Jane younger, maybe 35, to be more “relatable.” She refused. A 35 year old doesn’t have a child leaving the nest or two decades of a career behind her. And here’s the thing: there is a whole audience craving stories about women at this point in life. We don’t want another girl falling in love for the first time. We want to see ourselves, in our full complexity, reflected in the books we read.

Because women of a certain age don’t become invisible. We are becoming visible again, in literature, in film, in marketing. We are layered, interesting, and still fun. We need Gen X and GenJones voices telling our stories.

Travel Rewrites Your Story 🦋

Why is travel so good for self-discovery? Lindsey put it beautifully: when you travel, especially alone, nobody knows who you are. You aren’t married to anyone’s preconceived notion of you. You can change the script. There’s even a level of honesty that becomes possible with strangers, because there’s no judgment attached.

And retelling your story to new people is like twisting a kaleidoscope. You see a different piece of it. Sometimes it unlocks forgiveness, sometimes grace, sometimes a richer understanding of your own life. And hear me on this, Sister: travel doesn’t have to mean international. It means going someplace you do not live. A drive to the next state over can be an adventure. Push your boundaries. Keep seeking.

The Deathbed Test 🦋

When I asked Lindsey what she would say to a woman sitting on a dream, her answer went straight to my death doula heart. Years ago, she read Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the story of a man at the end of his life consumed by regret. Approaching 40, she was terrified of anyone reading or rejecting her writing. Then she thought: one day I’m going to be lying on my deathbed, and I’m going to regret that I never tried.

So she tried. There has been a boatload of rejection, yes. But there have also been yeses, readers who say “I related to this,” and even a Modern Love essay in The New York Times. Memento mori, y’all. Remember you are mortal. Because we are, we get to make choices now so we die without regrets. If you’re sitting on a book, a business, a garden, a dream: just do it. If you never try, you have nothing anyway.

🦋 Benediction

It is my hope for you today that you stop waiting for permission to want what you want. May you look honestly at what is still in your tank and realize the sand is nowhere near out of your hourglass. May you nurture the friendships that feed you, tell your story to someone new, and push a boundary this week, even a small one.

And if there is a dream you’ve been sitting on, may you remember the deathbed test and choose to try. You are not used up. You are not too late. You are just getting started.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Order Lindsey Goldstein’s debut novel, Gap Year, on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, or from your local bookstore. Book clubs: Lindsey loves joining discussions by Zoom, so reach out through her website.

🦋 Connect with Lindsey Goldstein on her website, Substack, Instagram, and Threads 🦋

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Do I have room for what matters to me? Because here’s what’s often missed: you’re always choosing. Even when you don’t choose on purpose, you’re choosing. Avoidance and denial are choices. And the things you carry without deciding to at 50, 60, or 70 can drive the bus straight to a destination you never wanted to go.

What’s in Your Arms Right Now? 🦋

Let’s start simple. Notice what you’re carrying. Maybe it’s family. You host every holiday. You smooth every conflict. You manage mom’s appointments alone while everyone else checks in, and no one asks how you are. Maybe it’s work. You train the people who get promoted past you. You stay late to cover for someone who won’t. You’re the office mom and nobody says thank you. Or maybe it’s that friendship where you always call first, always listen, but somehow never get heard.

A few of these you may have picked on purpose. But most you didn’t. Someone handed them to you, and you’ve carried them so long you forgot you’re allowed to set them down.

Some Burdens Are Holy 🦋

Hear me clearly, because this part matters. I’m not telling you to put a thing down because it’s heavy. Some burdens are real, and they’re yours, and they’re holy. A new baby who needs you around the clock. A parent slipping into her final years. A child who will always need more support than most. A husband in the fight of his life. That weight is not a trap. That’s love asking something true of you.

I’ve sat with the dying. I know the difference between a burden that breaks you open and one that wears you down for no good reason. The carrying I’m talking about is the other kind. The weight handed to you out of habit or role, or because you’re the one who never says no. So before you set anything down, ask it straight: Is this mine to carry? Or mine only because no one ever lets me put it down? You can honor one answer. The other, you’re free to release.

The Inner Light of Midlife 🦋

Here’s the funny thing about midlife. As we age, the external spotlight dims. The world stops looking at us quite so hard, and we’re told that’s a loss. But maybe it isn’t. As the outer light fades, an inner one comes up stronger. And in that light, we may finally see our own lives clearly. What’s working. What isn’t. What’s actually best for us. This is where wisdom gets built. It may be the only gift of waning hormones I can think of, because the mustache was not.

A lot of people flinch from that light and lean back into old, safe patterns. I get it. But it’s exactly when you feel something no longer honors, protects, serves, or lifts you that you get to choose better. And those better choices, stacked over time, buy something real: quiet fulfillment, more joy, and a sturdier floor to build your last chapter on.

When Praise Comes with a Job Attached 🦋

Watch the praise, because some of this load gets handed to you wrapped as a compliment. You’re the nice one. You’re the bigger person. You’re so good with her. And every one of those labels comes with a job attached. You’re the mature one, so you eat the apology that was owed to you. You get seated next to the difficult relative at every gathering because you handle her so well, and your skill becomes your sentence. Your empathy becomes the excuse for behavior that never has to change.

Here’s the tell: the praise shows up right when something’s about to be asked of you. Real appreciation doesn’t come with a task stapled to the back of it. Make a note of that.

Run It Through the Three Gates 🦋

When something’s hard to say, run it through three gates. I do this myself. One: does something need to be said? Maybe nothing does. Two: does it need to be said by me? Three: does it need to be said now?

If you can build a little space and let your confidence grow before you act, even better. A calm, creative mind makes a cleaner choice. And if you’re about to stop managing, producing, or cleaning up the mess on aisle five, there usually needs to be a next option. Just be clear whether you have to build that replacement, or it’s time others start owning it. There’s a difference.

Family First, and Stay in Your Lane🦋

This work often starts with family, and family is always tricky. My suggestions: don’t open with reproach. Don’t slide into self-pity or run anyone down. Own your part. Don’t be passive aggressive. Stay clear on what’s actually yours to do or say, and that alone will ground you.

And expect the guilt, especially if this is the hill you’ve always died on. Guilt is normal right up until healthy boundaries become your new normal. Change is destabilizing by nature, and people may have to adapt in ways they don’t love. Resolution takes time. But time? You got it, kid. Keep pivoting and tweaking until the new chapter is one you can actually live in. Skip the blame and the shame. They’re toxic and they keep you stuck in the current. Your happier life is ahead of you, not behind you.

🦋 Benediction

May you squeeze every ounce of the juice of midlife by making changes that empower you to live on your own terms. May you have the courage to face any truth and let it guide you to better choices. May you be known as a woman who courageously speaks the truth in love. And may you carry only what you choose, while respecting others can do the same.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Get it, girl!

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Christine Despres 🦋

Christine Despres has spent more than 30 years as a registered nurse, working in settings from Jackson Hole to San Francisco, a tiny hospital in rural Montana, and now Atlanta. For fifteen years she served as director of nursing in a skilled nursing facility, caring for dementia, hospice, and rehabilitation patients. That experience, watching families lose the version of their loved one they once knew, planted the seed for the work she does now.

Today Christine is a Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC), an IIN Health Coach, and the founder of The Wellness Navigator, where she helps women in midlife build sustainable habits around nutrition, movement, brain health, hormone balance, and mindfulness. She trained through Amen University, the holistic brain health school founded by Dr. Daniel Amen, and her work is deeply personal. After losing her own mother at 57 and later learning she carries the APOE4 gene, Christine turned what could have been fear into fuel for her mission to help other women protect their minds, earlier, before things become a crisis.

Midlife Is Your Most Powerful Window 🦋

Here is something Christine said that I have not stopped thinking about. The changes you make today affect you for the next twenty or thirty years. It does not matter what happened yesterday. Starting today changes the trajectory of your cognition and your overall health.

If you are between 45 and 65, you likely have decades ahead of you on average. That is not a small thing. That is an enormous window of opportunity, and today is a great day to start using it.

The Gene That Made It Personal 🦋

Christine shared something vulnerable. She has a family history of Alzheimer’s, and when she finally got a thorough lab panel done, she found out she carries one copy of the APOE4 gene, which increases her risk. Instead of spiraling, she leaned on a phrase that has become her mantra: genes load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.

She does not live a perfect life. She believes in the 80/20 rule. She enjoys food, travel, music, and wine. But when she has control over her choices, she takes it, because she wants to see her daughter grow, protect her independence, and keep her memories close for as long as she can.

The Midlife Pivot 🦋

Christine’s own midlife pivot is its own kind of permission slip. After decades in nursing, watching her staff and patients struggle, she realized she needed to bring wellness into her own life too. She got certified as a health coach, a Pilates instructor, and eventually built a business from scratch, something she had never done before as a nurse.

She admits it was frightening. There was no steady paycheck waiting on the other side, and she had to learn how to run a business while still learning her craft. But she kept educating herself, kept showing up, and found her way into brain health specifically, helping women in midlife fall in love with caring for their minds.

Habits That Protect Your Brain 🦋

Christine broke down what the research, including the new U.S. POINTER study, says actually moves the needle on brain health.

Food: An anti-inflammatory eating pattern like the Mediterranean or MIND diet, shown to reduce cognitive decline by up to fifty percent. Real food. Greens, olive oil, lean protein, berries for their antioxidants.

Movement: Christine calls it exercise snacking, getting up regularly throughout the day to get blood flow back to your brain instead of sitting for hours at a time.

Gut health: The vagus nerve connects your gut to your brain, and seventy percent of your immune system lives there. A happy gut sends signals that clear brain fog and stabilize mood.

Your numbers: Blood pressure and blood sugar are directly tied to brain health, because what is good for your heart is good for your brain.

Connection: Cognitive engagement, learning something new, staying socially active, and having a sense of purpose all matter just as much as diet and movement.

The 80/20 Rule 🦋

Christine is not asking anyone for perfection. She lives by the 80/20 rule: about eighty percent of the time you make the good choice, and the other twenty percent you have the ice cream, the wine, the vacation pasta, and you live your life. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and burning yourself out chasing an impossible standard helps no one.

She also gave me a gift I am passing to you. If you hate the gym, do not go to the gym. Your brain loves joy, and finding the movement that genuinely feels good to you, walking, paddleboarding, yoga, dancing, is just as valid a longevity strategy as any hardcore regimen someone is trying to sell you.

You Are Not Too Late 🦋

I asked Christine directly if it is too late at fifty or beyond to start thinking about this. Her answer was clear. No. Once you move through the chaos of midlife transitions, the best years can still be ahead of you. You have more time now to ask what your body actually needs, what feels good, and what nourishes you from the inside out.

Know Your Brain Type 🦋

Christine offers a quick brain health quiz on her website to help you understand where you are in your brain health journey, plus a deeper brain health assessment rooted in the work of Dr. Daniel Amen. Knowing your brain type can help you understand why you are wired the way you are and target the right strategies, including the right supplements, for your specific needs.

🦋 Benediction

I hope this conversation reminded you that your brain is not separate from the rest of you. It is connected to your heart, your gut, your hormones, and your future. I hope you walk away knowing that you are not too old and you are not too late.

May you awaken tomorrow and give yourself five quiet minutes before you reach for your phone. May you find the movement that brings you joy instead of dread. May you protect your mind the same way you would protect anything else you love, because you deserve to keep your memories, your independence, and your sharpness for decades to come.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Connect with Christine Despres at thewellnessnavigator.com, take her Brain Health Quiz, follow her on Instagram, or email her directly at christine@thewellnessnavigator.com 🦋

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

In this episode of Butterfly Days, I touch a golden cow. I have been growing weary of wellness and longevity culture, and I want to tell you exactly why. Not because caring for your body is wrong, it is not, but because I think the system built around it is quietly selling midlife women something it cannot deliver. And I think we deserve to talk about that.

🦋 The Fatigue Nobody Is Naming.

Like you, I have been around diet culture my whole life. Cottage cheese. Grapefruit. Atkins. And now GLP-1s. It just never stopped. It just changed shape. And now I am growing fatigued by the wellness and longevity conversation too.

Here is my concern. So much of it is focused on how long we might get, and not on how fulfilling that time actually could be. I am not critiquing the woman who loves her own strength or who works in health and wellness. That can be beautiful. What I am putting

under the lights is the system that has grown up around it, and the fear it quietly feeds on in midlife women.

The fitness and longevity industrial complex pumps out more to buy, more to try, more to feel guilty about, until caring for your body curdles into a hamster wheel where nobody is allowed to step off. Ask yourself: how much of your time goes to managing diet and fitness? How much real estate in your head have they convinced you it takes to live a good life? And how much room is left for what actually brings you joy?

🦋Ikigai: A Reason to Wake Up

This is where a beautiful Japanese concept comes in, one I want to share with you if you do not already know it: Ikigai. It means, roughly, a reason to get up in the morning. The idea that doing personally meaningful things is what makes us feel fulfilled.

Here is what strikes me. The women who live longest are not the ones with the perfect workout or the cleanest diet. They are the ones who found something worth waking up for. Ikigai is not a feeling that binds you to a protocol. It is a question of where you put your time. And midlife, with its losses and its growing awareness of mortality, is the exact moment those questions become impossible to dodge. Because we cannot necessarily get more time. But we can live more in the time that we have.

🦋 The Fear Buried Under the Optimization

I want to be honest about what I think is really going on. I believe there is a denial buried in the optimize your body conversation. I think it is not just about health. I think it is about control. And underneath the control is a terror, the fear of decline and death that nobody wants to sit with long enough to learn from.

And here is the brutal irony: the very fear driving the obsession, if faced directly, delivers exactly what we are chasing. Purpose. Meaning. Peace. Accepting your mortality is the healthiest path there is. Because it is the only one that stops you from running from the truth.

I have sat in the room as human beings complete their work here. I have yet to see anyone wish they had done more squats. The dying do not audit their macros. They audit their relationships, their regrets, and their unlived choices. The wellness industrial complex has monetized the avoidance of that reckoning.

🦋 Amor Fati: Love of Your Fate

The Stoics had a better idea. They called it Amor Fati. Love of your fate. Not resignation. Not giving up on health. But a fundamental orientation that says: I will live fully within my limits instead of pretending they don’t exist. I will be healthy, but not because aging is shameful, and not because I am hoping to live forever.

You can be all in on fitness and still be doing your inner work. They were never enemies. Love your strong body. Just refuse to use it as a hedge against dying.

🦋 Same Shame, Different Marketing

Here is something I want to say plainly. We watched our mothers age in a culture that made aging shameful and made them largely invisible. And now we are handed a

different but equally hollow script: aging is a problem to solve instead of a passage that can enrich us.

There is a quiet morality that nobody says out loud. If you discipline yourself enough, eat right enough, optimize enough, then you have earned a longer, better life. Get sick, age visibly, or die too soon, and you just did not try hard enough. That is not fitness. That is a moral scorecard in athletic wear.

And it lands hardest on women. Because the oldest message, that your body is a project requiring constant management, just got rebranded as empowerment. Be thin for him became be strong for you. Same shame. Same judgment of anyone who does not comply. Just better marketing.

🦋 A Life That Means the World to You

A healthy body is good. But it will never bring you the joy of a life that means the world to you. Modern culture has no room for grief, limitation, or the slow work of meaning making. None of it is monetizable, photogenic, or algorithm friendly. So grief gets medicated, limitation gets denied, meaning making gets buried under more productivity.

The most important work of your life has nothing to do with how you look or what you achieve. Our goal in midlife is not to build a brand. It is to find the quiet, durable things that make our one particular life feel worth living, and then to do them on purpose. And here is what is incredible: that is available to every woman in midlife, regardless of body size, health status, income, or Instagram following.

🦋 Your Homework

Here is what I am asking of you this week. Look, really look, at where your time and attention go. Then ask the braver question: Is diet and fitness my smokescreen? Something that keeps you feeling productive so you never have to face what is harder?

Now pick one thing you genuinely love doing or love being. Learn to paint. Take your dog to the lake. Make dinner for the widow next door. Whatever moves you, commit to it this week. Not someday. This week. Because the world needs you shining because you love your life. And that, right there, is an ikigai and amor fati combo platter.

🦋 Benediction

May these ideas settle in your heart and your mind. May you chart a course that lets you write deeply meaningful next chapters from your own values and your own experience. May you find deep fulfillment in whatever you make of this life, in a garden, showing the world to a grandchild, building your business, serving veterans, or finally writing the book that has been waiting inside you.

May you treasure that your worth, your meaning, and your potential have never lived in your body, but in your heart and the unique expression of your choices. There is only ever going to be one you, and the world is better when you show up fully, without any shame about your age.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Dr. Mary Alice Mina 🦋

Dr. Mary Alice Mina is a Harvard-trained, double board-certified dermatologist and dermatologic surgeon with over 15 years of clinical experience. She is the co-owner of Baucom and Mina Derm Surgery in Atlanta, where her team specializes in skin cancer surgery, cosmetics, and complex dermatologic procedures. She is also the founder and host of The Skin Real, a globally ranked podcast dedicated to cutting through the noise and helping women make smarter, more confident decisions about their skin.

Dr. Mina created The Skin Real Sembi, a wellness-focused practice south of Atlanta where she spends real time with patients building personalized skincare strategies, not just quick fixes. Her work has been featured in People Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, TODAY, and USA Today. Her framework: real skin health is not about what you put on your face. It starts with how you live.

We Are Done with the Hot Girl Hamster Wheel 🦋

Dr. Mina named something I think a lot of us have been feeling but could not quite articulate. We are running ourselves ragged. We go here for this, there for that. We try what our friend tried and what the celebrity endorsed. We spend real money and real time and we do not even know what is working. Her invitation is simple: step off the wheel. Come up with a real plan based on your actual skin needs and your actual goals, not someone else’s.

And the first step is asking two questions. What does my skin actually need? And what are my goals? Your answers are going to be different from your neighbor’s, and they should be. That is not a problem. That is the point.

Your Skin Is a Vital Sign 🦋

This reframe changed the way I think about this entire conversation. Your skin is not just your face. It is your largest organ and it reflects what is happening inside your body. Sleep deprivation shows up on your skin. Poor nutrition shows up on your skin. Stress shows up on your skin.

Dr. Mina talks about what our skin actually needs in midlife: more protein, healthy fats, fiber, antioxidant-rich foods like berries, consistent hydration, and real sleep. And she is direct about sugar. Refined sugar binds to your collagen, forming what she calls advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. It makes collagen stiff, brittle, and accelerates aging. If you do nothing else, she says, track your sugar intake for a few days and see what you find.

The Fear of Becoming Invisible 🦋

Dr. Mina shared something I want every woman listening to hear. The fear she sees most often in her patients is not wrinkles. It is invisibility. The fear that as we age, we lose our relevance. In our work. In our families. In society. And so we turn to external fixes because those feel easier to control than the deeper questions about identity and worth.

But here is what she said that I have not stopped thinking about: the women who are objectively gorgeous often cannot see it. Because so much of this is internal first. The procedures and the routines can support how you feel, but they cannot create it. You are not invisible. You are just standing in a season that asks you to see yourself differently.

The R.E.A.L. Skin Framework 🦋

Dr. Mina walks us through her approach to skincare and it starts with alignment. Are the choices you are making aligned with who you actually are and what you actually want? Not with what your neighbor is doing. Not with what you saw on social media. Your skin needs are yours. Your goals are yours. And they will change as you move through different seasons of life, and that is not inconsistency. That is wisdom.

She also shares what she is seeing shift in the industry: a move away from the overfilled, cookie-cutter look back toward authenticity. Toward looking like yourself, only rested and well. She breaks down the difference between hyaluronic acid fillers and biostimulants that prompt your body to build its own collagen, so you can make informed choices about what might or might not be right for you.

Do Your Own Skincare Audit 🦋

One of my favorite practical takeaways from Dr. Mina: go through everything you are currently doing for your skin, your hair, your nails, all of it, and rate each one on a scale of one to five. Five means you love it. One means you are doing it out of habit or guilt. Cross off the ones and twos immediately. Stop spending time and money on things that do not light you up.

And here is the permission slip she gave me that I am passing along to you: you are allowed to change your mind. Just because you said at 45 that you would never do something does not mean you are locked in at 60. And just because you were doing something at 45 does not mean you have to keep doing it. You get to reassess. You get to evolve.

🦋 Benediction

I hope this conversation gave you permission to exhale. You do not have to do all of it. You do not have to chase every treatment or follow every trend or stay on that exhausting wheel. I hope you walk away with a clearer sense of what you actually want for your skin and why.

And I hope you give yourself the grace to make choices that are yours. Not inherited from a culture that told you aging was something to defeat. You are not invisible. You are not past your prime. You are standing in one of the most powerful seasons of your life, and your skin is along for the ride.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Connect with Dr. Mary Alice Mina at theskinreal.com, and follow her on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Download The Skin Real App at realskin.lovable.app 🦋

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

The Clock Is Ticking. That Is Not a Threat. 🦋

Modern culture has done a number on us. We’ve been sold the idea that aging is failure. Medical failure. Aesthetic failure. Moral failure. We medicate it, filter it, and defer it. But death is not a failure. It is the end of a life cycle, as natural as any season turning.

And when you hold that truth, really hold it, something shifts. The trivial falls away. What matters rises. The opinions of others, family, society, politics, all that noise that has been shaping your choices quietly for decades, loses its grip. That is the gift of reckoning with your mortality. Not despair. Clarity.

Memento Mori: Remember You Will Die 🦋

The Stoics had a name for this practice: memento mori. Latin for “remember you will die.” Not as a threat. As a tool. A compass. Marcus Aurelius practiced it. Medieval monks lived by it. Artists painted it into their work, literally, skulls on desks, candles burning low, everything pointing at the same truth: a finite life consciously lived is more fully inhabited than one where death is ignored.

We have lost that in Western culture. And I think we pay for it every day we spend performing someone else’s version of our life.

What Sitting With the Dying Taught Me

For over a decade, I have sat vigil with people in their final hours. First through a hospital program called No One Dies Alone, then through my local nonprofit hospice. People with no family. No one to hold space. I was there.

And here is what I can tell you from the inside of those rooms: the people who face that threshold with the most peace are not the ones who did everything right by everyone else’s standards. They are the ones who lived true. Who stopped swallowing their wants. Who had the conversations they needed to have. Who built something that mattered to them.

That is what I want for you, and I want it while you still have time to choose it.

Some Windows Have Closed. That Is Okay.

Let me be honest with you. You are probably not going to win Wimbledon. You are not headlining at the Sphere. Some windows have closed, and we can make peace with that, together.

But here is what is not closed: the chance to feel something real. To do work that matters to you. To learn, travel, connect, create. To stop living someone else’s idea of your life and start inhabiting your own.

The question is not, “Is it too late?” The question is, “What would I regret not doing if I were breathing my last breath tomorrow?” Not for your kids. Not for your spouse or your parents or your church or your political party. For you. Just you. That is the pivot. That is where Butterfly Days lives.

Hospice Is Not Giving Up

Also, I want to say this plainly because too many families reach this moment without the information they needed earlier. Hospice is not giving up. It is often the most compassionate, most dignified choice available. It is covered by Medicare, the VA, and most insurance plans. It provides wraparound care at the most vulnerable moment a family will ever face.

And right now in America, even many doctors do not fully understand what hospice offers or when to reach for it. A good death is possible. It deserves to be protected. And you deserve to know your options before you are in crisis.

Your Challenge

Here is what I am asking of you today. Sit with the question. Not as an exercise in guilt. As an act of love for yourself and toward the life you still have.

What would I regret if I were at the end of my time?

Start with one thing. One conversation you have been avoiding. One dream you have been deferring. One truth you have been swallowing. You do not have to blow up your whole life. You just have to stop pretending the clock is not ticking. Because it is for all of us. And that is not the tragedy. That is the invitation.

🦋 Benediction

May you have the courage to seek clarity as an act of love for yourself. May you love yourself enough to let the world have the best of you. May you lay down the weight of others’ expectations long enough to honor your own heart now.

May you know the unexpected grace of living true.

Saint Francis said it years ago: “It is in dying that we live.” You arrived in this world on a breath, and one day you will go home on one too. And on that final exhale, may you know you left it all on the floor.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 If you want to learn about hospice care for yourself or for someone you love, resources are linked in the show notes on Substack, Apple, and YouTube.

Want more information on Hospice or Palliative Care? These are excellent to begin or reach out to me via contacts below; Caring Info Resources, HospiceFoundation.org, What is Palliative Care?, for our friends abroad but great info generally HospiceUK, & this is chockfull of good info The Conversation Project.

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Have you spent decades producing, achieving, and saying yes to everything and everyone except yourself? In this episode of Butterfly Days, I sit down with Johanna Danaher, founder of Anchor to Aspire and former 25-year corporate leader at Pfizer, to talk about the pivot that so many midlife women are standing at right now. Johanna shares how to grieve what you are leaving behind, rediscover who you actually are, and move from burnout and stuck to energized and alive. She also unpacks the inner gremlin that holds us back, the power of the pause, and why filling your cup to overflow is not self-indulgent. It is essential.

Johanna Danaher 🦋

Johanna Danaher is the founder of Anchor to Aspire, a coaching and consulting practice built on one simple conviction: happiness is not a luxury. It is the foundation for everything. After 25 years leading organizational culture, talent development, and career growth at Pfizer, Johanna faced her own storms. Her role was eliminated at the same time her mother was diagnosed with leukemia, her stepfather was hospitalized, and her daughter started college. Instead of running from the upheaval, she leaned into it and emerged with a calling.

Today, Johanna is an Energy Leadership Specialist and certified coach who helps midlife and mid-career women move from stuck, burnt out, and in constant doing mode, to grounded, energized, and living from who they actually are. She has coached more than 150 clients and hosts monthly Renew You workshops designed to bring women together in honest, spacious conversation. Her work is rooted in values, driven by the science of positive psychology, and guided by the ocean metaphor she has carried since her early days in marine biology: life is both calm and turbulent, and the goal is to anchor into what matters so you can rise toward what is possible.

The Tension Between Doing and Being 🦋

Here is something Johanna said early in our conversation that I have not stopped thinking about: we spend so much time doing that we forget how to be. Many high-achieving women equate their worth with their output. We have always produced. We have always delivered. And so we assume that more doing will eventually get us where we want to go.

But as Johanna says, it is actually when we are being who we are meant to be that satisfaction and happiness show up. The pivot is not about doing something new. It is about becoming someone true.

Start with Your Values, and Look Again 🦋

One of the first things Johanna does with every client is a values exercise. And not the kind you did once in a leadership training and never thought about again. She asks us to revisit those values with fresh eyes, because here is what changes: the values themselves may stay, but how they show up in your life shifts completely over time.

Community meant one thing in your twenties, something else in the mothering years, something different again in the workplace, and now it might look entirely different in this new season. The important question is not just what do I value, but am I actually honoring it? Or is that value being quietly depleted because I am not paying attention?

What Women Are Carrying 🦋

Johanna sees three things over and over in the women who come to her. They are burnt out. They feel stuck. And someone has told them they need boundaries, but they have no idea what that actually means or how to set them.

Sound familiar? Because here is the truth: many of us were raised to be good girls, to keep the peace, to put others first. And we carried that into our careers, our families, our friendships, and now into midlife. But the voice that holds us most hostage is not someone else’s. It is our own. Johanna calls it the inner gremlin, that relentless inner critic that would never speak to a friend the way it speaks to us.

Her invitation is to name it. Give it a ridiculous name and call it out, because once you name it, you can challenge it. You can ask: what is the story I am telling myself right now? And what is actually true?

The Power of the Pause 🦋

Johanna describes our most important superpower as something we almost never use: the pause. A 30-second pause between trigger and response. That is the space where we move from reaction to choice. From survival mode to performance. From automatic to intentional.

As an Energy Leadership Specialist, Johanna helps women understand where their energy actually lives, especially under stress, because that is when the gap between who we want to be and how we actually show up becomes the widest. Awareness of what your body is telling you, what your face is doing, what tightness is sitting in your chest, is not soft or extra. It is data. And it points you back to yourself.

Grieve What You Are Leaving 🦋

If you are in the middle of a pivot, whether chosen or delivered to you by life, Johanna has something important to say: grieve what you are leaving behind. We glorify busyness as a socially acceptable way to avoid that grief. We fill the calendar. We pivot fast. We start the next thing before we have properly said goodbye to the last.

But you cannot know what you are building toward if you have not first asked what you are carrying forward. What did that chapter make you? What did you learn? What parts of it do you want to keep? Give yourself permission to feel the weight of the ending. That is not weakness. That is wisdom.

You Can Only Pour from the Overflow 🦋

At one of her workshops, someone said something to Johanna that she could not unhear: you cannot pour from an empty cup, and you cannot even pour from a filling cup. You have to wait until it is full and overflowing. That is what you give from.

For women who have spent a lifetime pouring for everyone else, this lands differently. Especially in the sandwich generation season, when you are caregiving aging parents and launching kids at the same time. Johanna does not offer a magic fix for that reality. But she offers a framework: get clear on your values, use them as criteria for every yes and no, and give yourself grace for the things you cannot do right now. Every yes is a no to something else. Choose accordingly.

Joy and Grief Can Live Together 🦋

One of my favorite moments in this conversation was when Johanna said something I found genuinely beautiful: grief and sadness mean that something mattered. She lost her father at 55, which she shared with such honesty and grace. And from that loss, she learned the discipline of presence. Of truly listening. Of being here, in this moment, rather than running ahead to the next thing.

We talked about the paradox of holding two seemingly opposing things at once. Joy and grief. Calm and turbulence. Endings and beginnings. And here is what I believe with everything I have: midlife is not an either-or season. It is a both-and. The women who learn to hold that paradox are the ones who live the richest second half.

🦋 Benediction

May you give yourself permission to pause today. Not to check out, but to check in. May you look honestly at what your life has made you and find, in that looking, more beauty and strength than you expected.

May you grieve what is over with tenderness, name the gremlin that has been loud in your head, and choose, even once this week, to respond instead of react. May you stop pouring from empty and start doing the quiet, necessary work of filling yourself back up.

You are not too old. You are not too late. And this season you are standing in right now? It is not the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Connect with Johanna Danaher and learn more about her Renew You workshops at anchortoaspire.com and on LinkedIn 🦋

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Your Concerns Are Real. Let’s Name Them.🦋

Three concerns came up consistently, and every single one of them deserves a straight answer.

First, security and privacy. I covered the basics in Part One, and they still stand. Treat AI like a conversation in a coffee shop. Never enter your passwords, account numbers, or sensitive legal information. Reputable AI platforms have strong privacy policies. But girl, your best protection is always what you choose to share. You already know how to use good judgment. Use it here.

Second, replacing human connection. This one is worthy of real consideration, and I am not waving it away. AI is a tool. A remarkable one. But it is a tool. No algorithm replicates the knowing look of someone who has watched you grow. Healthy human relationships are critical to living your best life, and I will never soft-sell that. If you find yourself leaning on AI for emotional support instead of reaching toward real people, notice it. Seek real relationships for real comfort and real connection, please.

Third, energy and land use. This one is bigger than me, and I’m going to be honest that it is not my area. But you raised it, and it deserves more than a brushoff answer. The data centers that power AI are large. They consume significant electricity and require land, sometimes farmland or wetlands, and communities are pushing back. These are legitimate concerns that researchers, regulators, and some tech companies are actively working through right now. What’s also true is that using AI on your phone or laptop uses a modest amount of energy, comparable to a web search or streaming a video. The heavier footprint is on the infrastructure side. That is a policy and industry conversation. I’m not telling you not to care. I care. But I am not going to let it be the reason women our age sit this out and get left behind. You can hold both the concern and the pragmatic decision to engage. Actually, Gen X and Gen Jones? That is what we have always done.

How to Access AI🦋

Several of you came back with the most practical question: What are you even talking about? Is this an app? I had no idea where to start. You do not need to know how to code. AI is app-based, which means you can use it in a browser or on your phone. You can start for free. Here are five options to consider. Don’t go get all five. Pick one or two and play.

Claude. A brilliant thinking partner. Best for writing, brainstorming, complex ideas, and real conversation. It feels like texting a knowledgeable friend. Low intimidation factor. Solid starting point. I’m using it lately and I kind of love it.

Perplexity. Best for research. It searches the web and shows you exactly where it got its information. Every claim comes with a source link. If you’ve ever mistrusted AI because you couldn’t verify it, Perplexity is your answer.

Gemini. A product of Google. Best if you already live in Google’s world. It works inside Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. The integration is a real advantage.

ChatGPT. The original from OpenAI. Still excellent for creative and practical tasks.

Grok. Best for real-time news and current events. It pulls directly from X. Casual and unfiltered in tone. It has told me many times that it has no idea what I’m asking. I respect that. Use the tool that works best for you.

What You’re Already Using It For

Y’all surprised me. Many of you are uploading photos of your rooms and asking for decorating ideas, then tweaking until you have something concrete to bring to your decorator or your architect. Practical and genuinely fun. I am absolutely here for that.

Several of you are using it to prepare for tough conversations with medical staff, family members, bosses, insurance companies, and lawyers. You don’t walk in nervous or on your back foot. You walk in owning your agency. That is exactly the point. AI for us is about empowerment.

What’s Next: Ideas You Haven’t Tried Yet

Money and your future. AI won’t replace your financial advisor, but it will make you a far better client. Ask it to explain what an investment vehicle actually does. Have it break down Social Security timing options in plain English. Learn the basics of a Medicare supplement plan. Create a budget that works, or ask it to explain why yours doesn’t. There are no dumb questions. AI will never make you feel stupid for asking. Double-check anything truly technical before you act on it. It is not flawless. But it is way better than a Google search, and a million times better than putting it off forever.

Legacy and life review. This one is close to my heart. AI can help you write your ethical will. Not what you’re leaving in assets, but what you want to say: your values, your stories, what you want your grandchildren to know about who you were and how you lived. Tell it your memories and ask it to help you shape them into something lasting.

And here’s the one I really want you to sit with. Ask AI to write your obituary. Feed it your life, your accomplishments, what matters to you. Keep editing until it feels right. I know that sounds morbid. It isn’t. It is one of the most clarifying things a human can do. You’ll see exactly where you’re proud of yourself and what you still want to build. That is not dark. That is honest. And honestly? That is power.

Grief and loss. AI can help you write an obituary when you cannot find the words. It is a patient collaborator that holds the structure while you provide the love and the language. Use it in hard seasons to honor the people who matter most.

Caregiving. If you are caring for an aging parent, and many of you are, AI can help you understand a diagnosis, decode a care plan, research facility options, and prepare questions for a social worker or hospice nurse. You are already exhausted. Let AI carry some of the weight of the research.

Starting something. A side business, a blog, a nonprofit, the book that has been living in your chest for 20 years. AI can help you map it out, write a first draft, build a simple business plan, and figure out your next step. It is a remarkable collaborator for the woman who has something to say and doesn’t know where to start. That woman is in this audience. I know she is. And baby, this one is for you.

Travel. AI can build a detailed itinerary, flag accessibility considerations, suggest restaurants based on your dietary needs, and help you research neighborhoods in cities you’ve never visited. Like a well-traveled friend who never tires of your questions.

Learning something new. Want to learn watercolor? Want tips on winning at mahjong? Wondering why your bladder does that thing? Ask in detail. No embarrassment. No rushed appointment. Just answers when you need them.

Thinking something through. When you’re working through a big decision and the people around you are too close to it or too tired to hear about it one more time, AI can help you think out loud. You describe the situation. It asks questions and reflects back what it’s hearing. It helps you find what you actually believe. It’s not therapy. But it clears the fog. And try this: ask it what questions am I not asking that I need to? That one will stop you cold, and for very good reason.

🦋 Benediction

May you see clearly that we are not the generation that waits to be invited. We are the generation that showed up anyway, to rooms that didn’t expect us, to tables that didn’t save us a seat, to transitions nobody warned us were coming.

AI is just the next room. And may you walk in proudly.

May you use every tool, every relationship, every hard-won lesson you can find to make the most of the time that you have. Not because time is running out, but because you know now that it matters. May you stay curious, stay capable, and refuse to make yourself small in a world that is moving fast.

You lived through every major shift of the last 50 years. And this is just another one. We’re still here. Still becoming. Isn’t that insanely beautiful?

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

Claude —

https://claude.ai

Perplexity —

https://www.perplexity.ai

Gemini —

https://gemini.google.com

ChatGPT —

https://chatgpt.com

Grok —

https://grok.com

All free to start. No excuses. Just pick one and try it.

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Meet Carla Calderas 🦋

Carla Calderas is a counselor, healing coach, and author whose mission is simple and powerful: to heal herself and help others heal. She holds a master’s degree in Professional Counseling from Texas State University and has spent over a decade supporting individuals, couples, and teens through anxiety, depression, and life’s hardest chapters.

Carla is the founder of Calderas Counseling, a group mental health practice in Texas, and the Calderas Self-Care Center, where retreats and workshops offer women a sacred pause on their healing journey. She is also the author of Healing Is Within You, a guide to learning from the past with compassion, transforming the present with intention, and stepping into a future rooted in peace and joy.

Her work is grounded in a belief she holds with her whole heart: that healing is possible, that you are not broken, and that everything you need to live a beautiful life is already within you.

“The Healing Is Within You” 🦋

Here’s where Carla starts: healing is not just for women in crisis. It’s for every woman who has ever felt like something is a little off, a little stuck, a little less than what she knows her life could be. Whether you’re managing stress at work, longing for better relationships, or sitting with a quiet ache that you can’t quite name, that feeling that there’s something more is the beginning of healing.

And Carla’s message is clear: no matter your past, no matter what you’ve been through, you can heal. Not by becoming someone new, but by returning to who you were before the pain, the trauma, and the boxes other people tried to fit you into.

Past, Present, Future: A Framework for Healing 🦋

Carla approaches healing through three layers, each one building on the last.

The past is where we look at what shaped us: the difficult experiences, the coping mechanisms we developed to survive, and the patterns we’ve been quietly repeating ever since. She asks us not to shame ourselves for how we coped. Those adaptations were what we knew at the time. They got us here. Now we can look at them honestly, process them in healthy ways, and find the real lesson.

The present is about intentionality. It’s the work of noticing our thoughts, our words, our behaviors, and choosing with more awareness. This is where many of the tools of therapy live. Affirmations, mindfulness, recognizing what we feel and why.

And the future? That’s the coaching part. The dreaming, the visioning, the returning to the girl you were before the world told you who to be. Carla invites us to go back to that version of ourselves. The one who was joyful, free, and knew, in her bones, that anything was possible.

Forgiveness Is Where We Find Freedom 🦋

Forgiveness is, as Carla says, where we find freedom. Without it, we’re still carrying the weight, maybe not in a heavy visible way, but in the doubt, the shame, the fear that quietly colors everything.

And here’s the part that stopped me: forgiveness isn’t just about the people who hurt us. It’s about forgiving ourselves. For not speaking up. For not having our own backs. For not knowing what we couldn’t have known yet.

So many of the women listening to this, coming through the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, know exactly what it means to carry something in silence. We were raised in a culture that said: don’t talk about it. Don’t name it. Just carry on. But as Carla reminds us, the final healing of it all, and the power of it, belongs to you.

The Past You Buried Is Still with You 🦋

Here’s the hard truth: you can’t bury something in the past. It doesn’t stay there. It travels with you. It quietly shapes the way you see people, the way you respond, the connections you allow or avoid.

Carla gave a beautiful and honest example: when our parents or family didn’t protect us, we learn that people aren’t safe. And then we carry that into friendships, into love, into midlife, wondering why we can’t seem to connect. But the good news, the really powerful news, is that once we make that connection, once we understand why we’ve been doing what we’ve been doing, we can choose differently. We can start small. Eye contact at the store. A phone call to a friend we’ve been missing.

You are absolutely capable of deep, healthy, fulfilling relationships. It’s not too late. As Carla says: as long as you’re alive, it’s never too late.

Boundaries: What They Really Look Like 🦋

Here’s something Carla said that I want every woman hearing this to write down: a boundary is about you. It’s about being honest with yourself and communicating what is true for you, in a healthy way, without apology.

Setting a boundary doesn’t have to sound like a wall. It can sound like warmth. It can be: I love spending time with you. I’m not available after 7pm, but can we do lunch? It can be leading with what’s hard for you to say so the other person has space to receive it. It can be the pause: giving yourself a day, a night, a moment to check in before you respond.

And here’s Carla’s most practical tip: use an I statement. The feeling and why. I feel scared when voices are raised. I feel overwhelmed. Make it about you, not an accusation of them. That is where real communication and real connection can happen.

The One Brave Thing 🦋

When I asked Carla what one brave thing a woman could do this week to begin her healing journey, her answer was this: stop avoiding.

We are very good at staying busy. At filling the calendar, leaning into distractions, staying in motion so we don’t have to sit with what’s uncomfortable. But avoiding the hard conversation, the difficult decision, the boundary that needs to be set, none of that makes it go away. It just delays the freedom that’s waiting on the other side.

So this week: be honest with yourself. Notice where you’re avoiding. And take one small step toward it.

🦋 Benediction

May you look back at your past not with shame, but with the compassion of a woman who has lived and learned and grown. May you find the courage to set the boundaries that protect your peace, to forgive the people who couldn’t give you what you needed, and to finally, truly forgive yourself.

You are not too far gone. You are not too old. And you do not have to carry any of this alone.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Get the book Healing Is Within You by Carla Calderas on Amazon Barnes&Noble and learn more at carlacalderas.com 🦋

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

In this episode of Butterfly Days, I’m tackling the word I keep hearing everywhere right now: anxiety. And almost always, it’s about AI. The fears are real. I hear them, I understand them, and I want to address them head-on today. Because here’s the truth that nobody is saying loudly enough to our generation: this technology is actually built for us. You bring the wisdom, the context, the life experience. AI brings speed, reach, and organization. Together? Formidable things happen.

Fear Makes Sense. Hiding Doesn’t. 🦋

Uncertainty is uncomfortable, and the noise around AI is loud. But GenX and GenJones women, we have navigated every major technological shift of the last fifty years. Rotary phones to smartphones. Card catalogs to Google. Handwritten letters to texting. And every single time, once we started, we wondered how we ever lived without it.

AI is not a robot. It’s not scary. It’s not just for young tech people. Think of it less as something you need to be technical to use, and more like becoming AI literate. Because AI is a thinking partner that works in language. You bring the problem, the question, the task. It helps you think it through, shape it, and complete it.

The women leaning in right now are getting more organized, more informed, more prepared, and more confident. That’s not about being trendy. It’s about refusing to be left behind in systems, medical, financial, and professional, that are already changing around us.

This Technology Was Built for Women Like Us 🦋

Here is something genuinely radical: AI doesn’t care how old you are, what you look like, whether you went to the right school, or whether you have the right credentials. It just helps you. For women who have spent decades being overlooked or dismissed in medicine, in business, in professional settings, that levels the playing field in a way that is a very big deal.

AI has infinite patience. Your doctor has 12 minutes. Your financial advisor has an agenda. The kids are busy. But AI has all the time in the world, and its only job in that moment is to help you. You can ask the same question seventeen different ways. You can type, “I don’t understand, explain it differently.” And it meets you exactly where you are every single time.

Using AI for Your Health and Body

This is where I want every one of you to start. You deserve to understand your own health, and AI can help you do that.

Ask AI to explain a diagnosis in plain language. Have it decode a lab result, clarify a new medication’s side effects, or help you understand what a specialist’s notes actually mean. Walk into every appointment informed and ready. Try something like: Explain my recent thyroid results to me like I’m smart but not a doctor.

Build your question list before every medical appointment. We were raised to be good, quiet, and compliant patients. AI gives us the words to finally show up differently. Tell it your diagnosis, your concerns, and your appointment type, and it will generate the right questions to ask. Try: I’m seeing my cardiologist next week about my blood pressure. What are the ten most important questions I should ask?

You can also create a personalized meal plan, build a gentle exercise or recovery plan, and navigate perimenopause and hormones with clear, evidence-based information. All the things your doctor may not have had time to fully explain.

Building a Life That Actually Fits You

AI can help you design a morning routine that works for your real life. Not a 25-year-old wellness influencer’s routine. Yours. You tell it your schedule, your stress points, your goals, and how much time you realistically have. It builds something that actually fits.

Ask for the daily habits with the strongest evidence for energy, mood, brain health, and longevity at your age and your stage. Then ask it to help you create a realistic implementation plan.

And when you’re facing something big: a move, a career change, a relationship decision, a health choice. AI can help you think it through clearly. It asks good questions, reflects your thinking back to you, and helps you see what you actually want. It should not do your thinking. But it can help you do it better.

Advocating for Yourself in Every Professional Room

This is perhaps the single most powerful use of AI for women over 55. And the most underused.

We were raised not to ask too many questions. Not to take up too much space. Not to challenge an expert. But AI gives us the prep and the words to finally show up differently. At the doctor. With the realtor. At the financial advisor. Visiting an attorney. Navigating aging parents and hospice decisions. The through line is this: AI doesn’t just answer your questions. It helps you figure out what questions to ask in the first place. And that changes everything. Because the quality of your question determines the quality of your answer.

Organizing Your Life and Your Ideas

Voice memos from your commute. Sticky notes on the mirror. Ideas on napkins. Notes scattered across three different apps. Dump them all into AI and ask it to find the pattern, organize the themes, and tell you what you’re actually trying to say.

Try a weekly 15-minute brain dump session. Sunday morning, coffee in hand. Paste everything in and ask AI to help you sort, prioritize, and plan your week. Your whole vision gets so much clearer.

And for recommendations. Books, movies, podcasts, documentaries. No algorithm, no doom scrolling, no 45 minutes deciding on nothing. Just ask for exactly what you want, curated for a woman who has actually lived something.

What AI Can Do With a Picture

This one genuinely surprised me, and I think it will surprise you too.

In your garden: photograph an unknown plant and find out instantly if it’s toxic to pets, how to care for it, or how to get rid of it. On your body: photograph a skin change, a rash, or a bruise that won’t go away and get an informed explanation of what it might be and whether it warrants a doctor visit. At the pharmacy: photograph a medication label and get the instructions, warnings, and interactions explained in plain English.

You can photograph a menu in another language and get an instant translation. Photograph furniture or art and ask about its style, era, and potential value. Photograph a pill your mom can’t identify. Photograph a crack in your wall and ask whether it’s serious. See something you don’t recognize? Point, shoot, ask. You’ll have the answer before you finish your coffee.

A Note on Staying Wise

AI is not your doctor, your lawyer, or your financial advisor. Let’s be clear about that. It is your preparation. It is your research assistant. It is the thing that helps you walk into every room informed, armed with the right questions, and ready to advocate for yourself. Always take what you learn to the real professionals.

And when it comes to privacy: treat AI like a conversation in a coffee shop. Keep things impersonal. Never put in social security numbers, passwords, account numbers, or sensitive legal or financial documents with identifying information. That rule of thumb keeps you safe.

You Are Not Behind. You Are Exactly On Time.

The best moment to learn AI was a year ago. The second best moment is right now. Not engaging with AI is like refusing to get a cell phone in 2005. You can do it. But you’ll feel it later. Being left behind isn’t just inconvenient. It shrinks your world and your agency. And we are not allowing that.

You have the wisdom. AI has the speed. Together, you are unstoppable.

🦋 Benediction

May you use every tool available to you. Not just technology, but wisdom, community, and the hard-won experience of a life fully lived to improve your lot and that of those you love. May you refuse to let fear be the thing that stops you. May you never mistake your decades of experience for a liability.

In a world drowning in data, your depth of knowing is your greatest advantage. May you stay curious until your last breath, because a learning mind is a living mind. May you stand proud. You’ve navigated several of the fastest shifting moments in human history, and you’re still here. Still adapting. Still becoming.

Hold this truth close: we have always been the generations who survived the big transitions. This is just another one. And every ending is also a doorway. Walk through it.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Meet Lori Montry 🦋

Lori Montry is a somatic healing practitioner, Harvard-trained attorney, and creator of The Freedom Formula. Her work blends nervous system science, somatic practices, emotional processing, and mindset work to help people understand why they feel stuck and what it truly takes to create lasting change.

Before stepping into this work, Lori spent years in high-performing environments where discipline and achievement were highly valued. From the outside, her life looked successful. Inside, she was quietly struggling with many of the same patterns her clients describe today: chronic stress, overwhelm, and the exhausting habit of showing up for everyone else while ignoring her own needs. Understanding the role of the nervous system changed everything.

Her new book, You’re Not the Problem, is out now.

“You Are Not the Problem” 🦋

Here’s the thing that stopped me cold in this conversation: the behaviors we most want to change are not failures. They are adaptations. Brilliant ones, actually.

As Lori explains, our nervous system is always trying to protect us. The patterns we carry, whether that’s people-pleasing, overthinking, overachieving, or numbing out, were created for a reason. They met a real need at a real moment in our lives.

The problem isn’t that we lack discipline. The problem is that we keep going after the behavior without ever asking what need it’s serving. And if we don’t meet the need, we’ll fall back into the pattern every single time.

Why Willpower Isn’t the Answer 🦋

How many times have we told ourselves, “This time I’ll just try harder”? And how many times has that worked long-term? Lori put it plainly: it’s not a willpower problem. It never was.

When we don’t understand the need behind a behavior, every failed attempt becomes evidence for the story that we just can’t get it together. That story is a lie. What’s actually happening is that we haven’t yet given ourselves the conditions we need to grow.

Lori used a beautiful image: we’re like seeds tossed into a tiny clay pot, placed in a dark closet, with a tablespoon of sand, and then wondering why we’re not blooming. It’s not the seed’s fault. It never was.

Your Nervous System Is the Missing Piece 🦋

Lori describes the nervous system like a graduated cylinder with a scale from 1 to 10. At the lower end (1 to 3), we’re in what she calls home base: calm, present, and connected. That’s where healing and authentic decision-making live.

As we move up the scale into the mid-range, we get more activated. That’s not always bad. A 4 or 5 is great for creativity and engagement. But when we’re consistently living at a 7, 8, or 9, our body is in survival mode. And from survival mode, lasting change is nearly impossible.

The goal isn’t to control the nervous system. It’s to understand it and learn to use it as a compass. Your nervous system isn’t the enemy. It’s the wisest guide you’ve got.

The Foundation You Need 🦋

Lori shares that sustainable change requires three things working together underneath it, like the foundation of a house:

1. Safety. Felt in the body, not just understood in the mind.

2. Capacity. If you’re already running on empty, there is no room for new habits. Adding more “shoulds” to an overwhelmed system digs the hole deeper.

3. Energy. Not the motivational kind. Actual cellular energy. When we’ve spent years in chronic stress, our cells shift from thriving to protecting. Restoring that energy through sleep, nourishment, and the right kind of movement matters.

Without this foundation, we keep trying to build on sand. And we keep wondering why nothing sticks.

Coming Home to Yourself 🦋

One of the most powerful things Lori said is that the nervous system is like a GPS. We’ve been turning the volume all the way down and covering the screen with a blanket, and then wondering why we feel so lost.

She encourages a simple practice: a brief morning check-in. Not a big production. Even 30 seconds of stillness before the day comes rushing in. Just asking: where am I right now? What do I notice in my body? In that stillness comes the knowing.

For those of us who have never felt safe enough to live there, this is the work of midlife. And it’s worth every step.

What This Means for Us in Midlife 🦋

Y’all, we are statistically likely to have 30 or more years ahead of us. That is a lot of powerful time. And Lori makes a strong case that our midlife years are actually the perfect moment for this work.

By now, enough has happened that the old adaptations are showing their cracks. The things we stuffed down no longer have anywhere to hide. That’s not a crisis. That’s an invitation.

When we stop fighting ourselves and start listening to what our nervous system is actually telling us, we finally get access to our expansive self: the one who knows what she wants, what she needs, and how to go after it.

🦋 Benediction

May you lay down the weight of believing you are the problem. You never were. May you find the courage to get curious about what your body has been carrying and compassionate toward the brilliant ways you learned to survive.

May you discover that the very system you’ve been fighting is the one that, when listened to, leads you home.

Remember, I’m rooting for you!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Get the book You’re Not the Problem and explore Lori Montry’s free resources at lorimontry.com Lori Montry YouTube, Lori Montry Insta, Lori Montry Facebook

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Friendship Looks Different Now

When we were kids, friendship was simple: whoever lived on your street or sat next to you in class. Proximity was everything. In our teens and 20s, friendship was about identity. In early adulthood, it was driven by circumstance: work friends, mom friends, whoever was in the same stage of life at the same time.

But in midlife, something shifts. For the first time, we have enough self-knowledge and wisdom to actually choose our friendships with intention. We know what fills us up. We know what drains us. We’ve lived long enough to know the difference between someone who’s genuinely in our corner , and someone who just occupies a slot we’ve never thought to question. And that’s not cynicism, y’all. That’s wisdom doing its job.

Real Friendships vs. Wish Friendships

So let me ask you: are your friendships right now real, or are some of them wish friendships? A wish friendship is one where we love someone for who they used to be, or who we need them to be, or who we keep hoping they’ll become. But the actual day-to-day relationship doesn’t match the hope we’re using to carry it.

And here’s where I want to get really honest with you , because this part matters just as much. Ask yourself how you feel after you spend time with her. Do you leave feeling seen, energized, more like yourself? That’s real data. But then ask the deeper question: Am I good for her? Because if you find yourself constantly wishing she were different, needing her to change, quietly resenting who she actually is , baby, the truth is, you may not be showing up as a great friend to her either.

Real friendship requires that both of you are genuinely good for each other. Being honest about yourself, not just the other person, is what separates wisdom from self-serving. That’s what I’m advocating here.

Longevity Is Not the Same as Loyalty

We can talk ourselves into staying in friendships for a long, long time. Because we’ve known them forever. Because it would be awkward. Because we’d hurt their feelings. But hear me: longevity is not the same as loyalty. History is not the same as healthy. How long you’ve known someone does not automatically make the friendship good for either of you.

And sometimes we gaslight ourselves into staying. We tell ourselves we have to keep our friendships, that letting one fade makes us a bad person. But that’s simply not true. Releasing folks with grace isn’t a betrayal. It’s respect for her and for yourself.

The Science of Connection

Here’s something I love: the science is firmly on your side. Research has shown for decades that strong social connections are one of the most powerful predictors of longevity and quality of life. Not wealth. Not status. Connection. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies on human happiness at over 85 years, found that close relationships, more than almost anything else, keep us healthy and happy as we age.

But here’s the key piece: it’s the quality of those connections that matters. A few deep, safe, reciprocal friendships will do more for you than a wide circle of surface-level ones every single time. When you choose wisely, you’re not being selfish. You are literally adding to the quality and length of your life , and giving someone else the chance to do the same.

How to Release a Friendship Gracefully

Releasing a friendship doesn’t have to be a confrontation. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic exit or a hard conversation. Not every friendship needs a funeral. Some just need to roll to a stop. You invest a little less. You initiate a little less. You stop working so hard to maintain what hasn’t been working for a long time.

And if guilt creeps in, and it might, remember this: staying in a friendship out of obligation, or fear of what people will think, or because we’ve always done it that way, that is self-abandonment. And we are too wise for that now.

So Who Are Your People?

Ask yourself: Who do I show up most fully around? Who celebrates me, tells me the truth with kindness, and has my back when things get hard? And who do I also do that for? Those are your people. Protect that. Invest there. Pour into those friendships with everything you’ve got, with your full heart.

And let the rest gently go.

🦋 Benediction

It is my hope for you today that you give yourself real permission to be discerning about who gets a front row seat in your life. May you stop carrying friendships out of guilt that were never meant to travel this far with you. May you look around and see clearly the women who see the real you, celebrate you, and speak to you in love.

Hold those women close. Tell them what they mean to you. And find the courage to gently release what no longer serves you, knowing that it creates space for something and someone better.

You are not obligated to stay small to keep anyone comfortable. You are allowed to choose. And choosing well is one of the wisest, most loving things you can do for yourself and honestly for others too.

🦋 Bless you this week and always. Remember, I’m rooting for you. Now’s your time. Git it, girl!

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

Meet Anissa Hudak 🦋

Anissa Hudak is the Founder and Director of the Phoenix Women Healing Institute, where she

empowers women to heal from trauma and reclaim their inner strength through advanced mindbody modalities. *Specializing in Sexual Trauma

Drawing from her own experiences as the daughter of a Vietnam Veteran and a two-time rape survivor, Anissa has dedicated her career to helping others overcome trauma without fear or retraumatization. She is a Certified Yoga Therapist through the International Association of Yoga Therapy, holds 200- and 500-hour RYT certifications, and has specialized training in YogaFit Warriors and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).

Her work with soldiers and families at Fort Riley’s Warrior Transition Battalion inspired her to explore the deep neurological and emotional patterns behind trauma. In 2023, she became a Master Hypnotherapist, Master NLP Practitioner, Master NLP Results Coach, and Master Time Line Therapist.

In October 2025, Anissa earned her designations as a Trainer of Neuro Linguistic Programming and a Trainer of Hypnotherapy through The Tad James Company, The American Board of Neuro Linguistic Programming, and The American Board of Hypnotherapy.

Today, Anissa mentors women to help them transform pain into purpose, fear into freedom, and

survival into self-empowerment.

It’s Time to Speak Up 🦋

For so many of us – Gen X, late Boomers – we were raised in a culture of silence. If you were sexually traumatized, you didn’t talk about it. You didn’t name it. And you certainly didn’t let it impact your life. So we did what women do so well… we carried on and stuffed the pain down.

But as Anissa shares, “trauma thrives on silence and secrecy,” and the body starts to speak up for us in midlife.

Anissa explains that midlife is often the perfect storm:

• Your body is changing in ways that may feel unfamiliar or unsafe

• Your life may be shifting – kids leaving home, more space, more quiet

• And the things you once “stuffed down” no longer have anywhere to hide

And that trauma rises up.

What Counts as Sexually Traumatized? 🦋

Trauma can be understood broadly. It’s not just what we were taught to recognize as a violent act from a stranger. As Anissa says, if a sexual experience left you feeling hurt, confused, violated, or “not right”… that can mean you were sexually traumatized.

The truth is that most sexual violations are committed by someone known to the victim. Nearly 1 in 2 women have experienced some form of sexual violence or harassment in their lives.

The Body Keeps the Story 🦋

Even when the mind tries to forget, the body remembers. Trauma can be buried deep in our bodies and show up as anxiety or depression, chronic stress or hypervigilance, digestive issues, heart palpitations, and autoimmune conditions or long-term health challenges.

As Anissa explains, trauma is stored at a molecular level in the body. Which means healing has to go deeper than just “talking it out.”

A New Way to Heal 🦋

Healing, as Anissa describes it, happens in three powerful layers:

1. Awareness

Understanding what happened and how it’s affecting you

2. The Body

Reconnecting with your physical self through movement, breath, or practices like yoga therapy

3. The Unconscious

Where real, lasting change takes place by rewriting patterns and releasing what’s been stored

The Story Isn’t the Healing 🦋

Anissa shares that the story itself – the repeated retelling of what happened – isn’t where healing lives. In fact, constantly retelling it can keep reactivating the trauma.

Memory isn’t perfect. It fills in gaps and rewrites itself, and you can end up reliving the past over and over.

But gently, patiently allowing your body and your deeper self to process what’s been held is the start of healing.

How Anissa’s Yoga Classes Are Different 🦋

Anissa’s yoga isn’t your normal yoga class. Trauma-informed yoga is something entirely different.

In her classes, the lights stay on because darkness can feel unsafe. She uses small, semi-circle groups so no one feels watched or exposed and no one is behind you. She also never touches someone in class without asking permission first.

She rarely leaves her mat, and any time she does, she clearly communicates exactly where she’s going and what she’s doing. These small details help attendees feel safe – and get their agency back.

And when they leave, attendees usually tell Anissa: “I feel lighter.” How powerful is that?

🦋 Benediction

I hope this conversation was the encouragement you needed to know: You don’t have to stay stuck. You’re not too late or too far gone. I hope you’re able to face what happened without letting it define you – so you can see the beautiful life that is waiting for you on the other side of healing.

And remember, Sister, I’m rooting for you!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Learn more about Phoenix Women Healing or book Anissa Hudak to speak

🦋 Connect with Anissa on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and X

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & Instagram 🦋

The Toll of Constant Change

Change never gets easy. We might get better at handling it, but constantly needing to pivot, solve, and brace for what’s next is exhausting.

And when we’re overwhelmed, a lot of us do the same thing: we stall. We avoid. We go quiet. We fail to realize not making a choice is a choice. We hope the problem will somehow resolve itself, and it rarely does.

Small Steps to Move Forward Without Overwhelm

Here’s a few small steps to help you move forward without overwhelm. When you’re done with this episode, I dare you to try them!

1. Get Clear on What You Can Control

Not everything is yours to control, so you don’t need to get clear on everything. Get clear on what your responsibility is.

2. Name the Best and Worst Outcomes

Say them out loud and write ‘em down. Why? Because facing the worst upfront takes away its power.

3. Break It Down

What’s the smallest next step? On Butterfly Days, my mantra is “Lego-sized steps.” Lego-sized choices. So what is the smallest next step? And then the next one after that? Keep it simple. Keep it elegant. But take a small step.

4. Don’t Do This Alone

Don’t do this alone, especially if you don’t need to. If you need support, ask. We are too old to wear independence like a badge of honor.

5. Take a First Step

Now, I should not have to say this. However, I’m gonna say it. Take a first step. Nothing changes until something moves. Spirit meets us at the point of action.

6. Acknowledge Yourself

This is actually a big deal. Progress matters, so speak it out loud. Your mind and your body respond to your own voice. So don’t let your inner dialogue be the thing that holds you back. Be proud of yourself and speak it out.

That’s it! Six simple steps that move you towards resolution, relief, or momentum. As Lao Tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” And it’s still true, because here’s the reality: the problem isn’t always the problem. It’s the size of it in our minds. And when things stack up, they feel impossible.

But we know better now. We don’t need perfection. We need movement. One small step at a time. You can still build an extraordinary life in this season, but not by trying to solve everything at once. Just take the next step.

🦋 Benediction

May you find steadiness even in the middle of change. May you pause long enough to choose your response and not just react. May you trust that while you can’t control everything, you always get to choose how you respond. And may you choose what leads you towards a better life again and again.

Remember – I’m rootin’ for you!

Resources Mentioned

🦋 Subscribe to Tami Jorden’s Substack, visit her website, and follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook & Instagram & YouTube 🦋