Midlife Crisis in Women | The Shocking Changes No One Warns You About

0:03 SPEAKER_00: This is What the F Just Happened.

0:06 SPEAKER_01: The podcast that proves life is messy, midlife is so wild, and laughter is definitely non-negotiable.

0:13 SPEAKER_00: So grab a cocktail or a mocktail or your favorite emotionally supportive snack and let's get into it.

0:25 SPEAKER_01: Hello. Oh my gosh, you guys. We finally are here. Episode one of the What the F just Happened podcast. And here we go. So do you ever look around and think, what the F just a freaking happened to my life? Well, that is what Hillary and I do.

0:47 SPEAKER_00: Absolutely. And we appreciate all of you who have hung in there on our Insta page while we figured out the technology. Because I might be well into my 50s, someone else is not. It took us a minute to get here. It did.

1:03 SPEAKER_01: It was it was a it was a um a little bit of a haul trying to figure out our podcast technology on our own. Three computers, 800 chords, two ring lights. Yeah, which we don't use. Like who's uh yeah, we're we we're not even recording. We're just talking. Anyway, so I just had a facelift. I just lost my husband. We figured why not start a podcast? I mean, that is what we do. We talk about our real life situations every day as girlfriends. Um, we are there for each other. We're always totally busting up laughing or crying our eyeballs out.

1:38 SPEAKER_01: And we're like, we need to tell the world about our lives. So that is why we are here.

1:44 SPEAKER_00: And it's all encompassed in the name of what the F just happened. Life is messy, so let's talk about it. So, how did we get here?

1:53 SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess, you know, that's a that's a great question. I mean, we should have been live a few months ago, but here we are. Um, and we'll just do some intros so you guys know who we are. And um, so I'm Sada. I am a mom of two adult, beautiful daughters. I am a pretty new widow, my husband, who I love and adore, and he's so sweet, probably fishing and having a little glass of whiskey up in heaven. Um, he passed about a year ago. Um, I am a joy mentor. I love helping other people through midlife and grief and all of the things that I feel like I'm just a little bit ahead of those people on.

2:31 SPEAKER_01: I love to walk alongside them. Um, I love coffee, I love fashion, a good uh dirty martini with blue cheese olives. That is my favorite. I absolutely love the ocean and I am a total sucker for sunshine. As much as I can get of it, I'm I it just makes me happy and uh smile all the time. So, Hill, you take it away.

2:53 SPEAKER_00: So I am Hillary. Nice to meet all of you virtually. I am the survivor, or I shouldn't say survivor, I'm the graduate or survivor. I am survivor. I am a graduate of the longest I say starter marriage in the history of the universe. It was only 16 years, but it actually felt like a lot longer than that. I it had so many twists and turns that we joke that Netflix would not have even picked it up. They would have totally passed. It would not have it had restraining orders, it had me knowing the police on a first basis.

3:31 SPEAKER_00: Lots of legalities like lots of legalities. She said, get out, run. Anyway, I've got I am in a beautiful do-over marriage of now a decade to the most incredible man in the world who I'm so blessed and lucky to have. Who also cooks me dinner when I am alone. He's the best. I've got two, two, I've got three. You have three. Sorry, I was gonna say two bonus daughters who I do. They're amazing. Two incredible, beautiful bonus daughters. I've got three amazing adult, incredible, beautiful girls of my own.

4:07 SPEAKER_00: So we are a blended family. What else? I love long strolls to my front door to retrieve my Amazon boxes. That brings me joy. I love going to bed under the glow of my iPhone as I binge watch cleaning reels. That is not good for us on Insta. Nice. People who do cleaning reels, thank you. I will never do them, but I'm so inspired. Do you wear your glasses and do you wear readers? I don't wear readers. My see my eyes are actually 56, still pretty good. So who else? I I have animal, we've got rescues, we've got two dogs and a cat.

4:44 SPEAKER_00: I love all animals. You've never met an animal I didn't love. And that pretty much sums it up. Yeah.

4:50 SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that we wanted to just come on and give a little um bit about ourselves and kind of what we are doing here in in our podcast. Um, I think that one of the biggest things we want to just kind of chat about, like I said, is that we started this because we wanted to make sure that other women in life like knew that they were not um kind of on the outskirts of um some of their um experiences or their life's journey. Like we have been through this shit. So we were like, we need to just and we actually, I mean, I feel like we're funny and we do bust up laughing to each other.

5:30 SPEAKER_01: So maybe other people think we're funny.

5:32 SPEAKER_00: But also we got super tired of pretending, right? Like we don't pretend, but I think you see stuff on Instagram and everything looks amazing. And we thought, what is the real truth, right? Un when you pull back the veil and you put the camera down, what does real life look like? Real life as a widow, or is someone maybe who is has gotten divorced or is getting divorced or is considering divorce. There's so many stages of grief and rebuilding and still finding the humor in it. I mean, there was definitely times of humor, like when, you know, my credit score was 580.

6:10 SPEAKER_00: That sucked. Oh my gosh. Didn't I went from an 800 to someone saying, I didn't know you could go this, I didn't know you could be sub-six. But there are but we've already been there. But having come from a life of, we used to say, more flash than cash, we pretended. And I'm I'm right, I don't pretend any longer. And I think it's gonna be nice to just have a really truly authentic look at what does midlife look like.

6:37 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I feel like that's such a good point. Like nobody talks about the messy middle, and um I feel like it's definitely we're like in our healing era of whatever that means, like healing your facelift, healing my soul, you know, plus two very different uh healing eras, but like we're gonna be honest about it and we're gonna be honest about our, you know, when you do open up Instagram, like all of us do that, all of us do the doom scroll, all of us. I mean, it's just I'm really trying hard to just like stay off and you know, just do what I need to do and and and be off of there.

7:13 SPEAKER_01: But um, it can also be really inspiring to the people that actually do. Like, I try to be super authentic on Instagram and be like, just say all the stuff that I'm struggling with, but then also like, okay, we can struggle, but then like the next day, like put your crown back in the right place and like pull your bootstraps up and let's freaking go. And that is easier said than done. But a lot of what we see online as women, whether it's like our bodies, our faces, our um our lives, you know, perfect couples, houses, dog, doodles, all the things like that.

7:46 SPEAKER_01: A lot of it isn't real life. So I feel like I'm so excited.

7:50 SPEAKER_00: We're here to talk about like the real shit. Yeah, and the real shit, by the way, if we're gonna talk about Insta really quickly, is do not spend a dollar buying neck lift creams. Because people don't do it. How about how about the stickers? How about no? I owned all of it. There's nothing you did. You're like Sada, I have it all because I was like, I am next. And she goes, I have it all. I just had a facelift. We will totally do a deep dive, just so you're clear, and I hope you're not in my world.

8:20 SPEAKER_00: But when your neck falls into your body, it's not coming back with cream. So don't, I don't care which one it is. The miracle cream, the miracle cream is a surgeon telling you that you need a deep clean facelift and restitching all of the stuff. But also, let's talk about like you don't have to do that, but how do you want to do that for yourself? I would say all of you don't do it if you don't want to, right? Like I everyone is beautiful. I personally looked in the mirror and thought, where did my like where did my neck go?

8:58 SPEAKER_00: I lost weight. Thank you, trzepatide, GLP1, hallelujah, amen. I lost weight, and then what was left behind was I used to look like I ate someone because it was so both terrible. No, but it's true. Like I had a really chubby face, but what it what it masked was what was going on in my neck. So having pulled that back, that's my just little WTF moment of the week is don't spend money on net cream. But I did. I looked in the mirror and thought, I look this this area bugs me so much. Yeah. So that was your what you want to do.

9:34 SPEAKER_00: And so thrilled and blessed that I was able to do that. And so happy that now, as we are healing and de swelling, the things are going back to like, well, honestly, they probably were never here.

9:46 SPEAKER_01: And how are you feeling like mentally? Like, how are you feeling? Like you chose to do that because that's what you wanted to do. Like, obviously, your husband was like, You're beautiful. Yes, please don't spend a dollar. And you were like, No, this will be actually like, please don't spend any money. Right. I know, I know.

10:01 SPEAKER_00: But like, how are you? I'll tape it up for you. Show me how to do it. Yes, yeah, no, I feel great. Um, and we'll totally get into this. But this is the messy metal, is our bodies are changing. I I mean, I guess perimenopause technically. Don't know why I still have my period 56. I'm not sure like what I did to wrong someone and why it's still here.

10:23 SPEAKER_01: When she says she does, then every month when I am, it makes me cry because I'm a just with a little smidge behind her. A little smidge.

10:30 SPEAKER_00: You're like a whole, a whole smidge behind. I'm not. No, I'm not. You are, you're not even 50. You're years away.

10:37 SPEAKER_01: Years, years away. Not years, but I'm getting close.

10:40 SPEAKER_00: But it's the messy middle is right in the messy middle, you are raising kids, which is whether you're in your like late 20s, 30s. Yeah, that is a very challenging time, exhausting. Marriages during that time, whether you're single or married, so hard. So hard when you're in the the younger, yeah. The thick of it, right? The chaos of it. It's beautiful, it's incredible, but it's so challenging. Very hard. Yeah. Yeah, it's exhausting. And then and then it and we'll talk about that too.

11:09 SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about the younger years of raising our kids and kind of what that looks like inside of a marriage and what that looks like four-year marriage to survive. I mean, I, you know, I had I could go into definitely some really hard conversations about what it was like when um, you know, we were in those years with our kids that were small. And now um, Chris and I had like a excellent, my husband um who passed away, uh had an excellent, amazing the last few years before he did die, being empty nesters, like so much fun, so much, you know, and I have some really great lessons to share about how you get through those younger years for sure.

11:48 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I would say is my feedback on those years is when it's not going well and it's not salvageable. I am all for work your way out, like do everything you can to work your way out of a marriage if there's any chance of like making it work. Oh, you mean like making it work? Yeah. Yes, if you can make it work, make it work because divorce is so hard on everyone, especially the kids. Husband takes all of the money and you have no money in your hands. Yeah, unless he does that, and by the way, the bank calls and says, Hey, why are you late on something you don't even know you have?

12:22 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's that. But that's what's complex. Yeah. There's some bit, and that's what I was gonna say is I've got some advice and some stories of when you are in it and it's not going well. What are the steps that you need to realistically do to keep yourself in one piece mentally, physically, emotionally, financially? Like, how do you start at the bottom and get yourself to like keep going?

12:49 SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah. And I think I could say the same thing for like any kind of really heavy situation. Um, I have a daughter with Crohn's who almost, you know, uh died a couple years ago, and she's thankfully thriving and so amazing. I mean, my husband passed away. So, like, how do you get up each day and like put your pants on one leg at a time and actually like live the rest of this life that we were so blessed to be given when it it's really difficult. So I feel like um that is really what we're going to be talking about this season is you know, lots of these types of topics like facelifts, uh, fixer rubbers, grief, uh glow-up, money meltdowns, like having nothing when you leave a marriage, um, and everything in between.

13:38 SPEAKER_01: And uh like we are not the experts, but I think one of the things we have going for us is that we're survivors of really, really heavy shit. And we're like, well, we are experts because we survived this crazy stuff.

13:52 SPEAKER_00: So and we'll talk about it, and we join you to talk about it and have a conversation because you're not alone. There are so many of us out there, yeah. Everyone's out there, everyone is living a life and it is a up and down, right? It's like a big where was I today? I was at Shields for the first time, and what was in the middle of Shields? An aquarium. And there was a fish toe. Okay, but there was a merry-go-round. Yeah, there was a Ferris wheel. And that is literally life. Is sometimes you're just on this round going round and round.

14:22 SPEAKER_01: And then sometimes you guys, okay. If nobody, there probably are listeners out there that do not know what Shields is. So Shields is a mega, um, like a mega store. And um, it is uh, I don't even know how to explain it. Look it up online, but there's a massive Ferris wheel in the middle.

14:40 SPEAKER_00: And massive aquarium. So yeah, you could be a fish swimming around not knowing where you're going. Okay, that's or you can also be on a Ferris wheel where life is literally like oh, that's us too. It's us too, right? And that's honestly it's everybody. Yes, everybody.

14:52 SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, absolutely. So that is what we just wanted to kind of give you guys a little scoop about who we are. Um, we know that the only way to kind of survive is like going straight through the middle of the fire of our lives. And we are gonna do that with you guys. We're gonna talk to really great therapists, we're going to talk to girlfriends who have gone through divorce, we're going to bring on friends, family, um, other widows. We are going to make medical aesthetics.

15:19 SPEAKER_00: Medical aesthetics. Definitely talk about medical aesthetics. I am in my renovation era. Yes, not done. Yes. I'm not saying I'm surgically going to do anything. You're going first, but you have gone first. Yes.

15:30 SPEAKER_01: And I might continue going. Yes. But yeah, we'll talk about all of that. Yeah. And just kind of what that means. Like nobody has to get anything done. We are here perfectly imperfect, here to, you know, just build a community of beautiful women and beautiful uh connections through our podcast and hopefully bring you some laughs along the way while you have a glass of wine, where you while you have your mocktail, your emotionally supportive snack. Yes, your favorite yummy blanket. And we cannot wait to hear you guys or to see you guys and uh be with you guys on the next episode.

16:05 SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much for joining us. We love you guys. Thank you for supporting us, and we cannot wait for episode two.