The Resilient Mind - Journalist Spent Years Studying Midlife: Here's Why Your 40s Get Better - Stacey Lindsay

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Stacey Lindsay is a journalist and senior editor at Maria Shriver's The Sunday Paper, where she reports on women's issues, spirituality, and living an examined life. Over her career she has interviewed hundreds of public figures and everyday people about the lives we lead and the lives we seek. Her new book, Being 40: The Decade of Letting Go and Embracing Who You Really Are, is a deeply researched and personal exploration of midlife that challenges the story we've been told about what our 40s are supposed to mean.Connect with Stacey: Connect with Stacey Lindsay: 🌐 Website: https://www.stacylindsay.com 📷 Instagram: @stacylindsay 📖 Being 40: The Decade of Letting Go and Embracing Who You Really Are - available nowExplore tools from past guests of the podcast. Some links below are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you:💓 HeartMath: https://www.heartmath.com/resilient🧠 Muse: https://choosemuse.com/resilientmind🌿 Brain Ritual: https://www.brainritual.com/THERESILIENTMIND🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a journalist, my job has always been to hold the mic for somebody else and to amplify their story. And I love doing that. And I hope I have the opportunity to do that for the rest of my days. I really do. It has given me such incredible purpose. What got you to finally have the courage to actually write this book? The reason I started writing this book is because I had this fire inside me. I had something that hadn't had words attached to it yet.

There is this thing. I couldn't describe what it was. but everything about this age, this time in my life felt different. What would you say are the downsides of not stopping and reflecting? I have to say, I mean, you could argue there aren't downsides in a way because maybe that's easier. I don't want to take that route personally. I mean, this is biased. I would rather live a life that is examined, but heck, that is harder and sometimes not pausing to reflect.

How do you help someone sit with that loss rather than just right? or suppressing it. What if the decade most of us have been quietly dreading or at least nervously approaching is actually one where life gets most interesting. My guest today has spent years interviewing hundreds of public's figures and everyday people about the lives we lead and the lives we seek. And what she found when she turned that journalistic lens on her own 40s was something she did not expect, not decline, not predictability, but a profound, sometimes messy.

and ultimately liberating invention to finally becoming who you actually are. Stacey Lindsay is a journalist, editor and senior editor at Maria Shriver's Sunday paper. She spent her career reporting on women's issues, spirituality, and what it means to live and examined life. Her new book, Being 40, The Decade of Letting Go, and Embracing Who You Really Are, Comes out Mayfield, and is part field guide, part permission slip. deeply researched and deeply personal exploration of midlife that shatters the story we have been told of what the 40s mean. Her personal story which began with her mother leaving the family in search

of adventure when Stacy was still a teenager, gives her a unique perspective on identity, letting go, and reinvention that most people spend an entirety of their lifetime trying to find. Stacey, welcome to the resilient mind. I am so grateful to be here with you, Simba. Thank you so much for having me. And we're excited to have you here. So let's start with something personal. You shared that your mother left your family to pursue her own adventure when you're a teenager. That's a very formative experience, one that I imagine put you in an early complicated relationship with the idea of a woman choosing herself. How did that shape the lens which you eventually wrote this book?

In so many ways, in so many hard ways, of course, and in so many beautiful ways, I have to say, too. In one regard, my mother's story is a cautionary tale. And I say that because she was quote unquote doing all the right things, right? She was a mother, an incredible mother. She was a partner, a wife to my father. She was feeding, putting a beautiful dinner on the table every night and bringing us to school events. She was doing a at all. However, inside of her, her interior life was yearning. She was cracking against these desires, kind of all these unlived lives that she had. And it's no coincidence that in her late 40s, she decided to leave to make a drastic change in her life. And that caused a lot of pain. It caused a lot of pain in our family. It caused a lot of pain in me. And so I see that as a cautionary tale because I wish it didn't have to be so painful. On the other end of that, though, And there's this vast spectrum of all the healing and learning and unlearning I've had to do around my mother's story. But I say on the other end of that spectrum, it really filled my empathy bucket, I think, in a very quick and fast way.

I have or I work to have a lot of empathy for people in this life because I think this life is incredibly challenging. It's incredibly hard. There's so many societal expectations on all of us, no matter how we identify, no matter what our lifestyle is. And my mother faced a lot of those. And while I had a lot of anger, a lot of sadness, a lot of hurt around her decision, every year I've grown and now I'm in my own 40s, I have nothing but empathy for her because I know she has a lot of guilt around it and regret. And I know she was doing the best she could do at the time.

So it has shaped the lens through which I view life in general as we are always learning, we are always messy, we are always complicated. And sometimes we do these things. that unfortunately cause pain to other people, but that doesn't need to define us too. And I'll add one more thing is, one more thought to that is generosity. Generosity can be a really, really hard thing to have sometimes or to give to others, especially when we're in pain. And I am by no means saying I'm the expert on generosity.

But I have to say I am a warrior when it comes to really trying to fill my generosity bucket so I can give it to myself and give it to others in this life. And you're a journalist by trade, someone who spent their career telling people stories. What does it like to take that same rigorous, curious gaze on yourself? And what surprises did you discover? Incredibly challenging, I have to say. It was incredibly challenging because, as you point out, as a journalist, my job has always been to hold the mic for somebody else and to amplify their story. And I love doing that.

And I hope I have the opportunity to do that for the rest of my days. I really do. It has given me such incredible purpose. I do think, and what this book has taught me, is I hide a little bit behind my journalism in a sense, too. It's been very hard for me to weave in the eye. It's been very hard for me to weave in my own perspective. And on one hand, because I'm out of practice, right, because I focus on other people. And people are fascinating. I want to interview people all day long. And a side note to that too. It's funny, when I was in TV news, I would go out during the day in the field, interview people, and then I would have to come back and package the story and then go live on TV. I didn't care about the TV part at all. For some people, maybe they love that and that was a rush.

I just liked going out in the field and interviewing people. But it was hard to kind of weave the eye into my work and to really do this self-excavation. And I have to say, it took many rounds of the manuscript, too. It took many notes from my incredible editor, Cassidy, who said, we need, need more of your story. And part of the reason why this was so hard is, I believe, symptomatic of what so many of us face. It was a self-worth issue. It was, does what I have to say matter? Does my story matter? Is my story interesting? Is what I'm experiencing, go to hopefully teach or help somebody else? So that whole process was a journey, all the while, as I'm trying to write this book, too, which is just hard in and of itself. So,

it was a journey and I have to say I think I'm still going on it. I'm still experiencing that self-worth issue right now in this beautiful moment having this conversation with you. Wow, you're asking me questions about my work. I want to flip the switch and ask you. And I hope I get the chance to. And you touch on a very important point, the idea of self-worth. And am I worthy? to write a book where people actually listen. And I think this is something a lot of us struggle with. We've got ideas. We've got books. We want to write things we want to do. But for some odd reason, we think no one will want to listen or pay attention. What got you to finally have the courage to actually write this book in spite of having those feelings? I so appreciate this beautiful question.

It was community. It was a communal vibe from the start, meaning the three, reason I started writing this book is because I had this fire inside me. I had something that hadn't had words attached to it yet. There is this thing. I couldn't describe what it was, but everything about this age, this time in my life felt different because it was different. I was experiencing this frustration with all these societal stories that I finally wanted to put down. I was experiencing physical changes in my own body. I was experiencing this, I describe it as a primal urge to really start to interrogate some of these narratives and start to get closer to myself. And so when I realized, and I really started thinking about that, when I then offered that to other

women, and I asked them, are you feeling something like this? Or is this, fill in the blank? Or how do you feel about this? The floodgates opened. It was wild. And all of these topics about expectations, about beauty, about partnership, about unlearning, letting go, mother, partnering, it was, it's this endless ocean of conversation. So I thought, okay, this is bigger than me. This is truly bigger than me. And I actually, that's when I really started to work on the self-worth part because I thought this book that I've worked on is, I gave it a big swing. I tried my hardest. But it is one microscopic addition to this endless spectral conversation that we need to be having, which is ultimately about what is a meaningful,

fulfilling, beautiful life. But it would be a disservice if I put that down, especially when I was hearing, again, all these women talk about this too. So it really was community. It was community propelled. It was community focused. And then I started weaving those stories together. And again, one conversation led to another conversation, led to another one. And I saw all these patterns, too. Everybody was offering their own unique experience. But there were so many things that were parallel, that were similar and it was beautiful. So it was quite a journey for sure. Oh, I can only imagine. And talking about the book, it opens with the premise that most people sense that they have a distance that they've not fully named. You know, society has framed

40s as the decade of decline. Where do you think that story comes from? Why is it so sticky, even for women who consider themselves self-aware. Part of this question I can't fully answer because I'm still looking for the answer myself and that part is, what is it about 40? Right? It really is something that society likes to look at that age and go, oh, she's 40, she looks pretty good

or he's 45 and he's still got it or fill in the blank. There's something about that. Now I can theorize that if we are fortunate to live to 40, that technically is considering modern day living, that technically is middle age, right? So on average, we're speaking specifically about women, but on average, the modern life span in the United States specifically is 80, give or take. If you live to 40, it is technically middle age. So there's something kind of whoa about that. Like you're at the halfway part. I don't fully subscribe to that

because I think we never know when we're in middle age. And unfortunately, I've known people we all have who have passed way too early in middle age for them was very, very young. But with all that said, there is something very sticky about that age. And so while I can theorize that maybe it is technically that middle mark, but in other ways, I think, why about this number in this decade? But that was also that not knowing was also a big part of my fuel, too, because I thought to myself, this is a decade, this is a time that there isn't enough storytelling around. We lump it into general middle age, and that's fine.

but I wanted more specifics. I wanted to look at specifically the 40s and what is happening and what is kind of unlocking and all these conversations that I had and I'm seeing these themes come up. Let's really dig into this. It's really fascinating. And you write about the shouts, the societal scripts around marriage, kids, career, your bodies, and success that we are supposed to have figured out by 40. For someone who's checked off all those boxes, but still feels that something is off. What do you think is actually happening there? I think there's an awareness there that true deep meaning in a life transcends any prescriptions.

So we are sold a story that you do these things by this time. And so many of us are starting to put that down. And we're seeing that with people changing it up, right? We're seeing that with people not checking these boxes and living these fulfilling lives. But there's still a legacy to that story, I believe. There's still, even for those of us who are changing it up and not living according to the lines, we're still kind of carrying this feeling that we need to justify why we're not doing those things, right? I had felt that for so long.

I am not technically a mother. And I have felt for so long I had to justify why I don't have children and or why I wasn't married yet, all of these things. But for somebody who has checked those boxes, done those things, in a lot of times, Because they want to, and it's giving them a lot of love and beauty. But still, that's a prescription. Real true deep meaning in this life is having a closeness to yourself, is having beauty in ways that aren't defined by some societal standards, but you get to define them.

How do they feel to you? So I feel when somebody is experiencing that, I think it's actually a deeper awareness with how they generally want to live their days, how they want to feel in connection with themselves and with your community. And it can be really uncomfortable and it can also lead you to really, really, really beautiful places. And I'm really hoping with this work, this conversation you and I are having, this book and the spectrum of other incredible books out there that are hopefully helping people to sort of unlock and discover more beauty in this life, there's no shame, too. That's the one thing I really hope all of us can put down. We can do these things. We can do,

quote unquote the right things, whether we wanted to or whether our parents expected us to or whether we felt pressure to do it, it doesn't matter. But it's okay if we come to a place in life where we think, I don't want this anymore or I want something different or I'm still feeling empty or unfulfilled. That is okay. There's no shame in that. And I think, again, ultimately, that means meaning is kind of bubbling up and maybe a new, unfamiliar way. And that's part of the, I guess, the interesting paradox in midlife. You know yourself better than you've ever had, and yet there's that pressure to perform a particular version of yourself that maybe the pressure is getting, like I said, it's peak. How do these forces collide and how can we start to not only become self-aware,

but to take some of those steps to move in the life that we actually want? It's such a paradox, right? I mean, that's life too. And it's, and I laugh at it's, and I last because we've got to find some humor in this, right? I am by no means the expert. I am still a student, and that's why I love being a journalist, because I have these endless questions and this endless curiosity. But we have to laugh this because I think just maybe when we think we have something figured out, oops, there's a new challenge, right? There's some new unlearning we have to do. There's so many tools. There's so many practices, of course, or so many mindset shifts, and it's unique and different for each and every one of us. But I do feel,

feel that there are some very universal tools that we can all lean, lean, look toward and lean on. And they're accessible and they're free. And I think that is incredibly important because so many things that we think we want to outsource the answers, or we want to outsource our joy or our wellness. And it's very expensive and it's inaccessible to a lot of us. The first thing, really, and when we're in this sort of paradoxical quagmire of what's going on, right, is to know that no matter what we always have agency. It is to know that, is to really, really know that no matter what the systems are saying, no matter what social media is saying, we have agency. And with that agency comes the endless ability to always make changes in our lives. And that can even mean in the

smallest way starting today. It can mean putting up a boundary on work, like cutting yourself off from email during the day, just one hour earlier, to give yourself a little breathing room. It can mean allowing yourself to step outside for 20 minutes, if you have an incredibly stressful job or even five minutes just to get some fresh air, knowing that you have agency and knowing that things are accessible to you, no matter what you're going through. The other thing that I absolutely love is having faith and what gives me faith is knowing that there is something bigger than us at play all the time. I find a lot of comfort and beauty in that. We can get really wrapped up in our mental spinning, right, and all the things that are going wrong in her life and thinking about the

negative things and, oh my gosh, I wish I was five pounds lighter, or I wish I got along better with my best friend, or I wish I had made more money, all these things that are real things that inflict, you know, pain on humans. But when we take a moment to generally step outside and to look up at the sky, it, for me, it fills me with faith that, okay, there's a lot of beauty in this world and there is something bigger than me. And I want to tap into that power. That'll kind of move me toward what's next. So I tend to go toward the spiritual, but it really, really works for me. And then ultimately, what I think is the most divine is honoring yourself trust, to trust yourself, to trust yourself even when you make mistakes, right? To trust yourself even when you

have gotten yourself in a situation where you think, how did I get here? How am I, let's say, 45 years old, I'm in a job I don't like, I don't really know myself right now. I'm in a partnership I don't like. I want to make change. Do whatever you need to do to reconnect with your self-trust because when you have self-trust, it starts with you. I think that you're unstoppable after that. And in terms of that self-trust, is there anything that we can do to become more self-trusting, especially if someone who's listening to this, let's say, they've made a lot of mistakes. And now they're really afraid of like making a different one because they don't to mess up again or they've been living the whole life relying on other people to tell them how

to live their life. So the idea of making that decision themselves scares them. I can completely relate to that person. I want to say that. I have endless compassion and empathy for that person because many times in my life I have been there. And I may be there again too. This is again, not a one and done thing. We're constantly learning this. I really appreciate this question, Simba, because that was one of the underlying themes of the book that maybe I didn't explicitly write in the book, but it is this desire to stop outsourcing my own personal authority. I would want it to stop outsourcing my own personal, not decision making necessarily, but I guess sovereignty.

I've used that word again. And it's hard not to these days. That's why I have so much empathy because we are told all the time how to look, how to dress, how to vacation, right? How to design our kitchens, how to live a meaningful life, how to have a good job. We are told all these things. And while there may be some really beautiful messages in some of it, it's still overwhelming. We're not built for all of this information, but again, all of this telling of how we're supposed to do these things. And so I just, again, I have endless, endless empathy for that person. But the key really is,

to come to a place, however you can to say to yourself, I am going to stop outsourcing, my worth, I'm going to stop outsourcing my identity, my decisions to X, Y, and Z, to societal narratives, to somebody else. I have the power within me to know what is right. And I think that's so beautiful. I mean, that was the journey that I went on with this book, too, is just really, really, really, realizing I've lived a lot of life. I have wisdom. I am a philosopher. Like every other person in this world. We are all philosophers in our own lives. We are all incredibly brilliant and we're all equipped everything we need inside of ourselves. So I want to offer that reminder for somebody to start there to know you don't have to outsource. You truly don't. Even if you spent your whole life to

this point outsourcing, what do you think? Should we do this? Where should we go to eat? You can make small shifts today to really start to tap into your gut intuition because you know you deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply know. I love that. The subtitle of your book, The Decade of Letting Go, what exactly are women letting go off? And coming back to, again, why is 40 that inflection point that makes it possible and all necessary? Well, I'll start with the second part of your question to then lead to the first part, which is the 40s I found are that inflection point, because when I turned 40, which was really fascinating when I look back, on it now. I didn't have a lot of angst leading up to this birthday. And I know a lot of people do.

It's a big one, right? And you can argue any birthday with a zero at the end of it is a big one. I'm turning 30. It's a big deal. I'm turning 50. It's a big deal. And it is. It's exciting, right? But again, that 40 might cause a lot of people angst. I was not feeling angst myself. I did start noticing, though, that once I turned 40 and it was several months into being 40, I started noticing and paying attention to, we mentioned earlier, it's that sticky kind of qualifier. Society always has something to say about this age. I started really noticing it. And when I started really noticing the fact that something about this age, something about my life

is just feeling different and I didn't have the words for it. So I started really paying attention to this, Simba. And I noticed, you know, why I call this age an intersection is there's all these different paths kind of coming into this confluence of things that makes this time such an interesting time. One of them is what we've already talked about is society always has something to say, oh, she looks good for 45, right? Always has something to say about this age. There is this, we can't deny the fact that in our 40s, no matter what our lifestyle is,

life starts getting harder. There are pressures. If we do have our parents or guardians still, we're starting to become concerned about them aging if we haven't already. If we are in partnership or if we have children, things start changing around that. Kids start getting older or for some people, they start having children in their 40s too. But there's a lot of compound pressures. Again, we live in a world right now where there just are a lot of pressures too with political pressures and world wars and all of that.

There's a lot of pressure during this time. Then you have to take into consideration that for women specifically, but also for men, but for women, our bodies start changing. And that is undeniable. It's different for each of us. but at some point in our 40s, and for a lot of women, this is happening in their late 30s, we are going to experience hormonal fluctuations and just physical changes. And that kind of exacerbates all this sort of storm of all the stuff that's going on. But the other part of this, which is the really beautiful part, because all those things I just mentioned,

those are tough things, right? And I don't want this to come off as the 40s are doom and gloom. But there is this other, I refer to it as this primal desire of knowing or, ourselves deeper, a primal desire to really start reallocating our energy to the things that really matter to us. I've heard a lot of people say, oh, I just give less Fs, right? Well, I believe we give more. I actually care more in my 40s, but I'm really homing in on the things that I care about. And so to answer the first part of that question, what are we letting go of? I think so many of us are letting go of these stories. We're letting go of, I have worked so hard to do the

right things. I want to let go of this, you know, that everybody else is mandating for me. I want to start really moving toward myself, toward my creativity more, toward the care for myself, toward the care for my loved ones. But the letting go is just the societal stuff, the expectations, the pressures. I feel, and I've observed this is a time where a lot of women start to let that go. It takes work, but it is so, so worth it. As you were saying, one of the things that went through my head was when you're talking about it's not that you give less Fs, right? It's like the reallocation of the Fs that you have. Yes. Because it's so true and I have to say too. I am not somebody who just doesn't care. And I had an incredible, incredible mentor in my life who taught me

that the least favorite thing you can ever say to him was, I don't care. He said, think about it. remember, his name was Jimmy, and he said, think about it, Stace, you ask somebody, do you want to go to dinner? I don't care. Do you want to go have some fun? I don't care. I mean, you want to have zest. You want to have conviction behind, you know, what you're doing. And so that really stuck with me, and it's sort of defined a lot of things I do. I really do care. I mean, and I want to care and everything I'm doing. So I thought, okay, it's not that I care less about things, but it's just that I'm, again, rejiggering some of where my energy is going. And so you talk about, let's and go, which sounds liberating in theory, but in practice there could also be a grief component

to it, even when we are releasing what was never truly ours or truly authentic to us. How do you help someone sit with that loss rather than just rushing or suppressing it? There is a lot of grief to this. With change, I argue with any change, there's grief, there's loss, even if you want to make that change. And it's such a beautiful point to touch on because you can argue as we get older. A lot of the part of getting older is the loss of things the way they used to be and the grief that's wrapped around that.

The first part of this is really knowing that that's part of the human existence. I'm not going to try to argue to make it easier, but I want people who are listening to know that that is part of being alive. And to feel it, it can be so deeply hard, but to allow yourself when you can and when you feel safe. And often this may be just in the company of yourself with a warm cup of tea, if you can, at home to genuinely, deeply feel what you're feeling. Because grief is hard. Aging. There's beauty to it. It's a privilege. And also it's hard. Our bodies change. Our mindsets may change. Our lifestyles may change. Our capabilities too may change. And all of that has grief. But to know that this is part of being

alive. This is part of being human. And then again, to feel it. And I talk about in the book, and I interview some beautiful experts about this, about movement, the power that movement can give us, but particularly, too, when we're going through periods of anger, grief, rage, these feelings and emotions that Western societies tend to tell us to just skip over, just smile and say you're fine, right? Because it's a lot to deal with this stuff. Movement can be very, very cathartic and movement in any way you're physically capable to. So I will say walking. If you're not able to walk, go outside and move in a way that feels comfortable for you. But it lets the energy move through your body. It allows you to metabolize and digest this grief, this grief around

life and the changes and all these things. And it can be really, really life stretching to do that. And you're brought in voices from psychotherapy, women's health, as well. as financing your book, was there a piece of insight from one of those expert conversations genuinely shifted something in you personally? Yes. Hard to choose one, but my heart and mind is going to one right now. I interview an incredible coach Tara Moore. And I've known of Tara's work for well over a decade now. So it was a big win for me to be able to interview her for this book. Tara wrote this a massive book. I believe it came out about 12 or 13 years ago called Playing Big.

And it really, it focused on women, but I argue that anyone who picks up the book would get something out of her work and out of her words. But it talks about how we sort of arrest ourselves and our bigness and our possibilities through the way we carry ourselves at work, the way we kind of second-guess ourselves, the way we talk about ourselves and to each other. So I interviewed Tara. And when I approached her interview, I wasn't sure what chapter she was going to fit in because her wisdom is so expansive.

But I ended up weaving a lot of her wisdom into the beauty chapter. And something unlocked in me when we talked about beauty because she talked about beauty in the context of aging, right? And this is something that is incredibly stressful and hard for people, particularly women, because we are very much judged on the way society views us. Our looks are our currency a lot of times. We kind of almost, without realizing it, I feel like we put on a cloak of armor when we leave the door sometimes because the world sees, and again, the world sees anybody by their appearance first.

But there's a massive amount of scrutiny toward women. But Tara and I were talking about beauty and aging. And she said, you know, what makes you feel beautiful? Beauty is something that it tends to be so performative. But what really makes you feel beautiful? And she says when it comes to this, she argues that we all want to feel this sense of vitality. We all do. No matter what, that is beauty.

It's a sense of vitality. It's a sense of aliveness within us. And I have to say that just unearthed this new desire to actually do more writing around this too, because beauty is something every single one of us is worthy of. Beauty is not something you can buy. Beauty is something that is individual for each of us, too. If you took a group of people and you go to a museum, different people will respond to different pieces of art. I may look at a piece of art and it just unlocks, you know, and tears for me.

And you may look at the same piece of art and go, that's beautiful. But then you look at something behind us and it just renders you helpless, right? You're so moved by it. So that's beauty. It's non-denominational. It's for everyone. And everyone, that's part of this life too. I want everyone to experience as much beauty as they can. And that is a feeling. It's vitality. that really spoke to me. And it's clearly stayed with me too because I kind of pull from that consistently during the day of just even my daily routines too, I think, of Tara's wisdom. I don't know how this question is going to come because I'm still like formulating it. Talking about beauty, because again, you mentioned that there's the societal expectation around

it, but also that it's subjective. And having grown up in this society, we tend to, in a sense, like rely on how other people perceive us to influence how we feel about ourselves. So how can someone just hearing what you said about fatality and kind of are getting more, gaining more independence about their own beauty, how can they start maybe detaching from those societal expectations? Because as they gain that, they might still be, might still have the habit of waiting for someone to tell them that they look beautiful. I don't know if that makes sense. It does make sense. And who doesn't want to be told they look beautiful, right? We all want that.

I want that. I mean, that's feeling seen. So that's another part of beauty too, is we want to feel it and we want to feel seen. And feeling seen makes you feel part of this world. It makes you feel loved. It makes you feel worthy. It makes you feel powerful. And unfortunately, that gets zapped from us in a lot of ways when we perform or whatnot.

But we all want to feel seen. And we see, you know, the research underscores that too, when we're neglected as children or when we're neglected parts of ourselves or love during our lives, that has, that's trauma. That has an impact on us. So we're meant to feel seen. But it is profound. And I've done a lot of work on this around myself and as I was writing the book. And I do, and I suggest other people consider doing this, is take an inventory of the things that you do, either in a day or a week. consider the things you do for physically for beauty and think about what of those things do I do because I feel like I should do them. Social media is telling me or it's just what you do, right? You just curl your eyelashes because that's what you do. What of those things am I doing because I feel like I should do them? And what are those things am I doing because of my own volition? Because I really want to. What of those things genuinely make me feel beautiful? and what are those things just kind of, I don't know, they're just expensive.

And again, I'm doing them. I guess that can kind of fall in the first bucket too. And I just feel like that's just default. I've never questioned it. It takes some time to start questioning the things. So this can be in specific. Actually, this is really feel like this is not gendered too. But it can be our skincare routines.

It can be the makeup we use. It can be the clothing we put on too. All of this is a beautiful self-expression. And all of this is a right. So we put on something that's, colorful and big and, you know, billowy or whatnot, are we doing that because we feel like we should and that's what other people are wearing? Or am I really putting this on because it makes me feel beautiful and powerful? Am I feeling like I have to run and get this really expensive eye

cream to, you know, supposedly stop the creases around my eyes because the creases around my eyes are bad and this is, or am I doing this because it actually does make my skin feel good and I really do believe in it. But it's to take some time to think about all these things we spend our time and not to mention our money on and they can become default and to step back for a second. And it doesn't have to be this huge, like stressful practice. I don't want anybody to go, oh gosh, I have nothing too many things to do in a day. I don't need to do this whole inventory every day. I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying to take a pause and to really reconsider to and even reconsider before you go and buy something new or feel that you have to go buy

something new, who's telling me this story? Where is it coming from? Or am I really feeling drawn to this in a really visceral way? That can be a really, really powerful starting point. And it has been a powerful practice that I can continue to do for myself now. A lot of listeners will be approaching their 40s or already in their 40s and they're carrying a particular identity. So they're the achiever, the caregiver, the one who holds everything together. What does it look like when you start questioning those identities without the whole structure collapsing? It looks like getting closer to yourself.

That looks quite beautiful. That looks, I don't want to say this, but it's true. It looks uncomfortable. It looks inconvenient. But my theory is the things that are most worthwhile in life are inconvenient and uncomfortable. There's beauty that comes with questioning. There's beauty that comes from taking that time to really tap into your deep intuition. and there's risk. And I write about that in the book, too. Risk is a pretty heavy word, right? Risk,

to me, I always used to think of risk as, oh, you know, you do something in the stock market and you either win or lose it all, right? Or you risk, take a huge risk on real estate. And that's all true, too. Risk is a hefty word. We can take quieter risks for ourselves. We can do them daily. We can do them weekly or monthly. It can mean doing things that nobody else even knows too, but it's something that helps us get closer to ourselves. We can pick up a book, a piece of literature, that we know, maybe it's a memoir, that we know it's written by somebody who is going through something similar that maybe you're going through right now. And just to step out of ourselves and learn from the perspective, somebody else's perspective, that's a quiet risk. We can take a half a day off if we're able. And I always want to come to this, too,

that everybody's pressures and work lives and situations are different too. So what are the things that are accessible for us. But is that taking a half a day off and going to some new place an hour away that's totally unfamiliar and just walking around by yourself, is taking a risk, signing up for a fun language class that maybe you can meet somebody new? It's small, but really massive in scope, I think, beautiful ways we can take risks to get closer to ourselves, to help ourselves through this uncomfortable time of sort of relearning and to keep moving forward because we can, what,

What can't happen when we're going through these hard times is we can tend to spin and get stuck. And that's, again, where the movement comes into play, like actual movement. That's where knowing that there's something bigger at play comes into play to really help us, you know, so we can keep moving forward. But, yeah, it's a big one, but I'm right there with you. And for women who feel like they've missed the window, who look at 40 and think it's too late for me to change directions right now, What would you like them to hear? It's not too late. And if you're 50, it's not too late.

And you're 60, it's not too late. And also, I hold you in that self-doubt because that is human. And that is storytelling, whether you realize it or not, that is storytelling telling you that it's too late. But it's not. It never, never is. And going back to what we were talking about earlier about, how do we get closer to ourselves? What are these small things and small risks and changes we can do for ourselves? start there too.

It's never too late. There's an expert I interview in the book, Cindy Darnel. Oh, I have endless reverence for her. She's a therapist. And she talks about these quiet risks that women can take for ourselves. But she mentioned it might even be opening up another bank account that, I mean,

who knows, you can put $5 in that bank account a month. I'm not saying you have to save all this money right away, but just quietly add to that bank account if you need something tangible and let that bank account stand for a change you want to make or stand for a big trip you want to take or stand for something you want to create, whatever it is. That's another change we can do. And that is something we can do at 40, at 43, at 49, at 54, fill in the blank.

And that reminds me of, I cannot remember what it's called, but in the entrepreneurship space, the idea about going from zero to one. Like a lot of the time when we want to, we have an idea, we have a project, we have a product that we want to launch. We're like thinking, how can I get to a thousand? But we are still at zero. But just take that step from zero to one. That's a big step, the bank account having $5 in there.

And then from there you can scale at your own time. There's no pressure. But you have taken that first step. And in essence, you have, you have started that movement that you're talking about. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that you bring that example into this conversation. That's everything. That's so symptomatic of what we're talking about. Absolutely. If I may add something else too to this, it's taking the time, and this is another hard one. It's taking the time to genuinely think about what do I like and what do I want. That's another really hard one. And I argue that can get harder the older we get because life is busy, because we have these stressors. We have these immense responsibilities to care for other people. all these different things. And so it can be revolutionary just to stop and think, what do I want? What do I like? And it can be overwhelming. And I have to say that is a question that has gotten a little more

accessible for me, but I still have to work on it. And I try to do it often too. Where am I at? What do I like? What do I want? What do I want more of? The act of simply asking yourself, you may not have the answer too. You may not know it may take you asking yourself 2,500 times until you finally start to unlock something, but just the act itself can be revolutionary. And that act itself can be moving you in a direction toward more beauty and more self-knowing. But just asking that, it can be everything. What would you say are the downsides of not stopping and reflecting? Like you're talking about asking, what are the downsides if we don't actually take that time to to pause and ask ourselves those questions.

I have to say, I mean, you could argue there aren't downsides in a way because maybe that's easier. I don't want to take that route personally. I mean, this is biased. I would rather live a life that is examined, but heck, that is harder. And sometimes not pausing to reflect might be easier or somebody might not have the time or they might not actually have the awareness until much later in their life. And that is okay. There is no, no judgment here. But I do think that we miss out on some joy when we don't do that.

We miss out on some beauty. We miss out on the potential to stretch ourselves in ways that we can let in more, I can't I already said joy, but more joy, right? There's this idea that, and I just interviewed these two wonderful men, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, and they teach at Stanford. And they talk about designing your life, approaching your life as a design. and they just came out with a new book. They were talking about this idea that we have all these

unlived lives inside of us. And I really kind of weave some of that theme, maybe not explicitly, but it's part of my book too. We contain multitudes. They use the Walt Whitman quote talking about, we contain multitudes. And I believe that. And we quiet those multitudes, too,

in the face of doing all the right things. There is so much more life inside of us than what is ultimately expressed. So if we don't take the time to really look at this, we'll be fine, but we won't be stretched and as full and have as much meaning, I argue, than when we do. I have one of my favorite quotes, and I'm interested to hear what you think of it. If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. And if you do what is hard, your life will be easy.

That just landed right in my heart, absolutely. Because you find flow, I hear that word easy, and I think of flow. Because even when it's quote unquote easy, it still will be hard. We still will have taxes. We still will have mortgages and rent to pay. We still will have people needing us. We'll still have to feed ourselves, right? So I argue it never is fully easy.

But I think that word easy in that context, and I really appreciate that quote. I love that. It's a state of flow. And that's what we're all worthy of. And that's what is interrupted and robbed from us a lot because of modern society. And if we can tap back into that flow, whatever they mean for you, for me, for anybody listening, that's for us to each know. But it's that sense of flow and being connected to our divine internal worlds and then expressing that to the outside world. I love that quote.

Oh, I love it too. I was like, oh, please, hopefully still like resumes. One of the things you also touch on in the book is finances, which is usually something that maybe is not. not spoken about in midlife identity conversations. Why does money belong in this conversation and how does financial clarity and the kind of freedom that you're talking about work together? Money is an expression of what we believe in. Money is an expression of how we live. Money is a fascinating one and talk about a topic that's hard to talk about, right? But I've learned and I have a feeling a lot of people will feel similarly in this. I've learned the hard way that by not advocating for myself

in terms of money, I've really missed out on some joy and some wellness too, because unfortunately, in the capitalistic world we live in, we need money for care. We need money to live. We need money to clothe ourselves. All of it, we need money. But ultimately, that means we need money to, again, take care of ourselves. And it took me a lot of. And it took me a lot. long time. I just would think, I mean, I can't even tell you for decades. I would just say, yep, okay, take whatever it was given to me. I wouldn't question it at all. This is again, the self-worth conversation. If I was able to make just enough for my rent and then in my 20s, I remember, it was a big deal because I made enough for my rent and then I made enough to go out to brunch with

my girlfriends on the weekends. And I thought, this was good. And on one side of that conversation, it's beautiful. I have a lot of tenderness toward my younger self because I felt rich in a lot of ways, because all I wanted to do was be with my girlfriends on the weekends and, you know, work hard. And I was just discovering myself. But we have needs. We have absolutely needs. And again, this is a hard life. And so money is such a fascinating thing, how it can kind of bring out this feeling of greed in people.

People are uncomfortable around it. Oh, my gosh, I don't want to overstep. I don't want to ask too much for myself. But we have to, I think, the shift that's really important that I've made for myself, and I hope other people can too is by honoring our sovereignty around money, by honoring our worth, by asking for more or charging more or whatever it may be, and also for gaining health and clarity around our finances, that extends beyond us. That is taking better care of ourselves, but it also means taking better care for those who are looking up to us. It also means taking care,

better care of those who we love, who are in our orbits. It means setting an example. It has this echo impact. So money is so cradilly important in this conversation. Resilience is at the core for what we talk about on the show. How do you define resilience in the context of midlife? And do you think of it differently at 40 versus when you're 25? I do. I think of it differently now.

I have a deeper, closer connection to resilience because I have the gift of time and the gift of reflection. So when I would say 25, I was resilient. I don't think I realized it, though. I was truly surviving and having some fun, but I was surviving. I was learning about myself. I was learning about the world. I was doing what I had to do to do well at my job, and I had extra jobs on the weekends often, and I was paying my rent.

And again, as I mentioned, trying to have enough money to go out to brunch with my girlfriends and see as much of the world as I could. I was resilient, but didn't have the capacity to really understand it then. And as time has gone by, I've seen how I've faced a lot of things, moved through a lot of hard things, and witness people dear to me do the same too. So I've understood and understand now the incredible beauty of resilience that we have. What it means to me now, first and foremost, is having grace toward myself and for myself. It's grace. The second thing is having grace for the humans around me and at large.

We truly are doing our best. And I think hard actions, evil actions, they can't be justified. But they happen sometimes because people are broken because of the systems around them. They happen because people are hurt by other people. And to understand that and to have grace toward that. And again, I'm not justifying it because some things in this life cannot be talked through or understood totally. I mean, it's heartbreaking. But a lot of things that we see of people around us and even with ourselves is because

we're doing our best and we're trying. And sometimes people crack under that or make bad decisions. But it's having grace toward that and having grace towards humans make mistakes. Life is messy. We're never totally done, baked and done, right? I hope someday, you know, and I hope I have many more decades on this earth. And when I'm a wise older woman sitting there and on a porch maybe, I always envisioned myself on a porch.

At that point, I hope that I'm feeling like, okay, I got this figured out. But I've got a ways to go before then. And I have a lot of resilience to tap into. But ultimately, it's grace. It's having grace toward myself and toward others. And I think you can equate grace to empathy and compassion. And then the other part of it, too, is the resilience is that movement. It is, again, that physical movement of just staying connected with my body in ways that I can,

moving the hard emotions through my body, the grief, the anger, the rage, feeling those when they come up, letting them, pushing through them, but feeling them, and then allowing my heart to open to take in the joy. And the last part of this, too, is resilience is understanding that we can carry many things at the same time. It's not binary. It's not, I'm going through a hard time. I'm going through a grief-filled time, and that's it. It's, I'm going through a hard time. I'm facing something.

I'm feeling a lot of grief. and I also can still laugh. I also can feel joy. I also can be self-aware about a lot of new things, but then have all these new questions too. We can be contradictory inside of us, and that's okay. I'm a little hesitant to ask this question. I've kind of been molling it over. So if you don't, answer it, it's totally okay. But I was curious, so now in terms of after your mother had gone to discover herself, how is, how was the relationship put there when you're now in adult? It's beautiful. And it's beautiful because my husband reflects this to me often. He'll spend time with us and he'll reflect it back to me. He'll say you have a beautiful relationship with your mother and I've seen the work that you've put into it. It's beautiful because we meet each other where we are now. I have done a lot of work to let things, not let them go, but to face them, to do my own work around them. So the things about the anger I've had toward her, the disappointment, the feeling like I was abandoned. to really process that in my own time, but then to let in all the beautiful things that we do have

with each other. I love spending time with her. She's brilliant. She is so funny and she's got a massively big heart. And also the sad part of that story is she carries guilt and I don't want her to. That's part of her journey, but she carries a lot of guilt. But with that pain in her change and her decision, a lot of learning early on came from it for me. And I'm grateful for that too. So I have to say our relationship now is, it's the best. It's great. It's great. And also, too, when I find myself getting triggered, I think, okay, she's doing the best she can. I'm going to give her grace and I'm going to give myself grace too, right? It is not cookie cutter by any means. But it's focused on love and it's focused on gratitude. We got to this place. Many decades later, we are now at this beautiful place and I'm not going to take that for granted. That is beautiful. That is so beautiful. Thank you for asking. Oh, I'm glad I actually did ask.

The book already received remarkable endorsement from Maria Shriver, who said that it gave a voice to what women carry quietly. What do you hope every woman who reads your book gets when she closes that last page of being 40? I hope she feels closer to herself. I hope she knows that anything. and everything she has been feeling and is feeling in that moment, she is not alone. There is another woman out there, most likely many, many other women out there who are feeling something similar and can relate. And that's the beauty when we open up with each other. We start to see, oh, wow, it's not just me. I'm a human like everybody else. I'm going through this. So many people are too. So I hope the woman feels closer to herself. I hope she feels aligned with her integrity and her

values and her mistakes and her yearnings and her messiness. I hope she feels in the company of other women because that's a very important thing too. It's very sad that we still are facing immense loneliness in this world. I have experienced it myself. It's something we have to be very, very proactive about too because our culture is just not set up where we're all together and we're helping raise each other's kids and we're sharing meals all the time. It's just not and I wish it would turn toward that. I want that. So we have to be proactive with seeing people and getting out in the world. And sometimes that's not a reality for some people due to fear or just capabilities or where they actually live. But to be in community in a sense through a book, through podcasts such as this,

through other conversations, that can be really emboldening. And so I hope a woman feels in connection with community when she puts the book down. And ultimately, too, I just hope she feels excited. She may have made some decisions that she won't make again. She may have done things. She thought, why did I do this? Or how did I get here? But then also, too, this is just the start now. This is the start for the rest of your day.

This is a start for the rest of the week. This is a start for the rest of this decade. So grab it because it's not too late. And give yourself grace. For the listeners who want to connect with you, want to find your book, where can they find you? Yes. So you can find me on my website, stacylindsay.com. And if you're interested in the book, you can find a link there to order it.

You can find me on social media too on Instagram at Stacey Lindsay. And if you see me out and about, please come and say hi because I'd love to have a conversation. Perfect. And we're going to add all those links in the show notes. Stacey, thank you for sharing your message, your perspective. It was truly amazing to hear from you. This has been an absolute gift to sit with you and to be asked these beautiful questions. Thank you.

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