This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - On Sabbaticals, Reinvention, and Getting Older | Unfiltered & Unhinged

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

What happens when a woman who’s spent her entire life optimizing, producing, planning, and performing… decides to stop? In this unfiltered solo episode, Nicole Kalil shares the real reason behind her 3-month sabbatical across Europe — and it’s about a whole lot more than travel. Nicole opens up about the fear of untethering from productivity, the discomfort of rest, aging as a woman, solo dining anxiety, motherhood, identity, and what it means to leave behind the familiar long enough to uncover who you’re becoming next. Because maybe the things that scare and excite us at the exact same time are the very things pointing us toward the life we actually want. In This Episode, Nicole Talks About: Why she’s taking an 11-week sabbatical through Europe Turning 50 and why aging feels liberating instead of limiting The pressure women face to stay small, young, and polished Why slowing down can feel terrifying The power of doing something “impractical” anyway Rediscovering yourself by leaving the familiar behind What envy and jealousy might actually be trying to tell you Thank you to our sponsors! Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free! Families are better when they’re working together… go to myskylight.com/WOMANSWORK for $30 off your Skylight Calendar. Become a Fora Advisor today at Foratravel.com/woman  Connect with Nicole: Subscribe to Nicole’s Substack: https://nicolekalil.substack.com/  Related Podcast Episode: When a One-Star Review Means You’ve Officially Arrived | Unfiltered & Unhinged How To Take A Sabbatical with Katrina McGhee | 336 Solo Adventures: A Guide for Women Travelers with Megan Grant | 265  Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For over a hundred years, the world has been captivated by Hollywood. The stuff that dreams are made of. Where stars are born. Made it both! But just beneath the stardust lie a million more fascinating stories, that when sewn together, form an incredible history. The secret history of Hollywood. Available now, wherever you get podcasts.

I am Nicole Khalil, and you're listening to the This Isle. This is Woman's Work podcast, the unfiltered and unhinged edition. Short episodes, big truths, absolutely zero perfection. And friend, I got to tell you, I am the most excited that as you're listening to this episode, I am starting my three months sabbatical, which has led to lots of questions, mostly about the where and the how. But I also want to tell you about the part that matters most, the part that I'm most nervous to talk about. And that's the why. So let me warm up or get started with the easy stuff. It's the where and the how, right? For 11 weeks, I will be living around Europe. I'm starting in the south of France with Jay for about 10 days, which is my way of acknowledging

that maybe going directly from batch recording multiple podcast episodes, so you still have great content to listen to you, and all these color-coded calendars to completely untethered human with absolutely nothing to do might break my brain a little, because I have taken vacations before, but I have never taken nearly three months off from work while also living away from home. So I needed it to start as a vacation as a way to transition or sort of like ease my way in. So we're going from the south of France and then I head to Portugal, Spain, Italy, back to France, Belgium, Luxembourg, because small countries deserve some love to Denmark and Iceland. And some of it will be solo, some of it with JJ, some of it with Jay, some with my mom, my sister and her sweet little family are coming for a

week and some friends and even a few podcast guests that I'll get to meet in real life, which I'm super excited about. There will be some amazing hotels, obviously. And yes, I'll probably share them on my ridiculous little hotel snob approved Instagram account, which is dedicated to excellent hotels and my number one toxic trait. And we'll put the link to that in show notes if you are a hotel snob to you and are looking to add some to your bucket list. But anyway, yes, I will be staying at hotels. But there will also be apartments and Airbnbs because the point. isn't to feel like I'm on vacation for 11 weeks. The point is to experience life differently and also because it's budget. So I anticipate that there will be cheese and bread in whatever

form each country wants to present it to me. There will be wine. There will be books, technically a Kindle, which hurts my soul a little because I'm emphatically a book person, but lugging 14 hardcoveres across Europe was starting to feel like a cry for help. I suspect that there will be one cafe a day minimum. many walks where I've absolutely no clue where I am or where I'm going. A few historical tours, a few food tours, because learning and eating are my favorite hobbies. But beyond that, I have no idea. And my days are mostly not at all full, which is both the whole point and pretty terrifying. And if I have a funny story or an embarrassing story or most likely an

embarrassingly funny story, I may pop into my substack and share it and we'll also put that link in show notes. But other than having an epiphany or a rant or some life-changing realization while eating butter in a French cafe, there are no commitments. There are no timelines, no pressure to produce anything meaningful from any of it. Because the why behind the sabbatical matters so much more than the itinerary ever could. It's a combination of many things, a long-held wish to live abroad, even briefly, a celebration of turning 50 years old and forgive me a tangent, but if you know me, you know that I genuinely love getting older. I love the clarity of knowing what matters and caring less about everything else. I love feeling more comfortable in my

own skin. And I also love this invisibility that comes with getting older as a woman, which I know isn't everyone's experience. But maybe because I spent so much of my teens and 20s and even early 30s feeling watched and evaluated, noticed, commented on, I find it all kind of freeing. You mean, I get to walk into a room and not immediately feel some guy's eyes drift toward my boobs? I can go out without makeup and get two shits about what I look like and not care what anyone thinks. I mean, sign me the fuck up for that. And maybe because of that, I've become increasingly impatient with how often women's conversations still circle back to perfecting and shrinking ourselves. The weight we're trying to lose, the things we're not eating or are eating, the creams, the serums, the procedures,

the endless pursuit of younger, tighter, and smaller. I am so bored by it. And I'm so glad that I am. Because instead of all of that, on my trip, I'm going to eat with desire and abandon. I'm going to experience. I'm going to wander, rest, notice things, make memories. I want this time with my daughter during what may very well be the last stretch of years where she actually wants to spend time with me voluntarily because she's a preteen. And if you have one, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I want to go slow. I want to see what happens when my days aren't dictated by productivity, expectations, deadlines, or obligations. And that's also the part that scares the shit out of me. Without the supposed tos and the perfectly optimized calendar, will I even know what to do with myself?

Will I finally get the courage to go sit at a restaurant alone without feeling weird about it? Which, by the way, is ridiculous because I love being alone. I'm an introvert. But eating alone in public has always made me uncomfortable. Will I figure out my ideal sleep schedule? And is it really 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. as I've always suspected. Will I discover something that changes how I see the world or how I see myself? Will I not want to come back?

Will I question everything? And the answer to all that is maybe. But here's what I do know. Whenever I've watched somebody take a sabbatical or move abroad or disappear for a while or radically slow down or change their life, my immediate reaction has always been some version of envy or jealousy. and I genuinely don't know which is technically correct here, and I refuse to Google it, so it is what it is.

But I do know either and both of those feelings usually point towards something important. They reveal a desire, longing, inner knowing, truth, and I've learned to pay attention to it. So I'm doing it, excited and scared, which now that I think about it is exactly how I've done everything worth doing in my life. So I'm off.

and maybe I'll meet you back here in the in-betweens, but before I go, I want to invite you to explore, to go slow, to do something you've always wanted to do, no matter how impractical, impossible, or irresponsible it may seem. The thing that other people get to do or have, but not you, because what if it is meant for you? The thing that other people get to do or have, but you always think is not for you.

Because what if it is? What if it is meant for you? What if the things that make us uncomfortable and excited at the exact same time are actually pointing us towards something important? And what if we listen? I don't know exactly who I'll be when I come back, but it is worth finding out for all of us. Because discovering and rediscovering who you are and continuing to uncover who you can become requires us to leave the familiar every once in a while, to stop staying small and safe and the same.

There is so much of ourselves left to meet. So let's go meet her, because that, my friend, is woman's work.