When I launched the ‘5-minutes with…’ series back in February, I had a simple hope: that honest voices would find each other.
I didn’t know it would become what it did. I didn’t know that a single interview about letting go of what no longer serves you would land in someone’s chest at exactly the right moment. I didn’t know that a man writing about fear, softness, and a new kind of strength would shift something for women and men alike. I didn’t know that across twenty-seven conversations, a thread would emerge so consistently it felt less like a coincidence and more like truth.
Here’s what I kept hearing, in different languages, different seasons, different lives: “I thought I was the only one.” And then: “I’m not.”
That’s the whole point, really. That’s why this series existed. Because when one woman tells the truth, another woman exhales. And apparently, when one man does too.
So before I close this chapter, I want to give each voice its moment. These are the words that stayed with me. The ones I underlined. The ones I read twice.
Nat Sang on finally valuing herself beyond what she produces:
“I’m unlearning that my worth is not tied to position or earnings. I now measure my worth and my value in life experiences.”
5-minutes with... Nat Sang
At 52, Nat Sang is in what she calls a major identity shift season, and honestly, you can feel the clarity in every answer. After another corporate layoff, she stopped measuring her life by titles and earnings and started prioritising something far more radical: joy, peace of mind, and self-care. In this conversation, Nat speaks about the surprising hon…
Simon Salt on the quiet turning point that changed everything:
“The biggest mindset change was embracing my feminine energy. To see it, not as a weakness, but as a different kind of strength.”
5-minutes with... Simon Salt
Simon Salt is the kind of man midlife needs more of: thoughtful, honest, and quietly brave. A British expat living in Texas, Simon is a writer, freelance commercial photographer, and yoga teacher, and he’s in what he describes as a season of enlightenment, shedding old identities and softening his grip on what he once chased.
Liz Benditt on the contradiction no one prepares you for:
“No one really talks about grieving the body you used to have, while also being profoundly grateful you’re still here. That emotional contradiction is real.”
5-minutes with... Liz Benditt
Liz Benditt doesn’t do platitudes. She’s a six-time cancer survivor, founder of The Balm Box, mum of two, and a woman who has rebuilt her body and identity more times than most of us can comprehend. In this season of midlife, she’s not interested in bouncing back. She’s interested in reclamation. With humour. With power. With a very clear sense of what …
Vanessa Novissimo Wright on midlife as a portal, not a breakdown:
“Midlife and menopause are unique and powerful portals to a creative and beautiful version of yourself. Stay curious. Stay connected to yourself, to your friends, to your creativity, and to your joy.”
5-minutes with... Vanessa Wright
Vanessa Novissimo Wright is 51, post-menopausal, and in what she beautifully calls a season of becoming and unbecoming. A writer, creative communications strategist, and certified life coach, she has spent the past two years navigating career shifts, launching young adult children, and recommitting to her own creative life. But even with years of writing and speaking about per…
Diane ~ Healing Sounds 🎧 on what we were taught to swallow, and what it costs us:
“Many of us have been taught from a young age to be a ‘good girl’, stay quiet, look after everyone else first, don’t complain, keep smiling, push through the pain. That, in my opinion, is lunacy.”
5-minutes with... Diane Langlois
Diane Langlois has the kind of grounded wisdom you can feel before you even finish the first paragraph. She’s 60, a mum to six, a grandmother to twelve, and a lifelong learner who now guides others through sound and frequency healing. Her answers carry that beautiful mix of softness and strength that comes from living a lot of life: raising children, we…
Heather Sweeney on what she’d tell the woman who was about to change her own life:
“I would tell her to keep going, that the struggles of divorce would be so worth it. And I promise you won’t just survive after divorce, you’ll thrive.”
5-minutes with... Heather Sweeney
Heather Sweeney is turning 50 this year, postmenopausal, newly settled into a life she consciously chose, and writing her next chapter in more ways than one. An author, mother of two young adults, and proud owner of a geriatric Labrador, Heather knows what it means to rebuild from the inside out. In this conversation, she speaks candidly about navigating divorce, the …
Jessica Dickson on the quiet wisdom that comes out the other side:
“We don’t have the body, the looks, and the energy of our youth, but we do eventually get to a place of calm and wisdom that is a gift to cherish.”
5-minutes with... Jessica Dickson
Jessica Dickson is 53 and standing on that familiar edge so many of us reach in midlife: the verge of menopause, where your body starts doing things you didn’t sign up for and your mind feels like it’s running different software overnight. She genuinely believed that eating well and taking care of herself would mean an easy ride through perimenopause, a…
Hady Méndez on refusing to let ageing be a shrinking:
“I’ve learned to worry less about who’s watching and care more about the sense of joy in my heart. I need to find myself interesting. I need to surprise myself from time to time.”
5-minutes with... Hady Méndez
Hady Méndez is the kind of woman who makes you sit up straighter. She’s a single, child-free digital nomad currently based in Madrid, originally from NYC, the youngest of four sisters, and proudly Nuyorican. After 25+ years in corporate, she’s now the founder and CEO of
Amanda | 40 & Giving Zero F’s on the rules that have stopped fitting:
“You don’t have to blow up your life to change it. But you also don’t have to keep shrinking, smoothing, or squeezing yourself into something that feels wrong now.”
5-minutes with... Amanda Luppino-Esposito
Amanda | 40 & Zero F’s is a writer, a working mum, and newly arrived in midlife with a perspective that feels like a breath of fresh air. When she turned 40 last year, she started her newsletter 40 and Giving Zero F’s not as a joke, but as a philosophy: midlife as a beginning, not an ending. In this conversation, Amanda talks about the surprise of feeling more confident, sex…
Laurie Flynn on the paradox that surprised her most:
“Just as my body became less certain, I became more so.”
5-Minutes with... Laurie Flynn
Laurie Flynn (My Menossance) is 53, divorced, a mother of two grown boys, and living in Boston somewhere in what she brilliantly calls the Menoverse: peri, meno, who even knows anymore, but she’s definitely in the thick of it. By day, she leads an elementary literacy nonprofit that’s donated over a million books to children and schools in need; alongside that, she’s…
Alison Bame on the gap between surviving and actually healing:
“I didn’t want to just be alive; I wanted to feel strong, clear, whole.”
5-minutes with... Alison Bame
Alison Bame is a Registered Dietitian, Functional Medicine Practitioner, and a woman who has lived through cancer, early menopause, and the quiet, gritty work of rebuilding from the inside out. She’s not in a performative midlife. She’s in a reclamation season: no hustle, no chasing 35, no proving. Just a deep commitment to feeling strong, clear, resilient, and tr…
Marc Dupont on what midlife asked of him, honestly:
“Midlife didn’t so much make me softer as it made me harder to hide.”
5-minutes with... Marc Dupont
Marc Dupont doesn’t do neat labels and honestly, thank God for that. He’s a French Canadian strategist and writer, an endurance triathlete and hiker, a foodie and sommelier, a traveller, a father, a husband, and the human to Rocket the dog. Work is still demanding. He’s still ambitious. He still competes hard. But he’s in a season where proving matters less than b…
Lana Antonova on what matters more than noise:
“Depth is more important to me than noise. Your desire for real conversation, real connection, and real understanding is not a weakness. It’s maturity.”
5-minutes with... Lana Antonova
Lana Antonova is the founder and creative director of Webvixxen Design, and a multi-founder across several ventures, but what I love most about her is the language she uses for this chapter: not reinvention, but refinement. Lana is in what she calls the reclamation season of midlife, a season where she’s no longer performing but aligning. Clearer. Less …
Rachel Radway on the unexpected self-discoveries this season can bring:
“I learned in my early 50s that I’m neurodivergent, and that I’ve been masking all my life. So I’m unlearning that, peeling away all those layers that I built up over decades. None of us can do this alone.”
5-minutes with... Rachel Radway
Rachel Radway is a leadership and executive coach, multi-award-winning author, speaker, and consultant, currently in her mid-50s and still, very relatably, surprised every time something age-related pops up. In this conversation, Rachel shares how midlife can sneak up on you: you still feel young on the inside, then you move house like you’ve done a hun…
Jessica Corwin on what midlife actually is:
“Midlife isn’t the end of something. It’s the refinement of everything.”
5-minutes with... Jessica Corwin
Jessica Corwin is a registered dietitian, women’s health coach, mum of three, and a few years into perimenopause, which means she’s living the work as much as she’s teaching it. She supports women through this transition all day, then goes home and navigates the same shifting ground herself. In this conversation, Jessica names what so many women feel bu…
Julia Schlam Edelman on what she’d tell her younger self:
“Schedule quiet time regularly. Identify what you find rewarding. And take steps to start doing it.”
5-minutes with... Julia Schlam Edelman
Dr Julia Schlam Edelman is moving from midlife into post-menopause with the kind of clarity that only comes from living it while carrying everyone else too. A physician and women’s health advocate, she experienced firsthand the intense squeeze of the sandwich generation: teenage children, ageing parents, career demands, a working spouse, and a body quie…
Linda Cooper on the in-between that so many women quietly navigate:
“You are no longer the person you once were, but you are not yet fully the woman you are becoming… What I have come to understand is that this in-between space is not emptiness. It is a threshold.”
5-minutes with... Linda Cooper
Linda Cooper is a writer, guide, and what she beautifully calls a story midwife: someone who helps women make sense of what midlife awakens in them. She’s the author of When EVERYTHING Changes: The Midlife Collision of Body and Life, as well as The Conscious Coach
Paul Strobl on what men rarely admit out loud:
“Many men built themselves around usefulness. Then one day, the external demands ease a bit, and they realise they don’t know who they are without being needed.”
5-minutes with... Paul Strobl
Paul Strobl is 52, American, and living in a small mountain village in Bulgaria near the Greek border, coaching mostly U.S.-based clients from a stone house older than his home country. He’s also lived in Argentina, studied anthropology, earned an MBA, and brings the kind of perspective that only comes from both movement and reflection. What I love about Paul’s an…
Dr Trina Read on the permission to loosen your grip:
“You don’t have to grip life so tightly.”
5-minutes with... Dr Trina Read
Dr Trina Read is a Canadian sexologist and best-selling, award-winning author. She’s 57, married, raising two teenage boys, and a year past her final period, and she describes this season with a word I love: recalibration. Not reinvention. Refinement. Her body has changed, her energy has changed, and even her ambition has changed shape. In this conversation, Trin…
Kath Cheng|Her MidWay on wanting more without apology:
“You can love your life and still feel the pull for more; that doesn’t make you selfish, it makes you alive.”
5-minutes with... Kath Cheng
Kath Cheng|Her MidWay mentors midlife women, but not because she set out to. It began as her own quiet questioning, that low-level restlessness so many of us try to dismiss because nothing is technically wrong. Her life looked fine from the outside: responsible, steady, sensible. And yet something inside her kept whispering, “
Allison Chawla on ageing as a gift:
“Ageing isn’t a curse. It’s a gift. And I’m just now starting to unwrap it.”
5-minutes with... Allison Chawla
Allison Chawla is a psychotherapist who works mostly with young and middle-aged women, a mother, and a teacher of Buddhism who spends much of her time travelling with Thai monks, which already tells you she’s living life with depth and perspective. She’s just turned 49 and is now 12 months without a period, officially in menopause. In this conversation,…
Grace & Grit Letters - Where grace meets grief by Angie Hanson on approval versus peace:
“The approval you’re chasing won’t matter nearly as much as the peace you’re postponing.”
5-minutes with... Angie Hanson
Angie Hanson (Grace and Grit Letters) is a writer, grief educator, and the founder of Butterflies + Halos, a stationery brand and community that speaks hope into grieving hearts. She’s 53, lives in Nebraska with her husband, and has the kind of presence that can only come from having been cracked open by life and choosing to create meaning anyway. Midlife, for Angie, hasn’t …
Jennifer Gularson on protecting your peace:
“Perhaps most importantly, I’m learning that protecting my peace isn’t weakness; it’s wisdom.”
5-minutes with... Jennifer Gularson
Jennifer Gularson is a Physician Assistant specialising in functional and integrative medicine, with a particular focus on hormone replacement and women’s health, and she’s also a woman living the exact transition she supports others through. She’s an empty nester now, which she describes as surreal and deeply empowering: her 30s were devoted to raising…
Corry Matthews on what waits on the other side:
“Once I reached menopause, I realised I had made it through that challenging phase, and life feels expansive and full of possibility on the other side.”
5-minutes with... Corry Matthews
Corry Matthews is a wife, a mum, and a fitness and nutrition expert who’s spent the past 25 years helping women feel strong in their bodies. She’s a former bodybuilder who still competes in bodybuilding shows, and she’s also building a real-life community through events that help women thrive in the South Bay. What makes Corry’s story especially powerfu…
Jen Rigley on writing a new story:
“They are not alone in this journey we call life, especially in midlife. You can create a new story for your life; it’s never too late.”
5-minutes with Jen Rigley
Jen Rigley is the founder of Flourishing Over Fifty®, a mum of three grown daughters, a new grandmother, and a woman in a season of profound transition. She’s leaving behind the years of managing her children’s lives and stepping into grandmotherhood while also building a new career as a motivational speaker, which already tells you this chapter is anything but q…
Daphne Ogle, New Era Midwife on reclamation:
“Midlife, for me, has been less about becoming someone new and more about coming home to the woman who was always there.”
5-minutes with... Daphne Ogle
Daphne Ogle-Glenn is a woman-centred transformational coach, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who helps women in midlife shed the roles and masks they’ve carried for decades and reconnect with the wisdom already living within them. Before this work, she spent years in user experience design and strategy, helping organisations understand people more deeply, and now s…
chris kalaboukis on realising he had already succeeded:
“I realised at one point that even though I was still trying hard to succeed, I neglected to look back and notice that in some ways, I had already succeeded.”
5-minutes with... Chris Kalaboukis
I’ll admit, when I started this series, I wasn’t sure men would want to talk about midlife the way women do. So openly. So willing to admit where it’s actually landing.
Judith Anders on the fact that there isn’t one midlife story:
“There is a wide range of experiences. Some women have difficult symptoms, some don’t, and both are normal. It is not one single story.”
5-minutes with Judith Anders
Judith Anders is a podiatrist, a mum, a grandmother, and a woman living a version of midlife we don’t hear about nearly enough. She’s in what she describes as a steady, active season: running a business, staying physically strong, and moving through daily life with a grounded sense of health and balance. What stands out in Judith’s story is not upheaval…
Twenty-eight conversations. Dozens of truths. One theme running through all of them:
“We are not falling apart, we are becoming more honest, more discerning, more ourselves.”
This series was never meant to run forever; it was a season, and like all seasons, it had its own natural end. But what it gave me, and I hope it gave you, is a deeper sense that the midlife chapter, in all its complexity, confusion, grief, and possibility, is being lived consciously by so many people, right now, alongside you.
You don’t have to white-knuckle your way through it alone; you don’t have to stay quiet about the hard parts, and you definitely don’t have to shrink the parts of you that are still, quietly, fiercely unfolding.
Thank you to every person who said yes to these questions. Who answered with honesty rather than performance. Who trusted that their real story, the one without the polished edges, was exactly the one someone else needed to hear.
It was, it always is.
If any of these interviews resonated with you, go back and read them in full. Leave a comment for the person who told you the truth you needed.
Reach out. Connect. That’s the whole point.
More conversations coming, just in a different form → #85WeeksToFifty
Kiran x
What a beautiful and meaningful project. Thanks for letting me be a part of it!
What a beautiful project. Thank you for creating and nurturing it, Kiran!
I'm really feeling this collective need to share our stories as a way to know we aren't alone and to learn about ourselves and what's next in our life from and with each other.