The Room Between: Navigating Life's Transitions

Dr. Nicole Yeldell Butts
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

The Room Between is a podcast and community for women navigating life’s transitions — the personal ones, the professional ones, the expected ones, and the unexpected ones. It explores what happens in the space between who we’ve been and who we are becoming, and how we move through that space with consciousness, courage, alignment, and self-trust so we do not simply survive transition, but emerge transformed and unapologetically thriving.

Episodes

  1. 4d ago ·  Video

    Your Body Already Knows: Dr. Nikki Arguinzoni-Gil on Menopause, Breast Cancer, and Trusting Yourself

    For five years, Dr. Nicole asked her doctors to check her hormones and heard the same answer: they’re fine. She was exhausted, losing her words mid-sentence, and having anxiety attacks for the first time in her life. Then came the afternoon she collapsed on her couch with nothing left and no explanation. Her naturopathic physician, Dr. Nicole Arguinzoni-Gil (Dr. Nikki), explains what was really happening and the internal transitions every woman will face. Then Dr. Nikki shares a story she has never told publicly: her own breast cancer, found with no lump, only an itch and a feeling she tried to talk herself out of. Together they talk about trusting what your body already knows before anyone confirms it, learning to ask for help, and owning who you are at this stage of life. In this episode: The real difference between perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause, and why treating them the same can backfire What estradiol, progesterone and testosterone each do, and why low testosterone can take your drive with it Why so many women are dismissed when they report hormonal symptoms How Dr. Nikki’s instinct, with no lump, led her to the ultrasound that found her cancer Self-advocacy, second opinions, and trusting yourself when something feels wrong Letting go, surrendering, and learning to receive Disclosure: Dr. Nikki is Dr. Nicole’s own physician. Neither receives any compensation or affiliate benefit for this conversation. Medical disclaimer: This episode is for education and conversation, not medical advice. Hormone therapy is not right for everyone. Talk with your own licensed clinician about any symptoms, testing or treatment, and see a doctor promptly about any change in your breasts, including changes without a lump. Chapters (00:00:00) - Introduction: Navigating Life's Transitions(00:01:53) - Dr. Nicole's Burnout Story(00:03:59) - Defining Perimenopause vs Menopause(00:08:04) - When Doctors Dismiss Your Symptoms(00:09:22) - Society, Aging, and Owning Who You Are(00:12:02) - Reclaiming Life After Hormone Support(00:12:48) - Estrogen, Progesterone, and Testosterone Explained(00:15:51) - Before and After: Patient Transformations(00:18:59) - Why Perimenopause and Menopause Need Different Treatment(00:21:36) - Adrenal Health and Listening to Your Body(00:23:19) - Dr. Nikki's Caregiving Years and Mother's Passing(00:24:52) - Discovering the Breast Lump(00:29:27) - Second Opinion Changes Everything(00:30:56) - Facing Cancer with Faith and Courage(00:34:54) - Crying on the Radiation Table(00:36:11) - Lessons in Self-Love and Living Your Truth(00:38:29) - Overlap Between Cancer Journey and Patient Work(00:41:00) - Learning to Ask for Help(00:43:46) - Let Go, Surrender, and Receive(00:46:53) - How to Find Dr. Nikki and Closing Thoughts

  2. Oct 6 ·  Video

    Glimmers: The Nervous System Path to Unapologetic Thriving

    When life changes, whether it’s a new career, a loss, a new chapter, or a season of becoming, we tend to treat transition as something we figure out in our heads. But you don’t go through transition in your mind alone. Your body moves through it with you. It carries the stress, the uncertainty, and every past overwhelm it never had the chance to release. So the tools and resources you bring into your transition need to support your body, not just your mind. In this episode of The Room: Navigating Life’s Transitions, Dr. Nicole Yeldell Butts welcomes somatic experiencing practitioner and trauma healer Ife Mora to explore what happens in our bodies during life’s chrysalis seasons. Ife shares that while we tell ourselves stories and perform “I’m fine,” our nervous systems are often bracing, numbing, and stuck in survival mode. Together they talk about how the body holds what we’ve been through, why women of color in particular often live in constant survival physiology, and how that shows up as tight shoulders, a locked jaw, restless sleep, gut issues, and chronic pain. They unpack weathering, the Superwoman schema, the difference between being regulated and being numb, and why real resilience isn’t about taking it all. It’s about your body’s ability to return to baseline. Most importantly, you’ll leave with practical tools and resources for your transition that you can use right away. Ife guides three live practices: a body scan to drop your mind into your body, a vagus nerve toning exercise,  and a healthy pride exercise to help you move from shrinking to unapologetic thriving. Dr. Nicole also shares the everyday practices that support her own nervous system: grounding barefoot in the grass and a morning ritual of orienting to safety before her day begins. Because you can’t thrive in survival mode, but you can find your glimmers. In this episode: What somatic healing is, and where it came from How trauma and chronic stress show up as gut issues, chronic pain, poor sleep, and reactivity Why systemic oppression registers as a threat in the body, even when the mind says otherwise Regulated vs. numb: recognizing “faux resilience” The vagus nerve, glimmers, and the polyvagal ladder Co-regulation with our children, partners, and communities Healthy feminine rage, safe rest, and healthy pride Chapters (00:00:00) - Introduction and Welcome to the Room(00:01:05) - Body Scan Exercise with Ife(00:05:02) - Why Ife Joined: Somatic Work and Women in Transition(00:07:50) - Defining Somatic Healing and Its Origins(00:10:17) - Peter Levine, Trauma, and the Autonomic Nervous System(00:13:12) - Trauma, Identity, and Women of Color(00:19:59) - Survival Physiology vs. Embodied Presence(00:22:14) - Weathering, Health, and the Superwoman Schema(00:25:03) - The Vagus Nerve Explained(00:27:11) - Toning the Vagus Nerve: Vooing Exercise(00:36:56) - Personal Story: Dysregulation at 3am(00:40:23) - Resilience Redefined and Ancestral Patterns(00:41:49) - Ife's Own Trauma and Healing Journey(00:45:46) - Faux Resilience and the Window of Tolerance(00:51:15) - Building True Resilience and Agency(00:55:23) - Safety, Rest, and Healthy Rage(00:57:30) - Orienting to Safety and Gratitude Practice(01:01:15) - Healthy Pride Exercise(01:05:49) - Healing, Transmutation, and Closing Thoughts(01:08:01) - How to Find Ife and Episode Close

    Glimmers: The Nervous System Path to Unapologetic Thriving

  3. Sep 30 ·  Video

    She Didn't Want to Feel. She Wanted to Fix

    Monikka Stallworth didn't set out to make an exhibition. She set out to stop hiding. In 2016, within moments of her mother's death, a sentence arrived that she couldn't shake: life is for living. It took years to understand what that sentence was asking of her, and years more before she could show anyone the photographs she'd taken of the woman she had spent decades keeping secret. In this conversation, the artist behind Met Mo For This talks with Dr. Nicole about the long middle: the marriage she tried everything to save, a habit she hid from nearly everyone, the night she cut off more than a decade of locs while on the phone with her mother's best friend, and a poem that came to her at the least poetic moment imaginable. Along the way, she makes a case you don't often hear about transformation. Before anything can change, she argues, you need somewhere safe enough to let it, the way a caterpillar finds a protected place before it ever becomes a chrysalis. This is an episode about the difference between fixing and feeling, what grief sets in motion without asking permission, and what it means to reclaim the parts of yourself you were taught to be ashamed of. Monikka also reads her poem "Feel" in full. Chapters (00:00:00) - Intro and Welcome to The Room(00:01:26) - Introducing Monika Stallworth and Her Exhibit(00:02:06) - Mother's Passing and the Message 'Life is for Living'(00:03:33) - Filing for Divorce and the Need for Safety(00:05:13) - Finding Safety Through Creativity and Butterflies(00:07:29) - The Poem That Came to Her(00:09:23) - Hiding Shame Around Smoking(00:10:31) - Safety as the Chrysalis Condition for Change(00:12:08) - What Happened Between 2016 and 2021(00:14:41) - Mother and Grandmother as Supplemental Love(00:17:25) - Therapy, Listening, and Feeling Her Feelings(00:19:51) - Submitting Desires and Learning Self-Compassion(00:21:12) - The 50th Birthday Portrait Session(00:23:13) - Being Honest About Smoking and Receiving Compassion(00:24:31) - Capturing the Transformation in Photographs(00:26:18) - Her Father's Quiet Compassion(00:27:59) - Cutting Off Her Dreadlocks After Loss(00:31:52) - Losing Weight and Confirmation at the Courthouse(00:33:14) - Identity, Marriage, and the Shame of Single Motherhood(00:39:07) - Reading the Poem 'Feel'(00:44:27) - Stillness, Marinating, and Understanding the Space Between(00:45:47) - Reclaiming Creativity and Giving Herself Permission(00:49:19) - The Value of the Chrysalis Process Itself(00:52:56) - What She Had to Release(00:54:23) - Still in Transition: Be Still and Know(00:58:51) - Compassion, Reclaiming Yourself, and Final Wisdom(01:02:43) - Where to Find Monika and Closing Thoughts

    She Didn't Want to Feel. She Wanted to Fix

  4. Sep 22 ·  Video

    Self-Honoring Choices: Culturally Specific Self-Care for Black Women

    Correction: In this episode, Dr. Jean Pennicooke states that seven of the eight reassigned administrators were Black women. The accurate figure is six. We regret the error and have corrected it in these show notes; the audio/video remains as recorded. "Self-honoring choices" — that's the phrase Dr. Nicole and Dr. Jean Pennicooke return to in this conversation about culturally specific self-care. Dr. Jean coined the term after watching seven Black women principals reassigned in a single afternoon, and realizing the self-care advice she'd been given her whole life was never built for what she was actually carrying. Together, they name three things most women have felt but never had language for — weathering, other mothering, and secondhand trauma — and talk through what it looks like to honor yourself before you're depleted, not after. Chapters (00:00:00) - Intro and welcome to the room in between(00:01:42) - Meet Dr. Jean Pennycook(00:02:33) - The reassignment incident that sparked the dissertation. Correction: Dr. Jean Pennicooke states seven of eight reassigned administrators were Black women; the accurate figure is six of the eight(00:05:42) - Defining culturally specific self care(00:06:56) - Weathering, other mothering, and secondhand trauma(00:10:31) - Vicarious trauma and internalizing societal pain(00:12:02) - Three pillars: sister circles, spirituality, mentoring(00:14:56) - The power of sister circles as social self care(00:17:22) - Self care versus maintenance(00:19:17) - Self care as stewardship, not luxury(00:21:30) - Reflections from the book Shift and proactive renewal(00:23:43) - Boundaries and self-honoring choices(00:25:50) - The cost of neglecting health and losing colleagues(00:27:31) - Microaggressions and disrespect in leadership roles(00:29:13) - Spiritual self care and sitting with your truth(00:31:26) - Struggle, greatness, and the dichotomy of black women(00:33:09) - Healing versus survival(00:34:45) - Rest is resistance(00:36:37) - Closing thoughts and how to honor yourself daily(00:38:04) - Contact info and closing remarks

    Self-Honoring Choices: Culturally Specific Self-Care for Black Women

  5. Sep 15 ·  Video

    Moving From "Why Me?" to "What's Next?"

    For fifteen years, Tiana Sanchez ran a training and development firm with Fortune 500 clients, a team of coaches and consultants, and revenue that grew 454% over four years. Then, in the space of about a week, most of it fell away. Contracts canceled. Clients stopped responding. The public version of Tiana's life stayed exactly the same — the speaking engagements, the recycled photos, the "you're doing so well." The private version didn't. This conversation lives inside the gap between those two versions. Tiana talks about what it actually took to move her family out of necessity rather than choice, why she kept the unraveling hidden for almost a year before posting about it, and what a seven-day water fast taught her about resentment, comparison, and the difference between believing something is over and knowing, quietly, that it isn't. She and Dr. Nicole talk through what it means to separate your worth from your work when the work disappears overnight, why this wasn't Tiana's first unplanned reinvention, and the exercise — "blockers and builders" — she's used twice now to imagine a future she couldn't yet see the shape of. This is Tiana's own Chrysalis Season, and she's still inside it. Not a comeback story told from the other side — a conversation with someone in the middle of Boldly Becoming, in real time. In this conversation: What it took to separate fifteen years of professional identity from a sudden loss of income The difference between a public story and a private one — and what it costs to keep them apart Why Tiana reframes failure as an experience rather than a possession, and what that change actually changes The "blockers and builders" exercise she used both after a layoff in 2011 and again during this season What she learned from a seven-day fast about resentment, comparison, and what she could live without Why she now asks "what's next" instead of "why me" — and why that question is worth asking before a transition forces it About Tiana Sanchez Tiana Sanchez is the "Failure Enthusiast," CEO and founder of TSI, LLC. For over a decade, she has been the go-to corporate trainer and business consultant for organizations across the public and private sectors, including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Music, Sempra, Mercedes-Benz Research and Development, Sherwin-Williams, Health-Ade Kombucha, and the Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles. She's a two-time #1 bestselling author, executive coach, and host of the Like a REAL Boss podcast. Her books include Undefeatable: Conquering Self-Defeat, F'D Up: The UPside of Failure, The New C-Suite: Civil Leadership in Action, and Faith, Friendships and Business: How Faith and Friendships Strengthen Your Work and Purpose. Website: tianasanchez.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tianasanchez Instagram: @likearealbosslady YouTube: @TianaSanchez Books: tianasanchez.com/books Chapters (00:00:00) - Cold Open: From Growth to Collapse(00:00:38) - Introducing the Show and Guest Tiana Sanchez(00:02:04) - Why Tiana Shared Her Story Publicly(00:04:38) - The Sudden Contract Losses Begin(00:06:40) - Watching Business Disappear in Real Time(00:08:23) - Smiling Outside, Devastated Inside(00:10:04) - Compartmentalizing Pain and Private Struggles(00:12:56) - Separating Identity from Professional Role(00:14:29) - Lessons from the 2011 Layoff(00:16:46) - Reimagining a Future After Job Loss(00:18:47) - Reframing Failure as an Experience(00:20:33) - Sitting in the Messy Middle(00:23:50) - Blockers and Builders Exercise(00:26:21) - Grandmother as a North Star Inspiration(00:28:20) - Building the Business Through Mentorship(00:30:41) - Growth, Clarity, and Full Circle Clients(00:32:16) - Impact on Marriage and Personal Relationships(00:35:01) - The Water Fast and Spiritual Turning Point(00:38:44) - Pruning Resentment and Feelings of Insufficiency(00:42:49) - Redefining Success as Incremental(00:45:04) - Experiencing Success and Failure Simultaneously(00:47:10) - Advice for Women in Transition(00:52:16) - Reflecting on Who She's Become(00:54:00) - Asking 'What's Next' Intentionally(00:56:05) - Closing, Contact Info, and Sign Off

  6. Sep 8 ·  Video

    The Space Nobody Named

    There's a particular kind of change that doesn't announce itself. Nothing breaks. No one would know, looking at your life, that anything is different. And yet something in you has gone quiet in a way you can't quite explain, and you've never had a word for what that is. In this opening episode, Dr. Nicole Yeldell Butts names that space: the room between who you've been and who you're becoming. She introduces the idea of a Chrysalis Season — not a waiting room, but a place where something is already stirring beneath the surface, long before it's visible from the outside. SHIFT is the framework for meeting that season with consciousness and courage, so it moves from a transition you simply endure to a transformation you intentionally choose. This episode doesn't offer a plan. It offers something more useful first: permission to notice where you actually are. Chapters (00:00:00) - A Woman's Life in the Quiet(00:03:40) - The Room Between: Where Everything Happens(00:11:26) - What Is This Season of Your Life?(00:12:59) - A Woman's Transition: What Happens When You Change Your Self(00:19:49) - In the Room Between

  7. Trailer ·  Video

    The Room Between Launching September 8, 2026

    Something is coming. The Room Between: Navigating Life's Transitions launches September 8th. A space for women navigating life's transitions — personal and professional, chosen and unchosen, planned and unplanned —  that reshape who we are. Hosted by Dr. Nicole Yeldell Butts, each episode helps you name what's actually happening in your own "room between," and take one honest step toward who you're Boldly Becoming. This is your Chrysalis Season. Subscribe now so the first full episode finds you the moment it drops. Chapters (00:00:00) - The Room Between

  • 1 Trailer
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About

The Room Between is a podcast and community for women navigating life’s transitions — the personal ones, the professional ones, the expected ones, and the unexpected ones. It explores what happens in the space between who we’ve been and who we are becoming, and how we move through that space with consciousness, courage, alignment, and self-trust so we do not simply survive transition, but emerge transformed and unapologetically thriving.

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