The 40 Portal

Catherine Zack

The night before my 40th birthday, I invited the real-life women I admire to a wine bar and asked them to "sign my yearbook." Not happy birthdays, not well-wishes — I wanted wisdom. I realized the gift wasn't the party. It was the roomful of extraordinary women and all the hard-won wisdom we were sitting on, untapped, waiting to be shared. What came back when I asked was so raw, so honest, and so clearly not just for me that I couldn't stop asking. So I turned it into a process of self-inquiry practiced out loud, in community — not alone in my journal, but in real conversation with real women, on the record. The 40 Portal is a coming-of-aging story, told by those women. You don't arrive at 40 — you enter it. Each episode, I sit down with a different woman to explore the threshold she's walking through. Turning 40 is the portal to midlife — the bridge between who we were and who we're still becoming. Something happens to a woman here: the truth starts coming, whether or not she planned to tell it. It's a potent and powerful moment in our life, and the one we're least often invited to talk about out loud. We call it a midlife crisis, but the root of "crisis" means to sift — to pour over the particles of your life, hold each one up, and ask, honestly: does this still belong? Would I choose this now? Portals can be big and specific—turning 40, losing a loved one, divorce, becoming a mother, leaving a career. Or they can be less specific but still all-encompassing—the "everything looks fine but I'm dying inside" feeling, the army crawl, the resentment. We talk about it all. Each episode is anchored by handwritten wisdom submitted by listeners. Because typing is fast — it's what we're DOING all day. Handwriting is slow. Handwriting reveals our BEING. When you slow down, connect in conversation, with the right conditions of candor present: the truth comes out. This isn't a podcast about experts or influencers. This is a podcast about real women telling the truth about their real lives. Because when women tell the truth (not the polished version, but the actual truth) it sets us all free. Season One is complete: twenty conversations, close to a hundred handwritten submissions. The full archive lives here — and the notebook is still open. Whichever side of forty you're on, add your wisdom at the40portal.com. The story of what these conversations taught me is still being written. Hosted by Catherine Zack — contemplative educator, writer, former litigator, and speaker. More at catherinezack.com.

  1. 2d ago

    The 40 Portal — Season One Finale: You Don't Arrive at 40. You Enter The Portal.

    Last summer I turned 40 and set out on a process of self-inquiry practiced out loud, in community — interviewing real women in midlife about their own coming-of-aging stories, and collecting the handwritten wisdom you mailed in. At the heart of it: What does it mean to turn 40? What potent passageway is this number? And in a culture largely scrubbed clean of rituals for marking such rites of passage, could I build one in real time — a call-and-response wisdom exchange around the proverbial fire? In this finale, I return to the page that started everything: the one entry in my birthday notebook that inspired me to keep going — Becca's question about the fear of becoming invisible as a woman ages, and Meredith's answer beneath it. That exchange confirmed what I'd been feeling: that there's a wild, generative power to this number, born from a tension — I've lived enough to know some things, and I'm still so young with so much ahead. I trace the through-line across the whole season: that you're not behind, you're right on time (Kate); that you can put down the urgency (Tori); that you can soften and stay curious as you age (Alicia); that we contain multitudes (Jess, Amber); that we can own our desire (Becca, Emily); that we can shed old stories and stop people-pleasing (Kim, Nancy, Hillary); and that learning to love yourself is the real work of a lifetime. I also sit with what "crisis" actually means — from the root to sift — pouring over the particles of a life and asking of each one: does this still belong? Would I choose this now? What I know a year later, having just turned 41: you can't think your way through the portal, and you can't listen your way through it either. The only way through is through. This body of work is complete — and the conversation continues in your own real life. Season One is complete — twenty conversations, close to a hundred handwritten submissions. The notebook is still open: add your wisdom at the40portal.com.

  2. Jul 22

    How to Trust Yourself When You Don't Have It All Figured Out with Gabrielle Haddad

    What if learning to trust yourself is the real work of midlife, more than any career move ever was? In this episode, Catherine Zack sits down with Gabrielle Haddad -- a former lawyer who left a New York firm for international development work in Switzerland, then business school, then six full-force years co-founding an AI company, before stepping back on the eve of motherhood. On paper, a woman who has arrived. In conversation, a woman practicing self trust in real time: after two decades chasing meaning at work, what happens when you realize it was never missing from the work at all -- it was missing from your life, and your life is finally full of it. This is a personal growth conversation for women navigating midlife who look, from the outside, like they have it all figured out, and quietly wonder if believing in yourself is supposed to feel this uncertain. This conversation goes deep into motherhood in your forties, the felt tension between doing and being, and the slow, unglamorous work of trusting yourself before you have any proof it will work out. What happens when the meaning you built a career around finally shows up somewhere else entirely? How do you honor the part of you still aching to do more without abandoning the beauty of what already is? And what becomes possible the moment you stop needing to have it figured out? This episode is for every woman in midlife who looks, from the outside, like she has it together -- and still feels, quietly, like she is only just now finding her way. In this episode: - Becoming a mother in her forties. - The felt tension between the achiever and the mother -- doing versus being -- and the strangeness of knowing that raising a human is the most productive thing she has ever done while a voice still asks why she hasn't done more. - Stepping out of her company post-Series A and on the eve of motherhood -- how "I'll take six or nine months" became nearly three years, and what that taught her. - The arc: New York law firm to international development in Switzerland to business school to founding an AI company -- a decade-long search for work that meant something. - The realization that reframes the entire search: "I was seeking meaning in my work because I was missing it in my life." - The myth of the woman who, by a certain age, has it all figured out -- not true, not fair, not representative of anyone actually living it. - Why a woman does not have to be the same person at forty-five that she was at twenty-five -- and why the culture keeps trying to pin her down anyway. - The inner critic as a nervous-system pattern -- knowing something is true in your mind while it lives, stubbornly, somewhere else in your body. - Where she feels most seen, most safe, most at home -- an answer that seems to surprise her as she says it out loud. - Trusting your intuition even when it leads to a detour -- how you can follow your gut, land somewhere that isn't the destination, and still know that going was right. And the quiet thesis of the whole show: the point was never to solve the problem. It was to hold the big questions, together, and let that be enough. Submit your portal wisdom: the40portal.com/contribute Subscribe, rate, review -- it genuinely helps more women find this show. Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Gabrielle Haddad | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe (c) 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

  3. Jul 22

    How to Let Go of Perfectionism and Just Do the Damn Thing with Hillary Zio

    What would you build if you finally stopped caring what anyone thought? This episode is about letting go of perfectionism and midlife reinvention, and Hillary Zio is the perfect guide for both. Catherine Zack sits down with Hillary, a wine bar owner, former competitive snowboarder, skydiver, adventurous eater, and, in her own words, a woman who genuinely does not care what other people think. She means that as an invitation, not a wall to hide behind, and this conversation is a masterclass in the kind of self acceptance and confidence after 40 that so many women over 40 are quietly working toward. This one comes full circle. Hillary owns the wine bar where Catherine threw her 40th birthday party last summer, the night she set a now falling apart notebook on the bar and asked every woman there to fill it with wisdom if they were over 40, or questions if they were under 40. That notebook became The 40 Portal. One year and twenty episodes later, Catherine sits down with the woman whose room held the very first spark. Both born in July 1985, both about to turn 41, same portal, wildly different passage. This conversation goes deep into perfectionism, reinvention after divorce, mental health, and the quiet discipline of finally asking what you want, not for anyone else, but for you. What does it cost to keep performing perfect? What becomes possible when you stop? And how do you build a life -- a business, a body, a closet, a self -- that actually feels like home? This episode is for every woman in midlife who is done waiting until she feels ready and prepared to just do the damn thing. In this episode: * The wine bar as the birthplace of The 40 Portal -- the birthday, the notebook, the question that started all of this. * Women as cyclical beings -- honoring hormonal shifts and rhythms instead of fighting them. * The unglamorous nitty-gritty of running a small brick-and-mortar business in a small town -- the millennial dream versus the reality behind the bar, and why you cater to your community or you don't survive. * Drama queen in one moment, cool as a cucumber the next -- the full spectrum, all happening at once. * Being hard on yourself, and the decision at 41 to stop -- "I don't need to do that to myself anymore." * Perfectionism as the thing that keeps you stuck, and the whole antidote: just do it, because the only way to get better at anything is to keep doing it. * Living someone else's dream versus building your own -- what the entrepreneurial life actually asks of you. * Reinvention after divorce -- asking what do I want, not from a partner but for me. If you feel good and you're not hurting anyone, what does it matter? * The Let Them theory in practice -- letting people want what they want and going on with your day. * A nod to Lena Dunham -- it is none of your business what other people think of you. * Extreme minimalism as nervous system regulation -- 24 items of clothing, zero clutter, simpler is safer. * The freedom of just deciding -- a style, a hair-and-makeup routine, a way of being -- so you can quit chasing trends. Know thyself, then do that. Submit your portal wisdom: the40portal.com/contribute -- Whichever side of 40 you're on, your voice belongs in this book we're building together. Subscribe, rate, review -- it genuinely helps more women find this show. Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Hillary Zio | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe (c) 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

  4. Jul 22

    How to Stop People Pleasing and Finally Live on Your Own Terms with Nancy Harris

    What does it actually take to stop performing for everyone else and start living for yourself? In this episode, Catherine Zack sits down with Nancy Harris, a Chicago-based leadership consultant, executive coach, and entrepreneur who is -- in her own words -- caring less and less about damn near everything. And she means that in the most liberating way possible. Nancy is one of the five women Catherine was placed with in an online A Team about five years ago, a little seed of The 40 Portal before Catherine even knew that's what it was. She is living proof that what is on the other side of the portal is absolutely worth the passage. This conversation goes deep into people pleasing, self worth, and the slow, deliberate work of putting down the need for external validation. What happens when you stop trying to figure it all out and start exploring instead? What does it really cost to keep performing for everyone else? And what do you earn when you finally stop? This episode is for every woman in midlife who is done with pleasing and ready to start living. In this episode: - The A Team as a seed of the 40 Portal -- five women across different decades and industries, all at the same juncture: not starting, not finished, right in the middle asking where do I go next? - Figuring out versus exploring -- and why the people who tell you they have it all figured out are lying. - The 30s as a decade of putting it together, the 40s as a decade of things coming apart -- and the freedom that lives inside that. - Not just when things fall apart -- when you choose to tear them apart. When you look at a constraint and say: this is all made up. - Fifty-something and ageless -- the story of Nancy's mother whose age nobody in the family ever knew, and what that taught her about how energy and spirit matter more than numbers. - The myth of figuring it all out -- you can read Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, all the books, and then life happens anyway. - What she is not willing to trade: her soul, her values, her authenticity. Showing up as someone else is just damn exhausting. - When you're trying to impress, you cannot connect -- and connection is actually what we came here to do. - The roles we're handed -- wife, mother, career woman -- and the kaleidoscope of everything else that also counts as a life. Submit your portal wisdom: the40portal.com/contribute -- Whichever side of 40 you're on, your voice belongs in this book we're building together. Join The 40 Portal Book Club on Substack: substack.com/@the40portal Subscribe, rate, review -- it genuinely helps more women find this show. Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Nancy Harris | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe (c) 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

  5. Jun 25

    A Researcher's Take on Authentic Creativity in the Age of AI with Jessica Carson

    When we met, it was a moment in time. Not as cool as 1968 Haight-Ashbury, not quite 1920s Paris — but it was DC in the early 2010s, and it was its own thing. Hustle culture before hustle culture had a name. We were all riding bikes to yoga and listening to Alt-J and none of us knew who we were going to become yet. Some of us became people the world would actually come to know. Jessica Carson is one of those people. Jessica is a social scientist, creativity researcher, author, and the founder of the Center for Human Creativity. She started her career as a neuroscience at the NIH, spent five years as Head of Innovation at the American Psychological Association, and wrote Wired This Way — a book on the psychology of entrepreneurs, the light and the shadow sides of that creative wiring, published at 29 in April 2020. She is now a PhD candidate studying authentic creativity: what makes a creative work feel genuinely human, and what happens to that feeling when artificial intelligence enters the room. Find her at jessicacarson.co. In this episode: - DC in the early 2010s as a moment in time — NIH neuroscience labs, Big Law, the first Hinge beta test, and the yoga studios where none of us had figured out who we were yet. - How the gap in age between women can feel different depending on where you're each standing — and how powerful women interact with each other. - What it means to be a student of a powerful female teacher, to receive that transmission, and to be a little terrified and a little enamored by it at the same time. - Writing and publishing Wired This Way at 29, the cringe of looking back at your own earlier creative work, and why retrospective ick is just a tax you pay for having made anything at all. - The light and dark sides of the entrepreneurial brain — ADHD, addiction, sensation-seeking, and why the same wiring that drives the addiction also drives the willingness to tolerate ambiguity and risk. - Why entrepreneurship was glamorized to the point of fetish in the 2010s, and why the AI era has produced an entirely new cast of main characters who would make that same book much harder to write today. - The job that fell apart, the toxic exit, the year the universe seemed to turn itself off, and how that exact bewilderment became the thesis for the PhD she's living inside right now. - The core of Jessica's research: AI threatens our ontological security because we've always believed creativity was our last uniquely human trait — and why panic and polarization on this topic are getting in the way of actually thinking clearly about it. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UMQNQ_AdLoA Submit your portal wisdom: the40portal.com/contribute — Whichever side of 40 you're on, your voice belongs in this book we're building together. Follow The 40 Portal Book on Substack: substack.com/@the40portal Work with Cath 1:1 — coaching spots open for September 2026: the40portal.com/coaching Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show. Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Jessica Carson | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

  6. Jun 15

    Who Is Mothering AI? On Lullabies for Robots, Invisibility, and Turning 40 | Leah Rubin-Cadrain

    I have a working thesis. A woman over 40 is the most powerful, creative, vivifying, wise, and possibly terrifying creature in the universe, and this episode is one of my biggest pieces of proof yet. Meet Leah Rubin-Cadrain. She works in wearable technology, designing the experiences. She is a writer, an artist, a wife, a mother, she runs a poetry Substack called Lullabies for Robots, where she keeps asking one haunting question through her poems: who is mothering AI? She arrived at this question while she was nursing her newborn and having her first conversation with ChatGPT at the same time. She watched the flickering cursor and thought, “baby's first words.” Genius. Like a mother. This is a conversation about identity, motherhood, creativity, and the quiet power that women over 40 grow into, often right when the world expects them to disappear. Leah spent a lot of years being the quiet one in the room. Afraid of conflict. Rolling over. Bending herself into shapes so that no one would misunderstand her. And then she turned 40 and wrote four words on her whiteboard: I am f*****g 40. And that became her mantra. In this episode: How Leah celebrated her 40th birthday: wear something fancy, bring an offering, and surround yourself with your most beloveds.The reciprocity of a great party — being the center of attention while also getting to look your people in the face and say, you are my people.The fear of invisibility that can shadow a woman approaching 40 — and the woman just a few steps ahead on the path who said: you do become invisible in some settings. The exhausting ones. And honestly? The freedom that gives you.How Leah spent years disconnected from her body — and how lipstick, a warm robe after a shower, and the slow accumulation of small self-care practices changed that.A fertility journey that stretched across COVID, IUI, IVF, miscarriage, years of raised and dashed expectations — and a daughter who arrived when Leah was 39 and felt like a miracle.AI as toddler — the language of training large language models is eerily similar to the language of child-rearing. We are all parenting AI.The whiteboard mantra: I am f*****g 40. When she pictured another woman aged 40, she thought — I wouldn't f**k with her. That's a woman who knows what she's doing. And then she turned that lens on herself.Coming out, stepping out of the assigned lane for the first time, inviting the evil eye — and how being forged in that fire made her brave.Living in the nuance. Containing multitudes. Not one thing or another. Content note: We talk about fertility struggles, miscarriage, and postpartum anxiety in this episode. Find Leah at lullabiesforrobots.substack.com. Submit your portal wisdom: the40portal.com/contribute Substack: substack.com/@the40portal Work with Cath 1:1 — coaching spots open for September 2026: the40portal.com/coaching New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show. Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com Instagram: @the40portal Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Leah Rubin-Cadrain | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

  7. Jun 8

    Walking Away From Burnout Was the Most Ambitious Thing She Ever Did with Lia Zneimer

    We met on the internet, which I say as the highest compliment. There was an online community of independent practitioners — smart, weird, building things — and Lia Zneimer showed up in it and I immediately thought, yes, her. That is how it works sometimes. The internet at its best is a place where you find people you would never otherwise cross paths with, and you just know. She came to a virtual session I was leading and something just clicked. We have been loosely but meaningfully in each other's orbit ever since — Substack appearances, voice memos, the occasional ping — the kind of connection that doesn't require constant contact to feel real. This conversation is really about burnout, the kind that starts as a low hum and then quietly takes everything, and about what burnout recovery actually looks like when you stop performing success and start redefining it on your own terms. Lia is a marketer turned writer, originally from Colorado, now in the East Bay in California with her husband and her miniature poodle, Waffles. She is working on her debut YA novel, which she started in 2013 and which is coming along exactly as fast as it needs to, thank you very much, and she runs a Substack called The Recharge, where she writes about creativity, career, burnout, and the ways we come back to ourselves. Find her at getrecharged.substack.com and linkedin.com/in/liazneimer. If you are weighing a career pivot, in the middle of one, or quietly wondering why you are so exhausted by something that looks fine from the outside, this episode is for you. In this episode: - Storytelling, writing, and theater as the through line — veering off the path and coming home to yourself. - Two distinct burnout experiences: five years at WeWork through the failed IPO, then a leadership role at an early stage startup where she doubled down when she should have stopped, because spoiler alert — you cannot outwork everything if you try hard enough. - Getting texts from your CEO about influencer campaigns not converting while you're trying on your wedding dress — and what that moment of clarity actually feels like. - The difference between the vocation of writing and the business of writing — and why you might want to leave some things you love outside of capitalism entirely. - Creativity takes the time it takes. You cannot crank it. Stopping treating your creativity like a KPI. - Burnout as a repetitive use injury, a low hum, death by a thousand paper cuts — we don't figure this stuff out once and then we're good. It keeps cycling back. But you do get faster at catching it. - The girl boss era, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, hustle harder — the amount of b******t millennials were fed, and the slow work of deprogramming it. - Optimizing for success by having a regulated nervous system. - Giving up ambition for my 38th birthday — what that actually means and what it doesn't - What your 10-years-ago self would be genuinely shocked to learn — and why Younger Lia would have never believed she walked away from a VP role on purpose. - And the 40 Portal wisdom read at the close: from a woman who was 41 when she wrote it, about the weight of other people's expectations lifting, about moving from okay to sure, about trusting — finally — that you can handle it all. Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Lia Zneimer | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

  8. Jun 1

    Your 40s Are Not a Crisis. They're an Arrival into Your "No Urgency" Era with Victoria R.G. Newburn

    Out of every guest I've had on this podcast so far, I have known this one the longest. We met in 2010 at Flow Yoga Center in Obama-era Washington, DC — up the stairs from P Street in Logan Circle. She was behind the front desk with her grounded, earthy, ageless warmth. I was arriving every single day with a ginormous Louis Vuitton bag, straight from Kirkland & Ellis, transitioning from lawyer Cath to human Cath right there on the mat. Sixteen years and many life chapters later — welcome to this conversation with Victoria R.G. Newburn, who goes by Tori, and who I love enormously. This is the kind of female friendship that women over 40 have: the ones forged in shared becoming, that hold decades of who you were and who you're growing into. This convo is for every woman navigating the arrival of her 40s, reclaiming herself, and finally giving herself permission to stop performing. Tori is an author, guide, and intuitive. She runs This Gentle Way, her online practice working with people through astrology, meditation, and dialogue. Her debut book, The Weaver and the Wilder, came out last year. She is a mom of two, a homeschooler, and a deeply curious human being. In this episode: Obama-era DC and what it meant to launch our adult lives before the internet swallowed everything — the unique, almost endangered experience of millennials who actually had a before.Stepping into inner authority and the nervous system work that has to come with it.Internet success and the radical act of not tying your worth to numbers on a screen.Being in our "no urgency era."Reclamation: what practices, rhythms, and versions of yourself are you calling back in?The permission slip of your 40s — I just don't care as much about what I thought I needed to care about.Female friendship: the ones you don't talk to every day, or even every year, who are still among the most important people in your life.Vocation vs. "success" — inform and inspire as a why that actually holds.A shoutout to Debra Mishalove and the strong women who mentor us even when they're no longer in our daily orbit.Content note: We talk about pregnancy loss at about the one-hour mark I WANT TO TALK TO YOU ON THE POD! I'm looking for a listener of this podcast to be a guest on this podcast. Here's how to be considered: Submit your voice to The 40 Portal — your question if you're under 40, your wisdom if you're over 40: the40portal.com/contribute Leave a written review wherever you listen, then email me a photo of it by June 6, 2026: 40portalpodcast@gmail.com I'll choose the guest on June 7. Join The 40 Portal Book Club on Substack: substack.com/@the40portal Work with Cath 1:1 — coaching spots open September 2026: the40portal.com/coaching New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show. Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Victoria R. G. Newburn | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.

5
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

The night before my 40th birthday, I invited the real-life women I admire to a wine bar and asked them to "sign my yearbook." Not happy birthdays, not well-wishes — I wanted wisdom. I realized the gift wasn't the party. It was the roomful of extraordinary women and all the hard-won wisdom we were sitting on, untapped, waiting to be shared. What came back when I asked was so raw, so honest, and so clearly not just for me that I couldn't stop asking. So I turned it into a process of self-inquiry practiced out loud, in community — not alone in my journal, but in real conversation with real women, on the record. The 40 Portal is a coming-of-aging story, told by those women. You don't arrive at 40 — you enter it. Each episode, I sit down with a different woman to explore the threshold she's walking through. Turning 40 is the portal to midlife — the bridge between who we were and who we're still becoming. Something happens to a woman here: the truth starts coming, whether or not she planned to tell it. It's a potent and powerful moment in our life, and the one we're least often invited to talk about out loud. We call it a midlife crisis, but the root of "crisis" means to sift — to pour over the particles of your life, hold each one up, and ask, honestly: does this still belong? Would I choose this now? Portals can be big and specific—turning 40, losing a loved one, divorce, becoming a mother, leaving a career. Or they can be less specific but still all-encompassing—the "everything looks fine but I'm dying inside" feeling, the army crawl, the resentment. We talk about it all. Each episode is anchored by handwritten wisdom submitted by listeners. Because typing is fast — it's what we're DOING all day. Handwriting is slow. Handwriting reveals our BEING. When you slow down, connect in conversation, with the right conditions of candor present: the truth comes out. This isn't a podcast about experts or influencers. This is a podcast about real women telling the truth about their real lives. Because when women tell the truth (not the polished version, but the actual truth) it sets us all free. Season One is complete: twenty conversations, close to a hundred handwritten submissions. The full archive lives here — and the notebook is still open. Whichever side of forty you're on, add your wisdom at the40portal.com. The story of what these conversations taught me is still being written. Hosted by Catherine Zack — contemplative educator, writer, former litigator, and speaker. More at catherinezack.com.

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