The Room Between: Navigating Life's Transitions

Dr. Nicole Yeldell Butts
  • 5.0 (1)
  • 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. 3d ago ·  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

  2. 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

  3. 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

Trailer

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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