You’re Not Past Your Prime. You’re Reinventing It.

Stacey Lindsay, author of Being 40, on the Made-up Timelines and Harmful Stories We Carry and How to Finally Let It Rip

Award-winning journalist Stacey Lindsay has spent her career asking the real questions most others shy away from—and in this conversation, she turned that same lens on the judgements about how life is supposed to go based on our age. 

We talk about the invisible measuring stick we’re held up against, the pressure women face around having kids, beauty ideals, and our careers, and the question that quietly chips away at many of us: have I done enough? 

We get into what Stacey calls "delayering"—the ongoing, never-finished work of taking off inherited stories, other people's expectations, and judgments you've been carrying for so long they feel like your own skin. We talk about outsourcing our self-worth, the two kinds of stress (and how your body already knows the difference), and why so much of what women do in their 20s and 30s is quietly, relentlessly in the service of other people's comfort.

And then Stacey introduces the concept that rocked my little world: the Autumn Queen—a different archetype for women in midlife, one that has nothing to do with decline and everything to do with renaissance. Because it turns out the systems at play don't want to give us a word for this stage of life, and there's a reason for that.

This episode drops on the week of Stacey's book launch. It's the right week to listen.