March 25, 2020 • 30 mins
“Sometimes, I think I’m falling apart,” Ada Calhoun confesses in the opening line of an essay she wrote for Oprah.com in 2017. She struck a nerve with her Gen X peers who were ready to admit they could relate—struggling with careers, money, relationships, parenting, aging bodies, and more. Less than three years later, the award-winning journalist has expanded the piece into Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis. In this episode, we talk through the unrealistic expectations levied against an entire generation of women facing a plethora of obstacles that cannot just be meditated away. Calhoun has discovered ways to conquer them. More at AdaCalhoun.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
As much as you can. I think you replace digital
relationships with real ones, because that's one thing that I
heard again and again was that social media makes it
fool feel bad. I was looking at those idealized, filtered pictures.
It just gives you the sense that everyone else has
to figure it out. And so I think if you're
able to actually have these real conversations like you will have,
(00:22):
it gives you a more realistic and accurate idea of
what's going on around you. Hey, there, Welcome to the
road to somewhere. It's a place where we get to
talk about adventure and life changing and exploration and transformation.
(00:44):
It's about not necessarily knowing where we're going, but having
the faith that the journey will be worthwhile. I am
Lisa Oz and I'm Jill Herzig and I'm fifty three
years old. How old you? Good? Lord? I feel like
we're in a meeting fifty six all right, So there
you go, everybody. Those are our ages. Lisa and I
have often discussed why the hell women don't talk about
their age when you can just find it online two
(01:07):
seconds Google. Lisa was very old. Jill Herzige not quite
so old, but pretty old and doesn't get boat dox
so looks really old. Anyway, I guess I just feel
like it's funny. When I was the editor of Red
Book magazine, I wrote a um kind of last minute
(01:30):
editor's note about being honest about my age, and at
the time, I think, I think it would have been
like ten years ago, so I would have been like
super young, except it felt like it was a big
thing to admit it. Um, But I was telling everybody
my age, and it just felt stupid not to talk
(01:51):
about that, so I did. And our PR team came
down to see me in my office and said, are
you sure you want to do this? And I said yeah.
And the fact that they were trying to stage this
intervention made me even more sure that I wanted to
do it. And it turned out to be. I didn't
say anything profound, but it turned out to be. If
(02:16):
if anything I ever wrote went a little tiny bit viral,
that was the thing that went a little tiny bit viral. Anyway,
I just raise it because we're talking life stages and
life changes. Yeah, I think it's something that we as
women in particular, struggle with. I don't think guys have
the same pressure around it anyway. Our guest today is
going to help us. Do you know what the issues
(02:39):
around being modern women. She's an award winning freelance journalist.
She's written for Time, National Geographic Traveler, OH, from Oprah magazine,
Well you know that one, Joe Um and The New
Republic Billboard, just a slew of magazines. And she has
a new book called Why We Can't Sleep, Women's New
(03:00):
Midlife Crisis. Ad Cahun, thank you so much for being
with us today. Thanks for having me. So we talked
about all these articles you've written. The book actually came
out of an article for OH magazine, UM that you
wrote about gen xers. Um, tell us a little bit
about that article and how the world responded. Well, I
got a call um from an editor Oprah dot com
(03:21):
a couple of summers ago, and I was having like
the world's worst summer. Talk about like a moment of crisis. Um,
I was just miserable and a bunch of freelance work
had fallen through, and UM, I wasn't sleeping at all,
and I was just pretty miserable and broke, and UM,
this editor called and said, you know, I want to
talk about what's happening with gen x women. Everyone I
know is struggling. Um. And I was like, well, you know,
(03:42):
the timing is right, I need some work and um,
and I'm pretty curious to myself and so I just
started looking into it at all the forces at work
on women our age and UM, what I found I
just kind of blew my mind. And I wrote the
six thousand word story for opra dot com and it went,
um so viral I couldn't leave it. It It was like
hundreds of thousands of Facebook shares in like two days,
(04:03):
and um, friends of mine said that it was like
their entire Facebook wall. It was like people sharing it
back and forth. Um. And I just realized there was
like there was more there than just six thousand words.
So takeover miserable women at midlife. But it made me
think of was like, it's something we don't talk about enough.
And I think when there's an opportunity, I think, um,
women are ready definitely, so so talk a little bit
(04:26):
more about what was going on in your life. So
slow down of work and attendant lack of money. Yeah.
And I had always had this fantasy, like because I've
been freelance for about ten years. I've been an editor
in chief of an online magazine, and then I got
um freelance and become a ghost writer and written my
own books, and you know, I had like critical success
(04:47):
and all this stuff, and I felt like things were
on the rise for a while, and then all this
stuff just started falling through UM. And I'd always had
this fantasy like, oh, I can go back to a job,
like I'll just I'll fall back on corporate life, you know,
and go get an editor job, because when I had
left ten years earlier, there were some of those. And
then I decided to go back and there were none.
I was really surprised. Like I got called in for
(05:09):
a couple interviews, and one was for like a teaching
job that paid like a hundred dollars of class once
a week, and then another thing was for a magazine
I won't mention that was like basically starting level salary UM.
And I just I was like, oh, so my industry
was created some at some point when I wasn't paying
attention UM, and that's not an option. So this was
(05:30):
like my fantasy for what I was going to do
when everything collapsed with freelance, and it wasn't even there,
So I was like, what do I do? Do I
change careers? Um, do I you know, go back to school.
I just had all these, um, these things on that
I thought of, but none of them really seemed super feasible.
I had one child I was helping with college, and
(05:50):
one who was in middle going into middle school, and UM,
my husband's artists and the breadwinner, and it was just
the amount of pressure that summer was just um awhelming. Yeah.
In the book, though, I felt like you kind of
mounted this case that it's the financial pressures and economic
pressures which have uniquely, you know, impacted gen X women,
(06:14):
not just ones in the publishing industry. Though you and
I have that particular fire something like we can discuss
the yeah yeah, I mean lots of lots of industries
have been disrupted, but it goes beyond the economic yeah yeah, yeah. Well,
one thing that I was really surprised by, um was
just how every turn UM gen X women so basically
(06:35):
and when I see gen X, it's women born from
the mid sixties to the early eighties. But I feel
like a sort of older millennials and younger boomers tend
to relate to a lot of it too. UM. People
in this group, UM, a lot of them were children
of divorce, which, of course is can be emotionally rough,
but then also financially it can be devastating. And especially
(06:55):
in the seventies, a lot of times the men left
and the single mom moms were left to raise the kids.
And it wasn't It wasn't the way it is now
with the co parenting. Yeah, I mean it was you know,
at least half my friends, more than half UM in
the city probably UM. And so you have suddenly no
financial support. Um. A lot of those kids didn't have
a college fund um going into being adults. And then
(07:20):
you graduate into recession, many of them. UM, and then
it's sort of at every point like just we're smacked
back down. So um, we're just kind of climbing up corporately,
and then um dot com bust and just about to
buy a house and housing market crash and or just
already had just bought a house in many cases. UM.
I can't tell you the number of people who are
in this UM demographic who are underwater on their houses. Uh,
(07:42):
and just just bad luck, just bad luck, NonStop. So
I would not I would postulate that difficult financial circumstances
have been around for a really long time, and we're
probably universal right as the caveman the cave bust. You know,
I'm sure this is happened for a long time. UM.
(08:02):
Certainly that our grandparents were growing up in the depression
had difficulty. UM. But I've read an article, it was
actually a blog, UM. Do you know who Tim Urban is?
And he talked about gen xers and the reason that
it is so much harder for them than anyone else
given a hard circumstances is expectation and the level of
(08:23):
expectation being so far above what they actually achieve. And
so it's that gap that makes you unhappy, not the
actual circumstances themselves. Do you agree with that? So in
the book I talk a lot about this, UM. Expectations
we were given, especially as young women UM, growing up
during Title nine and and this, and with feminist mothers
(08:44):
in many cases, UM, who were part of the Second Wave,
and we were told like, you can be anything, even
president UM. And this was drilled into us from a
very early age, and they were all there was the
famous Enjolie perfume ad, you can do all these things. Look,
you can be sexy, and you can have a corporate job,
and you can have children. You can do it all
and still look fabulous. Only can you, but you kind
(09:06):
of should. Well. I think that's what happened to us.
I think we were told we had this opportunity and
this one UM, this one expert I talked to, this
shrink who I thought was really so smart. She said,
possibilities create pressure. That it's it's not like you don't
want the possibilities, but they come with just this um,
this sort of mantra and this mandate to do all
(09:27):
the things UM. And I think what happened with us
as a generation is we had this mandate, this pressure
to do everything and do it beautifully UM and never
letting them see you sweat and all of that UM.
But we weren't given any support to make that happen.
So it's not like the workplace changed to make it
easier to have kids at home while you did all
these things. It's not like um, men changed that much.
(09:48):
They changed a lot. They're much. They do a lot
more child care, but nowhere near half in most cases.
And so you know, you have you have all this pressure,
you've all these pictations for yourself, and then you to
middle age and it hasn't been easy. It hasn't happened
for everybody. Um, and then what do you do? Well,
when we come back, we're going to talk exactly about that.
What do we do? Before the break, we were talking
(10:20):
about the stresses and pressures and expectations put on particularly
gen X women with it. Ocahun, I want to dig
deeper into those, and you suggested that you might have
a clue as to what we can do about it. Um. Well,
I really do think the first step is to do
what you all do so beautifully on this podcast is
(10:42):
talk really frankly about the situation, so not without which
is what your story did. It got women talking, yeah,
and I think that's that's step one for all of this.
I just kind of saying, Um, they were saying, you know,
this is me, this is you know, and a lot
of them are saying things like I had the vague
feeling of unease and I didn't know what it was,
(11:04):
and they felt like talking about it in this way,
talking about it generationally, UM, put a name on it
and and help them see it more clearly. And also
I think they felt like they weren't alone, which is
so important. UM. And they also felt like they weren't.
They weren't crazy, they weren't um It wasn't that they
had personally failed and done something wrong and and not
worked hard enough. Because I think as women, we tend
(11:25):
to think, oh, if I just keep working, if I
keep doing more things, eventually it will all come clear.
But that actually sitting back and reflecting was what they
needed to do. M I mean, it's funny because sometimes
I think I'll have this experience when we're interviewing guests,
are preparing to interview guests, and they do give you
this sense that there is no obstacle you can't face,
(11:48):
there's nothing you can't overcome. And while it buys me
and it and it energizes me and I learned so
much from it, it's interesting to switch the focus to
you know, these obstacles are real, and if you don't
fully acknowledge them, it's actually hard to muster the energy.
(12:08):
You know, there has to be some moment too, of saying, like,
you know, there there's some there's some ship that happened,
and I gotta I'm working through it right and and
maybe not all of it can be um meditated away.
I think so. And I think one thing that a
lot of women I talked to said is that the
self helps sometimes makes them feel additional pressure that not
(12:32):
only are they facing financial trouble or marital trouble or
feeling overwhelmed with home and um work, but then on
top of all that they have to meditate or they
have to do something else than if they don't, they're
not actualized enough um and it's their own fault if
they're having trouble rather than a sort of unsustainable situation.
I think there's also this idea of well, I adore him,
(12:53):
but Joseph Campbell popularized the idea of following your bliss,
and there's this idea that if you're not doing what
brings you the greatest joy, you shouldn't be doing it.
So you approach your job when you're like enough to
have a job, even as something that is a drudgery.
And so I think it increases the unhappiness even if
you have something good. If you were talking about your
(13:15):
going in to work on Monday with this expectation that
it should feel incredibly fulfilling and you should find your
purpose there, yeah, and then it's just Monday, and yeah, Well,
I think one question that I kept hearing from women
was like, um, once they had really started exploring this
was what is going to be enough? Like when will
it feel satisfying? What like if the kids all get
(13:38):
into Ivy League schools and they become corporate president and
all these things happen. Will that when they have a
million dollars in the bank? Will that be enough? Or
where is? Where's their number? And I think a lot
of women from our generation don't don't have an end
goal message. Are we moving the goal line on ourselves?
That's what I kept hearing. I kept hearing women say
that that, Um, you know, they would they would be secure,
(14:00):
they would have they would be so lucky. Um, like
you said, it's it's not the depression. Um, they might
have an I RA even and um. And then it
wouldn't feel it just wouldn't feel safe. And I wonder.
And I talked in the book a little bit about
how we grew up and all the instability between the
divorce and the crime rate and the missing children on
(14:20):
milk cartoons and the latch key kidom and all of that.
There was just this real sense of danger and and loneliness.
I think for our generation. The twenty four hour news
cycle started when we became or you you're a little
younger than I became aware of the news, you know,
cable news, because when I was growing up, even when
I was like a teenager, you'd get your morning paper.
(14:41):
It was, you know, the New York Times or whatever,
and and that was the news. So they did. Parents
would sit down in front of McNeil, Lara, Peter jenne inshole.
But that was it. It wasn't And then when safe
of news, and now something's happening in Bangladesh and you
feel like it's happening in your back. And so I
think that increased anxiety is right, Petrol. I think that's
(15:03):
totally right. And I think also just the work, the
work day never stopping. I mean when I had a job,
um at a magazine, it was like when I opened
my phone at six of them running, there were a
million emails. And when I closed eyes at night, it
was right after looking at you know, a million emails,
and it just felt like there was no there's no rest,
there's no break. And and so I think that is new.
(15:24):
And what I tried to do in the book was
just talking about all the different things that are new
about being a middle aged woman today that are different
from our mothers and grandmothers. So there's a lot of
that's the same. The hormones are the same. Um, you know,
feeling pressure, dealing with aging parents, dealing with kids, all
this stuff. But I think what you identify as one
of the big changes, which is just you're never off
the clock. Yeah, so what's the I mean, we're trying
(15:49):
not to be reductive and you know, unthoughtfully self helping here,
but how are people helping themselves out with this? Yes? No,
And I think it is really important not to just
dwell in the dwell in the Missouri and all the
bad is. I think it's that's the first step. You like,
look at all the things that are rough and cut
yourself some slack because you realize that you you are
(16:09):
facing some stiff headwinds in certain areas. Um. There were
three things that I found helpful and UM one was
getting support, which comes in like a lot of forms.
Like for me, it was starting a club with some
other women journalists. So we meet once a month and
we just like help each other out, and we do
readings and we um and we have agents and publicists
and and so it's like networking but it's really just
(16:31):
us sitting around drinking and having a moment of like,
so I'm so happy to hear you call this what
it really is, drinking and gossiping. Um. So you know,
and that has been that's given me so many new,
wonderful friendships that have been sustaining in on every level. UM.
And so I think support and and so it's not
just friendships, although I think that's a huge part of it. UM.
(16:52):
But you know, getting more help at home however you
can get that, um, whether you're rallying family or paying
for it. UM, just really investing in and getting help. Um.
You know, I got a therapist, I got a good
go onecologist, I got a good accountant. You know, I
kind of assembled a team of help which I didn't
have before because I thought I can do it all myself. Um.
(17:13):
The second thing I think is expectations part which I
just think is so huge. And I think that's what
facing up to the reality it really helps you do,
is just thinking like why do I have these expectations
for myself? Like why do I think I'm supposed to
have all of this effortency under control? Maybe I'm not.
And I think that's so liberating. UM. And I just
think that in empowering and and and just once you
(17:33):
can let yourself, let yourself go a little bit um
and stop working so hard honestly, UM. And then the
last one is just realizing this is a period of
time that's been hard for women for generations, that that
middle age, because of the hormonal stuff that we go through,
which people don't tend to talk about very honestly. UM,
it just can be. It can be very fraught, and
(17:53):
I think, UM, realizing that and realizing that it will
end at some point is um is a huge step.
That doesn't mean it's going to get better. It will end,
and then you will become a really old person. Although
I mean much older people tend to be much happier.
I think no, I think have fifty, according to my
it's super psyched for my eighties. Have fast you'll ever
(18:15):
be is at fifty apparently according to started rising at fifty.
But I've seen is there's this dip like and I
think for women it's right around forty early forties, and
then it climbs back up. That definitely resonates. It's funny.
I remember that when I was going through a particularly
tough time. My mother was dying of cancer. I was
the editor in chief of a magazine. I had two
(18:36):
kids who needed a lot for me, and um, I
honestly thought my head fly right off my body and
it didn't. But um, you know, there's some the wear
and tear was showing for sure. And I talked to
the mom, a friend of mine, and she said, this
is a really tough stretch and at last a really
(18:58):
long time, but it doesn't last forever. And it was
such a short conversation and so incredibly helpful. Thank you,
Susan Scopetta. And we're listening to you. So what role
what Since a lot of us are navigating this with
either a spouse or someone close to us, a family member,
(19:18):
what how does it impact our intimate relationships and how
can we use those two support us in this because
we don't have the traditional roles anymore. You don't have
the strong, you know, masculine men to take care of you. Um,
at least most people don't, and so there's not that
to to lean on. I want to talk about intimate relationships,
(19:41):
how those help us when we come back. Before the break,
I've been stumbling into personal relationships, because that's what I
like to talk about. So we're here with in a comhident.
(20:02):
I want to just ask you what what is the
role of intimacy in this period of turbulence in our lives? Um, well,
I think it's essential. I think it's having someone on
your team and having somebody what you know, if it's
if it's not a partner, because again, a lot of
women of our generation don't have partners, and um, there's
been this rise of single dum. But whoever it is,
(20:23):
who's going to help you out? I which is another
expectation that's a little busted. It's definitely busted. And I
think that that's something I heard again and again where um,
women thought they were going to have partners and children
by a certain time and then they just didn't for
a variety of reasons, a lot of which make tons
of sense. I mean, I think they they had financial troubles,
so they thought, I'll just wait until I have more money.
(20:44):
And then by the time they had more money, it
wasn't on the table physically necessarily, and and you know
where they didn't have somebody with them. And so just
hearing that that level of disappointment as really UM. It's
really powerful, I think because we were raised thinking that
was just going to be at our at our back
and call um. But I think whoever it is that
you have, I think you think you need support at
(21:05):
this age. And I do think people are making it
up because there isn't the you get married at twenty four,
you have children at you know you have UM and
you and you go through life that way. Because things
are so different now. I think people are living together
much longer. They're having kids sometimes, Like I have friends
who have who are my age to have babies, little babies,
(21:26):
and I have friends my age who have kids in
their twenties and I have a thirteen year old and
a twenty five year old steps on UM and it's
like you just there's there's no formula and everyone has
to just make it up as they go along. And
I think the good news is that you can really
invent your own relationship and and things can be however
you and whoever you're with want them to be. I
(21:48):
was definitely struck in your book when you talked a
little bit about blame and relationships and how UM women
can sometimes fall into the trap of blaming their partners
for the choices that they made. And you know, I
fought with that a little bit because I do know
a lot of women, and honestly, I also know a
lot of men whose choices have been heavily influenced by
(22:11):
the expectations of their partners. Um. You know, I know
men who got into careers that made them miserable and
stayed in jobs that made them miserable because they were
they were married to women who expected that they would
just you know, write out there and make some money.
And um, so I'm curious about how you the blame
(22:31):
doesn't help. How do you on not that not? Um? Well,
you know, people better stronger than I am, as far
as um. Therapists and experts have have done a better job.
But one that I really loved was Daphne Demarna. You know.
So she wrote this called The Rough Patch, and one
thing she said in it that really resonated with me
is that we we tend to blame our partners for
(22:52):
so many things. Um, but it's not. It's not other
people that that limit our choices, and thought marriage that
keeps you from doing all these things you wish you
could do. And it's life. It's it's it's not this person.
And I think it's very easy, she said, to to
focus it on this person, And like you said, sometimes
it is the person. But in my experience and the
people I talked to, what I saw most often was
(23:15):
they were projecting all of these disappointments onto the situation.
And a lot of people I know who got divorced
found that right around the corner they had a lot
of the same problems. So expectation is something you hold
yourself to, what you what you want for yourself versus
what you're what you're actually able to achieve. But I
think there's another dark force like blame, which is competition
(23:40):
or comparison, and we I think we're immersed in that
in this culture with social media and even just in
the workplace, we're always comparing ourselves to the woman next
to us. How do you get around that, I think
as much as you can, I think you replace digital
relationships with real ones, because that's one thing that I
(24:02):
heard again and again was that social media makes people
feel bad just looking at those idealized, filtered pictures. It
just gives you the sense that everyone else has a
figured out And so I think if you're able to
actually have these real conversations like you will have. I
think it gives you a more realistic and accurate idea
of what's going on around you. Last fall, I got
(24:24):
together with a friend woman I love, who I hadn't
seen all summer long, and she had had this incredible
summer of travel. She'd just been all over the world
and there were pictures of her everywhere with monuments of
all kinds behind her um looking gorgeous, with beautiful children,
husband whatever. Got together with her and I said, Wow,
(24:44):
you've had yourself a summer and she said, oh, it's horrible.
I'm so glad to be done with that. I dragged
myself all the hell over th you. It made me
feel better, and it made me feel awful, and I
just thought, well, hell, you know, but you can't win
for loose like I wish. I wish, I wish just
one of those pictures had been of her, I don't know,
(25:07):
dragging a roller back through an airport looking to draggle,
saying like I thought this would be great, but it
actually it's kind of stucking, you know. I mean, I
guess you would have gotten a pile on of hate,
like you're so lucky you're getting off a plane from
tim Buck two. I'm stuck in wherever and it's ninety degrees.
But but I don't know it would have helped me. Yeah, well,
(25:31):
I think that's true of like the Christmas letter every year,
where people just talk about how great everybody's great. Look
at that once again another year of everybody excelling in
every way, And and yeah, I wish too, it was
it was possible to have the honest Christmas letter and
the honest Instagram post. Do you really though, because sometimes
they could be super heavy. I mean, I know stuff
(25:51):
that goes on in my family or friends and you
just don't want to, Like, you know, one friend of
mine his brothers committed suicide. That's not a letter you
want to open. Cheez, that's just we should just abandon
the Christmas ter. Maybe maybe if it's completely dishonest and
it honestly just so's misery, why are we doing this
(26:14):
at least? Just like no, I never sent a Christmas letter.
I senday Christmas card with just a picture, which this
year it gets my family is growing and it gets
harder and harder. When I grew up, we had six
kids and tons of pets and getting everyone to even
look at the camera was impossible. So we're getting our
(26:35):
families getting to that point now too. We cannot get
all four children to look at the camera or make
a nice face. So this year we have a screaming
baby and we made a speech bubble just saying ho
ho ho because we couldn't get a picture with her.
So we do a card, no letter. I like that.
I like that. I think that's the solution. That's the
you know, that's the honest Christmas card slash letter. Yeah,
(26:57):
you just have to be honest. I do think that. Well,
there are two things that as a woman who's not
a gen excerpt has gone through this interesting stage. One
is to be honest, honestly and and and stop lying
to yourself on to other people and stop with the pretense.
And the other is just to realize it's not. Part
of being honest is to realize it's not as bad
(27:17):
as you keep telling yourself. It is. The awfulizing. I mean,
my gosh, yeah, you're working hard, but you're not carrying
your chamber pot out to dump it out of the
window every morning. You know, to talk to us about
that just amazing. Can you imagine if we listen in
a time before tampons, before plumbing, it would have been terrible. Absolutely,
(27:38):
So there's some you know, even though we have to
make beds, it's way better than it could be, and
that it has been, you know. Yeah, And I think,
and I think practicing gratitude for all the things you
have and and the times we live in and all
that is part of it. Yeah, I totally agree. And
I also loved that in your book you include a
not a playlist, but a midlight of mixed tapes, because
(28:01):
of course you were referencing what every gen xer knows,
which is that mixed tapes are how you unlock the
heart of another person. Yeah. But I love the songs
on your miss tape mixed tape you got. You got
that part at the very very very very end of
the book. It's your favorite gen X song? Oh gosh, Well,
the one I the one I mentioned I think in
(28:21):
the book is Cruel Summer because that was funny was
having when I wrote When I wrote it, there was
a great Dolly parton song like p MS Blues. There's
there's a lot of songs from different eras was Dolly
having a moment right now. I love her. I just
think she should be sainted so much love. So are
you moving out of it? Do you feel like you've
processed this whole the secret of middle age, and you're
(28:44):
and you fully actualized? Um? You know what, It's funny
like it's writing this book really did cure the midlife
crisis part of my life. And then things got incredibly
hard where um, I have a parent diagnosa with cans, sir,
and child at my child at home burned down and
you know other people that it's it's been. UM, it's
(29:05):
been a really rough fall. And thank god I wrote
this book before all these things happen, because I feel
like I have this support system in place. UM, and
I know this is inevitable that that times are going
to be hard and my expectations are not high, and UM,
so I just I feel really lucky that I had
had done the book and I had done the research
(29:25):
and talk to all these women and made these new friends,
and then, UM, that has helped me so much dealing
with all this stuff. We feel really lucky for getting
to talk to you because really good advice. Thank you
so much for so much, Thanks for what you do. Okay, everybody.
The book is Why We Can't Sleep, Women's New midlife Crisis.
And for more from Ada, checkout aid to Calhoun dot com.
(29:47):
The Road to Somewhere is recorded in New York City.
Make sure to share, subscribe, rate, and review us. We
would love to hear from you. Where are you on
your journey? Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
at pod to Somewhere and email us at road to
Somewhere at iHeartMedia dot com. Special thanks to Alicia Haywood,
(30:08):
are incredible producer. Thanks everyone for joining us on the
Road to Somewhere. We're available on the iHeart Radio app,
on Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
As much as you can. I think you replace digital
relationships with real ones, because that's one thing that I
heard again and again was that social media makes it
fool feel bad. I was looking at those idealized, filtered pictures.
It just gives you the sense that everyone else has
to figure it out. And so I think if you're
able to actually have these real conversations like you will have,
(00:22):
it gives you a more realistic and accurate idea of
what's going on around you. Hey, there, Welcome to the
road to somewhere. It's a place where we get to
talk about adventure and life changing and exploration and transformation.
(00:44):
It's about not necessarily knowing where we're going, but having
the faith that the journey will be worthwhile. I am
Lisa Oz and I'm Jill Herzig and I'm fifty three
years old. How old you? Good? Lord? I feel like
we're in a meeting fifty six all right, So there
you go, everybody. Those are our ages. Lisa and I
have often discussed why the hell women don't talk about
their age when you can just find it online two
(01:07):
seconds Google. Lisa was very old. Jill Herzige not quite
so old, but pretty old and doesn't get boat dox
so looks really old. Anyway, I guess I just feel
like it's funny. When I was the editor of Red
Book magazine, I wrote a um kind of last minute
(01:30):
editor's note about being honest about my age, and at
the time, I think, I think it would have been
like ten years ago, so I would have been like
super young, except it felt like it was a big
thing to admit it. Um, But I was telling everybody
my age, and it just felt stupid not to talk
(01:51):
about that, so I did. And our PR team came
down to see me in my office and said, are
you sure you want to do this? And I said yeah.
And the fact that they were trying to stage this
intervention made me even more sure that I wanted to
do it. And it turned out to be. I didn't
say anything profound, but it turned out to be. If
(02:16):
if anything I ever wrote went a little tiny bit viral,
that was the thing that went a little tiny bit viral. Anyway,
I just raise it because we're talking life stages and
life changes. Yeah, I think it's something that we as
women in particular, struggle with. I don't think guys have
the same pressure around it anyway. Our guest today is
going to help us. Do you know what the issues
(02:39):
around being modern women. She's an award winning freelance journalist.
She's written for Time, National Geographic Traveler, OH, from Oprah magazine,
Well you know that one, Joe Um and The New
Republic Billboard, just a slew of magazines. And she has
a new book called Why We Can't Sleep, Women's New
(03:00):
Midlife Crisis. Ad Cahun, thank you so much for being
with us today. Thanks for having me. So we talked
about all these articles you've written. The book actually came
out of an article for OH magazine, UM that you
wrote about gen xers. Um, tell us a little bit
about that article and how the world responded. Well, I
got a call um from an editor Oprah dot com
(03:21):
a couple of summers ago, and I was having like
the world's worst summer. Talk about like a moment of crisis. Um,
I was just miserable and a bunch of freelance work
had fallen through, and UM, I wasn't sleeping at all,
and I was just pretty miserable and broke, and UM,
this editor called and said, you know, I want to
talk about what's happening with gen x women. Everyone I
know is struggling. Um. And I was like, well, you know,
(03:42):
the timing is right, I need some work and um,
and I'm pretty curious to myself and so I just
started looking into it at all the forces at work
on women our age and UM, what I found I
just kind of blew my mind. And I wrote the
six thousand word story for opra dot com and it went,
um so viral I couldn't leave it. It It was like
hundreds of thousands of Facebook shares in like two days,
(04:03):
and um, friends of mine said that it was like
their entire Facebook wall. It was like people sharing it
back and forth. Um. And I just realized there was
like there was more there than just six thousand words.
So takeover miserable women at midlife. But it made me
think of was like, it's something we don't talk about enough.
And I think when there's an opportunity, I think, um,
women are ready definitely, so so talk a little bit
(04:26):
more about what was going on in your life. So
slow down of work and attendant lack of money. Yeah.
And I had always had this fantasy, like because I've
been freelance for about ten years. I've been an editor
in chief of an online magazine, and then I got
um freelance and become a ghost writer and written my
own books, and you know, I had like critical success
(04:47):
and all this stuff, and I felt like things were
on the rise for a while, and then all this
stuff just started falling through UM. And I'd always had
this fantasy like, oh, I can go back to a job,
like I'll just I'll fall back on corporate life, you know,
and go get an editor job, because when I had
left ten years earlier, there were some of those. And
then I decided to go back and there were none.
I was really surprised. Like I got called in for
(05:09):
a couple interviews, and one was for like a teaching
job that paid like a hundred dollars of class once
a week, and then another thing was for a magazine
I won't mention that was like basically starting level salary UM.
And I just I was like, oh, so my industry
was created some at some point when I wasn't paying
attention UM, and that's not an option. So this was
(05:30):
like my fantasy for what I was going to do
when everything collapsed with freelance, and it wasn't even there,
So I was like, what do I do? Do I
change careers? Um, do I you know, go back to school.
I just had all these, um, these things on that
I thought of, but none of them really seemed super feasible.
I had one child I was helping with college, and
(05:50):
one who was in middle going into middle school, and UM,
my husband's artists and the breadwinner, and it was just
the amount of pressure that summer was just um awhelming. Yeah.
In the book, though, I felt like you kind of
mounted this case that it's the financial pressures and economic
pressures which have uniquely, you know, impacted gen X women,
(06:14):
not just ones in the publishing industry. Though you and
I have that particular fire something like we can discuss
the yeah yeah, I mean lots of lots of industries
have been disrupted, but it goes beyond the economic yeah yeah, yeah. Well,
one thing that I was really surprised by, um was
just how every turn UM gen X women so basically
(06:35):
and when I see gen X, it's women born from
the mid sixties to the early eighties. But I feel
like a sort of older millennials and younger boomers tend
to relate to a lot of it too. UM. People
in this group, UM, a lot of them were children
of divorce, which, of course is can be emotionally rough,
but then also financially it can be devastating. And especially
(06:55):
in the seventies, a lot of times the men left
and the single mom moms were left to raise the kids.
And it wasn't It wasn't the way it is now
with the co parenting. Yeah, I mean it was you know,
at least half my friends, more than half UM in
the city probably UM. And so you have suddenly no
financial support. Um. A lot of those kids didn't have
a college fund um going into being adults. And then
(07:20):
you graduate into recession, many of them. UM, and then
it's sort of at every point like just we're smacked
back down. So um, we're just kind of climbing up corporately,
and then um dot com bust and just about to
buy a house and housing market crash and or just
already had just bought a house in many cases. UM.
I can't tell you the number of people who are
in this UM demographic who are underwater on their houses. Uh,
(07:42):
and just just bad luck, just bad luck, NonStop. So
I would not I would postulate that difficult financial circumstances
have been around for a really long time, and we're
probably universal right as the caveman the cave bust. You know,
I'm sure this is happened for a long time. UM.
(08:02):
Certainly that our grandparents were growing up in the depression
had difficulty. UM. But I've read an article, it was
actually a blog, UM. Do you know who Tim Urban is?
And he talked about gen xers and the reason that
it is so much harder for them than anyone else
given a hard circumstances is expectation and the level of
(08:23):
expectation being so far above what they actually achieve. And
so it's that gap that makes you unhappy, not the
actual circumstances themselves. Do you agree with that? So in
the book I talk a lot about this, UM. Expectations
we were given, especially as young women UM, growing up
during Title nine and and this, and with feminist mothers
(08:44):
in many cases, UM, who were part of the Second Wave,
and we were told like, you can be anything, even
president UM. And this was drilled into us from a
very early age, and they were all there was the
famous Enjolie perfume ad, you can do all these things. Look,
you can be sexy, and you can have a corporate job,
and you can have children. You can do it all
and still look fabulous. Only can you, but you kind
(09:06):
of should. Well. I think that's what happened to us.
I think we were told we had this opportunity and
this one UM, this one expert I talked to, this
shrink who I thought was really so smart. She said,
possibilities create pressure. That it's it's not like you don't
want the possibilities, but they come with just this um,
this sort of mantra and this mandate to do all
(09:27):
the things UM. And I think what happened with us
as a generation is we had this mandate, this pressure
to do everything and do it beautifully UM and never
letting them see you sweat and all of that UM.
But we weren't given any support to make that happen.
So it's not like the workplace changed to make it
easier to have kids at home while you did all
these things. It's not like um, men changed that much.
(09:48):
They changed a lot. They're much. They do a lot
more child care, but nowhere near half in most cases.
And so you know, you have you have all this pressure,
you've all these pictations for yourself, and then you to
middle age and it hasn't been easy. It hasn't happened
for everybody. Um, and then what do you do? Well,
when we come back, we're going to talk exactly about that.
What do we do? Before the break, we were talking
(10:20):
about the stresses and pressures and expectations put on particularly
gen X women with it. Ocahun, I want to dig
deeper into those, and you suggested that you might have
a clue as to what we can do about it. Um. Well,
I really do think the first step is to do
what you all do so beautifully on this podcast is
(10:42):
talk really frankly about the situation, so not without which
is what your story did. It got women talking, yeah,
and I think that's that's step one for all of this.
I just kind of saying, Um, they were saying, you know,
this is me, this is you know, and a lot
of them are saying things like I had the vague
feeling of unease and I didn't know what it was,
(11:04):
and they felt like talking about it in this way,
talking about it generationally, UM, put a name on it
and and help them see it more clearly. And also
I think they felt like they weren't alone, which is
so important. UM. And they also felt like they weren't.
They weren't crazy, they weren't um It wasn't that they
had personally failed and done something wrong and and not
worked hard enough. Because I think as women, we tend
(11:25):
to think, oh, if I just keep working, if I
keep doing more things, eventually it will all come clear.
But that actually sitting back and reflecting was what they
needed to do. M I mean, it's funny because sometimes
I think I'll have this experience when we're interviewing guests,
are preparing to interview guests, and they do give you
this sense that there is no obstacle you can't face,
(11:48):
there's nothing you can't overcome. And while it buys me
and it and it energizes me and I learned so
much from it, it's interesting to switch the focus to
you know, these obstacles are real, and if you don't
fully acknowledge them, it's actually hard to muster the energy.
(12:08):
You know, there has to be some moment too, of saying, like,
you know, there there's some there's some ship that happened,
and I gotta I'm working through it right and and
maybe not all of it can be um meditated away.
I think so. And I think one thing that a
lot of women I talked to said is that the
self helps sometimes makes them feel additional pressure that not
(12:32):
only are they facing financial trouble or marital trouble or
feeling overwhelmed with home and um work, but then on
top of all that they have to meditate or they
have to do something else than if they don't, they're
not actualized enough um and it's their own fault if
they're having trouble rather than a sort of unsustainable situation.
I think there's also this idea of well, I adore him,
(12:53):
but Joseph Campbell popularized the idea of following your bliss,
and there's this idea that if you're not doing what
brings you the greatest joy, you shouldn't be doing it.
So you approach your job when you're like enough to
have a job, even as something that is a drudgery.
And so I think it increases the unhappiness even if
you have something good. If you were talking about your
(13:15):
going in to work on Monday with this expectation that
it should feel incredibly fulfilling and you should find your
purpose there, yeah, and then it's just Monday, and yeah, Well,
I think one question that I kept hearing from women
was like, um, once they had really started exploring this
was what is going to be enough? Like when will
it feel satisfying? What like if the kids all get
(13:38):
into Ivy League schools and they become corporate president and
all these things happen. Will that when they have a
million dollars in the bank? Will that be enough? Or
where is? Where's their number? And I think a lot
of women from our generation don't don't have an end
goal message. Are we moving the goal line on ourselves?
That's what I kept hearing. I kept hearing women say
that that, Um, you know, they would they would be secure,
(14:00):
they would have they would be so lucky. Um, like
you said, it's it's not the depression. Um, they might
have an I RA even and um. And then it
wouldn't feel it just wouldn't feel safe. And I wonder.
And I talked in the book a little bit about
how we grew up and all the instability between the
divorce and the crime rate and the missing children on
(14:20):
milk cartoons and the latch key kidom and all of that.
There was just this real sense of danger and and loneliness.
I think for our generation. The twenty four hour news
cycle started when we became or you you're a little
younger than I became aware of the news, you know,
cable news, because when I was growing up, even when
I was like a teenager, you'd get your morning paper.
(14:41):
It was, you know, the New York Times or whatever,
and and that was the news. So they did. Parents
would sit down in front of McNeil, Lara, Peter jenne inshole.
But that was it. It wasn't And then when safe
of news, and now something's happening in Bangladesh and you
feel like it's happening in your back. And so I
think that increased anxiety is right, Petrol. I think that's
(15:03):
totally right. And I think also just the work, the
work day never stopping. I mean when I had a job,
um at a magazine, it was like when I opened
my phone at six of them running, there were a
million emails. And when I closed eyes at night, it
was right after looking at you know, a million emails,
and it just felt like there was no there's no rest,
there's no break. And and so I think that is new.
(15:24):
And what I tried to do in the book was
just talking about all the different things that are new
about being a middle aged woman today that are different
from our mothers and grandmothers. So there's a lot of
that's the same. The hormones are the same. Um, you know,
feeling pressure, dealing with aging parents, dealing with kids, all
this stuff. But I think what you identify as one
of the big changes, which is just you're never off
the clock. Yeah, so what's the I mean, we're trying
(15:49):
not to be reductive and you know, unthoughtfully self helping here,
but how are people helping themselves out with this? Yes? No,
And I think it is really important not to just
dwell in the dwell in the Missouri and all the
bad is. I think it's that's the first step. You like,
look at all the things that are rough and cut
yourself some slack because you realize that you you are
(16:09):
facing some stiff headwinds in certain areas. Um. There were
three things that I found helpful and UM one was
getting support, which comes in like a lot of forms.
Like for me, it was starting a club with some
other women journalists. So we meet once a month and
we just like help each other out, and we do
readings and we um and we have agents and publicists
and and so it's like networking but it's really just
(16:31):
us sitting around drinking and having a moment of like,
so I'm so happy to hear you call this what
it really is, drinking and gossiping. Um. So you know,
and that has been that's given me so many new,
wonderful friendships that have been sustaining in on every level. UM.
And so I think support and and so it's not
just friendships, although I think that's a huge part of it. UM.
(16:52):
But you know, getting more help at home however you
can get that, um, whether you're rallying family or paying
for it. UM, just really investing in and getting help. Um.
You know, I got a therapist, I got a good
go onecologist, I got a good accountant. You know, I
kind of assembled a team of help which I didn't
have before because I thought I can do it all myself. Um.
(17:13):
The second thing I think is expectations part which I
just think is so huge. And I think that's what
facing up to the reality it really helps you do,
is just thinking like why do I have these expectations
for myself? Like why do I think I'm supposed to
have all of this effortency under control? Maybe I'm not.
And I think that's so liberating. UM. And I just
think that in empowering and and and just once you
(17:33):
can let yourself, let yourself go a little bit um
and stop working so hard honestly, UM. And then the
last one is just realizing this is a period of
time that's been hard for women for generations, that that
middle age, because of the hormonal stuff that we go through,
which people don't tend to talk about very honestly. UM,
it just can be. It can be very fraught, and
(17:53):
I think, UM, realizing that and realizing that it will
end at some point is um is a huge step.
That doesn't mean it's going to get better. It will end,
and then you will become a really old person. Although
I mean much older people tend to be much happier.
I think no, I think have fifty, according to my
it's super psyched for my eighties. Have fast you'll ever
(18:15):
be is at fifty apparently according to started rising at fifty.
But I've seen is there's this dip like and I
think for women it's right around forty early forties, and
then it climbs back up. That definitely resonates. It's funny.
I remember that when I was going through a particularly
tough time. My mother was dying of cancer. I was
the editor in chief of a magazine. I had two
(18:36):
kids who needed a lot for me, and um, I
honestly thought my head fly right off my body and
it didn't. But um, you know, there's some the wear
and tear was showing for sure. And I talked to
the mom, a friend of mine, and she said, this
is a really tough stretch and at last a really
(18:58):
long time, but it doesn't last forever. And it was
such a short conversation and so incredibly helpful. Thank you,
Susan Scopetta. And we're listening to you. So what role
what Since a lot of us are navigating this with
either a spouse or someone close to us, a family member,
(19:18):
what how does it impact our intimate relationships and how
can we use those two support us in this because
we don't have the traditional roles anymore. You don't have
the strong, you know, masculine men to take care of you. Um,
at least most people don't, and so there's not that
to to lean on. I want to talk about intimate relationships,
(19:41):
how those help us when we come back. Before the break,
I've been stumbling into personal relationships, because that's what I
like to talk about. So we're here with in a comhident.
(20:02):
I want to just ask you what what is the
role of intimacy in this period of turbulence in our lives? Um, well,
I think it's essential. I think it's having someone on
your team and having somebody what you know, if it's
if it's not a partner, because again, a lot of
women of our generation don't have partners, and um, there's
been this rise of single dum. But whoever it is,
(20:23):
who's going to help you out? I which is another
expectation that's a little busted. It's definitely busted. And I
think that that's something I heard again and again where um,
women thought they were going to have partners and children
by a certain time and then they just didn't for
a variety of reasons, a lot of which make tons
of sense. I mean, I think they they had financial troubles,
so they thought, I'll just wait until I have more money.
(20:44):
And then by the time they had more money, it
wasn't on the table physically necessarily, and and you know
where they didn't have somebody with them. And so just
hearing that that level of disappointment as really UM. It's
really powerful, I think because we were raised thinking that
was just going to be at our at our back
and call um. But I think whoever it is that
you have, I think you think you need support at
(21:05):
this age. And I do think people are making it
up because there isn't the you get married at twenty four,
you have children at you know you have UM and
you and you go through life that way. Because things
are so different now. I think people are living together
much longer. They're having kids sometimes, Like I have friends
who have who are my age to have babies, little babies,
(21:26):
and I have friends my age who have kids in
their twenties and I have a thirteen year old and
a twenty five year old steps on UM and it's
like you just there's there's no formula and everyone has
to just make it up as they go along. And
I think the good news is that you can really
invent your own relationship and and things can be however
you and whoever you're with want them to be. I
(21:48):
was definitely struck in your book when you talked a
little bit about blame and relationships and how UM women
can sometimes fall into the trap of blaming their partners
for the choices that they made. And you know, I
fought with that a little bit because I do know
a lot of women, and honestly, I also know a
lot of men whose choices have been heavily influenced by
(22:11):
the expectations of their partners. Um. You know, I know
men who got into careers that made them miserable and
stayed in jobs that made them miserable because they were
they were married to women who expected that they would
just you know, write out there and make some money.
And um, so I'm curious about how you the blame
(22:31):
doesn't help. How do you on not that not? Um? Well,
you know, people better stronger than I am, as far
as um. Therapists and experts have have done a better job.
But one that I really loved was Daphne Demarna. You know.
So she wrote this called The Rough Patch, and one
thing she said in it that really resonated with me
is that we we tend to blame our partners for
(22:52):
so many things. Um, but it's not. It's not other
people that that limit our choices, and thought marriage that
keeps you from doing all these things you wish you
could do. And it's life. It's it's it's not this person.
And I think it's very easy, she said, to to
focus it on this person, And like you said, sometimes
it is the person. But in my experience and the
people I talked to, what I saw most often was
(23:15):
they were projecting all of these disappointments onto the situation.
And a lot of people I know who got divorced
found that right around the corner they had a lot
of the same problems. So expectation is something you hold
yourself to, what you what you want for yourself versus
what you're what you're actually able to achieve. But I
think there's another dark force like blame, which is competition
(23:40):
or comparison, and we I think we're immersed in that
in this culture with social media and even just in
the workplace, we're always comparing ourselves to the woman next
to us. How do you get around that, I think
as much as you can, I think you replace digital
relationships with real ones, because that's one thing that I
(24:02):
heard again and again was that social media makes people
feel bad just looking at those idealized, filtered pictures. It
just gives you the sense that everyone else has a
figured out And so I think if you're able to
actually have these real conversations like you will have. I
think it gives you a more realistic and accurate idea
of what's going on around you. Last fall, I got
(24:24):
together with a friend woman I love, who I hadn't
seen all summer long, and she had had this incredible
summer of travel. She'd just been all over the world
and there were pictures of her everywhere with monuments of
all kinds behind her um looking gorgeous, with beautiful children,
husband whatever. Got together with her and I said, Wow,
(24:44):
you've had yourself a summer and she said, oh, it's horrible.
I'm so glad to be done with that. I dragged
myself all the hell over th you. It made me
feel better, and it made me feel awful, and I
just thought, well, hell, you know, but you can't win
for loose like I wish. I wish, I wish just
one of those pictures had been of her, I don't know,
(25:07):
dragging a roller back through an airport looking to draggle,
saying like I thought this would be great, but it
actually it's kind of stucking, you know. I mean, I
guess you would have gotten a pile on of hate,
like you're so lucky you're getting off a plane from
tim Buck two. I'm stuck in wherever and it's ninety degrees.
But but I don't know it would have helped me. Yeah, well,
(25:31):
I think that's true of like the Christmas letter every year,
where people just talk about how great everybody's great. Look
at that once again another year of everybody excelling in
every way, And and yeah, I wish too, it was
it was possible to have the honest Christmas letter and
the honest Instagram post. Do you really though, because sometimes
they could be super heavy. I mean, I know stuff
(25:51):
that goes on in my family or friends and you
just don't want to, Like, you know, one friend of
mine his brothers committed suicide. That's not a letter you
want to open. Cheez, that's just we should just abandon
the Christmas ter. Maybe maybe if it's completely dishonest and
it honestly just so's misery, why are we doing this
(26:14):
at least? Just like no, I never sent a Christmas letter.
I senday Christmas card with just a picture, which this
year it gets my family is growing and it gets
harder and harder. When I grew up, we had six
kids and tons of pets and getting everyone to even
look at the camera was impossible. So we're getting our
(26:35):
families getting to that point now too. We cannot get
all four children to look at the camera or make
a nice face. So this year we have a screaming
baby and we made a speech bubble just saying ho
ho ho because we couldn't get a picture with her.
So we do a card, no letter. I like that.
I like that. I think that's the solution. That's the
you know, that's the honest Christmas card slash letter. Yeah,
(26:57):
you just have to be honest. I do think that. Well,
there are two things that as a woman who's not
a gen excerpt has gone through this interesting stage. One
is to be honest, honestly and and and stop lying
to yourself on to other people and stop with the pretense.
And the other is just to realize it's not. Part
of being honest is to realize it's not as bad
(27:17):
as you keep telling yourself. It is. The awfulizing. I mean,
my gosh, yeah, you're working hard, but you're not carrying
your chamber pot out to dump it out of the
window every morning. You know, to talk to us about
that just amazing. Can you imagine if we listen in
a time before tampons, before plumbing, it would have been terrible. Absolutely,
(27:38):
So there's some you know, even though we have to
make beds, it's way better than it could be, and
that it has been, you know. Yeah, And I think,
and I think practicing gratitude for all the things you
have and and the times we live in and all
that is part of it. Yeah, I totally agree. And
I also loved that in your book you include a
not a playlist, but a midlight of mixed tapes, because
(28:01):
of course you were referencing what every gen xer knows,
which is that mixed tapes are how you unlock the
heart of another person. Yeah. But I love the songs
on your miss tape mixed tape you got. You got
that part at the very very very very end of
the book. It's your favorite gen X song? Oh gosh, Well,
the one I the one I mentioned I think in
(28:21):
the book is Cruel Summer because that was funny was
having when I wrote When I wrote it, there was
a great Dolly parton song like p MS Blues. There's
there's a lot of songs from different eras was Dolly
having a moment right now. I love her. I just
think she should be sainted so much love. So are
you moving out of it? Do you feel like you've
processed this whole the secret of middle age, and you're
(28:44):
and you fully actualized? Um? You know what, It's funny
like it's writing this book really did cure the midlife
crisis part of my life. And then things got incredibly
hard where um, I have a parent diagnosa with cans, sir,
and child at my child at home burned down and
you know other people that it's it's been. UM, it's
(29:05):
been a really rough fall. And thank god I wrote
this book before all these things happen, because I feel
like I have this support system in place. UM, and
I know this is inevitable that that times are going
to be hard and my expectations are not high, and UM,
so I just I feel really lucky that I had
had done the book and I had done the research
(29:25):
and talk to all these women and made these new friends,
and then, UM, that has helped me so much dealing
with all this stuff. We feel really lucky for getting
to talk to you because really good advice. Thank you
so much for so much, Thanks for what you do. Okay, everybody.
The book is Why We Can't Sleep, Women's New midlife Crisis.
And for more from Ada, checkout aid to Calhoun dot com.
(29:47):
The Road to Somewhere is recorded in New York City.
Make sure to share, subscribe, rate, and review us. We
would love to hear from you. Where are you on
your journey? Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
at pod to Somewhere and email us at road to
Somewhere at iHeartMedia dot com. Special thanks to Alicia Haywood,
(30:08):
are incredible producer. Thanks everyone for joining us on the
Road to Somewhere. We're available on the iHeart Radio app,
on Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Road to Somewhere News
Hosts And Creators
Lisa Oz
Jill Herzig
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