Midlife & Beyond Conversations

How do you feel when you open your wardrobe?

For many women, particularly as our bodies and lives change in midlife, getting dressed can become surprisingly complicated. Clothes that once felt right no longer do. We can find ourselves buying more, wearing less, or simply wondering where the woman we used to recognise has gone.

Midlife & Beyond with Jo Blackwell is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support m...

There’s something about becoming a grandmother that is almost impossible to put into words.

That first moment. That first cuddle. The first time you hear your grandchild call your special name.

My guest this week, Joy Crawford, understands that feeling very well. She is the founder of What My Grandkids Call Me, a community of grandparents built around a wonderfully simple idea: celebrating the names our grandchildren give us &n...

Caroline Nield was 48 when she discovered she was autistic.

Until then, she had spent years wondering why certain parts of life seemed harder for her than they appeared to be for other people. She rehearsed conversations before they happened. Phone calls needed preparation. Friendships could be difficult to maintain. Changes to familiar routines could feel disproportionately unsettling.

And, like many women who receive an autism diag...

What does it really mean to plan for our health after 60 – not from a place of fear, but so that we can remain active, independent and involved in the lives we want to lead?

My guest is Laura Ashforth, CEO and co-founder of Lateral, a specialist health insurer created for active people over 60.

Laura explains why traditional health insurance can become increasingly expensive as we grow older, and how Lateral has been designed t...

What if you didn’t need to reinvent your life to make it better?

My guests this week are Ann and Sal, hosts of the 1% Happier and Healthier podcast, and their philosophy is wonderfully simple: instead of setting enormous goals that quickly become overwhelming, make small, achievable changes – just 1% at a time.

And they know it works because they’ve done it themselves.

After meeting as neighbours 25 years ago, Ann an...

Do you ever wake up regretting how much you drank the night before—even though, from the outside, your drinking looks perfectly “normal”?

My guest, Kate Bee, is the founder of The Sober School, an online community helping women change their relationship with alcohol without shame, labels or a lifetime declaration that they will never drink again.

Kate describes her own experience of feeling lost somewhere between &l...

Have you ever felt that something was missing—and wondered whether changing direction would finally make you happy?

Ulrika Torquato left a career in medicine to pursue her dream of becoming a singer. But even after making that enormous change, the happiness she expected didn’t arrive. What changed her life was a much quieter realisation: while she was caught up in her thoughts, she was missing the beauty already present ...

Season 8 of the Midlife & Beyond Podcastbegins on Tuesday 11 August, bringing you warm, honest and sometimes moving conversations with women who have lived.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll explore everything from sobriety, strength and pelvic-floor health to late-diagnosed ADHD and autism, broken hearts, grandparenthood and wild new adventures.

In this short preview, I share a taste of what’s coming—along with news...

Neil Taylor helps families capture the stories, memories, and voices of their parents before it’s too late. After losing his own father to dementia, Neil realised how many stories had gone unrecorded – and how quickly voices and memories can fade.

In this conversation, we talk about ageing, grief, family connection, regret, memory, and why older people so often feel unseen. We also explore how understanding our parents&r...

Midlife parenting, letting go, and confidence. A thoughtful conversation on supporting adult children without holding them back, and rediscovering your own life beyond motherhood.You can find Randi here:https://www.randicrawfordcoaching.com/

And if this conversation resonates, my book Ageing Wonderfully Well: The Good News About Midlife and Growing Older explores many of these themes around identity, change, and what comes next:http...

Flourishing as we age means letting go of identity, ambition, and constant doing. In this conversation, Jo Blackwell and Laura Davis explore ageing, creativity, illness, and how slowing down can lead to greater freedom, joy, and meaning after 60. Find Laura here: https://lauradavis.net/And her book, The Burning Light of Two Stars can be found on Amazon

Is it possible to start a successful business after 50?

In this episode, Jo Blackwell speaks with Janis Doherty, who launched a creative venture in her late fifties after breast cancer and the pandemic prompted her to rethink what came next. What began as a small experiment making garden gnomes has grown into a thriving local business running creative events across her community. Gnome and Garden

A conversation about midlife reinvent...

In this reflective episode, Jo Blackwell shares 10 things she quit after 60 that made life calmer, lighter and happier. From letting go of constant usefulness and external validation to trusting intuition and releasing the need to control everything, this conversation explores the quiet freedom that often arrives in later life.

If you’re navigating midlife, ageing, identity shifts or life after 50, this episode offers perspect...

When the world feels chaotic, our instinct is often to rush in and try to fix everything. But what if the most powerful role we can play is simply to remain steady?

In this reflective episode, Jo Blackwell shares the story of a ship caught in a storm and the lighthouse that guided it home, exploring how calm wisdom, emotional regulation, and quiet leadership can help us support others without losing our own peace.