Reinventing at 56: How Yvonne Marchese Turned Playfulness Into Her Midlife Superpower

At 48, breaking up with her snooze button sparked a major shift for Yvonne Marchese. What began as one small change opened the door to reconnecting with herself, challenging ageist beliefs, and rediscovering what is possible in midlife. Now at 56, she lives a joyful, multi-passionate life shaped by curiosity, play, and purpose. Her story is a powerful reminder that tiny steps can unlock your midlife superpower. 

✨ Episode Highlights

This week on Reinvention Rebels, I’m celebrating the power of small steps, brave choices, and the unexpected sparks that set midlife reinvention in motion.

At 48, Yvonne Marchese was feeling stuck, exhausted, and overwhelmed by the daily grind. Hitting snooze had become a ritual — until one morning she realized something had to change. That tiny shift of getting up when the alarm rang became the first domino in a much bigger personal awakening.

Today, at 56, Yvonne is an author, speaker, photographer, and host of the Late Bloomer Living podcast. She is also the creator of the Age Agitators Club and a passionate advocate for seeing midlife as a playground, not a decline. Her journey is a beautiful example of how purpose, playfulness, and self-trust can become a midlife superpower.

In this candid and joyful conversation, Yvonne opens up about redefining aging, embracing imperfection, and giving herself permission to be a beginner — again and again.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• How ditching the snooze button at 48 sparked Yvonne’s reinvention
• The moment she realized her ageist beliefs were holding her back
• Why she believes aging can be playful, creative, and liberating
• The importance of asking for help, community, and doing it imperfectly
• How curiosity, consistency, and baby steps became her midlife momentum

Connect with Yvonne Marchese:

• Website: https://www.latebloomerliving.com/
• Instagram: @latebloomerliving

🎁 Free Gift

If this episode inspired you to explore your own possibilities, download my free guide, 100 Ways to Reinvent Yourself in Midlife. It is filled with simple, meaningful ideas to help you start betting on yourself in new ways.

👉 Check out my friend Adriene Berg's podcast, The Ageless Traveler, to discover enticing locations, luxury travel for less, grandparent and solo travel,
adventure itineraries, and meet the people who make travel easy.

Transcript

Yvonne Marchese
I don't need to be improved. I actually have everything I need inside me. Yes. And I just need to let her back out. All the things that I kept myself from doing because of limiting beliefs, because of things that were said to me or my experiences growing up, all that stuff is just, those are limitations that I then adopted and put on myself. And I don't need to improve nobody needs to improve themselves.

Wendy Battles
Welcome to Reinvention Rebels. Stories of brave and unapologetic women 50 to 90 years young who have boldly reinvented life on their own terms to find new purpose and possibilities. I'm your host, Wendy Battles. Ready to kick your fears to the curb, do it scared, and step into who you are meant to be in midlife and beyond? These amazing women, these reinvention rebels, can help light your reinvention path. Come join us and let's get inspired together.
Hey, hey, hey, friends! Welcome back to the Reinvention Rebels podcast.
I'm so glad you're here. I'm your host, Wendy, and if you're new to the podcast, this is the place where we celebrate women between 50 and 90 who are boldly reinventing themselves, rewriting the rules, and showing the world what's possible at any age. Today's conversation is such a powerful reminder That reinvention often begins with something small, something simple, something we barely realize is a turning point until much later. My guest, Yvonne Marchese, is living proof. At 48, she made one tiny decision. She broke up with her snooze button. And that small act became the spark that helped her completely shift her mindset about aging.
Reconnect with herself, and start building a joyful, multi-passionate life. Now, at 56, she's so many things: an author, photographer, speaker, and host of the fabulous Late Bloomer Living podcast. I'm going to tell you more about her in just a moment, but I want you to know that her reinvention is full of courage, curiosity, and those baby steps that add up over time. I know her story will inspire you to bet on yourself, even in the smallest of ways. And be sure to stay until the end because I've got a free resource that will help you get started on your own reinvention path. I am that sure that our conversation is going to totally inspire you into action. Now, let me tell you a little more about Yvonne.
At 56, Yvonne Marchese is living proof that it's never too late to reclaim your joy, find your voice, and reinvent your life from the inside out. After feeling stuck throughout her 40s, Yvonne had a wake-up call at 48 that sparked a bold personal transformation. She broke up with her snooze button, started meditating and moving her body daily, and slowly began rewriting the ageist narrative running through her head. As she reconnected with herself, body, mind, and spirit, she realized that aging wasn't a decline, but an invitation. That shift inspired her to help others feel the same sense of empowerment and possibility. Yvonne launched the Late Bloomer Living podcast, created the Age Agitators Club, and even got back on her roller skates, all while embracing a new mantra: aging can be playful. She's now an author, speaker, photographer, and roving reporter, living a multi-passionate life that's all about adventure, curiosity, and rewriting the script on what's possible.
In Midlife and Beyond. Yvonne Marchese, welcome to the Re and Vention Rebels guest chair.

Yvonne Marchese
Thank you. Wow, you made me sound so good.

Wendy Battles
That's 'cause you are. I didn't just make you sound that way. It's all true.

Yvonne Marchese
Thank you. I'm excited to be here with you today.

Wendy Battles
I'm so excited you're here. And I wanna tell everyone how we actually met because it was rather serendipitous that we got together because I was speaking at the Life in the Paws Menopause Festival last October, you were there attending it. And we now have all these mutual connections. And I think it was our friend Laura, our mutual friend Laura Wolfe.

Yvonne Marchese
Yeah.

Wendy Battles
That actually said, oh, you need to know each other.

Yvonne Marchese
Yeah, she was so spot on.

Wendy Battles
So spot on. And I'm- Thanks, Laura.

Yvonne Marchese
Right?

Wendy Battles
Thanks to you, Laura is right. And I just love when I have that instant connection with people where I feel like I've known them for decades, even though we just met. And that's how I felt when I met you immediately.

Yvonne Marchese
Yeah, me too. Me too.

Wendy Battles
Plus it's cool that we don't live that far away from each other so that we're actually one day going to meet in person.

Yvonne Marchese
I know, right? Right.

Wendy Battles
So I'm looking forward to that. And you know, we have so much to talk about today. You have such a great reinvention story, Yvonne. And I want to start by talking a little bit about. That snooze button that I mentioned in your bio, you said that turning off your snooze button at 48 was the first step in breaking free from this long period of feeling stuck. And I know many of us listening can relate to that feeling of being an inertia and stuck and just like, ugh. Can you tell us what was happening in your life at that time?
How did that small change of the snooze button become the spark for such a powerful reinvention?

Yvonne Marchese
Yeah. Do you know that feeling? Maybe you might get it in dreams sometimes where it's almost like you're trying to run, but you're not getting anywhere and you're-- oh, yeah. Or it's like walking through water, like that kind of feeling where it was-- my life felt like that. Even though I had fairly recently gone full time as a photographer, which had been my goal, like I didn't pick up a camera until I was 40. So I was a late bloomer there. And then I was working and doing photography on the side.
And finally, I think I was around 46 or 47 when I went full time with photography. And I was thinking, Shazam, that's it.

Wendy Battles
I know that feeling like that.

Yvonne Marchese
Right? But I was still, there was still something off. Like I, and I did not want to get up in the morning. And so I was hitting my snooze button over and over and over again. I was like, no, I don't wanna get up. I have to credit breaking up with my snooze button to Mel Robbins. My husband, he knew I was struggling and I was doing a lot.
I was looking for all the self-help stuff, all the self-help. And he's like, you know, I just, I've got this book on Audible and it's Mel Robbins, the Five Second Rule. I think you'll like it. And I was like, all right, I'll give it a listen. And I could relate to so much of what she was saying. Coming home every night, having a drink, almost every night, my husband and I would have a drink at night to relax and chill, chillax, whatever. And working late at night after the kids were in bed to edit photos.
And, you know, my husband would tell me, you suck at going to bed early. And I was like, I know, I do, I really do. And so I was not setting myself up well to get up the next morning. And hit the day running. And I was I felt like it was instantly having to put out fires with my kids from the moment I got up.
Everything just felt heavy. I felt like I was sluggish and slogging through my days. And and I felt like there was more for me, but I didn't know what it was. And so when I decided to try a morning routine as an experiment, broke up with the snooze button, and that meant taking my alarm and putting it across the room so I'd have to get up and put my feet on the floor and walk over to it. By then, it's like, oh, you may as well keep going.

Wendy Battles
Right?

Yvonne Marchese
Right? And I just thought, okay, I can do anything for 30 days.
Let me try this. I'm going to get up. I have always wanted to be a regular meditator. I had dabbled up to then and never was consistent. And so, okay, get up every morning about an hour before everybody else. Oof, not a morning person. Let me just point this out.
This was a big ask. Get up, meditate, move my body every day. That was what I was challenging myself to. And it was super hard. I did realize before too long went on that I needed to get my butt to bed earlier in order to make that better. So working backwards, that helped. And after a couple of weeks, Wendy, I started to feel an energy surge, and I started to feel more hopeful.
And I specifically started to feel more hopeful about what was next for me. You know, I was like, I was seeing the big five o coming and thinking, I already feel like my 40s were tough. I was telling, I was feeling old in my 40s, looking at myself in the mirror going, who is that? I don't recognize her. I don't know, something flipped. Yeah. Like a switch in my head. And when I started to feel more hopeful, that's when I had the aha moment of, oh, I have been telling myself that I'm getting old and it's all over and it is all downhill.
And that's not necessarily true. Like I feel better. At that point, I was like, I feel better than I felt in a really long time. Yes. If I can continue to feel better, what might be possible? I'm probably going to live into my 80s statistically. Maybe if nothing goes really wrong.
And if that's the case, I got another 30 years ahead of me. What am I gonna do with that 30 years? Am I gonna go around? Oh, it's all over.

Wendy Battles
Right. Or do something with it.

Yvonne Marchese
Yeah. Yeah. What do I want?
And I really started looking. Okay, what do I want?

Wendy Battles
I love it. I love how.
How this book was the Catalyst for you to get started, because. We all need a spark to help us reinvent. And it can come from so many places. It can come from someone we know, it can come from a book, it can come from a podcast we hear, or something serendipitous happening. We walk into, I don't know, a place we've never been and we meet someone we've never met and it sparks something. So I love that you use this as a way to create this opening for you and that We also can learn new things. We can change if we want to, because that's what I hear in what you said.
You had this desire. You wanted something different. You didn't know what it was at the beginning. You just knew that something needed to change. And you tried this routine of forget the snooze button. I'm going to get up and turn off my alarm. I'm going to meditate every day.
I'm going to move my body. But really, you were saying, I'm committing to myself. I'm making this commitment to myself.

Yvonne Marchese
Yes.

Wendy Battles
Because this is so important. And I feel like that was like a key factor in being able to move forward.

Yvonne Marchese
And I have to back up, Wendy, to say that part of this inspiration to do it, to actually take some action is because I got up one morning late, me late, and my kids were running late, and they were younger at the time, you know? Maybe my oldest was 10, I don't know. And I'm yelling at them, because they're not ready to go to school and we're scrambling to get out the door like we did every morning. And I'm yelling at them, get your lunchbox, why don't you have this? And I realized I was having an adult temper tantrum at my kids, expecting them to be more adult than they were. And here I am losing it. And I got in the car and I looked in the rearview mirror and I see these big fat tears in my kids' eyes.
And I just was like, oh my gosh, I felt like a monster. And that was when I came home and I told my husband, I'm like, Something's got to give. And I just also tell you that about I'm going to say maybe a month into this change in the mornings, my kids didn't know what I was doing. They didn't know I was up an hour earlier, none of that.

Wendy Battles
Sure.

Yvonne Marchese
But I went to wake up my kid and gave him a little shake, you know, and said, Hey, it's time to get up. And he just rolled over and said, you, seem happier, Mom. Oh. And yeah. And that was like, that's everything. That was everything. That was everything I needed to know to say, Yvonne, you're on the right track.

Wendy Battles
Yes.

Yvonne Marchese
Keep going. I love that. This is what you need to be doing.

Wendy Battles
Yes. And the wisdom from the mouths of babes, you know, even though they did, he was just being himself, saying that in this truly natural, organic way, but wow, what a thing to hear and reflect back to you that I'm on the right track. So sometimes even those little breadcrumbs help us along the way when our radar is on. And that's the other thing I'll just say, your radar was really on this level of self-awareness about things, which I think is is also so key. I know, Yvonne, that you talked a little bit about this stuckness that came from these ageist thoughts that you had, that you really sort of internalized when you said, I looked in the mirror and I didn't even recognize myself. So I'm really curious about how you began to challenge those beliefs and what helped you rewrite this narrative that's so prevalent in our world, that it's so.

Yvonne Marchese
Easy for all of us, especially women.

Wendy Battles
To get sucked into about aging and what's possible for us? How did you start to shift that narrative for yourself?

Yvonne Marchese
It's a really good question and I don't know if I have a pat answer for that. I think it has been a series of revelations to me that have started to become more obvious. I think where I started was the idea that that I did have 30 years ahead of me. And it seemed wasteful to not approach those 30 years with some sort of purpose. I wanted purpose. I wanted joyful purpose to be the theme of my life going forward from there. That's how much I knew.
And the realizing that the Ageism was a component of that. I think that's where the name of my podcast came from, is Late Bloomer Living. It's this idea that it's never too late to bloom, that you can do it at any point in time. And the ageism part of it kind of seeped in like, oh, this is ageist language that we're all steeped in. That I have completely bought into that isn't necessarily true, that the body's gonna decline in a certain way, that your mind, you're gonna lose, you know, you're gonna lose your marbles as you get older. All those things that we take as just, that's just part of aging, I was like, well, is it necessarily? It might be, it could be for some people.
But what kind of control do I have over that if I take care of myself? And the taking care of myself is not selfish. It helps my relationships with my kids and my husband and the people around me. So this idea that if we're taking care of ourselves, it's selfish, is also just mistaken. And I think that I approached it all from a self-improvement kind of lens. Like if you've got lenses on, you know, I was very much looking to improve myself in the beginning. And one thing that I've discovered over the past years of hosting the podcast and everything is that I don't need to be improved.
I actually have everything I need inside me. And I just need to let her back out. All the things that I kept myself from doing because of limiting beliefs, because of things that were said to me or my experiences growing up, all that stuff is just, those are limitations that I then adopted and put on myself. And I don't need to improve, nobody needs to improve themselves, you know?

Wendy Battles
Yeah, I totally hear you. And it feels to me listening to you talk about this. Unfolding, what I'll call an unfolding, that it truly was you awakening to yourself in new ways, that these things had always been within you, but you were giving yourself permission and space to recognize that. And I feel like that's such a game changer for midlife women because of all the socialization, because of all the messages that we get, because of the things we've internalized And it's not like I was like, oh, I'm gonna internalize this message right now, you know? I mean, it's so- Right, it's not that.

Yvonne Marchese
Nobody makes that decision, right? We make survival decisions.

Wendy Battles
Yes.

Yvonne Marchese
Right? As kids, before we have all the information or before we have context for a situation, we make decisions about our parents and how they view us and our siblings and how they view us and all, and you know, you get to those teen years and all of a sudden you've got all the input from all all the peers telling you things about yourself. And you just take it in, take it in, take it in, and you develop all these survival techniques for forgetting by and for, you know, yes, and for not getting hurt. But those survival techniques start to work against you after some time.

Wendy Battles
They do. They do.
And then to be able to kind of synthesize all of these different things, when we get to this point, where perhaps our responsibilities are changing. They might be less so as your kids grow up, but they might be more so as you're a caregiver. So there's still all kinds of things coming at us. But we certainly have experience and wisdom. And I think we learn, at least for myself, that I don't have to be so hard on myself. Like all the time. I mean, you know how it is.
I've wasted years beating myself up over all kinds of stuff. And you realize, this is so counterproductive. Like, why am I even doing this? Doing this, and I think we can get to this much better space and place where then you can invite in the things that you just talked about. Yeah. When you're like, I'm awakening to myself when I realize I'm pretty cool. And that there is no limit that I've got 30 plus years and I can do whatever.
Like, I have this basically open road to create something I'd love to do. And I think that's such a powerful mindset, what I would call a reinvention rebels mindset. Yes. This openness to what could be. And I feel like that's really related to something you talked about in our pre-interview. And you said that one of the hardest parts of reinvention is that it never ends. [No speech detected].
I was like, oh my gosh, you're so right. It doesn't end because you said, you know, you're constantly doing it again and again. And so- you-'re never done. You're never done.

Yvonne Marchese
You're never done.

Wendy Battles
I think it's a great idea to come to because we can still though refine and change. So I'm really curious about what keeps you grounded and resilient through these continual pivots and moments of growth.

Yvonne Marchese
I think knowing that it's never going to end helps in and of itself. It helps me to know that that's just. Living that there's going to be change that comes at us, and there's going to be change that we initiate. So how much can I initiate from a joyful, playful, experimental place, you know, and am I going to get there immediately? No, I'm not going to get there immediately. And that's. It's the enjoying the journey thing.

Wendy Battles
Yes, yes, yes. Right? It's not just this one time thing, like the destination of getting there. It's what you learn along the way.

Yvonne Marchese
Yes. And I'm in the middle of it again. It took me two years to... I had the podcast idea. It's all fuzzy as far as timing goes, but I know that I had the idea in my head for two years, two years, before I decided to go forward with it. It would not leave me alone. And I kept telling myself, I'm too busy.
I'm trying to build this photography business. Busy kids.
No, no, no, not now, not now. And finally, I was like, Enough already, Yvonne.
Just figure it out and make it happen.

Wendy Battles
I love it.

Yvonne Marchese
So now it's been almost five years, and now I'm like, okay, I made it to a little goal that I set for myself, a little internal goal of five years. And the goal too, let me just say with the podcast, I was like, so what's success? Like defining success for yourself, I think, is important.

Wendy Battles
Yes.

Yvonne Marchese
And it was like, is it going to be a certain number of downloads per episode? Is it going to be somehow making money on the podcast? No. I decided for myself that the success was going to be who I'd have to become to make the podcast happen and to do it weekly and get it done every week. And that was going to, like, who I'd have to become in that process was gonna be its own reward.

Wendy Battles
I love that. And who did you become to make that happen? 'Cause you do it on a weekly basis, which, number one, I'm like in awe of that because I don't have that much time. I'd love to, you know, I tried weekly and it was like way too much and I had to go back.

Yvonne Marchese
To like every other week.

Wendy Battles
So who did you become in this process? Determined, unstoppable.

Yvonne Marchese
I think who I became was I had to be bold. I had to ask for help. I had to surround myself with community that could support me. So I'm in a business mastermind with some other people who also have podcasts. I have podcaster friends. I go to a podcast community every morning in Clubhouse and get that kind of juice to keep me going. And I'm not a person who naturally asks for help.
I'm very, I'm kind of like the independent pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of girl. And it's like, no, that's not going to work in this case. You need to reach out. You need to ask people to come be on the podcast. You, you know, it's like, oh, having to market it, you know, having to get on camera to start creating awareness for the podcast.
That was its own thing.

Wendy Battles
Cause it's an audio only podcast.

Yvonne Marchese
I was not comfortable on It was never a thought in my mind that I would have to go on camera. Ever.

Wendy Battles
Which is so funny because you seem like a natural. I mean, it's so funny.

Yvonne Marchese
Thank you.

Wendy Battles
Right?

Yvonne Marchese
Thank you. It was not. It's like lifting weights.

Wendy Battles
Yes.

Yvonne Marchese
You know, that's been it. Like doing the podcast every week has been like lifting the weights. I know the routine. Can we lift a little more? Can we do a little more? You know, every day, like, what can be a little improvement? What can be a little tweak?
What can be, you know, gamify it a little bit? Like, what's going to keep the spark going, you know?

Wendy Battles
I love that. And I love that you not only advocated for yourself and said, I can do these things. I can be unstoppable. I can be committed to this and determined, and I can move forward.
But you also. Leaned in for help from other people because you said, even though it's not your natural tendency to want to ask for help, that you realized you could get further with the help of others. That you don't have to do it all by yourself. And I think that's one of the keys to me of reinvention. We can make it a solo trip, or we could make it a trip with lots of people. We can invite our friends and family, or whoever those people are we trust, to help us move forward as we reinvent.
And I think that's so. Key to pulling this all together. But above all, what I hear in your story, Yvonne, is that you bet on yourself. You said, I can do this. And I know at the beginning, you know, you're like, I don't do video, but now you do video, right? Like, you challenged yourself. You really clearly to be able to do this weekly, to do it for five years.
To be able to do all those things, you had to bet on yourself. You had to be able to do that to move forward, even though sometimes, I'm guessing, you probably weren't sure, you felt uncertainty, you were like, Can I do this? And then you realized, I can do this.

Yvonne Marchese
And I'll say this, part of it is getting out of my own way to accomplish the mission that I'm on, which is to reach other people, to say, Hey. I'm proof it's not too late for you to live your best life. Like, I still have things to figure out. I'm not perfect. None of that stuff. But I'm proof that you can shake it all up like a little EtschA-Sketch and shake it up and start drawing your picture over again. Oh, I like that.
I just came up with that.

Wendy Battles
I love that too. I mean, that's such a great metaphor for this.

Yvonne Marchese
Yeah. Yeah, just shake it up, people. And so when I- I change it. So I do things, a lot of times I do things because I'm like, well, if I'm going to talk the talk, I need to walk the walk. And so let's, and I fill my world with examples. Like I have learned so much from the people who've been on the podcast. That whole idea of asking for help, it is one of the first things I realized I was going to need to learn.
That was actually my word of the year that year that I started the podcast was help. Because I wanted to ask for help and I wanted to be helpful to others. So I had a, I had it going both ways. But it has solidified the more I've talked to guests and they guests who have been through their own reinvention, just about every single person I've talked to has been like, I had a coach, I talked to somebody, they said something to me. I, you know, everybody had some sort of community or guide to help them through it.

Wendy Battles
So we do not have to go it alone is what I hear you saying that all kinds of people and people that are super successful head coaches, they often start where we are when we're like, we don't know anything. We're just gonna we have this feeling. We're leaning into that feeling.
We're being curious about what's going on. We want to try something. We want to perhaps be more playful about whatever it is we want to do. So we lean in. And we get help to lift us up as we go.

Yvonne Marchese
And as people get to the Olympics, right?

Wendy Battles
They don't do it by themselves.

Yvonne Marchese
They have coaches. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Wendy Battles
So asking for help, and I think asking for help is such an important skill to be able to do that and to not feel bad about it. But it's like everything else, once you start doing it, you're like, oh, well that was helpful. Let me ask somebody else for something else. Or how can we help each other?

Yvonne Marchese
And I think that.

Wendy Battles
For especially for women, since we like to, you know, often we get stuck in that perfection thing. I'm not going to do it till it's just right. Instead of I'm going to just get started and see what happens.

Yvonne Marchese
Oh, my favorite new, my favorite new thing is done is better than perfect.

Wendy Battles
Absolutely.

Yvonne Marchese
And because I am and probably will always be a recovering perfectionist. So now it's like, just do it.

Wendy Battles
I know, right? Just put it out there. Just like, let's get, let's get the conversation started and. That's a, that's a, that's a, it's like a powerful, I think it's empowering when we do that. When we give ourselves permission to just try something as imperfectly as it might be, then we realize, okay, well it wasn't that bad. Like usually there's nothing that bad that happens. So I love that.
As we're wrapping up, I want to ask you about a piece of advice you might give to the midlife women listening to our discussion. That are feeling stuck or uncertain, can I actually do this? Who am I to think I can reinvent myself? I like the concept, but I'm not sure how. So what's one thing that someone could do who's listening to take a simple first step in dipping their toe into reinventing?

Yvonne Marchese
One of my favorite quotes, and I may butcher it, but it's do what you can with what you have, where you are. I guess what I would say is get curious and take a baby step. Research the thing you want to do. That's a baby step. If you spend too long in research, recognize it and maybe sign up for a class.
Watch a YouTube tutorial. Almost everything I know about podcasting I learned on YouTube tutorials and Google searches. There's a world of information out there. Join a community of people who are doing what you want to do. I'm giving you lots more than one thing. It really is baby steps. It's baby steps.
Don't expect yourself to be there. Be comfortable with being a beginner. Like let yourself be a beginner. I think that's like the biggest stumbling point when we get to this age and we want to look like we have our shizzle together.

Wendy Battles
Yes, we do.

Yvonne Marchese
You know, be okay with being a beginner and you're not going to know everything and let yourself feel the butterflies in your stomach. You know?

Wendy Battles
I love that, that it's okay to be a beginner and just get started. And you had so many great suggestions, and they all really fold into this theme for this year about betting on ourselves. That we can take that leap as big or small as it might be. It doesn't have to be something like, I'm moving halfway around the world. It could just be something small just to get us started.

Yvonne Marchese
But when we started with hitting the snooze button. Right!

Wendy Battles
Like, who knew that you hitting the snooze button You know, giving that up and going across the room to turn off your alarm and then, oh, I'm up, and then changing these habits could lead to all these things. And if that isn't betting on yourself in this simple way, not that you said at the time, oh, I'm gonna bet on myself by, you know, ditching the snooze button. It's not like you said that, but that ultimately, this is what was the outgrowth of it.

Yvonne Marchese
In a million years, I never thought that would lead to a podcast.

Wendy Battles
Right?

Yvonne Marchese
I never thought I'd write a book. I'm like, what? What? Exactly.

Wendy Battles
Like, anything is possible when we're open to it. That's what I take from your powerful reinvention story, that when we are willing to bet on ourselves in even the smallest of ways, it can lead to amazing, often unexpected, sometimes life altering in the best kind of a way things.

Yvonne Marchese
Can I just add one more thing?

Wendy Battles
Of course.

Yvonne Marchese
Be playful about it.

Wendy Battles
Yes.

Yvonne Marchese
Think about what you love to do as a kid that turned you on, that made time fly, or notice it now. What are you doing when you feel fulfilled and challenged and like the time is just flying? And lean into it more.

Wendy Battles
Have fun.

Yvonne Marchese
That's why I'm back on my skates. I love my roller skates.

Wendy Battles
Great. Six years old.

Yvonne Marchese
What am I doing on roller skates? I wear them.

Wendy Battles
Why not? But why not?

Yvonne Marchese
Yes. It's worth the risk to me. It is a hundred percent like, because when I'm on those skates, I'm challenged and challenged. I love it.

Wendy Battles
My balance.

Yvonne Marchese
It's amazing.

Wendy Battles
It is amazing. And I love it. And thank you for adding that idea of playfulness. I know that people who are listening are saying, I have got to follow Yvonne. And I wanna know, where can people find you? How can they find your podcast? How can they find you on social media?

Yvonne Marchese
Yeah, it's all under latebloomerliviNg. com or latebloomerliviNg is where I'm at on Instagram. You can find me there doing silly shuffle dancing and roller skating things. And yeah, latebloomerliviNg. com has the key to, it's all there.

Wendy Battles
Awesome. That is gonna be in the show notes so you can all find it easily to tap or click. Yvonne, I can't thank you enough for this amazing conversation, for your ideas, for your inspiration, the inspiration of hitting a snooze button or not hitting it anymore, and how that sparked so many things that caused you to reinvent. And as you said, you keep reinventing this ongoing process. So thank you, my amazing friend.

Yvonne Marchese
Thank you.

Wendy Battles
What an uplifting conversation. Yvonne reminds us that reinvention often begins long before the big breakthroughs. It starts with a moment of awareness, a small habit, or a single brave choice. You know, the things that I believe we've all done. And when we follow that spark, we open the door to possibility in midlife and beyond. If Yvonne's journey inspired you, I would love for you to take your own first step. I created a free guide called 100 Ways to Reinvent Yourself in Midlife.
It's filled with simple ideas to spark your curiosity and help you start betting on yourself in new ways. Just click the link in the show notes to download it. And if this episode inspired you in ways that you know. Other women in your life would also be inspired? Do me a favor and share this episode in your podcast app with a friend or two. There's so much inspiration here. I love Yvonne's story.
I love what's possible. And she reminds us it's possible for any and all of us in our own unique way. And one more thing. If travel is part of your reinvention vision, It's so a part of mine. I love traveling.

Yvonne Marchese
I've got the perfect resource for you.

Wendy Battles
I want to tell you about my friend, Adrienne Berg, who hosts the Ageless Traveler podcast. It's your go-to guide for lifelong travel. Adrienne is a fierce advocate for breaking barriers to travel at any age, whether you're dreaming about solo adventures, multigenerational trips, culinary escapes, or Luxury for Less. She's got you covered. She believes lifelong travel isn't just about the destination, it's about building lasting friendships, boosting our well-being, and living fully at every age. I've got all the details in the show notes to tune into her podcast. You're going to want to listen.
She's so insightful and very empowering. Thank you so much for listening and being part. Of the Reinvented Rebels community. Together, y'all, we are rewriting what it means to age with confidence, boldness, purpose, and joy. Until next time, keep shining your light, Rebels. The world needs you and all that you have to offer.