Message in the Middle: Midlife Women, Reinvention & Personal Growth
Message in the Middle is a podcast for women navigating the challenges, transitions, and reinventions that often come with midlife.
Hosted by Marianne DeMello-Smith, each episode explores the messy, meaningful moments that shape who we become. Through honest conversations with experts, authors, thought leaders, and everyday women, you'll discover practical insights, inspiring stories, and new perspectives on what it means to grow through life's most difficult seasons.
Whether you're facing a career change, caregiving responsibilities, health challenges, grief, relationship shifts, menopause, identity changes, or simply wondering what's next, Message in the Middle offers encouragement, wisdom, and real-world strategies to help you move forward with greater confidence and purpose.
Together, we'll explore resilience, personal growth, self-discovery, emotional well-being, and the power of turning life's messes into meaningful midlife messages.
Because midlife isn't the end of your story. It may just be the beginning of your next chapter.
Episodes
229 episodes
When Anxiety Shrinks Your Life: How to Take It Back
Anxiety doesn't always arrive with racing thoughts or panic attacks.Sometimes it shows up as perfectionism. People pleasing. Constant overthinking. Staying busy so you never have to slow down long enough to notice how exhausted you've be...
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What No One Tells You About Life After Work
We spend years preparing for retirement. We save, invest, plan for healthcare, and think about how we'll spend our time.But what about preparing for who we'll be when the work is gone?What no one tells you about life after work is...
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Midlife Reinvention, Inner Wisdom, Authenticity and Aging Well with Kathy Robinson
Episode DescriptionWhat happens when you've achieved everything you thought you wanted, only to discover there's something deeper calling you?For more than thirty years, Kathy Robinson built an impressive corporate career, ...
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What Happens When the Strategies That Made You Successful Stop Working?
For years, Nancy Deyo lived by the same rules many of us have been taught to follow: work hard, stay disciplined, push through discomfort, and keep going.Those strategies helped her build a successful career as a Silicon Valley CEO. But ...
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What Remains When Memory Fades? Alzheimer's, Caregiving, and the Legacy of Storytelling
What happens when the person who once cared for you begins to need your care?For many people in midlife, one of the most unexpected transitions isn't retirement, an empty nest, or a career change. It's becoming the caregiver for an aging...
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Beyond This Lifetime: Past Lives, Healing & Soul Patterns
Some questions don't have easy answers.Have you ever experienced an unexplained fear that didn't seem connected to anything in your life? Felt an immediate connection with someone you had just met? Or found yourself repeating the same em...
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Why Do I Keep Reacting Like This? Understanding the Hidden Stories Behind Your Triggers
Why do we keep reacting in ways we don't fully understand? Why do certain situations seem to hit harder than they should? And why can we have years of insight into our patterns and still feel stuck repeating them?In this episode of Messa...
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The Cost of Speaking Up: Lisa Cornwell on Truth, Self-Awareness, and Finding Peace After Conflict
What happens after you speak up?In this deeply thoughtful conversation, Marianne sits down with broadcaster, author, and keynote speaker Lisa Cornwell to explore truth, conflict, accountability, emotional healing, and the complicated aft...
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One Cup of Coffee Changed Everything: Jody Zarn on Homelessness, Empathy, and the Power of Truly Seeing People
What happens when we slow down long enough to truly see another human being?In this deeply thoughtful episode of Message in the Middle, Marianne sits down with Jody Zarn, an author, corporate trainer, and TEDx speaker whose life changed ...
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Retirement, Reinvention, and the Search for Purpose with George Jerjian
Retirement is something many of us prepare for financially, but few of us prepare for emotionally. What happens when the career that shaped your identity, routines, and sense of purpose suddenly disappears? And how do you rediscover yourself wh...
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Why Your Gut Isn’t Healing (And the Truth About Parasite Cleanses)
There’s no shortage of advice when it comes to gut health right now.Parasite cleanses. Heavy metal detoxes. Protocols that promise to fix everything in a matter of weeks.And if you’ve been dealing with bloating, fatigue, constipat...
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You Built the Life. So Why Does It Feel Like You've Outgrown It?
There comes a point in midlife that can feel both confusing and surprisingly unsettling.You've built a life. A career. A reputation. Maybe a family. You've worked hard, made sacrifices, and checked many of the boxes you once thought woul...
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Alli O'Malley on the Hidden Face of Abuse and the Truth About Recovery
Sometimes the hardest experiences to recognize are the ones we are living through.Many women think intimate partner violence only looks one way. They picture obvious warning signs, visible injuries, or situations that seem dramatically d...
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From Broken to the Big Stage: Scott Scovill on Fear of Failure and Reinvention
What if the thing standing between you and the life you still want isn’t talent, timing, or confidence—but tenacity?In this episode of Message in the Middle, Marianne sits down with entrepreneur, creative director, and author Sc...
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The Identity Gap: Who You Were vs. Who You’re Becoming with Dr. Sarah Andreas
There’s a moment in midlife that many women recognize, even if they’ve never had the language for it.You’re no longer who you used to be… but you’re not fully who you’re becoming either.In this episode of Message in the Middle...
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You Don’t Have to Change Everything to Change Your Life | Michele Kehrer on Clarity, Resilience, and Brave Shifts
What if the answer isn’t to change everything… but to change just a few things that change everything?In this episode of Message in the Middle, Marianne sits down with Dr. Michele Kehrer, business growth coach, entrepreneur, and...
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Why You Still Feel Stuck (Even After Doing the Work) | Somatic Healing with Melanie Smithson
There’s a moment many women reach in midlife where they realize something frustrating…They’ve done the work.They understand their patterns. They’ve processed their experiences. They can talk about their past with clarity and insig...
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It’s Not Too Late to Change Your Life: Debbie Weiss on Letting Go of the Victim Mindset
What happens when you wake up one day and realize your life doesn’t look the way you thought it would?In this episode of Message in the Middle, Marianne sits down with Debbie Weiss, best-selling author, speaker, and host of the ...
The Real Reason You React The Way You Do In Relationships (And How to Change It)
In this episode of Message in the Middle, Marianne sits down with therapist, relationships coach, and emotional safety expert Diane McDowell to explore a powerful reframe:What if the challenges in your relationships aren’t about...
The Relationship That Changes Everything: Learning to Show Up for Yourself in Midlife
What does it actually mean to be in a good relationship with yourself? Not the version you perform for the world. Not the one built on how much you get done or how little you ask for. The one underneath all of that. The one that shapes how safe...
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Stuck in the Same Patterns? How to Work with Your Subconscious Instead of Fighting It
If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking, “Why do I keep doing this?” or “Why can’t I just change this pattern?” Then this episode is for you.Because the truth is, most of us aren’t stuck because we’re broken. We’re...
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Rebuilding From the Inside Out: Jo Rye on Rebuilding Identity, Clarity, and Courage After Crisis
What do you do when everything in the life you knew changes unexpectedly? In this episode of Message in the Middle, I’m joined by Jo Rye, founder of Clarity & Courage, executive coach, and author, who shares what it rea...
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From Obedience to Inner Authority: Rediscovering Self-Trust with Toni LaMotta
In this episode of Message in the Middle, Marianne sits down with Toni LaMotta to explore what happens when we lose trust in our own inner voice and how we begin finding it again.After spending sixteen years living under a vow o...
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Resilience Is a Choice: Adriana Cowdin on Reinvention, Chronic Illness, and Starting Again
For many women in midlife, reinvention feels like something that should happen at the beginning of a new year, after a major life change, or once everything finally settles down. But what if the truth is simpler and harder at the same tim...
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It’s Not You vs. The World. It’s You vs. You | Emotional Fitness with Shaun Zetlin
In this episode of Message in the Middle, I sit down with Shaun Zetlin, master fitness trainer, author, and creator of Emotional Fitness, for a powerful conversation about redefining strength. After more than two decades helpi...
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