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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.
Message in the Middle: Midlife Women, Reinvention & Personal Growth
The Relationship That Changes Everything: Learning to Show Up for Yourself in Midlife
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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 you feel in your own body, how you respond when things fall apart, and whether you extend even a fraction of the compassion to yourself which you so freely give to everyone else.
In this episode of Message in the Middle, I'm joined by Kerisma Vere, holistic wellness coach, author, and founder of Towards Wellness Coaching. Kerisma's work is trauma-informed, deeply compassionate, and built from lived experience navigating trauma, mental health challenges, addiction, and the long, non-linear path back to self-trust. She is the author of The Light Switch Myth: Contemporary Approaches to Creating Lasting Change, the companion journal Ways I Showed Up for Myself, and the creator of the seven-module course From Pressure to Path: A Compassionate Framework for Change.
In this episode we explore:
- Why our self-relationship is the foundation of quality of life and connection with others.
- The real link between self-worth and coping mechanisms like addiction
- What the 'light switch myth' reveals about how we've been taught to approach change.
- Why small acts of self-support often matter more than dramatic transformation
- The practice of self-gratitude and what it means to acknowledge how you've shown up for yourself
This episode is for the woman who has spent years caring for everyone else and is just beginning to ask what it might feel like to turn that care inward. You're not behind. You're not broken. And you're not alone.
Connect with Kerisma Vere:
Website: https://www.towardswellnesscoaching.ca
Connect with Marianne:
- Website: Message In The Middle with Marianne
- Message In the Middle Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/422430469323847/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MessageInTheMiddle/playlists
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianne-demello-smith-678b9966
- Email: Contact | Message In The Middle with Marianne
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