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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
What Happens When the Strategies That Made You Successful Stop Working?
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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 after a medical crisis on Mount Kilimanjaro left her living with chronic pain, years of misdiagnosis, opioid dependence, and an entirely different reality than the one she had planned, she was forced to ask a difficult question:
What do we do when the strategies that made us successful stop working?
In this deeply honest conversation, Nancy shares what it was like to grieve the loss of the life she expected, navigate years of being told nothing was wrong, redefine resilience, and learn that perseverance doesn't always mean pushing harder.
Together, we explore what it means to stop fighting for the person you used to be and begin building a life that honors who you are now.
Whether you're navigating chronic illness, burnout, caregiving, grief, retirement, or simply discovering that the old rules no longer fit, this episode is an invitation to consider a different path forward.
Because sometimes resilience isn't about enduring more.
Sometimes it's about learning to listen.
In this episode, we discuss:
• Living with chronic pain and medical uncertainty
• The emotional impact of being dismissed or misunderstood
• Opioid dependence and recovery
• Grieving a former version of yourself
• Acceptance versus giving up
• Slowing down and redefining success
• Reinvention in midlife
• What resilience looks like when pushing harder no longer works
• Lessons from Nancy's forthcoming memoir, Perilous Ascent
Connect with Nancy:
- Substack Life Inside Pain: https://nancydeyo.substack.com
- Website: https://nancydeyo.com
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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