117. Two Panic Attacks, One Funeral, and Zero Regrets: My Midlife Reboot

After a week of ass-sitting on a tropical beach (highly recommended, by the way), I’m back and bringing you something different: my story. Not the polished “About Me” version—but the honest, messy, holy-shit-how-did-I-get-here version.

From panic attacks that landed me in the ER (twice) to leaving a successful 20-year legal career with no backup plan, I’m sharing how I went from burnout to building the School of Midlife®. I’ll tell you why I used to think I was just a “job whore,” how my dad’s death changed everything, and why I now take two vacations a year—on purpose.

But this isn’t just about me. It’s about you. If you’ve been living on autopilot, tolerating instead of thriving, or telling yourself “someday” will be the right time—this episode is your permission slip to want more. Because waiting isn’t a life strategy. But building a life that fits who you are now? That’s exactly the work we do here.

And heads up: the Gap Year is coming back soon—and for the first time ever, with a fully 1:1 coaching option. So if you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start living your best damn life, this is where it starts.

What You'll Learn:

• Why I left a thriving legal career without a backup plan
• The moment in the ER that should’ve changed everything (but didn’t… for 6 years)
• What my dad’s death taught me about the trap of “someday”
• How I finally defined success on my terms
• Why figuring out what you want, how you define success, and what your best life looks like is the only way to stop reliving the same year on repeat

Links + Resources:

• DM me “GAP YEAR” on Instagram: @schoolofmidlife or email me to get on the waitlist
• Learn more at: www.schoolofmidlife.com
• Share your takeaway with me: What’s one area of your life you’re done tolerating?

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Transcript

Post-Vacation Episode

[00:00:00] 

Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson.

This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. 

Well, hey friends. Welcome back to another episode of The School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson, former attorney Current Beach Bum. When when I can get away. Founder of the School of Midlife where we believe that midlife isn't a crisis at all. It's the invitation that you've been waiting for.

If you are new here, and I know that there are plenty of you, first of all, [00:01:00] welcome. I am so glad you found us. Here's what you need to know about me. I help high achieving women stop living on autopilot and start living their actual best lives, not the ones that they were raised to want or conditioned to want, but lives that light them up.

Big, beautiful, best life midlife, best life lives. And if you're a returning listener, welcome back. Uh, if you are watching the video, then you can see that I am tan because I am fresh off a tropical vacation. Tan, rested, reminded why I decided to build a life that I don't need to escape from. I don't need a vacation from. I know I talked a little bit about that in last week's episode.

Um, if you want to go back and listen to that, that would be a great refresher on building yourself a life that you don't need to take a vacation from.

[00:02:00] Today, I wanted to tell you how I got here. How? How did I become the person who has a life that she doesn't actually need to take a vacation from?

Because trust me, it didn't just start with ocean breezes and margaritas. It started with burnout and panic attacks and a whole lot of what the fuck am I doing with my life? I'll, I'll tell you here is the honest and kind of funny truth, I guess. There was a point in my life where I thought I was a job whore.

I mean, I started my career at an insurance litigation firm. I, I worked in-house. I had my own firm. I'll, I'll get into that, but I bounced around a lot. First job outta law school, worked in insurance litigation firm, think Goldilocks in a tailored blazer. It was, you know, mid to late nineties, so of course shoulder pads, but very, um, oversized blazer skirt suit [00:03:00] because it was the nineties still.

And I worked mostly on defending doctors and hospitals in medical malpractice cases. And when I say I worked on those cases, what I meant was I mostly did the research and put together draft questions for. A senior associate to review before giving it to a junior partner to look at before giving it to the partner who actually asked the questions of the witness at the deposition or in trial.

I mean, I was so far down the food chain. I don't, yeah, it,

I was doing something that was important for the case, but also like no one had any idea who I was. I, I was just a blip in the whole scheme of things, right.

I pretty quickly realized that litigation wasn't for me, particularly insurance litigation because we'd spend all of this time preparing for trial just to settle on the eve of trial. Medical malpractice cases in the [00:04:00] U.S.: Very damn expensive when you go to trial. So almost all of them settle.

And that just seemed like a lot of work to me for no payoff at the end. Right. I mean, why would you spend all of your time getting ready for trial and then never even go? You just, yeah, it just, it seemed like a waste of time for me.

I didn't wanna spend that time.

So after billing. 60 to 80 hours a week for a little less than two years, I traded law firm litigation work for corporate in-house real estate work. I landed a great job in-house with a national grocer. At the time, it was the second largest in the country based in Boise.

I'll let you do the math on, on what company that was, but I was there for about 20 months. That's where I started my commercial real estate legal career. I was there for 20 months and then I went in-house at a regional medical center for 10 months. I call it my pregnancy term. [00:05:00] Um, I was just gone for a little bit and then I went back to the grocer for another several years after that.

Then I was a partner in a small boutique firm for about five years, and then I owned my own firm as a sole practitioner for a while, and then I joined the practice of a large super regional firm. You, do you see what I mean when I say job whore? I bounced around. A lot. Always doing commercial real estate work.

Well, except for that starter job, right outta law school at the insurance litigation firm, but commercial real estate work. That's, that's what I did. I loved the work I was doing. I had great clients. I got good results. I was just trying to find the right job though, which is why, you know, I, I did, I bounced around a lot.

I'm looking for the right job. It was, it was almost like I was searching for something more than just a title and a paycheck. I wanted something, a job that would give me meaning and purpose and make me feel fulfilled. I mean, [00:06:00] is that too much to ask? Uh, apparently it was, and for 20 years I bounced around looking for the right fit, the right job, but it didn't matter where I landed it.

The newness wore off really quickly. I was always left with this kind of gnawing feeling, like, is this it? I mean, have I landed? Th this is as good as it gets. And for a long time, I thought the problem was me. That I just hadn't found the right law job. That if I could just, you know, tweak this one thing, or shift this one role, then it would click. Then I would be happy and I would love my job, and I wouldn't have a case of the Sundays.

But spoiler alert, it wasn't the job, it was the industry. I didn't need a better law job. I just needed to get out of the law. So many women get to midlife [00:07:00] in their career, and they've worked their way up the ladder. They have received all the promotions, they've got all the accolades, they're, they're at the top of their career.

And they think, you know what? I just need a small tweak. I just need a small change. I just need a little pivot inside the system. And sometimes that is exactly right for you. You are right. You just need a small tweak or a change or a little pivot. If you're like me, though sometimes what you actually need is a fucking exit plan.

And that's what I did. I mean, that's, for me, that's what I needed. I, and apparently I'm a slow learner. Actually, you know what? That's not right. I've said that about myself for a long time because I think it, it sounds kind of funny and cheeky, but I also, over the course of doing some of this midlife inner work, understand that the words you use to describe yourself.

They carry a lot of weight and [00:08:00] so when I say for a long time to kind of make be funny that I'm a slow learner, that's, that's not right. I'm actually a very quick learner. I need to stop saying about that, about myself because that's, that's just not true. I am a quick learner. I did need an exit plan though, and it took me a long, long time to come up with the exit plan or to actually even realize that it wasn't the job, it was that I just needed to do something different.

And part of that was I had invested so much time. 20 years of a career I'd invested time and so much money. When I graduated from law school in 1998, I had $130,000 worth of law school debt, just law school debt, no undergraduate debt, $130,000 of law school debt, which was real money, a huge nut in 1998.

Terms, um, in, in 1998, I mean, that was more than most people [00:09:00] paid for their starter home. Some people even didn't even pay that much for their second home. I mean, the, it was a lot of money. So I had invested a lot of time and a lot of money, so it was much easier for me to believe that I just hadn't found the right job yet.

But as it turned out, my real problem was that I needed to leave the industry. I needed to leave the law, but at the time, I just wasn't ready to admit that yet. And I, I tried all of these different jobs. I worked really hard at all of them. I was very successful at all of them.

Eventually though, my body said, you know what?

We're done here. It is the whole story of, you know, um, have you heard the one about at first when God's trying to get your attention, he throws a pebble and then he throws a rock, and then he throws a boulder. Well, my boulder arrived the day I landed myself in the emergency room twice.

That's right. [00:10:00] Twice in one day. In the morning, I was convinced I was having a heart attack, tight chest, dizziness, tunnel vision, like I couldn't see what, what was going on around me. Everything on the outside was just fuzzy, completely dizzy. I couldn't catch my breath. My heart was beating so fast. I end up in the emergency room in the morning.

They hooked me up to all the machines. They poked and prodded, and eventually a couple of hours later, they sent me home. They told me that I was just dehydrated, which made perfect sense because at that point in my life, I I would work all day and then a lot of times I would meet clients or friends for happy hour, which meant two vodka sodas and I would do that right after work and then, and then I'd go home.

So dinner was oftentimes like guacamole and chips or popcorn on top of my two vodka sodas that I'd had out with my [00:11:00] clients or with my friends. Um, that's not a very good dinner. I was working out with a trainer three days a week, so with all of the weight I was pumping. Uh, the fact that I wasn't eating any food, I mean my body from the outside looked absolutely incredible.

In fact, I still have a picture in my photo album saved that shows what I look like in a bikini at that point because I, I was always thinking, well, that would be really interesting to get back to that body. Now I save it for a different reason, for a reminder that that's not how I wanna live my life.

But anyway, so I looked incredible. But I was billing more hours at work than ever. I was not sleeping, I was not eating. So when I end up in the emergency room that day, dehydration, that makes perfect sense to me. Okay. I go back to the office. Notice I've been in the emergency room, [00:12:00] and I go back to the office.

I don't take the day off. I don't like try and get my shit together. I go back to the office. And then it happened again and the second time it happened, I was in the hospital for hours. They ran all the tests that you hear, you know, blood tests, E-K-G-E-E-G, a, CT scan. I even had a bubble test. I think that's what it was.

Um, a bubble test to see if I had a hole in my heart. I mean. They, they put me through all the testing. Hours and hours later, I ended the day with a clean bill of health. Which you would think is a great prognosis, right? Yes, it was. And the attending physician, after all of these tests, hands me a prescription for Xanax, and I am like, what the fuck?

I am a highly successful attorney. I get shit done. I make things happen. Why are you [00:13:00] giving me Xanax? I mean, come on. And the doctor told me I'd had a pretty severe panic attack and, and not just one of them, but a series of them throughout the day. And here's the wild part, I still didn't get it. I walked outta the hospital thinking, huh, that was weird.

That was weird. I threw the prescription away because I didn't understand anxiety at that point, and I certainly didn't think I had it because like I said, I was a high functioning attorney. I was very successful at what I did. If somebody needed something done, they came to me and I did it for them. I was completely running myself into the ground.

I didn't realize at the time that sometimes overperforming is a way to mask anxiety. It's a way to quell those fears that, you know, those that push way down deep and you don't [00:14:00] wanna deal with. But here I am, I leave the hospital. I think this is weird. What a weird day. I throw the prescription away and the next day I go back to work like the professional goddamn martyr.

What I mean it, how do you end up in the ER twice in one day and still think that the. The thing that you should do is not change your lifestyle at all, not get a different job, not change the way you're eating or drinking, or change anything about that, but just like bury yourself back into work. Well, I, I didn't put the pieces together until

six years later. That's right, six years. Here, I've got my body just screaming at me to stop, to do something else, to do something different. But I had trained myself so well to ignore my own needs that I, I couldn't hear [00:15:00] it. I didn't understand it. I wasn't paying attention to it. Surely there must have been something else going wrong with my body.

It it, I was having a bad day, I guess. I don't know. I, I must be the only woman in the history of that's probably not right, but you, you get what I'm going at, right? I mean, maybe you've had your own version of that. Maybe yours, I hope not, didn't involve a bunch of IVs and heart monitors, but you, you might know the feeling of pushing too hard for too long and ignoring the signs.

And thank God it wasn't, you know, it was, it was just a panic attack and I don't say just a panic attack super lightly, but at least it wasn't one of those really big diagnoses that stops you in your track and you know, all of a sudden life changes on a dime and you've gotta make a different decision. I didn't have that, which was great, but for six more years after that, [00:16:00] I continued to

bill my heart out as an attorney. I worked my way up to partner at one firm. I even owned my own firm at another point. And even after spending a day in the ER, I got to the point where I was back. I mean, I, I was doing the law firm thing like a champ. I was billing as much as I could. I was still feeling a little angsty at work, still not finding the fulfillment or the joy that I was hoping for.

Assuming that after the next promotion, of course, you know, I'd be in the right job. I completely ignored everything that happened in the ER that day, and I did it for six years. And then my dad died. He was 66. He had just retired on his 66th birthday from his second career, and he retired [00:17:00] five months before he died. He'd done everything right by the book.

He had worked hard. He'd played the long game. He'd saved money for his future retirement. He had put off trips to far away places that he had only dreamed of visiting. He told me he wanted to join a garage band during retirement so that he could play in in this garage band with old, other old timers and retirees.

He was gonna golf every day. He wanted to get back into snow skiing. He had so many plans for retirement, but he never got the chance to enjoy them. And for me, finally. The, it wasn't being in the ER twice in one day. It wasn't having a panic attack, so severe of a series of panic attacks, so severe that I thought it was, I was dying.

Um, that wasn't it. It wasn't looking back on my [00:18:00] work history and thinking that maybe this just wasn't for me. It was my dad dying. That was the wake up call I couldn't ignore because I finally realized waiting for someday, or when the time is right or when everything is perfect, that is the fastest way to never fully live at all. To keep putting off what it is that you want to do in life, and that was a hard lesson for me to learn for sure.

But I'll tell you, it stuck. It finally stuck, and I'm, I'm sad that I lost my dad, and that's what it took for me to finally take a look at what I was doing in my life and make some big changes. But that's, that's what it took.

And I left the law. I was right on the verge of joining the partnership of a large super regional firm.

Literally the job I'd worked my entire career to land. I. One day I am up for [00:19:00] partnership. Literally, the next day I'm trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Well, not, not literally the next day, because of course I gave them a month's notice and billed as much as I could until the very last day I was there.

I'm still not sure why. I thought it was important to take on so much new work and so many new projects that last month, but I didn't wanna leave any of my clients or my colleagues in a lurch. So. I billed and billed and billed maybe the largest billing month of that entire year was that last month before I left the law.

But when I finally walked out of the office on my last day, it was with boxes and boxes of, of stuff that I had I'd accumulated over 20 years. Right? I had all these boxes, but no backup plan. I had all these boxes and no roadmap. I just had boxes full of law books and photo frames and awards and [00:20:00] certificates.

A bunch of reminders of this very successful 20 year career I had that I, I was walking away from. And here's the kicker: when I was trying to figure out, okay, I did this for 20 years, what am I going to do now? When I tried to look around for those resources, the things to help me figure out what was next, you know what I found?

Nothing absolutely nada, crickets, nothing. I literally typed in midlife woman in transition into Google, and do you know what I got? All I got was information about menopause. Even perimenopause was too foreign of a concept to hit the top Google searches, uh, 10 years ago. So midlife woman in transition.

It meant menopause or am I having a midlife crisis? So there were, there was [00:21:00] plenty of things about hormones and diet books and Facebook groups talking about hot flashes, but, but nothing for high achieving women in midlife who wanted more. Sure, Diet books, hormone hormone forums. That's hard to say. But no one talking about what it really means to start over, not because your life is falling apart, but because you feel like something's missing because you know deep down somewhere that you are meant for more.

And when I couldn't find what I was looking for, I built it. Not, not all at once, but over several years. And that's where the School of Midlife came from. The School of Midlife was born out of that gap because it occurred to me as a high achieving woman in my forties who [00:22:00] didn't like the textbook successful life that she had lived up to that point and wanted to do something different for the second half of her life.

The School of Midlife was filling that gap to be a place for women like you and me and all of us, a place where we can ask, what's next for me? What do I actually want in life? What does success look like to me right now? And because I maybe have never thought about it before, but what the hell does my best life even look like?

These days? Best life, Laurie. She takes two vacations a year, one to explore and sightsee and all of the big city things. A Hello Europe. I love going to Europe once a year. And then another to ass sit on a beach somewhere tropical [00:23:00] with SPF 30 all over me. Zero meetings, maybe a cocktail, maybe a mocktail in my hand.

That's what I was doing last week. And it was wonderful. 10 outta 10, completely recommend it. And here's the thing, a lot of people will say, must be nice to be able to take two vacations a year. Or they'll give you a list of reasons why they can't. Or they'll try and make you feel. Like an overindulgent, self-absorbed biatch because of the exorbitant life you're living.

But hear me though, two vacations a year. That's not just a luxury. It's my baseline because I've built a life that aligns with my actual values. Isn't that a foreign concept? It's a life that that aligns with my actual values, not the ones that I inherited or I was taught to want or, or not [00:24:00] even the ones that I chased approval for for decades.

But my values. Mine. Because I know what's important to me. Because I finally took some time to figure out what do I actually value in life? What do I want? And I quit chasing gold stars. And instead now I'm chasing alignment. I'm chasing adventure and time and space and joy, and enough time to sit my ass on a beach and not feel like I'm behind or not feel guilty about it.

And I want that for you too.

If you are nodding along right now, saying that sounds pretty damn good, Then you're gonna wanna hear this. The Gap Year is coming back. Gap Year is the School of Midlife signature coaching program for midlife women who are done living on autopilot, ready to create a life that feels like a hell yes.

Ready to. Live a life that feels [00:25:00] more like they're, they're getting back to who they used to be. They, they feel more like themselves than ever. I've been listening to so many of you say that you want more one-on-one coaching, so the Gap Years coming back. For the first time ever, there will be an option that is entirely one-to-one coaching based.

I'll, I'll give you more on that, uh, in the coming weeks, but I'm excited to talk with you more about that very soon.

Inside the Gap Year, we work on three foundational pieces that weave themselves through every bit of what we do at the School of Midlife.

Number one, what do you actually want? Not what you've been conditioned to want, not what your parents raised you to want, not what you've been told to want, not what some influencer on social media tells you to want, but what do you actually want?

Number two, how do you define success? Not how your resume defines it, not how the workplace tells you to define it. It's, it's not just what your [00:26:00] title is or what your paycheck is, but how do you define success?

And number three, what does your best life look like? If, if I could wave a magic wand right now and you would just automatically be living your best life, do you even know what that looks like? And if you know what that looks like, are you living it or

are you waiting to live it? And if so, how long are you gonna keep waiting?

I am telling you that if you don't figure those three things out, you're just gonna keep living the same year over and over and over again. And the years just feel like they're going faster, don't they? If we don't figure out those three things, and we're gonna just keep putting the time in the effort in expecting some different results and waiting.

Waiting until the kids leave, waiting until retirement, waiting until someday and someday. I'm telling you, that is not a life strategy. [00:27:00] I know. I know. You know that. I know that. But sometimes you just have to hear it again. Right? Waiting to live your best life. That's not a life strategy.

Postponing happiness and fulfillment, not a life strategy.

Being intentional about living a life that aligns with you and your values and wants, and your idea of success. Now, that's a life strategy. So if you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, shit, that's me. You're not alone, you're not behind, and it's not too late. But you do have to make a choice.

You have to decide that now is the time you're gonna do something different. I'm not saying you have to walk away from your career like I did, maybe you do, but you definitely have to start making decisions that align with Best Life You. Who she is, what she wants, what she wants to do with the second half of her life.

And I'm telling you, midlife isn't the end. It's not the beginning of the great slide into old [00:28:00] age in retirement. Don't you dare believe that bullshit that they're trying to push on us. Midlife absolutely can be your best life. I know it. I'm living it. It has to just be your choice. And if you want my support in making your next chapter

the most intentional one, The best one yet, just shoot me a DM with the words Gap Year in it, and I'll send you all the details when they're available. It's, it's not happening right now, but we're getting really close, and I want you to be part of that because I know how transformative it can be.

In the meantime, I want you to ask yourself this question:

What is one area of your life that you're ready to stop tolerating and start transforming? It's a perfect journaling question for those of you who are journalists, I'd love it if you'd share any insights or takeaways with me, because that actually helps me with programming the podcast episode each week.

So again, the question is, [00:29:00] what's one area of your life that you're ready to stop tolerating, going through the motions, living the same day every day, coasting on autopilot? What's that one area that you're, you're, you're ready to stop doing that and you're ready to start transforming right now?

With that, I am so happy to be back from vacation.

It was fantastic. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being brave enough to want more to realize that midlife is an opportunity and there is so much good that can come out of it if you get very intentional about living it.

So thanks so much for being here. I will see you right back here next week when the School of Midlife is back in session. And until then, take good care. Maybe start planning your next vacation, eh? Just saying I'll see you next week.

 Thank you so much for listening to the School of Midlife podcast. It means so much to have you here each week. If you [00:30:00] enjoyed this episode, could you do me the biggest favor and help us spread the word to other midlife women? There are a couple of easy ways for you to do that first. And most importantly, if you're not already following the show, would you please subscribe? That helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. Second, if you'd be so kind to leave us a five-star rating, that would be absolutely incredible. And finally, I personally read each and every one of your reviews. 

So if you take a minute and say some nice things about the podcast, well, that's just good karma. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you right back here. Next week when the School of Midlife is back in session until then take good care.