My 2025 Year in Review

My 2025 Year in Review

In this reflective solo episode, Michelle looks back on a year that quietly changed everything. She shares what 2025 taught her about midlife, identity, and learning to let go when life doesn’t look the way you expected.

Michelle reflects on the moments that shaped the year, including her daughter leaving home, stepping away from the family business, downsizing, and hosting her first midlife event. Each experience brought a mix of emotion, uncertainty, and unexpected clarity that many women recognise during times of transition.

Throughout the episode, Michelle speaks openly about how change can feel uncomfortable and unsettling, and how community, connection, and working alongside women became an anchor during this season. She shares how relationships with women of different generations added perspective, grounding, and a strong sense of belonging.

Looking ahead to 2026, Michelle talks about what’s next, including her intention to create more spaces for women to come together, share stories, and feel supported as they move into new chapters.

This episode is for women who feel they’re standing at a crossroads, questioning what’s next, and learning to trust themselves through change.

Key takeaways:

• Midlife often brings unexpected change and growth
• Letting go can be emotional but deeply freeing
• Community and connection matter more than ever during transition
• Reinvention is about rediscovering yourself, not starting over
• Embracing change can lead to clarity, purpose, and confidence

Resources & Links

If this episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you. Your feedback helps shape future episodes. Reach out anytime at michelle@your2ndact.com.

If you enjoyed this chat, please consider leaving a 5 ⭐ rating or a short review. Your words might be exactly what another woman needs to hear today.

Stay connected:

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• 💬 Join the private Facebook group

Until next time, take care of you… Michelle ❤️

Transcript

Speaker 1  0:00  
Stay open, ladies, stay open to what is possible. You are more than what you think. Trust me, I have grown so much this year with all the changes, and I am a person that doesn't really like change. I fear it, but I don't want to sit in a spot where I can't move, I can't grow that really scares me. And I just can't wait for next year. I can't wait for what it will bring. And I really am going to work on keeping my fear at bay, not letting it take over, not letting those thoughts come into my head. Of you can't the imposter syndrome stuff, all of that. I'm just going to keep going and see where it takes me. Welcome to your second act, the podcast that proves that life doesn't have to end at 4050, or even 60, because when it comes to living your best life, age is just a number. Hi, gorgeous. Welcome to the final episode of 2025 and what a year 2025 has been. Yes, it's gone super fast. Yes, it's sometimes been a complete show. Yes, it has been amazing, like life, right? Highs, lows and everything in between. But I like to have a review. I like to sometimes look back and see what has happened throughout the year. How have I changed as a person? And there has been a lot of changes, you probably realize from my earlier episodes in season four that my eldest daughter flew the nest, is now living in Canada, has been gone for four months and is thriving and loving it, and I, as a mother have dealt with it. I can't believe I am cool with it. I'm cool that my daughter has left. I think I'm proud of myself for dealing with it the way I've dealt with the whole change of a child leaving, because sometimes the thought of your kids leaving is quite scary, right? It's, you know, you as much as you want them to fly and you know, be these empowered people that go on and do great things, you kind of want to keep them close as well. I'm glad that she's done this, and I'm so proud of the way that I've dealt with it, and thank God for technology and FaceTime. You know, she doesn't feel so far away. So that was one of the big changes. Another one was also holding my first midlife event. I remember this time last year, I was thinking, oh my god, how am I going to do this? Who will come? Can I stand up in front of a room full of women and present? Probably not. I've never done this before, but hey, let me just do it. I'm going to step into my power those buzzwords, and I'm just going to do it because I also think

Unknown Speaker  3:03  
when women are really

Speaker 1  3:06  
open to the fact that they are really vulnerable and scared, I think we also connect with them because we can relate. So I'm hoping that I'm a relatable person, because I can tell you now, not for one moment did I think that I could do what I did, and this whole year has been a little bit about that I also so after that event, I was so proud of myself that I did it. I was able to string a sentence together and hold this event, and see the event, and I loved it, which then made me realize that I want to do more of these things. I thought I was going to do more throughout the year, but, you know, life through a spanner in the works, and we found ourselves deciding to sell the family home and downsize. That, in itself, was a big task coming to terms of the fact that we're going to move, finding a new place, getting rid of a lot of stuff, and it's stuff. This is one thing I've I've I've learned, girlfriend, that you don't need stuff. We think we need to be surrounded by a lot of it. We don't. And moving to this place, which is much smaller, I have just brought what we need, and that's all we're using. I'm not going to try and refill all the cupboards, which there aren't many, so I probably won't have the luxury of doing it, but that, in itself, was really freeing. Going through things that I even had. I had stuff in that kitchen from stuff that I had in my 20s, that I just brought from house to house. I thought, I don't want this stuff. Just get rid of it. I'm going to buy myself a new dinner set, new cutlery set. Why do we need to keep things that we've had forever just, you know, upgrade. It's an upgrade in my second act. I love it. Why not? So that was a massive change. Then deciding to leave the family business, that in itself was, yeah, that was big, realizing and also admitting. I wanted to change that can be hard to do. You can think it, and I was thinking it for years. How am I going to get out of this? It's the family business. You feel tied to it, the responsibility of it. So I thought, this is the year, Michelle, this is the year to practice what you preach and make a change for yourself. And I now working in reptile and I'm loving it. I'm loving the difference that it brings. I love working with women. I've always attention. We've always worked with men, because being in the property industry, it's quite a heavily male dominated industry, and I just love women and coming together. And I don't know, we just get each other, don't we? We just, it's just easier. And even though some people say, Oh, working with a lot of women can be quite bitchy, maybe I'm lucky. This group of girls that I work with have been so welcoming. I love that I work with 25 year olds up to 60 year olds, and every one of them I just I love, I connect with. I think that's another thing in midlife, let's not just pigeonhole ourselves. To hang around women that are our age. No, make friends with younger women. I've also met this lovely girl who's 20 years younger than me, and we just connected instantly. And I caught up with her for a few times, and she's the lady who pushed me to trying my first marcha, because I thought, What the hell is that? But anyway, I love marcha. So, you know, learning something new from someone younger, it's great. And also connecting with older women. I go to a gym. It's a great community of people, and I'm connecting with a lot of older women, and it's so inspiring, because you're listening to their stories. So therefore, as a person, you are actually stepping up, learning and realizing that anything is possible. Anything is possible. So I've, I'm in this new job. I'm loving it. It's a Christmas casual position. So another great way to just, you know, step into something new, new. It's not a massive commitment, and I'm really liking it. And I'm actually hoping to stay on, so we'll see what happens. But I've also started planning events for next year, because that's what I want to do. In the new year, I want to bring more of these conversations to women in a live setting. So my friend Joe and I are starting women's circle, and I did do an episode about that with her a few months ago, so I will be posting more information about that when we start to sell tickets to that. I'm doing another event with a new friend of mine, Rebecca, that I connected with at the end of last year, and we're going to do a live panel of interviewing women who've had a new second act. Now that is going to be a fun afternoon. So that's going to be in March, so keep your eye out for that. So if you're in the Sydney area, come along, because I love listening to women's stories. So we're going to have four to five women, and they've all got very different stories of how they've changed in midlife and how they've stepped into their second act. So yes, keep an eye out for that. I just want to do a little bit of a recap of some of the amazing women that I've interviewed this year on the podcast I had my good friend Jane, who came on, who left her corporate role to travel around Australia with a husband in the camper van, and she has not looked back. She had been in this role for a very long time. It was a management role. She had a lot of responsibility, and she just came to that point in her life where she thought, I need something new. I don't want this anymore? And I think a lot of us get to that point, especially in our 50s, when we're sort of heading towards 60, it's like, do I really want to be in this do I really want this stress? Anyway, she has not looked back. So if you haven't listened to that story, do because there are little great pearls of wisdom, and also bit of an inspiration to someone who wants to leave a full on career. Sophie came on to talk about burnout that a lot of us feel. Who else has there been? There's been Kath. Kath who decided to give up alcohol, and that completely changed her life, and that then inspired her to become an alcohol coach, and now she's helping others to step into a new part of their life without alcohol, and just that upgrade in itself has been amazing for her Courtney, who left another one who left a career. In corporate and is now, my gosh, she is flourishing in this new career as a stylist. She's a fashion stylist, and she has taken the internet by storm. She has over 200,000 women who are just loving her content, and I loved connecting with her and hoping that she's going to be one of the panelists in our event next month. So definitely listen to her. She had some great tips on what to stay away from when we're trying to style ourselves. And just really, get really good practical tips, actually. So she's so informative. And what I love about her socials is she gives so much information away, where a lot of this stuff we have to pay for. So keep an eye out for hers as well. We had Tim, who he Yes, he is a man, but I really wanted to bring him on the podcast, because he's all about bringing men together and working in the male mental health space, and how men that get to midlife also, obviously they find themselves at crossroads. And he has a space where men come together through sport, through walks on the beach. He buys them a cup of coffee, and that's how men connect and open up. And he has saved many, many lives. So if you're finding that your man's feeling a little bit quiet or feeling like he doesn't have much inspiration, or he's a bit alone, looked him up, listen to his episode, because it's great that there are spaces for our men to go to, because they suffer just as much as we do in our second act. What you know they they need their purpose. A lot of the times, they feel so stuck that they can't change because they have these big responsibilities. So his episode was really touched my heart, actually, and I love what he's doing and really helping others and his own story as well is so relatable, so that, again, in itself, is a great episode and Monique, who decided to say sayonara to her family, I'm going on a gap year I've done my role as a mother, as a wife, as a cook, as A coach, as everything that we do as women, and she decided to put herself first, and she wrote a book about her experience. I absolutely loved it. And better still, I got to meet her. The other week, we caught up in the city and had lunch. A lot of the women that I speak to, obviously I don't get to meet in person, because I do remote recording. So she's in the Sydney area, it was a great opportunity to connect with her, and we just got on well, and just loved connection.

Speaker 1  12:50  
How good is connection? I know I go on about it all the time, but it's so important that we put ourselves in a situation that we can connect with more people. So hopefully, through my events, I can encourage you to come and meet others. And if you're on your own, that's probably the best way to come is by yourself, forces you to chat to others. I went to a book launch the other day, and I was really scared because I went by myself. But you know what? It was so easy. You get in there, most people are on their own anyway, and you start to chat, and you connect, and you make meet people who might have something that you could possibly learn from, or they can connect you with somebody else. It's, it's really, I just think it's important bringing community together, and I really want to do more of that next year. So that is my hope for 2026 thank you again for being part of this, your second act community, for showing up week after week, and now I've moved the episodes to fortnightly, because it just gives me more time to put it together. I am so grateful that you do listen. And each week I get a recap of my stats on how many listeners I have, how many followers. And that, in itself, has been interesting how I'm not obsessed about it anymore. I see that there's a steady number of women that jump on and listen, and that just fills my heart, that you put aside 30 to 40 minutes once a week or every fortnight to listen to one of my episodes. Thank you. I hope you get something out of it. And I've always said even if I can help one person to inspire them in this stage of life, you can be do try something different. Then I've done my job, and I absolutely love it, and I can't wait for next year have an amazing lineup of guests who are coming. On and yeah, stay open, ladies, stay open to what is possible. You are more than what you think. Trust me, I have grown so much this year with all the changes, and I'm a person that doesn't really like change. I fear it, but I don't want to sit in a spot where I can't move, I can't grow. That really scares me. And I just can't wait for next year. I can't wait for what it will bring. And I really am going to work on keeping my fear at bay, not letting it take over, not letting those thoughts come into my head. Of you can't the imposter syndrome stuff, all of that. I'm just going to keep going and see where it takes. Me. So Happy New Year and all the best for 2026 and please keep tuning in, because there's going to be way more amazing people to listen to. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of your second act. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you could rate and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback means the world to me, I.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai