Insights from the Couch - Real Talk for Women at Midlife

Ep.63: Women Waking Up: How to Create a Midlife Transformation With Passion, Purpose, and Play

• Colette Fehr, Laura Bowman • Season 5 • Episode 63

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In this episode, we sit down with the vibrant and inspiring Wendy Valentine, host of The Midlife Makeover Show and author of Women Waking Up: The Midlife Manifesto for Passion, Purpose, and Play. Join us as we talk about how midlife doesn't have to mean crisis—it can mean awakening. Wendy shares her deeply personal story of rebuilding her life from the ground up, and the radical self-love and resilience that fueled her transformation. We dive into the emotional truths of midlife, from grief and divorce to rediscovering joy and authenticity. Wendy doesn't just inspire, she equips you with tangible tools, mindset shifts, and her powerful FREEDOM framework to help you move from stuck to empowered.  

Episode Highlights:

[0:03] - Welcoming Wendy Valentine and introducing her book, Women Waking Up 

[2:32] - Wendy shares her rock-bottom moment and the events that triggered her transformation 

[6:24] - Reframing "crashing out" as a path to growth and renewal 

[8:25] - The lotus metaphor: finding beauty and strength in the mud of midlife 

[13:09] - You don’t need a crisis to change: How midlife malaise can be a call to action [14:51] - The most common limiting beliefs Wendy hears from women in midlife 

[17:37] - Stepping into the light: responsibility, courage, and becoming your own best friend [22:27] - Introducing the FREEDOM framework: 7 steps to rebuild and reclaim your life [27:27] - From "acting" like your future self to becoming her 

[29:44] - Small changes with big ripple effects 

[32:49] - Leaping into the unknown: Wendy’s journey into RV life and podcasting 

[36:22] - Meditation, journaling, and daily habits that shift your brain and your life 

[40:16] - Rewiring your beliefs through neuroplasticity and self-awareness 

[43:25] - Trusting yourself and embracing midlife as your time

Links and Resources:

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Colette Fehr:

Hi guys. Welcome back to insights from the couch. We have Wendy Valentine here today, author of women waking up, you're going to want to grab her book immediately, because we're going to be talking about how to have a midlife awakening, not a crisis. I don't even know what that word means. We're going to have so much fun today. Wendy, thank you for being here. Welcome to insights from the couch. Tell us about you and your book before we dive in.

Wendy Valentine:

Oh, there's so much to tell. Thank you for having me. I was I was literally thinking that maybe I should do the interview from the couch so that have been cute.

Colette Fehr:

I know she just all lie down on the couch and talk that way. Yeah.

Wendy Valentine:

So yes. Wendy Valentine, I am host of the midlife makeover show podcast where we talk about all things midlife. And as you know, there's a lot to talk about. Oh yes. And author of the what the book, women waking up, the midlife manifesto for passion, purpose and play. It is my little baby. I love her so much, so much work has been put into this thing. Oh my gosh. So yeah, this book is part guidebook, part playbook. It's a little bit of a memoir. So you get to hear my story, how I went from breakdown to breakthrough, and it is jam packed full of tools and techniques that you can apply immediately in your life. I was kind of after less fluff and more formula, because as you go into the bookstore, if anybody does it anymore, you go to the Self Help section, which I've read all of them, that's actually my section, and I love all those books, and they've helped me tremendously. But one thing I've noticed, like, there's a lot of just fluff and a lot of sounds great, but how do you actually do that actually change your life? So that was my goal with this book, is to literally put everything in there that no matter where you're at in your life, if you're lost or stuck or feeling a little invisible that happens to us in our 40s and 50s, that there's plenty of methods in there to help you get you to that next level in your life.

Colette Fehr:

That's amazing, because action. We gotta get into action to create change, and that is the missing piece a lot of the time. So before we get into some of that. Obviously, you guys, we're going to want to read this book to get the full breadth and scope of the tools, but your personal story is amazing. So tell us a little bit about that.

Wendy Valentine:

Ooh. Okay, let's go back. Let's see. About seven years ago, so I'm 52 now that was I was 45 years old, and I was going through divorce. I had about 150 grand in debt, unemployed, the list goes on. I had black mold, toxicity, Lyme disease. I was like, at the peak of my perimenopause, I didn't even know it was called perimenopause until I started the show. I was like, there is such a thing as perimenopause. We

Colette Fehr:

learned that the hard way too. I know I

Wendy Valentine:

was like, Why didn't I tell me that? So within a six week period, my dog died, my cat died, and then my brother died. So like all the things we hear about that can happen in midlife, it happened to me all at once, all at once, all at once. Yes, needless to say, I had depression and anxiety and panic attacks from from witnessing my brother's death. So I was a hot, hot mess, not just from the hot flashes. So I came to this point was like the Robert Frost quote of you know, two two paths diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by. And I did, because I had to make that decision of like, am I going to keep spiraling downward, or am I going to rebuild my life from the ground up? And in some ways, it was a great opportunity for me with the fact that everything was completely deconstructed, because then I had a clean slate in a weird way. And I was like, Okay, well, if everything went to crap, then I can just completely rebuild. And I did. And so I took the road less traveled, the road that would lead me back to me, to my true, authentic self. And within a two year period, I got therapy for the panic attacks and the depression. EMDR, yes, can we hear it for? EMDR, I love it. Yes. Found this great therapist in Chicago. She's amazing. So I worked on everything in my life, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, and within that two year period, I went from making$0 to a half a million dollars, paid off all my debt. Wow. And I had always had this dream of driving an RV across the country. And. And I thought, you know, why don't I just make this happen? Like, let's just go for it. Wow, I did. I bought an RV, and I took off across the country, and then I started the midlife makeover show podcast, eventually writing the book. Because at that time, I thought, all right, I looked back at the last two years and I thought, if I could do this, anybody can do this. I mean, as much as my life was a mess, if I can do it, any woman can do this, they can rebuild their life and create a life that they love. So I created the freedom framework, which ended up going into the book. And,

Laura Bowman:

yeah, I just want to zoom in on this real quick, because, like, I in therapy, you know, I actually think that there's a big term. Now, I don't know if you guys have heard it on the internet, but it's like, crashing out. Have you heard

Wendy Valentine:

of this on love

Laura Bowman:

Island? They're like, Oh my god, so and so is like crashing out in real time. But I actually think that, like, crashing out is kind of like what you're describing. This phase of your life can be like such a huge blessing, because it does allow you this, like, you get to bounce off the bottom of the swimming pool and kind of have an opportunity to, like, rebuild everything. So it's sort of like this it, you would never ask for it, but it's sort of like this weird gift.

Wendy Valentine:

Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, yeah,

Laura Bowman:

but I want to zoom in on the years, those years that it took you from like, oh my god, I cannot believe that. Like, my life is the hot mess. Express to like, when you like, what were the things that made you feel like you were emerging out of that.

Wendy Valentine:

The things that were, um, you know what I'm gonna go with, the first thing that popped into my mind, and it was the very first time that I felt more connected to my spirit, yeah, and as much as we would love to ask chat GPT all the questions about our lives, but really it's like that inner chat guru, if you will. I had to have start having those difficult conversations with myself. Yes, we've heard the term of piss or get off the pot, right? I had to have that piss or get off the pod conversation with myself. Like, all right, Wendy, it's go time. Like, no more excuses. You have got to do something to change your life. And I thought too the next 50 years, I did not want to repeat that. I didn't want I wanted it to be different, and I knew the only person that could change that was me. I would love to blame everyone and the past and the crappy relationships and even the black mold and the tick bite. You know what I mean? Like, we could all blame everything that's external, but really it was up to me and I. I had to become my own best friend. I had to start being kinder to myself. Start loving myself more. I always say that I got a divorce and I married myself. Yeah, the greatest gift ever. And so, yeah, I mean, it may, when you were talking about the kind of like going down into the pool and coming back up, it made me think of the lotus, which I actually talked about it in the book, and there's a term called the Lotus effect. So the lotus, every night, sits in the mud, it's cold and it's dark and it's yucky. And every morning, when the sun rises, the Lotus comes to the surface so it reaches for the light. What's really cool, and this is the Lotus effect, is that as it opens up, the water literally removes all of the mud from its petals, so you never see mud on its petals, and then the sun goes down, and then the Lotus goes back into the mud. And I was always fascinated by that, and I related that to my life, and I thought, okay, I I need to love my mud, you know, the muck of midlife, the divorce, the the trauma, the death, the debt, everything, it's all mud. But just like the lotus, it also nourishes you, because the Lotus feeds off of that mud, right? And to always reach for the light and to also not allow it to take you down. Like, yes, it's part of you. It's it's that mud is part of the lotus, all of that trauma and the drama is part of me, but it's not, it's not appearing on me. I don't like walk throughout my day going, Look at me. I have all this stuff going on. I mean, sometimes I have to tell my story, but, but it doesn't weigh me down. It's I show more of the light and the the pretty white petals than I do my mud.

Laura Bowman:

I love that,

Colette Fehr:

right? But you embrace the messy parts, and it sounds like you were able to start changing your life. By getting into a healthier relationship with yourself and accepting the difficult pieces, but then also not pushing yourself from a place of criticism and pressure and fear, but pushing yourself from a place of self love and encouragement and like, come on Wendy, you've got this, and you gotta get yourself, figuratively off the couch and into action, or things aren't going to change. I think that's sometimes a struggle for people to have perspective when we're in the mud that right? It can feel so bad that we get pulled in and we think we're sinking into the earth, when really it's part of the grist for the mill.

Wendy Valentine:

Yeah, you have to ask yourself, What can I learn from this? And you may not know right away.

Unknown:

I mean, I've always, like, kind of slow to learn on some of that stuff or

Wendy Valentine:

go through something. I'm like, I don't know what's here, but there's something I just know it, and it'll hit me, like, out of the blue, maybe a year later, or two years, two years later, but I'm always looking for it. There's something there. So, yeah, it makes you it is the dichotomy of life, right? You wouldn't know light if you didn't know dark, you wouldn't know joy, if you didn't know sadness, if it was happy all the time, then we would be like, okay, you know it's like the the story of Siddhartha, of Buddha, right? His his parents wanted to protect him, so they kept him inside the castle. And everything was happy and joyous and wonderful all the time. And then one day, Siddhartha climbs over the castle wall, and he sees a homeless person, and he was miserable, and he was like, Wow. He's like, didn't, had never even experienced any emotions like that, yep. And then he went back inside the castle, and he missed that, that holistic feeling of being a human and I think the one of the things to really accept and understand and grasp that we're human beings, being human we're built with, as you know, right, 19 plus main emotions, and to embrace them and love every single one of them, even the depress. I mean, anger serves a purpose, right? Depression serves a purpose, everything. And if you just kind of learn to utilize those emotions to get you to wherever you want to go in life, it's amazing. It's amazing.

Laura Bowman:

It's interesting too. Is like, I think that these these muddy moments, or these things like you're describing, like divorce and dad and all these things compel a person to sort of grow. And I know what I see as a therapist is women that in my office that don't really need to change. They're in midlife, they're really stuck, they don't feel a sense of purpose, but there's nothing compelling

Unknown:

them. Crisis. There's no crisis. Yeah, and

Laura Bowman:

I mean, it shouldn't be that change should always require crisis. Agreed, very often, it's like the thing that helps you get to the next level, because

Colette Fehr:

it's having everything fall apart. Yeah, yes, sometimes people won't galvanize until something is forcing you to however, what I love about what you're saying, though, too. Is that okay? Every crisis happened to you sort of all at once, which in the moment can't have felt good, right? We can sit here and wax poetic about embracing negative emotions, right when they're piling on. It is really, really tough to have that perspective. But what I love about what you're saying, and your point, Laura, is that you know this isn't unique to Wendy. You're not the only person who can do this, and you don't have to have your life fall apart. And if you have your life fall apart, you can do this no matter who you are, whether everything's burning to the ground around you, or whether you're just sort of stuck in on we that sort of like midlife malaise, of like, I don't really love what's happening, but I don't know what to do or where to get started. So you we can have that life we want and break our patterns, no matter who we are what's happening. And I really am excited that you're giving people such actionable tools to get there, because that's our motivation too, right? We can all talk about this and have analysis paralysis. So as we get into this, can you because I thought this was really interesting, the way you highlight let's get into some of the self limiting beliefs that you see, that we hear all the time in our office, too, and we've all struggled with ourself. What are some of the limiting beliefs that come up at midlife that we've got to kind of work around? I

Wendy Valentine:

would have to say I'm too old, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough. This is my life now. Wow. Wa, wa. I mean, these are all. I mean, they call it a limiting belief, for a reason, right? Because it limits you from being who you truly want to be. And by the way, I love your sub stack. On sub stack, and I posted one today about the Marianne Williamson quote. It is my faith quote, and it is a quote that literally helped to push me out of that mud. And the quote is, our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. And at the time when I had this aha moment with this quote, the Marian Williamson quote, was like, staring at me from the wall. I was living in the basement because my husband and I were going through divorce, and I volunteered to be the one that would live in the basement in the dark cold. I was like, well, gonna have a dark night of the soul. Let's go all out. I was trying to make the basement my little dungeon a little bit more of like a sanctuary. So I hung up, you know, positive quotes on the walls, and I had this pink, very uncomfortable but so adorable, pink, fuchsia chair from Pier One. I miss Pier One, and some days, like I would, literally, I would lay in bed just bawl my eyes out feeling sorry for myself. And some days I would make it from the bed to the fuchsia chair, and I would sit in that chair and I would stare at all of these quotes, and I kept going back to Marianne quote, and for some reason, it just kept drawing me back in. I'm like, why am I obsessed with this quote? I don't totally get it. I don't totally agree with that. I was like, a little pissed about it, and then it finally hit me. I was like, oh, wait a second. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. And I asked myself the question, instead of chat GPT, because we didn't have it back then, I asked myself the question, what if, Wendy, what if you fully stepped into your light? Like, what? Great question. Yeah, and very rare, like, we we can hang on to that mud, and we can love our dark. And sometimes the dark is it's familiar. It's like, Oh, I know. I mean, it was predictable for me. I know how to be depressed. I know how to have anxiety. I know how to do all the things and to even manipulate I was almost like gaslighting myself, if you will, right? And then I thought, Okay, what if I fully stepped into my life? And when I asked myself that question, I my stomach was like, Oh, my God.

Laura Bowman:

That means a responsibility, right? It's a big responsibility.

Wendy Valentine:

Wait a second, I have to follow through this divorce. I have to get a job. I have to I have to start making some money, I have to get some good therapy. I have to do all the things take responsibility. Yeah, it was, and I thought, but wait a second, staying in the dark, where's that going to get me staying in the basement, right? Metaphorically or literally? So I was like, No, we it's time. It is time to step into the light, because I cannot handle this anymore. Like it's, it was so heavy, but it's, you know, I want to go back to what you were saying before about it's proactive versus reactive, right, right? Because you either are the ones serving the divorce papers or putting in the resignation letter to your employer, or you're the one getting served with the divorce papers or right or or getting fired. So it's either proactive versus reactive, and I think that's the key, is to stay ahead in your life as much as you possibly can. As you know, we can't avoid shit that happens in life. You can't avoid deaths that occur. You can't avoid career changes and body changes. Sometimes like you can't avoid a lot of this stuff, but it's how you deal with it, how you get back up and do as much as you can proactively with yourself and your heart and your soul and taking care of yourself, the more that you can take care of yourself. You can handle anything that comes your way. You really can't.

Laura Bowman:

Yeah, yeah. I agree with that,

Colette Fehr:

right? And I think that's the hard thing, is that when we're feeling the heavy, and I'm glad you talked about that, how heavy it felt that some days you couldn't even get out of bed. You lay there and cried, because that's real. That's what it feels like when we are in the dark place, literally and metaphorically, it can feel absolutely overwhelming and paralyzing, but there is always a way through, and it starts with getting into connection with yourself and getting into action really taking an honest appraisal of what's the situation. Am I going to sit here and continue to suck my thumb and see myself as a victim, or am I going to say, Okay, this sucks, and now, what am I going to do to turn my life around? Yeah. You have to save yourself, right? No one else is coming

Laura Bowman:

when, when you're in that downward spiral, though it can feel so hard to take care of yourself, I just want to normalize that. Like when you're in that dark place, I think those bad habits really come roaring out. And so it's like that whole like, take care of yourself. It's you're so anxiety ridden. Oftentimes, it's hard to do anything to Care for Self, except for, like, survive. You

Wendy Valentine:

know what I do now, though, like, and I still have shitty days and shitty afternoons and a crappy week, maybe not even crappy week anymore, but I'll give I'm like, All right, girl, I'm gonna give you an hour and you're gonna lay on that bed and ball your eyes out and feel sorry for yourself, and then you're done. I love that, yeah, and then I also give myself Grace like we do not. I mean, as women, we are such great caretakers, and we're so loving and we're so sweet, but for ourselves like we don't give ourselves that grace and that and that credit, and it's okay to have a shitty day. It's okay

Colette Fehr:

and you're gonna have a shitty day, no matter how bad our life is or how bad, yeah, yeah,

Wendy Valentine:

yeah, it's and sometimes you're just in a bad mood. I mean, I've stopped evaluating everything, because I used to them like, something's wrong. Oh my god. What is it? And I would like, analyze my whole life. I'm like, Man, I'm

Unknown:

just like, right? Sometimes

Colette Fehr:

it's just a hard day. And I know, and I we see this in therapy all the time that, you know, some days the same things feel so heavy and awful. I'll wake up the next day. Nothing's changed. But I just don't feel as down about it, or it just my perspective has shifted. I mean, so much of it is what's happening in your nervous system. So the more we can just embrace that. Sometimes it's gonna feel like a lot of Yuck, and sometimes it's gonna feel like a lot of hope, and move with that. Then we don't get stuck in making meaning that brings us down farther. We can just move through difficult emotion.

Wendy Valentine:

Yeah, you're so right. And I always think of emotions as energy in motion, right? Emotions, they flow through you. They're not supposed to stay stuck. So just allow them to, like, do whatever it's gonna do, and then move its way out. And you just gotta you have to move on. You have to give yourself permission to move on. It's hard for people, yeah,

Unknown:

but it's doable, but it's 100%

Laura Bowman:

so Wendy, start taking us into some of these tools that you have. Like, what is this? Like, Freedom method, and how do you use this with women?

Wendy Valentine:

So freedom and literally, they are these seven steps that I took to take me from like point A of angst to point B of bliss. And f is free yourself. And that's a lot about just gaining clarity on where you're at now and where you want to go and becoming your own best friend, and then r is reset your life. A lot of that is dropping the baggage. And if you were like me, by the time I got to mid 40s, I had probably a U haul truck full of baggage that I was carrying around. So a lot of that is just allowing, again, allowing yourself to drop that baggage. You don't have to carry it. You don't have to carry everyone else's baggage either, and hitting that reset button as you step into your next chapter as a new woman. And this is probably, I think, the second step is my favorite, because a lot of it is about designing a new woman. And if you think of think of like a drone, if you had a drone that was following you around all throughout the day as you got up in the morning and observing what you were thinking, what you were doing, how you were eating. Were you rushing around? Did you stop to meditate? Did you stop to get a breath of fresh air? How are you dealing with people? How do you walk into a room, everything that you do and like, literally designing this woman, how you really want her to act throughout her day, and then every single morning, when you wake up, you slip into the shoes of that new woman. And eventually you become her, which is pretty cool, which is exactly what I did. And I'll never forget this my Aunt Annie, 92 years old, that poor thing, the greatest sounding board on the planet, even my own therapist, was like, Thank God for Aunt Annie, but she told me. She said, Darling. She's like, you've always wanted to be an actress. She said, why don't you just act like the woman you want to become. Like, that's genius. So I did, I mean literally, like, okay, strong. I want to be healthy. This is, this is how a healthy Wendy eats. This is how she thinks all of that. So yes, I would say the second step. Is probably the most critical of them all. E is envision a new future that is a lot about creating your dream life, from your home to your health to your happiness, and then reverse engineering that dream into reality. And as we all know, it's, we are 99% energy, only a tiny bit of matter. And if we concentrate more on that energy and we dream what we want to see happen, like it's already happened. Yeah, it will happen. I mean, that's how I manifested the RV and did all the things so it's, it can happen. E, the next E is embrace and explore. And that is dropping the perfectionism and just embracing who you are, where, where you're at right now in your life, and even all of the challenges you might occur as you move forward, right? I mean, I am a recover Hi. My name is Wendy. I'm a recovering perfectionist. I mean, what is it? Approval, seeking, codependency. I had all of those labels, and I had to peel those labels off because they weren't serving me anymore. Yeah, and I looked back at my life, and the reason I put those labels on me is it was a way to survive. It was a way for the little Wendy to not get abandoned anymore, to feel safe and secure, even though deep down, I wasn't. So it's removing those labels so that you can really just be your true, authentic self without apology at all. Right. Dee is detached from tomorrow. This is all about being present, going with the flow, allowing life to just unfold. However, because it is right, it's going to unfold. It's going to do what it's going to do anyway, do its thing. O is probably my favorite. O is O your better self. This is about setting healthy boundaries, creating more self worth, and I mean owning who you are. Because like you're going to go through the trouble of designing this new woman, you've got to protect her. You got to take care of her. And finally, M is master yourself. This is all about washing, rinsing, repeating the same steps, because we don't just evolve, and then you stop, you continue to evolve as you move forward in your life. So you're

Colette Fehr:

taking people through in the book and in your work with people, you're taking people through the same steps you have walked through. You know they work. You've been through them. And I love that you rely so much on the mindset and the energy, because it really is possible to create whatever you want for yourself. That's where those limiting beliefs come in. Is people think it's not true when those limiting beliefs are occluding your perspective, but it really is true, so you're giving people a way to dig out and see that whatever you want is possible.

Wendy Valentine:

Yeah, I think we sometimes will, and I was, I will use those as an excuse to not, to not move into that light, right? I agree. And, you know, I've had people even ask in interviews, have you always been so bold? Have you always been so courageous? I'm like, No, but we're all courageous. We're just courageous in different ways and in different phases in our life. I mean, going back to that story of being in the basement bawling my eyes out, you know, every single day being bold sometimes was literally moving to the fuchsia chair. That was a bold move for me, and then taking

Colette Fehr:

care of yourself that day, right? Like that. It's going to look different.

Wendy Valentine:

We don't have to, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will the new you. So you don't have to do it all overnight. Just take little mini steps, and eventually you'll take bigger steps and bigger steps and bigger steps, but, but it's a it's a process. It's not anything that's done. So if you don't, I mean, that's why New Year's resolutions fail so many times, because people try to do too much too soon, and then they're like, Oh, I suck. I can't do this. Like, yes, you can just little by little by little.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah. And in fact, what we know from the science of change is that even when we think we're taking off a very small chunk. We usually have to slice it about 10 times thinner than we think we do. You know, like doing two push ups in order to build a habit of doing push ups, not every day I'm going to get up and do 100 push ups. That's not small. Small means a little teeny. Maybe one day all you do is get out of bed and into the fuchsia chair.

Wendy Valentine:

I think one of the things that happens in your 40s and 50s is that the rules, the roles, the expectations, are changing. Yep, and you have to kind of take a step back and look at that like, what is my role now? What and what are the rules? And do I believe in those rules? Do I. Yeah, what are my roles like? What are my values? Who do I want to be? And you don't. What's cool though, too, is that you don't have to change all areas of your life. You can just pick one area, you focus on that one area. And what's amazing is that as you change one part of your life, like the rest of the area has changed too. It just spills over. So you don't have to try to totally reinvent yourself. I had a lady that a student that was in my class this past year, and she was someone that was like, I don't have, like, a whole lot to change, but she just felt like there was something missing. Yeah, something else. And, you know, she was, she was in her 50s and, and all, the main thing that she got out of the whole course was that just for her to get out and play a little bit more, yeah, take that, take an art class, and to think outside the box a little bit, and she's like, Oh my god, I'm finding things that I actually like to do. I mean, she had a good marriage. She loved her job, and all of those things were good. She was healthy, but she just wanted there was something missing. And it was she had to find that thing, but she found it. It was just plain, a little bit more so, yeah, not all of us have to have a total revamp

Laura Bowman:

and and action creates more action, right? Like you begin we all, we call it the active dabble here, where you just start dabbling in things, and all of a sudden you find what, like speaks to you. But I'm just curious how you go from, like, taking the leap to doing the RV because that's like a really big independent move, like, talk to us a little bit about that. Well,

Wendy Valentine:

I sold everything, by the way, so that was, that was a huge leave. I'm going from, you know, a 5000 square foot house down to 150 square feet.

Colette Fehr:

I think that's amazing. Though, I actually feel envy inside of me when I hear that like I love the idea of shedding,

Wendy Valentine:

yes, yeah. And, you know, I was decluttering all areas of my life. You think about my relationships, for changing the my decluttering, my mind, my beliefs, everything, but it was all it was all baby steps. I again. I couldn't have done it, you know, overnight, and I just, I just kept tuning in with myself. I just kept tuning in to, all right, Wendy, what's next? What's the next move? Like, let's, let's take care of this. And then we go on and we keep going to the next layer, the next layer. So, I don't know, I just kept, for the first time in my life, I actually listened to myself, yeah, and what I wanted and what would bring in. I didn't. I didn't know how to drive an RV. I didn't know how to operate an RV. I didn't know how to

Laura Bowman:

run a podcast. No,

Wendy Valentine:

right now is anybody know our raw podcast? But the another quote that really motivated me during that time was leap and the net will appear, yeah, and I just kept leaping, and the net is, is you? You are the net. You will catch yourself. And again, as recovering perfectionist, I used to not even make a move until I had everything figured out. I mean it. I think in some ways, I wanted to start a podcast, you know, 10 years ago, but I didn't have the lighting right, or the wall would look a little weird, or, Oh, I was off center. I mean, literally, just like, oh my god,

Unknown:

yeah,

Wendy Valentine:

yeah. And now I

Colette Fehr:

just let it be let it be messy. Let it be messy. I think that's one of the biggest things I learned in life, too, is that you've got to just, I've never heard the quote, leap and the net will appear. Is that what it is? But I love that. I think that is how you have to live. And sometimes you are going to fall with a bit of a thud. I mean, we can't pretend that's not true, like failure is part of the process, and it's what we learn most from. But the more you leave and realize, most of the time, you catch yourself, you figure it out, and even when you fall, you're able to get back up, wiser and better and land next time. That's the only way. And you've gotten where you are by doing it the opposite way. Just go for it. Figure it the fuck out as you go. Yeah, I love

Wendy Valentine:

that. You said that because, did you ever see the George Costanza episode where he did opposite day? No, but I've heard people

Colette Fehr:

talk about this, but explain it a little, because I never actually watched,

Wendy Valentine:

yeah, that was one of the, one of the things that popped in my mind during that time. I was like, no, what if I just had a George Costanza day life chapter or whatever. And basically, in the episode, he was like, you know, everything else hasn't turned out the way it's supposed to. What if I just do the opposite, you know, like, sort of chicken. I'm gonna order tuna. Like he just kept doing everything. I. Opposite, and that's what I did. I was like, You know what? That, instead of feeling like, Oh, I got to call this person back. What if I don't call them back, you know, or anything, I just

Colette Fehr:

did the opposite of what the woman I was used to do and did what this new woman I'm becoming would do back. What might happen? Yeah,

Wendy Valentine:

I think we're, we're trained to, like with all of these goals and everything else, these plans, having our planners, which I have one too, but I think we focus too much on the what and the when and the where and the why and the how, instead of the who I'm like, What about the who isn't that the most important? Because if you design the woman that you want to be. She'll do the things. Yep, she will take that leap, she will buy that RV, she will write that book, or start the podcast. She will do those things. And it's like, it's an easier way to go about it, rather than like, Okay, I gotta get up and I gotta go, check, check,

Laura Bowman:

check, yeah. And it's also the idea that, like, when you achieve something, you're going to feel a certain way, rather than like just being present on the whole journey. And that journey is you becoming this woman you want to be, and so like every day can feel good, as opposed to when I get this one thing happening, I'll finally feel validated in my life. It's like a totally different perspective, you

Wendy Valentine:

know? And I would, I would say that the two greatest things I did, the greatest habits I created during that time, was meditation and journaling. Those two things were, those are the winner, winner. Chicken dinners agreed every single morning, just about and I learned how to meditate that would work for me, because I used to go to the Deepak Chopra retreats, and they would sit in silence for like over an hour, and I would just die. I was like, but then I started doing guided meditations, and those changed so much for me to where I really loved meditation, and then I could see the results happening in my life, in most importantly within me, I was calmer. Things were the limiting beliefs were starting to just kind of disappear without me like trying to get them to change,

Laura Bowman:

but you're describing habits that tune you into yourself, right? Yeah, exactly. Those are, like, you going inside, yep, that's the thing that begins to clear it away. And it's the shift that a lot of people, especially when they're in a frenzied state, have a really hard time doing. They're going outside. They're like, what do you think I should do? What should I do here? And you gotta get that relationship with self going, Yeah,

Wendy Valentine:

too. Like, if you know, if you're, if you're someone out there listening that you're really, really struggling, like the shit has hit the fan, and you just want to scream, and just like, oh my god, there are ways, little ways, that you can just help yourself feel better. And sometimes it's simply, I know it sounds corny, but just taking a walk in the park, sitting and reading a book, drinking some tea, hanging out with friends, and I, I was the worst at even though I don't know I didn't, I had a hard time, like calling my friends and going, I'm really struggling. But they sensed it, so they would come like, I'm taking out to lunch. So even if it's just calling a friend and saying, I need to, I just need to sit and have coffee, you know, anything. But you try to find little ways to help you feel a little bit better each day, and eventually you get out of it. But again, you have to pull yourself out of it, but

Colette Fehr:

I'm so glad you said that, because you're right. It is we're talking about big transformations, and also on a day to day basis, when the shit really hits the fan, it is doing these little things that just are self loving and make you feel even a tiny bit better in the midst of the hardship, whereas, like you said, Laura, a lot of times when we're in crisis, we're grasping for old coping mechanisms that are maladaptive or unhealthy, right? Like when I was going through my divorce. It's 20 years ago, but I started, I hadn't smoked a cigarette in seven years, and I started chain smoking again. And you know, I started going from having one glass of wine occasionally to having three on my back porch with a pack of cigarettes. And then I'm like, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm coping great. I don't need help. Like, what the fuck Right? Right? Yeah, I'm fine. I don't need, like, medication. I'm not depressed, I'm not anxious. Are you out of your mind? Those things don't happen to me. I can do anything. I'm strong, right? So it's like, you're not you're me. I was making meaning at that time, in a way, and going back to, like, old, younger versions of Colette and how she coped, like how I coped when my parents got divorced as a teenager. You. Instead of saying, Okay, this is now, and yes, I'm an adult, but this is really hard. So what can I do that's self loving and makes me feel better? And is it really three glasses of wine and a pack of cigarettes? No, it's not. And that's how I began to emerge,

Wendy Valentine:

yes, and I would have say too, with meditation, one of the things I learned was it wasn't some you're not trying to stop your thoughts because some people, like, I can't stop thinking. You're not supposed to stop thinking, right? You're just observing. You're just watching these thoughts go by, like, it's a ticker tape, you know, on CNN, right? You're like, you're just, you're just watching. You're just checking out the news. Are you you got bad news coming across? You got good news coming across, whatever it is, right? But then also, too, with meditation, and this is something I learned from Dr Joe Dispenza with neuroplasticity neuroscience. It's crazy to think that they didn't figure this out until maybe what, 35 years ago, that we can actually rewire our brain. Fascinating. But once I learned that, I was like, oh, so I'm not stuck with all of these beliefs and all of these thoughts that I have that keep going on repeat. I can actually change that. So with meditation, what's amazing is that if you have a neural pathway that has always believed I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough. You can literally change that neural pathway. That pathway will just disappear, and you create a new one that believes that you're amazing and you're a genius and you're awesome, and that that is the point of meditation, is to literally change your brain and change your life. That

Colette Fehr:

practice, in and of itself, if I could get everyone who comes in here for couples therapy to adopt a short daily mindfulness meditation practice that is the fastest and best way to fire me and not need to come in here and spend your time and money. That's true for all for all ailments, but it's it's sometimes a tough sell, because it's not a quick fix. It's something that you have to do, and then it takes time to feel the rewiring of the brain. But I think we're all saying here, do it. It's worth it. It's a game changer,

Wendy Valentine:

because, as we know, like the the panic attacks and anxiety and the depression sometimes, like, it can get stuck and until you can and what works for one person doesn't work for another. So you have to, yeah, you just have to figure out, like, try all sorts of different methods and techniques, no matter who it is or what it is, just try different things to get that unstuck. So just to break yourself free and see what works for you. Point is like, do anything you possibly can to recover from the trauma and the drama, and it's just because you're worth it. I mean, we're all worth it to just move past this. Because

Laura Bowman:

when I hear you saying, Wendy, like that first step is, like, you've got to give yourself the permission to change and like that, to grow, and that these things will appear on your path. These things will get dropped down, and you will you, if you choose to follow it, it will take you somewhere new. Yeah, first, yeah. A lot of people think they know what they need, or they think they know what'll help. And it's like be open yourself up to possibility.

Wendy Valentine:

I know, yeah, trust you. Trust yourself. I think this is a lot of in this stage in life, especially we have to we're so used to having to take care of kids and our partners and our parents and friends, and this is your time to take care of yourself and and you you just do anything you possibly can to just to love yourself more.

Colette Fehr:

What a beautiful sentiment to end on. I think that's perfect. And your book is amazing. I think our listeners gonna are gonna love it. So remind everyone about your book, where they can find it, and how they can find you and work with you. All that good stuff.

Wendy Valentine:

Thank you. So main place is Wendy valentine.com you can actually get the book there. I don't know when this episode is coming out, but the book comes out September 9. If you order before, then there's like, over $500 in pre order bonuses, and I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and sub stack is my new my new hangout.

Colette Fehr:

Yes, I have your sub stack in my inbox to read today.

Wendy Valentine:

Yeah, well, you already know about it. It's the basement.

Colette Fehr:

And the Marianne Williams have no but it's great. It's great stuff. So thank you so much for being here. Wendy, yes, everyone go grab a copy of women waking up. It's what we all need to make this stage of life the best it can be. And we're so grateful for you for being here. We hope you got some insights from our couch today, and we'll see you next time. Bye, guys. You.