What If Midlife Is Where You Begin: Boundaries, Burnout & Reinvention

If you’ve been the competent one for decades, you can get so good at holding everything together that you stop noticing you’re not actually inside your own life. Mary Rothwell opens with a personal turning point, leaving a career-defining job after it became unsafe, and the disorienting question that followed: who am I when my identity is no longer my role?

Midlife coach Sandra Wood joins us with her own flashbulb moments, including a breast cancer diagnosis that sparked a life review and a clear internal message to show up for herself. We talk about what happens when you start setting boundaries after years of people-pleasing and overfunctioning: the system pushes back, conflict feels threatening, and labels like selfish or crazy can get thrown your way. Sandra shares how learning to tolerate discomfort and let other people have their feelings can become the most freeing boundary of all.

We also dig into the messy middle: divorce, depression, rebuilding financial stability, and parenting daughters while reinventing yourself in real time. Along the way, we explore the difference between “managing” your life and inhabiting it, why kindness is a stronger compass than being “good,” and how the caregiving role can quietly erase your wants if you don’t stay present to them.

Finally, we clear up a common point of confusion for women seeking support: coaching vs therapy, when you may need both, and how to vet a therapist or coach with confidence. If you’re at a crossroads with burnout, boundaries, identity, perimenopause stress, or caregiving pressure, this conversation offers language and next steps. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s carrying too much, and leave a review with the boundary you’re ready to practice next.

Transcript

What It Means To Inhabit

Sandra 0:00

You know when you're inhabiting yourself, when you have less stress, when you have more ease about whatever is arising, like you might be in the middle of conflict and be going, Oh well, this is what needed to happen. You know, that's inhabiting. That's what inhabiting feels like.

Mary 0:17

For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek. But in nature, violets are anything but weak. They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem. Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult. It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature. If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place.

A Career Crisis And Losing Identity

Mary 0:52

Hey Violets, welcome to the show. About four years ago, I had a life crisis. And as with most of our worst experiences, I did not see it coming. I had to leave a job and a career I loved because a new person on the team made working there a nightmare. While my body felt the threat immediately, it took my brain a bit longer to catch up. Of course, initially I questioned myself. Was I overreacting? Surely the cruel flippant comments and the daily badgering and manipulation couldn't be intentional, right? Because who does that? Well, all that is a story for another day. The outcome, however, is today's story. I left that job in a career that I loved and that defined me for over 30 years. It was the air that I breathed. In the shifting sands of a half-century life, marked by losing my parents, two brothers, friends, a marriage, and picking up the pieces of other changes, it was my constant. It made the world make sense. And in the space of several months, it was twisted into a space that became unsafe, marked by confusion and the abandonment of people that I thought I could trust. It changed into something that, while my work remained as fulfilling, the space around it was a quagmire of anxiety and fear. And after I resigned, I found myself lost. I had no idea what or who I was outside of my career identity. It colored every aspect of my life. I kept trying to find a way to make an impact and help people, but what I eventually learned was that I first had to figure out what I wanted to create for me. And although I have navigated through it, I remember waking up every day feeling like I was spinning from one thing to the next. And one of my thoughts was, I'm a therapist, for God's sake. How can I not figure this out? And that is something that once I started to work with women in midlife, I recognized as a pattern in many of my clients' lives. Maybe not always as soul-wrenching as my experience, but the puzzle for women of figuring out what they really want for themselves, which starts with who they are, not what they do for others. I think midlife, with its new terrain of grown children, established or end stages of careers, decades-long marriages, and or aging parents, brings this moment of reckoning to nearly every woman. My guest today has been through many of these situations that created multiple moments of reckoning, and she has used that experience to help other women navigate the question of now what for themselves.

Sandra Wood And Midlife Reckonings

Mary 3:23

My guest today is Sandra Wood, a midlife coach for smart, capable women who are exhausted from running everyone else's lives and have quietly lost themselves in the process. She spent 17 years in nonprofit leadership before rebuilding her life from the ground up after several of those moments of reckoning that I mentioned. But she didn't just survive those chapters, she used them. And now she helps midlife women stop managing their lives and start inhabiting them again. Welcome to No Shrinking Violet, Sandra. Thank you. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Well, I am excited to talk to you because so many of the themes that you talk about in your on your website, in other podcasts with your clients are similar to pretty much every episode on my podcast. But what I almost always start with is what I call flashbulb moments. And these are moments that stand out in relief. You know, and somebody recently, another guest recently said there are people that are young enough to not know what flashbulb means. But when you turn the flash on on your phone because it's dark, so the moments that stand out in relief, and you I think you've had some major ones, but what do you think were a few of the times in your life that really clearly there's what I told you, I'm in the city. So I'm gonna try to get if everyone heard that motor, that is because I am now in the city. But anyway, the moments for you that were really like those moments of reckoning that you knew your life was going to go in a different direction.

Breast Cancer As A Wake-Up

Sandra 4:56

Yes, yes, yeah. I mean, there's a lot, but um the the the probably the one that really woke me up to that there were going to be more of those is um I at a little after 40, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And so I was going through treatment and I it just you know it turns your life, a health crisis learned turns everybody's life upside down. Um but I was like really review doing a life review, and I was mid-life in my mind. Um, and so um, excuse me, I um I was standing outside in my front yard and I was watching my daughters like riding bikes or something, I can't remember. And um I was really asking myself, what is this all about? And I had been spending time feeling like a victim, and I knew that that was gonna have an expiration date because it didn't feel good to stay in that mode. And so I was just standing and I felt like something tapped me on the shoulder, you know, and it was one of those moments where you kind of look around like, what, you know? And really the question was, are you ready? And I took a deep breath and I was like, ready for what? Like, what's that question mean? And really what came to me right after that was to show up for yourself, to like really show up for yourself. And so that moment was that flash, flashlight moment where I started to realize I wasn't living my life for me, I was living it for everyone else and getting my value out of that. And so that began like the deconstruction of my whole life because I, you know, I had two daughters, I was a stay-at-home mom, I had a husband, and I realized that I didn't have good boundaries and I didn't really know where I ended and other people began. You know, so it was just a yeah, an interesting moment. Yeah.

Mary 6:49

Yeah. And I hear that so often. But when we think about something like cancer, and it looks like you have made it through and are very healthy now. So that's awesome. That's awesome. Um, it's I think something like that, where it's so all-encompassing, it forces you to really look at what I am doing every day, because now I'm not just trying to keep myself well in balance, I'm needing to make myself well.

Sandra 7:19

Yes, yes. It I it almost felt like when I had that awareness that that was the work that needed to begin, then I, you know, I started reading books about boundaries and I started realizing I had um, you know, there were some patterns in my marriage that were very unhealthy. So it I started to set boundaries and it was almost like, you know, you pull pull a string and you pull the whole thing out. That's really what it felt like because once I started pulling on this piece, then everything deconstructed. My marriage, my relationships, my my relationship with my parents, you know, nobody liked this Sandra that was now appearing, who had a voice, who had boundaries, who was saying stop, you know, or or identifying the unsaid things that hadn't been said before. It's just once you start, um, you can't stop. But the beauty underneath that was that I found a stability that was, oh, this is me. This is, I have a right to be this, even though I don't really know what my identity is right now, and it kind of doesn't matter. Um, but it was that was when I started to discover that, that felt like life and death to me because I what I felt is that cancer was telling me something needed to change. And I just had the distinct feeling that if I didn't keep pulling the thread, that that was just gonna come back again. And I hadn't, it was very clear to me, this is I want this to be a one and done, you know. Yeah.

Mary 8:50

Yeah. Well, and it's interesting that sometimes it takes something huge to make you finally say, I'm going to use my own voice. And it in weirdly, in retrospect, it becomes not just a flashball moment, but kind of like a blessing. That it really is a moment of reckoning. Like you can go one of two ways here, but and if you keep doing what you're doing, you're not gonna come out on the other side.

Sandra 9:18

Yeah, yes. And that's where I love, I mean, I I will always say to women, it doesn't have to be a crisis, it could be a bunch of niggling things, right? That are that are causing, you know, uh big emotions or whatever. It doesn't have to be a crisis, but sometimes we just don't listen. Yeah, you know, not listening to our body, right? We're we we don't sense it till it happens. But I love that we can turn that into magic, you know.

Mary 9:44

Yes, yeah, for sure. And what I think is interesting is when you decide to start use your voice using your voice. So you meant you sort of likened it to unraveling a sweater, you know, you start pulling and all of a sudden in a sense you are naked, right? You've

Boundaries That Upset The System

Mary 10:00

now gotten rid of the entire thing. Yes, but you know you're on the right track when other people are upset with you because it's a system. I always talk about systems theory and you're part of that. It's it's trained you how to be, quote, a good mom, wife. We'll talk more about the word good later, but yes, it trains you and when you step out of that, the system does not like it.

Sandra 10:24

No, no, I love that you call that out, Mary, because I think women need to know that, you know, that that if you're in that process, that you know you're on the right track if everyone's mad at you, or if you know, if if things are being projected at you that you've never heard somebody say to you before, you know, it can be quite shocking, you know, what comes back when you start to go into that mode. So I love that you call that out. I wish I had known that.

Mary 10:51

Yeah.

Sandra 10:51

Because I question myself a lot. Am I crazy? Am I because I was told I was crazy. And this is, I think these are all the comments that are made when women start deciding to become bigger and and become who they really are.

Mary 11:05

Yeah.

Sandra 11:06

Yeah.

Mary 11:06

And the word words like selfish start to come up. And I think we become really uncomfortable when we step past that and we start to do that self-advocacy. It's really kind of it makes you a little bit cringy, squirmy, like, wow, this is really uncomfortable. And I have so many clients that want to then go back, like receive back in because it's not only uncomfortable, but you start to get these words that you have always been afraid of. You're being selfish, easy, like whatever that word is, yeah, it's come from somewhere in the past.

Sandra 11:42

Yes, yeah. The being nice or the being good, you know. I think that also is what we're in the face of I'm not being nice, I'm not being good. But I always like to reframe it, but that's being kind. That's being kind to you, and actually it's being kind to the other person because you've probably been overfunctioning and they haven't had the opportunity to grow in that way, right? Yeah, yeah.

Mary 12:04

Yeah. And that's what I'll often say to women with their children, that they, whether it's as much as helicoptering or they just really want to smooth that road in front of them, you are denying them the ability to have, whether it's a crisis or just a tough time, you're denying them the access to resilience and finding their own solutions.

Sandra 12:27

Yes, yes. And and I think that's where, you know, I I believe for women that's a hard, it's it's a hard place to be in. But once you start doing it and you start seeing the benefit, especially with children, because you're like, oh my God, they're they figured it out. They didn't, you know, I they grew because I didn't, you know, overhelp. And I I think for me, what the biggest challenge was is that I didn't know how to stand in conflict and like stand in conflict and allow everything that was arising without collapsing and you know, without freezing or fleeing or fawning or, you know, all of those things. I didn't know how to do any of that. So I did one of the, you know, one of the the Fs, right? I just re- I and that I had to kind of keep seeing. Um, and you know, because I grew up in a household where conflict was always happening and never resolved. So I never actually got to see two people like state their needs and come to, you know, an understanding and adapting to each other. That didn't that didn't come for me. So I when conflict happened and this whole divorce and you know changing my life happened, I felt very unsafe. And I think that a lot of women go through that piece, and I think that's why we collapse and go back to safety because it's just what we know, even though we know it's not right.

Mary 13:55

Yeah. And yeah, so that idea of um, I just totally lost my train of thought, so I will be editing this part. Um I was like, oh yeah, I want to talk about this.

Sandra 14:04

And I was like, I hate it when that happens.

Mary 14:07

Totally going on in my brain. Um anyway, it'll come back because it always does. Um so the other thing that I that I wanted to ask about is you mentioned sort of feeling this like there, like this real fear. So there became a point, I'm sure, and maybe this happened to you more than once, where you realized all I have is me. Like if I'm gonna get out of this, I have me.

Sandra 14:32

Do you remember the first time feeling that well I have another flashbulb moment where so I ended up um, you know, because I was still kind of plain small, like I moved out of the house because I left the marriage. And so I didn't ask for a lot. I just wanted out. I wanted out. And so I was living in this apartment between two floors. I think I had college students above and a family that cooked um uh really

The Moment No One Rescues You

Sandra 15:00

spicy food every day. So it was just I was overwhelmed because I had been this middle class, you know, idle white woman, you know, who had kind of all the things. And so I was living a rougher life than I had been living. And um, and I just remember it was a tiny little apartment. My daughters were, you know, trying to adapt to all of it. And I remember depression landed big and heavy and dark. And I know it because I've had it before. Um, and I remember like laying face down in the horrible gross shag carpet, bobbing my heart out, and you know, like so wanting someone to rescue me or fix it for me. And I remember having this moment of like, no one's coming to rescue you, Sandra. There's there's nothing anyone else can do, you know, besides you. So it was just like no one was gonna save me. And so I think that moment right then was even though I still ran through depression for a time after that, it was just a little ping in my reality of like, you're the only one who can do this. And that was the first time in my life I think I ever really discovered that and actually really started to live that way.

Parenting Through Divorce And Change

Sandra 16:20

Yeah.

Mary 16:21

Yeah. So you have daughters. Yeah. So I'm thinking about how they are seeing this happen for you and you navigating that. Yes. So and even while you're saying I have to live for myself, of course, there's a part of you that's like, well, I'm a mom, like I need to raise these girls. Yes, totally. What was that time like?

Sandra 16:44

Well, I think what the underlying theme was is that my parents had a tumultuous relationship and my dad left for a while because he had uh another, he had an affair. And um, and so all I wanted was my mom to divorce him. And I still love my dad, but I wanted to see them grow the F up, you know? And um, but she they didn't, and he ended up coming home, and I was very disappointed because I wanted to see them like really deal with their issues, and they didn't. And so as I saw myself looking at the marriage that I was having, it was like I'm gonna be telling my daughters that it's okay to be small, that it's okay to be unhappy, and it was not, and so I feel like a big part of that was that I couldn't allow my daughters to see me do that. And so making that decision, what kept a foundation under me, even though it was really challenging, and and you know, their dad was took it hard and was being very difficult and very combative. And so I w worked really hard to not bleed any of that energy on the girls, even though they witnessed it. But I I I just made a choice. I'm not gonna say vile things about him because that's their dad, you know, even though I had, you know, I'm sure they felt all that stuff. Um and really, yeah, my focus was well, first of all, I had no job. I had, you know, I really had no income. So I had to go out and hustle. And so my main focus was becoming a provider and getting my daughters through this time. Um, and for I was unemployed for a year, and that was challenging, but I finally got a job and I was able to start providing, and that really built a lot of self-esteem for me. So my daughters watched me recreate my life in the middle of my life. And so they learned that you can do those things. And I always said it's never too late to reinvent yourself. And then I started sharing with them look, there's gonna be a lot of times in your journey of being a woman where there's you're gonna have all these transitions. And so I feel like I was better at it because I knew I had four eyeballs on me. And I wanted them to make good choices in relationships that they went out to create. So I feel like it was the whole thing was really based off of me wanting my daughters to not go down the path that I had gone down.

Mary 19:11

Yeah.

Sandra 19:12

Yeah. Yeah.

Mary 19:13

Well, and I think it also helped them see that you can navigate something and it it can be messy and it can be emotional, and some days are really, really hard, but that doesn't mean you're failing or you're not doing okay. And I think it that's really important for I think, especially young women to see, because when we see accomplished women, we often see only that end product. We don't see the toil or it's like, wow, they've made it. And now that we have all the social media and the Instagram filters and everything looks polished and beautiful. And I think to see a mom not hide emotion, not you know, pretend that, oh, everything's fine, you walk that line of like, well, I'm not gonna malign their father. However, here's the reality that you're navigating.

Sandra 20:08

Yes, exactly. And the reality ended up being that I ended up full-time parenting them, you know. So, and that wasn't what I thought was gonna happen. So that was also a little hard to kind of deal with. And they had to deal with their feelings with their father. But once again, I just really, you know, just um I just listened to how they felt and said, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, you know. So, um, and then I feel like, you know, I was learning these skills. So I started teaching them to them. So I started, I mean, like my daughter, like my daughter is a business coach and I'm teaching a course in her program this Friday on boundaries. And she, you know, she was telling me how she's starting the intro for me in that on that training. And she said, I'm gonna tell them that at 15 I learned how to have boundaries, and that that was like the best thing my mom could have taught me. And I was like, oh, because I didn't remember that I did that. But she was like, No, you told me when I'd come home and say this was happening at school, you know, you would you would coach me and tell me the words and I would go and come back. And so it's those kinds of things, my growth became their benefit. I guess that's what I'm saying here is the things I was learning. I started teaching them too.

Mary 21:22

Yeah. And along those lines to circle back to conflict, I think, you know, certainly it comes from what we witnessed in our home. But but when you mention boundaries, one of the things that I think makes setting a boundary hard is we're often, we often have the belief that we're responsible for someone else's response to what we do. So we don't want to make somebody mad. We don't want to hurt them, even if we're justified. So I think that's also why we're very uncomfortable with conflict.

Sandra 21:52

Yes, yes. Oh my gosh, I love that you call that out. It's so true because now we want to manage their feelings on top of us setting about. That's very confusing for that person. So basically you're telling them that you don't really have a boundary because if you don't allow them to have their feelings, then, you know, and I always will say to women, it's none of your business. Like the best gift you can give them is to be with their own feelings because sometimes it doesn't turn out bad. Sometimes they might be like, oh wow, oh, interesting. And they might come back with an insight, or now you've navigated a new relationship based on the fact that you let them be in their own energy. I still practice that in my marriage. I mean, I'm I'm in a second marriage and it's amazing. But you know, if my husband isn't feeling great or he's kind of in a mood where he's brewing on something, I cannot take that on. But it's a practice for me because I've done it so much that if I'm not aware, all of a sudden now I'm like, what's going on? Are you okay? And it's like, nope, I have no business with that. He's a grown ass man. And if he needs something from me, he can come. And he's the kind of guy that will do that. So it's not my responsibility. But I think the reason women get in this trap is because they've been so capable and competent that everyone has acknowledged that and we think, oh, we're serving others, we're helping others, and we get caught in this loop. So it makes it really hard to set boundaries when we start to realize my competence is I'm being taken advantage of in work and in my relationships and even with my children. So it does become hard because we aren't used to letting them sit with what it means when we actually set a boundary. Yeah.

Mary 23:44

Yeah. And so when that really resonates with me when you say, especially with your husband, when he's not okay, it's like, okay, you use the perfect words, it's not your responsibility. Um, and we do tend to take on that responsibility because I do think we we typically are empathic, we have that compassion, we can hold a lot. And you know, I know you really work mostly with women kind of in that midlife, and that's when I think we have typically gotten saturated, where we have done it for so long and we can do it pretty well until we can't. And then we can get physically sick, yes, you know, we have burnout, right?

Sandra 24:27

Oh yeah, yeah, and and and and throw in some perimenopause, and now we're like mad, you're right. We got a big mix of all kinds of things that really come up, and so it's kind of you know, I I think that what we end up losing is what's the internal boundary? Like, what do I really want? What do I really desire? Because when I saw that in my first marriage, that created a strong energy. And I think as women, if we can start to think that way, like I, you know, I had a client, she was a nurse and she was an ER nurse and she was doing everything for everyone else. And, you know, I she I just taught her the line, I have no business with that, because that was her mantra when she started to feel that, you know, she'd be like, I have no business with that. That was her internal boundary of no, I'm gonna stop here and allow whatever is happening to happen, not needing to fluff

From Managing To Inhabiting Yourself

Sandra 25:20

it up or be nice or you know, all those things that we were talking about earlier. Yeah.

Mary 25:25

Yeah. And I think this might tie into this next part because I read and then I saw this on your website. Um, you want to help women stop managing their lives and start inhabiting them. Yes. It describe what that means because I think we can think managing is awesome. I'm managing. But this is kind of what we're talking about, right? When we feel like we have to manage the environment and everybody's reactions.

Sandra 25:50

Yes, yes. And we then we end up micromanaging, right? We overthink things, we start thinking about what everybody else is thinking. So managing everything, it keeps us away from ourself and from our own knowing of what we want and and how we want to be. And I think also when we're managing all kinds of things, we're not even really in our body. We're in our mind. We're thinking through all the things, we're navigating them, we're moving fast, um, or we might just not be moving at all, but we're numbing out, you know. So those are kind of the ways that we tend to deal with overmanaging. Um, and so we're not in ourselves anymore. And and that's where I think the shrinking comes into play, you know, where we're not shining forth. I believe we all have a purpose here. It can be just a simple thing, like I'm here to shine a light for people, or I'm here to bring clarity, or I'm here to enjoy life. You know, it doesn't have to be complex, but when we don't stay in touch with that, then we're not inhabiting ourselves at all. And to me, inhabiting means we're looking at all the areas of our life, our body, our mind, our heart, our relationships, our work, you know, the big thing. I have a lot of women, you know, in mid-age that it's that they're not getting to the big thing because they're managing. And so when you start to unpack what that might be, maybe it's a new career or whatever it is, then you start to inhabit that dream, that goal, that feeling. And you know, when you're inhabiting yourself, when you have less stress, when you have more ease about whatever is arising, like you might be in the middle of conflict and be going, Oh, well, this is what needed to happen. You know, that's inhabiting. That's what inhabiting feels like. What do you think it feels like, Mary?

Mary 27:42

What what do I think inhabiting feels like? Well, I think there's sort of this almost like a click, like an alignment, a congruence. And when you realize, okay, yeah, this is it, even though I think we often think when we hit congruence, that it feels easy. And I think it's simple, but it's not easy. No, because when you just focus on I want to live the life that I want to live based on what I need, who I am, all of those things, then I think it sort of clears the space and things get quieter. You know, I know that's kind of a poetic, like, well, Mary, what are you really saying? But I think it's that sort of clicking in and that connecting.

Sandra 28:30

Yes, yes. And I think it's also us like for me, my practice is that I've learned to transition between things and not just running to the next like getting off this podcast, having a minute. Yeah, and then where am I going next? You know, so that's inhabiting to me those kinds of feelings of being being more mindful. So it is kind of that space. I I I will share just a quick story. Um, I found myself inhabiting myself even more in 2025. I have to take I had to take a sabbatical from work because both my parents needed me and they were 85, 86, and in August of 2025, and then in December of the same year, my both my parents died. Um and so I just took time off, you know, to um to to you know work through all the things that you have to do once when two people die. Um and what I realized is that first of all, I'd done my work. So I'd said all the things, they had said all the things, so I didn't have unhealed, unsaid things. But what I realized is that my caregiving roles were completely and totally done. Because my daughters are adults, have their own families, and you know, we have great relationships. So to me, I started inhabiting even more of myself because I have no, I have no one turning to me and saying, fix this, help me, you know, and and all those codependency loops like ended. Yeah, you know, and so I think we inhabit ourselves even more when we start to come to completion of things that we're resolving within ourselves too.

Mary 30:13

Yeah, I think that's a great

Kindness, Compassion, And The Caregiving Line

Mary 30:15

point. And so when you mention that sort of these roles ending, I think where women get the most stuck is when they start to inhabit. And then, as we talked about the word good before, this definition comes up of, well, I want to be a good daughter. I want to be a, you know, a lot of times our kids are sort of out on their own. And then we are in that generation where we have to start helping our parents. But I think that women struggle with am I gonna go too far? Am I gonna inhabit my life to the point where I am not doing the things that are caretaking? How do you help women navigate? Like, where's the line?

Sandra 30:57

Yeah, where's the line? I think the line is when you start to shift your language from good or nice to kind, what does it mean to be kind to others? Um, and for me, that's been my grounding word because when my parents were passing, they had it was kind to me to help my mom understand that you're dying. You know, and um, and it was kind for me to tell my dad, I can't do all the things for you. You you have to you have to learn to do some of those on your own. Um, because I had my boundary, but at the same time, I was fully participating and giving attention when I was visiting with my father after my mom passed. So I think we we can look at it from the place of if you keep kindness and compassion as sort of your goalpost, compassion is fierce. Compassion doesn't mean you do everything for everyone and you love everyone and you love everything. Compassion is to me kindness in action. It's that we know when we need to have a boundary, but we also don't have to be super spicy about things. Like we can have a boundary and be absolutely kind having a boundary. So I think that's how women can kind of monitor that piece of not thinking that they've gone too far. If anger is coming into play at any time, then it's time to stop and regroup because that's giving you a message that maybe you're a little off track, you know. So I I don't I I think that for me is how I come back to it all the time. And I'm also here to be of service, but I'm being of the service that I want to be. So then that makes me still feel connected to I just read every you know encounter as it arises, and I check in with myself and I know what I need to do. So I think women need to live moment to moment as well, and and trust themselves. Trust that their wisdom is hard-earned, let your wisdom shine through.

Mary 33:01

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that moment to moment I think is very important. The fluidity of boundaries that there might be a day where you need to have more for you, and there might be a day where you have more to give to someone else.

Speaker 2 33:15

Yeah.

Mary 33:15

But recognizing that thinking about your own needs, you are a person in that equation. And I think often we don't really think about, well, I don't, I don't care about my need, or I'm not considering my need. Here are the people in front of me, and they we tend to make that immediate need more important than us. And so I think if we put ourselves in the equation and not just an equal part of the equation, but really like the most important part of the equation, we that's where I think we hesitate. But I think it's the fluidity and I think it's recognizing that we are in that equation.

Sandra 33:54

Yes, exactly. And I think you just have to practice it, you just have to play at it. Like, where am I, where do I feel, you know, how how can I practice being bigger, bigger in a room? Or I mean, sometimes how I practice it is that I have boundaries because I don't want to be big. So it doesn't mean that you have to always, you know, show up like here I am. It's you get to choose when are you sh when do you feel like shining and and being the guide in the room, or when do you feel like just stepping back and observing everything? You know, shrinking that is where you're acknowledging to yourself where you're not showing up for yourself. But you get to choose how you show up in each encounter that you're having.

Mary 34:36

Yeah. Yeah. I think that also is very true.

Coaching Vs Therapy And How To Choose

Mary 34:40

So I listened to a few of your um interviews on other podcasts. They were several years ago, but there was something that was really interesting, and I want to tease this apart with you. We're taking sort of a little side road, but you were a coach before coaching became like every other person that you pass on the street. Yes. So as a therapist, there was always back in the day, there was always sort of this how what is coaching, what is therapy? And you've talked about this, and I think it's important to address in this context because when we think about a woman wanting to enlist the help of a professional, I think understanding like what do you need and what is a path that you can take. So talk a little bit about how you see sort of your role as a coach and in the, or if you want to sort of fold in this idea of therapy, how would someone decide, I don't even know where to start? What do I need if I want to find someone to help me? I know that's a big question.

Sandra 35:42

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are there are times where I've definitely coached women that are doing both, and it's it's like the perfect thing for me, especially if they um, especially if they well, they just need a professional to walk through those pieces that I'm not professionally trained in. But I also understand that my role as a coach is to help women get clarity on what is happening in their internal landscape and their external world. And so I I think that it's just getting clarity on where they actually are so they can actually look at themselves and go, oh, this is what's going on. And I think what where I've always framed like the combination of the two is women getting clarity about maybe some of their patterns or some of their trauma in in in therapy and with a counselor and understanding like the steps towards the navigating that. I think my role comes in as a coach is that there's the real life everyday stuff that not necessarily is going to be talked through. I mean, it depends. I mean, therapists are so diverse these days and so many different aspects of what you can go to therapy for. I think it's also changed as coaching has changed because when I first became a coach, it was just I saw everybody and everything, men and women, all ages, because it was just this new thing. Um, but I also think now that we have therapists that are so defined and, you know, this is the area that I really help people with. And so for me as a coach, it's I have my themes, but I think that the quality of what I really like is when somebody has the clarity around, and if and my job is to help them with that piece, but then it's like, what are the action steps that are going to really change their life based on this thing that they see? So maybe it's a relationship challenge, or it's I need to have a difficult conversation with with my husband. And I don't really know how to how to do that. So for me, what I love to help women do is do the real, like, let's practice it out, let's get the words going. And I think sometimes women don't have the words. So I I use those words in our coaching, so they start to inhabit that feeling, oh, I can have a voice, I can say these things. And so for me, coaching is just meeting that woman where she is, but helping her get the clarity because a lot of times if you're burned out, or if you're, you know, your body is you're going through a health crisis, there's a lot of things going on in there. So it's it's just really understanding what are all the layers and the pieces happening here, and then what do they want? So I'm I'm not telling them what to do. I'm I'm asking them, I'm asking them those questions that help them get, oh no, this is what I want to do. Okay, how are we going to navigate that? Does that kind of answer tomorrow?

Mary 38:37

Yeah. No, that's what I because I really I like to open these conversations when I can in this situation because I think there's confusion about what is a therapist, what is a coach. Yes. And I've done this for 35 years. So one of the things that I think is a beautiful change is that someone like you will come, you'll come on a podcast, you'll have your website, and people will recognize, oh, she's lived this. And they're in the past, especially, I think there's been more of a barrier with therapy that the therapist is, quote, the expert. And yes, training like constantly, even all the training.

Speaker 2 39:17

Yeah.

Mary 39:18

But to do this podcast for me was also a switch because therapists don't talk about themselves. And so I think as people are starting to recognize, you know, therapy, therapists are people too. We have a obviously a little bit of a different ethical boundary because I also do coaching, but it's I'm very, very, very clear. Different paperwork, different process. But I think sometimes it's confusing, especially when what we're talking about, women are at a crossroads and they can feel paralyzed. They can feel like I don't even like even I alluded in my intro, I was like, I should be able to do this. Like, how can I not figure this out for myself? But sometimes we do, we are face down in the shag carpet, right? And we're just like, what do we do? And so I think anytime I feel like, okay, we can have this conversation a little bit and help people understand that you're going to find therapists you don't resonate with, you're going to find coaches you don't resonate with.

Sandra 40:17

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Mary 40:19

You want to look for the training, you want to look for, you know, people that you feel are connecting with where you are. And I love that you said people can be doing both at the same time because therapy can be a different process. And especially if you can, you know, get a release form so that you can you can all communicate. Yes. That is, but I want to empower someone to take whatever path they think is going to. If you think it's therapy, great. If you think it's coaching, that's cool too. It's really figuring out where to go if you feel like I need somebody to help me navigate this.

Sandra 40:59

Yes, yes. And I will speak to that because I do like a lot of clarity calls with women. And there are often times where I know for certain therapy has to happen immediately. Like that I wouldn't be able to do the work that we need to do without that. So I have said that to women, and not always do they want to hear that, but it's I can't in all, you know, in my own integrity take them on because I'm not going to do that part. And then it's just going to feel like muddy, a muddy soup. I don't know my word for it. But I also um have had women who have had therapy and said, I want, I want to now take what I know and have more of an accountability and you know, and and and to be able to check in with myself on those things. And I think those things really work well. Um, I am a writer and so I have a a lot of articles in Substack. Um, and I just wrote a whole article about being the original, you know, life coach back in, you know, the early 2000s and where everything is these days, you know, with with all of it. And I just basically I'm I basically said there is a lived aspect to a really good life coach who isn't going to teach you anything unless they did it themselves. Like to me, that's a qualification. So if someone's trying to teach you how to sell and they don't know how to sell, then that's not a good fit. But I also just really wrote in the article that you just you have to be discerning and you have a right to ask a therapist all these questions. You have a right to ask a coach all of these questions. And if they get offended, go find somebody else because we should be able to answer those. And a coach, I think a really co good coach is transparent. She's not pretending or he's not pretending to be someone that they aren't. And yes, I do social media and you know, I do all of the things, but I am showing up as me in my true, honest, authentic self. And if you're working with a coach that isn't being authentic, then you're it's not a good fit because I mean most coaches just want you to be you. So um, so that's what I have to say about that. But people ask me that question a lot, and it's like they both have their place, be discerning. I hate Hollywood because every storyline is if somebody has a coach, they're crazy, and that bothers me a bit. Um, I think we need to, we need to up-level because there are a lot of successful people in this world that are getting therapy and getting coaching, and you know, they're they are rocking it. So yeah, yeah. Long answer.

Mary 43:30

No, I love that. And I think shows like shrinking um make it more confusing. That is total entertainment, people. You need to understand. That is total entertainment. Don't hanging out on a bench in the park getting through. No, you're not.

Sandra 43:45

You're not, they're not intervening in your life. I've never gone to anyone's home or right, it's yeah, no, thank you.

Mary 43:51

Not your friend group. So, yeah, it's so that I think confuses it, but I love that when you do a clarity call, if there's Something that is in the way. I sort of see it like if you have an issue that is so in the way you can't work around it, debilitating anxiety or no ability to manage emotion, or there's a lot of things where okay, we got to go to the past, which that's more of a therapy thing.

Sandra 44:17

Yes, absolutely. Yes.

Mary 44:19

Let's dig into the past. And then I what I really love is when I do have somebody in the therapy room that gets to the point where I'm like, you know what? I think you want to transition to somebody now where you can start to set different kinds of goals, have accountability. It's a different process in coaching. But yeah, it's there, I think it's so muddy. And that's why, you know, I wanted to kind of bring it up because I know you have talked about it and it can be very confusing. So my whole thing is empowering somebody to just take a step, take a step and start. And if something doesn't fit, you don't need to, it sort of comes back to what we were talking about. You don't need to make that coach or therapist feel okay. Like you can just say, this isn't working.

Sandra 45:08

This isn't working, yes. I mean, I've had I I've started with a client, a couple clients, and they're like, you know what, this isn't what I wanted. And I you know, I and I also think it's really helpful for us to be clear about what we do want. Like I had a woman that started with me, and she kept saying, I want energy work, I want energy work. And it's like, I'm not an energy worker. I mean, everything is energy. And so if we really think about it, therapy is energy, all of that. But I what she really wanted was someone to go, you know, do that for her to feel better. And was like, this is not a good fit. You actually have to do shit. It's not gonna be easy what we're we're asking. But um, so you know, I think that's also people are sometimes they just want a magic, they want the magic pill, you know. I I have uh a couple of physicians in my town that that um I've actually given them all the therapists because I have relationships with all the therapists in my town. And so um I've actually had her refer therapy, but sometimes her clients say, I don't want a therapist, I what are other options? And so she'll send me um women that that would consider life coaching, and I'll get on the call. Sometimes I actually have to say, you need therapy. They she wanna hear it from the doctor, but you know, every now and then it's like that's the next step. And then other times it's like a great fit because they've done that or they have a different perspective of what they want. So I love the the community and the teamwork and the collaboration. That's where I think we do really well together when we're not, you know, saying, well, that doesn't work. And you know, people sometimes say, well, therapy didn't work for me. And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, probably maybe not the right therapist, maybe you weren't ready. Yeah, you know, uh, you know, what didn't go right, you know. So then I have to kind of find out that first because I can't work with them if they say therapy didn't work, you know.

Mary 46:59

Yeah. And so I'll just put one more finer point on that because you sort of brought up another nuance. If someone says you're not ready for coaching, you need therapy, that doesn't mean you're broken or like something drastically wrong. I think it's sort of like, you know, sometimes you get a cut and you need neosporin, and sometimes it's deeper and you need an antibiotic. You know, so I think it's just you we have to move through where we are, and the healing comes from different places. Yeah. And it's just unique. You you need different things, and we don't question that physically. But I think sometimes when it's emotionally and mental, we think, oh, well, therapy that I shouldn't need therapy.

Sandra 47:40

And exactly, exactly. Yeah. And I will just say that I I don't believe anyone's broken. I just I have no belief system. So if some a woman comes to me and say, I'm broken, it's like, okay, let's unpack that. But really, I mean, it's it's just we have inexperience with things, we have patterns that he developed, we have a lack of clarity sometimes. It's just it's a it's a it's a mixed bag. And both of those things can help us unpack those things and discover ourselves within there because there's always a part of you that is not broken because you're still here. Absolutely, yeah. Right. So I just yeah, I just I really feel passionate about that piece. And when we can start to really own that, then I think that's where we start to feel more empowered and we feel like we can expand ourselves and we can do all the things we've been talking about on this call.

Mary 48:29

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's another uh final important thing is that when something goes off the rails, it it went off the rails. It's not that, oh, it's your fault. You probably played a part in it, but this is so you can learn. And yeah. Also, if someone ends up in my office, it's because they survived doing something, and then that thing doesn't work anymore, which means you're a survivor. Like we all do what we have to do.

Sandra 48:58

You did what we have to do. Totally exactly. Yeah, there was nothing wrong. Actually, you needed to do that one thing. Yep. Yeah, now we just have to understand that we have can have new strategies. Right.

Mary 49:09

What's the next thing?

Sandra 49:10

What's the next thing? Yeah,

Finding Sandra And Mary’s Closing

Sandra 49:12

awesome.

Mary 49:12

Well, this went in way more different directions than I thought. Very fun. I love talking to you. So tell people a little bit more about what you do and where they can find you, and then I will link that for you.

Sandra 49:23

Absolutely. Um, where they can find me is several places, but you can go to my website is sanderwood.coach. Uh, you can also follow me on Instagram, StanderwoodCoach, or Substack SanderwoodCoach. So all the different ways you want to engage. Some people want to go read articles. If you go to my website, you can see that there's a clarity call in there that you can book with me for 30 minutes. I also do an activation session, um, and I'll do that one time for women, and it's a midlife activation session. So it's where you go a bit deeper. Um, and we do an intake form before, so I know exactly what you're really working with. And for one hour, we deep dive into that one area, and it's 195. Um, so it's a really kind of an easy way to come into it because a lot of times women don't know what coaching is. Um, and so it's a big, it's a it's a big step to take. We could we know what therapy is, but coaching sometimes is like, I don't know. Um, so those are the ways that people can engage and just get started. And and what I what I do is I have a six-month midlife reset program where we walk through all these different aspects of kind of the things we've been talking about, because I believe women should live a no-regrets life. So by the end that you get to the end and you be like, I did it all, I experience it all, you know, I'm resilient and feel at peace with who they are.

Mary 50:43

So that's that's that's a bit about me. Yeah. That's a beautiful goal. Yeah. Yeah. What a great thing to aspire to.

Sandra 50:50

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Mary 50:51

Well, thank you so much for being here.

Sandra 50:53

Yes, thank you. This is a wonderful conversation. Thank you, Mary.

Mary 50:57

And I want to thank everyone for listening. There are many starting points to figure out what you need, and Sandra shared several with us today. My latest book, Nature Knows, shows us that plants, of all things, can be wise guides in giving ourselves permission to truly live as our real self. Filled with examples from nature, my clients' experiences, and my own life. Nature Knows is a beautiful and gentle guide to rediscover your own inner nature. Find all the purchasing options at maryrothwell.net forward slash nature knows book, linked in the show notes on Amazon, or ask your local indie bookstore about carrying it. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.