Under Heaven Podcast: Laureen Quick- When Everything Falls Away

Under Heaven Podcast welcomes Laureen Quick, navigator, threshold guide, and host of Unscripted & Unstoppable. Trish talks with Laureen as she shares her remarkable journey through loss, reinvention, and late‑life transformation.

A sudden loss, life shift, and turning 60 brought a profound season of rediscovery:  traveling the world, hiking mountains, and stepping into the work she now does with women over 50.

Together, Trish and Laureen explore the inner terrain of transition. They talk about what it feels like when life no longer fits, how to recognize the signs of change, and why disorientation is not a failure but an invitation. Laureen shares her four movements of transformation: descent, shedding, reclaiming, and radiance. She also offers practical wisdom on slowing down, practicing the pause, and trusting the process.

They also discuss the power of community, the emotional signals that readiness for change is emerging, and the beauty of later‑life development that often goes unspoken. Laureen closes with two grounding words for anyone in transition: patience and trust.

Laureen: laureenquick@gmail.com
 https://mailchi.mp/4f231240146e/brilliant-beyond-50-e-newsletter 

Trish: patricia@lookingup24.org
          www.lookingup24.org 

#Women 50+ #Life transitions #Grief and healing #Identity shifts                              #Midlife transformation #Navigating uncertainty #Radiance and embodiment

Under Heaven Podcast, Faith, Trish Hodges, Testimony, Christian Women, Encouragement, Testimony

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to Under Heaven, the podcast where we glorify God and celebrate the beautiful stories of women whose lives have been transformed by his goodness and grace. I'm your host, Trish, and each week we share real conversations about faith, hope, and purpose. This is a place for encouragement and truth where every story matters and every listener is welcome. No matter where you are on your journey, let's grow together under heaven. Hello and welcome to Under Heaven Podcast Today. I'm Trish and today we're going to be joined by Lorreen Quick. She is a navigator, a threshold guide, and a speaker who walks with women over 50 through life's deeper transitions. She serves women in those tender seasons when things have changed and things just aren't fitting together right. Through her one-on-one coaching and her podcast, Laureen creates spaces where women can slow down, listen inside, and rediscover the quiet wisdom that's rising within them. Her work is shaped by her personal experience, and she'll share that with us a bit today. So let's welcome Lorreen. Thank you so much for being on Under Heaven Podcast today.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Thank you so much for having me. I am delighted and excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Amen. Thank you. It is so good to have you here. And I think it is so exciting that you live in Idaho because I think, as we talked earlier, I have relatives in Idaho. And the most joyous summer I ever had was spending it with my cousins in Idaho years ago.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

I cannot imagine a better place to live.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Yes, it's it's awesome there. Well, Lorraine, you talk about coming to a time when everything that you knew about how life was and who you were, it fell away. Can you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

I can. I will start by saying my my husband was in a car accident, a minor one, but he got out of the car and promptly fell and hit his head on the pavement and ended up having a traumatic brain injury from that. And within about a week, he had passed away. So I was in my late 50s a widow. And I happened to have two teenage daughters. I guess actually it wasn't late 50s, it probably early 50s. Anyway, um, had two teenage daughters, both still in high school. And so out of that, I became a single mother and got my daughters through high school and into college, and ultimately they have graduated and grown. But within all of that time frame, within like a five-year window, my marriage, my husband was gone, my children were gone. Um, and I was sitting around kind of twiddling my thumbs, I think waiting for my daughters to call me and tell me they needed me, but they didn't because they have lives of their own. And with that, I eventually turned 60. And my 60th birthday was a big awakening for me. I woke up and I thought, oh, you know, I've always wanted to go to Machu Picchu and I've always wanted to do this. And it was sort of like, okay, you are 60, you have less years on this planet left than you have lived. You either stop talking about someday and start doing these things, or just you're gonna be miserable for the rest of your life. And so I started, I booked uh a trip to Machu Picchu with my youngest daughter, actually. And out of that evolved a process of a lot of growth. I lost about 80 pounds, began hiking, uh, doing lots of traveling. I became an adventurer in my own life, and certainly had not expected that to happen. But out of that, I just grew. And out of that, I had women asking me, Well, how are you doing this? What's going on with you? And I learned that they too were having these moments where they didn't know what they were going to do with the rest of their life, that their old life had suddenly or seemed like suddenly fallen away. And now they had no idea what they wanted. And out of that, I began doing this coaching work with women over 50, particularly during this phase of life where you're not clear. You you're you are living a life of uncertainty. And um, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it as I say.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

There you go. I love that. You said that you are an adventurer, and I do want to just drop in here that you are going to have a great adventure ahead of you in August. You want to tell us what you're gonna do?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yes, I am doing something I have never done before. I am actually leading a summit um attempt with six other women who are in their 50s, 60s, um, who are compatibly slower hikers like I am. And we are gonna be climbing Ryan's Peak in the White Cloud Mountains at the end of August. We're we're currently training together to get ourselves ready for that. It's gonna be about a 5,000-foot elevation gain for us, all in one day, and um some challenges, technical challenges to go all the way up to the top.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yes. Oh, I admire you and I and and prayers out to you and those women because what a great adventure and the feeling that you all will have as you get up there. Oh, even the journey, even the journey, I believe you guys will be learning things just like you did when you went with your daughter so long ago.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Absolutely. Every hike, every every summit is a journey and a learning.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Very good. Now you do you have a podcast, and who are the who are the people that you usually have on the podcast? What do you talk about?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

So the podcast I host is called Unscripted and Unstoppable. And the women that come on as my guests tend to be women that are older, not always, but tend to be. And they're speaking to topics related to what it's like to live in your 50s, 60s, and 70s. So um, in some cases, there may be conversations around anger and how we deal with the anger and um sometimes the grief that we feel when our life is beginning to move towards the end. Um, trying to kind of give you a range here. Some of them have been around what happens when your children decide that they don't like you anymore and they want to not speak to you, which happens a lot these days, it seems. And some of them are around, you know, finding joy, how to express yourself with creativity, how to um make new friends, all the all kinds of topics.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Those are wonderful. That's pretty much how mine goes as well. Um, and and then also highlighting the women who are helping other women to get out of these situations. So this is perfect. You are lined up with our audience. And I would like for you to talk about um how does a woman know? I mean, yeah, I heard you say uncertainty. How does a woman know it's time for her to shed some of them old labels of her life and head into that journey of the future?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

You know, uh it is kind of you just wake up one day and you have this sense of, I would describe it as disorientation. You feel like something has shifted internally, um, and you are growing and you are changing, but the outside of your life is the same. Oh, okay. And so all the outside stuff no longer seems to fit, or it irritates you or frustrates you, and you don't have a lot of clarity around what should I do next or how should I approach this situation. Um, and for for me and the experience I went through and the work I do with other women, what I have learned is it's really it's really an issue about orientation, and that we we manage really well and navigate really well our outside worlds. What we don't manage very well and don't navigate well is our internal world, our inner terrain of emotions, um, and I I would say states of being. And so the biggest move forward for us is we have to begin to go inside ourselves to start to figure all this stuff out. Um, and it takes time.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Yes, I think that is is that's excellent. You described that perfectly. Can you um tell us how you take a woman? You have a um you have the four movements, you say, of transformation. Can you take us through what those movements are that when a woman comes to that point, she can begin to work on this?

SPEAKER_00 9:42

I can, Trish. And and what I'll say up front and foremost is the tendency is to want to rush this, to just push through to some solution. And so when I work with women, I guide them, okay, stop. Just stop, take some deep breaths, and let's practice not rushing, because this process takes time. And then what I help them to understand is that in this inner terrain, I I've labeled them as four states of being. They're they sound linear, but they're not. Um, but you progress through them, around them, um on a regular basis, honestly. And some of those states dominate our lives at different moments in time. So the first state is descent. And here it's when your life is kind of broken, open, and you don't know who you are. You you have that uncertainty we've talked about. You might be experiencing grief or loss, or just you're confused, and and everything doesn't seem clear. And then the second state that you potentially may find yourself in is a shedding state. And that that's where you're letting go of things. You're letting go of the role of mother, for example, or you're letting go of expectations about how you should behave, but also how other people might behave. You let go of old survival patterns, and this is assuming that you're doing this inner work, um, and you basically are jettisoned out of your life all the things that don't fit anymore. And then the third stage that I share with my clients is this the stage of reclaiming. And in this stage, you're reconnecting to your truth, to your own voice, you're starting to speak up, and you're getting clearer and clearer about what you want and also what you don't want. And through this process, you continue to evolve to um a place where I call it radiance, and that's where it's this isn't a state of perfection. It is really a state of alignment where you get you've gotten very clear about who you are, and out of that, your actions and behavior are all aligned, your decisions are all aligned with who you are versus who you think you're supposed to be or who other people think you are, and all that kind of stuff. You're very clear and everything is aligned.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Oh, I love it. You explain I love the way you explain it, Laureen. I just oh, I love that. Okay. Now, um how do you help how how do you help the women? Do you um give them suggestions? Do you talk about things that help them realize it themselves? Is it a combination?

SPEAKER_00 12:33

We start typically, Trish, by figuring out where they're at. Um and the thing is this this orientation piece can change. So, for example, I could be floating between reclaiming and radiance when it comes to my relationship with my children. But when it comes to my relationship with money, I might be down in the shedding phase of letting go of old patterns of spending, for example. So we look at what's going on in the life today, and then out of that we identify where we're at in this emotional terrain. Yes. Yeah. Oh, I love it. The thing that's interesting, it's like if you think about it, a map tells you exactly where you are, and then you know where to go based on where you want to go, right? So if you but if you don't know where you are on the map, it's really hard for you to figure out how to get to where you want to go. So you get oriented, and then again through conversation and through a lot of self-reflection, you begin to figure out where you want to go, and then we start identifying strategies that work for you to get there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

I love where you um talked about them, like they may be at the radiance part with you know, one part of their life, but yet down at the letting go at another. And I think that is so important for us as women to realize that there are these different areas in our life. And that just because we may not be radiant in one area doesn't mean that we aren't worthy of you know sh just talking and showing the radiance. We are worthy.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

And I always I try to stress these are not goals to achieve, right? You it's not like my goal is to become radiant, but rather these are markers on a map. And when I'm looking at my life this moment in time, it gives me a clue as to where I'm at, and then I can begin to apply strategies that work for where I'm at. So if you're in shedding, it doesn't it doesn't help you to use reclaiming strategies. You really need to do the shedding, right? You and you can't speed this up. It you need to do it, you need to let go, and letting go means there's grief, and grief means you need to process that grief and understand it, and you need to feel it, and grief takes time, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Yeah, and I love that you point that out. I just did a teaching this week on waiting patiently, and um, it is so important for us to reflect. And I know for me that was a real hard thing to do because uh you know, as a young adult, I learned to push everything else aside and just go forward in what I was expected to be, and when it came to that time of reflection, wow, that was hard, but it was worth it.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

It is, and you know, one of the things you can do is I call it practicing the pause. So I'll give you an example. Um, earlier no, last year, I went on a trip with my youngest daughter and her husband. And we got up, I was in their apartment in Austin, and we got up and we were gonna leave at eight o'clock that morning, and I'm packed and I'm ready to get my stuff in the car and go. And my daughter comes in and goes, Well, we didn't sleep really well last night. We're gonna take a little longer. And so we're gonna leave probably at nine or nine thirty. And I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna practice a pause. And so I spent the next 45 minutes actually writing poetry, and I got some really great work done during that time. The old me would have been frustrated and irritated and spent my whole time criticizing why I can't they be on time? And they said eight o'clock. But I told myself on that trip I was going to practice a pausing throughout the entire trip. And so I did five or six pauses a day where I just stopped whatever was going on, and I just sat there and looked at the world and thought about my life and just waited for insight and beauty and joy to show up. And it did. And that that practice, I mean, I deliberately practiced that trip, really helped me be able to now recognize moments when the pauses come and they're opportunities for me to explore myself and my life versus get angry.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Right. Oh, that is so good. Yes, we do need to practice that pause. And oh, that I'm just thrilled to talk with you, Lorraine, because I could just relate to what you're saying. Um, and and look at what you did with your time. And I think that's something we as women need to learn that when we're waiting, when we're practicing that pause, it can still be a time of uh doing something, of gaining something. Like you write the poetry. How exciting!

SPEAKER_00 17:46

It it those moments can be incredibly creative for us if we don't spend all of our time being angry and resisting them, right? So they actually become the moments we remember. I remember that moment from that trip. There's other moments from that trip I don't remember, but I remember that as a as a fond memory of my the quality of my life, of me living my life as me. So practice the pause, and then eventually they just become natural.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Can you talk a little bit? You mentioned it a bit, about the freedom that we have when we can let things go and and just you know become, like you said, who we are meant to be or who we are in this stage of our life. Can you tell us about the freedom that you feel in that?

SPEAKER_00 18:37

I think it's just pure joy. Um, it is a sense of I am who I am, I am perfect in every way. I am here with my gifts to share them with others, and I feel truly, I feel connected to the world and to the people in it. It's a it's it's radiance, it's it's a delight to live there, to be there. And again, I'm not gonna be there 24-7, but when I get to experience it, and the more I get to experience it, I mean I tingle all over just thinking about it. It just feels like this is so right. I am so aligned.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yes, that is that is so cool. I like that. Um, what um I'm trying to think of is um you kind of talked about it. I was gonna ask you like, how does a woman know when they're ready to go to the next step? But it's that inner knowing, it's that inner needing more, or how would you explain that?

SPEAKER_00 19:46

It it often is, but at the same time, sometimes what it is is it's disruption. Like I'm not happy, I don't like this anymore. I want something different. So it it can be a longing that you have for something else, but it can also grow out of frustration and anger. Um, I had a friend once say to me that anger really is wonderful because it's the beginning of change. Yes. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, and so it these these feelings, these emotions don't mean there's something wrong with you. They actually mean you're on the verge. You are on the verge of something new and something exciting. And it's only just our fears that hold us back, right? We we are scared because we don't know. Um and are and so we want to resist that.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

But I would encourage everyone to face that because there's so much beauty and to reach out, to reach out to others, you know, because you like you said, sometimes we feel we're broken, there's something wrong with us, and it's like we're not reach out to other women and find they go through the same things in their life, and um yeah, not to be afraid. I encourage women for community, and that's why I'm so thrilled about you and these women who are gonna do the hike because community there's a phrase in the Bible that says iron sharpens iron. And as you are there and you are encouraging these women, they encourage each other and they encourage you, and it all just it just works together, melds together, and we become absolutely and I will say you will be surprised at how many women are going through what you're going through.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

We we think it's just me.

unknown 21:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

You know, it's just me, I'm the only one. And the reality becomes if you begin to to talk, oh my gosh, everyone, every woman goes through this phase at different ways, different levels, different intensities. Doesn't matter, they're still going through it, but we're not we don't talk about it. And one of my work, it some of my work really is to bring. It into conversation now because when we we started to have our periods, we got lots of education and training on that. When we go through puberty, as we evolve even through menopause, there's all kinds of people talking to us about that. But no one really talks about this phase of development in a woman in her life as she moves into, you know, they I think they called it cronehood, right? When we used to become crones. But I hadn't heard that. Yeah, it's it's uh it's not such an ugly word, it really is, but it is actually a beautiful stage. Uh, but we don't talk a lot about it, and there's more and more of us old. So we need conversation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Yeah. I I attended my 50th high school reunion a few years ago, and it's like you realize that life has a lot of life has passed by, but then again, that's when we realize there's a lot of life to live yet.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Absolutely, yes. So uh what word would you like to leave? We're gonna wrap this up. Man, that time went fast. What word would you like to leave with the women today?

SPEAKER_00 23:17

A word of inspiration to me would be patience. Don't rush this. Cultivate patience. It's a beautiful thing to cultivate, to have in your life. And trust, patience and trust. I'll give you two words. How does that sound? There you go. Trust enough to have patience. Seed paint.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

There you go. Oh, I love it. Yes, kind of like when we're gardening. And in you know, springtime here, we put seeds in the ground. We have to have patience while those develop. And the same for us. We have to have that patience.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Yeah, you can't keep digging those up, checking on those seeds. You got to love them grow.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Excellent, excellent. You are so right. We need to leave them there. Oh, how right you are. Well, Laureen, thank you so much for bringing such depth to us today. And and I just absolutely love the beauty and the warmth in that you have, your personality, and I love that. And I know that you reach so many women with encouragement. And so I'm talking to every woman out there now who's listening, or even the men. We need to learn to shed those old identities. And and like she said, take our time, reflect, look inside. Sometimes it hurts to look inside, but take your time to look inside and say, I am ready for the next step. I'm ready for change. And if you need any help, if any of this has touched you, you can reach Lorraine or I because we both talk about the same thing, that there is more to life than just raising our kids or having a career, because there's a time when we're gonna be over 50, over 60, over 70, and we still have that radiance. And like I I call it in my ministry, we have that sparkle. So I thank you, Lorraine, for being here today. It's been a pleasure. I thank my guests who have who are listening today, and I just want to leave you with the encouragement to remember to speak life, choose hope, and know that you are always loved. So thank you all, and thank you, Lorraine. Bye-bye. Thank you for being with us today on Under Heaven. I trust this conversation encouraged your heart and reminded you of God's faithfulness. If today's episode blessed you, please click like, subscribe, and share the hope with others. Until next time, blessings.