Ep. 8 - The "Too Late" Lie Every Midlife Woman Tells Herself

In this episode, Rachel pulls apart the one belief that quietly steals more midlife dreams than anything else: I'm too late. It feels like a fact. It's actually a story. And it's costing you the version of your life that's been waiting for you to show up for it.

Rachel shares the moment she almost let the "too late" story stop her from stepping into the work she's doing now, why midlife is genuinely the most powerful season to build something that matters, and the risk most women never calculate: the cost of not trying.

In this episode:

• Why "too late" isn't a fact, it's a story you've been told so many times you stopped questioning it
• The moment Rachel almost let "Am I too old for this?" keep her from her most aligned work yet
• 5 specific reasons midlife is your most powerful building season (not your wrap-up)
• The research that says women hit their creative and emotional peak in midlife (not their 20s)
• The risk you're not calculating: what it actually costs to wait one more year
• Real women who decided "too late" wasn't going to be their story anymore
• The question that changes everything: what are you going to do with the time you have?

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Not Done Yet Reset (free audio walkthrough + reflection guide): rachelaperry.com/notdoneyet
• The Knowing: a private 8-week space for midlife women done dismissing what they keep coming back to

Connect with Rachel:

• Website: rachelaperry.com
• Instagram: @rachelaperry
• TikTok: @rachelaperry

If this episode stirred something in you, share it with a midlife woman in your life who needs to hear it. She's not done yet either.

Transcript

Welcome And The Midlife Question

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Not Done Yet, the podcast for midlife women who know deep down their story isn't finished. I'm your host, Rachel Perry, and here we're gonna talk about what's really happening in this season of life: the identity shifts, the quiet questions, the courage it takes to listen to yourself again, what it actually looks like to step into what's next, and why our boobs are hitting our knees. If you've ever looked at your life and thought, wait, is this it? Girl, you're in the right place. Because midlife isn't the end of your story, it's the moment you start paying attention to it. So take a breath and let's talk about what's really going on and what you want to do with it. Because, sister, you are not done yet.

The Knowing And Doing It Scared

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Hello, my beautiful friends. Welcome back to Not Done Yet. Y'all are freaking amazing. I am obsessed with all of you. Thank you so much for just being awesome and being a great listener and supporting me in everything. It's so amazing. And I am so blessed. And I'm so grateful. And I love that you guys are enjoying this. I keep getting messages from everyone, from everyone, every single person. No, from a lot of you. And it truly means the world to me. I also am really excited and appreciative of your excitement around the new program that I just kind of shared with you guys called The Knowing. It was really hard for me to put it out there, I'm not gonna lie, because I didn't know if anyone would be interested. But because this is what I do, and I show you how I can, how I get scared and do things anyway. And I share that because I want you to do that as well, right? So many of us have incredible ideas, and we don't follow through with them because we doubt ourselves in some way. We're so worried about what other people are gonna think. I mean, there are so many

The Too Late Story Unpacked

SPEAKER_00 2:11

reasons. And we're actually diving into that today a little bit because I just so believe that midlife is not the end. We're not wrapping up, we're not kind of like brushing our hands together and going, well, did that well, and now it's my it's time for me to wind things down. That's not true. That is not true because we are not done yet. And I'm gonna keep saying that. I mean, it is the title of this episode, but I'm gonna keep talking about it because you guys, I think we have more to offer in midlife than truly we've ever had to offer before. Yeah, I said it. I said it. And I also think you may not realize that, right? I hear so many people in midlife, women in midlife, women, let's be real. I don't hear men in midlife saying this, but I do hear women saying it. And I've done a lot of research. And this across the board seems to be what people think in midlife, kind of like I've missed my window, I'm too late, I'm too old. I was gonna do something big with my life, and I should have done it 10 years ago or whatever. Here's the thing: it doesn't feel like a story when you think about it, right? It feels like a fact, just like a reasonable, realistic assessment of where you are and what's possible for you at this stage of life. Like you're just being practical. But I want to spend this whole episode pulling that belief apart because it's not a fact. It's in fact a story. It's a story that has been told to you so many times by so many sources that you don't even realize in so many subtle ways that you stop questioning whether it was actually true. And it's not true. Okay. And we're gonna dive into why it's not true. All right.

My Fear Of Becoming Irrelevant

SPEAKER_00 4:02

But before we go anywhere, I'm gonna share a little bit about me because you know I love to talk about myself, but also because I think stories, true stories, like actual events, not the stories we tell ourselves, help. So when I turned was turning 50 last year, it was about the time that I started leaning into stepping out of the network marketing world and stepping into serving women who are not in that world. It was what I really wanted to do, right? I wanted to step up and serve midlife women. And I wanted to help them figure out what's next. But I had this moment and I thought, wait, am I too old for this? Like, is anyone even gonna listen to me? Am I relevant? Like, how long before I become irrelevant? And is there a point where you just become too old and people stop following you? They stop paying attention, they stop caring about what you have to say. And as I'm sharing this story, I'm realizing I at that point had not thought I want to help midlife women specifically. I was thinking more like, I want to help empower women to do what they are meant to do, right? It wasn't until gosh, December that I really started fine-tuning that, honing that in. But I sat with that fear, y'all. Like I really sat with it. I was like, I don't know. Like, am I am I wrapping up? Am I losing my window? And I think part of me almost used that as a reason to not step into it, almost, because it sounded so reasonable and so practical, which is not me at all. Like I was just being real, you know? But here's what I finally had to ask myself. I finally was like, okay, Rach, says who? Where did that belief actually come from? Who decided that there's an expiration date on relevance or on ideas or on building something that matters? There's no good answer, y'all. There's no good answer because there isn't one. I had just absorbed that belief so completely from culture, from the online business world that I'd been in, from a million subtle messages about what women are supposed to do and when they're supposed to do it, that I had started treating it like truth. And I almost let it stop me. And I'm so glad that I didn't, because you guys, this is the most alive I have ever felt in my work. Ever. Ever. And I'm 51. So where does that too late story

How Culture Sells A Narrow Timeline

SPEAKER_00 6:25

come from? Because it's not, I don't think we made it up. Culture, society, it's their fault, has a very specific and vero, vero, very narrow timeline for success. We celebrate the young founders, the early wins, the first acts, the 25-year-old who built something incredible, or the 30-year-old who's already a multimillionaire. Those are the stories that make the headlines. Zo, those are the ones that get the book deals. Those are the ones that get held up as examples of what success looks like. The woman who started something at 52 and built something extraordinary, she exists in enormous numbers. We just don't hear about her as often because it's not as sexy. And when you don't see yourself reflected in the success stories that were being shown, it's really easy to conclude that we don't belong in them. And for a lot of us who came from the same world, like that network marketing world or the online business world, really, or the corporate world, that world has its own version of this story. It's obsessed with youth and hustle and moving fast. And there's this subtle, unspoken message that if you haven't made it by a certain point, you probably won't, that the window closes, that the market moves on. And that's not the truth. Y'all, that's just BS. And it has absolutely nothing to do with what's actually possible for you. So

Why Midlife Can Be Your Peak

SPEAKER_00 7:58

let's get into the real stuff. Because I don't just want to tell you you're not too late. I want to show you specifically why this season might actually be better than anything that came before it. And I and I'm going to be really specific here. Because you have so much to offer is a nice thing to say, right? Yeah, I mean, you do have a lot to offer, but it doesn't actually change anything. What changes is getting really specific. So we're going to get specific, okay? You have stopped caring about the wrong things. In your 30s, and tell me if this is true for you, so much energy went into what other people thought. Like, am I doing this right? Does this look okay? What are they gonna say? There was this constant hum, I guess, of social approval seeking that took up enormous amounts of mental and emotional bandwidth. And for me, I was a young mom in my 30s. And well, I mean, I wasn't a young mom, but I was a mom with young kids. And I'm looking back, I mean, come on, 30s, you are young. But I was so concerned with doing everything right. And was I doing it all okay? Was I being a good mom? But also, what did the other moms think? And the, I mean, y'all, the list went on. But somewhere in our 40s and into our 50s, that hum, that worry about what other people think starts to quiet down. Not completely because we're human and we still care. So if you still care about what other people think, sister, you're not alone. But it's loosened its grip, I'm willing to bet, right? And that loosening is worth so much because when you stop spending energy on the wrong things, you suddenly have so much more of it for the right things. You know what actually matters. And this sounds simple, but it's not. Knowing what matters, really knowing, not just saying it, really does take decades to figure out. It comes from having lived through things that felt catastrophic and turned out to be okay. From having wanted things desperately and then gotten them and realized they weren't actually what you thought, from having real relationships and real losses and real experience of what life actually is versus what you thought it was going to be. At 50 or in midlife, you have that knowledge. At 30, you are still acquiring it. That's not a deficit, that's an enormous asset. You have patience. And I'm thinking, also, I have less patience for things, but we're not talking about that. You guys, the patience. I did not have patience in my 30s. I wanted things to happen fast. I needed external validation quickly to keep going. I couldn't play the long game because I was too anxious about the short one. And midlife brings a different relationship with time, a longer view, the ability to build something steadily and trust the process in a way that genuinely wasn't available to me when I was younger. And that patience in business, in creativity, in relationships, and everything changes, right? Because we have survived hard ass things, right? This is the one I really want you to hear. You have evidence, real lived evidence that you can navigate difficulty, that the things that fall apart, you know that you can find your way through, that you can lose something important and rebuild, and that you can be scared and do it anyway. This one that is so big to me because we really have done things that scare us, right? A 25-year-old doesn't have that evidence yet. She might have the courage and energy and incredible ideas, but she doesn't have the proof yet that she can handle hard things. You do. And that proof changes the way you move through uncertainty. It changes what you're willing to try. It changes how you recover when something doesn't work the first time. That's not baggage, sister. That's your greatest asset. You have real relationships, not followers, not an audience, real people built over decades who know you, who trust you, who respect you, and who will show up for you when you build something. Oh my gosh, like this is, I am living proof of that. The amount of friends who have tuned into this podcast is incredible. I felt so scared and vulnerable when I launched it because I was afraid of my friends listening to it and thinking it was terrible. But you guys, that didn't happen. I get text messages. I mean, shout out to Colleen. I get text messages from her and from other people that are like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Y'all, that network doesn't get built overnight. It gets built over years of showing up consistently for people. And you have it. Okay. Here's something else. I this actually surprised me. Surprised me, maybe not surprised me, but I was maybe validated is a better word. I was, I felt so validated when I heard this. Because it really goes against everything that we're taught about aging, creativity, and productivity. But research shows that women hit a creative and emotional peak in midlife. Not in their 20s, not in their 30s in midlife. Okay. Something actually opens up in this season. It's like you have access to your own instincts, your own voice, your own authority that wasn't available before. And that noise of other people's opinions quiets down enough that you can finally hear yourself. And that urgency of proving yourself to everyone else loosens enough that you can actually focus on what you think, what you want, and what you believe is true. Girl, she's not past her peak. She may be arriving at it. And I do feel this in my own work. Like I am more creative now than I've ever been. I have more ideas now than I've ever had. And I do believe so much of it is because I'm in this aligned space. I was, when I was younger, it was I wasn't in that aligned space. I was successful and I was happy, but I wasn't truly aligned and I wasn't truly joyful and I didn't love what I was doing. I loved the wigs. Okay. I loved being funny. I loved being on stages. But I didn't love, love, love what I was doing. And I and I share that because I want you to know that as a woman in midlife now, you have so much more to offer than you did. And I am more sure of what I believe in and what you believe in, and what you want to say and what I want to say more than ever, more than I even did at 35 and 40. And I don't think that's despite being 51, I think it's because of it, right? So here's the reframe that I think matters

Starting Over From Something Real

SPEAKER_00 15:13

the most. And I and I want to encourage you to sit with this one. Starting something in midlife is not the same as starting something at 25. Right? And I say that in the most encouraging way possible. Because at 25, you were starting from zero from scratch. You were a wee baby. Okay. You had very little life experience, although you thought that you knew it all, very little self-knowledge and very little evidence of what you were actually capable of. But when you start something new now at 48, 52, 55, 60, you're starting from somewhere completely different. You're starting from experience, from skills you've developed across multiple seasons of life, from a deep understanding of what you value and what you don't, from relationships built over decades, from having already survived the things you used to be afraid of. That starting point is genuinely different. And it's better in the ways that actually matter when you're building something real and sustainable and meaningful. You are not starting over. Okay. You are starting over from something. Okay.

The Risk Of Never Trying

SPEAKER_00 16:24

All right. So listen, when I say starting something new, I don't mean like go start a business. Although for some of you, it may be a business. It could be anything. It could be anything, literally anything, whatever your idea is, whatever that thing is that gets you excited. Okay. Now, you may sort of be calculating the risk of starting something. Like, what is the chance of failure? What is the possibility of embarrassment? What is the time and money that might not pay off? What will people think if it doesn't work? And those risks are real. And I'm not going to pretend that they're not. And I'm not going to pretend that I literally weigh all of those risks every time I try something new. When I announced the knowing, my program, my small private experience for midlife women, I was weighing all those risks. I still am. But here's the thing, here's a risk that we maybe don't calculate. And I actually would be, I'm going to say, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think this is actually the biggest risk. What's the risk of arriving at 65, 70, 75, and realizing that you never tried? What's the risk of giving the next 15 years to waiting for the right time, which somehow really will never arrive? What is the risk of that quiet, slow accumulation of unlived possibility, of the idea that kept coming back and kept getting filed away until one day it just, I don't know, stopped coming back. Not because it wasn't real, but because you ran out of time to try it. Both of those are risks. The risk of trying and the risk of not trying. And I think we spend so much time calculating the risk of trying that we forget to calculate the risk of not trying. You get to decide which risk you can live with. But I want you to make the decision with both risks on the table, not just one.

Ordinary Women Who Chose Now

SPEAKER_00 18:26

So there are women that I have watched do this. Not famous women, not women with unusual resources or extraordinary circumstances, just women, like real women who decided it wasn't too late. The woman who spent 20 years in a career that paid really well and felt meaningful, and then one day realized it wasn't hers anymore. She was terrified to walk away because she was 49 and starting over felt impossible. She walked away anyway and built something from her experience that she couldn't have built 10 years earlier because she didn't have the 10 years of experience. What about the woman who had the idea for years? She, the thing that she kept almost doing, who finally sat down and said, All right, I'm done. I'm doing this now. Not because she had a perfect plan, because really she had no plan. Not because she felt ready, but because she was done almost. What about the woman who thought her best years professionally were behind her and found out in her early 50s that she was wrong? The thing she built in her 50s was better than anything she'd built before because she finally knew enough to build it right. These women didn't have anything you don't have. They just decided the too late story wasn't gonna be the one they kept telling themselves. Okay. Okay. Do you hear that? They just decided that too late story wasn't gonna be the one they kept saying over and over again. Here's the thing the question isn't whether it's too late, because it's not. The question isn't whether you have what it takes because you do. The question isn't whether the timing is right, because sister, from experience, I'm gonna tell you it never feels perfectly right. And waiting for it to feel right is just a more comfortable version of never. The real question is this what is the cost of waiting one more year? Not dramatically, not catastrophically, just honestly, if you wait one more year to start the thing, pursue the idea, take the step, what does that actually cost you? What doesn't get built? What doesn't get tried? What version of yourself doesn't exist yet? And then I want you to ask, what could happen if you started now? Not perfectly, not with everything figured out, just now. Because here's what I know. The women who are doing the things they always wanted to do in midlife, they didn't start when they felt ready. They started when they decided that not starting was more a more expensive choice. And they are not extraordinary women. Well, they are, because we all are, but there's nothing special about them. Okay, no, that too is not true. You get what I'm saying, right? There's nothing that makes them different. They're just women who stop letting the too late story make decisions for them, and you can do the same thing starting today. The timing was never the real obstacle, and too late was never actually a fact. It's just a story, one that got told so many times it started to feel like truth. Sister, you are not too late. You are not past your window, and you are not past your peak. You are not done becoming the version of yourself that has been quietly waiting for you to give her a chance. You are in midlife. And midlife, this weird, wild, hormone filled and also unfilled, right? Because right? Doesn't our don't our levels drop? Identity shifting, boobs hitting the knees season might actually be the most powerful time of your entire life to build something. That matters. I'm going to say might. I'm going to take out the word might is the most powerful time of your entire life to build something that matters. So the question isn't whether it's too late. The question is, what are you going to do with the time you have? That's that's big. What are you going to do with the time you have? Ooh, girl, you are not done yet.

Reset Link And Share Request

SPEAKER_00 22:26

You are not done yet. And I really want to encourage you to get scared and start exploring what your ideas are. Right? This is your time. Midlife is not the end, it's the beginning. If today's episode stirred something in you, if there's something that you've been almost deciding to start, I want you to grab the not done yet reset. It's a free audio walkthrough and reflection guide. And it's the perfect step for exactly this moment. You can go to rachelaperry.com forward slash not done yet. The link is also in the show notes. And listen, if you are loving this podcast, if this is resonating with you, would you do me a favor and share it with a midlife woman in your life who needs to hear that it's not too late for her? Because, sister, she's not done yet either. I love your face. I'm so happy that you're here. Thank you for being here. I'll see you next week for another episode of Not Done Yet.