You Can't Buy a New Midlife Identity on Amazon, Time to Put the Work In Says Sarah Milken of The Flexible Neurotic
Show Snapshot:
Want a midlife you love? Do you wish you could order one with Amazon Prime?
Nice try!
Midlife podcaster Sarah Milken, aka The Flexible Neurotic, says the midlife you want takes work. But good news! Sarah walks us through the *midlife remix*, which involves a sense of humor and small, daily steps forward—for a one-two punch that adds up to big change.
Ready to put the work in?
In This Episode We Cover:
You’ve got the midlife itchies. Here’s how to scratch them.
Want to get unstuck? Start small.
Nope, and no. Your new midlife identity isn’t on Amazon (or your Instagram scroll).
Scared? Do it anyway. Plus, the power of ignoring the 40,000 reasons not to try something new.
Freeing yourself from stereotypes, the inner mean girl, and the hell of the high school lunch table.
The #1 question no stay-at-home mom wants to hear.
Switching lanes, claiming your own happiness and the joys of being quasi-unavailable.
No one is a mind reader (dammit!) The midlife you want takes communication.
Show Links:
Sarah’s Website
Sarah’s Instagram
Sarah’s podcast: The Flexible Neurotic
Podcasts spotlighted on the show:
Quotable:
A really big theme of my “midlife itchy” platform is that many of us get the midlife itchies. We want to rebrand ourselves and maybe not be the carpool mom anymore. Or maybe it's a rebrand of a new haircut or dying our hair blonde. Or maybe it's finding a new passion. Maybe it's pickleball. But no one can do the work for us. We have to do it.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty [0:29]:
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. Midlife is funny, right? Ha-ha funny and funny strange. On the one hand we have brain fog bloopers and cartoonish hot flashes, you have to laugh. But on the other hand, a buffet of WTF menopause symptoms and a tick-tock clock that says you are running out of time to figure your life out. The good news, we are confident and more comfortable in our skin; the bad news, we’re shocked and upset at starting to sag.
My guest today knows midlife is funny, but she also sees it as an opportunity. She’s all about what she calls a midlife remix. Sarah Milken is the creator of the mega popular podcast, The Flexible Neurotic. She describes herself as half Birkenstock, half Manolo Blahnik. I describe her as one of the funniest PhDs to cross my radar and a voice that consistently offers ideas and inspiration for a kick-in-the-pants midlife reboot because the midlife you want takes work. Ready to put the work in? Stick around, this show is for you. Welcome, Sarah.
Sarah Milken [1:38]:
I’m so excited to be here, this is like midlife remix on crack with the two of us together.
Katie [1:45]:
I know! I know, I’ve been following you, and your podcast, and your Instagram for ages. We’ve connected over Zoom; we’ve had a chance to catch up. And probably most of audience already knows you but for those who don’t, I’m super excited to put you on the radar. We’re talking all things midlife reinvention, making midlife sexy versus lumpy and frumpy. But before we dive in, I want to ask the question I know every listener is thinking: what’s a flexible neurotic?
Sarah [2:16]:
A flexible neurotic is someone who has gone through 40 million years of schooling, [Katie laughs] gotten all As, hit every single benchmark, created anxiety, off the charts. So, that’s kind of the neurotic part; go to school, hit the benchmarks, get the PhD, all of those things. And the flexible part is that you research the fuck out of every possible thing to the point where it can't be researched anymore. So, you have the information then you just have to go with it, that’s the flexible part.
Katie [2:53]:
Yes, you’ve got to bend, because otherwise you get research paralysis, and you find yourself stuck when you’ve got too many options. This is a perfect segue into what we’re going to be talking about because sometimes in midlife we feel stuck. I hear this from women who come on my show, at different points in my own journey, I feel stuck. There are days where I feel stuck even though I’m in action. I know you talk about this a lot; you talk about getting unstuck, you talk about the midlife itchies, how to scratch them. How do we scratch those midlife itchies?
Sarah [3:27]:
I think for most women generally, in this midlife hot zone of starting to feel slightly irrelevant, if you have kids they’re probably on the older side or already out of the nest so you’re like, “Oh my god, what the fuck am I going to do now?” And it seems really daunting and overwhelming because sometimes you look around and you’re like, "Well, that woman is a professional pickleball player, [Katie laughs] and this woman plays Mahjong, and this woman has a local boutique.” And you’re like, but wait, what do I have? I’ve spent so much time focusing on my family and serving everyone in my family that it’s me time now and I don’t even remember what I fucking like anymore. I don’t even remember what my passions are, and I don’t have any hobbies unfortunately, I’m working on that. But in terms of getting to the unstuck part, the things, the ideas that I constantly circle back to are starting small, and being scared, and doing it anyway. Starting small can literally mean, I went to my friend’s 50th birthday party that was a pickleball party [Katie laughs] and for me...
Katie [4:42]:
Wait, is this a true story Sarah? Did you really do this?
Sarah [4:44]:
Yes! My friend Allison had her 50th birthday, I opened the paperless post and I’m like, “Shut the fuck up.”
Katie [4:50]:
Uh-oh. You’re like, I need a new wardrobe instantly, I have to do a sport.
Sarah [4:55]:
I started going through my daughter’s tennis clothes, I don’t even play tennis, I’ve never played tennis in my whole life. But I can’t be that friend who doesn’t show up because she couldn’t do something, especially with this podcast.
Katie [5:07]: First of all, pickleball is so fun! Did you have fun or were you like, “No, not for me.”
Sarah [5:14]:
Oh my god, it was so fun other than the fact that it was 4,000 degrees in LA in the middle of the summer. But you know, when you do something once, you have so much adrenaline pumping because you’re like, “Can I do this? Am I making the biggest fool out of myself?” I mean, some of these women play like three times a week and they’re pros.
Katie [5:34]:
Oh yes, yes. I know those women. I want to be one of them honestly, I’m a total pickleball nerd now, I love it.
Sarah [5:41]:
Oh my god, well I found a few other women who have never played tennis or pickleball before, so I feel like if we’re all in the same starting ground it’ll feel okay. So, I feel like starting small thing is like, “Yeah, I’ll go to the pickleball birthday party,” rather than being like... Because I could have thought of 40,000 excuses to not go.
Katie [6:05]:
Yeah, there’s always 40,000 reasons to not try something new and I love that you did it and that you started small. Being scared and doing it anyway is another great piece of advice.
Sarah [6:19]:
Yeah, it sounds very vague, and I really try not to be vague in my platform, in my messaging, but I can't be any more specific than that. It’s like, you’re not going to build the confidence muscle without the action step. And as you know, starting a podcast or starting any business, you really have no idea, most of the time what you’re doing. It’s like sending that first email, “Can you edit my podcast?” And once you start sending those emails and getting a little bit of momentum, that’s when the confidence muscle starts building and you’re like, "Yeah, I’m getting some responses, I can do this.” But if you’re just sitting in that analysis by paralysis... Is that the term? Or is the other way around?
Katie [7:08]:
I think you hit it; I think it’s good. [laughs]
Sarah [7:11]:
Okay, but if you’re sitting in that quicksand feeling all the time, there’s no way out and no one’s coming to save you. I think that that has also become a really big theme of my midlife itchy platform is many of us get the midlife itchies, it’s this need to want to rebrand ourselves and maybe not be the carpool mom anymore; or maybe it’s a rebrand of a new haircut, or dyeing our hair blonde, or whatever; maybe it’s finding a new passion, maybe it’s pickleball, maybe it’s any of those things. But no one can do the work for us, we have to do it.
And there were so many times in my life I was like, “Oh my god, my husband is so successful, can he just think of an idea for me?” And I never asked him, obviously, but I think I secretly hoped that he was going to come home one day and be like, "Oh my god Sarah, I have the best idea for you,” but it never happened. And then I’m like, oh, maybe I could buy self-reinvented identity on Amazon, [Katie laughs] maybe I can scroll Instagram and find my fucking answer, but it never happened.
Katie [8:26]:
Sarah, I have scrolled Instagram endlessly. I have purchased many things on Instagram, but I agree with you, no one is offering us a new identity on it. Although I love that you went looking for it because who doesn’t? [laughs]
Sarah [8:39]:
I mean, you know how you think you’re just going to find it and it’s going to be like, “I saw that post, and now I’m ging to do this.” And the reality is, most of the time it doesn’t turn out that way. If it does, you’re lucky. But it’s trying a bunch of new, different things. And a lot of my guests over the past two years, another big theme that’s come up is say yes to awkward shit, like the pickleball party. A lot of times we’re like, “Oh my god, no.” Or “That’s going to be so uncomfortable, I’m not going to know anyone.” But a lot of times those awkward, new times, or moments, or events are the times where you put yourself in an awkward position and you force yourself outside of the comfort zone and you meet someone who leads to the next thing.
Katie [9:28]:
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Sarah [9:29]:
Or it’s like, what can we do next? What’s happening? And that’s what I love about this whole process is while there’s a lot of shitty, sweaty quicksand, there’s also a lot of synchronicity, and optimism, and energy. It’s like the ebb and flow of midlife and I think that that’s what keeps me going is I know that when I have shitty days, they’re not going to be forever.
Katie [9:54]:
Yeah, because you know, we’ve been around the block honestly, too. One of the good things about putting some miles on the car is that we know we’ve been through hard things, we’ve been through difficult things, and they pass, we move through them.
A question that popped into my mind, do you think this is something that affects stay-at-home moms more? Because I’ve been both, I’ve been somebody, my oldest is 22, my youngest is 15. And in the 22 years that I’ve been a mom, I have left the paid workforce twice, I’ve been home for periods of several years at a time and re-entered and I know that’s hard to do. Do you feel like the midlife itchies is something that all women go through? Can it be harder if you’ve spent a lot of time at home? What’s your take on that?
Sarah [10:45]:
Honestly, that’s a great question and it’s something that I think about a lot because in my DMs I get so many messages from both groups of people, from stay-at-home moms who are like, “It’s fucking Groundhog Day, I can't do this for one more minute. I’m going to lose my mind.” And then I got a message from this woman this morning who is like, "I’ve been part of this career for 20 years and I just left last week and what am I going to do now? I don’t know, I just know that I couldn’t be there anymore.”
So, I really think it’s an interesting combination of a lot of different types of women and energies and it’s really nuanced because the stay-at-home moms, we’ve been telling ourselves in our heads for so long, “I’m just a mom,” and someone asks, “What do you do?” And you say, “I’m just a mom.” And it’s trying to get that box and that stereotype of ourselves, and that branding of ourselves out of our heads. Because in reality, we’re never really just a mom but that phrase, it’s so deeply annoying to me on so many levels. Do you understand what I mean?
Katie [12:03]
Yeah, absolutely. I am a New Yorker, I have lived in New York and when I would go to events with my husband at different points when I was at home with my kids, caregiving for three small children, which is a job on steroids, and people would look at me and I knew what would happen around this little gathering at the cocktail hour, that somebody would eventually look at me and say, "What do you do?” Because that’s all people want to know in New York, what do you do? And I would dread the question because I felt invisible the moment I shared my answer, because people would literally almost turn around mid-sentence and look to the next person because they weren’t interested in talking to you.
Sarah [12:47]:
I know. It’s the worst question in the world. And you know what’s really interesting is I never really articulated that to my husband, and I noticed...
Katie [12:58]:
You’re much nicer than I am Sarah. [both laugh] Believe me, I have complained about this in the past.
Sarah [13:05]:
Not from him! No, not from him specifically, I mean talked about it in general about other people because he doesn’t even have to hear me, he can just see my face. My face is so expressive he’s probably like, "Holy fuck, we’ve got to get out of here, someone just pissed her off.”
Katie [13:19]:
[laughs] I need to protect this person who has just asked that terrible question, [Sarah laughs] I’m going to grab her by the elbow and squire her away.
Sarah [13:29]:
I will say that it’s interesting because when we go to a dinner party or we’re out, he never asks the other person what they do, even if it’s the man.
Katie [13:38]:
Good.
Sarah [13:39]:
And I said to him, it’s so interesting that we could leave a dinner and you might not know exactly what that person’s job is. And his answer is, everyone has a different life to live, and everyone is at different times in their lives and I feel like it’s judgmental to ask that.
Katie [13:58]:
Yeah, I love that.
Sarah [13:59]:
I was like, wow, okay.
Katie [14:02]:
He’s a very evolved husband.
We are going to be heading into a quick commercial break but when we come back, I do want to talk husbands, I want to talk evolution of marriages in midlife. We’ll be right back after this break.
[Ad Break]
Katie [15:36]:
Sarah, we’re back from the break, we headed into it talking about how evolved your husband is, how he’s got a good dinner party patter and he doesn’t ask obnoxious questions. I know you talk a lot on your podcast and your Instagram about midlife marriages, making midlife sexy again. Your husband is a terrific and good sport, I love what you share on the show. How have you seen your marriage evolve throughout your podcast? How has midlife impacted it? And what do you hear from your listeners?
Sarah [16:07]:
Wow, that’s a lot of really good questions. [both laugh] I hope my husband is listening to this...
Katie [16:12]:
I hope so too.
Sarah [16:13]:
... with his weighted vest on his walk, where he’s completely... [laughs] I totally throw him under the bus.
Katie [16:21]:
No, you’ve made him a little bit of a star. I feel like I know him because you share a lot about him and he’s such a good sport and he reminds me a little bit of my husband, somebody who has been so supportive of what I’m doing, so supportive of the podcast. But you know, midlife marriages, like any kind of marriages, take work and I’m curious as to how he feels about being your Instagram husband and how you’re making a midlife marriage work.
Sarah [16:48]:
Look, I mean, I don’t know how much you know about my marriage or my history, but my husband and I met when we were 13 when we were in 9th grade, so we have a lot of history together. That’s a lot of body shapes, that’s a lot of hair styles, hair colors, the whole thing.
Katie [17:06]:
He’s seen all your eyebrows, right? I always joke that my best friends remember every set of my eyebrows. [laughs]
Sarah [17:12]:
Oh my god, even my kids are like, “What was that hair color, is it eggplant?” I’m like, okay, all right. But I think for him, the quick and dirty of it is that he has known my parents since I was 13 and my mom is a major career woman, the opposite of stay-at-home mom, and I think that that’s just what he assumed I would be. We went to college together and all of those things, so he saw, this is a girl, woman who is on a path and she has a mission.
But I think at the same time, when I decided, after I got my PhD and I was teaching in the Graduate School of Education at USC and I was pregnant with my son, after I had my son I thought, “Oh my god, I really don’t want to leave.” And that was not my intention, obviously, after 40 years of school, or what seemed like 40 years of school, but he was really supportive of it. He was like, “I’m going to be happy if you’re going to be happy,” [laughs] that’s basically how it went.
And so, I was a stay-at-home mom up until two years ago. I’m still a stay-at-home mom with a podcast, however someone wants to define it. And I think that, he always knew that I wanted to do something along the way, it was just, I couldn’t figure out what; I felt stuck, I felt like I was in between seasons of my life. Can I go between being a mom and doing something on the side? And I think when I turned 45, I was like, okay, “Midlife itchies on, I’m in full fucking welts. [Katie laughs] I need out, I’m going to lose my shit.” And then of course, COVID came a month later after I had this whole epiphany, and then we’re all locked in our houses for two years.
Katie [19:07]:
The universe has a great sense of humor, right?
Sarah [19:10]:
Totally!
Katie [19:10]:
They’re like, “You’re going nowhere Sarah! You are going nowhere!
Sarah [19:14]:
Yes! You can sit in your house and be monitored by your teenagers, how fantastic. And you can try to record a podcast with everyone yelling and the dog barking. But I will say that I think that I went from being the most available human in my home for everyone else’s needs, like, “Oh, you need your baseball shit dropped off at school? Great. You need this...” to being more unavailable and I think at the beginning, that was kind of tricky and hard for everyone in my house.
My husband would call me from work, and he’d be like, “What are you doing?” And I’m like, “What do you mean? I’m prepping for a podcast, I can't meet you for lunch,” or whatever it was. it was such a different dynamic shift for our marriage, and I think at first it was like, “God you’re spending a lot of time on this podcast,” because I would work at night too. For me, my podcast doesn’t feel, I mean obviously there are some days it feels like a job, but a lot times, it feels like a passion and I’m a nerd and I want to read about my guests and the information they’re bringing to it. So, my husband was like, "Do you think you could maybe not be writing a podcast at 9 PM and we could watch a TV show together?” [laughs]
My kids had a hard time too because my daughter is like, "I texted you 12 minutes ago, and you didn’t respond.” And it’s funny because right before we got on, my daughter called me at 12:59 to tell me something about dropping her off at her tennis practice and I go, “I’m recording a podcast in one minute,” and she’s goes, “Yeah, I know, that’s why I’m calling you right now.”
Katie [20:58]:
That’s so funny.
Sarah [20:59]:
So, I think that the going from super available to quasi-unavailable or available all the time was kind of tricky for everyone, but I have to say, my husband has been an amazing sport, with some grumbling on the side, I’m not going to lie. Instagram is not his favorite place to be. And my kids have been pretty good sports. They used to make me take a lot of photos down, they’d be like, “That’s ugly. I have a pimple in that photo!” Now, I think they’re just over it.
Katie [21:33]:
They’re over it. And by the way, they learned that change happened, they survived it, and I think that’s actually so important for anyone who is listening to this right now, who is thinking I want to try something new but how is my family going to react, or my friends, or my partner? And the reality is that change, people survive it. You can reorient how things are. The person you are today doesn’t have to be the person you were yesterday, we’re not stuck. Sometimes having that conversation with ourselves, because once we get ourselves on board and our own mindset on board around this, then we can enroll other people. Because there’s one thing I think that moms and women are very good at doing, it’s being persuasive. We keep the trains running on the tracks, and if we want a new set of tracks, people are going to have to get onboard with us.
Sarah [22:28]:
I couldn’t agree more. I talk about this on my Instagram and my podcast all the time, we all want good marriages, or partnerships, or friendship, but all of that is a cocreation project. No one is a fucking mind reader; my husband is not a mind reader. If I want him to do X, I need to express that, he cannot read my mind. So, at the beginning of the podcast, I was not that open on Instagram, like filming my family and my dog, whatever, because everyone was sort of scared of it. And then I just said to them, “Look you guys, I’m not going to post your deepest, darkest secrets, but I’m a midlife podcast talking about real shit, my kids, my life, my dog, my husband. You guys can't be invisible.” And I think part of the success of my podcast and my platform has been the realness, the vulnerability, and the kind of relatability factor. It’s like, oh wait, my son leaves the teriyaki chicken dripping all over the kitchen at lunch.
Katie [23:38]:
Too. [laughs]
Sarah [23:38]:
Yeah, exactly. Or explodes it and then walks away from the microwave. We can all relate to those kinds of things. But the point is, is that I had to sort of co-create this journey with them because like you said, it’s a very different dynamic than it was two years ago, but they can't read my mind. I have to say to them, “This is what I need from you. You don’t need to be dancing on my Instagram, but I might screenshot a funny text from you, teen daughter, and put it up on my Instagram.” [both laugh]
Katie [24:13]:
There’s so many funny texts from teen daughters, I agree. But I love that... I have had moments in my life, if I’m being totally honest, where I expected my husband and I expected my kids to read my mind and the moment you said that I was like, “Oh my god, that was me. I hope I’ve evolved past that.” And I do.
I feel like I actually was just profiled on a website called TueNight, I don’t know if you know it, it’s a great Gen X website and newsletter. They asked this question: what makes you feel like a grown ass lady? And my response was that I’ve honestly gotten better at having hard conversations because I was not great at having hard conversations early on in my life. I expected people to know what I wanted, and I was sort of scared to be direct and ask for it. I was raised in this sort of... I don’t want to say... I wasn’t raised by my parents, but I feel like I was raised in the generation where maybe sometimes we were more people-pleasing and were worried about what other people thought of us, or maybe that was just a life phase.
But I am so fully past that, I can have hard conversations, they don’t need to be mean or unkind, but to be direct is something that I finally own. And I also own that I am 100% responsible for my own happiness. That’s nobody else’s job, to make me happy. Part of my job for myself to create that is to be in relationships that are honest and where I’m giving to my husband and my kids and that they in turn are giving to me, but I have to own my own happiness and I feel like that’s something that I definitely learned in my 40s and 50s. Where do you land on that?
Sarah [25:57]:
Yeah, I could not agree with you more. There was a very long period of time because you know, my husband was at work and I was at home with the kids and I just thought, “When is he coming home? When are we going to go to the movies?” And I think over this two-year process, especially my midlife remix, as I call it, I’ve realized that my happiness, my entertainment for myself, my sense of purpose has to be developed from within because when two people come together and one person is expected to satisfy every single need for the other person, it never works out.
Katie [26:38]:
Right, absolutely. It’s sort of like the anti... it’s repelling. [laughs] It’s too much!
Sarah [26:44]:
Totally! My husband is like, "You don’t even text me back, I’ve called you twice.” So, there’s also a little bit of, “Oh, now you want to talk to me, because I’m busy?” There’s a little bit of like, foreplay involved.
Katie [26:56]:
That’s so funny! It’s like middle school dating, [Sarah laughs] it’s like wait a minute, you like me because I don’t like you, oh my god.
Sarah [27:03]:
Exactly, he’s like, “Sarah, you’re the hardest person to reach in my whole life.” And I’m like, well, I’m sorry.
Katie [27:08]:
Yeah, exactly. I’m busy! I’m busy mixing, midlife mixing, remixing. Take a number!
Sarah [27:14]:
Totally! You can pose with the weighted vest on. But I think another aspect that I do not always talk about but when I remember to, I bring it up. I think that for me growing up in a house with such a powerful mother figure who worked, and a lot of the things that my brother and I were able to do, go to private school and all of those things, were because my mom did work. For her, it wasn’t a choice thing, whereas for me it was. And so, it was very different, and I know a lot of who I am is because of my mom, because she was a badass, because she created this largest nonprofit in the country for special needs kids from scratch, with five kids and now it’s a hundred-million-dollar nonprofit. And I think that my daughter, and my son, have always known me as the stay-at-home mom who is smart, with a PhD. And I think part of my, sort of... I don’t know, I guess you would say part of my midlife itchy satisfaction and what I wanted to do before I became an empty nest, was model for my kids what I was modeled as a kid as well.
Katie [28:35]:
Yeah, I love that.
Sarah [28:36]:
That I can light up my own life, that I can have something that’s my own, that I can have something that’s not related to them or to my husband, and my kids have seen that.
Katie [28:47]:
Yeah, and that you can do it at any time, which I think is so important also. Because the message is: it’s never too late to be the woman you want to be, it’s never too late to do the things you want to do, it’s never too late to try something new. And it sounds like you were at home for maybe like two decades, but your kids are looking and realizing that there’s not one lane you need to be in, you can change lanes and you can change lanes later in life, and I think that is such a key message too. Because sometimes we feel like you get one story and I haven’t experienced that and the women that come on my podcast, the women that come on your podcast, are constantly telling and writing new stories and they’re doing it at ages when sometimes pop culture really writes you off. So, I love that you’re having these conversations.
We are nearing the end, I could talk to you all day long, and anyone who feels the same way needs to get on your Apple podcast app and look up The Flexible Neurotic, we’re going to have that in the show notes, and we’ll share it with you at the end. But I want to ask you a question about a favorite guest before we move on into our speed round. I know you’ve talked to some really phenomenal women, it’s probably hard to pick, you have two kids, no one’s a favorite. But what’s a show that’s really stuck with you that listeners should check out if they want to experience The Flexible Neurotic magic?
Sarah [30:15]:
Oh my god... [Katie laughs] You didn’t tell me you were asking this. Now I’m like... I don’t even know if I could pick to be quite honest.
Katie [30:26]:Well, let’s make it easy. What about a recent one? What’s a recent show that really stuck with you? Because that’s not playing favorites, that’s just you know, picking somebody who was on lately.
Sarah [30:34]:
I mean, I think it depends on if you’re looking for sort of expert advice versus, I guess, more psychological advice. Dr. Jill Krapf was on my podcast a few episodes ago called “Under the Midlife Hood.” She really helped, I mean, I must have gotten a thousand million messages about it, she really helped us understand what’s going on in the midlife vagina, what are the myths, what the exact things we should be asking our gynecologist, because so much of it gets swept under the rug.
Katie [31:10]:
Yeah, that’s an important one. All of my vagina shows do gangbusters in downloads because women want to know. You refer to it at one point as a “vintage vagina” which absolutely cracked me up and anyone who is listening to this either has or will have a vintage vagina and you know, there are certain ways that you need to be taking care of these treasured antiques. [laughs]
Sarah [31:33]:
I mean, they’re so... And that’s another thing my teen daughter loves to talk about. She’s like, "Umm, why are we talking about your vagina all the time? Why are we talking about the spotting, why are we talking about this?” And I’m like, you know what, it is what it is.
Katie [31:51]:
It is what it is, it’s a midlife podcast.
Sarah [31:53]:
But I would have to say, look, I don’t think I could pick. Jennifer Fisher the jeweler, food creator was amazing, she has a very badass approach to life. You may not agree with all of her food restrictions and her lifestyle in terms of what she eats, but she really has a badass approach to life.
I think that Jen Delvaux, she was diagnosed with breast cancer after her husband has been fighting brain cancer for 10 years. So, that was an episode on creating light in midlife darkness, or what appears to be midlife darkness.
And I think most recently, my episode with Bobbi Brown, the makeup guru, I think a lot of people related to that. I called the episode “Everyday Midlife” and it’s talking about a woman who created her own success from scratch and now as a 65-year-old woman, she’s kind of giving the secrets of her mindset, how she was willing to learn on the go, and create this life for herself of always doing something new. And now, she’s back at it with her second round of her makeup company.
Katie [33:04]:
Yeah, I love Jones Road, that’s fantastic. Okay, all those shows are going in the episode show notes, listeners can find them and click through and check out those recent ones. So, I love that Bobbi Brown shared that she’s still growing.
I guess my last question before our speed round is what new skills or mindset have you acquired in midlife that might have eluded you when you were younger? And what, if anything, have you let go of
Sarah [33:34]:
Perfection. I’ve probably let go of because I’ve realized that really nothing is perfect and if you wait for something to be perfect, you’re never going to do anything. And with Instagram, Instagram is like a living beast, it never sleeps and if you’re sitting around trying to create the perfect post, with the perfect audio, to get the perfect number of likes, you’re never going to get anywhere. It’s like, be inspired, create your content, post it, move on.
Katie [34:09]:
Yup, done is better than perfect.
Sarah [34:11]:
Yeah! And I think that that has been a really big thing for me. In terms of things that I’ve learned, we could have six episodes on that, [Katie laughs] but I think for me, it’s been the technology piece of this whole thing. Instagram, I had never been on before my podcast, I didn’t even have an Instagram account two years ago, so posting a post or a story was like a whole clusterfuck. I was like, "Wait, what do you mean? I don’t understand, I don’t get it. Wait, you can put stickers on stories?” And then, all the technology of recording the podcast and editing the podcast. I just didn’t think my brain could do it and there’s a lot of things that it still can't do. My husband is like, "Sarah, I’ve showed you this for two years.” And I’m like, "I know, I know, I know. It’s just one of the last things I can't get.” So, I think generally speaking, I’m like 80% there with the general understanding of the technology, which I never thought in a million years I could do. It would be like me taking AP chemistry, it would never happen, you know?
Katie [35:15]:
Oh my god, I love it. I’ve never taken AP chemistry, but I’ve learned that myself too. First of all, you can google anything, so we do that. And two, you can ask for help and I love that your husband...
Sarah [35:25]:
Oh my gosh, I’m on the help train baby.
Katie [35:28]:
Yeah, totally. So, google and ask for help, you can get anything done. I love it.
All right, we’re going to move into our speed round. I always close with this, it’s kind of a high energy way to end, just one-to-two-word answers because we want to cover a lot more ground and learn a lot more about you.
So, launching The Flexible Neurotic was: _____.
Sarah [35:48]:
Exhilarating.
Katie [35:50]:
Dream podcast guest: _____.
Sarah [35:55]:
Brené Brown.
Katie [35:56]:
Still cannot believe I talked about this on air: _____.
Sarah [36:01]:
Midlife vagina anything.
Katie [36:04]:
[laughs] I could talk about this midlife topic again and again: ______.
Sarah [36:08]:
The midlife itchies.
Katie [36:10]:
The midlife itchies, I love it. If I never have to talk about this midlife topic again, I’d be happy: _____.
Sarah [36:18]:
Close family death.
Katie [36:20]:
Got it. And my midlife self is ecstatic that I will never have to do this thing from my younger days again: _____.
Sarah [36:28]:
Go back to fucking high school. [Katie laughs] Sit at the lunch table. [laughs]
Katie [36:33]:
Exactly! Or look for a seat at the lunch table.
Sarah [36:36]:
Oh my god! Or just look like everyone else, and be like everyone else, and try to find that seat at the lunch table, augh!
Katie [36:44]:
It’s done. Done, done, donezo. You believe in the midlife remix, what’s the last new thing you learned, tried, or did?
Sarah [36:52]:
Hmm...
Katie [36:53]:
I think it might be pickleball.
Sarah [36:54]:
I was going to say, probably pickleball.
Katie [36:56]:
I’m going with pickleball. That’s for me too, pickleball is the last new thing I learned. [Sarah laughs] Too bad you’re in LA Sarah, we’ll have to get you out to the ...
Sarah [37:04]:
I know! I’ve got to work on those skills, and I could have a really cute outfit.
Katie [37:06]:
We’ll have to get you out to the East coast so we can do pickleball, let’s put it on the...
Sarah [37:10]:
I know, and then I wouldn’t even have to have a tan in the East coast because you wear leggings. In LA, you’re expected to wear that little, short skirt and I’m like... [grunts] god.
Katie [37:17]:
All right, if I have to play pickleball and be tanned, that’s like a nonstarter.
Sarah [37:20]:
I know, I know. It’s like a no way José.
Katie [37:23]:
I’m way too Irish for that. Okay, finally your one-word answer to complete this sentence: As I age, I feel _____.
Sarah [37:34]:
Okay, I’ve got to think about that one... [Katie laughs] because I want to say sweaty.
Katie [37:40]:
That’s fine. Sarah, we’re here for honest answers.
Sarah [37:40]:
[laughs] So, I’m trying to think of a more profound answer.
Katie [37:45]:
We’re here for honest answers, sweaty works. [laughs]
Sarah [37:48]:
Sexy!
Katie [37:49]:
Sweaty and sexy, all right!
Sarah [37:51]:
Yeah, sweaty and sexy! It’s sort of like the juxtaposition, like the flexible neurotic, you can be two things at the same time.
Katie [37:58]:
Of course, two things can be true. You can like Birkenstocks and Manolos, you can be sweaty and sexy.
Sarah [38:02]:
Totally, I think the juxtaposition makes you sexy.
Katie [38:06]:
Perfect. All right, thank you Sarah.
Before we say goodbye, how can our listeners find you, and your podcast, and The Flexible Neurotic?
Sarah [38:13]:
Everything The Flexible Neurotic. The Flexible Neurotic podcast on all podcast platforms, and my Instagram @TheFlexibleNeurotic, and my website The Flexible Neurotic. Just make sure you spell “neurotic” right. [both laugh]
Katie [38:27]:
I’m going to help people, that’s going in the show notes, no one needs to look it up.
Sarah [38:34]:
You’d be surprised, people are like, "I can't find you.” I’m like, “Did you spell neurotic right?”
Katie [38:38]:
[laughs] I love it.
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. A quick favor to end the show: if you enjoy A Certain Age, if you learn something new or simply love tuning in every week, please take the time to write a review over on Apple Podcasts, just grab your phone, open the podcast app, find A Certain Age, scroll to the bottom, it’s so easy to do.
And be sure to join me next week when we mark World Menopause Month with menopause advocate Donna Klassen of the nonprofit, Let’s Talk Menopause.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then: age boldly, beauties.