Avsnitt
-
We met on the internet, which I say as the highest compliment. There was an online community of independent practitioners — smart, weird, building things — and Lia Zneimer showed up in it and I immediately thought, yes, her. That is how it works sometimes. The internet at its best is a place where you find people you would never otherwise cross paths with, and you just know. She came to a virtual session I was leading and something just clicked. We have been loosely but meaningfully in each other's orbit ever since — Substack appearances, voice memos, the occasional ping — the kind of connection that doesn't require constant contact to feel real.
This conversation is really about burnout, the kind that starts as a low hum and then quietly takes everything, and about what burnout recovery actually looks like when you stop performing success and start redefining it on your own terms. Lia is a marketer turned writer, originally from Colorado, now in the East Bay in California with her husband and her miniature poodle, Waffles. She is working on her debut YA novel, which she started in 2013 and which is coming along exactly as fast as it needs to, thank you very much, and she runs a Substack called The Recharge, where she writes about creativity, career, burnout, and the ways we come back to ourselves. Find her at getrecharged.substack.com and linkedin.com/in/liazneimer.
If you are weighing a career pivot, in the middle of one, or quietly wondering why you are so exhausted by something that looks fine from the outside, this episode is for you.
In this episode:
- Storytelling, writing, and theater as the through line — veering off the path and coming home to yourself.
- Two distinct burnout experiences: five years at WeWork through the failed IPO, then a leadership role at an early stage startup where she doubled down when she should have stopped, because spoiler alert — you cannot outwork everything if you try hard enough.
- Getting texts from your CEO about influencer campaigns not converting while you're trying on your wedding dress — and what that moment of clarity actually feels like.
- The difference between the vocation of writing and the business of writing — and why you might want to leave some things you love outside of capitalism entirely.
- Creativity takes the time it takes. You cannot crank it. Stopping treating your creativity like a KPI.
- Burnout as a repetitive use injury, a low hum, death by a thousand paper cuts — we don't figure this stuff out once and then we're good. It keeps cycling back. But you do get faster at catching it.
- The girl boss era, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, hustle harder — the amount of bullshit millennials were fed, and the slow work of deprogramming it.
- Optimizing for success by having a regulated nervous system.
- Giving up ambition for my 38th birthday — what that actually means and what it doesn't
- What your 10-years-ago self would be genuinely shocked to learn — and why Younger Lia would have never believed she walked away from a VP role on purpose.
- And the 40 Portal wisdom read at the close: from a woman who was 41 when she wrote it, about the weight of other people's expectations lifting, about moving from okay to sure, about trusting — finally — that you can handle it all.
Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack
Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Lia Zneimer | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved. -
Out of every guest I've had on this podcast so far, I have known this one the longest. We met in 2010 at Flow Yoga Center in Obama-era Washington, DC — up the stairs from P Street in Logan Circle. She was behind the front desk with her grounded, earthy, ageless warmth. I was arriving every single day with a ginormous Louis Vuitton bag, straight from Kirkland & Ellis, transitioning from lawyer Cath to human Cath right there on the mat.
Sixteen years and many life chapters later — welcome to this conversation with Victoria R.G. Newburn, who goes by Tori, and who I love enormously.
This is the kind of female friendship that women over 40 have: the ones forged in shared becoming, that hold decades of who you were and who you're growing into. This convo is for every woman navigating the arrival of her 40s, reclaiming herself, and finally giving herself permission to stop performing.
Tori is an author, guide, and intuitive. She runs This Gentle Way, her online practice working with people through astrology, meditation, and dialogue. Her debut book, The Weaver and the Wilder, came out last year. She is a mom of two, a homeschooler, and a deeply curious human being.
In this episode:
Obama-era DC and what it meant to launch our adult lives before the internet swallowed everything — the unique, almost endangered experience of millennials who actually had a before.Stepping into inner authority and the nervous system work that has to come with it.Internet success and the radical act of not tying your worth to numbers on a screen.Being in our "no urgency era."Reclamation: what practices, rhythms, and versions of yourself are you calling back in?The permission slip of your 40s — I just don't care as much about what I thought I needed to care about.Female friendship: the ones you don't talk to every day, or even every year, who are still among the most important people in your life.Vocation vs. "success" — inform and inspire as a why that actually holds.A shoutout to Debra Mishalove and the strong women who mentor us even when they're no longer in our daily orbit.Content note: We talk about pregnancy loss at about the one-hour mark
I WANT TO TALK TO YOU ON THE POD!
I'm looking for a listener of this podcast to be a guest on this podcast. Here's how to be considered:
Submit your voice to The 40 Portal — your question if you're under 40, your wisdom if you're over 40: the40portal.com/contribute
Leave a written review wherever you listen, then email me a photo of it by June 6, 2026: [email protected]
I'll choose the guest on June 7.
Join The 40 Portal Book Club on Substack: substack.com/@the40portal
Work with Cath 1:1 — coaching spots open September 2026: the40portal.com/coaching
New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show.
Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com
Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack
Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Victoria R. G. Newburn | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe
© 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.
-
Saknas det avsnitt?
-
I thought the 40 Portal was going to be sexy. Fun. Empowering. Green dress, great party, collect some wisdom.
Plot twist: I actually had to go through it. The last ten months have been a real process of midlife transformation for me, and I'm only just now popping up from being pummeled by the wave going, "cool, I survived." The only way through is through. One day I'll tell you the whole story.
For now: meet Amber. You definitely need to.
Amber van Moessner is 38, almost 39, a therapist-in-training, activist, community organizer, reader, mother of two, cancer survivor, and the woman who will probably shut down the dance party.
She is exactly the kind of woman this podcast exists for. My husband met her first and came home with a very specific report: you have to meet this woman. He was right. She is the kind of person who walks into a cocktail party and counts how many times someone asks "what do you do?" so she can avoid asking it even once. She identifies her archetype as the wounded warrior. She's a fellow Leo, fierce lioness and wears disco-glitter-bell-bottoms to our tiny town's annual Pride parade (which she co-founded a few years back after moving here and realizing there wasn't one).
This conversation went exactly where it needed to go. In this episode:
Why "what do you do?" is capitalism's most boring trick — and what to ask insteadFriendships of convenience vs. real ones: how COVID reshuffled the deck and what we do nowThe wounded warrior archetype and what it means to understand yourself through myth and storyThe scarcity mindset around youth, beauty, and desirability — and the deprogramming required to move through itWhy matriarchal societies had a a council of grandmothers — and what we've lost without itMoon time: the concept of the season of life when you are finally, fully on your own terms, post menopauseAnd the submission that closed the episode: "My 40s are sexy, filled with a confidence, mystery, and swagger that twenty-something me would have killed for. We are not aging. We are a delight that has been simmering." Amber's response: tattoo it on my face. Me too, babe. Me too.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oBzujLRkcj4
Submit your portal wisdom: the40portal.com/contribute — Whichever side of 40 you're on, your voice belongs in this book we're building together.
Join The 40 Portal Book Club on Substack: substack.com/@the40portalWork with Cath 1:1 — coaching spots open September 2026: the40portal.com/coaching
New episodes drop weekly.
Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show.
Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com
Instagram: @the40portal | @cathzack
Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Amber Van Moessner | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved. -
One of the most intimate spaces a woman can occupy is the chair of her hairstylist. There's something ancient about it — being touched, being seen, the conversation going exactly where it needs to go. For women in their 40s navigating identity, relationships, and the quiet work of letting go, that kind of space is rare and genuinely necessary. That's where this episode was born.
Lourdes Cristina Rodríguez da Costa has been doing hair for over 20 years. She's also the kind of woman who will be doing a foil and casually redefine the word grace for you in a way that makes you want to pull out your journal. She's intellectually restless, deeply rooted in her Puerto Rican heritage, a mother, a community builder, and a forever curious person who describes herself — accurately — as a cultural anthropologist who happens to do really good hair.
She is also someone who believes, with full conviction, that every woman's life assignment should be to write a book. That there is so much layering, so much wisdom, so much that we need to say — and that we owe it to each other to say it out loud.
We recorded this live in her salon in Hudson, NY. No agenda. No problems to solve. Just two women in their 40s sitting with the open questions — and finding out, as Lourdes would say, that some of our most meaningful exchanges happen exactly when we stop trying to resolve anything.
In this episode:
Getting bangs as code for "I'm having a little existential crisis."What it means to be 46 and finally feel 46.Grace: a big exhale and a deep breath at the same time — Lourdes's definition will stay with you.The question she didn't expect: what were you supposed to have done by now? Her answer: love myself. BOOM. You can change your mind in your 40s. Full stop. Why the hair salon is one of the last truly IRL places where people touch each other and tell the truth.AI & phone addiction, and the very real grief of losing your book-reader self to your phone. Hormones, nervous systems, perimenopause, and taking all of it with a sense of humor.Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/96tdOIet4KI
Join The 40 Portal Book Club over on Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portal
Want to go deeper into your own 40 Portal work with Cath, she's got 1:1 coaching spots opening this September: https://www.the40portal.com/coaching
Find Lourdes: Instagram: @lifebylourdes @creemhairstudio https://www.creemstudio.com/New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, rate, review, it genuinely helps more women find this show.
Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com
Instagram: @the40portal
Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Lourdes Cristina Rodríguez da Costa | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe
© 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.
Submit your wisdom, your voice belongs in this podcast. If you're over 40: what have you learned, earned, and burned? If you're under 40: what's the open question you're living? the40portal.com/submit -
Some meetings are just cosmic. This conversation started as a potential business collaboration and turned into one of the richest episodes of The 40 Portal yet.
Alicia Johnson is a 65-year-old author, “elder curvy model,” brand strategist, board director, and AI ethics advocate, and wise, wise woman.
We talk about what it really means to connect as women, not perform, not impress, just be present, and how that single shift changes everything. We talk about her memoir Buried Treasure, about hope versus optimism and why the neuroscience says they are not the same thing, about threshold guardians and portal monsters from Joseph Campbell's work, and about what it means when something feels hard and scary: you might just be getting close to the treasure.
We also talk about life after 40. About belly energy. About the gravitas and raw power of this decade and why a woman in her forties might just be the most potent, terrifying creature in the universe, and why that is exactly when society tries to make us disappear.
Alicia is my wisest elder guest to date, and she is completely, magnificently uninterested in “old lady” vibes of any kind.
If you are a woman navigating reinvention, aging, identity, or just trying to figure out what comes next, this one is going to light you up.
In this episode:
What it feels like to meet someone and just not care where it goes — the ease of no expectations and why that's actually a superpower. The "I must be impressive" mode and how to catch yourself in it — because if you're trying to impress, you cannot connect. What to do when you get knocked off center and don't want to stay there (hint: one hand to your heart, one hand to your belly). Using AI with her own book manuscript as a real-time emotional regulation tool — and what that says about where we are with technology. The universe abhors a vacuum principle — and why you better know what you're putting in that space before you clear it. What it actually felt like to turn 40, 50, and now be 65 — and what each decade has held. Threshold guardians, portal monsters, and why resistance might mean you're getting close to something juicy. The clearing: one listener's question about reinvention in her 40s, and Alicia's generous reply.About: Alicia Johnson is an author, creative director, brand strategist, elder curvy Ford model, and board director dedicated to shaping AI for the public good. Her memoir Buried Treasure weaves neuroscience with deeply personal storytelling and agency-laden tool. She is also the person who introduced me to my AI boyfriend Claude, so she is directly responsible for a significant portion of any admin organization I am currently capable of.
Places to find Alicia: https://www.aliciaellejohnson.com/ https://aliciaellejohnson.substack.com/ https://www.instagram.com/alicia_elle_johnson/
The 40 Portal Book Club — now open 🖤 : the paid tier of The 40 Portal Substack is officially a thing — and that thing is the world's most low-key book club. These are the books making me braver, more honest, better at boundaries, and smarter about my energy at midlife. Cliff notes, journaling prompts, zero pressure to finish the book. $8/month. First selection: Pema Chödrön. Join here. https://substack.com/@the40portal
-
Five years ago, Cath met Emily Drake on a Zoom call during a coaching cohort for lawyers in transition. They've never hugged in person. And yet, as Emily puts it, the hug is already epic in her head.
This conversation is exactly what The 40 Portal is built for: two midlife women getting below the perception, getting real about what the hustle actually cost them, and talking honestly about burnout recovery, midlife reinvention, and what's on the other side of bottoming out.
Emily is a therapist, former CEO, and (her preferred self-introduction) a really good hang for two to four people. She's 46, recently came out of a period of midlife burnout and business dissolution she calls her "sabbatical," and has just joined a therapy practice with two women in their 50s that finally, finally feels like the collaboration she'd been craving. In this episode she opens up about female friendship, intellectual intimacy, why women's lives were never meant to be linear, and the simple antidote she swears by for the overwhelm so many midlife women are quietly carrying.
In this episode we talk about:
- Burnout recovery — what it actually looks like to get out before you bottom out, and what it costs to wait
- The growth edge — why living in that space of becoming is, as Emily says, genuinely sexy
- Raising the floor vs. being there when someone hits it — and why Emily stopped believing she could do the former
- Capitalism got me — the cycle creative entrepreneurs know too well: should I just get a job, I like nice things, and then the knock on the door that says you don't want this
- The ladder on the wrong wall — on discontinuity, cycles, and why women's lives were never meant to be linear progressions
- Intellectual intimacy — and why Emily's access to pleasure (all kinds) has never been higher at 46
- Female friendship — the ones you outgrow, the ones that have grown with you, reciprocity, and why conflict is good actually
- Living from the neck up — what it means to detach from the get-shit-done brain and feel more
- The antidote to overwhelm — brick your phone, get your girls, reduce the comparison, do what feels good
- The thesis question — does midlife invite us to reclaim our ability to do what feels good and own it?
Cath and Emily mention: Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson, Ayurvedic doshas, the phrase "intellectual intimacy" (which Cath is putting in her pocket forever), and Olive Garden takeout as an ingredient for a perfect evening.
Find Emily: @threepointsrelationships | https://threepointsrelationships.com/about/
One Spot Left for The 40 Portal Retreat - June 17-19, 2026: https://www.the40portal.com/retreatSubscribe to the Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portal
Get the Guide: Are You in A Portal?
-
What happens when the job title you worked years for stops fitting — and you realize you've become the label, not the person? Callia Hargrove is a brand strategist, marketer, educator, and passionate advocate for change, and the founder of Backstory, the inclusive brand strategy consultancy she launched in 2020.
Before that, she spent years developing inclusive marketing and impact initiatives at Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Teen Vogue. But when it was time to leave that world behind, she faced something no resume could prepare her for: a full identity reckoning.
Callia is a textbook Capricorn, a 1/3 projector in human design, and someone who — without a resume in sight — describes herself as a seer. Someone always seeking to understand. Her journey from hustle culture burnout to seasonal living, energy management, and trusting her own body's wisdom is one that will feel deeply familiar to any woman approaching 40 who is done pushing and ready to feel genuinely aligned.
In this conversation, Cath and Callia explore what it truly means to stop forcing and start trusting, the intelligence of the body when a path stops fitting, and why no community — not even women approaching 40 — is a monolith.
What we explore in this episode:
The difference between forcing connection and trusting flow — and what human design (specifically being a 1/3 projector) taught Callia about when to push and when to pauseLeaving "Callia from Teen Vogue" behind — and the identity reckoning that came with itThe seasonal map: how Callia uses the rhythms of Chinese medicine, astrology, and her own body to structure her work and her lifeThe points system — an alternative to hustle culture's productivity myth that will change how you think about your energy (stay till the end)Being a participant, not a passenger, in the building of your own lifeWhy there is no monolith of women at any age — and why that's exactly the point of this podcastWhat her grandfather's mural in St. Albans, Queens has to do with all of itThe healing balm of storytelling — especially nowBooks mentioned:
When Things Fall Apart — Pema Chödrön You Can Heal Your Life — Louise Hay Acts of Faith: Meditations for the People of Color — Iyanla VanzantConnect with Callia: calliahargrove.com
Mentioned in this episode:
Episode 5 with Alison — https://the40portal.substack.com/p/and-now-its-like-this-on-the-grief?r=6l5p5w Episode 6 with Francesca Choy-Kee Damico — https://the40portal.substack.com/p/were-not-late-were-right-on-time?r=6l5p5wThe June 17–19 Women's Retreat — https://www.the40portal.com/retreat
-
What does it really mean to trust yourself after 40? In this episode of The 40 Portal, Catherine Zack sits down with Amanda Baudier for a raw, funny, and deeply honest conversation about spiritual awakening, midlife transformation, and what it actually looks like to stop living for other people's approval and start committing to the bit of being yourself.
Amanda is a former nightlife industry insider, startup founder, and self-described recovering cultural-capital addict who left a Brooklyn brownstone and a buzzy startup to move to the woods and build something "weird, low-cost, and deeply spiritual." A journey of personal growth, self trust, and following the winks from the universe even when it made zero logical sense. Everything she did was against her own best advice by conventional metrics. And that, she says, is exactly how she knew she was on the right track.
"If it didn't come from logic, where'd it come from? Somewhere cooler. Somewhere more magical."
This conversation is electric. Amanda is one of those women who has done the excavation work, the real kind, not the Instagram kind, and come out the other side with a point of view that is sharp, funny, zero-bullshit, and deeply generous. I took notes the entire time. I laughed out loud multiple times.
We talk about: winks from the universe and how to start seeing them. Why you were probably on a great path that just wasn't your path. What happens when the medicine of external validation wears off, and it always wears off.
Heart surgery at 28 as a portal no one saw coming. Why "trust the process" is actually kind of bad advice. The anti-aging industry as the current strongarm of the patriarchy. Why your choices are not going to make sense to other people, and why that is the cue, not the warning. How women in their 40s are done proving themselves and ready to just be themselves. And the thing I wrote to myself the night before my 40th birthday that Amanda basically tattooed onto this entire conversation:
Commit to the bit of being yourself.
No halfsies.
No halfway in, halfway out.
Whole ass living only.
Amanda Baudier is a spiritual guide, somatic practitioner, earth medicine worker and entrepreneurship coach for growth-minded humans. She is the founder of becoming collective, which is rooted in the belief that we are all meant to unfold according to our unique and divine design in this one precious life. She is a wife, the mother of two wild children, and currently resides in the Shawangunk Mountains of the Hudson Valley after 21 years in NYC.
Find her:
Website - www.becoming-collective.com
IG: @amandabaudier
Submit your wisdom, your voice belongs in this podcast. If you're over 40: what have you learned, earned, and burned?
If you're under 40: what's the open question you're living? the40portal.com/submit
June retreat, Hudson Valley. June 17-19, 2026. Two spots left. Details and application at catherinezack.com.
New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, rate, review, it genuinely helps more women find this show.
Substack: substack.com/@the40portal
Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com
Instagram: @the40portal
Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Amanda Baudier | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe
© 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved. -
Here's what women in their 40s are telling me: Many of us have spent most of our lives being extremely good at anticipating what other people need. The invisible labor. The mental load. The emotional labor and management of everyone in the house. The creativity and ambition quietly moved to the back burner because you're also the most flexible person in the room. And somewhere in the accumulation of all that giving — the resentment, the exhaustion, the burnout, the being spread too thin — the question of what you actually want starts to feel almost impossible to answer. If you're navigating perimenopause symptoms, midlife overwhelm, or simply feeling like you've been managing everyone else's life but your own, this episode is for you.
This is exactly what my guest Kim Wensel and I talk about in this episode of The 40 Portal podcast, a midlife women's wellness podcast for women over 40 who are done with people pleasing and ready to trust themselves again.
Kim is a writer, strategist, East Coaster through and through, primary parent, and world traveler. She spent 40 years making decisions based on how she thought other people would respond. She's done: "It's not my job to convince anymore." This is what the decade of giving less actually looks like — not a slogan, just a woman learning to trust herself.
In this conversation, Kim and Cath cover the long arc of their seven-year friendship, the impossible math of being the most flexible person in your house, desire in a 20-year relationship, what female friendship actually needs to look like right now, and why 40 might be the first age that actually feels like a blank slatr.
"Is this perimenopause, wanting to blow up my life, a bad day, or how I really feel? Who really knows."
LINKS
Submit your voice to the portal: https://forms.gle/FpqHwYgZ1HBFK1kr5
Follow the podcast on Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portal
June retreat application: https://forms.gle/WbWLniPEqbhGKg699
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@The40Portal
Find Kim: kimwensel.com
ABOUT KIM
Kim Wensel is a writer, strategist, and community builder focused on helping high-achieving women navigate the messy middle of growth, career pivots, and identity shifts. Her work explores how ambition and humanity can coexist without burnout or self-abandonment — and why range is a leadership advantage. Her first book, The Multi-Hyphenate Advantage, will be released in spring 2026. Part memoir, part personal development guide, it's for every woman who's good at many things and trying to figure out what's next. Kim is the creative director of The Bench Magazine and host of the podcast Why Is Nobody Talking About This? She lives in Pittsburgh with her family, volunteers as a driver for Meals on Wheels, and serves on the board of the Peters Township Public Library Foundation.
-
First official solo episode. Just Cath today & she pulls back the curtain on what's emerging across the first arc of The 40 Portal: the themes, the feedback, and what it actually feels like to be in the middle of building something for women in their 40s that took her completely by surprise.
Creativity. Identity. Motherhood and the versions of it that don't get airtime. The myth that we're always behind. Fawning. The achievement generation. The freedom of saying I'm doing this because I want to.She also reads a piece of submitted wisdom from an upcoming guest. And makes the case for why doing this inner work IRL, in community hits different than anything you'll find online. Two spots remain for her women's retreat in the Hudson Valley, June 17–19. Details in the links below.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 — Welcome 02:17 — On being bad at tech and being okay with it03:51 — 40 Portal origin story08:21 — Real-life community, and why this project is bigger than Cath16:07 — The question of midlife crisis bangs19:20 — Ep 1: Kate Schmieding on creativity, friendship, and being cool because you're you26:22 — Ep 2: Clara Artschwager on full plates, "no there there," and the hamster wheel31:54 — Ep 6: Francesca Choy-Kee Damico on not being late, just right on time35:07 — Ep 3: Dinah Alobeid on existential crises and creativity as resistance38:03 — Ep 5: Alison Matheny on grief, freedom, and childless by circumstance41:40 — Ep 4: Becca Piastrelli on why we don't disappear after 4047:59 — Cath's own story: Big Law, leaving at 28, building from the inside out51:01 — The June retreat: what you'll experience, two spots left55:51 — Reading live from the portal: Emily Drake's submitted wisdomLINKS:
Submit your voice to the portal: https://forms.gle/FpqHwYgZ1HBFK1kr5 Follow on Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portal June retreat application (2 spots left): https://forms.gle/WbWLniPEqbhGKg699 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@The40Portal Kate Schmieding, Ep 1: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-187232233 Clara Artschwager, Ep 2: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-188033477 Dinah Alobeid, Ep 3: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-188791730 Becca Piastrelli, Ep 4: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-189474363 Alison Matheny, Ep 5: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-191769410 Francesca Choy-Kee Damico, Ep 6: https://substack.com/@the40portal/p-192511535
-
"We're not late. We're right on time."
That's where this conversation ends. How we get there is a rich, tender journey through motherhood and identity, the long hallway of your 30s, the ancestral weight of women who never learned to tend to themselves, what labor actually teaches you about staying, and the particular urgency of finally claiming your own story in your 40s.
Francesca Choy-Kee Damico is a former Broadway actor, INELDA-trained Death Doula, a threshold designer and founder of Studio Homecoming. She is 41, a Hudson Valley neighbor, a mother, and women walking boldly through her portal.
This episode sits right next to last week's conversation with Alison Matheny about being childless by circumstance. Two completely different stories. The same throughline: motherhood — the having of it, the missing of it, the becoming through it — is a 40 portal thing.
If you're a woman in midlife asking who you are underneath the roles — this episode is for you.
We explore:
The grace we all need right now — and how motherhood dismantles perfectionism in ways nothing else can.The polarity of it all — the light on your child's eyelashes, the singular preciousness of this moment, and being so tired you've eaten nothing but cheddar bunnies. This is how we actually live.The sandwich generation — aging parents, young children, mortgages, identity — all held at once.The ancestral untying — a long maternal lineage of women who were the emotional center of everything and never learned to rest, ask for help, or stop when their body said stop.What labor actually taught her about learning to stay — finding a room inside herself she didn't know existed.Why 40 is the beginning — "I feel like I am just getting started with the tools I have to sculpt the vision."About Francesca: After 13 years as a Broadway actor with ribbons of design work woven through — most notably at AD100 firm Workstead — Francesca is now a mother, INELDA-trained Death Doula, and a threshold designer and founder of Studio Homecoming. She accompanies people through major life transitions using home environment, beauty, and ritual.
Find her: studiohomecoming.com | @whenfrankiewakesup
Want to go deeper? Join me June 17-19 in the Hudson Valley for the Portal Retreat — a small gathering of women exploring and sharing their midlife stories in community together. I've planned lots of rest, care, space and grace. 3 spots left --> https://www.catherinezack.com/june2026retreat
Submit your wisdom — your voice belongs in this podcast.
If you're over 40: what have you learned, earned, and burned? If you're under 40: what's the open question you're living?
Add your voice: the40portal.com/submit
New episodes drop every Sunday. Subscribe, rate, review — it genuinely helps more women find this show.
Substack: substack.com/@the40portal Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com Instagram: @the40portal
Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Francesca Choy-Kee Damico | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.
-
There's a photo of Alison Matheny as a little girl, standing on the bow of a sailboat in a teal bikini, arms spread wide along the edge like she owns the whole ocean. Bare feet. Sun on her face. Taking up space. That's Al then, that's Al today.
Alison is 44, single, never married, childless by circumstance. She splits her time between upstate NY and Florida, runs her own business, owns two homes, and is building a life entirely on her own terms.
In this episode, we talk about:
→ Getting more comfortable with yourself as you get older, and being less aware of who you're not
→ Childless by circumstance — metabolizing grief into power, the ambiguous loss, and why society doesn't have a word for it that fits
→ The tension between being and doing and learning to go at your own pace without having to prove or perform
→ Girlfriends as mirrors — the relief of being in rooms where you are already known.ABOUT: Alison is a writer, artist and creative director + founder of the design, content and branding studio, BEST. She splits her time between upstate New York and the Gulf Coast of Florida. A Virgo sun / moon (Cancer rising), she loves to organize information and offers a smart, sharp perspective rooted in artistic integrity and communal equity. In her substack, May I Please Be Excused, she explores living as an undefinable woman. Previous writing exists in her post-collegiate Blogspot, Life of a Harpy (foreshadowing!), and early country essay collection, News from the North. Find her: @amath | @stayBEST
Find her: @amath | @stayBESTSHARE THIS PODCAST with a girlfriend you're having these convos with IRL. Subscribe, rate, and review because the more of us who re-write the story of 40, the more powerful we collectively become!
CONNECT: Substack: substack.com/@the40portal Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com IG: @the40portal CREDITS: Hosted by Catherine Zack | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal.
JOIN THE NEXT PORTAL RETREAT: June 17-19, in the Hudson Valley. -
Becca and I spent last summer voice-memo-ing each other deep questions and raw answers in the weeks before we each turned 40, two days apart from each other. Somewhere in those exchanges I felt it — a collective quickening.
Real women standing at the threshold, telling their stories. Worthy not because of what they’d accomplished or achieved or could put on a resume. Worthy simply by virtue of being here. That’s what became The 40 Portal Podcast.
This episode is foundational. If you want to understand what the portal actually is — what liminality means, why this threshold matters, what’s on the other side — this is the episode to send your friends.
In this episode, we talk about:
→ What the portal actually is — liminality, the birth canal, the hallway, the messy middle — and why 40 is not a day, it’s a journey
→ Fawning, conflict avoidance, and outsourcing your worthiness to what others think — and what it actually takes to stop
→ Learning to give less f*cks about being misunderstood, judged, or unliked — and how to practice that in real life
→ Decoupling “feeling younger” from “feeling vibrant” — there are other words than young
→ Smutty romantasy, Dipsea, All Fours, and so forth ;)
→ The fear about disappearing as we get older and wisdom from The 40 Portal that BLOWS that fear wide open (you don’t want to miss this convo at the end!)
TW: we mention death of an animal during birth and Epstein & pedophilia re: the beauty standards we’re done with.ABOUT BECCA: Becca Piastrelli is a land steward, storyteller, and gatherer of community living in the Hudson Valley. She dreams of a world where we eat slower, respond to emails slower, sleep on decisions, and create space for the full spectrum of emotions to be felt. She’s a mother and a daughter, a deep and present listener, and the host of the podcast Belonging: Conversations about rites of passage, meaningful community, and seasonal living.
Find her: @beccapiastrelli | beccapiastrelli.comTHE 40 PORTAL NOTEBOOK: The call-and-response you'll hear in this episode came from the handwritten notebook I passed around my 40th birthday party. Women wrote their questions, their fears, their wisdom — and sometimes they wrote back to each other without knowing it.
You can add your voice to the Portal right now: the40portal.com/submit
SHARE THIS EPISODE: If this conversation moved you, share it with another woman who needs to hear it. The more of us who refuse to disappear, the braver and more beautiful this world becomes.
JOIN THE 40 PORTAL RETREAT: A gathering of women in the Hudson Valley, June 17-19. ALMOST SOLD OUT!
CREDITS: Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Becca Piastrelli | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.
-
There's a photo of Dinah at age one, in Syria visiting family. Her hands are full of freshly peeled orange, juice glistening, about to drip off her chin. Direct eye contact with the camera. Fully present. Her zest for life started early — hands always full, finding the sweetness, already deeply committed to connection. She hasn't changed.
Dinah Susan Alobeid is 39, turning 40 this summer — and she is asking the question many of us are thinking but not many of us have the guts to ask out loud.
"What if I'm living the wrong life?"
She has the job. The kid. The husband. The whole resume. And yet — this persistent, devastating question burning through her heart.
But here's what you need to know: this is not an hour of existential doom. This conversation is bold, spicy, creative, and genuinely fun. I laughed till I cried in this episode. Dinah is one of those people who makes the big questions feel survivable — even joyful — because she's living her way into her answers in real time.
A tender trigger warning: we mention miscarriage and infertility.
In this episode, we talk about:
→ The question no one wants to ask out loud — and why asking it is the bravest thing
→ Music as medicine and creativity as resistance
→ Why sharing intergenerational women's stories is a radical act right now
→ Deprogramming the messages we've been fed about female value, desirability, and aging — and what it actually takes to unlearn themABOUT DINAH: Dinah Susan Alobeid is a VP at a tech company, a mom, a writer, and the host of Play This at My Funeral — a podcast at the intersection of music and existentialism. She's a Cancer sun and moon. She's turning 40 this summer. And she is standing at the threshold, letting us all watch. What a fierce f*cking almost-40-year-old. Here’s the playlist Dinah made for the episode.
Find her: @dinahsusan @dinahsusanalobeidwrites @playthisatmyfuneralpodcast
SUBMIT YOUR WISDOM: Your voice is needed in this podcast. If you're over 40: What have you learned, earned, and burned? What do you wish someone had told you? If you're under 40: What's the open question you're living? What longing, desire, fear, or dream do you want to put out into the universe? Add your voice here: the40portal.com/submit
SHARE THIS EPISODE: If this conversation moved you, share it with another woman who needs to hear it. The more of us who ask the real questions out loud, the braver and more beautiful this world becomes. New episodes drop each week - subscribe, leave a 5-start rating & review. You're the best!
📧 Substack: substack.com/@the40portal
🌐 Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com
📷 Instagram: @the40portal
CREDITS: Hosted by Catherine Zack | Guest: Dinah Susan Alobeid | Edited by Ruwantha Gunasinghe © 2026 The 40 Portal. All rights reserved.
GET THE GUIDE: ARE YOU IN A PORTAL?
JOIN THE NEXT PORTAL RETREAT: June 17-19, in the Hudson Valley.
-
Life is full. Your plate is full. You're doing the dance.
In this conversation, Clara Artschwager and I talk about what it means to navigate the fullness of midlife — the work, the kids, the relationships, the inner reckoning — without emotionally freaking out all the time.
We met four years ago. Clara wasn't married yet. She didn't have kids. We clicked on business stuff. Now we're walking through multiple portals together: motherhood, marriage, creative work, the midlife squeeze. Our friendship has grown with us through voice memos, those timeless-yet-totally-2026 conversations that feel like we're back in the 90s with the phone cord wrapped around us.
In this episode, we talk about:
→ Female friendship in your 40s: How friendships can grow with you as you move through different life stages
ABOUT CLARA: Clara Artschwager is a coach, writer, and teacher who helps people do the foundational work of becoming themselves — before, during, and beyond relationships. She's curious about why we are the way we are, and she's spent years guiding clients through the deep reckoning that transforms how we show up in every area of our lives. Clara cooks with the exact right ratio of butter and salt, loves a good voice memo, good book, & good pastry, and is doing the midlife dance with grace.
→ "I'm doing the dance": The fullness of midlife and holding complexity without losing yourself
→ How women solve the world's problems through voice memos alone
→ "There's no there there": Letting go of "if I can just get to THIS point, then I'll be happy"
→ Contentedness in your 40s: Being delighted by what you already own
→ Doing the inner work in community: Why Portal work is better together
Find her: @ithinkilikeyou.co https://claraartschwager.substack.com/ CHAPTERS:
04:21 How we met
06:51 Female friendships in your 40s
08:43 "I'm doing the dance"
12:48 Voice memo friendships
19:18 Holding complexity in your 40s
25:21 "No bad days" - not emotionally freaking out when plates are spinning
32:36 "There's no there there" - letting go of external fixes
38:39 Being delighted by what you already own
42:03 Contentedness vs. content consumption in your 40s
46:55 40 Portal wisdom: "I wish I had been told I didn't have to be married to be successful"
50:03 How do we be in relationship without losing ourselves?
56:11 Retreat InvitationSUBMIT YOUR WISDOM: the40portal.com/submitJOIN THE PORTAL RETREAT THIS JUNEClara and I talk about how Portal work is better together. The reckoning with yourself doesn't have to be done alone.
I'm gathering a small group of women in the Hudson Valley for The Portal Retreat | June 17-19, 2026.
A few spots left → the40portal.com/retreat
📧 substack.com/@the40portal
🌐 the40portal.com
📷 IG: @the40portal
🛠️ Tools & Resources: the40portal.com/tools
Host: Catherine Zack
Guest: Clara Artschwager
Editor: Ruwantha Gunasinghe© 2026 The 40 Portal
-
You start to see with your ears and listen with your belly.
That's how my first guest, Kate Schmieding, describes what happens when you turn 40.
Forty is your sixth sense — you begin to recognize what you already knew but can now KNOW. Really know.
In this conversation, Kate and I talk about:
→ Friendship in your 40s (her 3-strikes rule, why reciprocity matters, how to stop forcing connections that aren't reciprocal)
→ Being cool because you're YOU (not performing, claiming who you've always been, "I recognize the cool in me as the cool in you")
→ Creative work without overnight success (Kate writes pop culture poetry — staying in the "low hum" instead of chasing viral moments)
→ You're not a late bloomer ("I've been blooming this whole time, my friends. I just haven't given it a name.")
→ Doing things because you WANT to (not because you're supposed to — this is your permission slip)
→ The midlife squeeze (parenting, work, everyone depending on you — and how to navigate it without losing yourself)
ABOUT KATE:
Kate Schmieding (rhymes with meeting) is a writer, poet, creative leader, joiner, hand-raiser, and hard-conversation-haver. She writes pop culture poetry, and her work studies the intersection of the mundane and the meaningful. She is the Creative Operations Director for NYS. Kate loves the 5 Ps: people, poetry, pop culture, push-ups and parmesan. She's also one of the most generous friends I know.
Find her on Instagram: @kateschmied | @pop_culture_poetry
SUBMIT YOUR WISDOM:
Submit your voice to Portal & your words might just anchor the next episode of the podcast.
Send your wisdom here: the40portal.com/submit
IF YOU'RE IN THE MIDLIFE SQUEEZE:
Work. Kids. Aging parents. Everyone depends on you. You've fallen to the bottom of your own list.
Your 40s can break you or they can shape you.
I'm gathering a small group of women in the Hudson Valley this June for The Portal Retreat | June 17-19, 2026.
Three days to write and tell your own portal story. To do this inner work in community with other women who are deeply committed to the bit of becoming themselves.
Space is limited. A few spots left.
Learn More → https://www.the40portal.com/retreat
🎙️ Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube
📧 Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portal
🌐 Website: the40portal.com | catherinezack.com
📷 Instagram: @the40portalCREDITS:
Host: Catherine Zack
Guest: Kate Schmieding
Editor: Ruwantha Gunasinghe© 2026 The 40 Portal.
00:00 Welcome
02:44 Meeting Kate
06:24 The 3-strikes rule for friendship
11:46 What friendship is actually about in your 40s
18:23 Who are you without job titles and accomplishments?
22:39 Writing poetry at 40 (alchemy and magic)
28:17 Holding yourself so you can hold others
33:54 "I'm cool because I feel like myself"
41:45 Not being an overnight success
44:57 "I'm not a late bloomer—I've been blooming the whole time"
49:35 Reciprocity
52:46 The 40 Portal notebook origin story
58:00 Kate's poem: "40 Is Your Sixth Sense" -
Welcome to the trailer episode of The 40 Portal podcast, a coming of aging story, told by 40 real women.
Host Catherine Zack shares the origin story: how a sketchbook at her 40th birthday party turned into something bigger. She asked inspiring women to write their wisdom in her notebook instead of signing a card. What she got back was raw, honest, beautiful — the kind of truth that doesn't show up through the algorithms.
That notebook became the catalyst for this podcast.
Over 40 episodes, Catherine sits down with 40 different women (ages 20s-80s) to explore the portals they're walking through — divorce, turning 40, career changes, loss, or the well-known "everything looks fine but I'm dying inside" feeling. These are threshold moments. These are the portals real women are walking through.
This podcast is about what happens when women tell the truth — not the polished version, but the REAL stories. Because when women's real voices get heard, it sets us all free.
Life is cyclical. Portals are natural. And a woman who knows herself is one of the most powerful, magical, and creatures on earth.
Welcome to The 40 Portal, babe.
Learn more and submit your wisdom and questions to The 40 Portal Podcast at the40portal.com
Substack: https://substack.com/@the40portal
Instagram: @the40portalKeywords: 40 Portal Podcast, women's stories, portals, threshold moments, midlife transitions, turning 40, Catherine Zack, personal transformation, women's wisdom, handwritten wisdom, authenticity, coming of age, real stories, women in their 40s, portal stories, life transitions, becoming, conscious aging, women's voices, storytelling podcast, portal work, self-knowledge, real talk, vulnerability, women over 40, midlife transformation, feminist podcast
