The Midlife Rebel Podcast
Welcome to Midlife Rebel , the podcast for women in their 40s and 50s who are done playing by the old rules.
Here, we redefine what it means to thrive in midlife—where health, purpose, and freedom meet.
Each week, we explore the intersection of body, mind, and spirit through honest conversations about holistic health, emotional healing, and awakening to your next chapter. With expert guests, soulful stories, and practical wisdom, you’ll find the tools and inspiration to live with more vitality, authenticity, and joy.
Whether you’re reinventing yourself, reclaiming your wellbeing, or simply craving deeper meaning, Midlife Rebel invites you to embrace your evolution and design life on your own terms.
Contact Nadine: https://midliferebel.beam.ly/contact
The Midlife Rebel Podcast
Meditation, Menopause & Midlife Awakening | Lynne Goldberg
The old story says midlife is a crisis. This conversation offers something different.
I’m joined by meditation teacher and Breethe co-founder Lynne Goldberg for an honest, grounded conversation about navigating midlife with awareness rather than fear. Lynne doesn’t speak in theory. She shares the real seasons of her life — profound loss, divorce, cancer, and reinvention — and the simple practices that helped her stay steady when life felt anything but.
We talk about how awareness interrupts autopilot, why “future tripping” fuels anxiety, and how a daily practice can soften fear and bring you back to what’s actually happening now. We also explore the bigger midlife cycles many women feel — the internal push to question patterns, change direction, and live more honestly — and what it’s like to move through a youth-focused culture that often overlooks women in this stage of life.
Menopause becomes part of that conversation too — not as something to endure or fix, but as a meaningful pause that invites a new chapter. Lynne speaks to visibility, self-worth, and the shift from external metrics to inner authority.
We also touch on creativity, sexuality, and desire — how they change, deepen, and often become more embodied with time. Lynne shares how Breethe grew from a personal practice into a global platform, and how her forthcoming book arrived not through force, but through alignment.
This is a conversation about meeting midlife with compassion, clarity, and choice — one breath at a time.
If this episode resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who might need it, and leave a review to help more midlife rebels find their way.
You can find Lynne's profile in our Guest Directory
https://midliferebel.beam.ly/person/lynne-goldberg
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I'd love you to send me a text to let me know what you thought of the episode, if you have any questions, or if you've got suggestions for future topics or guests you'd like to hear from.
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Welcome to the Midlife Rebel Podcast. It's time to rewrite the midlife story for women who refuse to be put in a box. Because maybe midlife isn't a crisis. Maybe it's an awakening. Midlife is filled with lots of twists and turns we don't always see coming. Our bodies are changing, our emotions can run wild, our thinking deepens, and suddenly we're questioning purpose, meaning, and how we want to live this next chapter. At this time in our lives, we really have two choices. Ignore all the changes and push through, or get curious and seek answers. And here at the Midlife Rebel podcast, we're choosing curiosity, and we're bringing you conversations and support to help you navigate this powerful transition. Today's guest, Lynn Goldberg, is a leading meditation teacher in North America and co-founder of the Breathe App. Lynn is no stranger to the Midlife Journey, and she's here to share wisdom, practical tools, and groundful insights to help you feel supported through one of the most transformative stages of your life. Thanks for joining me, Lynn. This is going to be here. I just love it when you you find these people that are just so aligned with this midlife experience because we are to a degree told, or well, probably more than to a degree, told that, you know, we do just have to get on with it. It's just one of those things. And we're kind of given a story of what midlife is and the things that we might go through, you know, the crisis. But in fact, it's a really powerful part of or, you know, yeah, part of our lives.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think that idea of a crisis is one of the most um it it's such an interesting way to describe, you know, the the word crisis in Chinese really is opportunity. And I think what's so exciting about this opportunity that we're given is that up until now we've been following societal rules, and we've really truly been honoring our parents' voices in our heads or our teachers' voices in our heads, and we've just been checking all those boxes. And it's so exciting when you get to a stage in your life where you say, Hey, I'm a grown-up, and I don't have to do that anymore. And that opportunity to not follow everybody else's rules, you know, to not check the box on being the good girl in my case, or you know, so many other rules that we follow is is such an exciting time. It really is. You know, and a lot of people go off to ballet or they or they do, they buy themselves a new car or whatever it is that they decide that they want to do, and that more meaningful coming inside ourselves and really being able to evaluate what really lights us up is to me that opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:It is a really um important opportunity, but it's it is um uh it does include lots of twists and turns, doesn't it? And so we're not we're not always completely aware when we're in the process of this transition, this transformation, that uh that that it is an opportunity, it can just feel like a bit of a whirlwind and a bit confusing as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love the word aware because of course, as a meditation teacher, that's what is so important, that sense of being aware, on purpose, moment to moment, right? That's what we practice all day long. And if if you're really truly practicing mindfulness, and to me, that sense of awareness of taking yourself outside of the story, not being caught up in the whole drama of it all, and just observing, oh, amazing. This is definitely a tornado. And uh can I be in the center of it as opposed to on the periphery?
SPEAKER_00:Obviously, as a meditation teacher, as you said, this is uh you know your work. So were you in the midlife journey when you started to meditate, or have you been uh fortunate enough to be like in that experience before the midlife journey unfolded?
SPEAKER_01:That's a great question. I I am one of the I feel so blessed because I've had several opportunities to really practice.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And I had in my late 30s, I would say, maybe no, earlier. Ooh, gosh, I'm dating myself. But I would say before midlife, um, I was pregnant with twin girls and ended up losing them. And then shortly after I lost them at six months, so I did give birth and I did uh hold them and have them alive for two years, uh two days, pardon me. Um and so I I did have that loss, and then shortly after that, um, my marriage broke up. That was a 15-year relationship, and there was just so much grief and two people who just didn't know how to really help one another and ended up, you know, really rubbing at each other as opposed to holding on to one another. And then uh my mom was diagnosed with uh cancer, and she ended up passing away. And then right after that happened, I lost my job. So I was blessed in the sense that I lost all my identities, right? I I lost I was uh no longer a wife, no longer a mother, no longer a daughter, no longer the business person that I saw myself as. And I had been dabbling with meditation at that point because I had been trying to um navigate. Well, I think I started dabbling with meditation when I was trying to get pregnant initially. And of course, at that point everyone just kept saying, just relax and everything will be fine. And yeah, and uh and so meditation had already been a part of my life and I had you know used it, but I was more what I called an emergency meditator. So I would wake up at three o'clock in the morning and I would, you know, meditate myself back to sleep, but it wasn't a daily practice that I sort of honored. And then when everything sort of um fell away and I was left with me, I was lucky enough to have something that helped ground me and helped give me a sense of soulless and also helped me recognize that you know I could find some peace in the middle of all of it. And that was really useful for me. Um and then I started teaching meditating. So I started studying, I started teaching, I started, and then obviously founded this app because I was so excited about this tool that I had that I thought, oh my God, if I could teach my children how to do this, what a gift that would be for them. And they didn't want to learn from their mother. Okay. So I had to I had to find other people that I could teach so that they could teach my kids. And so that's how I was lucky enough to start this app. And then from there ended up having um many, many blessed years of this wonderful practice until at the age of 59, my my marriage fell apart for the second time. And I thought, and I I was very blessed, and I had gotten pregnant and had a child, and I was very lucky to have had this whole other life. And as life does, it's sort of this I this idea of well, I think you have more to learn here. There's a growth edge that we're missing. And so I was um excited slash left in um in a sort of I would call that liminal stage between so you you learn what it is that you've been doing all those years, and then as the onion layers get peeled away, you get deeper and deeper. And I I was very fortunate that I did have this skill that I knew how to use, because in the second end of the story, I ended up getting um diagnosed with cancer, and then had a second recurrence, and then my daughter went away to school, and of course I was, you know, in this marriage that had a long-term 20-year marriage at that point that had just ended. And so again, I had had the same experience, but 20 years later with a lot more wisdom. And I feel that the skills that I've really honed at this point have been so helpful for me that I'm like, hello, everybody has to you need to know this stuff. Yeah, this stuff works because when you're when you are facing adversity or trying to figure out how to navigate some of those real life and death situations, it's great to have some stuff that you can fall back on. So so short answer, yes, I had skills. Longer answer reinforcement.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um wow. Yeah, that's a real sort of test from the universe, isn't it? How much do you trust in the things that you've learned?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. A, that that trust, and B, I think, you know, I feel so blessed because I've had to actually, you know, what the first night that I that I remember when my my ex had left and I was lying alone in bed, and I thought, and I had just had this cancer diagnosis, and I was really terrified. I I can't think of another word to describe that existential terror. I'm gonna die, and I'm gonna die alone. And then I was able to say, Well, that's future tripping, right? That's not happening right now. You're in a bed, you have sheets, you have a roof over your head, you're alive, nothing is happening to you at this moment, and so I was able to really stay present, and then I was very lucky to resource and start when when I started to really offer myself compassion and love, that feeling of oh, I am just that's all there is. It was overwhelming. I felt like I had just jumped into a sea of love, and there was nothing but love inside me, outside of me, everywhere. And it was the most magical experience. And it was not just trust the universe, it wasn't a conscious choice to trust the universe, it was a felt experience of this is who you are. You don't have to look. You are this is you, and it was the most breathtakingly beautiful experience. Um, I don't think you get moments like that unless you're in a sort of existential state.
SPEAKER_00:Do you um believe or believe uh for want of a better word that we come in as a soul and choose our experience?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's such a great question, and I have no knowledge of that. So I wouldn't be able to be able to say that with any sort of authority. I have a sense of trust that everything has been um designed for our growth. And so if you believe that you are a soul that has an evolutionary path, uh then I suppose that's one explanation. I'm not certain I I certainly do believe that we are here as that the universe itself is constantly expanding. We're all in an expansive state, we're always growing. And if you think about life and love, one plus one is three, right? It's that evolutionary uh expansion. So do I believe we're meant to? Of course I do. And and yeah, I think uh it's a reflection of all of us, it's not it's not me growing here as one individual soul.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'd love to obviously people listening are gonna want to know when you had your the cancer diagnosis, um, you've gone through that process and you're on the other side of it, assuming. I'm assuming, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Can you tell us a little bit about how that panned out? Like I don't want to spend a whole bunch of time on it, but I'm pretty sure that you know, people want to know the happy ending for that story.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I the first time I was diagnosed, it was just like a casual, I'm in the shower, and you know, somewhere mid-shampoo, I discovered a lump. And that was the you know, the ooh, this doesn't feel right. And then that experience of having, you know, all the tests and all of the uh all of the emotional upheaval that goes with it is um disconcerting because we're in that period of uncertainty. And I think for all of us, not knowing is really challenging, right? There was a science experiment that was done on rats where they were shocked, and each time, have you have you heard of that science?
SPEAKER_00:I think so.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I find it so incredible because we they preferred being shocked regularly and intermittent, knowing that they were being shocked on a regular basis to not knowing when the next shock is gonna come, right? And I found that to be so exceptionally interesting because of course we're all rats, right? We don't know when that next little shock is coming. And as that happens to us, of course, the sensation is I want I want to hold on to something. And as humans, we can all we we can be certain of one thing, there's actually nothing that is certain, so right. So it was just a fascinating explanation for uncertainty for me. It was okay, this is really what liminal space is. And how can you sit with that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Like when you said um you were after your husband left and you were in the bed just received this diagnosis. And the stories begin. Because you try and put some kind of understanding around what's actually happening, but those stories don't actually exist, they're they're literally just stories.
SPEAKER_01:I I think our lives are a series of stories.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah, trying to make sense of yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And if our our story matches our reality, great. And if it doesn't seem to fit, then then we're thrown into a tizzy. Yeah, well we're sorry, go. No, you go ahead.
SPEAKER_00:I was just saying, yeah, we we we create our realities through all of our stories, for good or bad, don't we? So it's like bringing bringing ourselves back to that awareness that we actually have the the power to create a different story.
SPEAKER_01:And and I just love that feeling because that's the one thing that we actually can have agency over, right? And so that sense of ah, I've got I got a lot of control here, you know, depending on what story I tell myself.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I I think that that's a beautiful um, and I'm not saying slap a, you know, only good vibes sticker over stuff. I'm not saying that at all. I mean just like hello, why would you tell yourself over and over again, I'm gonna die alone? It serves absolutely no purpose. And you know, apart from if you want to die alone, right? Like, who cares? Why would you say that? So so I I find that that just catching yourself in that moment while it's happening is a skill you can learn. And I think that that's that's what you can do. You can catch yourself.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So the midlife story. For many of us, I well, I think I've been studying astrology for the last 12 months, and I've come to realize that the midlife story is well, it is one big long journey. It's not like one point in time, it's not when you turn 40, it's not when you turn 50, it's not when you turn 60, but they're all parts of a long, unfolding journey.
SPEAKER_01:And tell me more about what you mean, because that that sounds really interesting. In in which respect? Like in an astrology sense, how does that relate to that?
SPEAKER_00:So there's there are lots of different planetary activations that happen throughout our midlife. I I wouldn't be able to roll them off the top of my head, but there's a Uranus opposition where the planet Uranus is opposite where it was when you were born, and that can also that can often that's around the age of 38, I think.
SPEAKER_01:And that's the second person that told me about this, and I love it. I love that when things come up a couple of times. Yeah, that's cool.
SPEAKER_00:And that is like sudden chat can be sudden change. So, you know, when you do have those people who go out and buy the car or quit their job or you know, go traveling and you know, do things that are a little bit out of the ordinary, that can be representative of the the Uranus opposition. Um, we get a chiron return when we turn 50. So that can be about um healing wounds from our earlier life, um, emotional wounds, and then using them potentially to help others. Um uh there's a Jupiter return, which is at 48, I think. The Jupiter return, I realized I stopped drinking alcohol, so it's kind of an auspicious time, the Jupiter return. So there's all these things, and then there are other, there are some other ones. There's and then it, you know, it starts as early as when we're 28 with our Saturn return, which can be like it's time to grow up. Um they're just some uh yeah, brief examples. Um, but that so there is this unfolding astrologically that. Happens to all of us. But obviously the way that we uh navigate it, the way that we express it, the way that it shows up for us can vary.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What I really appreciate about that is that it's an explanation for these experiences that we all share. They're universal experiences. Right. And I think that um we all have the sense at a certain time in our mid-20s that we have to sort of take a little bit more ownership over our lives. And we certainly get to a certain age where there are those moments of, oh, I'm repeating the same over and over and over again. Am I still going to keep doing this or do I want a new way? And I think that for me, and not just for me, I think that James Hollis wrote this, writes about this. I think that uh, you know, there's um Lao Tzu wrote about this idea of the wanderer. I think there's so many representations of the idea of getting to a certain part of our lives and recognizing that, okay, the old stuff isn't working. I've been doing it, but it isn't working. And these wounds are driving the bus. And I'm not gonna be sitting here, you know, they haven't perfected auto driving yet. So until that's I'm gonna take a little bit of ownership over my my GPS route. And I think that's important. I think that when we start to really understand and recognize that we have um the ability to stop ourselves mid-pattern and choose another way. That is obviously something that astrology recognizes. But so many other philosophers, psychologists have been talking about this for the ages. Yeah. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And it shows up. Yeah, it just shows up in our lives, like you said, those repeating patterns. It's like the universe giving you a tap on the shoulder, isn't it? Time to level up, time to, yeah, time to grow up, time to take some responsibility, um, awaken.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I think that idea of being aware and awake and not um not allowing the below the line thinking to be uh motivating your decision-making process. You know, there's this idea of conscious choice making and how you don't have, you know, what the Eastern mystice mixed mystics called karma, you know, all that karma actually means in Sanskrit is action. And when we take action, yeah, but we take action from an old uh memory, which is what that conscious cycle does. You have a memory and then you take action based on that memory. Well, when you're taking anything from the past and making that your future, you're enabling the pattern to continue. That's what's perpetuating, that's what's perpetuating the pattern. So this idea of stopping the pattern by not allowing that memory to perpetuate into your future is conscious.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So there's there's um there's a skill in bringing awareness to that, isn't there? That doesn't it doesn't happen for everyone, and it doesn't happen for everyone, I don't think.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, I think it's absolutely possible for every single one of us to have that, and I think that that's what I I want to help people recognize is that that feeling of powerlessness that we sometimes have, because oh, why do I keep going for the same guy? Or oh, why do right? We we all do that and we all do it and we all feel crappy about ourselves because we see that we've you know we we're not getting as if it's a linear line, but that there's this feeling of not having progression because we keep going backwards. And I think that if we're in that growth state that we're all evolutionarily designed to be in, that part of that trick skill, and it's teachable and it's learnable, and it's not hard, is learning how to pay attention on purpose in the moment.
SPEAKER_00:Is that like would you say that's kind of like stepping outside of what's actually going on and being the observer?
SPEAKER_01:That's all it is. Right. That's exactly what it is. You know, I if you want to make it the most simple, and I mean I wrote an entire book about this, so I don't think it's as simple. I think there are steps that you can actually but I mean if I'm gonna simplify it in its most concrete way, I think it's paying attention. And that what we do when you meditate is you choose an object of your attention, your breath. You pay attention to it on purpose. When you notice that your mind is wandering, you come back to the breath. That's all you're doing over and over and over again. That's strengthening that attention muscle. And the more you do that, the more you can notice, oh yeah, I just took a little detour, right? Oh, my fantasy has me off in bali, or you know, I wish I would have said, or all those shoulda, coulda, woulda, all that. And when you start to notice, that's what the game is. And it's not more complicated than that. A lot of people make it really complicated, it's not that hard. And I think that getting to the place where you can become awakened seems people talk about it as if it's somewhere off in the great distant future. Could do it right this second.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Do you think there's a so when you're in a meditative state and you talked about like that drifting off into the thoughts, the shoulda, kuda woulda, and then bringing yourself back to the breath? What is the end result when like in long term? Is the end result being awakened and being aware that this is just a game almost that we're playing that we have more control over? Is that or is there something bigger?
SPEAKER_01:You know, it it depends on the individual. I think when you really look at what meditation is designed to do, it's to to allow you to notice where it's so that you learn yourself. And of course, what is the the self, right? And and the more you sort of expand on that, it's a fascinating. You can go on, I can do 17 interviews on this whole thing. But I think that that's that's really what meditation helps you recognize is hey, I, you know, I'm not this one little person on this, as you said, astrology is for you, has shown you movements that are planetary. Yeah. You're not we are not just us. It's there are millions of stars, trillions of stars. We are part of something magical and mystical and universal, and we all share it, and we all share the same DNA, except for like 99.9% of us is the same as everybody else. So, you know, this idea that we're somehow just little old me, and that I'm alone in this great universe. No, I don't buy that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. What's your I mean, you've you've spoken about some of your personal experiences and how they showed up in your midlife. Did you do you have any um what other insights have you got basically? Because you've you mentioned the number 59, so one would expect that uh you've journeyed through a a significant part of that midlife experience. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Being very polite. I am on a whole new trajectory. You know, midlife is the beginning. Yes. And now I'm and now I'm in this other sort of state, which is equally magical and equally wonderful. And and what I what I'm really interested in is how you evolve and grow, and how something that happened at 39 is not the same as something that's happening now. Um, but I think that there's a lot of people who are experiencing the same sentiments, and I think that that's what's really interesting. I think there are many women who have been not really, they've been invisible, and they've been had there's this sense of being invisible because we don't look the same way that's been revered in a youth culture. But there's also the invisibility of our medical history and the sense that you go into a doctor's appointment and you have all these symptoms and you're saying things that are very real. And most physicians aren't trained to understand that those are hormonal fluctuations and changes that are actually causing serious, serious changes to your body. And I think that as women are talking more and more about this, and as we're becoming uh our voices are getting louder, and I think that that actually brings a tear to my eye because there are so many voices that are saying, Hey, I'm tired of this. And I am not willing to be so small to make others feel important, and I think that's what that's what I call menopause. It's that pause where we really determine what it is that we want for ourselves and we give birth to ourselves because we've given giving birth to lots of other things at this point in our lives, right? When by the time we hit menopause, we've taken care of kids and we've taken care of our husbands, and we've taken care of all the stuff, all the labor force that we don't get paid for. And we get to a certain stage and we say, Hey, I'm here too. My I matter, and I think that that's the most exciting thing that that is collectively happening for so many of us right now.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. There's uh a sense for me that so many, well, it's this whole idea of being put in a bit of a box, especially when it comes to perimenopause and menopause, the symptoms. If someone does go down that traditional route of going to the doctor, it's um well, it's not a a process in our lives that's revered as something quite auspicious, is it? It's a process that we try and fight against and we think that there's something wrong with us, or we don't have the time to embrace the experience of our body changing, or to be grateful for what what we've been through, um, and to yeah, revere that ex that transformation that's occurring. We're not really taught about it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, oh I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_00:Um that's okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. When when you really consider um and I write about this in a lot of detail in in my book, but this idea of just being our surface level, and that's who we are, and I think we're that's our culture today, so it's not our fault. We are taught that we are only as good as our bodies and our physical appearance, and we're not trained for ourselves to resource our value. And I think what's very exciting is that when we start to uh look at who we are, not as this physical body, but as something bigger than that, there's such a sense of appreciation for the life journey that we've now had and the wisdom that we've accumulated, and the sense of uh maternal love that we've been able to offer, but then that also we get to nurture and honor ourselves. And isn't that a special time in our lives? It's a beautiful, beautiful time. And if it's used correctly, what I find so exciting about it is it can become the best trajectory for the next best life that you could possibly have. If you feel in your brain, and and this is such a psychological thing, but if you believe that you are only as good as how you physically look, first of all, your body will wear out. That's just a fact. So how you how you honor yourself and what you do for yourself, that you can do something about what you are dealt with and the the genetics that you might carry, or the you can still do something. You know, there your the your gene expression is largely dependent on the habits and the mindset that you have. And isn't it exciting that you can you can actually take care and honor and nurture yourself? And then by doing that, look what you get to do for humanity. It's not just about yourself, you get to really embody this wisdom and expand your wisdom and and collectively rise. And I think that's so exciting.
SPEAKER_00:And um for you, it would seem that you that you step into the role of of the wise elder. You become the guide for others.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's it's a responsibility that is I think we all have different stages in of our lives, right? And I certainly relied on my mom passed away when I was young, and I sought out women who were my my mother's age and older because I recognized that there were things that I didn't have to actually physically do. I didn't need to make the same mistakes that I was gonna. I could ask people how to avoid that pothole. I didn't need to actually go fall into it. And I and I think that you know, now I'm at that age where I get to return the favor. Hello. Why wouldn't I?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Times have changed significantly, haven't they, in terms of the the wise elder. Um do you feel like there's an evolution? It's almost like a a complete cycle, isn't it? It's what the it's what women used to do in community. And then we've kind of moved away from that. But if you look at it in terms of like a a cycle, women are stepping back into that power and that role.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that, and I think that's entirely true, and I think that that recognizing how powerful we are in a in a very loving, different way is part of our feminine. If you want to, uh you know, I I don't like I'm when I say feminine energy, I'm not specifically talking about being female genetically. I'm talking more about the energy that comes from that nurturing, compassionate, intuitive, loving energy. And I think that that's being honored more than it has been up until now. I think up until now there's been this power over this domination, this killer be killed, fight type of energy. And it hasn't gotten us or our planet very far, has it? So I think that it's exciting to see this evolutionary shift that's happening and be a part of it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Can you talk more about um feminine power and um you know our radiance in midlife, sexuality, some of those things? All the juicy stuff, all the juicy stuff, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think again, evolutionarily, when you look at how women are raised, and rightly so, because if you knew that if you got pregnant or if you uh there are so many things that can happen to a woman based on her physical body, and and and it could destroy a career, it could destroy her life, really. In a sense, you get pregnant at 14, yeah, in a sense, all of that. So there's this real protective nature that we have or that society has had over women from enjoying sex. Good girls don't do that because god forbid you get pregnant, then what? So I I I understand it from a human human evolutionary perspective, but from a pure physical enjoyment, we've been shamed for enjoying something that is pleasurable and beautiful and has nothing but joy. And how lucky are we that we get to be our sovereign queens? That's what we get to be. And when we hit menopause, we don't have to worry that we're gonna get pregnant, do we? And isn't that lucky? Isn't that lucky? And now it's just about pleasure. The only reason, and there's a reason that we still get to have pleasure after we have our reproductive or like after we don't get to reproduce any longer. Our pleasure never goes away. Lucky, lucky, lucky. So I'm a big believer in recognizing what it is that our sexuality can help us uncover about ourselves and deciphering how and what turns us on and going for it because hello, you don't have an indefinite amount of time on this planet. And if you get to have a good time while you're here, that's good.
SPEAKER_00:Go for it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:How does that all fit in with um the hormonal shifts that we do experience? Yes, we can't get pregnant anymore, but the libido can also diminish. Does it come back? Yeah, I think that there's this um difference.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna call it a slow burn as opposed to a firecracker. Okay. You know, when you're in your early 40s, oh my god, I was so horny all the time. So good. And it was so much fun because there just some a man had to walk by me and I'd be like, ah, and that was a totally different excitement. But I think that when you get to a certain age, yeah, it takes a bit of time to get the pilot light on, but then it doesn't extinguish. And so I think that it's just working with your tools differently. And I think that that's that's just knowing yourself, another way of knowing yourself and taking responsibility for yourself and honoring yourself, you know.
SPEAKER_00:I wonder how tied up it is as well with what you were talking about before with body image and the expectation of who we should be, and like not really embracing that that change, but hating on it, whether that decreases like that feeling of empowerment through our sexuality.
SPEAKER_01:So that's a so give me more of a flavor of what you mean by that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I just I'm I'm just kind of curious whether that how that plays a part, a role in in whether we do kind of embrace that, you know, you new change in our sexuality, whether it's linked to whether we're also embracing the changes that our body is going through rather than detesting the experience.
SPEAKER_01:There's there's this sense I think that many women have. There's an exercise that I do that if you ever ask a woman to look deeply at herself in the mirror, very interesting to do because some women just can't. Or when they do, they look at themselves and they notice all the things that are wrong. And I think that that is part of how we're raised. We were raised to look at what's wrong, and it was for our survival. You know, it's the negativity bias. We are programmed to look for that. And I think that when we stop looking for what's wrong and we start paying attention to what's right, it's a whole different shift. And I think that that's again a practice. It's just a practice.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking let's talk about you you've mentioned your own purpose and legend legacy and you know, having a meaningful life, but this is something that actually evolves as well, isn't it, as part of our midlife journey, or it can. Um, where we all of a sudden go, what is this all about? How do I give my life more meaning?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Can you talk to us?
SPEAKER_02:We're lucky we do that.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yeah. And I think that that's what one of the purposes, you know. I talked about the opportunity of a good life. And I think that is one of the reasons that we get to a certain stage and why these different events that happen can be seen as those opportunities. Because I think that we often mistake uh security, safety, um tradition, you know, with uh safe with this feeling of I'm gonna keep myself okay. And I think what ends up happening is that midlife shows us that that isn't really true, because some things can actually happen even though you followed all the rules. And so then you have to to rediscover what it is that actually gives your life meaning and purpose. And isn't that a gift? And and there's many different ways that you can do that, and I I go into that again in the book. It's just there's so much at so rich a topic. Um, but I think being able to find what it is that we value is is one of the luckiest things that we can do, and then if we're even luckier, if we can then share it. And one of the greatest things about being an elder is that we get to teach our children.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Yeah. You uh so uh the two things that you've two would you call them great works, your your app. That was really uh a great work that you produced based on your own experience, but it's obviously been a big part of your journey. I've I often think that the like everyone's experience is important to their evolution. But when something blooms, when you pick a thing and it blooms, it's a pretty good sign that you're on the right track with it, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:I I like to think so. You know, when we started the app, it was something that was done from an my own personal desire to help my kids. And then once it was my kids, then it might have been their friends, and you know, it sort of escalated, and I saw this feeling of, oh maybe I can help more people with this. And so, yes, now we're in uh we've we've been downloaded 20 million times. We're in countries have been translated into I don't know how many. So I feel like this is a a beautiful, beautiful um gift that I was given and that I get to then share with other people. And I hope that that I will always continue to be creative because I think again, when we talk about what the universe is, the universe is a creative process. We're always in a state of renewal. That's what we are. We are constantly rediscovering, renewing, regenerating, otherwise, we're dead.
SPEAKER_00:And the book, you've mentioned the book several times.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, it's a year away. It'll be 2027. So um maybe you'll have me back before that. Yeah, absolutely. But I'm really excited. It's something that was hugely helpful for myself. Again, you know, I think that I selfishly was looking at how I could make sense of certain things and and unpeel this onion. And so as I was unpeeling the onion, I went around the clock again, and it just was a whole other experience. And it was fantastic. Writing the book, that experience? One of the best experiences of my life. If I had to say one thing that I enjoyed more than any experience, um, this was definitely high on my list of things that I just loved, absolutely loved.
SPEAKER_00:Was it a um has it been an experience of like, you know, I've got all of these things that I need to share? Or like what what was how did it all unfold?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it I'm gonna say something that might sound crazy to you. Uh I honestly felt like this was ghostwritten by that doesn't sound crazy to me. I I feel like I was just blessed.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Truly blessed. And I feel like I would wake up at five o'clock in the morning and I couldn't wait to sit down and start. And I lost all track of time and space. And at the end of the day, I'd go, oh my God, how did that happen? And that was my experience, and it was exceptional, exceptional. So it was the universe gave me gifts everywhere, just everywhere. People contributed, people were uh willing to be interviewed. I met some of the most outstanding people in this field because I was so blessed by so many people. So I feel like it was just divinely it happened. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. When you uh you obviously have a meditation practice. What does um what does that look like? Is it like how many times a day?
SPEAKER_01:What yeah, uh, you know, it's I I am always reluctant to answer this question because I don't want people to feel like they have to be super achievers. You know, I always say if you can do five minutes, five minutes is better than no minutes. If you can do 10 minutes, great. What I like to do is first thing in the morning when I wake up, the first thing I do before I do anything else is I have my practice. And that can be as short as 20 minutes, sometimes it could be an hour. It just depends on how much time and where I am and if I'm traveling and all that kind of stuff. Um, and then I have a yoga practice, I practice yoga every day. Um sometimes that's not true. No, that's not even true. Uh, sometimes I don't get to practice yoga, sometimes I'm running and I have no time. I try to stretch and do a little bit of my practice every day. Um, and then again, I I meditate at the end of my day as kind of like a bookend to my day. And I I find that really useful. I find it helps me settle, it helps me recognize where I might have fallen at, you know, I have this sense of being in this field of love. And when I lose that field and I'm not connected to it, I try to reconnect to it. So I look at where I left that field throughout the day.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And if I'm lucky enough, then I can catch myself in the moment. But if I didn't get to catch myself in the moment and I'm reflecting back at the end of the day, then that's another opportunity for me to reconnect. And so for me, that's a really important time as well. And I and I feel like that is my my minimum practice. That's that that's like I'm not whole, I'm not okay if I don't get to do that. And then of course, you know, I spend a lot of different times within the day using like all these reminders, as every time they go off, it's a an opportunity for me to breathe and recenter or to see, you know, just pay attention. Yeah, I find that really useful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Great. Do you just um I'm just curious, when you were writing the book, did those downloads come, did any downloads come during meditation practice? Do you have that experience?
SPEAKER_01:I I've had that experience. I I've had that experience. I find that my most exciting times is when I'm actually sitting down and actually writing, and it's it's just remarkable because I don't speak that well. Oh, I think you speak pretty well. But I find that things come out of me, I'm like, oh yeah, or something, I'll I'll make a connection that I haven't quite been able to articulate. And then that to me is whoa. Where's that? Like, how cool is that, right? And that that's what I mean by a real download. That's it's exceptional.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's very cool. And uh, I think it uh well it's almost like the the the proof that that that that it's meant to be, isn't it? Almost that it just flows so naturally. You're not trying to force the this book out of you.
SPEAKER_01:It's like I really happening to you almost. I really believe that. And so, yes, I've had too many things happen along the way of writing this that have been so fortuitous, and I never would have started writing this book if I hadn't had those things happen. So I kind of feel yeah, that that that's right. We'll we'll see, right? Who knows? Uh to me, uh who this was one of the most wonderful, enriching experiences. So yeah, I feel lucky.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Well, we're all gonna be hanging out now for 12 months until we can get our hands on your book. Um, it sounds like it's gonna be a wonderful tool to support women through this this transformation that we call midlife. Um, where can we reach you in the meantime? You've got uh an Instagram account, and also obviously we can access the Breathe app. We can put all of those links in the notes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I have um uh a website that's Lynn Lynn with an e goldsbergmedation.com. So I'm there too.
SPEAKER_00:You can find me lots of places, all over the place. And we'll as I said, we'll share all of those links so that people can access um access you more easily. I really love this conversation. Um yeah, I'm so grateful to you for being here today. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01:I love all of it. So thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Hey there, Rebel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Midlife Rebel Podcast. If you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a coffee by going to Buy MeACoffee forward slash Midlife Rebel Podcast. Thanks for listening.