Turning 40, Finding Love and Unlocking Self-Acceptance

Is it possible to find lasting love after 40? It's a question that Katherine Baldwin asked herself after her 41st birthday when she woke up single and without children. After years of struggling with binge eating, an adrenaline addiction, and extreme behaviors, Katherine Baldwin had to hit rock bottom before she could start her journey to self-acceptance and healing. Now she's ready to share her story and the solution she found for lasting love. Katherine explores how an unexpected loss and the realization of being alone in her mid-30s sparked her journey of self-discovery.

Guest Bio

As a transformational coach, midlife mentor, motivational speaker and the author of 'How to Fall in Love', Katherine Baldwin supports people to love themselves, create lives that they love, and find healthy love. Formerly an international journalist, Katherine burnt out and broke down in her late 30s and was forced to reevaluate her life. Turning 40 as a single, childless woman who was confused about how her life had turned out, Katherine launched a blog called 'From Forty With Love', exploring issues such as singleness, childlessness, emotional overeating, career confusion, and midlife crises. Eleven years on, she continues to blog with vulnerability about her struggles as well as some significant breakthroughs, which include finding love in her 40s and marrying at 48 after following the steps laid out in her book. As well as coaching one-to-one, Katherine hosts online courses, workshops and retreats. Her love and life advice has been featured widely in the British media.

Show Notes

Katherine Baldwin had spent her formative adult years pursuing freedom, excitement, adventure and adrenaline. When she turned 40, she felt she had come through a lot and was in a good place. However, when she hit 41, she felt trapped, single, and without a clue as to what she was doing with her life. She started a blog to document her journey and found her voice in writing about her experiences. When her dad died, it was a shock to her, as she had no partner or family to be with her. This spurred her to take a holistic holiday and take a break from her high-pressure job. Upon her return, she was offered voluntary redundancy and a lifeline to leave her job, which she used to start freelance journalism. Here, she wrote about things she cared.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. The Dark Side of Living a Life of Adventure and Excess: Exploring the struggles that lay beneath the glamorous exterior of globetrotting and partying.

2. Facing Existential Crisis in Mid-30s: How an unexpected loss and the realization of being alone sparked a journey of self-discovery.

3. Turning 40: How embracing one's age and taking a leap of faith with a blog about self-acceptance led to a new life path.

Resources:

Katherine’s website

From Forty With Love blog

How to Fall in Love book

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The Forty Drinks Podcast is produced and presented by Savoir Faire Marketing/Communications

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Turning 40 and Grief Recovery: An Exploration of Resilience and Happiness

Emma Johnson is a mother to three young children and the convener of Women’s Circles where is drawn to, and feels really able to connect with, those women who have found motherhood to be like falling off a cliff. Today she shares her personal journey of rediscovering herself after the loss of her sister and the challenges of motherhood. She delves into the concept of holding space for others, and how it can be a powerful tool in the healing process. Emma also talks about the importance of resilience and happiness in the face of grief and adversity. Join us as we explore the theme of turning 40 and the journey of grief recovery with Emma Johnson.

Guest Bio

Emma believes deeply in the power of the female voices and stories, and in creating beautiful spaces for women to come together, to find sanctuary and soulful connection as often as they need it. She runs in-person and online circles as The Wild Circle, bringing women together for regular moments of ritual, reflection and connection, with a focus on returning to nature and connecting with our inner wildness. She says: "I believe we all need a space that we can rely on, where we can come as we are, and be met in that place. Women are deeply rooted in nature - the more we connect with our wildness, the more we root ourselves to the earth, the more we can truly connect to ourselves and each other.” She has a Masters in English and Postmodernism, traveled around the world by herself at age 18, has walked on fire, is a mother of three and lives in the Cotswolds in the UK, with her husband, children, three cats and three chickens.

Show Notes

In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Emma Johnson to talk about the challenges of motherhood, loss, and rebuilding oneself. Emma shares her personal experience of going through postnatal depression and anxiety, as well as losing her sister suddenly, and how she found resilience and happiness through the process.

Emma also talks about her work with moms who have gone through similar experiences. She shares her perspective on the grief of motherhood and how it can be a process of refining oneself, letting go of certain parts of one's identity, and building a new and better life.

The conversation also touches on the concept of "holding space" for others, and how it can be a powerful way to support and protect people as they share their feelings and struggles. Emma explains how it's not about changing or influencing others, but rather creating a safe and non-judgmental environment for them to share and process their thoughts and emotions.

Throughout the conversation, Emma emphasizes the importance of self-discovery and self-awareness, and how it can lead to greater happiness and resilience as we age. Emma reflects on how she is happier and more fulfilled now than ever before, and encourages listeners to embrace the aging process and all that it has to offer.

Key Takeaways:

• Nearly all mothers feel like they have fallen off a cliff after becoming a mother, but it's not talked about.
• The process of rebuilding oneself after motherhood and loss is challenging but necessary.
• Acknowledging that one's life will never come back in the way it was expected and building a new one can lead to a happier and more fulfilled life.
• Taking time to fully grieve and process loss is important for one's mental and emotional well-being.
• Holding space means creating a safe and solid environment where people can share their feelings, fears and pain without being judged or influenced.

Sponsor

The Forty Drinks Podcast is produced and presented by Savoir Faire Marketing/Communication

Additional Resources

The Wild Circle website

The Wild Circle on Facebook

The Wild Circle on Instagram

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Learning “You’re Allowed to Change Your Mind” Before Turning 40

Emily Aborn still has a couple years to go before she turns 40, but she’s already thinking about how she wants to celebrate. She’s also considering what she wants to accomplish before the big “four-oh” and the time remaining to reach those accomplishments seems to be dwindling at the speed of life. Skydiving is the easy one. Writing a book? Is there still time for that? Emily has already learned that it’s ok to change your mind, but she yearns for the “I don’t care about your opinion” attitude she sees so many of her older friends enjoying.

Guest Bio

Emily Aborn is a Content Writer, Podcast Host, and Founder of She Built This, a community for women entrepreneurs and professionals. She’s been an entrepreneur since 2014 and has experience in running brick-and-mortar as well as online businesses. She’s worked with over 86 different industries and loves helping those with a big mission increase their visibility, connect with their clients, and bring their dreams and visions to life. For fun, Emily enjoys nerdy word games and puzzles, reading, listening to podcasts like they're going outta' style, and tromping about in the woods with her husband, Jason, and their dog, Clyde.

Meet Emily Aborn

Emily Aborn feels like the countdown to 40 is equally as important as what happens on the other side of 40. At 36, she’s already starting to think about how she’s going to memorialize her 40th. As someone still facing forty, though, she wonders what’s on the “mysterious” other side. She already feels like something is different, but finds it hard to put her finger on it while she’s still in the midst of it.

In her 20s, Emily was trying to figure out who she was and says she burned A LOT of things down in the process. She says she has had more jobs than rotations around the sun; she thinks the number is 42. After graduating college with a nutrition degree, she jumped from job to job to try to find one that fit. In conjunction with the job changes she moved many times and found herself in “ridiculous amounts of debt for that age.” Once, she watched from the window at work as her car was repossessed and towed away.

In her late 20s she went to work for a chiropractor who she had worked for right out of college. Emily found it hard to be around the chiropractor because she was such a positive person who was following her dreams and working towards her goals with such clarity. Emily felt so out of alignment with that kind of life. She always knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur and here she was working for one, which made her feel bad about still working for someone else.

You Are Allowed to Change Your Mind

She and her husband opened a non-toxic mattress store and she ran that for almost five years before she acknowledged that she didn't love it. That’s when she realized “you’re allowed to change your mind.”

Emily pivoted and got her real estate license and, while she loved the classes part, she did not love the ‘being at the beck and call of the clients’ part. She needs more structure in her day. So she started doing marketing for a real estate group, which led to helping someone else with their marketing, and then someone else. Then she honed in tighter and tighter until she realized that the consistent throughline with all her jobs was writing. Now, she just provides marketing writing services for clients.

Today, she’s put it all together: she owns her own business doing something she feels successful at and satisfied by. She’s been on this path for four years now. In addition to the marketing services, she also started a company called She Built This to support women entrepreneurs.

What Really Matters

At 32, Emily lost a nearly lifelong friend in a tragic accident, which she says aged her. It helped crystalize what mattered in life. She realized she wanted to make an impact on the people around her, like her friend had.

Another thing she wants is to have the “I don’t care” vibe she sees her over-40 friends rocking. She wants to shed the “inner committee” of all her friends and family and colleagues.

When Emily thinks about 40, she feels like it’s simultaneously a celebration and leaving something behind. There are also a bunch of things she wants to do in the four years before she turns 40. But of all the things she said she wanted to do before turning 40, the pressure is building because the window between now and then is getting smaller.

At the same time, Emily thinks turning 40 comes with a “permission slip” to finally own who you are. She feels like she’s already going through a process of letting go of things she’s “supposed” to do. Thinking about relationships or events that she attends, if Emily wonders who she’s going there for, or if she’s uncomfortable, or if she’s just try...

Turning 40 and realizing “fine” is a four-letter word

Serban Mare is an immigrant who came to the US from Romania when he was 23 in search of better opportunities and a better life. He did everything he was “supposed to” and then came to understand the meaning of the maxim “be careful what you wish for.” In his mid-30s, he described his life using a couple of four letter words: He was FINE. He was LOST. He encountered a concept that sent him down the rabbit hole, reading, listening, learning, experimenting, evolving. Which ultimately led him to say YES to a 40th birthday project that took a year and a half to plan and more than a week to accomplish.

Guest Bio

Serban is an expert in personal development, self-help, and peak performance. He is a Professional Speaker, Certified CBT Practitioner, and Life Coach. As a Project Manager, Serban learned how to map out steps to escape the typical “work towards retirement life” and has engineered the path to a more authentic, joyful, and fulfilled lifestyle.

Serban came to the United States with $200 to call his own and through adversity created a better life for himself and his family. Despite achieving the “American Dream,” he realized he craved deeper meaning and fulfillment. After undergoing his own personal transformation, he accumulated an abundance of knowledge which he desires to share with others on how to live a higher quality, passionate, and meaningful life.

Commemorating 40 on Mt. Kilimanjaro

Serban Mare came to the United States from Romania when he was 23 and looking for better opportunities than he had at home. What he thought would be a relatively short stay has turned into making a life here.

Early in the year that he turned 40, Serban was having dinner with a friend who was shortly to turn 50 and their wives. The friend had a plan to do something grandiose for his 50th and Serban wanted to be a part of it. That thing was hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa. Serban’s reaction was: “I’m in. Let’s do it.” His wife took a couple days to think about the seven-day hike and signed onto the trip four days later.

The pact was made a little over a year before they went to the mountain. A lot of the following year was spent finding the right equipment since getting a blister can be what determines success or failure.

Serban calls hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro the most memorable thing he’s done in his life.

The 40 Transition

While Serban commemorated his 40th birthday in an uncommon way, he still went through a pretty typical life transition. Serban’s vision of a life well lived was to go to college, find a corporate job, get married, have some kids, get a dog and save for retirement. That was the blueprint he followed until he was 35. He and his wife decided not to have children, which, he says, gave them more time to ponder about life.

Serban went to lunch with a friend he hadn’t seen in a while. The friend asked how he was and he seemed full of genuine interest. So he thought, and answered: career, fine. Relationships, fine. Health, fine. Nothing was great. He realized he felt like he was going around in circles and that’s when he wondered if that was it. Was there anything more to life? Or was he just going to go around in circles for the next few decades.

His wife sent him to Lewis Howes’ podcast, The School of Greatness, and particularly the episode where Les Brown talked about how to defeat a negative mindset. This is where he first encountered the concept of “growth mindset,” which led him to Carol Dwek’s book, Mindset. This led him to realize that he could do so much more, which several years later led him to climb the tallest mountain in Africa.

Serban defines growth mindset as the understanding that we can do anything if we set our minds to it and truly believe it. Maybe the thing you’re striving for is hard and you can’t do it yet but if you keep practicing and you’re consistent, you can. It may be a simple concept, but he came across it at exactly the right time. He says that he proves to himself over and over that he can do so much more.

An early proof of “I can” for Serban was public speaking. As an introvert and non-native speaker he was scared to participate at meetings at work. Just introducing himself was terrifying, but he realized it was holding him back. So he found a chapter of Toastmasters in his area and started working on public speaking. At first it was hard and he was bad at it but with practice it got easier. T...

Turning 40 and Overcoming Being a People Pleaser

Martin Salama experienced a childhood trauma that put him on a path to being a people pleaser for most of his life. And the funny thing about being a people pleaser is that, while you’re trying to make everyone around you happy, usually you’re not making ANYONE happy, least of all yourself. It took losing everything in his late 40s and having to rebuild again from scratch to knock him from that path and set him in search of another, better, path, which he found. Today, he’s happier, healthier and more fulfilled than he was when he was a “successful businessman.”

Guest Bio

Martin Salama is the Architect of The Warriors L.I.F.E. Code. He specializes in helping people who feel frustrated in their life quickly shift their mindset to UNCOVER their greatness so they can live their true potential and enjoy LIFE! An example of what he’s achieved is a client like Roberta, who lost her 6-figure job due to COVID and came to Martin depressed and felt very lost. Within a short time, she had, quote: “direction, focus, and a renewed energy around all the possibilities I could pursue... and getting back on track to enjoy LIFE!” The key to his success is, he’s mastered the ability to Live Incredibly Full Everyday! Which he turned into the acronym L.I.F.E. and created the Warriors L.I.F.E. Code coaching program.

Show notes

Defining moments don’t always announce themselves. Often, we only recognize them in retrospect. When Martin Salama was 10 years old, his little brother was hit by a school bus and passed away a few days later from his injuries. In his mind, with his 10-year-old reasoning skills, Martin understood that he was the only boy in the family now, the only one who could carry on the Salama name, and he decided that he never wanted to see his parents distraught like that again. He decided it was his job to make sure they were always happy. Looking back, he realizes that’s the moment he became a people pleaser.

After he graduated college, his father connected him to a man 15 years his senior to go into business and do the same thing his father was doing: manufacture tablecloths. Martin wanted his father to be happy, so he complied. Then after he got married, he had another person’s happiness to balance as well. It took him years to realize that in trying to please everyone, he wasn't pleasing anyone.

When he was 40, Martin was in between businesses and trying to figure out his next venture. His wife had started playing tennis and identified that courts weren’t easy to get in their area, so they decided to start a business building courts in an affluent area of New Jersey. The due diligence and prep work took several years and $3 million. When he went to the bank to finally get the loan, he was 45, it was September 2008, and banks had stopped making business loans due to the financial crash and ensuing recession.

Martin sunk into a depression for about a year and, on his 24th wedding anniversary, which happens to fall the day after Valentine’s Day, his wife said, “I’m done. I want a divorce.”

That year of depression also included a lot of introspection in which Martin realized he was never happy as a businessman. He never liked the roller coaster of owning businesses. He never liked being a salesman. But when he was involved in community projects and organizations, he was much freer. He wasn’t afraid. The passion, the vision, those things carried his work. He also realized that he wanted to help people and that his experience of working with coaches was so positive that he wanted to become a coach. Today he coaches people through the transition from self-conscious to self-aware.

In this episode:

• How losing everything in your 40s and having to start over - from scratch - can actually be a gift in disguise
• An example of what being a “people pleaser” looks like
• An example and description of a codependent relationship
• How to go from being a worrier to being a warrior
• When we’re evolving as people, in order to be sustainable, changes take time, effort and desire
• When making big, sweeping changes in life, it helps to focus on your WHY, which Martin defines as “What’s Hurting You?”

Sponsor

The Forty Drinks Podcast is produced and presented by Savoir Faire Marketing/Communications

Get Martin’s card deck, coloring book and other resources: ConnectWithMartin.com

Tell me a fantastic “forty story.”

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