If you’re a midlife woman who’s finally getting your protein, strength training, and sleep dialed in — only to have the holidays show up like a glitter bomb of sugar, cocktails, and family dynamics — this episode is exactly what you need.

Between the gifts, the hosting, the traditions, the cards, the cooking, and the never-ending expectations… December can feel like a full-time job. But what if this year could feel different?

Shira Gill is here to help you create a holiday season that feels joyful, calm, meaningful — and actually aligned with your life right now as a midlife woman. Hallejulah.

In honor of Thanksgiving, I asked listeners to share what they’re feeling most grateful for in midlife. Your answers were honest, hilarious, heartfelt, and full of that signature midlife “F-it” energy we all know and love.

Today’s episode is a crowdsourced roundup of what real women 40+ are grateful for right now — from better relationships with our bodies, to boundaries that finally stick, to friendships that feel like lifelines.

If you’ve hit your 40s and found yourself thinking, “I don’t feel like myself anymore,” you are in extremely good company. This is one of the most common—and most misunderstood—symptoms of perimenopause.

In this episode of the Midlife Advice podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Prudence Hall, a gynecological surgeon turned regenerative medicine practitioner, who helps women decode their symptoms and reclaim their energy, clarity, libido, and spark.

Welcome to the Midlife Advice podcast, where smart, curious, and slightly sassy women over 40 come to figure out all things midlife.

In this short solo episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on why I changed the name of the podcast from Belong Wellness to Midlife Advice — and how this shift reflects exactly what the show has become: a go-to source for real, relatable, expert-backed advice on hormones, health, relationships, and purpose.

At 35, Teyonna Bowman was a young mom who thought she was doing everything right — eating healthy, staying active, raising her kids — until she found a lump in her breast that changed everything. After surviving breast cancer twice, Teyonna entered medically induced menopause at 40.

In this episode, Teyonna shares what it’s really like to navigate early menopause after cancer — the physical symptoms, the emotional whiplash, the loss of connection with her body and her husband — and how she ultimately reclaimed her strength and purpose.

In this episode, I talk with Andrea Nakayama, a functional nutritionist and narrative-medicine practitioner (yes, we cover what that means). Andrea explains how our beliefs about aging influence inflammation, cortisol, memory, recovery, and even longevity—and why your mindset may be one of the most powerful tools for midlife women’s health.

Forget headstands — the most advanced yoga is parenting without losing your cool.

In this week’s episode of the Belong Wellness Podcast, I talk with Sarah Ezrin, yoga teacher and author of The Yoga of Parenting, about how yoga philosophy applies far beyond the mat — especially for parents in midlife.

Have you ever noticed that just when life starts to feel really good, you start bracing for something bad to happen? That’s what psychologists call the Upper Limits Problem.

This week, I sit down with award-winning author Tamar Hurwitz-Fleming to talk about why joy can feel so hard to hold onto, and how birthdays can actually teach us how to expand our capacity for joy.

Have you ever found yourself standing in front of the pantry after a stressful day, not even hungry but looking for…something? Something to give you a little boost, a little comfort, or to take the edge off? That’s what we call emotional eating.

Learn the root causes and how to finally break the cycle.

When it comes to menopause hormone therapy, most women are offered a short list of standard prescriptions — and that’s it. But if you’ve ever felt like those options don’t work for you, there’s a reason: hormone therapy isn’t one-size-fits-all.

That’s where compounding pharmacies come in. 

If you’ve hit your 40s and suddenly feel like your body got swapped out for someone else’s…I’m right there with you. For many midlife women, uninvited menopause belly fat shows up overnight, brain fog makes you lose your train of thought mid-sentence, and you’re wide awake at 3am pondering disasters that will probably never happen. 

In this episode, I’m joined by Barbara Sobel, a board-certified nutritionist with a master’s in clinical and functional medicine nutrition. Barb specializes in midlife and menopause nutrition and helping women in perimenopause and menopause figure out what actually helps us feel better at this stage of life.

Perimenopause doesn’t have to feel like the end of your fire. In Ayurveda, this stage of life is actually called your Golden Goddess era.

In this episode, Jessica talks with Heather Grzych, Ayurvedic doctor-level practitioner, bestselling author of The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility, and former president of the National Ayurvedic Medical Association. Heather explains how Ayurveda sees midlife as a shift from the fiery stage of life into the air and space stage — a transition that brings both challenges and new possibilities.

When Julie Parana had a hysterectomy at 42, she expected relief from years of pain—which she got. What she did not expect was the immediate launch into menopause a decade earlier than planned. Even with her ovaries intact, Julie found herself dealing with symptoms like brain fog, forgetfulness, and sleep struggles that were affecting her work. But, it wasn’t until the hot flashes showed up that she connected the dots. 

In this episode, Julie shares how she pieced together the truth, and how the experience inspired her to become The Menopause Occupational Therapist — helping women and employers navigate this transition with confidence.

In this episode, I’m joined by Heather Nelson to discuss her very personal story that sheds light on a topic that feels like a black box to many of us—surrogacy. 

Heather is a mother, wife, business coach and podcaster who became a surrogate five years ago. Now at 43 and navigating perimenopause, she’s preparing to do it again. 

In this episode, Cheyenne shares how she went from VP of Marketing at a tech startup to award-winning historical fiction author and full-time adventurer. We talk about midlife reinvention, imposter syndrome, creative courage, sailing as self-discovery, and what it really means to live authentically.

Relationships are always complicated. But in midlife, they often get even more layered—especially for women who are doing the deep inner work of growth, healing, and change.

In this episode of the Belong Wellness Podcast, I’m joined by licensed psychotherapist Jessie Curtner, who specializes in helping couples navigate the emotional complexity of long-term love. 

This week, I’m joined by Courtney Townley, host of the Grace & Grit podcast and a total truth-teller when it comes to midlife women’s health. She’s here to help us stop waging war on our bodies, stop doing everyone else’s emotional labor, and start rebuilding a life that actually works for us.

We’re talking burnout, hormone shifts, people-pleasing, body image, boundaries—and how to stop patching the cracks and start pouring a new foundation.

What happens when divorce, single motherhood, turning 50, and perimenopause all hit at once? You get a full-blown midlife dumpster fire. But today’s guest, Donna Johnsen, found a lifeline in laughter. In this episode, she shares how journaling, community, and humor helped her survive the hardest season of her life—and how her Instagram account became an unexpected source of healing for herself and others.

We met in preschool. Now we’re in perimenopause. And somehow, my oldest friend Alexis Lynch is reading six books a month while running her own law firm, parenting an 8-year-old, and doing alllll the things.

In this week’s episode, Alexis shares how she reignited her love of reading in the middle of all the midlife madness—and how you can too. She also shares her summer reading list curated just for YOU.