Midlife Is Just The Beginning: Stepping Into Your Light With Wendy Valentine, Host Of The Midlife Makeover Podcast & Author Of Women Waking Up
Midlife isn’t a crisis — it’s an awakening.
In this empowering episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, Becca Powers sits down with Wendy Valentine, author of Women Waking Up, for an honest conversation about breaking free from people-pleasing, reclaiming personal power, and stepping fully into the woman you were always meant to be.
They explore how women are often conditioned to put themselves last, silence their dreams, and live on autopilot until their mind, body, or spirit can no longer keep up. Wendy shares her own journey of reinvention and moving from comforted darkness into courageous light, while Becca reflects on owning her gifts, setting boundaries, and returning to radiance.
Wendy also breaks down her FREEDOM framework, a roadmap for releasing limiting beliefs, envisioning your future, and mastering your mindset so you can stay grounded through life’s inevitable ups and downs.
If you have ever felt stuck, overextended, or quietly longing for more, this conversation is your permission to stop waiting and start choosing yourself.
Navigating Midlife Transitions
Understanding the emotional shifts that come with aging, changing roles, and evolving seasons of life.
Honoring Joy and Grief Simultaneously
Holding space for both heartbreak and purpose without diminishing either.
The Power of Allowing Your Feelings
Releasing perfectionism and giving yourself permission to have hard days.
Staying Grounded Through Change
How awareness and self-compassion support resilience during overwhelming seasons.
The Cyclical Nature of Life
Embracing the truth that every ending carries the seed of a new beginning.
Rediscovering Radiance After Loss
Returning to your light while honoring the depth of your humanity.
Reframing Midlife as a Beginning
Seeing this chapter as your most expansive, courageous season yet.
Key Moments You Won't Want to Miss:
Wendy’s realization that she had to take a stand for her own health and wellbeing
Becca’s reflection on returning to her authentic gifts and allowing her to have a seat at the table
The conversation around being scared of your own light
The power of awareness and why you cannot un-aha
Wendy’s reminder that focusing on who you want to be changes everything
The honest discussion about grief, joy, and honoring both simultaneously
The message that midlife is not an ending but a beginning
Empowering Thoughts to Take With You:
“You're not too old. It's not too late. Midlife is just the beginning and it's the most exciting chapter of your life, so go for it. Whatever it is, go for it.” – Wendy Valentine
“Your mind is either your best friend or your worst enemy, right? And you're the one that gets to decide.” – Wendy Valentine
“You wouldn't know joy if you didn't know sadness. You wouldn't know dark if you didn't know light.” – Wendy Valentine
“I would never even treat my worst enemy as bad as I treat myself.” – Becca Powers
About Wendy
Wendy Valentine is the author of Women Waking Up: The Midlife Manifesto for Passion, Purpose, and Play and the host of The Midlife Makeover Show, a top-rated podcast for women in midlife. Wendy empowers women to kick fear to the curb, reignite their spark, and wake up to what is truly possible in this powerful chapter of life. Learn more at http://www.WendyValentine.com.
Connect with Wendy Valentine
Step into your power and embrace midlife with passion, purpose, and play. Wendy Valentine’s Women Waking Up is your invitation to reignite your spark and return to your radiance.
Get your copy here: http://www.womenwakingup.com
Power Links
Join Becca in her Facebook Community - The Dragonfly Effect, Where High-Performing Professionals Chase Big Dreams: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1C4z83krsn/
Purchase Becca’s Book - A Return to Radiance, The POWER Method to Ignite Your Soul and Unleash Your Potential: https://www.beccapowers.com/a-return-to-radiance
Invite Becca to Speak: https://www.beccapowers.com/keynotes
Grab Becca’s Free EBook, The High Performer’s Path, The 8 Forces of Potential for Mindset Mastery: https://www.beccapowers.com/
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We Want to Hear From You!
What part of Wendy’s story spoke to your heart?
Was it the reminder that midlife is just the beginning, the power of awareness, or the courage to step into your light?
Share your takeaway and let us know how this conversation empowered you to choose yourself.
Becca Powers: Welcome to another episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour. I'm bringing you a guest that you're gonna love because I love her, and I've only known her for a few minutes, and I just think this is gonna be really, really good. Today I am bringing you fellow new World Library author, Wendy Valentine.
She is the author of the recently released Women Waking Up and the podcast host of The Midlife Makeover Podcast. Wendy, you do a lot of beautiful things for women in midlife, so let's welcome you to the show.
Wendy Valentine: Thank you so much for having me. I know we had some technical difficulties, but nothing two women cannot handle. We're here, we're ready, and we're gonna have fun.
Becca Powers: That is it. And I love just reading about you. I noticed when I first started, I could see your face, and I love alliterations. I love that you use passion, purpose, and play. I shared with you that I'm really tapped into purpose, really tapped into passion, but I sometimes miss the play. I think a lot of women listening are in the same boat. I can't wait to get into it a little more.
Wendy Valentine: The reason I wrote Women Waking Up is for any woman out there that feels lost, stuck, invisible, or just quietly dissatisfied because I have been that woman. I'm 52 now, almost turning 53 on Thanksgiving.
About seven years ago, I was going through divorce, unemployment, I was about $150,000 in debt, empty nest, chronic illness, black mold toxicity, Lyme disease. I was also dealing with menopause, and within a six-week period, my dog died, my cat died, and my brother died. Needless to say, I was incredibly depressed.
I was suffering from panic attacks, which I had never experienced before. Anxiety, you name it—I was a mess. I remember laying on the bathroom floor bawling my eyes out, thinking, "Wendy, you're gonna be turning 50, your life is a mess. You have no job, you're sick, you are broke, everything is wrong with your life in this moment."
Then I was saved by this wild vision, this wild dream. Out of the blue, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to drive an RV across the country? I thought, Windy, this is not the time to do that, but then I realized I had nothing to lose.
Wendy Valentine: To make this dream come true, I realized I would need to get a job, get out of debt, recover from illness, and heal from grief. I became overwhelmed—paralysis by analysis—but I thought the pain of staying where I was was far worse than the pain of going for it.
Within two years, my transformation included recovering from chronic illness, paying off debt, saving enough money to buy an RV, taking off across the country, starting The Midlife Makeover Show, and eventually writing my book, Women Waking Up.
The book’s framework is FREEDOM, which became the blueprint I teach.
Becca Powers: Your story is real, raw, and beautiful. Sometimes, there needs to be a stripping away of everything. I can relate—I was riddled with disease, debt, and disconnected relationships. I call it the devastation of the Ds.
Wendy Valentine: Exactly. That stage in life is perfect for reevaluating and regrouping. You can flip your life upside down or fine-tune it.
Becca Powers: I feel like I’m in another transitional state. I said to a friend, "I am too old and too young for this shit."
Wendy Valentine: That’s why it’s such a perfect time to look at your life, to see what is in alignment and what is not.
Carving Away the Unnecessary
Wendy Valentine: Yesterday I posted an Instagram reel about the statue of David. When asked how Michelangelo carved it, he said, "I just carved away everything that was not him."
Becca Powers: It’s the unlearning. Sometimes we think we need to add more habits, hustle, or hoops. But really, it’s carving away the things that are not us—behaviors, beliefs, thoughts.
Wendy Valentine: Especially in your forties, you need to question what you’re doing, what you believe, and what you want. In your twenties and thirties, you’re just checking off boxes. In your forties and fifties, you wake up and ask, "Who am I? What do I really want?"
Becca Powers: Your story reminds me of Tony Robbins’ UPW and Wayne Dyer’s words: "Don’t die with your music still in you."
Wendy Valentine: And Brony Ware’s number one regret is living life for everyone else. I remember thinking, "It is time for me to start living for me." I don’t regret being a mother or taking care of family, but I was a perfectionist.
Absolutely! Here’s the cleaned-up transcript with unnecessary fillers removed, grammar corrected for readability, headers added, significant lines bolded, and section header suggested. All original words are preserved.
Wendy Valentine: A people pleaser, an approval seeker, a codependent. Yeah, right. Everyone, raise your hand. So I was going above and beyond, not knowing why, just robotic about it, because that's how I was raised to think this is what you do, you take care of everybody else. Wendy, you know, set your dreams over here on the back burner, even whatever you think and believe and what you really wanna do with your life.
Becca Powers: Put that over here. Back burner or whatever. Why's so miserable?
Wendy Valentine: Yes, exactly. I had finally decided, no, it's time. We are not doing this anymore. I had to take a stand for me, for my own health and wellbeing, because I know that I wasn't doing anyone anywhere any good. I couldn't take care of anybody else anymore. I just couldn't do it.
I can remember there was a quote I loved during that time. I still love it. It's one of my faves. Maryanne Williamson:
Becca Powers: Oh yes, yes. Say it please.
Wendy Valentine: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us."
There was a reason why that quote kept sticking out for me. I had a cute little plaque with the quote on my wall, and I kept staring at it thinking, why would I be scared of my light? That's stupid. I kept reading it again and again, and I realized I am scared of my light because if I fully embraced my life, that means I'd have to get a divorce. That means I have to get a job. That means I actually have to write a book, start a podcast, fulfill my dreams, and get over myself, my fears, my doubts, and all the BS I've carried for decades.
A lot of us are very comforted by our own darkness because it's familiar. We know how to deal with our own BS. We even have internal conversations like, "Oh my God, I'm too old," or "I'm not good enough," and another voice says, "Yeah, you're right." You get used to it. You become familiar with it until one day, you make the decision: I'm not believing this stuff anymore. I'm gonna step into my light and actually be who I wanna be.
Becca Powers: I love that on so many levels because it's true. It takes work. It's more comfortable to stay in your darkness, throw a pity party, complain, or settle. But when I stepped into my light and started owning my gifts and talents, I had to start developing them. I had to lean into them. It was exciting and fun, but also a lot of work.
The writer in me had been around a long time, from pretending to write books at six years old to delivering epiphanies to my stuffed animals. I had to allow her to come back, have a seat at the table, and nurture those natural skills. My uniqueness, my talents, had been suppressed, so I had to spend time developing them to be at the level I wanted. My light wanted me to be an author, to be on stages. Awesome, but scary.
Wendy Valentine: I love that you made that point. You have to give yourself permission to change. For me, it wasn't just about driving an RV across the country or cruising through the desert. I was more excited about the woman behind the steering wheel—the woman literally and figuratively in the driver's seat of her life. I envisioned a woman who was happy, healthy, financially free, had her shit together, good relationships, and had removed toxic relationships.
Sometimes, when we want to change our lives, we focus too much on the what, when, where, and how, instead of the who—who do you want to be? Envision the person you want to become, and you'll find a lot of what you want will naturally fall into your life. Be excited about the person you want to be. You have the power to actually do that.
Becca Powers: It's literally about taking back your power. Deciding, this is who I'm going to be, and no one's gonna stop me. Whether it's your health, your thoughts, your beliefs, your life—you get to choose.
Looking back at that time, when I got quiet enough to hear my thoughts, my mind was the worst critic, the worst enemy. I had to say, we are not doing this anymore.
Wendy Valentine: Everything's a habit. Being happy, grateful, complaining, eating poorly—everything is a habit. Until you stop and have awareness of what you're doing, you'll just stay a robot. Awareness is the first key change. Once you have an aha moment, you can't undo it.
Becca Powers: You can't un-aha.
Wendy Valentine: Exactly. Einstein said once your mind expands, it can't go back. It changes you. And it does.
Introducing the FREEDOM Framework
Becca Powers: Let's go to the FREEDOM acronym. I assume F starts the process?
Wendy Valentine: Yes, it does. Can we talk about. Yeah, when I wrote the book, I literally sat there and I looked back at the two years of that reinvention of myself and my life, and I did it in order. 'cause then I felt like, well, if I did it this way and it worked, then why wouldn't I just share the same.
Actual framework. So step one is free yourself from limiting beliefs and self-sabotage. Yes, we all do it, but to free yourself of that, our is to reset your life of the clutter, emotional and physical clutter that we have in our lives. Step three is Envision. The firstly is envision a future filled with love, that vitality and confidence and joy.
Step four is embrace and explore your potential, your passions, and your purpose, which you're really good at. And then step five is detach from tomorrow. Start living for today. Oh, is own your best self with unshakeable boundaries. This one's kind of new for me. Yeah. Because I, I was never very good at setting the boundaries, but I'm getting there.
Well, that was,
Becca Powers: I was not either. And that led to my bathroom floor moment. So that was like, yeah. As I rewind my own process, that was one of the things that I had to do. I didn't even realize that's what I was doing. I just, outta necessity, had to start saying no when I always said yes just to like, not end up back on the bathroom floor.
Yes. And then later I was like, oh, those were boundaries.
Wendy Valentine: If you think about it. No one ever, I mean, I don't know about you, but especially growing up or my twenties or thirties, no one was like, let's talk about boundaries. Let's teach boundaries. I mean, if, if they only taught about that in school, oh my gosh.
I needed that bad. So, and then finally, M is master yourself so you stay grounded with life's inevitable ups and downs because shit's always gonna happen, but it's how you handle it so that, yeah, she might get knocked down, but you're gonna be able to get up much quicker the next time.
Becca Powers: Yes.
And I always say, I say something similar, I'm like, life, be life in. Like, you can pretend that it's not going to in two months from now or six months from now, but guess what? I know it is, it's gonna do its thing.
Navigating Life’s Changes in Midlife
Wendy Valentine: And then how are especially, right again, especially when you're in your forties, fifties, and beyond. Life will change, the birdies leave the nest. You're gonna go through perimenopause and menopause. And if you're a man out there listening, then whoever you're with is probably gonna be going through it. So you have to deal with it. And our parents are aging. There's so many things going on.
Yeah, so much. And sometimes it's all at once. So the more that you're able to stay grounded, stay centered, and be aware, just like you said, having that awareness of how you're feeling and cutting yourself some slack. I mean, as a recovering perfectionist, I was so hard on myself. If I was having a bad day, I'm like, "I should not be having a bad day. I should be having a good day and should be happy." And now I'm just like, I'm having a bad day. I just allow myself to deal with it knowing that…
Becca Powers: I'll get through it a hundred percent. I think it's that knowing, whether you want to call it faith or what, that everything is cyclical. Every ending has a beginning. Just because you're having a bad day today, guess what? That's gonna end. It could be a bad week or a bad month.
It's definitely going to be if you don't shift your perspective and allow it to be something. I'll probably talk to you more after we're done because we only have like five minutes left. But this past year has been really rough on me too, and I called it my, I do a lot of teaching. One of my keynotes is called The Power of…, and I really believe in that. Even if you're having a bad day, things can still be going well.
Last year, a year and a half ago, my brother passed away. I was releasing Return to Radiance. He passed away in the second edit, and I had due dates. I had to keep going. How am I gonna honor this colossal grief and also honor one of my biggest joys, my passion, my purpose, coming to life? I had to honor the grief, but I had to honor the joy at the same time. It felt conflicting at times, but they were both real and alive inside me. I'm really glad you mentioned that because it honors our humanness.
Wendy Valentine: Totally. It's the dichotomy of life. You wouldn't know joy if you didn't know sadness. You wouldn't know dark if you didn't know light. It's part of it. Being able to push through probably taught you a lot during that time.
Becca Powers: I've learned so much. That's just starting to land. Probably be another book about it someday.
Wendy Valentine: Well, hence your book, A Return to Radiance, that even despite loss, even death, you're still able to come alive within yourself and return to Radiance over and over. It's a practice. You just have to teach yourself. That doesn't mean you're not honoring your brother; you were honoring your brother and honoring yourself.
Becca Powers: I truly believe I honored him more by continuing my path.
Empowering Message for Midlife
Becca Powers: We have three minutes left. Wendy, I want to ask one last question before we summarize how listeners can stay in touch. Since it's The EmPOWERed Half Hour, what is an empowering message that you would like to share with the listeners?
Wendy Valentine: Tying it into my niche of midlife: You're not too old. It's not too late. Midlife is just the beginning, and it's the most exciting chapter of your life. Go for it. Whatever it is, go for it.
Becca Powers: I love it. I got goosebumps again, like five or six times.
Becca Powers: Alright, Wendy, how can the audience find you, your book, and all those beautiful things?
Wendy Valentine: The best place is wendyvalentine.com. Anything and everything is on there. The book, Women Waking Up, is sold everywhere—Amazon, paperback, audio read by me, and ebook. There are over $500 in bonuses that go with the book, which you can get on my website in the show too. My podcast, The Midlife Makeover Show, is wherever you listen to podcasts.
Becca Powers: That is awesome. Well, Wendy, uh, this was awesome. Thank you. I think this was really good.
Yes, yes. You were truly, this
Wendy Valentine: Turned me to radiance.
Becca Powers: Yes. Yeah, I feel very woke up right now and ready to claim my midlife, so I appreciate you. You are awake girl. You are awake. That's alright. No, well, thank you for being a guest. It was great to have you on. Thank you, Becca. Everyone have a great day.
