Messy Middlescence

Podcast by Tara (Conti) Bansal and Christina (Conti) Donovan

Messy Middlescence

Like adolescence – "Middlescence" is a time of tremendous change touching most aspects of our lives. There are the physical and hormonal changes but also many of the rhythms, relationships and frameworks that have dominated our lives for decades all start to shift in ways that are unbalancing at best – seismic at worst. Our podcast will explore the challenges and opportunities of these unique “middle” years. However – ours will be different because it is one of sharing, exploring and figuring things out together. It is "messy" because we do not have answers but we hope to discover some. We hope to motivate and / or guide listeners to actively change both their perspective and day-to-day reality of this unique time. We also aim to create a supportive connected community of listeners with similar struggles and questions. We truly hope you will join us!

Latest episodes

18 February 2025

Grief Debrief

In today’s episode, Tara and Tina take time to consider and contemplate the vast amount of both practical information and words of wisdom from the two previous episodes on grief and loss. We hope you were able to listen to our last 2 episodes: “Learning and Living Through Grief” with Brett Danko and “When Their World Stops From Grief” with Anne-Marie Lockmyer. We recommend that you listen to them before listening to this one.

Today’s episode highlights what we learned and experienced through these interviews with Brett and Anne-Marie. We hope our discussion helps bring more clarity and positive energy to this emotional and difficult - but unavoidable and important topic. We encourage you to listen and hope you will contact us with any feedback and the impact these episodes had on you and your middlescence journey.

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04 February 2025

Learning and Living Thru Grief with Brett Danko

We are so inspired by and grateful for the many people willing to share their middlescence journey with us. We are humbled and amazed at their courage and willingness to open up and share their personal experiences, dreams and fears.

As we continue with this season’s theme of grief – we are especially grateful to our next guest. Brett Danko lost his beloved wife, Dawn, last March. She was 55 and had been fighting cancer for several years. Brett’s middlescence journey has been filled with what for many of us is our absolute worst nightmare.

Brett’s ability to be “an open book” and thoughtfully and stoically detail his last few years is a testament to his strength of character along with his innate abilities as an amazing teacher.

Take a deep breath, then listen and learn as we discuss Brett’s experience of grief and loss that touches upon a wide range of topics including:

- The importance of not holding emotions back and having those conversations where you tell the people you love how you feel;
- The impact and difficulties respective to a quick death versus a long and painful illness;
- The necessity of treating the people you love with kindness every day;
- How it is never too late to create an emotional link with people;
- Remembering that success is ultimately having people that love and care about you;
- Why middlescence is the time to be a little selfish and to do the things you want to do with the people you want to be with;
- The value of spending time with people who are going through a difficult situation regardless of whether that situation is permanent or not;
- The idea of an emotional bucket that you control who fills and empties it;
- Providing continued support to people in grief by reaching out via text, phone or an offer to come by AFTER the first 3 months;
- The decision to create and then fulfill your legacy.

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21 January 2025

When Their World Stops from Grief with Anne-Marie Lockmyer

We opened the 2^nd season of our Messy Middlescence podcast discussing grief and loss. We continue with that topic – which will be a recurring theme this season – in our interview today with Anne-Marie Lockmyer (https://www.griefandtraumahealing.com/). Anne-Marie is a grief recovery specialist and award winning author of the book “When Their World Stops: The Essential Guide to Truly Helping Anyone in Grief”.

We feel strongly that our interview with Anne-Marie is one that every person – regardless of age and circumstance – can benefit from. At some point in our lives, someone we love or care deeply for will undergo a devastating loss. While our intent maybe to provide help, support and comfort, we often do not know what to do or say. And perhaps – even worse – we do or say the absolute worst thing. Anne-Marie provides extremely practical advice and concrete examples on how to help someone who is grieving. Despite the difficult topic, Anne-Marie brings hope and positive energy to our conversation.

We hope you will join us as we educate ourselves about grief and discuss with Anne-Marie the following topics:

Anne-Marie’s captivating and inspiring personal story which details her own experience with devastating grief and her journey to becoming a grief recovery specialist;

How grief is a natural part of any significant loss (not just death) and people should be educated about it and given tools to help process it;

Each grief journey is totally unique and has no timetable and no checklists;

Grief is a traumatic emotional injury and its recovery should be viewed similarly to a traumatic physical injury allowing as much time, space and help that is needed to heal;

What we should and should not say to someone who is grieving;

What is helpful and not helpful to someone who is grieving;

The idea that we as a society/culture are not comfortable with unhappy feelings and we need to learn to get comfortable being uncomfortable;

It is impossible to talk someone out of being sad.

We hope you listen and find this episode as valuable and helpful as we did.

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08 January 2025

Holiday Recap and Intentions for the New Year

Welcome to January! The end of the holidays can hit hard. Even when your holidays have been absolutely perfect, it can be challenging not to dread everything that awaits us in January. Whether it is taking down decorations, starting back on the work/school routine, saying goodbye to loved ones or even just facing those holiday bills – January is full of difficult tasks. We think for most people there is an inevitable sadness -- or perhaps cheerlessness is a better word - that permeates most people’s lives as January begins. It is so easy and tempting to shut the door on December and trudge forward with our heads down.

May we suggest a more nuanced approach? As January unfolds, spend some time thinking about your holiday(s). What were your high points? Replay those moments that brought you joy over and over as we traverse these long winter months. And then try welcoming January with a theme or some positive or fun intentions (definitely no resolutions or promises). Do not be afraid to do this slowly. There is no rush! All of 2025 stretches in front of us.

We hope you will join us as Tara and Tina do all these things as we ease our way out of the holidays and into 2025. We relive the high and low points of our holidays, talk about favorite things of 2024 and our intentions for 2025. We hope our discussion helps ease your transition away from the holidays and generates some gentle excitement for the upcoming year.

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17 December 2024

2024 Book Recommendations

The end of every calendar year sees “best of” lists for just about every cultural category imaginable. But “best” is not easily defined when it comes to art and culture — especially when used by critics. Most of the culture that Tara and Tina consume comes from reading and as a result they are continually searching for book recommendations.

Although critics’ lists are sometimes helpful, Tina and Tara have found that those books recommended by family and friends usually resonate far more than those on the critics’ lists. It is with this mindset that they chose to do their own “best of” episode as 2024 comes to a close.

For Tara and Tina, “best of” means the books they enjoyed reading the most this past year. In this episode they discuss their favorite fiction and non-fiction books of this past year. They hope some of these titles make their way into your reading future. They would also love to hear some of your favorite books of 2024!

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03 December 2024

A Few Kind Words with Tracey Willis Gates

Is kindness overrated? We don’t think so. Maybe it is our age, maybe it is the world we currently live in – but it seems, if anything, that kindness is vastly underrated and something our society and communities could use more of.

Cue Tracey Willis Gates – self-proclaimed “kindness ambassador” and author of the book “The Power of A Few Kind Words: Create a More Meaningful Life, One Letter at a Time” which shows how important, how easy, and how meaningful kindness can be.

Gates’ book documents her transformational journey of writing a handwritten, unexpected letter of appreciation to a different person every day for one year. Tara and Tina both read Tracey’s book and feel this is a book everyone should read and can benefit from. We were so thrilled to speak with Tracey after reading her book and she does not disappoint.

Tracey is not advocating everyone imitate the impressive and daunting challenge she gave herself. Rather, she shows and shares through her journey the powerful impact of 1) being observant to the gifts and things we appreciate in the people we interact with and 2) the simple way that acknowledging these things through words can have.

We love her assertion that kindness is both a superpower AND a learned behavior. Our ability to be kind is strengthened and improved with practice - making kindness something we can all work on incorporating more intentionally into our daily life. But this is just one part of Tracey’s story. There are so many positive and inspirational messages in her book. Tracey’s challenge to herself, which transformed her life in so many ways, occurred during her middlescence years and she is a prime example that it is never too late to find your purpose. She passionately advocates for all the good things that happen as you age. And she demonstrates that a small series of seemingly unrelated steps can often lead to a serendipitous journey with unexpected and fulfilling results.

As we move into the holiday and gift-giving season, we hope Tracey’s many messages will inspire you to take the time to make connections and be more present to those around you and to practice your own small acts of kindness. They are free. And as Tracey’s stories show – a powerful medicine for both the giver and the recipient.

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