157. They Want You Quiet. Why Midlife Is the Time to Get Loud.

What happens when your intuition is screaming something isn’t right—but the world keeps telling you to sit down and be quiet? In today’s episode, we’re talking about midlife discernment, political gaslighting, and the rising cost of staying silent. This one’s raw, unfiltered, and unapologetically necessary.

In This Episode:

In this soul-stirring, no-holds-barred episode, Laurie dives deep into a conversation that’s long overdue: what happens when women finally start trusting their own intuition… and the world around them tries to silence it?

This episode isn’t just about politics—it’s about principles. It’s about gaslighting on every level—from government narratives to the deeply personal ways women are told not to trust their own experiences. Laurie explores how the chaos in the world mirrors what midlife women often experience when they stop people-pleasing and start speaking up.

She covers:

• The emotional toll of constantly waking up to bad news
• Why our nervous systems weren’t built for 24/7 chaos
• The terrifying rise of authoritarianism—and how it’s gaslighting the public
• How midlife women are reclaiming their voice and power, even when others try to shame them back into silence
• The gut-wrenching parallels between political manipulation and what many women experience in their personal lives

Midlife isn’t a crisis. It’s a moment of radical discernment. And if you’ve been feeling like the world’s gone off the rails, and no one’s saying the quiet part out loud? This episode is for you.

👀 Listen if you’ve ever felt:

• Gaslit by the news, your doctor, or your family
• Like you’re waking up—but everyone else wants you to stay asleep
• Pulled to speak up... but afraid to rock the boat

🎯 Midlife takeaway:
Your intuition isn’t a liability—it’s a leadership skill. And the world needs it now more than ever.

🔥 5 Click-Worthy, Emotionally-Charged Titles

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Transcript

[00:00:00] 

What happens when you finally start trusting yourself, your instincts, your intuition, and the world around you starts gaslighting you into silence. This week, I'm pulling zero punches. I'm talking about midlife discernment, political gaslighting, the cost of staying silent, and why it's never been more important to use your voice.

Let's dive in.

Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson.

This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. [00:01:00] 

Hey friends. Welcome back to another episode of The School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson. Really, really great to have you here today.

I think most of you know that I record these episodes pretty much the day before they drop because I want them to be current. Just like for the most part, my Sunday newsletter: I used to actually write on Saturday nights, but I'm trying to get my shit together and, and not spend my weekend working. So I've started to actually write the newsletters on Thursday night or Fridays. And this week I wrote it on Friday, scheduled it, it went out Sunday morning. And then another US citizen was killed in Minnesota. And it, it felt a little tone deaf to [00:02:00] me that I didn't actually talk about the killing in the newsletter. Because honestly, at the time that I had created the newsletter, I didn't know about it. It hadn't happened yet.

And I thought about revising the newsletter and I didn't. It just went out as it always does. But I feel like today, as I record this episode, that there's just, there's a lot going on right now in the world. And it feels a really heavy, and I know that depending on who you are, where you live, that things have been heavy for a long, long time. And it's getting harder and harder to quiet the noise. And I'm not saying don't [00:03:00] be informed about what's going on, don't listen to what's going on, but it is also.

It is too much for us to constantly be in the loop every second, keeping up on all the breaking news. Our bodies literally cannot handle it. We were not made for this, right? We, we've got those, those parts of our brains that were built for protection, which is when we are in, we're in danger. We develop a lot of cortisol, there's a lot of stress going through our bodies.

And then once the the danger passes, then we're supposed to be able to, to get back to normal, to recalibrate, to let our system come back to normal.

But with what's been going on lately, it's really hard to get back to normal. It's really [00:04:00] hard to get back to the point where it doesn't feel like we go to bed and we wake up to another horrific, ridiculous, crazy thing that we would never have expected to be happening. Especially if you are in the US and you're listening to this.

 . I want to talk today about gaslighting kind of relate it all together, but also take what is going on in the world, in the US These crazy, I mean it, it feels like unprecedented times all the time. I saw a meme that said I would just like some precedented times.

It's like, can we just get back to that?

So it's happening all around us, and it's happening within us too. What I mean by that is there is something painfully familiar about what we're going through [00:05:00] as a midlife woman. Because for most of us, we've been told from a early, early on that we don't really know how we feel. Or that our intuition is unreliable. Or that our reactions, they're too much.

You're just too much. That when we question what's going on around us, that we're being negative. And if we're bold enough to name what's actually going on around us or inside of us, then we're cautioned against being impolite.

We're told that if we don't have something nice to say, that we shouldn't say anything at all. And perhaps what has been most damaging of all, which is also happening in real time on the daily news is this whole idea that we [00:06:00] are talked out of what we're seeing and sensing and feeling. Like what we're actually experiencing isn't actually what's happening.

Oh, bless. Bless her heart. She just doesn't know. That's not what's going on. Sure, maybe that's what somebody told you to think, but that's not right. That's not what's actually happening.

And I feel like that's literally what's going on in the US with our government. That we can see actual video evidence of what is happening and then we have the government telling us what it thinks is happening. Or, uh, the government is reframing what's actually going on with a narrative that supports what it is trying to accomplish here, which at this point, I honestly feel like is just trying to bring down democracy in the United States and [00:07:00] take everyone with it. I, I don't see many lifeboats right now except for white men.

I, that's me throwing up my hands. If, if you're not watching on the video, it's so fucking maddening. It really is. And, and I think what's, what's hardest to understand is there seems to be no bottom. Every time I, I feel like this is it, we can't go any lower than this, than than we do. Then we start actually killing United States citizens. The government is shooting US citizens in our streets under the guise of we've gotta be able to clean up the streets against these awful criminal immigrants. Guess what? We are [00:08:00] a nation built on immigration. None of us started out here, save the Native Americans who we have conveniently moved off of their land to a reservation. I,

I am so upset. I am so frustrated. I'm so mad. And it also feels like there's not a lot that we can do. And I don't want us to get to the point where we feel like there's nothing we can do. We just throw our hands up and we just let it happen because that's not it at all. There are so many ways for us to get involved to actually affect change.

We have an uphill battle. It's not gonna be easy. It's going to require us to move past [00:09:00] being tired and frustrated and angry. I get that. And it also, feels unfair that this is falling on women.

Like, why can't the men, the ones who are actually in power, the ones that are trying to take away our rights, why can't they just step up and do their fucking jobs? Represent the people who elected them, not just come up with some ridiculous agenda to keep women at home. I mean, what was that article a month or so ago about? That women in the workforce are actually ruining the workforce. How about we take your fragile male ego and you just, you sit down a bit and you listen to the adults in the room, which are typically women [00:10:00] giving grounded, thoughtful advice. Why don't we let the men sit it out for a little bit and let's just see what the women come up with.

Because it seems to me if the women are actually running things, we're gonna make sure that people are fed, the kids are not separated from their parents. That the, the people are educated that.

We have healthcare that we're, that we're taken care of. And interestingly, those are values that Christians should be standing up for. Wow. I mean, talk about the things we're not supposed to be talking out on the podcast and politics, religion, let's just go into it.

If we actually showed up and spoke up against our values, I would really like to think that we [00:11:00] wouldn't be in this place. Because all of the polls that I have seen indicate that what is going on is not, it's not popular. The president may say he has a mandate because he got, because he won an election. He didn't even have an entire majority of the people in the United States that voted for him, and yet he feels like he has unfettered ability to do whatever he wants, and the courts aren't reigning him in.

Congress isn't reigning him in. There's a reason we have checks and balances in this country. There's a reason we have checks and balances in this country at this point. I, I think I would settle for either checks or balances.

Let me just say, you are entitled to change your opinion at any time. [00:12:00] Just because you voted for a candidate with an idea that they were gonna bring down grocery prices or make the streets safer, close down the border. Bring down gas prices, whatever the reason that you voted for a candidate, that doesn't mean that you have put a flag into the ground and you have to always stick with that candidate regardless.

No matter what.

Adam Grant recently posted our highest loyalty doesn't belong to people or parties. It belongs to principles. If you wouldn't accept it from your opponents, you shouldn't accept it from your allies. Integrity is standing by your values even when your own group violates them.

That hit me really hard. Because it seems as though [00:13:00] there is a lot of digging in. There's a lot of saying, I voted this way. I am going to stand by that vote forever, I will never come off of that vote. Which means there is nothing that that person that you voted for, that party that you voted for, there is nothing that they can do wrong. You are essentially giving them unfettered ability to do whatever they want. That's new in the US. We haven't had that here before.

We are a government of the people for the people. We don't answer to a dictator. We don't have authoritarianism in this country, or we haven't until recently. I think it's interesting that it's the [00:14:00] 250th anniversary of the United States of America in 2026. And this might actually be the first time in my lifetime, in 54 years, that I really wonder if we're gonna get there.

Are we going to allow citizens to be gunned down in our streets? Are we going to allow the government to continually rewrite these narratives of what's actually happening? I mean, think about this. If they are lying to us about what we can actually see with our own eyes, there is so much video evidence of this.

If we can, if they're lying to us about that, what? What are they hiding from us that we don't even know about? What are they lying about that we can't even see? It's, [00:15:00] it's too much.

George Orwell in his book, 1984. I was trying to remember when I read that. I was, it was assigned to me in English class. I think it was in seventh grade. Could have been eighth grade somewhere, but a long time ago. And there's a quote in there which feels so

relevant to what we're going through right now. The quote is, "the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final most essential command." What does that mean? That means the party is telling you what to believe even if it goes against everything, not only that you stand for, but that you actually see and hear.

See with your own eyes, hear with your own ears. And in order to comply, you have to just [00:16:00] get rid of your own decision making. You have to believe them at all costs. And I, for one, think that's too great of a cost. I don't wanna do that.

I'm gonna bring this back to midlife women because I don't, I don't want this to become a rant, but I also feel like if you are someone who has stayed silent because you don't wanna rock the boat, I can't do that anymore.

I wanna bring it back to what I, I see as this really interesting relationship between what's happening in the US and what happens to women when they get to midlife and they actually start exercising their voice in a way that they never have before.

It's so interesting to me though that what is happening in our country is very [00:17:00] similar to what midlife women experience all the time. Which is when we get to midlife, we actually start trusting ourselves a little bit more. And that feels threatening to some of the people around us, particularly the ones who have benefited from us, not speaking our mind in the past, for not setting and holding healthy boundaries for us, giving too much of ourself all the time, and just assuming that we're being good people because we're showing up for

everyone around us we're, we're giving and giving and giving of ourselves. But to what end? Yeah, we get to midlife and we're like, you know what? That's not working for me anymore. And we start pushing back because we're trusting ourselves a bit. We're, we're listening to our own intuition, and that starts feeling threatening to others and to systems, and to the relationships.

It's because [00:18:00] they, those relationships have relied on our silence. They've relied on our self doubt. They've relied on this idea that we don't really. We don't stand by our decisions. We can be talked out of it really easily. That our convictions are malleable, that it doesn't, you know, she can change her mind.

If we, if we show her how impolite she's being, or self-absorbed or self-centered, she'll, she'll come off of that position. That's fine.

And for a lot of us, for many, many years, we did. We did. And

now, now that we have more clarity and we stop outsourcing our opinions to others, and we actually start honoring our inner voice and trusting our intuition and listening to our gut when it tells us [00:19:00] one thing over another. We we're actually paying attention to how we feel versus the, the message that we're getting from others on how we should feel or what we actually saw or what we are experiencing.

When we do that, they tell us we must be having a midlife crisis. Because we've never acted this way before. We never questioned it before. Why would we start doing it right now? This is, this is just like George Orwell, right? You can't be trusted to feel your own feelings. Let me tell you what it is you're feeling.

Let me tell you what it is you're experiencing, and I'm here to tell you as far as midlife women are concerned, this is not a crisis at all. This is discernment. This is discernment. One from years of showing up in a world that is no longer serving us. That doesn't mean it didn't at one point. That's what [00:20:00] I'm talking about.

That if, if, if we bring it back to what's going on in the US right now, just because it worked for us, just because our vote. Meant one thing before doesn't mean we're tied to it forever. We can change our mind, and that's what midlife women have the luxury of doing as well. We can change our mind. We can start following our intuition.

That is one of the beautiful things that comes with aging into midlife is discernment. It's wisdom, it's, it's when we finally decide to start trusting our experience and trusting our own judgment and stop outsourcing our, our knowing or stop talking ourselves out of how we feel and start honoring who, who we are and what it [00:21:00] means to be the women that we are, and the women that we are becoming.

When, when people try and talk us out of how we're feeling or what we're experiencing, I don't know if any of you have had a doctor just tell you that what you're, what you're feeling, what you're describing to me. It's all in your head. It'll pass. I, uh, had very, very bad. Endometriosis for a lot of years and many, several doctors told me that all women get cramps, all women get sick around their cycle.

What you are describing, you're just imagining it.

I was imagining it so much that I would actually sleep. In the bathtub when I was having my period, because I couldn't keep any food in me, whether it was coming out the top or out the bottom. I [00:22:00] literally there, there was so much going on inside my digestive system and my colon and all related to the endometriosis.

Can you imagine a man hearing that from a doctor? Can you imagine a doctor ever saying that to a man? It wouldn't happen, right? But it's this whole idea that women have to be told what they're feeling. And they have to be told what they're seeing. And I was actually so worked up about this that, um, I, I accidentally kicked the power cord out from, uh, the computer.

It's just so much my friends, it's, it's so much.

But learning to trust yourself again, to learn how to trust your intuition, to trust that the life that you are envisioning for [00:23:00] yourself is neither dramatic nor unrealistic. When you're able to trust yourself to say, this isn't working for me anymore. It did for a while. It's not working for me anymore.

Having that ability to speak your personal truth, the power that is so important,

Obviously I don't usually talk a lot about politics on this podcast. Um, I feel like I, I try and be a little bit of a port in the storm, which is you can come here and get away from it. I also know that it hear me when I say it's not my intent to change your mind about anything. I just want you to really think about is what you're saying and what you're hearing.

Is it okay for [00:24:00] you? And if it's not, you can say something. You don't have to condone it anymore just because you did at one point, and that applies to what's going on in the United States. That applies to what's going on in your own life. Any confusion or anger or sadness or clarity or resolve that you're feeling particularly this week, given what's been going on?

In case no one has told you, you are allowed to trust what you're feeling. You are allowed to trust those emotions. You are allowed to name what you see and not have anybody try and talk you out of it or tell you you're wrong, or try and give you some other narrative, and you are allowed to use your voice.

 Whew. That's a lot for [00:25:00] today. I'm gonna end with this. Here's the truth. This isn't just about politics. It's about principles. It's about learning to trust what you see and feel and know, and not letting anyone, whether that's the government, or a doctor, or a partner talk you out of it.

You get to decide what's true for you. And if it doesn't sit right with you anymore, you are allowed to change your mind. That's the beauty of midlife is it's not a crisis. It's it's a moment. It's a decision to stop outsourcing your own personal knowing and start honoring your truth. Your discernment isn't a liability, and don't you listen to anybody who tries to tell you otherwise.

Your discernment [00:26:00] is a superpower. Use it. The world needs your voice, your wisdom, your voice. Now more than ever. Thanks for spending the day with me today. I will be back here next week. Hopefully. I had like to say, I won't be quite as fired up next week, but you just never know. I don't know. This could be, this could be the new Laurie

I, I don't think it will be, but we'll see. I I do have a vacation coming up this weekend, so maybe I'll get away from it a little bit. And, and, and... you know what, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna apologize for how I'm feeling today. I'll see you back here next week when the school of midlife is back in session.

Until then, take good care of yourself.

 Thank you so much for listening to the School of Midlife podcast. It means so much to have you here each week. If you enjoyed this episode, could you do me the biggest favor and help us spread the word to other midlife women? [00:27:00] There are a couple of easy ways for you to do that first. And most importantly, if you're not already following the show, would you please subscribe? That helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. Second, if you'd be so kind to leave us a five-star rating, that would be absolutely incredible. And finally, I personally read each and every one of your reviews. 

So if you take a minute and say some nice things about the podcast, well, that's just good karma. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you right back here. Next week when the School of Midlife is back in session until then take good care.