7 Things Midlife Women Stop Waiting For

In this season finale, I'm pulling together the highlights and hard-won lessons from twelve conversations with women who broke records, ran ultras, completed an Ironman at 51, took up roller skating, learned to skateboard at 40, and rebuilt confidence after illness, all while navigating the very real demands of midlife.

What I found wasn't about peak performance or turning back the clock. It was about seven things midlife women stop waiting for. And what becomes possible the moment they do.

In this episode you'll learn:

— Why confidence is a result, not a requirement 
— The power of visualisation and chunking down to tackle anything that feels too big
— Why the community you're looking for is hiding in plain sight 
— How to stop measuring yourself against who you were at 25 and start building forward
— Why being a beginner is not a phase to get through

Featuring twelve women in midlife who stopped waiting and found out what they were capable of.

If you keep telling yourself you'll start when things calm down, when you feel more ready, when you've got someone to go with, this episode is for you.

Follow on Instagram @unshrinkablemidlifemoves 

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:09

Over the last season of this podcast, I've sat with twelve remarkable women. Women who have run races and broken records, who ski and discovered roller skating in Pyrocoks, and rebuilt confidence after illness. Those who navigated menopause while training, who raised families, and quietly alongside all of that, started entirely new chapters. Every story was different, but there was a thread running through all of them. None of these women waited until they felt ready. Someone was pulsed in Lanzarotti when her friend says, Fancy trying cheerleading. Someone's at the track watching his son longjong when she thinks, actually, why don't I? Someone scrolling Instagram at midnight and spots a woman longboarding by the sea at sunset and thinks, I want to feel like that. The pause before the yes. That's where every story in this series began. Today I want to pull those stories together. Not as a highlight reel, though there are some moments in this season I'll be quoting for a while, but as a kind of map of what I actually found when I went looking. Seven things midlife women stop waiting for. One, they stop waiting for permission. Emily's 48. She's a former competitive gymnast, a mother of two boys, and she currently holds a Scottish national record in the master's triple jump. She'd done approximately 20 triple jumps in her life at that point. The way it started, she went to watch her son compete at the athletics track. She found herself looking at the long jump runner and thinking, if you know how to do it, why do you better go? That's it. No coach suggesting she try it. No one telling her she was the right age, the right build, the right kind of athlete. She decided she was allowed to begin. The permission never came from outside. It never does. That's the point. Two, they stopped waiting to feel confident. Lornette ran 50 miles in January on a coastal path through Storm Ingrid, temporarily blind in one eye from the wind, and at one point nearly off a cliff in the dark. She didn't start that race feeling confident. She told me she broke the whole thing into six mile chunks. Six miles. I know I can do six miles. I could do six miles every day if I needed to. When she miscalculated her timings and thought she was going to make the cutoff at St. Ives, and then realized she got it wrong and she was back in the game, she said.

SPEAKER_06 2:31

And then I realised I'd got my timings wrong and I was like, okay, I'm back in the game. And that was it. My mindset changed completely.

SPEAKER_05 2:38

She finished 15 hours, blind in one eye, and she finished. Donna, who didn't Iron Man at 51 and recently rode 600 kilometers across Nice, said something that stayed with me about race day.

SPEAKER_08 2:50

You never want to visualize yourself suffering. You want to visualize yourself having a good time, all the nutrition's going down well, you know, you're smiling and just enjoying the moment.

SPEAKER_05 3:01

That's not delusion, that's a decision. Confidence wasn't the starting point for either of them. It was a result. Anna, the Army GP, skydiving world medalist, the person who practiced handstands exits into a swimming pool to build muscle memory, said she was terrified for the first 40 jumps.

SPEAKER_07 3:19

On the way up, every single time, I'm like, why am I doing this? On the way up in the plane, and then I'd land, I'd go, that was awesome! And I'd go up again, like, why am I doing this? She told her students, It's natural to be nervous and I'd be worried if you weren't nervous. It's important that you need to set yourself nerves, it's keeping us safe, it's keeping us alert.

SPEAKER_05 3:36

It's okay. That's not toxic positivity. That's physiology. Confidence followed action, not the other way around. Three, they stopped waiting to be good at something. Almost every guest in the series was willing to be a beginner. Millie's 40. She got into longboarding after seeing a video of a woman cruising by the sea at sunset. Graceful, flowing, completely free, and thought, I want to feel like that. She booked a camp. She turned up not knowing anyone. She left with new friends and a board under her arm. By January, she'd moved on to skateboarding, showing up at skate parks as a 40-year-old woman who couldn't skate in a sport that is typically male dominated. She went anyway.

SPEAKER_10 4:15

When I asked her what the attraction was, she said, You don't have to be good at it to enjoy it. And no one's watching. Okay, we're watching each other, but nobody cares whether you're good at skateboarding or not. And you're not trying to be a good wife or mum or girlfriend. You're not trying to be a good colleague. You're not trying to achieve something.

SPEAKER_05 4:33

She's not good yet. She doesn't need to be. The wobbling is the point. Virginia's 55 and came to roller skating two years ago. She put on her skates at Crystal Palace expecting to feel like her 10-year-old self, and she didn't. So she found a beginner's course, then another, then another. She's now a coach, helping new skaters through exactly the wobble she once had. She described watching her beginners.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

You see people turn up and they literally cannot stand up from the chair because they've got their skates on. And after that first session, they're skating. Second session, you see the confidence is building and they've made friends in the room as well.

SPEAKER_05 5:15

Soraya found her way to a kickboxing pass via a poster, a moment, an open mind. She was dropping her kids at gymnastics, spotted a flyer for a women's self-defence class run by a former European Mai Thai champion, and thought, this makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 5:30

She went that same evening. She said, I always go into anything with a really open mind. I'm not really scared of anything, so I'm like, okay, what's this about?

SPEAKER_05 5:40

Sarah Gilbertson talked about falling on the slopes. Emily started triple jump later than anyone thought possible. What the magic wasn't, being good. What the magic was, being willing. Four, they stopped waiting for the old version of themselves. Sarah Gilbertson said something in our conversation that I keep coming back to. She works as a therapeutic coach supporting midlife women in returning to skiing. Women who've lost confidence, had an injury, taken time out, or find themselves on the mountain thinking, I don't ski like I used to. She said sometimes we're judging the 45, the 55-year-old us against a 25-year-old body image and or achievement level. And it's different. That word different. Not worse, not less, different. She talked about working out what you actually want skiing to look and feel like now, not recreating what it was at 25, not proving something. How does skiing make you feel? And how would you like it to feel? That's the question she starts with. And I think it's the right question for all of it. Sarah also mentioned that at the time of our conversation, she was at her fittest since she was a teenager, after back surgery, after two years away from the slopes. She said, intrigued to see what my experience will be like when I go back. Not anxious, intrigued. That's a shift. Sarah Allen's, who teaches group fitness across the Crystal Palace area, comes at this from a training side. She pushes back on the noise online, the ever-shifting narrative about what midlife women should and shouldn't do. Lift only, don't do cardio, zone two for everything. She called it for what it is, its trends, its narratives, it's whatever's in fashion. Her answer to all of it is variety. And a harvest study she cited that found doing multiple types of exercise is broadly beneficial to health.

SPEAKER_09 7:31

I will never tell anybody don't do this type of exercise, but unless it's dangerous, they're going to injure themselves or something. Types of movement have their value and they all have different uses. I just really believe in doing as many different types as you can practically fit into your week.

SPEAKER_05 7:47

And the word she used when I asked what movement means to her was equilibrium, not peak performance, not the body you had at 30.

SPEAKER_09 7:56

Exercising movement, it just brings everything, your nervous system just brings everything back into equilibrium. You know that really nice feeling that you have when you're bouncing down the street and the sun's out and you just feel very in not looking back, but building forward.

SPEAKER_05 8:11

Five, they stop waiting for perfect circumstances. Charlotte made a decision in Thailand to go home and start over.

SPEAKER_06 8:19

And what happened before is because my boys swim a lot, I am at the sports center every day, about 10 hours a week. And I would sit poolside, basically stuffing my face with crisp and chocolate while they swam. And I went, right, this has got to stop now. And I literally, first November, came back and they were in that pool. And it's like, right, I've just started a major and I was like, right, from this moment on, I'm going to gym.

SPEAKER_05 8:42

She did strength training three times a week from day one, changed her nutrition completely, lost weight, got stronger than she'd ever been across a decade of triathlon. She now competes in higher ups pro doubles and has qualified for the world championships. That's not a perfect circumstances story. That's a decision made on a bad day. And then there's Fiona. Fiona's 52. She stumbled across a roller skating event while walking to the shop for cat food in the summer of 2023 and bought her skates three days later. But here's what you need to know about Fiona. She had surgery at 40 that permanently changed her feet. No weight bearing through them. No running, no jumping, no sudden movements, no tiptoes.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

She said It just doesn't affect your movement, it affects your confidence, what you used to go out and do. Going out raving and things like that doesn't happen anymore because I can't really dance. Because I can't move my feet like that. And if I do, I know there's a price to pay for it.

SPEAKER_05 9:40

Roller skating is implausibly one of the very few things she can do. On skates, her feet don't flex in the way walking demands.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

She said, I really wanted to succeed at roller skating because my movement is being limited by the problem with my feet. I'm gonna have this disability for the rest of my life. So I need to do something, otherwise I'm gonna sit at home looking more like a Buddha day by day.

SPEAKER_05 10:05

She also can't feel her big toe or her little toe inside the skate. The signals that tell you where your feet is, which edges you're on. Every drill other skaters do automatically, she has to compute consciously.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

I have to work that much harder to simulate where the body should be without having the feet guide me, which everybody else is using. So that's a challenge and an internal battle, and sometimes it brings tears of suffering and pain.

SPEAKER_05 10:34

And yet she learns moves that some younger, able-bodied skaters haven't got yet. When that happens, she said, It's euphoric.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

And even so when I can do it over and above younger and able-bodied males or females. So that just makes me snap my fingers and gives me a drop the mic moment.

SPEAKER_05 10:54

She also talked about menopause and skating in the same breath, not as separate challenges, but as things that arrive together, and that the skating oddly speaks to both the brain fog, the osteoporosis risk, the hot flushes that make speed near feel less like discomfort and more like relief.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

She said part of the freedom of roller skating is a plus for me during menopause because you just need the freedom. You need to feel air, you need to feel breeze. I know if I go to the park, put on my skates, the weather's nice, and I go and skate, and I put my arms out and put my head up to the sky, I know I'm gonna feel good. I'm gonna feel like I'm gliding on water, and that's what I need to feel.

SPEAKER_05 11:37

The lesson from this wasn't that life became easier for any of these women. The lesson was that they moved anyway. Six, they stopped waiting for someone to come with them. Several guests described their biggest breakthroughs happening when they took the first step alone. Anna entering skydiving competitions as a solo competitor in a team sport, Launette at an ultra in January in a storm, Emily showing up her master's athletics track having told herself she was just going to have a look. Virginia is 55 and came to roller skating two years ago. A woman she knew from yoga was raving about it. Weeks of you've got to come, you've got to come. And eventually Virginia just bought some skates and turned up to Crystal Palace one Friday evening. She put them on expecting to feel like a ten-year-old self, but she didn't. She said I can skate, but actually this feels really odd. What followed was a four-week beginners course, a WhatsApp group she didn't know existed, an international skate trip to Barbados, and a family of three women she now calls her skate sisters. But here's the part that stayed with me. Virginia described herself as an extrovert introvert, someone who feels a flicker of anxiety about walking into a new room alone, and yet she goes to skate events by herself every week. I'd never go to a club or a bar by myself, but I would go to a skate event by myself. She said the community'd been hiding in plain sight the whole time. It didn't come before she showed up. It was only visible once she did. Debbie, the captain of a South London Masters cheerleading team, sports motorbike rider, a woman who wants books a solo trip to Morocco on a Sunday for the following weekend because she saw a video of hot air balloons at sunrise, said this about midlife.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

I just feel like at this age I've got the confidence and the money and the time to do things that I wouldn't have had time or money or energy to do in my twenties. So I don't think it is a crisis. It's just that now I can do it.

SPEAKER_05 13:28

She didn't wait for the squad, she became the squad. And then she built one. The community arrived after they started, not before. Debbie also said something about what the community then becomes.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

I didn't have a lot of girlfriends apart from my best friend that I talked about earlier when I was growing up, but I've really learned the value of having women around you. We talk about absolutely everything. If someone's got a problem, no one's embarrassed to say about it, and no one's embarrassed to admit that they've been through it as well. And we always say Wednesday night isn't only cheerleading, it's like therapy for all of us.

SPEAKER_05 14:05

Seven, they stopped waiting for proof. This is the one that really gets me. None of these women knew what they were capable of when they began. Emily didn't know she'd break records. Launette didn't know she'd run 50 miles. Donna didn't know that finishing an Iron Man at 51 would change the way she moved through the rest of her life.

SPEAKER_08 14:23

She said it really did show me who I was as a person. It just gave me such a boost at a time when I was looking basically at getting older. So I just started reaching for things and just asking for more, just being more direct, just wanting more out of life and trying to get it.

SPEAKER_05 14:43

Fiona didn't know roller skating would become the thing that gave movement back to her. And Emily said something that's been sitting with me for weeks. She's was talking about raising her sons, about what it means for them to watch her being fiercely competitive in her late 40s.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

She said I think it's really important for them to see a woman being fiercely competitive, wanting to make things happen, getting strong. They watch me doing weights in the house, they watch me talk about the goals that I have, and they see me show up to training sessions over and over again. And I think being a supporter and a carer and that sort of role is one of the most incredible things that anyone can do. But it does mean that if that is the thing that you confine yourself to, but you never get to realise your true potential.

SPEAKER_05 15:27

They didn't wait for proof. They created it. So Raya is 46. She's two young children, a senior role at the London School of Economics, and a daily walking practice of at least 10 kilometres. She also does kickboxing. She's been going for two years, and her teacher has been quietly encouraging her to compete. She has the mental strength for it, she's been told. She's considering it. But what I found most striking wasn't the kickboxing. It was what she said about potential.

SPEAKER_04 15:54

She said, I don't think I have scratched the surface of my potential. I think that there is so much more that I am capable of.

SPEAKER_05 16:02

She said it plainly, without drama, like it was simply a fact she'd arrived at, not a motivational statement, an assessment. And then she said something that I think is one of the most powerful things spoken across this entire season.

SPEAKER_04 16:17

There is a feeling of empowerment and control that comes with being able to just walk out your house and be able to exercise and move so freely. Being able to breathe unaided, being able to move in whichever way I want. I'm very fortunate in that I can move my body pretty much how I want.

SPEAKER_05 16:34

Movement as privilege, not performance, not achievement. Just the extraordinary, ordinary factor being able to go. That's not waiting, that's knowing yourself well enough to act. Sarah Gilbertson put it precisely.

SPEAKER_04 16:49

For me, it's quite life-affirming I can still do stuff.

SPEAKER_05 16:52

And Fiona described movement as elasticity.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Sometimes you can only go so far and you rebound. Sometimes you can go even further and still rebound. Sometimes you can be stretched and never gain your original shape.

SPEAKER_05 17:12

If there's one thing this season has taught me, it's that midlife isn't about holding on to who you've been. It's about getting curious about who you could still be. Every woman we've had from started in exactly the same place, not knowing, and then deciding to find out. Doesn't have to be an Iron Man, doesn't have to be 50 miles in a storm or a European indoor championship. It can be a Wednesday night cheerleading session that feels like therapy, or a beginner's skate course where you wobble and fall and come back. It starts with a yes, sometimes a frightened one. Thanks for listening to this episode. If this resonated, as always, share it with a woman who needs to hear it. And if you can spare two minutes, leave a review. Leaving a review makes a real difference. It helps more women to find this show. Follow us on Instagram over at unshrinkable midlife moves for more conversations. If today's episode has you thinking about discovering what you're actually capable of, then I want to tell you about something that was built exactly for that moment. The Grit and Grace Games is a first of its kind fitness race event for women in midlife. It's not about being the fastest or the fittest, it's about showing up, pushing yourself further than you thought you could, and crossing a finish line that proves something to yourself. Join us on the 12th of September 2026 at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre in London. To find out more and grab your ticket, go to gritandracegains.com. Thank you for listening, thank you for being part of this season of unshrinkable midlife moves. Until next time, keep moving, keep exploring, and keep finding out what's possible.