Like many things worth it, it wasn’t easy when the Flipping 50 show started. If you’re new or you’ve been here a minute but you never heard this story, this is how it all started.
Tears roll down my face as I take down years of memories. Since I can remember I wanted dozens of frames full of memories hanging on my walls and lining bookshelves. My cell phone rings and I see it’s my realtor, what perfect timing.
It was she who said a house sells better when a buyer can imagine themselves in the space and the seller’s personal items are removed.
I should have been putting up Christmas decorations. It was a brutally cold December day. There’d be no 19 ft tree, no throwing mardi gras beads at it. Dustin was at college and would be home over break but there might not even be a tree this year. He’d have to have that experience at his dad’s.
That was the first year of what is now Flipping 50 and the companion business served by the She Means Fitness Business podcast that helps health and fitness coaches start and grow their fitness businesses serving women over 40.
That was 11 months after having quit safety and security of a regular paycheck. It was after the times I’d confidently said, “If I’m not where I need to be and have to, I’ll sell my house.”
Not so confidently, I was selling my house.
I was leaving… a house I loved in a neighborhood I loved in a town I had loved since I was a little girl visiting my sister and hearing stories of my grandmother attending college here so many decades ago.
During the first 14 months of going 100% in on the mission to serve midlife women and to uplevel the health and fitness industry instead of complaining about what was wrong with it, I had 8 major life changes.
Life was tough.
But then – I’d love to say I worked harder, got help and it all got better.
Well folks that’s not how it happened.
Life got harder.
And I learned a lot of lessons.
In the J.Crew factory outlet store picking up funeral suit coats for my great nephews who’s dad was just killed by a drunk and high driver. In spite of red-rimmed puffy eyes the clerk said, “Going to a wedding?” It took everything I had just then which was not a lot not to say, “No bitch, you had a 50/50 chance and you blew it. They’re burying their dad.”
My niece’s husband was killed riding his bike in the last 10 minutes from home of a two hour ride with a buddy after having been gone all week without getting in a ride. The driver had left him for dead and sped off. We were all devastated. Not just the families, but a town, his colleagues at Google, his biking community near pros. Bill wasn’t a careless occasional rider out on a Saturday ride. He was a calculated, Eagle scout kid grown into a turning-pro biker who was much loved and envied for his skill and humility.
Life was hard before Bill.
But after, my eyes were open about hard.
Choose your hard we say. I choose to work “hard” because I know this isn’t hard. I choose to put in more time than most are willing to because it matters. Things that do are worth it. I’m not here for the toned arms and the smaller size.
I’m here for adventure and fun and feeling it all, experiencing it all. I watched life fall apart in minutes. I’ve also watched it come back together. It’s never the same. Of course it’s not. But it’s beautiful and it’s honoring to those gone.
This was the first 4 years of my start of a new life.
Tears – much more than laughter. And the privilege of watching generosity and love pour out of people. The lessons of understanding that everyone you meet on the street at any moment could be going through a catastrophic event in their lives. Because groceries still have to be bought and work still has to happen and kids need to go to school.
I’ve become a better human because of hard.
It can go either way. You can let it swallow you up, consume you, gain limited beliefs and then let them run you or you can surround yourself with someone who will tell you that no, exercising hours a day and fasting to disguise a terrible habit of eating too little… is going to keep you stuck.
I established Flipping 50 for the women who feel like no one gets them, and that trainers seem to think they must be cheating if they aren’t getting results. For those who think they should be tired, sore and stiff or it isn’t working. Who think if you feel miserable you’ll finally get to a place you feel good.
My job is to point out the science that these things are wrong. To put into practical terms what the missing part is for women in midlife.
No one was talking about menopause fitness in 2013 when I began this journey.
And what i used to teach in the 80s and the mid 90s even about osteoporosis has changed. Yet, if it’s online you may read something and still now be conflicted.
It’s my self-prescribed job description to clean that mess up and give you clarity about why we thought that then and what we know now. Not just to tell you the rules have changed.
It’s my job to help you hear from people whose ideas oppose mine or sway me to change my limited thinking.
It’s not about being right. Sometimes it’s about delivering information that might be inconclusive so that you can decide for yourself.
Others, it’s sharing new information and either asking questions about the validity of the science or its application to you.
When you tune in, you’ll hear interviews usually reserved for Tuesdays and most often a solo episode on Fridays, answering questions or following up with an idea or science that’s new on the scene. When for instance our community is confused about “Zone 2” training, or conflicted on fasting + exercise in a fed state, I’ll be talking about these things.
Mostly, I’ll be talking about these things with the lens focused on women in midlife and studies featuring women just like you.
You’re not a man, a mouse, or a young woman – not even younger you.
I also ask that you think big. Rather than criticize, get curious. Why was it said that way? How could it have triggered you? And believe that one woman doing lifts us all up, it’s called collaboration and if you haven’t gotten the memo, we’re lifting each other up now.
When I was a year into building this online business of mine that Flipping 50 Show became a part of I realized something.
