This week on The Midlife Mess, I’m talking about love—but not just the romantic kind.

After revisiting 8 Rules of Love by Jay Shetty, I found myself reflecting on something that hit even harder this time around: society teaches us to place romantic love at the top of the pyramid, while often overlooking the many other forms of love that shape our lives just as deeply.

As someone navigating singleness in midlife, this conversation felt personal.

I talk honestly about the tension between wanting partnership while also learning to love yourself more deeply. About how singleness can feel peaceful one day and painful the next. About the life you pictured versus the life you have now—and how to stop treating your current chapter like a waiting room.

We also get into:

• Why self-love is more about boundaries than bubble baths
• How we confuse chemistry with compatibility
• The patterns midlife helps us finally recognize
• Why peace matters more than potential now
• The love of friendship, children, family, pets, and community
• Building a richly loved life—even before romance arrives

If you’re single, partnered, healing, hopeful, or somewhere in between, this one is for you.

This week, Lara shares a very real recap of the past couple of weeks—from spring break comparison spirals and a meaningful trip with her daughter, to friendship accountability, letting go of someone from her past, and processing tragic loss in her community.

This episode is about motherhood, grief, emotional growth, and what it looks like to hold joy and heartbreak at the same time.

In this episode:

• spring break pressure and comparison
• friendship, insecurity, and accountability
• love, longing, and not sending the text
• a sweet mother-daughter trip to Biltmore
• a funny Banana Ball mix-up
• grief, parenting fears, and talking to kids about hard things

Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicide and grief. If you or someone you love is struggling, you’re not alone. You can call or text 988 in the U.S. for support.

This week on The Midlife Mess, Lara shares a deeply personal story about receiving anonymous text messages from burner phone numbers — and the bigger truth it revealed about shame, secrecy, power, and what it means to exist as a woman in the world.

What starts as an uncomfortable experience becomes a larger conversation about unwanted attention, body confidence in midlife, the emotional labor women carry, and why attraction is not the problem — entitlement is.

Lara talks about the power dynamic behind anonymity, the misplaced shame women so often end up carrying, and why good men have a responsibility not just to behave well themselves, but to hold other men accountable.

This episode is for women who have ever been made to feel uncomfortable for simply existing — and for men who want to better understand the female experience and help create a safer world.

In this episode:

• Anonymous texts, secrecy, and power
• Midlife body confidence and unwanted attention
• Why women carry shame that isn’t theirs
• The mental load women carry around safety
• Why attraction does not equal access
• What men can do better