Hey, beautiful boss mom. Pull up a chair.

This week’s conversation is one I’ve wanted to have for a long time, and it’s not really a how-to. It’s the kind of talk that names something you’ve probably felt in your body and never had words for. I sat down with Katy Rexing, a meditation teacher who rebuilt her entire life from the inside out, and we got into the midlife awakening for moms. That wobbly, why-do-I-suddenly-feel-like-this season that so many of us hit somewhere in our late 30s and 40s.

If you’ve been quietly wondering whether something is wrong with you lately, I want to tell you upfront where this is going. Nothing is wrong with you. You’re right on schedule.

Grab your coffee, your tea, your weighted blanket, your dog, whatever you self-soothe with. Let’s get into it.

About the Guest: Katy Rexing

Katy Rexing is a certified meditation teacher, a 200-hour registered yoga teacher, and a professionally trained chef who lives in Southern California with her husband and four kids. She’s also the host of the podcast WithIn, which is all about women in midlife turning inward to find the answers they’re already carrying.

Almost a decade ago, Katy rebuilt her life through a daily meditation practice, and now she helps other women do the same through her coaching, retreats, and a whole library of guided practices. You can find her on Instagram at @katyrexing, and if you want her starter meditation toolkit, she has people comment the word PRACTICE on her posts and she sends everything you need to begin. Her work and mine come at moms from different doors, but we keep landing in the same room.

The Wall Almost Every Mom Hits Around 40

Katy grew up a textbook good girl. Firstborn daughter, great grades, good school, smile on her face, doing exactly what she was told. She worked in advertising, became a chef, had four kids, and applied the only operating system she knew to all of it: if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it perfectly.

Any mom can tell you how that ends. It ended in panic attacks she didn’t even have language for at the time. That paralyzing, pull-the-covers-over-your-head, something-must-be-wrong-with-me feeling. And here’s the part that stopped me cold. Katy doesn’t think that breakdown was random or rare. She thinks it’s almost universal.

“I think every single woman, by the time you reach your early 40s, something happens, and the body and the mind are like, ‘I am done being at war with you.'” — Katy

For some of us it shows up loud, like a panic attack on the kitchen floor. For others it’s quiet, just a low hum of unease you can’t quite point to. You mention it to a girlfriend, but it never feels big enough to act on. It often hides inside that quiet I feel like a bad mom guilt so many of us carry without ever saying it out loud. Either way, Katy’s take is that we spend our 20s and 30s building entire lives on other people’s values, abandoning a little piece of ourselves with each choice, getting really, really good at numbing it. And then the pot we’ve been stuffing things into for two decades finally boils over.

A Panic Attack Is Your Body Crying to Be Heard

I know this one from the inside.

Last year I was driving through the mountains to Arizona with my two kids and out of nowhere I had a panic attack on a bridge. The only way I can describe it is that I felt like my body was going to do something I didn’t want it to do and I wouldn’t be able to stop it. That I’d accidentally drive us off the road. That whatever happened would be my fault because I couldn’t control my own body.

My cousin got me in with an energy worker the next day, and we figured out it was a traumaversary. Some hard things had happened on that same date the year before, and my brain wasn’t processing it, so my body did the processing for me. Here’s the framing that came out of that work, and I think it’s the whole thing:

“A panic attack is your body crying to be heard. And your brain is going, ‘No, I’ve got this, we’re just going to be this exact way and everything’s going to be perfect.’ And your body is like, no.” — Dana

When you’ve spent years with your brain and your body disconnected, that disconnection eventually demands a meeting. The shaky season isn’t your enemy. It’s the alarm bell. As Katy put it, it’s an invitation to slow down and course-correct, and thank God it goes off, because it gives us the chance to write the next chapter as ourselves instead of as the role we were handed.

Why This Happens On Purpose

Here’s where Katy got me thinking differently. She doesn’t believe this midlife unraveling is a malfunction. She thinks it’s by design.

It lines up with what’s happening to us physically. Perimenopause, menopause, the whole hormonal shift. Her belief is that Mother Nature wired the timing on purpose, that the awakening and the biology are meant to arrive together, and that it’s been happening to women for millennia.

“I do not think we should try to avoid it. I think it’s the most beautiful thing that happens to us.” — Katy

That reframe matters, because most of us treat the wobble like a problem to fix. We try to optimize our way out of it with more supplements, more workouts, more control. Katy’s whole point is that the discomfort is the doorway. You’re not supposed to dodge it. You’re supposed to walk through it. Which, honestly, is the same thing I say about every uncomfortable growth season in business and motherhood. The discomfort is the price of becoming who you’re meant to be.

Stop Trying to “Love Yourself” (Start by Knowing Yourself)

If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at “just love yourself,” Katy is right there with you. She thinks we skip a step.

“Meditation in its truest form means to know thyself. To know thyself.” — Katy

Her argument is that you can’t love yourself if you don’t actually know yourself yet, and most of us only know the polished, presentable parts. The anxiety, the shame, the parts we want to ostracize, those stay in the dark. So when we slap “love yourself” affirmations on top of a person we haven’t fully met, it goes hollow. We’re standing in the mirror critiquing ourselves while reciting “I am enough,” and some quiet voice underneath knows we don’t believe it.

“You cannot love yourself yet. You are not there yet, and it’s not your fault. First you’ve got to get in it, sit with it, sit with the things you ran from for so long.” — Katy

The byproduct of doing that, of welcoming in all the parts instead of exiling the uncomfortable ones, is that acceptance shows up on its own. I don’t even use the phrase self-love for myself. Self-acceptance is as far as I go. There are parts of me I don’t love, but I accept them, and I understand the role they played in getting me here. I try not to be angry at past versions of me who weren’t yet brave enough or wise enough to do it differently. They were doing their best with what they had.

The Gold Stars We Keep Collecting

Both of us kept circling back to the same trap: building your whole sense of worth on outside metrics.

Katy calls them gold stars. The followers, the careers, the marriages, the kids who turn out a certain way, the house that looks a certain way. We’ve been trained since girlhood to collect them and to believe that the collection is what makes us okay. So we ride a roller coaster, up when a post does well or a kid gets into the right school, down when it doesn’t.

She told me about taking a couple of months completely off social media and coming back with a different relationship to all of it.

“I don’t celebrate the posts that go viral and do great, but I also don’t feel shame about the ones that do terrible. It means nothing. It’s just something happening in the outside world.” — Katy

That detachment is one of the hardest things a person can practice, and it’s also where the peace lives. When your identity stops being driven by what happens out there, your kid’s hard day stays your kid’s hard day instead of becoming a verdict on you. The work, as Katy says, is learning to bounce back without losing yourself in the moment. Not numbing the feeling, not pretending you’re never upset, just growing your capacity to come back.

Why I Think a Business Can Be the Gentle Way In

Now, you know me. I have a deep belief that every mom should have a business. I don’t mean a seven-figure empire. I mean two hours a week of content, a little mini course, reviews on Amazon, whatever fits your life. And I floated a theory at Katy: that starting something becomes a mirror, that it forces the self-development journey whether you signed up for it or not.

Katy pushed back, and I loved her for it. She’s cautious about wrapping the word “business” around every woman, but she fully agrees on the thing underneath it.

“Purpose is a huge part of wellbeing. We think about supplements and sleep and diet, but having something to wake up to, something that makes you feel needed, that’s huge.” — Katy

Here’s where we met in the middle. Women are purposeful in community. The minute a mom figures something out, she wants to tell everyone, because that’s how we’re wired. So she starts sharing, and people start listening, and suddenly all the deeper stuff surfaces. Am I worthy of this? Am I scared to be seen? Do I have a voice? The creative outlet cracks open the inner work. (That last one, learning to show up as yourself and own your voice, is its own beautiful journey.)

And that, to me, is the gift. We’re not handing women a side hustle. We’re handing them a doorway.

“I think what we’re doing is saving people from the explosion, so you can actually start to listen to your body before it forces you to.” — Dana

You’re meant to be uncomfortable so that you can self-accept. A business, a practice, a creative thing that scares you a little, those just give the discomfort somewhere useful to go.

What an Incredible Time to Be Doing This Work

We ended somewhere hopeful, and I want to leave you there too.

Katy and I both got into motherhood without any of the tools we have now. No podcasts in our ears, no Substacks, no community of women a phone-tap away. We felt alone in it, partly because no one taught us how to actually receive love and support in the first place. So for all the noise about screens and scrolling, both of us see what’s available to moms right now as a genuine gift.

“What an amazing time to be alive that we have podcasts and Substacks and Instagram to start sharing these things. I felt so alone early in motherhood. It really is a gift.” — Katy

My version of it is simple. If we’re all going to be on our phones at midnight anyway, let’s at least point them at the good stuff.

“I’m all for doom scrolling if you’re doom scrolling on how to meditate, how to self-accept, how to listen to your inner voice, how to build something that brings you to life.” — Dana

And the most freeing thing Katy left us with is that the answer was never out there to begin with.

“Everything most women are searching for, they already have within themselves. They just don’t believe in themselves enough yet.” — Katy

So if you’re in the wobble right now, the unease, the where-did-I-go feeling, please hear me. You’re not behind. You’re not broken. You’re right on schedule. The discomfort is the doorway, and you already have everything you need to walk through it.

Your Next Step

If this conversation stirred something up, here’s where to go next:

• Follow Katy on Instagram and comment PRACTICE on a post if you want her starter meditation toolkit.
• Listen to her podcast, WithIn, for women in midlife turning inward.
• Come into the free BossMom community. This isn’t just a place to hang out. It’s where we actively help you get clear on what you actually want, build the focus skills to get there, and learn how to do business differently when your time and space are limited. Inside you get free networking events, mindset workshops, our daily mindset audios, real connection with other moms, and a dedicated app, so it’s completely off social media. And it’s free. There’s genuinely no reason not to come hang out with us.
• When you’re ready to level up, BossMom+ is where you go. This is where we build the right marketing plan for your business and give you the ongoing support to actually implement it and hit your financial goals. It’s $197 for the whole year, and it’s worth its weight in gold.

And tell me a story. DM me inside the community after you listen and tell me what hit, or what you’re sitting in the discomfort of right now. I read them all.

I’ll see you next week.

xo, Dana