MIDDLE AGEish
Authentically and unapologetically keeping it real, discussing all things Middle Age (ish), when metabolism slows and confidence grows. Middle Age(ish): A time of transition from dreaming of who we will grow up to be and looking at the legacy we will leave behind. Listen to this podcast and join the hosts of Middle Age(ish) as they sit around with a glass of wine to discuss all things related to middle age with some amazing guests!
MIDDLE AGEish
The Art of Balancing Motherhood, Career, and Self-care with Niamh O'Connell
Ever found yourself stuck at a red light, your hands gripping the steering wheel, and stress gnawing away at your nerves? Relax, take a deep breath, and join us as we explore how tiny, seemingly insignificant habits can lead to massive changes in our mental well-being with our fascinating guest, Niamh O'Connell. As an Irish author, nutritionist, and wellness consultant, Niamh walks us through her journey from stay-at-home mom to a successful career woman, revealing the powerful interplay of creativity, parenting and transforming one's life.
Struggling with sleep or battling the hormonal changes of perimenopause? Hang in there, because Neve uncovers some practical strategies for better sleep and taking control of your body's changes. Balancing motherhood and a career can be a tightrope walk, but Niamh steers us through her experiences, offering advice about celebrating small victories and the importance of not sweating the small stuff.
Prepare for a delightful trip across the pond as we explore the charming differences between Ireland and America. From the way we label our favorite movie flicks to the biscuit vs. cookie conundrum, it's a jaunty journey through linguistics and cultural variances. We then switch gears into an honest discussion about work-life balance, managing guilt, and how cultural differences shape our parenting experiences. So buckle up for an episode bursting at the seams with laughter, practical advice, and rich conversations on navigating the waters of midlife with grace and gusto.
Niamh O’Connell Website: www.thewellnessclinic.ie
Niamh’s Amazon Kindle Author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Niamh-OConnell/author/B0C6QMGDZZ?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
Niamh’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewellnessclinicireland/
Niamh’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewellnessclinic/
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Welcome to the Middle-Age-ish podcast, authentically and unapologetically, keeping it real, discussing all things middle-age-ish, a time when metabolism slows and confidence grows. Join fashion and fitness entrepreneur Ashley Badosky, former Celtic woman and founder of the Lisa Kelly Voice Academy, lisa Kelly, licensed psychologist and mental health expert, dr Pam Wright, and highly sought-after cosmetic injector and board-certified nurse practitioner, trisha Kennedy-Roman. Join your hosts on the journey of Middle-Age-ish.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Middle-Age-ish podcast. I'm Trisha Kennedy-Roman and I'm joined here today with my co-host, not Ashley. I started with Ashley, but Ashley has gone. She's having some car issues today, so we are missing our Ashley. But we also have Lisa Kelly and Dr Pam Wright and we are joined today with Neve O'Connell, who is we're going to love her because she's from Ireland, and I said earlier, I've never met anyone from Ireland I didn't like. So welcome, we're so excited to have you. Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here. It's really late there, right? Are you like 1130 right now? It's 1130.
Speaker 3:I've had my power nap. I got up and did some yoga. Oh wow, hydrated and I'm ready to go.
Speaker 4:I'm a nice owl anyway, Neve, I'm so disappointed. I remember you being the night owl.
Speaker 3:I am actually but I've less energy. Now I'm in my 40s For all the time.
Speaker 2:That night owl stuff kind of changes as we get down, oh yeah. That fourth decade, I think.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and three kids will do it to you as well, and we homeschool, so it's busier too, oh wow, I remember reading that I mean, homeschooling is so popular over here, but I mean it really isn't in Ireland.
Speaker 3:That's right, but since the pandemic a lot of people got a flavor of homeschooling during the lockdowns, when kids were stuck at home and expected to still follow the curriculum while parents were still trying to work from home. I think there's maybe two and a half thousand on the register at the moment. That's incredible.
Speaker 4:It's good fun. So you managed to do all of that and write books as well, and be a nutritionist and do all these wonderful talks.
Speaker 3:Yes, I set up the wellness clinic. I was a stay at home mom between my second and third child for about four years and I really needed a creative outlet for myself. I was writing a blog at the time about my parenting. I was attachment parenting and co-sleeping and breastfeeding and baby wearing and all that kind of lovely stuff. But I really wanted to get out there again and be a bit more visible, because I think stay at home moms get a really hard time in society and I really just needed to do something. You know, to use my brain again.
Speaker 3:So when I had my third child, she was kind of the catalyst for me, saying I need to get out and work and just make something of myself again. Because I had run a theatre school in my 20s which was really really fun and became my full-time job into my early 30s. So I trained up as a nutrition and lifestyle consultant with the Institute of Health Sciences. That was a one-year diploma course which I was able to do from home with the newborn on my lap, breastfeeding her and on the laptop, and I just got straight into kind of working with individuals. And then I moved into the corporate sphere at a year or two later, and that's where I've been ever since, kind of designing and delivering corporate wellness programs, which I really love.
Speaker 3:That's amazing, oh yeah the books got written during lockdown but I edited them and published them this summer because I thought if I don't do anything with them they're going to sit on the computer unused. So I really wanted to have a couple of books out there as well for my clients to read and kind of support the work I'm doing in their workplaces.
Speaker 2:Great. So tell us about your books that I'm curious to hear about your books.
Speaker 3:So they're for the lazy people who have no time to themselves and always feel like they're chasing their tail, and who never have time to read a book or sit down and rest. These books are for you, that's us 100%.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they came out of all the work I did with individuals, especially through the pandemic and from what I was hearing back from questions during my corporate wellness talks as well. Everybody was sleep deprived, everybody was stressed out. So they're drawing on a lot of mindfulness techniques and all the experience I have working with my clients. So one book is called how to Relax when you have Too Much To Do, and that's all about making more time in your day to take just two or three minutes to sit down and close your eyes or switch off your phone for a little bit. I do a lot of ranting about screens and how much we are addicted to our screens. And the other book is called how to Sleep when it Doesn't Come Easily and that's kind of the nighttime. So between the two they span your 24 hours and they're designed to be read in little, one or two pages at a time. The sections are really short and accessible.
Speaker 2:It sounds like you wrote two books for me, basically Exactly.
Speaker 3:They're going down well. I have to say I've had great feedback so far.
Speaker 4:That's amazing. And what about so the relaxing thing? I think that's the one that we were talking about last week. We're talking about how hard it is and I just, I sometimes feel, even with mom, guilt. It's so you just feel bad. If you're sitting down, you're like, oh my God, I should be doing something else.
Speaker 3:And it's our whole productivity society that we've built around capitalism and our value as tied to how much money we're bringing in for the household, and that was a factor in me returning to work as well. I just felt invisible because I wasn't earning and I was raising children and that's more important than that. But we all feel this need and pressure to, you know, justify our existence, and I don't think any of us have role models of coming home from school and seeing our mom sitting down reading the paper with her feet up. No, no, I certainly didn't. No, my mom was a pharmacist and she ran her own business and she was always working or cooking or cleaning or doing something. Yeah, so I think we're the first generation to really realize how much we, how much importance is placed on our self care and how much we are missing out, because I think we're also the first generation trying to have it all, trying to have the careers and have the families, and it's really impossible. We have to prioritize ourselves somewhere in there too.
Speaker 5:I would love to hear about your sleep strategies because I know you know we talk about stay away from the phone, stay away from screens, like keep an hour, you know, with those things away so that you can go to sleep. But what other like techniques do you get?
Speaker 3:So it's the same as eat well, avoid caffeine and some people need to avoid caffeine completely because some people are super sensitive to it and it can hang around in your system up to 24 hours. So the type of caffeine you consume can be improved as well. So for me, black tea has a gentler. Well, for everyone who's sensitive to caffeine, black tea will give you a gentler buzz and a more sustained energy boost, rather than coffee, which will give you a really quick and intense buzz, but also maybe bring on anxiety or palpitations if you have too much of it, and affect your sleep obviously too.
Speaker 3:So I like to think of sleep as an art form, something you must practice to get good at, just like any other skill, and it comes down to obviously watching what you're eating and drinking, especially into the evening hours, but also knowing how to release your stress at different points during the day. So you're not just lying in bed with the whole day purling through your head. You're just kind of processing your day as you go along. And that's what the first book how to Relax goes into is taking these times at your lunch break and then the early evening to kind of process what you've done, take a few deep breaths, move into the next part of your day with a clear head, and then, if you do all those strategies through the day, it should be a lot easier to wind down and fall asleep at night.
Speaker 2:That's really give advice, and advice I've never heard, because that is I all day long. It's when I lay down, is when I start processing everything. That's actually I've never thought about just trying to consciously stop during the day and process a little bit at a time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I work with my clients to find triggers, things they do regularly, whether it's checking the time or picking up your phone or pressing send on an email or waiting for the kettle to boil something that you do three or four times or more through the day. That can be a reminder to take a few deep breaths and just zone out for just a minute. It could be obviously nothing to zone out if you're driving, but say every time you stop at a red light, that could be a reminder to just breathe deeply two or three breaths or actually reset your body chemistry and bring down your blood pressure and your heart rate as well. So the more we can do that at intervals through the day, the less we will have that kind of pressure valve built up and just it'll explode somehow in the evening, because a lot of people will then turn to a glass of wine where they'll blow up at their partner because they have all this pent up stress.
Speaker 4:Right. Do you find working with women like I've noticed a huge difference in like I would consider myself pretty chill and pretty chill, like I'm not, you know, not manic in any way, but I've noticed sort of get coming out the other end of my 40s. That has changed. Everything has changed, like blood pressure is higher, heart rate is higher than it ever was before, like all the things. One life should be a little bit easier and you kind of think that you get older and life gets a little easier. But I think this whole perimenopause thing is not given enough credit for what it's doing to our bodies.
Speaker 3:It's huge and at certain times, even if you finish your periods, you'll still have an energy cycle, and it tends to go with the moon's phases as well. So a lot of people will be menstruating on the new moon and ovulating on the full moon, and even if their periods have finished in their 50s, they may still find they have more energy at the full moon. And it's the times of the new moon when you need to rest and recharge and kind of go into your cocoon. And at those times you can't say to your boss look, I can't show up today, I need to take a duvet day. You can't tell the kids to chill out. And also with having children later in life, as we all are doing because we're trying to have careers too, we find we're parenting young children under 10 in our 40s, which is in itself a challenge, and maybe previous generations would have been grandparents at this age. So we have a lot more on our plates than ever before. It's really tricky that's so true.
Speaker 4:Yes, so true. It's hard trying to wind down, then switch off during the day.
Speaker 3:It's so difficult yeah, sorry guys, they might do cook zero sitting on my nightstand every night, apparently not not helpful, not helpful if you know, everyone has their coping mechanisms and I never tell people to change your coping strategies ever. That's usually the last thing is to especially food and drink. We're so emotionally attached to it. So I always say, you know, exercise more, because that's a fantastic stress reliever, and do all the other things. Get to bed half an hour earlier and then, once everything else is ticking over and it feels like it's okay and you're comfortable, then start making the changes in your diet, because I think that's that's something we, as women, fall to a lot. Is the comfort eating or the comfort food, yeah, familiar?
Speaker 4:and then you feel guilty for that then as well. So you're like it's adding it's. I know I'm trying to like stop having a glass of wine before I go to bed, but on it, genuinely, whether it does or not, I genuinely feel like it does calm me down and it's, it's like a switch in my brain that goes okay, it's time for you to like switch off, switch off, calm down, calm down. So I've been really hard to give it up, and then I do give it up and then I'm cranky so I'm like well, just make a few other changes that won't challenge you so much.
Speaker 3:And when I began I did one of my first public workshops and it was a six part workshop series called Urban Mama and it was aimed at moms. It was really through my own struggles as a mom in the early days to mind myself and to look after even my bit most basic personal hygiene. You know that that my work through um, through self-care for women, came about. And this course, the women attending it, some were coming along with their babies and others had left toddlers behind and some had children into their teens. But they all reported so much mom guilt and I realized I had to do like the full first session, first week, was all about releasing that guilt and that internal pressure that we put on ourselves, thinking, oh, I'll just eat this chocolate biscuit, but I really shouldn't. So you're, you're not even enjoying the treats that you have because you're having yourself a draw.
Speaker 3:So yeah, but realizing that we role model for our kids, especially our daughters. So if they don't see us looking after ourselves and enjoying what we're doing, you know we're not doing them any favors either. So I think it's important they see us. Especially like with food groups. People get quite strict about, you know, cutting out sugar or treats or cakes or whatever you like, and but I think it's healthy for kids to see us enjoy those foods in moderation as part of a balanced diet, and not to be saying any kind of negativity about any types of food or drink just to see it all as neutral. It's just fuel, it's just. It is what it is and they will, because you don't realize how much they're modeling and picking up what we're doing that's such a different approach to hear, because you don't we don't hear that all that often over here.
Speaker 3:No, I'm the nutritionist who says we don't count calories, we don't stand on a scale, we don't even look at, we cut the labels out of our clothes immediately. Yeah, my approach to nutrition is absolutely like bringing more of the good stuff but keep all the other stuff if it keeps you going, especially through the pandemic and everybody during that time reverted to old habits, to old comfort foods and to crushes like that. So, as I said, I would work with the client on their stress, on their sleep, on their exercise, way before I touch any dietary stuff. And even then it's just about bringing in more of the good stuff and you will realize, when you feel better in yourself, when you love yourself more, you will want to treat your body better and eat better, anyway, that's my approach.
Speaker 4:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:You know, you said something that I have not really considered but when you talked about us being the first generation that's trying to have it all with careers and kids, because, if I think about it, in my generation a lot of the moms were my mom was a stay-at-home mom, a lot of the moms were stay-at-home moms and I've compared myself to that and I always kind of have mom guilt that you know, my mom did this while she was at home, and with a younger generation is there more career focus then? So we were kind of that middle generation of trying to balance having our families and having that career, and so I'd never thought about that before. But I think that that's been a lot of my mom guilt is always comparing myself to my mom and the stay-at-home moms that I knew and trying to do all the things they did and juggle, yeah, and that's so tough.
Speaker 3:I mean, they had time to bake an apple pie from scratch and here we are, feeding our kids the best food we can, but we're still beating ourselves up about our choices.
Speaker 3:And if your kids eat frozen pizza for three months, as mine did when I had my third child and I was starting to study, we just have to let that go and say this is just how it has to be, because I'm in a busy busy with my life right now and I've worked with clients who really beat themselves up about not having an organic diet for their kids and not cooking everything from scratch, but they're also working full time, so I'm trying to help them. See, you can take shortcuts, like you can buy the frozen chopped vegetables, and that's fine. And I have so many quick recipes I share with my clients, which are literally open a bag of onions, dump them in the slow cooker. Open the bag of broccoli, dump it in two. Open the cans of tomatoes, dump them in two, add herbs and spices and cook a pasta alongside or whatever, and it's. You don't need to chop anything, and I think we need to be okay with that.
Speaker 5:I love that because I've had so many clients over the years who they go to see a dietitian and they're like oh, yeah, yeah, you really need like homegrown, like you need super organic. And they're like I don't have time, like I don't have time to like go and buy everything organic and like hook it from scratch and go do that. Yeah, it's not realistic.
Speaker 3:I went to my local green it's called the Green Door Market. It's a beautiful farmers market. Everything's organic and they have a huge section of Irish homegrown produce and I stood there last Sunday. I haven't been in their ages for ages because I've just been doing online orders from my supermarket. But everything was frozen and plastic. And I just looked at all the beautiful produce the beets, the cabbages, the leeks, the potatoes and I just thought there's a lot of work there. I mean you have to peel, you have to wash, you have to scrub, you have to stop. Then you have to cook and I was just like I can't do that now. And I could do it when I was a stay at home mom. I could, I had a bit more time, but right now I can't and I'm okay with that. But it's taken me ages to get there.
Speaker 4:It is, and I think that we've got. I think in some ways I think we've moved a little bit. Well, I definitely feel I have moved a little bit past caring what people think anymore and I don't like, I don't really look at Facebook and go, oh gosh, I wish I could do that. So I think some positives did come out of kind of COVID and everybody coping the very best that they could kind of led us all to. You know, go, I don't really care what you think, I'm just going to do what I do, because I know what worked and what worked for you during that has been like, is what we carried through, thankfully, exactly, and I'm always the first to say to people, especially when I get up and do a talk, that when you see on my Instagram I baked the cake, it's because that's the first cake I've baked since the last one I posted three months previously.
Speaker 3:You know I'm not having every week in my house and if I show you my slow cooker full of vegetables, it's because I'm delighted I'm actually cooking for my family from scratch. Yeah, so I'm celebrating the Wednesday, but that's not the norm in my house. It's still very much cheese on toast and beans, microwave baked potatoes, like that's how we're getting by. And I see people you know stroke, you know, trying to have no microwaves and cook everything in this very holistic, organic way. And I just think it's fine if you are in that slow living thing and you're maybe homesteading and I love. I have this dream that my, my parallel life will be me with chickens in a country house and I'll be making everything in my apron. But I live in a city and I work and I homeschool and I know these are the short cuts I have to make and my kids are still eating well, you know. So it's working.
Speaker 2:You know what I love about your advice I think that's very different than a lot of health culture that I've heard is you're very real about you know it's overwhelming. Well, you've got to do this, you've got to do this, you've got to do this. And it's almost overwhelming where I'm like, okay, I'm not doing any of it. Yeah, and I love how you you're very real on you know, dude, basically do the best you can and, you know, try to make these improvements. But I like how real you are with your advice. Thank you, even a few minutes a day?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it does have to be a long time, but a few minutes. Yeah, exactly, I think you have to be, and if I can't do it myself, I'm not going to tell someone else to do it, and I am the slowest person to make any changes. I have all my favorite foods. I like to eat them in rotation. I don't particularly like fruit and vegetables. I have to really force myself to eat them and I'll only enjoy them if they're cooked. So you know, for me to tell someone to eat salads every day, it's not realistic because I'm not going to do it and I know no one else is going to have time to prepare a fresh salad every day either.
Speaker 3:So I have tried lots of different kind of diets or eating ways, you know, like intermittent fasting. I've tried going gluten free. I've tried going yeast free. I've tried loads of different things so that I can talk about them with my clients, because a lot of my clients will have tried and failed at different things and they're all just fads. Really, not one of them is going to answer your questions. None of them are a full-on lifestyle change forever and none of them will really make you feel good inside.
Speaker 3:I think it all starts with self-love, the more you can work on, untie the knots from your past life where you might have traumas or worries and things that affect you still today in your behaviors like it's CBT, you know it's your thoughts affect your feelings which affect your actions. The more you can work that out on them, the more you want to treat your body better and eat better. So I'm always telling my clients to get a therapist alongside working with me Because invariably, invariably, stuff will come up and that's not my remit and I have had, obviously, people in the past come to me and they say they want to change the diet, but the first section they're talking about their unhappy marriage I think you need a new trip, you need a pair of yeah, now it's in the info before I take on a client, it's like you need to be working with the pair of. The stuff will always come up when you start to open up and take time to self reflect.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, I love that that's true.
Speaker 2:So we're always learning new things from Lisa and, just like your name, I was very confused on how to pronounce it, because yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. So Lisa's always teaching us new words. So what is something you, when you're coaching your clients, that you think if you set it to an American, they would have no idea what you're saying? Good question, the great question, because we just learned thumbs up is not good to give.
Speaker 4:Yeah, this is true, I haven't enlightened them, yes, on the whole Fanny thing. Oh goodness, like the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll enlighten them after.
Speaker 3:Okay, they saw, that that's a really good question. I suppose I naturally kind of change my lingo and I'm speaking to people I'll say diaper and garbage instead of nappy and rubbish, you know. So I can't take off the top of my head maybe some kind of Snack foods or something. I suppose what's tricky is for me, you know, when you say chips or potato chips or crisps, and then the whole biscuits versus scones thing versus cookies over.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I just had this conversation in my head today as well. Yeah, so we call, we call, and all kind of cookies, biscuits. Yeah, so the biscuits over here which are best class. We call them scones though. So you're even, you're, we would have fruit scones and plain scones of the scones that you love and you're southern cooking. They're like biscuits here, but we would call them plain scones. It's pretty much the same. Pretty much the same. It's probably they're a little lighter, the biscuits that they have here, a little lighter than scones.
Speaker 2:but yeah, so when I brought crumble cookie, you would say they were biscuits.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, yeah and even that we do, do. We do kind of still have cookies, though, so, but they're giant, so like cookies in Ireland would be like giant chocolate chip cookies or oatmeal raisin cookies, yeah, but everything else smaller, like your arias, we would call those biscuits.
Speaker 3:But we've become so American I know Because American culture is so cool, we really take it on and we've changed so much. Like kids are talking about going, yeah, we say we go to the movies. Now, we don't say we're going to the cinema or going to see a film, yeah. So we've adopted so many, so much language and lingo.
Speaker 4:So much Americanisms and baby showers and stuff that people would never have had before, like oh yeah.
Speaker 3:And sweet. Yeah, gender reveals. That's the thing you know. That's Halloween Interesting. Yeah, halloween. When I was a kid, we would go out for Halloween. We would go out in like a black plastic bin bag with the art put out and pictures from the front like really basic terrible things. And now Halloween like everyone's changing their decor in every room of the house for Halloween and it's really become this big festival, which is great. Which is great. I think the more and more festivals, the better.
Speaker 2:It's funny. We're we're very. We talk about American culture in Ireland. We're obviously very enthralled with Irish culture and Ashley couldn't bear. Tonight she had car issues but Lisa already told her she couldn't ask you about leprechauns. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I've warned them. They're the pain of my life, me, if you, please, please, ask me now. Ask me about fairies, because I'm really like into the whole magical world of fairies, so I think that fairies I can get on board with it's the leprechauns.
Speaker 4:And then I was telling them, like you know, everyone I used to spend my time disillusioning all Americans got there's no such things, leprechauns. And then they made that stupid museum.
Speaker 3:I'm dying to see this new thing you filmed there in Ireland a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 4:Yes, yes, it actually went really well. Yeah, it was really good. It was really good. It was so nice. It was so weird to go back and do it after so long, like it's been. Well, it's been 12 years nearly since I did it. So, and yeah, and it was back in the helix as well, which is where it started, so it was fun. It was actually. It was the first time, I think, in all the time I've done anything on stage that I kind of went, oh yeah, no, I've got this. I was a little bit like you. I was like, oh no, I've got this, this is good, this is easy because we weren't the main focus of the show, which was lovely. I was very happy to hand it over to the new girls, who are just, they're gorgeous girls, really, really nice girls, but you like toured with young kids and everything.
Speaker 3:I don't know how you did it.
Speaker 4:I actually you know I had to do it. She doesn't even know how I did it and I think about it all the time and it's, I think it's like anything, it's like any job and you're so stressed out being a mom anyway, you just get on with this. But I just remember those times that you just had to go on stage and you know the kids wouldn't have slept and you're trying to keep the kids quiet. I never wanted them to be a hassle on tour for anyone else, but we did it and the kids loved it and they still remember it and people would ask all the time when you're on the road going, how do you do kids? I'm like, well, like every other working mom does it. She just do it.
Speaker 4:It's just that I had to live on a bus, which was that wasn't fun, but they were the best. They were with me and they really were the best touring kids I could possibly wish for. They were really good and they they never caused any problems and the boys slept. They just loved it. Keanna Jack loved it. Ellie loved being the center of attention, so much so she just didn't want to sleep. And then, as soon as I was pregnant, on Harry, I was like that's it, I'm done. I'm out of my contract right now. Actually, you did your time for a play.
Speaker 3:And you did, I did and you did yourself. It's amazing.
Speaker 2:Well, it's been so nice to talk with you. I appreciate you being up really late, so late.
Speaker 3:It's been lovely. Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be involved and I've been enjoying listening to bits out of your other podcasts that you've had, and I've really enjoyed watching your other guests, and each one has had amazing takeaways for me, so I'll continue to follow them as well.
Speaker 2:Well, I love your realistic takeaway of just you know doing the best you can really, and so we'll definitely have links to your information and really enjoyed our conversation with you. So thank you so much for being with us. Thank you so much, Rady. Thanks, Nev, Good to see you. Have a good night.
Speaker 3:Take care, bye, bye, everyone she's so cute, so, so proud of her.
Speaker 4:She's an incredible person.
Speaker 5:And doing all this she does in homeschooling. I can only imagine. I know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's you know, as I was saying to her, like it's so out of the norm to homeschool at home and the way she's chose to parent and the things she does is very out of the norm. So I'm even more impressed by her because there will be a lot of judgment. Irish people talk a lot.
Speaker 2:She's just real. We talk about being real and authentic.
Speaker 4:That's what she's so like. She's so kind, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I love her, her ideas of just doing the best you can do, so it's all we can do. Well, cheers to being the best we can be. Yes, do the best you can do.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining the ladies of the Middle Ages podcast as they journey through the ups and downs of this not young but definitely not old season of life. To hear past episodes or make suggestions for future episodes, visit wwwmiddleageshcom. That's wwwmiddleageshcom. You can follow along on social media at middleagesh. Also, if you have a moment to leave a review rate and subscribe. That helps others find the show and we greatly appreciate it. Once again, thank you so much for joining us and we'll catch you in the next episode of the Middle Ages podcast.
