.png)
Hey Sizz, Hey!
The truth is...
I’m a former people-pleaser and perfectionist who spent years being “the strong one”—the dependable one, the one who kept it together for everybody else—while quietly minimizing my needs and second-guessing my voice. Then I hit a hard reset and drew a hard line in the sand. I realized I had spent so much of my life being intentional about how I showed up for everyone else, but I had not given that same care, effort, or attention to the relationship I had with myself. I could not keep living a life I didn’t choose.
​
So I began the inside-out work of confronting the woman I had become in survival mode, getting honest about what I wanted, and admitting that being happy from time to time was no longer enough. I wanted fulfillment. I wanted a life rooted in meaning, purpose, style, confidence, joy, and the freedom to feel sexy in my own skin again. And I knew I had to do the work of creating it.
​
That journey became my book, Sizzle Boldly: 7 Rule-Breaking Steps to Own Your Fire and Redefine Midlife, and it is the same work I now help midlife women, wives, and empty nesters do—reconnect with themselves and create a life that finally feels like their own.
but more than that
Many midlife women find themselves at a crossroads, confronting questions they can no longer afford to ignore,
​
Is this it?
What do I want now?
Why doesn’t the life I built fully align with who I’ve become?
What’s next for me?
​
What many women need in this season is not more guilt, pressure, or surface-level inspiration. They need validation, permission, and a clear roadmap for what comes next.
and for the wives
I’m also the co-author of 90 Day Marriage Reset Challenge with my husband, because redefining yourself shows up at home too—your voice, your boundaries, your communication. If you’re a wife who’s been losing herself while trying to keep the peace, I see you.
I Love the Women Who Raised Me.
I Just Didn’t Want Their Lives!
​
Most women were taught how to sacrifice, serve, and survive. Very few were ever taught how to belong to themselves. I loved the women who raised me. My mother, my grandmother, and the women around them were strong, faithful, and responsible. They knew how to hold families together, keep a home running, show up for church, and do what needed to be done. There are so many things about them that I respect and still carry with me today.
But if I’m being honest, they also showed me a version of womanhood that I didn’t want to inherit. I watched women who knew how to keep showing up, and keep sacrificing. Women who were dependable. Women who were needed. ​But I also watched women slowly disappear. They were so busy being everything for everybody else that I’m not sure anyone ever stopped to ask them what they wanted. And I don’t know if they ever gave themselves permission to ask that question either.
​
Without even realizing it, I started becoming that woman too. I got married young. I became a wife and a mother. Like many women, I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do: build the life, hold it together, stay committed, and push through. From the outside, it probably looked like I was doing everything right. But inside, something didn’t feel right. Not because I didn’t love my family, and not because I didn’t value my faith, but because somewhere along the way, I realized I had built a life shaped more by duty and expectation than by truth.​​​​​​​
And I think a lot of women quietly recognize that feeling. We’ve been taught how to be good women, responsible women, selfless women, women who take care of everyone else. But very few of us were taught how to be whole women. Nobody told us that being needed is not the same thing as being fulfilled. Nobody told us that a woman can look like she’s doing everything right and still feel like she’s disappearing in plain sight.
​
That realization became clearer for me in midlife, because midlife has a way of forcing a woman to sit with her truth. The truth about what she wants. The truth about what she has outgrown. The truth about the life she still wants to create. And let me say something that might make some people uncomfortable: I do not believe women were created to spend the first half of their lives raising children and supporting everyone else, only to spend the second half quietly fading into the background. Motherhood is powerful and Yep, Legacy matters. But women are still women in midlife. We still have curiosity, vision, desire, ideas, purpose, and parts of ourselves that want to grow, explore, and experience life in meaningful ways. And I believe many women buried those parts of themselves under duty. I know I did, until a few years ago- I said I want a reinvented and redefined life.
​
There came a point when I had to admit that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life performing a version of womanhood that left no room for me. That’s why I believe women must redefine midlife. Not because our past didn’t matter, and not because the women before us didn’t do the best they could, but because midlife is often the moment a woman realizes something powerful, the rest of her life still belongs to her- and deserved to be lived fully!
​
You can love the women who raised you and still choose differently. You can honor your roots and still refuse certain inheritances. And sometimes that moment of honesty is exactly where a woman’s real life begins.
Get Clear in a
SIZZLE SESSION
When you know there's more for your life-
but you're unclear, stuck or ready for your next chapter - this private
75-minute clarity session give you clarity, direction and a plan that you can trust.
​​
Identity. Relationships. Purpose.
No application. Just book your time and let’s get to work.
Podcast
Girl I’m Stuck Podcast
Hosted by Demi Austin-Thomas
Author, Speaker, and Podcast Host
Still Looking for more Ways for us to Connect?
