Episodes

The Gift of Winter and Holiday Lunacy The holiday season is already showing up in our conversations, along with autopilot social customs that have no awareness of who is on the other side. If you’re grieving, struggling, or simply don’t celebrate, being asked “What are you doing for the holidays?” can land hard. In this episode, Raven invites you to pause, notice what you actually want, and protect it. And to consider taking the always-asked questions off of autopilot. In this episode: - Why ...

What happens when the script you’ve been following (meet, date, move in, marry, etc.) stops feeling like yours? I talked with Craig Wynne, author of "How to Be a Happy Bachelor," about how he came to a happily single life, the stereotypes single people face, and why friendship matters so much. In this episode: * Stepping off the “relationship escalator” and why single life deserves the same respect as marriage * How stereotypes land differently on single men and single women * Why friendship...

Being Single in a Couple's World A conversation with Kathy Wasserlein. Being truly content as a single woman shouldn't seem like a big deal, but it does seem to be. Not because it's inherently a problem, but due to the social constructs within which being married, or partnered, is seen as a pinnacle of life success. And preferred. Kathy's spirit and clarity are infectious. Questions posed and answered, by both of us: - How long did it take to settle into your life as a single woman, not as ...

Ditching the Weekend Script. This episode is about weekends and our orientation around them…when married, when divorced. Finding your own rhythm.

Ditching the Weekend Script: On the Unspoken Divide Between Couples and Everyone Else This episode is about weekends and our orientation around them. And, what happens when you stop trying to outrun the discomfort of 'nothing to do' and no one to play with. If you're not part of a couple or family ... anymore... you can find yourself feeling lost, like you're floating in a sea of dread without anything or anyone to anchor you. In this episode: * Why weekends can feel heavier than weekdays wh...

Breaking from the Tribe - Losing the Roles and Finding Yourself with Gladys Morales. After cancer and significant vision loss, and a life that refused to follow the expected script, Gladys discovered that resilience is not about returning to who you were. It's about it's about discovering who you can become. In this Episode: - The questions her break from cultural traditions gave rise to: Who am I, who am I really? - What it has meant to root herself into her real essence, not the person tha...

Raven talks about some of the money ‘rules’ that many wealth 'gurus' hand down like gospel. And the way these rules often stop people from doing anything. For example, if you don't have the 10% to put aside each month to 'go to work for you,' what then? She shares from her own experience and points to something most financial guidance doesn’t account for: the stress that the continual pursuit of more creates. - How she finally dealt with her debt - and the strange fear she exprerienced at the ...

The Pressure to Prove, or Improve. Who said you should? What if the words we use every day are shaping decisions we think we're making freely? In this episode of Life without Bookends, Raven explores two of the most loaded words in our cultural vocabulary: prove and improve. She unpacks the difference between improving your skills and improving your being, what it costs us in our bodies and our decisions to live as if we're not yet enough, and what becomes possible when we stop performing for ...

In this episode, Bye-Bye Corporate, I talked with Deborah Stephenson about what it was like to leave her corporate career after 40 years, not to retire, but to start something new. Said Deborah about approaching the decision moment:
 "And so it was a really, really frightening, awful moment at that time because ... I felt pretty trapped at that point because I was like, at my age, if I leave here, I'm going have a difficult time finding another job. And it's probably going to be the same job. ...

On Resistance and Procrastination: Intelligence or Something to Overcome? Life is perfect sometimes. I planned a different episode and recorded it 3 times only to realize it wasn't happening. Either the time for it was off, or it's not meant for me to record. Some things are simply 'good ideas' with no energy to back them up. Resistance and procrastination are only problematic when we're fixated on the plan - the timeline and goals. Otherwise, I assert that there IS an intelligence worth payin...

The Challenge of Being Yourself: How 'weird' do you allow yourself to be? We all want to 'be ourselves,' yet we live in a world where fitting in to get along ofter supersedes that real drive. Some people go in the other direction - seeming to exaggerate their weird. Others, such as some of those among us who are neurodivergent, can't help but be themselves. No answers. Just questions: How 'weird' do you allow yourself to be? Interested in the transcript Raven mentioned, from The Challenge of ...

In this episode I offer additional insight into what I mean about “Life without Bookends.” And what can happen when they fall by the wayside. Life contains obvious bookends, such as one’s relationship or marriage, parenthood, school, and one’s job or business. But, what about the more subtle bookends embedded in the vocabulary of our culture, and the hand-me-down beliefs that unknowingly shape behavior? Which did you recognize and which surprised you? Are you on Substack? I wrote a personal p...

Life without Bookends is a podcast about what happens when the structures we've relied on begin to loosen or fall apart. When a relationship ends, a beloved career crumbles, or something in us wakes up one day and realizes that the life we’ve built no longer fits. This is a conversation about what becomes possible when you stop trying to rebuild the old life and start trusting what wants to emerge.

A short clip to explain why, after only three episodes, Money and Life Shifts is now Life Without Bookends.

When a marriage no longer fits, it might not be weird. It might even make sense. This episode was originally recorded in late 2021, a few months before my divorce date. I found myself feeling vulnerable and afraid, alongside the contrasting awareness that this was the right move. From the Episode - When a marriage no longer fits When the walls of that container became smaller and smaller, I was quite ready to free myself. And then as I got closer, and even now that the divorce is just a few mont...

In this episode, Rethinking Purpose - Is it Enough to Just Be? - I briefly explore what gives us our sense of purpose, and the motivation behind it. Purpose is often tied to what we're doing in life, or what we're giving in life, basically anything that we're engaged in that makes us feel like we have purpose. When I recorded this, I was thinking back to a time when I was doing work that I really loved doing. And I wondered if this podcast is, in part, me looking for joyous purpose again. Purpos...

When life shifts… what happens to our relationship with money? In episode, Money - The Myth and the Math, I begin exploring the role money plays in how we orient our lives, and what happens when that foundation changes. In this episode: Why we tend to organize our lives around money How life transitions change our financial reality and identity The idea that “more” is not always the answer Money as both myth and math A different way to think about capacity, spending, and stewardship Listen in, a...