If you’ve ever wondered, “Is it too late for me to...” the answer’s NO and The Uplifters are about to show you why. This space is for purpose-driven women who want to do big, brave things in the second half of their lives. I’m your host, Aransas Savas, and I’ve spent the last 20 years at the intersection of behavior change research and coaching.
May is for mothers, money, and menopause
This month’s stories:
🎧 Four very different takes on motherhood from Ruthie Ackerman, Katie Horwitch, Sarah Gormley, and Shayla Martin. Listen HERE
🎧 Dr. Kimberly Derezil, MD, a doctor and certified wealth manager, discusses how to avoid massive financial losses during menopause. Listen HERE.
🎧 Women’s health advocate Rebecca Bloom on what happens when women get sick. Listen HERE.
🎧 And Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson and Christy Kercheville on finding renewed purpose in the wake of cancer.
Many of us spend our whole lives with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake when it comes to our dreams and goals.
We know what we want. And we know exactly how to talk ourselves out of doing anything about it. The timing isn’t right. What will people think? Who do I think I am? Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson estimates that 90% of the people she’s coached over her career are living this way. The hardest moments of life have a way of shaking loose every reason we had for waiting, though. They can clear the noise, show us what matters most, and give us the courage to move forward.
In today’s episode, you’ll hear from two women who took their foot completely off the brake after cancer diagnoses.
After her breast cancer battle in 2020, Jacque looked back on her life, her experiences, her skills, her passions, and she asked herself, “What’s mine to do?” In other words, what problem am I uniquely well-suited to solving? To figure it out and find more empathy and compassion for other humans, she committed to having a thousand cups of coffee with strangers. She discovered that storytelling was the through line of her journey. That understanding gave her the courage and conviction to share her vision with Monique Ruff-Bell, Chief Program & Strategy Officer, TED, and to launch the Gateway Gathering and PitchFest five months later. Now, she’s created a platform for spotlighting speakers and talent to connect them with opportunities. It’s taken lots of bravery, but every time her heart starts pounding, she looks at the bracelet she wears from her cancer journey and says to herself, "This is not as scary as cancer.”
Christy Kercheville was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, a rare and incurable cancer, on March 5th, 2020, four days before the world locked down. Six years later, she has walked around Amsterdam in loose-laced shoes (the only pair that fit with the water retention from chemo) because she was not missing the tulips. She has rented a van and road-tripped with her sons. She works in ways that fit her body’s needs now, raises money for leiomyosarcoma research, and gives herself as long as she needs to wallow before asking: what’s the next thing I want to do?
What the Research Says: Studies on what psychologists call mortality salience, the acute awareness of our own death, consistently show that it doesn’t make people retreat. It makes them bolder, more willing to act on what matters, and more able to release the fear of judgment that was never really protecting them anyway. In midlife women, this effect is compounded by the neurological shifts of perimenopause and menopause, which research links to increased risk tolerance and stronger identity clarity. We are all one day closer to death every day that we live. Remembering that reminds me to seize the moment. My grandma ran until the last days of her life. Like her, I want to run all the way to the finish line. Remembering that life is short can be a powerful motivator to go do the big, brave things we’ve been putting off.
Lift Them Up: Find Jacquelyn at JacquelynFletcherJohnson.com to learn more about The Gateway Gathering and PitchFest. Find Christy on Instagram and TikTok at @christychronicleslms, where she’s sharing her journey and raising awareness for leiomyosarcoma. And if her story moves you, consider donating to the Leiomyosarcoma Direct Research Foundation at LMSDR.org.
If you loved this story... You’ll want to go back and listen to last week’s conversation with Rebecca Bloom, author of When Women Get Sick, about navigating serious illness with agency, support, and the self-advocacy tools most women don’t know they have.
