Kristin Smith is one of the founders of WOTR. She shares how she's spent much of her life feeling like a failure. People only see the external Kristin and not the flaws and failures she's hidden. She was a young girl who lacked self-worth in her early teens and much of her adult life  She worked hard to hide that image as an adult and she did everything she could to look successful. Self-worth and gratitude is her profound remake!  

Leigh is one of the co-founders of WOTR.  In this podcast she discusses how her younger days as an over-achiever who conformed to societal expectations impacted her life path.  After making the decision to move to Colorado to be with a man (who she later married), her life transitioned from working towards her personal goals to supporting his.  This mental and emotional shift to a supporting role became a pattern that was permanent throughout her marriage.  As the years passed, it began to feel like her identity was eroding.  The years staying at home raising her children were rewarding and happy, but she lacked the kind of personal fulfilment one gets from following your passions in the work world.  Unhappiness and the inability to communicate her needs grew into a nagging issue that damaged her marriage.  She thought of herself as a faded version of someone who used to be.  Post-divorce, Leigh is fighting to rebuild her identity and her independent spirit.  

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Is it found only once or twice in life?  When one of Kristin's yoga students offers up his rustic cabin, we jumped at the chance for a free getaway to work on WOTR. The kitschy 70's vibe fueled our laughter for the weekend.  No WOTR getaway would be complete without a fancy cocktail, yummy snacks, and cool morning talks about midlife love on the porch. 

In their first podcast episode, Kristin and Leigh invite you to join them on the sofa as they discuss their desire to help women transform themselves, and their vision for Women on the Remake!  

After hearing about the book "Big Friendship" by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman on "The Marie Forleo Podcast", Leigh and Kristin read it, and dive into the topic of the trials and tribulations of friendship at midlife.  Aminatou and Ann host the podcast "Call Your Girlfriend", and the story of their friendship forms the backbone of this book.  Leigh and Kristin discuss how friendships can change as women go through such a transformational experience as divorce, and emphasize the importance of maintaining and "stretching" for those women you need in your life.  Those "old friends", who KNOW you, who knew you BEFORE, become important as you try to regain your identity.  Leigh and Kristin discuss how the pandemic has led us to edit our friendship list to the ones who will tell us the truth, and help us be our most authentic selves. In the context of discussing the book, Leigh and Kristin discuss how the difficulties of female friendship relate to women at any stage of life, especially as women go through transition.  The discussion moves on to how the loss of a special friendship can be as difficult as a death.  Any woman in midlife, especially those in transition, remaking themselves, can relate to the conversation about the importance of friends.  They are life.  Leigh and Kristin cover their own friendship, which we would define as a "Big Friendship", and the challenges of building a business together--the learning curve is STEEP.  Having "big friendship" is not easy.  It's work, but it's worth it.

Leigh and Kristin sit down with Giffney Nagel, a close friend who is also an aspiring author.  Giffney discusses the impact of a spontaneous move back to her hometown on her friendships.  Friends back "home" related to her as the person she used to be as a young adult.  After a short stint living back in her hometown, she returned to Atlanta.  The return to Atlanta showed Giffney the importance of understanding who your true friends are.  Giffney discusses the friends she was pursuing before leaving the city, and how when she returned to Atlanta she was surprised at who reached out to her and rebuilt friendships--newsflash-- they weren't the same ones she thought were so important to her before.  Leigh, Kristin, and Giffney discuss how the shit we’ve faced in 2020 has affected our friendships.  The Real Ones will be there for us no matter what.  The political climate and the pandemic have had untold effects on midlife friendships.  It is up to us to keep those that matter close.

Kristin and Leigh are joined by Johnna Robinson, a lifelong friend from Kristin's hometown.  When Kristin accidentally sent an extremely critical text message about a political post that Johnna made on Facebook to Johnna instead of to Leigh, as she intended, she faced having to have a difficult conversation with her friend Johnna in order to repair their friendship.  Leigh and Kristin recorded this episode remotely with Johnna, and discuss the incident and what happened afterward.  Johnna's gracious response to her old friend's screwup, despite Kristin having hurt her feelings, set the tone for how we stretch for those friends that matter to us.  The amazing truth is that Kristin and Johnna were able to consider their reconnection under negative circumstances as a positive new beginning to their 30-year friendship.  This lesson is one that should be learned by all of us, as we live in such a polarized culture, where we easily block or unfriend someone whose viewpoints don't match ours.  The over-politicization of all topics, including the pandemic, has made it difficult to easily discuss many topics that wouldn't have been off-limits before.  The discussion turns to how it is not a positive thing to live in an echo chamber, where your own beliefs are confirmed and re-confirmed without challenge.  As Johnna says, "Our friendship is just our friendship.  Who am I to condemn ANYone for what they believe?  You just don't get anywhere by fighting about these things."  When you have a friendship that has lasted for 30 years, it's a precious thing that isn't worth throwing away over a simple misunderstanding.   The challenging world we live in today has made it even more important that we keep our friends close.  

Angie Witz decided to remake her life by going alcohol-free.  Known by friends and neighbors as the fun-loving curator of neighborhood social events, Angie began to realize that she was unhappy with the role alcohol played in her life.  She heard the "whisper", "You drink too much."  In most of our social circles, alcohol is a central part of every single gathering.  Being the person who doesn't drink is HARD.  Angie began removing alcohol from her life by participating in a month-long health challenge, mostly because she knew it would be easier to pass off not drinking to her friends that way.  She spent all of 2016 playing around with the idea of not drinking, and taking intermittent breaks from it.  Depression, stress, and anxiety were concurrent players in the last year before she really, really quit.  She hit her low point when she considered walking in front of a moving car.   The following year, she cut her alcohol consumption down drastically, but still had several episodes of heavy drinking before a serious discussion with her husband in August of 2017 caused her to stop for good. 

Angie buried herself in resources to help her stop drinking.  Meditation, podcasts, Facebook groups, reading... she tried it all.  Check below for her favorites.    Her social calendar went from ridiculously packed to empty.  To avoid the temptation to drink, she stopped going to the Friday Happy Hours, the neighborhood parties, and everything.   She began to notice that alcohol is omnipresent in our culture.  TV, social media, social events, everywhere. 

Over the next two years, Angie went alcohol-free and regained her sense of abundance, her ability to sleep, the freedom to live her life without being dependent on alcohol, and in fact, the pre-alcohol identity she had lost.

Resources:
Podcasts:
The Happiness Lab https://apple.co/31uXgBe
After Alcohol https://apple.co/2FOCXXT
Seltzer Squad https://apple.co/2Hex9rD
Bubble Hour https://apple.co/2HpeOYm

Spiritual:
Your Move with Andy Stanley
https://yourmove.is/

Blog:
Unpickled by Laura McKowen
https://unpickledblog.com/

Books:
Annie Grace - "This Naked Mind" https://amzn.to/3ocRbTV
Jill Stark - "High Sobriety: My Year Without Booze" https://amzn.to/3m9Bmvf