What if you checked in with yourself before something broke?

In this solo episode of Growing Up Late, Jeannie McIntire takes her own advice. With freshly injected arthritic thumbs and a calendar that looked impossible, she heads to the Florida beach for her annual fall reset. She isn’t in crisis. She feels great and loves her work. That’s exactly why this conversation matters.

Jeannie explores why you can’t heal while you’re busy managing how you look, and why high achievers, people pleasers, and the “always there” friend often only stop when something forces them to. She shares a moment from chairing a 1,000-person conference that taught her something about recognition, and makes the case that we’re allowed to want things: a lifestyle, experiences, respect, love, and to be seen.

In this episode:

• Why deciding to rest is harder than resting
• Performance vs. healing: why managing appearances keeps you from tending to yourself
• The quiet truth behind overperforming and running on praise
• Why even people who “do it for the love” want to be seen
• Permission to want things, and why waiting until retirement is a risk
• How to check in on your reasons, not just your momentum

Quote to remember: “Your reasons matter more than your momentum or the outcome.”

Reflection question: Where in your life are you performing wellness instead of tending to it?

Mentioned: Jeannie’s interview with Jeff Ellison

About Growing Up Late

Growing Up Late is a podcast about reinvention, resilience, and becoming the author of what comes next. Your host, Jeannie McIntire, is a former Sam’s Club executive who led a $2+ billion business and is now an entrepreneur, speaker, and podcast host.

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Empty nest identity and the dream sheet, with Kelly Salmons

“You are the value.” Kelly Salmons says it plainly: when the kids leave and the daily needing slows, it can feel like your worth left too. It didn’t. Kelly, founder of The Nest Evolution, explains how she found that out the hard way, starting with ten minutes, a blank page, and one dream: a trip to Antarctica.

Kelly had a plan. She moved to Florida, bought the house next to her sister and parents, and went back to teaching, expecting it to fill the space her daughters left. Something still wasn’t right. When a personal development exercise asked what she wanted, she wrote one thing, a trip to Antarctica, and nothing else. It took her two or three tries before the list began to fill.

Then she had to remember who she was. In seventh grade, Kelly decided she was going to the Naval Academy and planned her way in. Years later, she couldn’t think of a time she’d felt powerful, until a classmate told her the whole class had been scared of her. And “become who you are” had been engraved on a swim trophy she’d owned for 40 years.

Try this before you press play: Set a timer for ten minutes and write down what you want, not what your family needs.

Key ideas

• Your worth isn’t tied to being needed
• You’re not starting from scratch: skills from motherhood and past careers carry forward
• A dream sheet is a running list of what you want, even if it’s small
• Well-meaning support can feel like pressure, and stillness helps you hear yourself
• Pool time: a daily 20 to 30 minute phone-free reset for couples
• Few decisions are life or death, so decide, revise, and keep moving

Questions this episode answers

• Why do I feel lost after the kids leave, even with a good life? “You are the value,” Kelly says. Many mothers tie their worth to being needed, so when the needing slows, it can feel like the worth left too.
• Where do I start? Write a dream sheet, then find regular time to be still.
• How do I find myself again? Try small experiments Kelly calls a joyfulness quest: a new coffee shop, an old hobby, a class, a call to a friend you’ve lost touch with.
• How can couples reconnect? Protect a short, regular, phone-free time together. Kelly and her husband call theirs pool time.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome, Kelly Salmons

0:45 When the empty nest felt bigger than a quiet house

2:00 The dream sheet: “I wrote Antarctica and nothing else”

8:45 The Naval Academy story and “we were scared of you”

14:30 “Become who you are”

19:30 Pool time: staying connected in marriage

26:00 Where to start: the dream sheet and stillness

32:30 From a $17 class to ten new friends

36:30 What Kelly has learned: decide, revise, design with intention

About the guest

Kelly Salmons is the founder of The Nest Evolution, a number one best-selling author, and a coach who helps women through the empty nest transition. A former naval officer and educator, she is also a real estate investor and will return for a full episode on that journey. Find her at The Nest Evolution link: https://thenestevolution.com/

About Growing Up Late

Growing Up Late is a podcast about reinvention, resilience, and becoming the author of what comes next. Your host, Jeannie McIntire, is a former Sam’s Club executive who led a $2+ billion business and is now an entrepreneur, speaker, and podcast host.

Connect with Jeannie here: https://linktr.ee/jeanniemcintire

Being picked feels like proof you’re worth something. It isn’t. A story about flattery, people-pleasing, and what happens when you say no to an offer you were supposed to be grateful for.

For most of my life, if someone told me I was the right person for something and said it warmly, I said yes.

In this episode of Growing Up Late, I take apart the idea that being chosen is the same as being valued. I start with a too-fitted outfit and a salesgirl who said I looked amazing, move through a promotion I turned down three times before the division president made it personal, and into a marriage where I gave up what I wanted because it was dressed up as something I’d said I wanted. Then I'll tell you what happened when I recently said no to a board seat, and what the reaction taught me.

The idea in one paragraph: Being chosen can work like borrowed value. Someone else’s enthusiasm fills a gap I should have been filling myself. It feels like currency, but it’s really their yes standing in for my own. Being chosen isn’t the problem. The expectation that you owe gratitude for it, whether or not the offer serves you, is the thing to outgrow.

Key takeaways:

1. Flattery can feel like proof of worth, but it’s someone else’s enthusiasm, not your own self-regard.
2. The most persuasive offers are personal and specific, and they’re often dressed up as prestige and purpose, which makes them harder to spot.
3. Going along isn’t the same as choosing. You can spend years watching your life instead of making the hard decisions yourself.
4. Saying “no, thank you” without apology is a skill, and it can take years to build.

Notice: Who gets warm when you say yes and who goes cold when you say no, and when something good happens to you, who isn’t clapping? You don’t have to do anything about it. Just notice.

Quotable lines:

• “Being picked felt like proof I was worth something, so I skipped the other question: Do I actually want this?”
• “It felt like obligation dressed up as something I had said I wanted.”
• “A no does not need a follow-up.”
• “The prize is choosing yourself first.”

Listen if you’ve ever wondered why you say yes to things you don’t want, or why declining a flattering offer can feel like breaking a rule.