Ever thought of hitting the road in a retrofitted van? Victoria Lee Starr did it in midlife and found her true self. She became a guide for women through the sacred season of midlife reinvention, helping them reclaim self-trust, inner safety and their authentic power. Using transformational breathwork, guided microdosing support, somatic ritual and emotional excavation, her work meets women in the places most avoid... the unraveling, the burning, the falling apart...and transforms those moments into a becoming.

Victoria’s own awakening began in Costa Rica, when everything she thought she needed to feel loved, safe or worthy started to collapse. What looked like failure was actually her Rite of Passage into self-trust, honesty and the woman you become when you stop abandoning yourself.

After leaving an emotionally abusive relationship, Victoria rebuilt her life from the ground up and spent nearly four years living full-time in her Ram Promaster van with her dog, Olivia Grace. Her van became her initiation chamber, a sacred space to learn to trust her body, intuition, truth and the quiet voice that had been waiting decades to lead.

Victoria works through psychological wisdom, nervous system healing, transformational breathwork, guided microdosing, intuitive channeling, somatic rituals and emotional excavation. She helps women fully be themselves in midlife, showing them that falling apart is often the beginning of becoming.

She calls herself a "spiritual outlaw" because she refuses to heal or lead within the confines of traditional systems, surface-level fixes or fluff. "This work is not about bypassing the hard stuff, it’s about entering the sacred, messy, untamed places where real healing lives," Victoria says. "I walk between realms of emotional, spiritual, somatic and psychological and I'm not here to guide women to think their way into peace. I guide you to feel, to embody and to remember. A spiritual outlaw breaks the rules of what healing is 'supposed to' look like; doesn’t fix you — she walks with you as you unlearn the lies and reclaim your soul; channels deep wisdom that comes from lived experience, intuition and higher intelligence — not just certifications; uses non-linear tools like breathwork, somatic ritual and emotional excavation to guide people back to their power; refuses spiritual bypassing and meets you in the root of it — trauma, lineage, nervous system patterns — and helps transmute them into gold; and is wildly intuitive, slightly rebellious, deeply grounded and divinely guided."

In this episode, we talk about:

--Midlife as a Rite of Passage

--Why women in their 40s, 50s and 60s are unraveling and why this is actually the beginning of their becoming.

--Being a Spiritual Outlaw

--The future of healing beyond fluffy positivity and patriarchal conditioning

--Breathwork + Microdosing using natural, non-addictive medicine for Emotional Reinvention

--A grounded, embodied approach for women ready to reclaim self-trust and inner safety.

--Living on the Road After Burning Down Your Life

--Lessons from four years of nomadic living about freedom, intuition and rebuilding identity.

--Rebirth After Divorce, Abuse and Identity Collapse

--How to trust yourself again when everything familiar has fallen away.

She offers free resources:

Her Guided Meditation Collection consists of short, soul-nourishing meditations for midlife transformation:

https://www.victorialeestarr.com/free-meditation

Breathe with Intention: Your Toolkit

Practical breathwork exercises to reclaim calm, clarity and self-trust:

https://www.victorialeestarr.com/free-breathe-toolkit

Hot Flashes Breathwork

A focused practice for navigating menopause with embodiment and empowerment:

https://www.victorialeestarr.com/hotflashes

Learn more:

Website: https://www.victorialeestarr.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/victorialeestarr/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorialeestarr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-starr-68495a280/

Oona Metz is a nationally recognized therapist and author who has spent more than 30 years studying the strange, tender, deeply human ways we navigate relationships, self-abandonment and change. Her new book, Unhitched: The Essential Divorce Guide for Women (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster), launched in January and has already earned remarkable attention. Gayle King praised it on CBS Mornings, Maria Shriver highlighted it in her newsletter, Time Magazine ran an exclusive excerpt, and it’s been featured on CBS News and NPR's Morning Edition. It also quickly became a top divorce book on Amazon.

She speaks candidly about why women initiate nearly 70% of divorces, and how that statistic is less about endings and more about awakening — about the cumulative weight of emotional labor, the slow erosion of self and the eventual decision to choose alignment, truth and self-trust.

Oona’s work is deeply aligned with conversations about reinvention and becoming. In this episode, we discuss:

• the quiet realization that something needs to change
• the emotional courage it takes to leave a life that once made sense
• the nonlinear path from grief to clarity to self-reclamation
• how women rediscover identity and purpose in midlife
• the unexpected freedom and possibility that can follow loss
• what it means to consciously step into a new version of yourself

Her five-phase model of divorce grief offers a thoughtful framework for understanding the emotional arc of transformation — not just as loss, but as a process of becoming.

As both a therapist and someone who rebuilt her own life after divorce, Oona brings a rare blend of clinical depth and lived wisdom to conversations about resilience, reinvention and the deeply human process of beginning again.

Oona is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, a Certified Group Psychotherapist and a Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association. She has three decades of clinical experience and specializes in treating women navigating divorce. She leads three weekly Divorce Support Groups and is the founder of the Beacon Group Fellowship, a program which trains mental health professionals across the country to lead divorce groups. She has given over 100 talks and workshops locally, nationally and internationally.

Learn more:

www.oonametz.com

https://www.instagram.com/oonametz/

https://www.facebook.com/womennavigatingdivorce/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/oona-metz-licsw-cgp-6a14a41b/

https://www.youtube.com/@OonaMetz

https://www.oonametz.com/book-unhitched

https://time.com/7344525/why-women-divorce/

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/why-more-women-are-initiating-divorce/

"Aging is the ultimate triumph of living," says ageism & longevity specialist, Helen Hirsh Spence. Helen is a later-in-life Canadian entrepreneur, speaker and age-equity advocate. She also is a leader navigating the demographic shift; TEDx and global speaker, author; age provocateur & mindset shifter; older & multigenerational workforce expert; and founder of Top Sixty Over Sixty.

Top Sixty Over Sixty is a social enterprise advancing age inclusion, longevity literacy, and healthy ageing across workplaces and communities. Helen consults with businesses, communities and individuals to help them become age-ready for their longer lifespans.

Her TEDx talk on embracing a longevity mindset was among the most viewed globally the month it aired. Helen urges us in the Talk to reject the longstanding negative perspective on aging and, instead, to embrace our later years as a time filled with growth, promise and opportunity.

Top Sixty Over Sixty advances longevity literacy by providing the tools and training to eliminate age bias and promote age diversity. Top Sixty drives success by resetting thinking, unlocking potential and leveraging the talent of all generations.

"We provide consulting, speaking and training to businesses. We help reframe the age narrative, address age biases and myths, and leverage the talent of the multigenerational workforce. Through coursework, training and coaching, we show mature adults how to renew and reinvest their knowledge, skills and experience to reinvent themselves with purpose.

Created in 2017, Top Sixty Over Sixty focused on older Canadians and encouraged them to reinvent themselves to meet new work and entrepreneurial challenges. Top Sixty Over Sixty continues to evolve. It works with progressive businesses and organizations to maximize efficiency, innovation, and prosperity. We offer practical guidance on how to engage an ageing workforce and create stronger sales opportunities for ageing customer segments.

We do this in four ways:

• We motivate and re-skill older adults by introducing an entrepreneurial mindset.
• We help employers transform their multigenerational workforces into innovative, intergenerational teams.
• We advise businesses on how to attract and retain a diversely aged workforce.
• We show progressive businesses how to avoid age-bias in their branding, hiring, and communications.

Top Sixty Over Sixty provides original and curated resources of interest to businesses and organizations, as well as individuals. These include a monthly newsletter, The 360, blogs and online resources. Events and workshops are held as programming and demand dictate."

Helen's book, ReSet: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life, reframes longevity as a triumph—not a burden—and offers a bold roadmap for thriving in a century-long life. It challenges the outdated notion that age is merely a number and introduces a richer understanding of what it means to grow older this century. It exposes the hidden architecture of ageism—in our policies, workplaces, media and even our own thinking—and dismantles the myths of inevitable decline. Most importantly, it moves from insight to action.

Through self-awareness, values alignment, purpose discovery, and an entrepreneurial mindset, readers learn how to redefine their personal brand, cultivate optimism and spot new opportunities for growth and contribution. This is a roadmap to living longer and better, shifting mindsets from viewing aging as decline to viewing it as a time for new growth.

Helen is helping us learn how to enjoy our "longevity bonus," since we generally are living two to three decades longer than our predecessors. Every day is a gift! Use it well!

Learn more:

https://www.topsixtyoversixty.com/

TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwhOQRduE7c

Age sense/ newsletter on LI:

https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/age-sense-7377782746225582080/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-hirsh-spence-a029a010/