I have to admit it was hard to title this interview with Mary McGreevy, creator and host of Tips From Dead People, because we covered everything from the act of writing an obit to the depth and weight of thinking through what you want to leave in this world long after you are gone as your signature of self.

Mary started reading obituaries decades ago for fun, and when she started to read them on Tik Tok and Instagram, hundreds of thousands of followers agreed with her belief - reading about the lives of people after they are gone is fascinating, deep, sad and hysterical.

As our talk unfolds, the alignment with delicious life is clear, - you are rarely remembered for your bank account or the awards on your mantle. It's the fact that you wore two different colored socks, or you always gave chocolates to the post man at holiday time.

As women, we struggle to give ourselves permission, and yet, Mary reads obits about women who have lived wild and unapologetic lives (many involve running from the law, but that is another story!) We think if we do anything out of the box, we are going to be slighted or disliked, but when you realize one day you are going to be dead, and all you have left is your story, you may want to reconsider what you give bandwidth to in your life.

What Mary has given us in her public reading of people's obituaries is that our lives are not what we have achieved by the length of our resume or our professional status, but rather our humanity and how we have interacted with and touched others. What has been our unique impact on those we get the privilege to know and love in this lifetime.

Mary highlights the layered and textured aspects of humanity by reading these obituaries which we forget is what connects us all.

I am intrigued to go and make a list of all the quirky stuff I know about myself, and even ask my partner to do it as well. Or you can ask your adult children to do it. It's not dark. We are all going to pass at some point, and in the process of living life, we can think about what mark we want to leave behind in a spiritual way once our body is no longer here.

Mary gives tips on how to write your own obit and she is currently working on her book!

You can follow her at https://www.instagram.com/tipsfromdeadpeople/

Kristen Noel knows about divorce. She, like so many of us, has experienced it twice. But she took it to the next level by becoming a certified intuitive divorce coach. As women tend to slog through, and beat themselves up while pushing to get to the other side of something as painful as divorce, help is available and deserved.

It's not your fault you want to move on. You are not selfish or self-centered. You are not burning down the castle of dreams. You have decided you are complete with this marital scenario and want different.

Our society makes it hard for women to move on. There has to be a host of reasons, and for some of us, there are. But for others, it's no longer a fit.

But what about the kid? Oh my God, how could you? The guilt, the shame, all the stuff. That's what Kristen works through in a gentle but firm way in helping women navigate a "smart divorce" with an "evidence bank" of wins.

Her evidence bank concept was so aligned to my Delicious Life (and I adore her as a friend) I had to bring her on to the show to share with my "sandwich generation" listeners that there is a path through divorce that makes it a bit easier.

Like life has its ebbs and flows, so does divorce, and it's in the waiting periods, after the dust settles that the doubts and feelings come in.

Join us as we talk about how women may give the marriage a second chance (but usually change their mind and are back for coaching round 2...)and also, what Kristen does for fun and her self care.

I want anyone listening here to understand, through divorce, one still can have self-kindness and love, even when it seems like the world is shifting off its access. Dinners with friends, and beach days, and walks in the park, all teach you that random self-kindness that you find when its all said and done is now a part of who you are.

How we treat ourselves in the trenches, is how we can treat ourselves outside of them.

Kristen has a process to bridge the gap between strategy and self-care with the women she coaches and that couldn't be more delicious. You can find her at https://intuitivedivorce.com

My Live Your Delicious Life newsletter is on fire these days - dropping the mad self-kindness tips and tools for all areas of your life. Highly recommend a join so you don't miss my live Exhale events, as well as more podcast guests!

New here? Start with this one. This is my story — and probably a little bit of yours too.

At 44, I was a single mom with two kids, no savings, and everything to prove.

So I did what so many of us do - I worked harder, gave more, pushed further. I overworked. I overpleased. I said yes when I meant no and kept producing results to prove I was worthy, capable, enough.

And then my body said: not so fast.

The panic attacks started. Not as a breakdown - as a message. My nervous system was waving a white flag, telling me I had been last on my own list for so long I had forgotten I was even on it.

So I started small. I looked at trees in the sunshine. I danced in my apartment. I laughed with friends. I started stealing tiny moments back for myself - what I now call Delicious Moments.

This is that story. And if you're in the messy middle right now, running on empty, holding everyone else together - this one is for you.

Start here. 🌻

Loved this episode? Join Live Your Delicious Life — my free weekly newsletter for women in the messy middle. One story. One act of self-kindness. Every Tuesday. → Sign up here: liveyourdeliciouslife.kit.com.

Take a minute, like give yourself a second to pause, and you may realize you don't want to do something. What? The idea of that is wild to so many of us.

Choices? WTF?

You have the right to take some space in between shit before making a decision or a move. You can say to yourself and others, let me think on this.

That is gutsy and this is what Laura Aura, my guest this week, is all about.

What makes her a Delicious guest is she stands for the understanding that what we have and need could be so easily right before us, if we pivot with desire. Ask, what do I want?

Again, a big mind blow.

Within the desire to have a more peaceful life where we are not running around constantly over performing, there are miracles of uniqueness and acheivements that we didn't even see on our landscape. Those gentle surprises where we say, "I want a peaceful home. I like being home. I like living in this country, or this city."

And we don't have to explain why.

Laura shares about her book writing journey (something I know quite a bit about as a former book coach) and we talk about the humbling permission to write a book.

You will leave this interview on fire, and with a new agency to create deliciously in your life.

You can find my newsletter - Live Your Delicious Life - here. I also am having The Exhale events in June and July which can be accessed through the newsletter.

You can learn more about Laura here.

As always, rate and review so more women can find us. Thank you!

Sure, you may have divorced your ex, but you raised kids with him co-parenting for twenty years and then unexpectedly, he dies.

A hole is left in your life, but mourning can be complicated, and perhaps your current partner doesn't understand. Or your job doesn't see that as an immediate family member and expects you to show up for your job.

What about the grief when you child gets a diagnosis of Autism or OCD and you realize that they will have to work harder than other kids to get through life. Or that it will be more on your plate as a mom, juggling two other kids.

Or someone you knew in recovery commits suicide due to addiction, and it hits you square in the heart, but feels bigger than it should?

As women, we are navigating so many complex seemingly (to society mourning standards) minor losses and griefs every day, but we are expected to just take them on in our bodies and shoulder forward to all our responsibilities. To even stop for a moment and breathe can seem like too much time in our busy schedules but if we don't face the trauma and pain, we can get derailed in other emotional ways.

Speaking today with Krista Hellman, a social worker and founder of the Trauma and Grief Institute in Ottawa, Ontario, I learned a lot about how we need to process attachment and mourning in our bodies.

Krista wrote a book about the loss of her dog called Over ther Rainbow: The Love, Loss & Legacy of Your Dog, but it is about more than pet loss. She speaks of how connection can be continued beyond loss.

Please rate and review this episode if you enjoyed it.

I have a newsletter, Live Your Delicious Life, where you can learn more about my events, The Exhale: Put Yourself First where we discover ways to bring more Delicious into your life.

Susan Landers, M.D. tells us that perfectionism comes from our childhoods. Be good girls. Play well in a group. Don't be too bossy. Or if we didn't get the mothering or love we needed, then we try and receive that unconditional love by the praise we get from society. A lot of working moms fall into the perfectionist trap because they feel like they have to do all the things perfectly from work tasks to the birthday parties.

And of course social media has made this worse.

Susan talks about going from a 80 hour job in the NICU with three little kids to identifying her burn out and making changes in her professional life to better enjoy life more deliciously. She learned to block out time just for herself to do what she wanted on her calendar whether it was take a walk or call a friend. In fact, she admits that she has experienced burn out twice in her career - the second at age 62.

She also breaks down the Eisenhower Matrix which identifies what in your life is urgent, or what you can delegate or get rid of. Without a tool like this, we can think its all-important and lose our perspective in the weeds of responsibility.

Susan admits she was 50 years old when she learned how to say no. And silencing the inner critic, setting boundaries and practicing self-compassion is the key to get out of the perfectionism trap.

Susan has a wonderful Substack Mom's Matter.

She has written several books and we discuss Good Enough is Your Super Power: Overcoming Perfectionism for Women by Silencing Your Inner Critic and Settting Boundaries on the show.

Enjoyed our interview and the podcast as a whole? Please rate and review as that helps us get the word out to more "sandwich generation" women. I also have a newsletter liveyourdeliciouslife.kit.com. Join our community for a wealth of information and events.

How many of you are willing to walk away from a toxic job, pursue a passion project and be in naïve optimism while you do it? I know from my personal perspective, we tend with our careers or how we lead our kids to be in hard love, or face reality. Or we work ourselves to the perfectionist bone, having zero fun while we strive to "get it right."

But with Dr. Vicki Johnson, she gives a solid sell on the idea of optimism, but also chipping away at projects with high effort. This in itself will lower the potential of being a perfectionist.

She provided so many insightful takeaways in our interview, especially coming from a place where she juggled jobs, side hustles (built her platform ProFellow) and young kids, all crammed in a small apartment in San Francisco.

Currently she lives in Bend, Oregon and has recently published her book, Pitch Your Potential: The Formula for Winning Dream Jobs, Awards, and Elite Opportunities.

Would you like to be a part of the Delicious Life community where we are building events and connections? Please join me at liveyourdeliciouslife.kit.com where you can download for free my PDF Seven Acts of Self-Kindness.

If you enjoyed today's podcast, please rate and review. It helps us to get the message out that we don't have to be burned out exhausted women to achieve dreams and goals.

You would think with all the fancy initials after De Shell's name, we would be talking about female leadership, or coaching but that is not what this podcast is about.

In fact, if you stay in the interview for at least 22 minutes, De Shell will mesmerize you like she did me. She will lull you into belief you deserve a gentle life and no longer need to feel like you are drowning inside.

De Shell and I had a shared language of leaning deliciously into our expansion of self-knowledge in an area that is not necessarily to our professional advantage. Why not? Who told us that is not beneficial? The system, that is who, and its all a bunch of lies. How you feed your soul is how you show up everywhere in your life, including how you self-serve.

For De Shell this was yoga. She learned after decades of practicing asanas that the lifestyle is so much biggest than exercise. As a life long learner, she wanted to do something deeper that helped her calm down. What it meant for the mental and energetic and emotional space. She signed up for a teacher training which also gave me permission to validate my desire to take a yoga teacher intensive one day because I too have been doing yoga my whole life thinking I want a better understanding of what's deeper. I have learned more than ever lately, if you just stay in child pose your whole time, it is okay.

Why can't we do something just to learn? Why are we always in the hustle? Women always need an outcome, but what if the outcome is it feels good and you are curious.

I share with De Shell I found out a lot of what I believed in, what I felt I had to prove, was a lie. She nailed in on the head when she said, it's the overfunctioning. The badges we think we need to win, and the conditioning to place more value on what we do versus who we are. Women who don't have self-trust use the real masculine language and think "if I could just…", but at the same time, it's magical thinking to say we don't need to make money. There is a happy medium. De Shell works with a lot of women on boards with high position, and she thinks of herself a decade ago. She would defend the lies based on how she defined herself. Self-care for example, relaxation versus rejuvenation. You don't rest when you die! You need to nap on a hammock! Stop trying to think looking good is self-care!

De Shell takes off into the mountains, and travels alone. She doesn't want to be concerned with what you want to eat and what activity you want to engage in. She wants to rejuvenate!

In the Fun Segment she suggests:

1. Journal by candlelight, do yoga poses, sink into oracle witnessing and reflecting on becoming.

2. Go on trips on your own and make discoveries.

3. Eat at new places and savor what's local. What's the story behind the food?

4. When you travel, see how the poor and impoverished live beyond your resort parameters.

5. No schedule, no check in. 8 hour book days.

If you loved our podcast, I would love to have you as part of our Delicious community by joining at liveyourdeliciouslife.kit.com

If you want to learn more about the work De Shell is doing, check her out at https://leveragingtruth.com