Episode 5: Initiated by Life

A conversation with Lianne Raymond on Midlife, Mentoring, and the Maturation of Women.

In this soul-nourishing episode of The Midlife Ripening Podcast, I’m joined by my longtime coach and mentor, Lianne Raymond—a life poet and a deeply wise guide for what it means to grow into our fullest potential.

Lianne invites us to rethink midlife as a sacred initiation offered by life itself. We talk about menopause, matriarchy, mentorship, and the cultural hunger for mature presence. We explore how women can move from self-help toward rhythm, agency, and confidence.

Whether you’re navigating perimenopause, questioning your next era, or longing to reclaim your own authority, this conversation offers a balm.

If you’re curious what ripening into elderhood might make possible…

This episode is for you.

In this episode, we explore:

• What nature teaches us about rhythm, growth, and unfolding

• How nature can be an initiation—even when culture fails us

• Why women don’t need to be fixed, and how self-help can keep us small

• Elderhood, matriarchy, and feeding the village from our harvest

• The longer, deeper lineage of coaching as soul-midwifery

Bookmarks

🍒 “Women are lucky. Nature provides us with initiation, even when culture doesn’t.”

🍒 “That kind of presence—where everyone around you feels more possible—is our birthright.”

🍒 “I think women have been midwifing each other’s souls forever. We just call it coaching now.”

Seed to carry with you: 

“A Summer's Singing" by Lorna Crozier, from Everything Arrives at the Light (McClelland & Stewart, 1995).

Where does that singing start, you know,

that thin sound—almost pure light?

Not the birds at false dawn or their song

when morning comes, feathered throats

warm with meaning. A different kind of music.

Listen, it is somewhere near you.

In the heart, emptied of fear,

stubbornly in love

with itself at last, the old

desires a ruined chorus,

a radiant bloody choir.

Where does the singing start?

Here, where you are, there’s room

between your heartbeats,

as if everything you have ever been

begins, inside, to sing.

~ Lorna Crozier

Connect with Lianne Raymond: Follow Lianne’s work at https://www.lianneraymond.com/, or on Instagram, @lianneraymond.