Latest / Butterfly Days w Tami Jorden / Five GenX Lodestars, 1 Year: What Guides Us

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Five GenX Lodestars, 1 Year: What Guides Us · Butterfly Days w Tami Jorden

• 0:10
  Tami Jorden (00:02.22)
• 0:14
  Welcome to my realm. I'm Tammy Jordan, and this is Butterfly Days, the podcast that proves you're not past your prime. You're living in it right now because women don't have expiration dates. Butterfly Days is a celebration of the extraordinary potential of Gen X and Boomer women. Throughout history, women have shared wisdom to uplift and empower one another. And you're about to learn hard-earned wisdom and best-kept secrets.
• 0:18
  From interesting, inspiring women. So if you're ready to embrace your butterfly season with confidence, find joy in the present, and create a legacy that matters, you're in the right place. No more holding back. Let's spread our wings now. Here we go!
• 0:26
  Tami Jorden (00:58.604)
• 0:30
  Welcome to my realm. Wanna hear something crazy? It's been a year since I started Butterfly Days, and I am so grateful to all of you who've chosen to take the ride with me and learn all of the things that we did, hear from amazing guests, and just continue to refine what we understand. Now I thought it might be fun to take this minute.
• 0:34
  Look back at some of the lodestars from our first year constellation. Tell you what a lode star is in a minute if you don't know. A year ago, I hit record, not knowing if this podcast would work. I just knew women in our generation were feeling insignificant. And I had a voice to contribute, and I was tired of waiting for permission to try. You know, before ships had satellites, before travelers had maps that you could trust, they had a lodestar.
• 0:42
  It's a fixed star, usually the North Star that doesn't move the way the rest of the sky does. You could lose your bearings completely in open water in the dark and still find your way home because of one point of light that held still long enough in the sky. That's a lod star. So that's actually what this year turned into for me. 55 episodes in, here's what I learned.
• 0:50
  This show was never mine alone. Twin women sat with me and handed me something true. And so many of you told me you found ideas that launched you somewhere new. We're living the oldest story there is when we listen to Butterfly Days, because it's women passing wisdom to other women one caring moment at a time. We didn't invent that. We just get to keep it going into the twenty first century.
• 0:58
  So today isn't a highlight reel, it's a thank you. And my gift to you are the five big lodars, the fixed points that showed up in my solos just as powerfully, guest after guest, also. Not rules, not a checklist, just the glowing truths that stayed steady enough for us to navigate by in this stage of our lives. We need them now more than ever because we're not living our mother's midlife experience.
• 1:06
  Tami Jorden (03:21.932)
• 1:10
  First Lodestar, earned wisdom is currency. Earned wisdom is the coin of our realm now. Everything you've endured or celebrated is coalescing inside you, offering counsel for the road ahead. You are the most equipped you have ever been to craft a bold, beautiful next chapter. And it's okay to admit that. It's okay to call your shot, you know?
• 1:14
  Earned wisdom isn't just a nice way to say, trust your gut. It's harder one. It's what's left after you've gone through something grueling and asked, what actually happened here? And what do I know now that I didn't know going in? And can I use that in new ways? It's like experience is the bricks, clarity is the mortar, and wisdom is that staircase that we build from it.
• 1:22
  Through the failures, the disappointments, the nights that we begged for the dawn. That's why I'm encouraging you to sort through your memories and mine them for more gold. When I look back at my worst chapters with older eyes, wow. I found that I was braver than I remembered. And further, I had more grace for everyone involved, including me. And that's not softness, that's a more honest template.
• 1:30
  The next trial that comes, I'm not starting from zero. I'm leveraged by everything I gleaned from everything hard that happened earlier. So that's what this year taught me, guest after guest. The woman who's been through it isn't wiser in some vague feel-good sense. She has a good strategy now, a way of running hard decisions through her own three gates before she speaks.
• 1:38
  A way of catching herself mid catastrophe and asking, is this really true? Or is there another way to see this? She's clear that the problem isn't as big as it feels at 2 AM. And yes, some of what we've learned is now instinctual. Clarity moving so fast it arrives just as knowing. And that's real. It's not luck. It's a pattern recognition built and internalized over decades. We can earn that. But instinct is
• 1:46
  Tami Jorden (05:43.03)
• 1:50
  Is only part of our story. We now know that making a mistake is never the problem. Refusing to own it, to learn from it, and adjust, those are the problems. And we're not trying to be perfect anymore. We're a lot harder to shame because of this. We can be wrong now without being undone. We pivot, we recalibrate, we try again, and that's mastery.
• 1:54
  Refining the best of what we already are. And that's what makes us a force to be reckoned with in midlife. We don't have to get it right the first time. We just have to keep adapting until we do. That is the power of earned wisdom. Which sort of leads me to Lodestar Number Two. Memento Mori clarifies our purpose. As you know, I sit with the dying and I've done that for decade. Not once at the end.
• 2:02
  Has anyone ever told me they wish that they'd pleased more people? Nope. And or scored better on somebody else's scorecard. What they say pretty much every time is some version of this. I wish I'd understand what actually mattered sooner. I just wish I could have understood that. This year, I got to hand you that Lode Star early on while you still have years to mine it. Memento Mori.
• 2:10
  Means literally, remember that you are mortal. Your window is finite. That's exactly why it matters that we prize what's good in us and we learn to be proud of what we've built without becoming pompous by it. When we accept that everyone makes mistakes, we all do, and everyone gets to move forward with grace when we're when they're willing to learn. We crush shame in the dust. We stop fearing we're not enough.
• 2:18
  Or that everyone else belongs in the room and we're the imposter. We take our rightful place at any table with our heads high because we're clear that our time is limited, and that's exactly what makes this chapter extraordinary in a way that only we can make it. Our time here is brief, and that's what makes what we choose to do with it matter more. And we get that now. Lodestar three, Amur Fatih up.
• 2:26
  Tami Jorden (08:06.51)
• 2:30
  Upgrades your experience. yeah. This one I think took me the longest to grasp, but it's so powerful. Amur Fati is loving your actual life, wounds, injustices, and failures included. And instead of grieving the one that you thought you would get, it's not pretending the hard parts were secretly good. It's just refusing to let them be the whole story. Because hope isn't.
• 2:34
  A disposition that some of us got lucky enough to have. It's a decision made awake, eyes open about how dark it actually is. When we stop fighting reality and face what is head-on, we become a patterning ramp against the limits we once thought that fate had set for us. So facing the truth, even when it hurts, sets us free to see clearly and make braver, more creative pivots.
• 2:42
  And when we finally say, This is my life, all of it, I will decide what it means. I will find out what's beautiful and powerful in it. Not because everything that happened was good, but because my life matters, even with its flaws, something in us fully unfurls. And we stop waiting for fate to hand us the life we wanted. And we start making something extraordinary.
• 2:50
  Out of the one that's actually ours. Lode star four. Contribution compounds. This fourth lodestar is what you do with all that earned wisdom. Once you've made peace with your fated life, there's no template for life after 50, only intuition, courage, and curiosity. It's a brave chapter. What I heard this year again and again is that something personally meaningful.
• 2:58
  Offered in service to a greater good is what actually fulfills us in midlife. Somewhere in your knapsack is a gift that you've been calling nothing your whole life because it's rather effortless to you now. But guest after guest showed me the same thing from a different angle. What's easy for you is remarkable to somebody else. Excellence stops being the destination and becomes our vehicle at this point.
• 3:06
  Tami Jorden (10:32.472)
• 3:10
  The retired accountant who helped save a boy in foster care, we love her, wasn't doing something new. She aimed everything she already was at somebody who needed exactly that. Her gift, offered in her own specific way, made a profound impact, and it filled her heart at the same time. Meaningful contribution pays dividends of dignity and pride for the world and for us.
• 3:14
  Which leads us to Lode Star Five. Kinship sustains. The last note, Lode Star, holds up all of the others. And this year, the data confirmed what we already felt: that it's critical. You were never meant to do any of this life alone. Not the earning of the wisdom, not the facing of the finish line, not the loving of your actual life, not the giving of your gifts. You
• 3:22
  Are made for connection. Even in the busy modern lives, good old-fashioned friendship is what we need most for the long run. Caring for each other reciprocally over time is critical for healthy longevity. When we have strong support, we're forged by the hard things instead of destroyed by them. If we build varied friendships and remember to be one too, the power of that.
• 3:30
  Never let anyone shame you into believing time with people who nourish your soul is frivolous. It's wisdom to stock the shelf before the storm. It really is. And as we age, strong community means our families aren't left carrying the whole weight alone. So these are your five midlife load stars to help you navigate ahead. This was a year of women telling each other the truth and tucked into every episode.
• 3:38
  The same idea, which I think I've been saying to you in fifty different ways all year without fully realizing it. You are not a body trying to last longer. You are a life trying to matter more. You know, we didn't start this fire, but we can use its light to find our way and to light the way for the women coming behind us. And that's what I think Gen X and Jen Jones women are doing right now.
• 3:46
  Tami Jorden (12:58.542)
• 3:50
  One Tuesday episode at a time, rewriting what this chapter of a woman's life can look like. I am deeply proud of what we built together this year and deeply grateful to the 23 women who shared their wisdom with us. I'm proud of the ideas that moved from some vague idea in my heart into words clear enough to propel us towards not wasting our midlife. I don't want any of you lying on your bed at the end.
• 3:54
  Wishing that you'd cared more, reach further, or chase something that meant the world to you. There's still so much sand left in your hourglass. So I've got more for the new season ahead that I think you're gonna love. Let's keep building midlife maps that break into new terrain. You guys, together, I need your support in that. Please rate this podcast, follow it, and pass it on to a sister who needs it. And this
• 4:02
  Is my benediction for you. May all that you learn this year bring these five truths together in you long enough to transmute into something new, something amazing, something only you could forge. May you see that in accepting that your time is finite and loving your life this far, you make space to improve the world in your own way, surrounded by others.
• 4:10
  who cheer you on doing it. And may you be proud to be a trailblazer, because a whole woman over fifty is indeed a beautiful thing to behold. And remember, I'm rooting for you.
• 4:18
  Tami Jorden (14:43.446)
• 4:22
  I'm so grateful you listened to this episode. I hope it was a real value to you. If there's a sister in your life who needs this message, please share it. Just like women have done to lift each other up over the centuries and across cultures. Women lifting each other is so important. It's why I do this work. And to avoid FOMO and keep up leveling your own life, make sure you don't miss the next episode.
• 4:26
  You may be losing hormones, but your life has given you powerful perspective. And I believe you have something to give that no one else does, that the world needs. So remember, I'm rooting for you. Let's go.