What if it took you until MID life to say out loud something that you’ve been trying to find the words for your whole life. Something like: “Yes, I know I am a mother, married to a man, but I am also bisexual…and I’m ready to date women.”That’s the story of today’s guest, the novelist Julie Cohen. Julie was in her 40s when she came out as bisexual. She tells Holly Wainwright that some people asked her why she bothered. As if age, itself, rendered her sexuality irrelevant. Others suggested that j...
Dec 02, 2024•51 min•Season 3Ep. 8
Does ambition die in midlife, or are we just getting started? And what happens when your drive is as strong as ever, but your body is screaming 'stop'? Holly Wainwright is interviewing Bruna Papandrea, one of the most successful women in Hollywood. One of the most successful people in Hollywood, full stop. The Australian super-producer came from a working-class background in Adelaide to be in the rooms where things happen - namely bringing massive movies and TV shows to the screen, from Gone Gir...
Nov 25, 2024•52 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Are you "difficult" if you speak your mind, or have you just grown into yourself? Do you just finally know what you want and how to ask for it? We asked Tina Arena. She's a Gen X icon with immense success under her belt, who can speak and sing and win awards in four languages, who has lived all over the world, and who, in recent years, has been refreshingly open about everything from politics to parenthood and to ageism in the music industry. Not everybody likes that. But as Holly learned in thi...
Nov 18, 2024•46 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Nikki Parkinson's husband kept assuring her that her suspicions about infidelity were all in her head. And then one day, she got an email in the middle of the night that changed everything...What happened next took Nikki's life apart piece by piece. Six years on, former lawyer Nikki says she made so many mistakes during that time she never wanted other women to do the same. Now she's turned that into her work, becoming a Divorce Coach, Separation Strategist and Co-Parenting expert, and she wants...
Nov 11, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 5
It’s not an actual list of dickheads, although let’s face it, by this stage of life, we’ve all met a few of those. No, this list is for Kasey Chambers herself. It’s a list that signals to her that she isn’t listening to her gut - something that, by now, many of us MIDs have learned is our secret weapon... Kasey has built a career tuning into her gut - she calls it her little foghorn. The foghorn told her that her first album should be called The Captain, despite the suits thinking it was a terri...
Nov 04, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Gen X can be funny about food. A lot of us were raised on a diet of Kate Moss, cigarettes and coffee. We were happy to talk openly about skipping meals, cutting carbs, and cabbage soup cleanses. We swam in a sea of celebrity diet tips, fads and…shame. In today’s episode of MID, Holly is talking about food and the absolute necessity of small joys with Virginia Trioli. Virginia Trioli is one of the most highly-regarded journalists and broadcasters in Australia. She’s a two-time Walkley Award winne...
Oct 28, 2024•47 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Welcome to our first MID episode about hormones & peri & meno…we meant to do it earlier, but, you know: brain fog. For more than twenty-five years, Grace Lam lived and breathed the rarefied air of high fashion as a Vogue editor. Everything was going according to plan for the talented, organised, focused Grace until hormones entirely upended her tidy world. She’s going to tell you about exactly what that felt like. Fast forward a few years, and Grace has become a loud and important voice ...
Oct 21, 2024•48 min•Season 3Ep. 2
To kick off Season 3 of MID we are bringing you a conversation that Holly says kind of changed her life. We think it will change yours, too. Inspired by her book - and it’s really a very good book - We Are The Stars - we talk about all that loss, all those different seasons of life she’s lived through, from being a wild young girl with a baby bird in her pocket, mercilessly bullied at school, to being a starry-eyed raver at the peak of Sydney’s club scene, to being a survivalist who falls in lov...
Oct 14, 2024•56 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Season Three Of MID with Holly Wainwright will be back in your ears on Tuesday 15th October with more conversations for - and with - Gen X women who are anything but. THE END BITS: Share your feedback! Send us a voice message or email us at podcast@mamamia.com.au Follow us on Instagram @MidbyMamamia or sign up to the MID newsletter, dropping weekly here . CREDITS: Host: Holly Wainwright Executive Producer: Naima Brown Producer: Tahli Blackman Audio Producer: Tegan Sadler Mamamia acknowledges the...
Oct 10, 2024•2 min
It's the last conversation of MID, Season Two, with our guest Alison Brahe Daddo. Ali was THE Australian model of the late 80s, on every magazine cover and on many a teenage girl’s wall. She had a huge career here and overseas, and then she married the equally famous and swoon-worthy Cameron Daddo, backed right away from the industry, settled in LA and raised a family. Now, as Alison Brahe Daddo, or Ali, as very many of us know her, she’s also become just the most honest, interesting voice about...
Sep 23, 2024•56 min•Season 2Ep. 8
You've heard about the incredible invisible women of MID. One minute we're there, the next we're unseen by the naked eye, our voices only audible to dogs. Well, what if there was a way to reappear? Jane Tara is a writer whose brilliant novel Tilda Is Visible follows a woman who - literally - begins to disappear, and how she brings herself back into view. Not just the world's, but crucially, her own. When it comes to disappearing, Jane’s lived it. In the year she turned 50, life was hammering her...
Sep 16, 2024•43 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Welcome to MID, the podcast for Gen X women who are anything but.Today we’re talking with Gen X Aussie icons, Vika and Linda Bull, all about family, and sisters in particular, and how they hold you and shape you and give you something to push back against as you grow into mid. If, like Holly, you don’t have a sister, there’s still plenty of things to find in this conversation, because the women in it are excellent. Frank and funny and no bullshit and full of stories formed by not only being sist...
Sep 09, 2024•43 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Liane Moriarty sits down with Holly Wainwright for this episode of MID. Holly and the best-selling author of Big Little Lies, Apples Never Fall (and so much more) are talking about time. The thing we have too much of when we’re young and have learned all to well not to take for granted as we get older. Liane’s new book Here One Moment , is, in large part, about mortality, time and what you would do if you knew exactly how much of it you had left. But Liane also talks with Holly about how some or...
Sep 02, 2024•47 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Angry, much? Yep, we get it. Today we’re talking to Jacinta Parsons about rage. The ABC radio presenter and author has written a sharp and clever book called A Question of Age. It’s not an angry book, but she writes brilliantly about one of the most common - yet surprising - things about midlife: The fury. In this conversation, we talk about why anger might be a very rational response to many things about… life. Like many women, she lives with a chronic illness, is a parent, and has a big job, b...
Aug 26, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Simmone Jade McKinnon was - and is, to many - Stevie from McLouds Daughters. She joined that iconic Australian show fresh from another era-defining TV moment, Baywatch, with a Hollywood star fiancé on her arm and a creative career in full flight. And then everything changed. Simmone and her son Madigan have been living in a caravan and then a shed in her family’s back paddock for the best part of a decade. She’s been making ends meet with carer’s subsidy, odd jobs like jillaroo and by starting h...
Aug 19, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Kylie Gillies is telling Holly Wainwright about The Shift. You know, the moment when you realise things have changed - your children were tiny, and now they’re not. Your parents were giants, and now they’re not. You were the bold young thing in the office. And now you’re not. Kylie has been in living rooms across Australia for 17 years as co-host of The Morning Show with Larry Emdur. Not only is Kylie an experienced, engaged journalist, but she's also a MID woman perfectly placed to talk about a...
Aug 12, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Overlooked, touched-out and too tired. That's how many MID women feel about sex. It's how Leslie Morgan felt, too. At 49, her marriage ended, and after not having sex for three years, she decided to change that. Over the next year, Leslie found five boyfriends and discovered her sexual self wasn't actually dead, she was just having a good lie down. In this interview with Holly Wainwright, author and advocate Leslie Morgan discusses what women really mean when they say they no longer care about s...
Aug 05, 2024•59 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Sex. Money. Sandwich. Season Two of MID with Holly Wainwright is coming back to your ears and your hearts on Tuesday 6th August. You're not going to want to miss these incredible conversations with (and for) Gen X women who are anything but. Follow and subscribe so you don't miss a thing, wherever you listen your podcasts. THE END BITS: Share your feedback! Send us a voice message or email us at podcast@mamamia.com.au Follow us on Instagram @MidbyMamamia or sign up to the MID newsletter, droppin...
Aug 01, 2024•3 min
By MID, you've woven a big, beautiful, messy life. Some of it joyful, some of it devastating, some of it entirely unexpected. Today's guest, the iconic Australian musician Christine Anu has woven plenty of stories about all these things. In this very frank conversation, she talks about rebuilding herself, her life, her relationship with her kids and her career after a divorce knocked her off her feet. Now, about to release her new album, Christine is reckoning with how all the parts of her past ...
Jul 01, 2024•55 min•Season 1Ep. 8
It goes so fast. Did you want to pinch the people who said that to you when your babies were small? And now you know it's true. Welcome to the season of parenting when they're taller than you, they're eating the fridge and apparently, you've done your job right if they need you less and less every day. This episode of MID is a reunion. Holly hosted This Glorious Mess with author, presenter and Australian icon Andrew Daddo for years. Her kids were tiny, his were teens and together they unpacked a...
Jun 24, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 7
By MID, you've likely lived through some loss. You know grief has no time for fancy words and clever jokes. In fact, it hasn't a lot of time for words, full-stop. It's a full-body experience that can change you on every level. No-one wants to talk about death, except for our guest: interfaith minister, author and death-walker Dr Jackie Bailey. Jackie has experienced a great deal of loss, and she spends her life walking others through it, helping people prepare for it, and acknowledging it when i...
Jun 17, 2024•59 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Your relationship with your body might be the most complicated one you'll ever have. So says comedian and podcaster Helen Thorn. And she'd know. Helen has been performing onstage in a skin-tight gold spandex catsuit for years, at all sizes and shapes, as one half of the Scummy Mummies comedy duo. She says that she always felt "f*cking powerful" in it, and laughed off the patronising head tilts of those who declared her "brave". But when Helen found out her husband was cheating on her, upended he...
Jun 10, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Burn-Out, says author Katherine May, is what happens when you repeatedly ignore your own needs. Sound familiar? The first signs are often that you can't focus. Can't read, maybe. Can't sleep, or sleep too much? Can't eat, or can't stop eating? You're Tired All The Time. You have that cold that just won't leave.The cure, everyone says, is simple: Slow down, Darl. But it's not so easy when everyone needs something from you. Author and advocate Katherine May - creator of the Sunday Times and New Yo...
Jun 03, 2024•34 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Most Gen X-ers did not grow up idolising 5am-rising yoga girlies. For many of us, drinking "like the boys" was almost an act of feminist pride, and certainly the way we knew we were having a "good time". Holidays, celebrations, milestones. Wine o’clock, and the witching hour and the glass (or two) that marks the end of the work day... Alcohol is woven into our social lives in an almost invisible way. So what happens when you realise that the habit you thought of as your little helper is actually...
May 27, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Grown-up dating is a bit like the middle aisle at Aldi - full of surprises, a few hidden gems and a whole lot of sh*t you don't need. Generation X are getting around the apps and although they didn't exist when we were young, we're fast learners, resilient as hell and our bullshit detectors are unparalleled. So, what could possibly go wrong? Cathrine Mahoney knows. She's been post-divorce dating for almost a decade and has the stories to match. Like the time the man she'd been walking past at th...
May 20, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Julie Goodwin has had an extraordinary ordinary life. And in the last few years, she has had an extraordinary ordinary wrestle with her mental health. While you were buying Julie's cookbooks, watching her two stints on Masterchef and listening to her on the radio, she was taking care of everyone but herself (sound familiar?) and some issues she thought she'd successfully shoved in a low drawer spilled out and began to take over. In this first conversation for Mid, host Holly Wainwright talks to ...
May 13, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Welcome to MID the grown-up conversations women deserve. Ever wondered what to do when your ducks don't all fit neatly into the row they're supposed to? Over eight episodes we bring you handpicked compelling stories discussing relationships and wellness. Fun, frank wisdom from an impressive line up of well loved names, in the second act of life who share it all. MID goes deep on self-care with zero shame and rich experiences you can cherry-pick for wisdom to share, changes to make and attitude w...
May 10, 2024•2 min
