Shownotes
Denise Lee’s path through midlife has been anything but simple. From surviving childhood trauma to battling addiction and the pressure to live up to cultural expectations, she spent years feeling like she was running behind everyone else. But her 40s brought a wake-up call: healing isn’t about timelines or comparisons, it’s about learning to trust yourself. In this candid conversation, Denise shares how she rebuilt her inner voice, discovered what real leadership looks like, and finally began to trust herself. If you’ve ever felt behind on life’s timeline or trapped by old patterns, this episode will show you what it means to wake up in midlife.
Guest Bio
Denise G. Lee is a healing and leadership coach who helps high-achieving adults untangle the inner scripts they didn’t know they were living by. She works with people who look like they have it all together—but quietly wonder why it still feels hollow. In her work, Denise invites honest reflection on identity, success, and the invisible expectations we carry, especially as we age. Her podcast and coaching explore what it means to lead from emotional clarity, not cultural pressure.
Turning 40 and tuning into a new frequency
When Denise G. Lee hit her mid-30s, she was juggling new motherhood, an immigrant identity that didn’t fit neatly into any box, and the heavy weight of a painful childhood. From the outside, her life looked picture-perfect, but on the inside, Denise was still carrying chaos, addiction, and self-doubt. It wasn’t until a series of wake-up calls, including getting kicked out of a therapist’s office and facing hard truths in recovery, that she began the long process of “growing up” on the inside. Now in her 40s, Denise has stepped into a life of healing, self-trust, and authentic leadership, and she’s sharing what it really takes to get there.
Highlights from this episode:
- How Denise’s immigrant upbringing shaped her sense of identity and belonging.
- Becoming a first-time mom at 35 and wrestling with feelings of being “too old” and unprepared.
- The chaos and trauma of her childhood, and how it stunted her inner growth.
- The pivotal moment at 27 when a therapist sent her to Sexaholics Anonymous, forcing her to face her addictions and denial.
- What it meant to outgrow her environment and seek a fresh start in Texas.
- The danger of chasing image and comparison, and how Denise learned to stop living by others’ timelines.
- Redefining leadership, moving away from manipulation toward empathy, resilience, and safety.
- The ongoing process of tuning into her “inner voices” and learning to trust herself.
In this episode, you’ll hear a story that proves growth isn’t linear: it’s layered, messy, and deeply human. Denise’s journey from chaos to clarity is a reminder that midlife isn’t about hitting milestones on a set timeline. It’s about waking up, tuning into the right frequencies within yourself, and learning to lead your own life with compassion and courage.
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, follow, and share The Big Four Oh Podcast. It helps more people find the show, and reminds them they’re not alone in this wild midlife transition.
Guest Resources
Connect with Denise on Facebook
Connect with Denise on Instagram
Get Denise’s Life Script Questionnaire, free for listeners of The Big Four Oh
Do you have the Midlife Ick?
Download Stephanie’s guide to the Ick to diagnose whether you or someone you love is suffering from this insidious midlife malaise. www.thebigfouroh.com/ick
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Sponsor
The Big Four Oh Podcast is produced and presented by Savoir Faire Marketing/Communications
Transcripts
Stephanie: Hello Denise. Welcome to the show.
Denise: I am so glad that I'm here. Stephanie. Thank you for having me.
Oh, it is my pleasure. I am really looking forward to this conversation today. You have an element of your story that I don't hear often, which is the immigrant experience. You are the child of African immigrants. Is that right? Did I get that right? Yeah. Yeah. So let's start at the very beginning. Why don't you tell me a little bit about the forces that shaped you. Who were you when our story begins at about 35.
Denise: Oh boy. 35.
It's so funny, every time, like I would fill out forms at the doctor's office and somewhere they would like. Like, what are you? And they would say, African American or black. And I don't really feel, I know I'm an American, but I don't really feel like an African American because even though I'm 35 years old, by and large, I was more exposed to African culture while living in America. So even though I'm 35, I still don't feel as if I am truly one of the boxes that, that you get checked.
Checked. Right.
Stephanie: Not a clean box. You, you straddle some boxes.
Denise: I've had conversations with my husband that too. He, even though he was born in Hong Kong, he was by and large raised here in the States too. He's like, I'm not really here.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: But anyway, at 35, my son's about six months or so old. And I was feeling like an old mom.
Stephanie: Oh.
Denise: Be, 'cause I thought all the visions of what I thought motherhood was would be, I would be in my twenties. And I would have more energy. And I would be able to have pop out more and more babies. And here I am thinking, oh my gosh, my obstetrician told me if I had another baby, it would be a geriatric pregnancy. And so, it was a little weird because even though I have this new baby and I'm so technically still an adult. I'm still wondering if I am grown up enough.
Stephanie:
So you're feeling a little immature or unprepared for that stage.
Denise: Yeah, because I would thought that, you know, you're over 30, you should have a little bit like get it together. You're, you've got some experience under your breath. But here I was talking to anybody who was a mother younger than me for advice, 'cause I didn't know how to take care of this little one where I still felt little inside.
Stephanie: Mm. And there's the key right there. Yeah. So let's go back and talk a little bit about your upbringing and why you felt so young inside still and that internal self didn't grow at the same pace as the external self.
Denise: Yeah.
Stephanie: Tell me a little bit about, about growing up.
Denise: Yeah, I don't wanna sit here and say that my childhood was terrible because since I've been living in the course of life, I've heard some really horrific thing, so it's made me question what terrible really is. But for me it was a very chaotic situation where, on the outside looking in, everything looked great.
In the early years, my family were living in the suburbs of the Washington DC area. My father's a banker. My mom's a stay at home mom. I have two older brothers, so on the side outside looked really great, but on the inside there was a lot of stuff going on. My father was largely gone. He said he was for work. Come to found out later, he was with different women.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Denise: My mother, abused, myself and my brothers in various different ways. With me, I got the full brunt of it, physical, emotional, and sexual. From as long as I can remember, up to 11 years old before I was taken away briefly to foster care.
Stephanie: Wow.
Denise: So the reason why I said I felt like a kid was because during the years growing up, I had no real recollection with love and comfort, and security was and stability. Everything was very unstable.
So when I got out of, foster care, I briefly lived with my mother again. And then that was chaotic, went live with my father, but I was still that stunted little kid.
And to make matters worse, I mean, I was consuming hardcore porn. It was a lot of alcoholism. So I was not grown up
Stephanie: Yeah. You were,
Denise: I wasn't grown up.
You were medicating with with different sources. And the interesting thing is that, that it looked like this upper middle class family, in the capital region. And it wasn't that behind closed doors. So then you left home and, you were a hard worker, right? Tell me a little bit about twenties and, and kind of building yourself, your career.I was booted out when I was 21.
My father, the company that he was working for, they merged and dissolved one bank and he says, I'm going to Wilson, North Carolina. I don't know what you're gonna do, but I'm gonna go to Carolina. And so I didn't wanna stay with one of my brothers at the time. And I started cohabitating. It was my series of co-habitating from about 21 to 26, different boarding homes. And even though I was working, I was going to school, but it was, it wasn't so much like I was working because I had purpose in myself. I was working because I was fearful of being homeless.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Denise: I was fearful of disappointing the mentors that were around me
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: at my college or at my internship. That's what would really motivated me. I wish I could say I was hardworking from my own sense of like personal pride and like that's not what it was.
Stephanie: Right. Tell me a little bit about, you said something to me when we first spoke, about the world owes you something.
Denise: Yeah.
Stephanie: Tell me about that.
Denise: I always, think about the ideas I moved from the world owed me, I was betrayed. Then I betrayed myself. Then I came to acceptance where I'm now at and at 40. I know we're gonna talk about it,
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: I felt betrayed because here I am in the nation's capital, like one of the, like in an upper class area. I'm going to a great school and I feel like everyone owes me something because I feel so terrible inside.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Denise: And nothing and nobody is making me feel good,
Stephanie: Hmm.
Denise: And it made me angry and bitter.
Stephanie: Yeah. And it was finally a coach or a mentor who said, snap out of it. It's not true.
Right.
Denise: I don't believe it was a coach or a mentor.
Stephanie: okay.
Denise: I thinkit was reality.
Stephanie: Okay.
Denise: Teaching me from experience to experience, to experience, and I said in the beginning, I, in the course of going to 12 step recovery, talking with different people in different seasons of life, I realized that pain is relative
Stephanie: Mm.
Denise: Hardship is relative. And It made me realize like maybe it wasn't as bad as you think. There was explanations that explained what was inexplicable at the time. I, I had maybe a person here or there saying this is a great job, or this is a great place to live, or whatever. But it didn't really help me because my mind was just so geared, Stephanie, to like a negativity bias.
Stephanie: Yeah. So when was it that you learned, that it takes time to, to build, a life for yourself? That it's, it's not all just handed to you immediately?
Denise: 38.
Stephanie: Oh my,
Denise: Early forties.
Stephanie: yeah.
Denise: I realized as I was closing into forties, I'm like, wait a minute. Remember a mentor told me, it's like you, the stuff that happened in your childhood that was, that was on your parents, but the stuff that you do in your adulthood that's on you. So I'm thinking about the last 20 years of my life. I'm like, that was all on me.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: It came to a point where I had to decide if I wanted to own who I was or I would continue to like delegate my sense of worth and value to everyone around me.
Stephanie: Ooh. Yeah. I think I remember you saying that you spent a, a, some time in your early adulthood, twenties, thirties, looking online and scrolling to find the ideas of what you were supposed to be doing or what, what was worthwhile in life. Tell me, tell me a little bit about that and how you were creating a picture of what you thought it was supposed to look like.
Denise: When I was in my mid to late twenties. Somebody told me about this thing called Facebook
Stephanie: Mmm.
Denise: where people would connect with their friends and family. And then I had another person tell me about this weird thing with this bird, this blue bird called Twitter, and you could talk to celebrities and they would talk back to you.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Denise: Now, I didn't get a twitter account at the time. But I remember getting a Facebook account 'cause that seemed simple. And in it, everybody was talking about their trips and they were showing how great there was and, and I was looking at people my age and they were doing things. I thought to myself, what am I doing wrong with my life?
They're always smiling. They're always talking about the positive things. They always got an inspiration, a quote that they got from somewhere. And I thought to myself, maybe if I could just be what I saw online, not just from the people I was connected to, but any your Facebook friends, aren't your friends. Like I just
Stephanie: Right,
Denise: Well, they may be. They may be.
Stephanie: Right.
By and large they're voyeurs. I wish they call you voyeurs. Yeah.
Denise: People only see a, a curated version of you. But the point of matter is I would always try to see what people my age were doing. I wanted to know what Beyonce was doing. I wanted to know what Shakira was doing. I wanted to know where all these other multimillionaires were doing.
Right. And it really got me even more immersed in my addiction because I felt like I couldn't measure up to what I saw.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm. At what point did you meet your husband and get married?
Denise: I met him shortly before I turned 30. We met at a a Christian Meetup event and he, unbeknownst to either one of us, we were thinking this was our last shot of love. If I didn't find anyone, I was gonna go ahead and just pack my bags and move to Costa Rica.
My husband thought, I'm going to just be content in bachelorhood because my hu husband was 33 at the time and he just thought, I'm a virgin. It's clearly this whole dating thing is not working despite being set up by my parents, despite trying to do certain things. It's just not working. So we both kind of met each other at a point of just almost resignation.
Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Tell me how that relationship started. I don't wanna make light of it, but being well beyond that age now, it seems silly that you would think that it was your last chance, right? 30 is so young. 30 and 33. But, it was what you were seeing and, and you were surrounded by visuals that you were placing a lot of weight on. And so that next step was something that you thought you were late for, I think.
Denise: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, even though I was engaged before meeting my husband, it was a train wreck of a relationship. It only lasted nine months.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Denise: I never had any relationship before my husband that lasted nine months.
Wow. I've been married, 13 years, but I never had anything beyond nine months.
And so when we met each other, I remember saying to him originally, I said, you know, I'm weird, right? And he was like, no. He's like, I'm weird. No. And so we actually bonded on the fact that we both felt outcast in a lot of different ways.
Stephanie: Yeah,
You had two major pivot points. You, you told me one was at 27 and one was at 38. So the first one was right before you met your husband or a couple years before you met your husband. Tell me about that first turning point.
Denise: Stephanie, that was a real serious timeframe in my life. That was when I was kicked out of a therapist's office because I know, right? Like why, why would you get kicked outta the therapist's office? What happened was, I was just telling them everything I was going through, right? And I remember sitting and I had a little old little Asian nun of, of a therapist, and I was busy telling her my latest sexual escapade.
And she just said, wait a second. And I remember she just got off the chair and walked slowly to the file cabinet and opened the drawer and gave me a piece of paper and put a clipboard on and a pencil.Don't say anything. Just fill this out. And I remember, looking at the questions, have you ever had sex in public? Who hasn't?
Has porn ever preoccupied most of your time? This is not what everyone does? And I, if this was a quiz, I would've gotten an eight outta 10. The only two things I said no to was, have you ever had sex with kids, or have you ever been jailed? And I would've been jailed considering some of the things I did.
And at that moment,the therapist said to me, I can't do this. I'm sorry. She gave me a piece of paper to meetings called Sexaholics Anonymous. What is that? She says, this is our last session. Best of luck. And it was a moment I truly felt alone because I, I didn't, it was estranged from my parents. I was estranged from my brothers. Well, I talked to one of my brothers. I didn't have really anyone else that in my life that I confided in. The people I did connect with, it was more me just dumping my issues with not really solving anything.
Stephanie: Right,
Denise: So I didn't feel like I had a real confidante. I didn't really had feeling any connection with anyone. And so here I was forced to deal with something that I was probably dealing with since God knows how long. It was the start of growing up, at 27.
Stephanie: Yeah. It, it sounds like, somebody finally put a mirror up in front of you that you were able to see in. By asking those questionsin that way, made it very obvious.
Did you start to go to the sexaholic anonymous?
Denise: Yeah, I
Stephanie: Yeah,
Denise: I finally sat in a room with people who did far worse things than me, had far bigger issues. And I think that was the start, Stephanie, where I was realizing that hardship is really relative.
Because I would tell I was sexually abused and they're like, I was too. Well, I got in trouble with my boss, I was too. I got fired too. And I was like, whoa. Every time I would say these things to get like sympathy from other people and they're like, honey, take a seat.
Yeah. Yeah. It's really quite average in this room. So how did that get you to start growing up? What was it about that turning point? It was the first time that it forced me, like you mentioned earlier, to put a mirror to what I was doing. It was the first time I couldn't use my background as a shield from
Stephanie: Mm.
Denise: confronting my own narcissism, my own self pity, my own sense of entitlement.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: Feeling like I deserved something. That was the very first time, 'cause I was around people who were just like me. So no one said to me, grow up 'cause they didn't wanna grow up.
Stephanie: And was this about the same time that you were written up at a corporate job? Was that, tell me a little bit about that.
Denise: Well you know, it's kind of hilarious because you would think, I'm going to meetings. I'm not really sober from alcohol, but I'm trying.
Stephanie: Okay.
Denise: I'm trying to. That they would see the new and improved version of Denise and if anything, they just wanted back to Denise version [one]. Because some people just get used to who you are, even if it's the worst version. And if you change and it makes them feel uncomfortable, they'll try to create situations that will bring the version that this near and dear to their hearts back.
I had a situation where my boss who was retiring. He made it his mission to get me and another person fired. They were documenting things and I remember just feeling set up because I was trying my best to be sober and to be honest, and because I wasn't fully cooked emotionally, I just took every single bait. They tried to put me in a performance improvement plan. I was like, oh my gosh, they're trying to fire me right now. My husband was like, you need to leave. You need to leave. No matter how hard you're trying, you just need to leave.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: And it was hard because I thought I could rehab my image at that moment, but I couldn't.
Stephanie: Right, right. Not in that environment.
Denise: So flash forward a few years and, you and your husband relocated. Is that right?
to Texas where we live now in:Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Denise: I wanted a fresh start and my, husband felt that his brother was also trying to put him into this image of who he was supposed to be. And like people ask us all the time, like, are you moving for a job? Are you moving for like an opportunity? I'm like, no. No, because it was, we wanted to be looked at apart from our past, apart from our image.
People always say like, oh, you can't run away from your past. You always have to deal with your demons inside you. And like, yeah, to that point, it's true. But for me, I needed that clean start. He needed that clean start.
Stephanie: You needed people who weren't going to, continue to put you in the place that you had always been in, right? You need, you needed people who were gonna see you with fresh eyes and take you with how you presented yourself, which is as people who were growing and people who were becoming a better version of themselves.
Denise: Yeah. I don't think that it was done outta malice. Like seriously, like I, I don't mean to sit here and say, well, I was running from the law and had a,
Stephanie: Yeah,
Denise: bench warrant or anything. It was none of that sort. It was the fact that I was growing so much, I outgrew the environment I was in.
Stephanie: Yeah. That makes sense to me. So talk a little bit about you. You got to Texas and you wanted to start a business.
Denise: I started to try to do business coaching here in Texas, and I thought it was gonna be easy. I thought it was just gonna be all the things that you would seeing scrolling on, well now they call it Meta, but then Facebook. And it was just a copy and paste thing, post to profit. That's where the expression was. And I thought that I could fake it and bluff it.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: I realized was that I was trying to do the same old tricks that I did unsuccessfully before I, I really started taking my recovery seriously in my mid thirties. Yeah, I went to the business events and I shook hands. I went to score events and all this stuff, but it wasn't from an attitude of let me really like, help people. It was more like, let me try to pivot and make money at the same time.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: My heart wasn't really into it.
Stephanie: Well, and also I think, when you described it to me the first time, you were also, focused on the image of it, versus the soul of it. You were focused on what it needed to look like externally in order, you thought, to attract people to it, which turned out to be hollow.
Denise: People can tell when someone is just clout chasing or grifting or looking for money versus people who are actually doing it. Like, I don't even care if I make a, a dime from it. I'm just really giving you this information because I know that we're all better off. And I didn't really, honestly, like Stephanie had that vibe before.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: And plus it wasn't a good fit for me, when I think about it. Despite the fact I thought, oh, I have a, I have certificate in project management. I can, manage multimillion projects before. This is a a cake walk, my heart wasn't in it, Stephanie, and it showed.
Stephanie: Yeah, So you moved down to Texas at 38 and you're there for a couple years. You are approaching your 40th birthday. Tell me what that feels like.
Denise: Whew. I mean, I, I mean, I was already feeling the grays. I'm, and I started actively gray, like dyeing it. But it was this issue of like, man, my husband already beat a million. I can't even make a million. Man. I, I was want my hair to the shoulder length. I could barely get it to the end. Like there was always these things I was ticking off my, like, wanted to check off that I couldn't do.
I felt like. I should have done.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: And, and I realized it was all about comparing myself to people and understanding that their path is their path, and my path is my path.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm. So you didn't really feel like celebrating when you turned 40.
Denise: I didn't even want anybody to know. In fact, it's so hilarious that I don't really even like advertise my birthday, at all, to this day. Because it's a reminder of, for me, like yes, I'm getting older, but am I using each day for purpose? I hope that makes sense.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Denise: So if I'm just focused on the chronology, I'm missing the moment to moment.
Stephanie: Interesting. Well, you also told me that you felt like you just woke up.
Denise: I do in a lot of ways. In the past, like for example, somebody offended me, even in my mid thirties. I would try to think about a snide thing to say, and now I'm thinking to myself, how can I stay in peace as much as possible?
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: Or like people complain about, oh, the tariffs or what, whatever this person's doing. Like how is this impacting you on a nuclear level? Like so in my mind, I'm always thinking how's impact me? What's needed and necessary, and not being reactionary.
Because for the longest time I was always reactionary, and so I'm waking up to the realization that a lot of the stuff is confusion and chaos to keep people from becoming the person they should be.
Stephanie: Mm. You said though that you felt like you were comatose from like 28 to 40. What does that feel like?
Denise: I believe that as a woman, I should have a very successful business and not dependent on a man for anything, and making sure that if my husband drops dead, I can be able to pick up and move and do whatever. It was like Beyonce's independent women anthem, like I was singing it on end. I'm like, wait a minute. Uh uh oh, oh, oh. I'm not offended. And so I think for a lot of women, especially women raised in like second, third wave feminism and this idea that you are disgracing all the women before who suffered and the suffrage movement and that did all these things and you're actually deciding to listen to your man. You're deciding not to try to work yourself to cancer. You're deciding to not try to outmaneuver everyone around you. How dare you. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was spitting in her grave now. Like all these messages. And it was a confrontation to like, okay, yeah, those messages work for those people in that area, but what about you? Is it working for you? And the answer was no. It was making me go insane.
Stephanie: When did you realize that?
Denise: 41. 41.
Stephanie: What else did you realize when you were 41?
Denise: That culture will tell you to do anything to make a buck at your expense. Or to get you to be not questioning so that it can serve their own means. That, yeah, on a macro level, it looks great, we have a lot of people, men and women at work doing certain things. But to what end?
I volunteer at a food and clothing pantry and one of the ladies there, I swear she was in her mid fifties. We were all gathered around in a circle after a prayer session before the clients come in and she has someone, a spokesperson say, just wanna let you know that Sandy has cancer. And then Sandy was just kind of like. And I remember thinking to myself, she was always so wound up. She was, is wound up so tight.
And I remember didn't feel like saying this to her, Stephanie at the time, but I later came to her. I said, you know what, sometimes it's not what is being said, but who's saying it and how it's being said. But here goes. I don't know who told you that you had to have control at all times, but maybe this cancer is a wake up call for you to really reprioritize what matters most. And tears were flowing through her eyes, Stephanie. And she was in her mid fifties. I'm here at 43 and going, oh my goodness. I can't believe I'm telling her this.
She's like, I know, but my husband always wants to have everything organized and everything fixed. And I'm like, that's his anxiety. You don't have to own his anxiety.
Stephanie: Which is really interesting because the way that you characterized it to me when we first spoke was that at 41 you realized you did learn stuff along the way. You may not have been at the place you thought you wanted to be, but it wasn't all wasted time because you did learn stuff.
Denise: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I was thinking at that time Stephanie was that if it's not on the timeframe that I thought it would be, it means that it was all for naught.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Denise: And who puts you on this timeline?
Stephanie: Where did you interpret this timeline from?
Denise: Yeah.
Stephanie: It's like thinking that 30 years old to, to, to have met the person that you're gonna spend your life with. I was 40 when I met my husband and, and, I'm not sure had I had even given up at that point, but, I was an eternal optimist.
But, right, where do we interpret these, patterns, these, these structures that we think we're supposed to adhere to.
Denise: So let's talk a little bit about leadership, because you also talked about how while you had been doing personal training and personal development for a long time, you at that point still thought that leadership was about manipulation. Yeah. Yeah. It was basically trying to match and mirror, that old command and control model that I saw in bureaucracy. And the funniest part about it is that I knew that it didn't work 'cause I resented it.
Stephanie: Right?
Denise: So why would I try to replicate that with other areas. It's maddening, when I'm thinking about, but I think all of us as human beings, we do that. Even if we know it's not working, it's still a model.
Stephanie: Right, right. And and because we're exposed to it so much, we think it must be the model, not just a model. So talk a little bit about how your views on leadership have changed and what it means to you now.
Denise: I wish I could be like saying I just watched the Brene Brown special and I understood about vulnerability. The end.
Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Well the, it would be a short conversation we'd have then if it was that easy.
Denise: I know some people will be listening and some people will be watching, but behind me is a bookcase, and this is not even like all of my books. I've got way more.
I really needed to grow up on a lot of different ways and I needed to understand what it meant to be resilient. Having your own sense of agency. Understanding and putting trauma in perspective. Understanding how to cope. Understanding how to be empathetic. How to model empathy. Like I needed to learn everything.
This is beyond just Stephen Covey's like traits of highly effective. This is up and beyond that. I had to erase and rerecord everything from the ground up because what I was taught through example was clearly dysfunctional.
Stephanie: Yeah. And what you saw during your formative years, what you saw and experienced was not healthy. And so the habits and things that you picked up were not serving you well, and so you did have to unlearn all the way down to the ground floor and start again.
Denise: You are absolutely right Stephanie. And it was humbling because I didn't understand the difference between expressing my needs, from demanding my needs. I thought they were the same.
Stephanie: Sure,
Denise: As an example.
Stephanie: Sure. Well, that's the entitlement too, right? Demanding your needs means you're entitled to having them met versus expressing your needs and finding yourself in a position to get them be met.
Denise: One of the things that we talked about, Stephanie, before we had our conversation was I, you asked me do I have any questions? And I said, I wanna make sure that I'm understanding how we're gonna deliver the structure
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: and that I would've never said that five years ago,
Stephanie: Right,
Denise: I would've been like, tell me when I can get my plug in.
Stephanie: Right, right. Instead of building this conversation together. You would've been looking for, where can I shove my piece in?
Denise: Yeah.
Yeah, and I think a lot of people in their forties, they hit this, the crisis moment where they think, oh my goodness, I need to meet these milestones. I have these goals, and I'm just going to plow hard on anything and anyone who will agree to me. And that actually regresses us emotionally.
Stephanie: Yeah. It does. Tell me, do you feel like you trust yourself now?
Denise: I'm trusting myself.
Stephanie: Okay.
Denise: 'Cause there's times where I even catch myself on even boundaries that I've made and thinking that I, maybe I need to give more leniency. I'm like, no, you don't. You've already been accommodating and transparent. There's parts of me that want to regress back to certain things that certain triggers hit me. If I feel afraid or scared, or hungry, or lonely or tired.
I mean, I'm a human being and so I'm not Teflon from anything,but I think I'm doing a better job of recognizing when I feel scared and when I feel susceptible to bending over and and betraying myself.
Stephanie: Yeah. One of the hallmarks of this transitionary period is we go from putting our trust in all the people outside of us who know better and are smarter and, and more experienced than we are, right? So that's why in our teens and twenties and thirties, we're always doing the things that we're supposed to and that we should, 'cause somebody has told us that we're supposed to and that we should.
And then in this timeframe, this, this decade around age 40, we start to realize that we have experience of our own, right? At 40, we've now been an adult, quote unquote, for 20 years. We, we've done things. We've, we've seen the, if thens. We know if I do this, then that happens. And if I don't do this, then that happens, right?
And so the hallmark of this transition is to start to trust our own voice and trust our own opinion. And not necessarily rely on all those or be swayed by all those external voices around us. But in your, example, that inner voice was silent for so long and you've just been building it in these recent years.
So tell me a little bit about the difference of the voice that you're building inside of you to all the voices that are telling you what you're supposed to do.
Denise: The voices that I always had was corrupted, so I couldn't use that. I think there will always be three voices inside of me. Adult that's supposed to be collecting the experiences and processing and making strategic decisions based on immediate as well as long-term consequences. The little kid in me that wants to be creative and playful. The parent in me that wants to say, honey, just take a rest, and supportive of nurturing. But for me, I always had the stern angry, mean bitch, voice of a parent that says, honey, you should be doing this right now, or else. Hurry up, be stronger. Never show them their weakness. I had the impulsive kid that just wanted everything to go burn to the ground. And then my adult was checked out, probably eating through a tub of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Denise: Nowhere to be seen.
So the, the voices, it wasn't so much that they weren't there, it was that it was on completely wrong frequencies.
Stephanie: That's beautifully, beautifully said. And so you had to go to the radio, dial three different radio dials, and find the right frequency to find the true voice. How did you do that? Was that all the books you read?I know you've done therapy, right? You've, you've done a, you've done therapy, you've done 12 step programs, you're in recovery.
But how did you, how did you tune those dials to find the right frequency?
Denise: So unbeknownst to me, we were doing in 12 step therapy, a technique called Gestalt experiences. And basically Gestalt was as a form that, that was developed by, Frederick Pearls, and what it is is basically visioning your side outside of yourself, talking to versions of yourself. And so during my sessions in my 12 step meetings or talking to my sponsor, I was literally confronting the kid, confronting the adult, confronting the parent, really retraining all of those, but unbeknownst to me, didn't even know that was what was happening.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: Gestalt means, and it's a German word for wholeness. I was trying to become whole.
Stephanie: Yeah, That's, that's, that's actually, that's, that's really profound, right? Becoming whole, finding the whole truth of yourself. I love the idea of tuning into the right frequencies. That's, that is just, it's a beautiful metaphor that I think so many people can relate to, right? If,I love that you said you have three voices in your head.
I have two. I have always had two. And I think different people have, different numbers of voices in their head. And, and I had to retrain mine as well, because similarly the mean voice was very loud, very mean, and really left no room for the kind and supportive voice. And so I, I had to, I spent about a year and a half, doing an exercise of my own that was given to me by one of my mentors that, that, that rebalanced that.
So, you know the mean voice. There is a, there is a purpose for it, right? There is. but when it's so out of balance, then it's, it, it, it's, it's not useful. It's, it's just leading you in the wrong direction. So, so my exercise was to get them more in balance so that my kind, supportive voice could be heard. And I could realize that, I was capable of good things, and I was responsible for good things, and not just the all the mean and things, and all the ways I was falling short.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love that. I love that metaphor of, of tuning into the frequency. So you're 43 now and you are still emerging from your cocoon. What is next for you? What are the next hills to be conquered in becoming you?
Denise: I always thought it was about me talking through my whole stories without, when I say stories, I'm talking about different junctures in my life without crying. And so I already met that goal.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Denise: right? And I'm seeing how I can have forgiveness for those who have hurt me and forgiveness for myself.
That's so awesome, so profound. But for me, it's more about being brave about things I don't feel like I'm qualified to do.
Stephanie: Mm. Talk about that a little. What are you not qualified to do?
Denise: So for me, like I'm, I frequently talk about different psychological concepts and stuff. I'm like, well, you're not, you're not a trained psychologist or therapist. You've got no business talking about this. There's Besides, there's a whole bunch of shamans and, and schmucks out there talking about that. There's no space for someone like you, especially within the leadership environment. You're not qualified for that.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Denise: And for many years people say, go write a book. And I'm like, I'm not ready for that because I feel like I'm still in my infancy, of really understanding how does traumas and addictions impact a high achieving leader?
What does that really look like? Beyond just the anecdotal stuff.
Stephanie: It's interesting. It sounds like now you're in it. You've been in it for years, right? So you were in yourmid and late twenties and you were already in therapy and, and starting to work through some stuff and identifying some addictions. But now it feels very conscious and purposeful the way you're talking about what's next.
You've done a lot of the broad stroke, big things, and now it's digging into some of the, the more fine tuned. You're doing it more consciously and more thoughtfully.
Denise: There is a heavy weight that's on me, Stephanie, and I'll be honest with you and say that. This is not just about giving people a listicle things to do and breathing, and. This is beyond that. This is like, are you a safe space to really understand the nuances of how people have been impacted, and having the humility to refer out. Having the grace to say, this is not something I can do.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: Having the confidence to be submitting my ideas to places where it needs to be heard. For example, this was about a couple weeks ago, I, one of my, my posts went viral. It was a, it was, it, it was this high within like a few days of like 200,000 impressions. Yeah. Yeah. On and, and like literally if you google passive aggressive leadership, I'm literally number one or two underneath Psychology Review or Harvard Business Review. Like it just, like
Stephanie: Isn't that so different than how you were feeling in your late twenties when you were, looking at Beyonce and Shakira as, as quote unquote role models, as if your life should be similar to theirs. I can hear the difference in how you're approaching your life and the world. When you describe how you were doing it in your late twenties, and you describe how you're doing it now in your early forties. I mean, the care and the thoughtfulness is not something you had back then.
Denise: Yeah, I remember talking a few years ago to a client and she told me that she had five abortions and one of them was self-induced, and the other version of me in the past would've been very judgmental. And I said, thank you for sharing this. Let's talk about this, unpack it, and make her feel safe.
I didn't understand how to make people feel safe when talking about these things that can have lots of stigmas attached to it.
Stephanie: Well, how could you? How could you, you weren't safe as a child. You didn't have that safety. How could you know how to share it with other people until you went, learned how to do that. Right. And that comes with time, that comes with, succeeding and failing. It's a long road to walk,
Denise: Yeah, I, I think it was really first started, Stephanie, with learning to be safe with myself. And I think people know, and hopefully in your forties, hopefully, you can actually feel safe within yourself. People can be safe to telling you things. Like last night, my son bawled in tears and he was telling me that one of his school, people that he rides the bus with in school, he's a, he believes that he's a, he's a thug, he's a bully. He does all these mean things. And he is like, I feel like I lost a friend. And he was just crying. And I felt so sad for a little dude, because, even though I know like, honey, this is my husband's like, honey, you gonna have more of these situations. This is the beginning
Stephanie: right,
Denise: of losing friends, but that's not the point.
Stephanie: Right. It's his first time.
Denise: And it hurt.
Stephanie: It's big.
Denise: But he felt safe enough to share it, and that's so awesome.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Denise: instead of just bottling in.
Stephanie: Yeah, It's lovely when you have those examples that show you your own growth. They demonstrate to you that you have grown because now you are the person who can make somebody else feel safe.
Denise: Yeah. Yeah.
Stephanie: Oh, Denise, this has been so lovely.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and your journey. And I know it's not nearly done because there's, there's still way more ahead of you than there is behind you, but I just wanna thank you so much for being so generous with your story.
Denise: And thank you, Stephanie. You've asked some really, honestly wonderful questions, and I'm really glad that if anyone's listening to understand that forty is just a date. There's more ahead of you than behind you and everything you've experienced, good, bad, and ugly is shaping you to be the person that you're meant to be. So embrace it.
Stephanie: That's exactly right. Couldn't have said it any better myself.
