S2 | E3 Danyell Edwards — Starting Over After Everything Changed

Danyell opens up about the moment her life changed overnight when her husband left, and what it really looked like to keep going while everything felt like it was falling apart. From feeling alone in her marriage to hitting a breaking point she couldn’t ignore, she shares the raw truth of navigating midlife challenges all at once.

We talk about rebuilding after disappointment, finding your confidence again, and learning to choose yourself without guilt. And maybe the most powerful shift of all? Realizing that “no” is a complete sentence.

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About Lara Portelli:

As a successful business owner, NLP Practitioner, Midlife Reset Mentor, acclaimed award-winning author, and seasoned professional, Lara understands the challenges of navigating careers, business, and personal growth. She now channels her expertise into mentoring women through midlife and into their bodacious second act, helping ambitious women step into their power and build success on their own terms.

Connect with Lara: https://www.laraportelli.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Midlife I'm Five, the Puck Easy. I'm your host, Lara Cornelli. This is the spoke where we trip away the light big ass. Rip the gloves off and get real about what it means to thrive in our second act. Each week I'm joined by a guest to be talking their own a dangerous midlife path. We're talking menopause, divorce, reinvention, and everything in between. Welcome back to Midlife Unplugged the Fucker Is. I'm your host, Lara Portelli, and I'd like to welcome our guest, Danielle Edwards, all the way from our cherry-picking hub in our country. For those people, our guests that aren't from Australia that will be tuning in, our audience, Daniel lives in Young, and it's our cherry. It's where our cherries come from in this country. So welcome. Welcome, Danielle. Thank you. So, as you know, on Midlife Unplugged the Fuck It Is, we start to unplug from life and have a chat, a relaxed chat about midlife and what happens to us in midlife and the changes that come about. And it's not all doom and gloom, like we've been told. And so tell us, Danielle, what was uh what was the fuck up moment for you in your life that started to turn to change things and to make some change in your life and uh lead you in a direction where perhaps you weren't going at the time, but you are now.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

So I just turned 44 this year, and a bit over 12 months ago, my husband decided to pack up and leave. I was at work one day and got a message from my son and said that dad was packing the car and he was leaving, and I knew nothing about it, and um, so I was sort of blindsided by that and got home and he'd gone through the whole house and packed bits and pieces and left, and I haven't seen him since. So yeah, that was sort of the starting point for me, and um trying to figure out now what's next.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yeah, so I would imagine, and for our listeners at home, that you're not alone in that experience, that unfortunately, um some women find themselves in that position where you get a text message saying 'tis all over, um, you know, from not even your partner by the sound of it, or your husband, it came from one of your children. And what what what alternative do you have but other than to pick yourself up, bust yourself off, and get on with it, so to speak?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah, no, exactly right. Um being the breadwinner for the family, you know, I paid the bills, I had to work, so I couldn't just sort of fall in a heap and you know, break down. I had to go to work, I had to continue paying the bills, and I didn't really have a choice, so I just had to pick myself back up and keep going.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

You were we're talking um uh about that you were the that you'd work 40 hours a week and that you'd come home and you were told to find your own dinner. Talk me through that. How what the how did that make you feel?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Um it just made me feel really alone. So I for 13 years I was a family daycare educator, so I ran a family daycare business from home. Um so whilst I was here, I was still doing all of the housework and everything. So he would just he never worked during that time. So I was running a business and doing that, and then during COVID, um I had to close my business unfortunately and decided to take a job in a center. Um, and the arrangement was that if I uh am away working all week, he was going to look after the house and cook dinner. And for the beginning part of it, it was okay, and then not long into it, I'd have to come home on a Friday. Um, as I'd stay there through the week, and rather than commute backwards and forwards, I'd stay there. I'd get home on a Friday and nothing would be done. I'd have to find my own dinner, like I'd get home at seven o'clock at night, and yeah, I'd have to find my own dinner, then I'd have to do all the housework, and then in between that was trying to do university. So I was pretty much alone in it.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Yeah, that's that feeling of being alone, it's isolating.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yeah, it's like you're in a marriage, but you're not, like it's you're still yeah, it's really hard to describe.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

So COVID saw your home business have to stop.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

You then to help our audience understand, you then found yourself needing to commute an hour away, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Yeah, um, Cara's about 45 minutes away from here on a good day. So um over and back is uh 45 minutes each way, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

So that would have been an hour and a half for you on top journey if you chose to do that way. However, you chose to um stay in Cara at all week. So for people that are unaware, Cara and Young are our country areas. So the roads there are treacherous anyway on a good day with our you know our native species that we have here, our kangaroos and our wombats. So to add to your turmoil, Danielle, you also had, you know, you're faced with then needing to lodge, you know, and live somewhere else. And then, you know, to add to that loneliness, you weren't even at home. So the where was the support? Where was you know that that um that it'll be okay, I'm I'm gonna be waiting here for you when you get home, you know, at the end of each week.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

After the first I wouldn't even say it was six months to a year. It just was non-existent.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

So what was your bucket moment in all that? You know, and for our audience at home, I'm sure Danielle and myself, I had my fuck-up moment in my marriage, and it was around the same time as Danielle, it was that 24-year mark. Things started to go a little awry, and you know, there'd been a lead up though. Um, leave a comment for us in in the comments below. Uh, and for you, Danielle, what what drove it? What you just taken.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

I started to see things. Our eldest moved out and moved to Canberra. Um, I think it would have been about four, a bit over four years ago now. So my eldest son moved to Canberra, and then our youngest uh son um had started talking about moving out as well, and I think that sort of started the ball rolling on his behalf, going, well, what's next for me? sort of thing, on for him. But the the moment that I can pinpoint, um, I was trying to do uh an assignment for university, sitting at the table, and for two hours he just wouldn't stop talking. He'd ask every question under the sun, he would um have to comment on everything, and I kept saying to him, I need to study, can you just let me study? And he was cooking eggs at the time, and one of the eggs started rolling off the bench, and I was trying to tell him, you know, the eggs rolling off the bench, the eggs rolling, and it fell on the floor, and I was like, Okay, it's an egg on the floor, big deal, no, no problems. And he turned around and said to me, if you weren't talking to me, that egg wouldn't have broken. This is your son.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

No, my husband. Oh, your husband, okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Yeah, so my husband turned around and said to me, If you weren't talking to me, the egg wouldn't have rolled off the bench and broke, and I just thought, no, fuck it, that's I'm done. I can't win. I'm sitting here trying to study. You're in the kitchen cooking eggs, and one fell off, and it's somehow my fault. So I just that was it for me. It was my fault. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

So you were pretty much done, maybe before he left.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Yeah. Do you think you were having it was probably for a couple of years before that, but I didn't have the mental capacity to be able to do anything about it. Um, I went through a really bad depression. Um yeah, it I just wasn't in it in the right space to be able to deal with that on top of everything else. So I just sort of let a lot of things slide. Um, because I just couldn't mentally deal with what I knew was gonna happen if we I told him to leave.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah. I think a lot of women or a lot of people can resonate with that. You know in your heart that it's not things aren't going well. However, when you're dealing with that mental load, emotional load, sometimes physical load as well, you're trying to keep it all together for everybody, keep everything together for everybody, and then to face I have to deal with that on top, it's just easier to say, I'll just stay here.

unknown 9:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

And it was I know Yeah, I know when I left I it it you know, at first it seemed a big party, and then it was oh, and then I went away, and then to America, and but at some point you have to start dealing with it. And then it's then I think I am I missing him? No, I don't miss him, I miss the familiarity. And that fear of letting go of everything we've known as human beings for 20 odd years or a quarter of a century when you say it like that, can people resonate with that? A quarter of a century? I mean, that's a long time in people's lives. You know, quarter of a century, twenty-four years, whatever it may be for our audience at home. That woman there uh out there at the moment that's listening to you and I chat, Danielle, you know, that's in the same boat, that's a long time. It's easy just to say, fuck it, I'll stay here.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

I'll just seem like the easy option at the time.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Yeah. I I I'll just stay here. I know this I know he'll be home at four. I know what to do. I know I've just got to get the dinner on the table. You know, or the egg. Oh yeah, that's my fault too. Fuck it, it would never be your fault, right? Yeah, I understand. Yeah. So also uh so you had some other turbulence happening in your life as well with a job that you'd been gunning for at the time.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

For ten years?

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

I'm really interested to to hear a little bit more about that. You've been had your eye on this prize for ten years, and somehow that didn't come off for you either in that time. So there was quite a bit of turbulence going on for you. But tell us, tell my, you know, tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

So whilst I was doing my family daycare at home, I was studying my bachelor's degree in social science because I wanted to get a job with DCJ. Um, so I did my degree through correspondence. I was working at the time, so I was meeting all of the criteria that they were looking for, and I finally finished my degree and went for the job interview, and I got declined because I had never worked in a team environment before. So after, you know, spending all the weekends and nights doing all this study thinking that I was going to, I was doing it to better our lives to be turned down for something as not as simple as, but something like not working in a team environment before, it really gutted me. And that was the same year I turned 40, the same year my our eldest son moved out. So it sort of all hit within the space of a couple of months, and it just it really broke me.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

So on top of uh your relationship breaking down, travel, um the job that you identified that you really wanted that you'd been working, work like we all we all have goals that we're working and ticking off, um, then to also deal with um some empty nesting going on, it was just the perfect storm, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Would you say? It was, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Yeah. So fast forward to now, where are you? Where are you in your life? I can see all your um things on your, you know, on your wardrobe there, on your cupboard.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

So they're my motivational quotes. So for a very long time, I even still now I had a lot of self-doubt. You know, you're not good enough, you don't deserve this. And I think that just has come from I don't know, years of not being acknowledged, you know. It's everything was always my fault, and if anything failed, it was because I didn't work hard enough. And so lately I've been trying to build myself up, and I remember reading in your book about talking about how we speak to ourselves, our like our internal dialogue. So I've been trying to surround myself with more positive things. Um, so at the moment, I just actually got back from a weekend away in Sydney. I treated myself to a holiday. Um, I've been doing a lot more things for myself that I want to do. Um, because I was always told that I couldn't do things because it was his turn and it'll be my turn soon. So for 20, for 24 years I didn't really get to do anything because it was always what he wanted first. Um, and the the line I got from him was it'll be your turn soon. Um, guess what, buddy? It's my turn now. That's it. So I've been trying to do a lot more things on my own to build up my confidence. Um, so yeah, going to Sydney and driving around Sydney for the first time, that was exciting. Um, I actually went and seen my dad for two weeks in June, so I went up and saw him and spent some time with him, which I'd never done before on my own, so that was another one. And I've actually got myself booked in for a cruise for my 45th birthday next year. So I've got to go on a cruise. So yeah, I'm starting to get out there and build more confidence. And how do you feel? It's amazing, it's absolutely amazing to be able to look forward and do the things that I want to do and have fun and enjoy myself.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Yeah. You've you've raised your babies. Yep. Yep. And what work are you doing now, Danielle?

SPEAKER_01 15:20

So I'm in early childhood now. Um, so I work with uh birth to five-year-olds. So I'm doing that. I've been at the place that I'm at now for four years now. Um absolutely love it, absolutely love it over there. So just looking at the future and what it might hold, whether I end up getting a transfer over to Canberra to be closer to my eldest son. Um depends on what our youngest um my youngest son wants to do, whether he wants to head to Canberra as well. But um, it's just kind of gonna come down to what it is that I want to do.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Yay. Cool. That's amazing, amazing, amazing. So as we wrap up this episode, Danielle, tell me one thing, one thing that is a non-negotiable for you now that you've moved through all those windy roads and literally driving sometimes through the windy roads. Uh tell me one thing that's a non-negotiable for you in midlife, uh, that wasn't before, perhaps, like when you were younger, and something that's just an absolute non-negotiable for you that you've instilled in yourself since learning some confidence.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

It's okay to say no. Yay. I I was always a yes person. Um, even if it disrupted things, even if it was an inconvenience, even if it meant that I missed out on things, I would always say yes. Because I was always either scared of a confrontation or um scared of hurting people's feelings or scared of other things, but now if it affects me in a negative way or I don't want to do it, it's okay to say no.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

No is a complete sentence, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:07

That's right. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Cool. All right. Thank you so much for joining us in Danielle. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show and look forward to watching your journey. I can't wait to see some photos of you on your cruise next year and what happens in between as well. So, everybody, thank you for tuning in to Midlife Unplugged the Fuck It Is. I'm your host, Lara Portelli, and I look forward to welcoming you on when you join again soon in a future episode. That's a wrap on this episode of Midlife Unplugged the Fuck It Is. If today's conversation is something I've been new, hit subscribe, share it with your midlife crew, and keep the conversation going. I'm Lara Portelli. See you next week for another raw, real, and unapologetic channel.