S2 | E8 Sabrina Militello — Finding Yourself in the Midlife Chaos

Who’s Patrice, and why is she causing so much trouble?

In this episode, Sabrina Militello shares how naming her inner critic helped her notice the stories she was telling herself and finally start challenging them.

Lara and Sabrina also talk about self-worth, overwhelm, loneliness, and what it takes to reconnect with yourself when life starts feeling heavy.

If things have felt a bit “too much” lately, this one’s worth a listen.

Get to know Sabrina — https://www.sabrinamilitello.com

If you have loved today’s episode, please share this with a friend. ❤️

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_01 0:00

Welcome to Midlife I'm Five that Fox E. I'm your host, Laura O'Kelly. Whip the last up and get real about what it means to try it out second act. It's where I'm not by death. We're talking their own adaged midlife path. We're talking menopause, divorce, reinvention, and everything in between. Buffalo, because this isn't your mother's midlife crisis. This is midlife unplugged. Hello everybody. Welcome back to Midlife Unplugged the Fuck It Is. I'm your host, Lara Portelli, and today's guest is the amazing Sabrina Milletello, all the way from Austin, Texas. Hello and welcome, Sabrina. Welcome, welcome to Midlife.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Hi. So good to be here. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Absolutely. And loving that English accent. Loving it.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

And English in America. Indeed. Indeed. Transplant. Yes. How long have you been in America? Gosh, it's been like 15 years or so. So yeah, fair old time.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yeah. So that's for our guests at home listening to all our wonderful guests at home. That, you know, transform transformity and um and transplants, as Sabrina's saying, are really possible. You can pack up, you can uh, as we say here in Australia, piss off to somewhere else and replant yourself, right? And say that in England too. Replant and do something else. Piss off and do something else, love. Um and actually, my third book that I've just it's not back up on the wall there yet, um, is called, you know, uh your midlife edit, pruning your garden and what no longer serves you. So that's really good. But today's not about me, it's about you, Sabrina. So without further ado, let's jump in and talk about you for a while. Uh let us know a bit about yourself and especially I want to know about your fuck at moment when you decided enough was enough the way you were living, and you know you knew you needed to make some change.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Yeah, so I am now in a season of my life as a coach and an executive in in my professional career, and all from the outside looking in, everything is looking is looking good and dandy, which gives me pause a little bit because the last time everything looked good and dandy. It was a straight up shit show, and and that was my fucking moment was was about to hit. So I've been having some kind of like a wobble a little bit in this season because everything feels so good. But I remember when everything felt good the last time and it and it and it wasn't. So where I find myself now at 43, nearly 44 years old, is very much in my claiming myself era, like discovering who I really am and valuing her and valuing her above all else. And I talked to like a few of my girlfriends about that, and and you know, it can sometimes sound as if you're being selfish or you're being um dismissive of the other people in your life. But I truly believe that the longest relationship you'll ever ever have is the one that you have with yourself. You're with yourself a hundred percent of the time for a hundred percent of your days. So if the relationship that you have with you isn't solid, then no wonder life feels like a shit show. No wonder things feel as if they're going wrong, or you can't you can't, you know, figure it out, or it's just not going the way that you hoped. And you know, when I was, gosh, this was eight years ago or so when I had this big turnaround in my ability to focus on myself, is I was in a my great marriage. What I saw was a great marriage. My husband and I had been together for 17 years at that point. We've been married for seven years at that point. I was at the height of my career, I co-owned a fitness studio, I was doing all the things, I'd lost over a hundred pounds, I was like, everything was going great. I was a you know pillar in my community, all the things. My health was in the toilet, even though I was skinny or slim. I was not healthy at all because I was over-exercising. I eating disorder I thought I kicked in my teens had come back, and just trying to manage all the things and be all the things for all the people, you know. And then my husband one day turned to me and said that he didn't love me anymore. Just out of the blue, it's out of the blue for me. And I sat there and I had this very visceral reaction to that. Obviously, I was distraught, but I also realized how much of my self-worth was tied to how he felt about me, and not just how he felt about me, how so many other people in my life felt about me. I was only a good person because they thought highly of me. And that didn't feel right. In that moment when that was stripped, you know, that that sense of safety and certainty, something I'd never questioned, how my husband felt about me, for that to be gone. I realized that if I didn't have anything more than how other people perceive me as the anchor of my worth and how I saw myself, I was fucked, basically. Right? So I had this come to Jesus moment with myself where I was like, Sweeney, you need to fix up, like something needs to change. Like you cannot continue, you can't carry on like this. And so hence came years and years and years of self-work and healing and diving into all the things that made me feel as if I wasn't worth anything, I wasn't worthy of anything. My husband and I, we found our way back to each other, so we're good, and actually our relationship is a is in a better place than it ever has been before. And I think that is down to me being in that self-I don't even like to call it a selfish era. I think it's a very necessary phase of life that women need to go through where we acknowledge that we're important and that we matter. Yes, everybody else in our lives matter. I'm not saying that they don't, but so do we.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Absolutely. I concur with that so much. And for the woman that's at home listening to this episode or watching later, or you know, um, you know, it's somehow rummed into us uh I think socially and can you know, um conditionally that you know we get the pram and the dolly when we're little and that we need to look after and nurture. And I think that's in that's built into us anyway, into our who we are as women. But somewhere along the line we we it gets a bit misconstrued and we just totally give. Like I I concur with so much that you're saying there, Sabrina, because I just gave and gave and gave and gave as well. And then there's just no feeling of self. There's just nothing. There's not it gets to the point where there's just nothing left to give anymore. And I too owned a women's fitness facility.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

We're like the same person. And I was at my unhealthiest at the time. I was stressed out, I found myself in the fetal position one day from anxiety of trying to run a business that wasn't going so well. But if I look back and I'm honest about myself, my marriage wasn't doing so well, the business was crumbling, and I wasn't in a great place. So how can we be expected to give when we're not giving to ourselves? And I know it's cliche, and I know people are, I'm giving I'm filling my cup, I'm putting my oxygen mask on first. But what does that really mean? What does that really mean for women and for people? And I'm interested to know, you know, as I was just saying, for people that, you know, might be having their wine right now or the cupper or in the morning or whatever when they listen to this episode, and you're saying that your husband said to you that he didn't love you anymore, how did that like for some people, we'll say people, and more so women, maybe because that's what we're talking about here today, when he told you he didn't love you, did it bounce off and you go, I don't care? Or did it how did that make you feel when in that moment you weren't feeling good about yourself? Did it spiral you further? Were you analytical? Did you brush it off? You said that you're you and your husband worked on things.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

But in that moment, what did what went in your mind and your heart? In that moment, I was destroyed. I it completely shattered me. We've been together since we were 17 years old. We've you know, we've we've we have a connection that is unlike anything that I ever thought I would be worthy of having. Um, I have a lot of like foundational self-worth stuff that I think it's a constant work in progress, right? But I like what we had, what we do have, but then how it presented to me, it I it completely destroyed me to think that I had lost this man. And there was a moment as I was kind of sitting with it, because he told me when we like we were we went on a date night and we were in the car on the way home, and he just was like, Yeah, while he was driving, and while uh I was okay, so we got home and I I cornered, like took myself off into a corner, and I just remember thinking like what I had I think I had so many emotions, and I ex I expressed one, which was something has to give with how I feel about myself, but the other one that I really remember is this thought of see, I knew it. It was kind of like that version of myself that was so damaged and and fractured on the inside was what was waiting for that. Yeah, it was almost like I was waiting for the the other shoe to drop, or I was waiting for the the fantasy or the fairy tale to end because I didn't believe that I was worth what I had. So I found a way to fuck it up. That's literally the first it was being shattered and destroyed, second, it was that, and then it was like, okay, well, if this if this is what your life is gonna be, you're always gonna push people away, you're always gonna end up with the dregs, you're never gonna have your happy ending because you don't deserve it, because that was my story, then you're gonna have to figure out how to survive by yourself. And if you're gonna be with yourself, then that needs you need to fix that. So it kind of I went through so many stages and phases, and even now it's like something bad happens, and and my I call the bitch that lives inside my my head, her name is Patrice, and I don't know why her name is Patrice. So if your name is Patrice, don't come at me. It's not anything to do with the name. That's just what I decided to call her. So when she starts with her ugliness and her like bitchiness and whatever, like there, there's she starts with the like, see, I knew it. You of course that would happen to you. Of course, that was never gonna happen for you. Of course, see, like she gets all like that, and I have to sit there and be like, yo, girlfriend, we're not playing this game today. And I think that's why I named her, so that I can have that kind of conversation. I'll be like, we're not doing that, we're not doing that because I don't have time for that. The version of me that is today doesn't have time for that. Like you can carry, you can do your thing, but I I choose not to listen. And it's taken a long time to get there. It's something that I coach my clients on a lot, is is turning down the volume on that, on that in internal narrative. But I think it I the reason why I share it and I share it in that way is because so many of us carry around those stories and we live in those stories and we almost wait for the for the truth of those stories to to happen in real life, for us to be able to say, say, see, I told you. And sort of it's almost like we're addicted to that sad story.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Yeah, it's that um verging on that, you know, um self-sabotage. See, told you, waiting for that to happen, right? You know, and I love that. Like for our listeners out there to you know, who who will who listen to this, do you have a Patrice? I'd like to know, and Sabrina would like to know, who's your Patrice? Do you have a name for your ugly itch in your, you know? So my yeah, uh how about you know, like fuck off Patrice, not today, Patrice. Yeah, literally.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

That's what I do. Like something will happen and I need to be in great energy. And I'm like, yo, girlfriend. Not today.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Not today, Patruce. But in all seriousness, if you have that do you have a name? Like I'm quite interested. No, I think I need to find a name. Yeah, that's that's great. Yeah. And and again, it's that we talked about you know uh worthiness before, and then we talk about too, oh that we knew that was gonna happen. I knew that was gonna where is it? Is it I did a lot of work and I'm an ambassador for Tar and Brumfit for the body image movement. I noticed you mentioned uh body image as well. And I went into owning a women's fitness um center to because I really wanted to empower women. And not long into my journey, Sabrina, I noticed that it was actually the industry that was part of the issue. That was a really big wake-up call for me, that the beauty industry, the health and fitness industry, that are multi-multi-trillion dollar industries that are actually the industries that are knocking us around. The billboards, the you know, and I felt quite ill when I was first when I realized what was going on. And what I what I also noticed when I owned my women's uh fitness center was a lot of the women would come in, they'd have their way in or the check-in if that's what, you know, we if if we could get them to do it. And I understand why they didn't want to do it. And then they'd do a workout and then they'd go across the road and have a coffee and a cake with a friend from the gym. And what was so empowering for me was they didn't give a rat's ass about their way in or their measurements, or the the they were lonely. There were so many women that were lonely. The loneliness was an epidemic in from what I was seeing, my hundreds and hundreds of members coming through. But I remember one lady in particular that came through and she told me that she'd woken up one morning with the red ring around her lips from the wine bottle. And the what she woke up, she was still in her work uniform, she'd slept on the lounge, and the red rings around her mouth from drinking out the bottle and the wine, and and I thought, where are we going if this is, you know, this epidemic of low self-esteem, low, you know, body image that is not healthy, and this loneliness epidemic. What what are your thoughts on that, Sabrina?

SPEAKER_00 16:13

I think I think you hit the nail on the head. There's so much there about women being isolated and feeling lonely about certain things because we have to wear all these hats and we have to be all of these things for all the people in our lives. Like men don't struggle with things like that because they go out with their buddies, they blow off steam, they they do whatever. There's not any kind of expectation necessarily for them to hold any other roles in their lives apart from buddy, boss, husband, father, maybe. Whereas us women, we're carrying all of these other roles and and places that we need to be energetically and version of ourselves that we need to carry. And the some of a lot of the time, what I see in my coaching practice with the women that that I work with, I have the privilege to work with, is that becomes a it becomes this like mechanism that we use to isolate ourselves away from others because we we tend to um we tend to write a story about it that it's just happening to me. And not in a self-absorbed or egotistical way, but rather we we catastrophize and we personalize our experience to the point where we think it's just happened. I'm the only one that's struggling with this. And social media hasn't helped with that because everything that we see is just the highlight reel of everybody's life, right? So we see HomeGirl over there crushing it. She's got 16 children and 15 jobs, and she's hashtag nailing it. Her nails are always done, her hair's always done, her eyelashes are perfect, and she's got great mental health. And we're like, well, I can barely get out of bed in the morning. Like something is wrong with me, right? So, because of that, we we pull away from those moments of connection that we can have with other women, we pull away from spaces that enable us to have that connection with other women because we carry shame that we're we we're a hot mess express, right? We carry shame that we don't have it figured out. We and then we think there's something wrong with us that nobody else is struggling in the same way that we do. And one of the most prideful things I've been able to do in my career is create spaces and communities for women to realize that we we all are trying to figure it out, we're all in our messy middle, especially in midlife. Where this is the messy middle of our existence, right? And we're all just trying to figure it out. And I think once you're in community like that, once you're in safe spaces that encourage and enable you to have conversations like that, it's not that the things aren't still hard. Yes, they're hard, but we start to recognize that we women, we're built to do hard things, and we we were made for this challenge, and we can get through it because we know that we're not the only ones.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Absolutely. And I you were talking just then about community. I can remember my grandmother talking over the fence for a long time to her neighbor, or you know, um, the lady of the same culture that would come around and they'd peel the vegetables together at the kitchen table. And there was that bond and that kind of village um connection. It's just not there anymore. A lot of people, like in Australia, wouldn't even know who their neighbours are, go to work in the dark, come home in the dark. And I think we're just all so busy trying to pay one house off, get another house, get another car, get another TV, get another, get another, get a get something. And that's I'm not judging anyone for that. It's just when's enough enough? And yeah, what are we losing in the meantime? Where's our connection to the community, as you were saying? And I know we you know, people I met.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

You made such a great point about the you know, community sitting around at the dinner table and feeding vegetables and doing those things together. Like it makes me think of you know, our ancestors or our parents never talked in depth about the kinds of things that we're happy to talk about nowadays. Like my mother would never have talked about mental health, she'd never talk about menopause, she'd never talk about you know having a fucked up relationship, she'd never talk about any of that stuff. And we are so willing and open as a generation to talk to have real deep conversation, and yet we're so starved for the ability and the spaces with which to do that. And I think there's something that we have to do, and maybe it's an element of vulnerability of putting yourself on the line and just saying, hey, who who is willing to meet me at this, you know, virtual table or or whatever we create and create those spaces for ourselves? If it's not built, build it yourself, because I think um our mental, emotional, spiritual, physical health depends on that.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, Sabrina, as we wrap up today, what's one message that you really want to get out to our listeners? What's one real pertinent message that Sabrina would like to send to all the like you? I love how you reference messy middle because that's what it is.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Yeah.

unknown 21:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Messy middle. I think the the one that most applies to this conversation that just jumped out into my head is your past doesn't get to dictate your future unless you decide that it does. Right. Like all the mess that we've been through, all the things that we've walked through, all the bullshit, all the struggle, all the things. There's no way that we went through that for no reason. I don't believe that. There's no way we went through it for no reason. Something there was necessary for you to put you into a point in your future that is everything that you hope it will be. But that will only happen if you allow that those to be lessons, if you allow those to be learnings, if you allow it to be data collection for yourself, rather than allowing it to be a limit or a box that you put yourself in. Yes, the things that happen may have been terrible, but they only get to dictate where your life goes from here on out if you let them. And I think that for women, especially us in this in this era and this season of our lives, we've got a lot of stuff that we walked through. And I've been using this analogy a lot recently with my clients. It's like we're in this space where imagine life, this season of life we're in, as us being in a traffic jam, right? You're you're sitting in traffic and you're looking and you see all the red lights ahead of you, and you're just like, for God's sake, when am I gonna get to the intersection so I can get off? And you're just like doing this, you know, those people that are stress, stress traffic sitters, you know, they have to like do something. You're doing that, and all you can see is red lights, red lights, red lights, red lights. And that's what we do to ourselves, as opposed to looking in your rear view mirror and seeing all of the white lights that are behind you and thanking God that you're not still back there, right? And I think that we need to do that more for ourselves. Appreciate, yes, this may be messy, this may be ugly, I may be struggling, but look how far I've come and give yourself the grace and the honor of that acknowledgement.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

I love I love that. That's so important. I I totally agree and believe in that too. That we can't have just gone through all this shit for nothing. And every day's a school day, and every day we're above the ground is a school day. We continue to learn. We don't leave school when we leave school physically. We every day we're on this earth, we learn. And as you're saying, we can't have just gone through it all nothing. And um, yeah, look back at the white light. I like that. I really do like that. Every time I see someone doing that, now I'm going to think of you. The stress driver. Oh, it's been so good having a chat to you, Sabrina. All right, everybody. Let's all uh give Sabrina a big thank you. It's been amazing talking to you and uh such insightful, such insightful um you know, uh ideas and thoughts there. And thank you so much for joining us this afternoon, Sabrina, and your evening. And Sabrina's details will be up uh when her episode is aired, and you can find everything about her there. So thank you so much, Sabrina. It's been a joy having you today. That's a wrap of this episode of Mid Life Unplugged. Let's fuck it. Today's conversation is something happening here. Subscribe, share it with your midlife crew, and keep the conversation going. I'm Lara Portal. See you next week for another four reality chat.