✨What Shapes Us Now✨
This space offers a curated lens on books, podcasts, and cultural influencers shaping thoughtful conversations for women in this season of life. Selected by a contributing writer who values substance over trend, each recommendation is shared to support reflection, growth, and personal evolution.
Hot Flash and Sassy Podcast: The Relief of Finding Someone Who Understands
Meet Holly Wiskamp and Renee Famula, the women behind Hot Flash and Sassy, a local St. Louis podcast opening honest conversations about perimenopause and menopause. Through personal stories, humor, and conversations with guests, they help women feel understood, less alone, and more confident asking questions about their health. Discover how their own experiences inspired the podcast, why these conversations matter, and how GlowInto will be joining them this fall.
Craving Community in Midlife
You can have a full life—a spouse, family, career, busy calendar, and plenty of people around you—and still find yourself craving deeper connection. In Craving Community in Midlife, Gieta Beckmann explores why our sense of belonging can shift as children grow up, careers change, relationships evolve, and familiar social circles begin to look different. She reminds us that community in this season may not happen automatically; sometimes, we have to be the one who sends the text, extends the invitation, and keeps showing up. Because the next chapter isn’t only about where we’re going—it’s also about who we want beside us along the way.
Female Voices: Life & Loss
Teresa’s conversations explore the experiences that change us, stay with us, and often reshape the way we see our lives. Through honest discussions around loss, relationships, transition, resilience, and the stories women carry, the podcast fits beautifully into what What Shapes Us Now is all about.
And this won’t be a one-time feature.
Each month, I’ll be sharing selected conversations and content from Female Voices: Life and Loss with GlowInto readers, giving you another place to discover meaningful stories and perspectives from women navigating real life.
Finding Meaning in Midlife
Inspired by Arthur C. Brooks’s From Strength to Strength and Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose, this edition of What Shapes Us Now explores how our understanding of success, purpose, and personal value can change in midlife.
Self-Care Is Not One-Size-Fits-All
What Shapes Us Now: “Self-care is not about copying someone else’s routine. It is about becoming honest about your own needs.”
What Shapes Us Now: Valerie Bertinelli’s Getting Naked
I relate to the idea that midlife is not about fading into the background—it’s about becoming more real. It’s about caring less about outside approval and more about building a life that feels aligned.
What Shapes Us Now: The Lives That Inspire Us to Live Fully
“The things that really matter in life are family, friends, and doing something meaningful.”— John F. Kennedy Jr.
Loving What Is
February is often called the month of love.
We celebrate romance. Partnership. Grand gestures. Flowers. Cards. Dinner reservations.
But in the second half of life, love becomes quieter. Deeper. More honest. It becomes less about who loves us… And more about how we love ourselves.
Let Them, Let Me.
Let Them is about recognizing the limits of your control — and choosing not to cross them anymore.