Paige Lavelle was standing in her kitchen holding a white coffee mug that matched all her other coffee mugs when the question arrived, uninvited: who is this person, and when did I lose touch with her?
That kitchen had been designed on purpose. Every surface, every finish, every decision reflected the life Lavelle believed she was supposed to build. She owned a home. She had finished graduate school. She was married. Her Christmas cards looked great. Her calendar was full and her job was good. By every external measure available to her, she had made it. And she was miserable.
This is the tension at the center of self-discovery after divorce: the gap between a life that checks every box and a life that actually fits. If you have ever done everything right and still felt like a stranger in your own house, this is for you. It is not a story about escaping a bad marriage. It is a story about reinventing yourself after divorce, and about what it costs, and gives back, when you finally stop performing a life and start living one.
Leaving a Picture-Perfect Life Rarely Starts With a Crisis
Lavelle’s unraveling did not begin with a dramatic betrayal or a rock-bottom moment. It began with boredom, the quiet, persistent kind that hums under an otherwise functional life.
“It wasn’t something that was necessarily obvious to anyone around me,” Lavelle said. “I was very good at putting on a face.”
She had an MBA. She had a good job. She was, by any reasonable definition, doing well. And still, she found herself fantasizing about escape, not toward anything specific, just away.
“I just kept thinking, why are you not happy? What is wrong with you?” she said.
Lavelle even caught herself hoping for a crisis that wasn’t hers to create, something external and undeniable that would force the decision out of her hands.
“I would catch myself wishing for something terrible to happen, like wishing for my ex-husband to have an affair or have me catch him cheating on me, or to be fired from work,” she said, “something that made the bad person someone else and gave me an excuse to kind of have someone else blow up my life so that I didn’t have to.”
That impulse, wanting permission to leave rather than claiming it, is one many people recognize once it is named out loud. Amy Stone put it plainly during the conversation: “It’s like we know we need to do something and we don’t wanna, we’d rather have somebody else step in and do it.”
Where the Picture-Perfect Blueprint Comes From
Lavelle didn’t invent the checklist she was chasing. She inherited it.
She grew up in cookie-cutter suburbs outside Philadelphia and later Houston, in a household with real financial instability but a strong, consistent message about how to avoid repeating it: get smart, get a law degree or a medical degree, make money.
“I was told, you know, you’re smart, go after a law degree, go after a medical degree,” Lavelle said. “This is how you make the money, this is how you do better than we did.”
She loved writing from childhood, filling notebooks before she was even 10. It was treated as a hobby, not a plan. “It was kind of a, that’s a cute hobby, but you need to make money,” she said. “You need to use your brain.”
As the eldest daughter of a family that had struggled financially, Lavelle absorbed the pressure to outperform her parents’ circumstances, even as her own instincts pointed somewhere else. The picture-perfect life wasn’t a personal fantasy. It was a set of instructions, handed down with love, that she followed without ever asking whether she wanted the destination.
When Wellness Becomes a Way to Avoid the Real Problem
Long before Lavelle confronted her marriage, she tried to fix everything around it.
“I went hardcore for like between 6 months and a year down this like, you know what the problem is? I have too many toxins in my shampoo and I am eating too much gluten,” she said. “It didn’t occur to me at the time that the problems that I type A’d my way into could not be type A’d out of.”
She overhauled her diet. She obsessed over her decor. She worked harder. None of it touched the actual source of the unhappiness, and eventually the exhaustion of trying became its own kind of evidence.
“I was so burnt out,” she said. “This isn’t fixing it. The diet’s not fixing it. The changes to my house are not fixing it.”
Stone asked Lavelle directly whether she could have skipped that detour and gone straight to the harder conversation. Lavelle’s answer gets at something important about timing and readiness.
“I was really struggling with what deep down I knew to be true, but I just wasn’t ready to accept it,” she said. “Back then I didn’t have the tools at all for how to handle that. I didn’t have the words for how to handle it.”
Reinventing yourself after divorce, it turns out, often has a warm-up act. The wellness trends, the decor, the busyness, aren’t failures of willpower. They are frequently the only language available before someone is ready to name the real problem out loud.
Overcoming Judgment When You Finally Make the Change
Once Lavelle acted, first the divorce, then a move, the reactions started arriving fast, and not always kindly.
“They definitely felt free to comment,” she said. Lavelle noticed a pattern in who pushed back hardest: “The people that it triggered the most were people who I know, and this is not me making assumptions, this is stuff that I know, these were people that were in unhealthy relationships and weren’t happy.”
Raised Catholic in a large extended family where divorce simply wasn’t done, Lavelle felt the weight of expectation intensify. “It was jarring, and I think I wasn’t prepared for what it would bring out in people that felt triggered by it,” she said. “There were some people that, they made me feel like they didn’t say this verbatim, but it was almost a how dare you type of energy that was coming off of them.”
Stone offered her own version of this, describing decades of strangers volunteering opinions about her marriage to a previously divorced man, and the moment she stopped absorbing outside statistics as personal prophecy. “The only statistic that matters to me about my marriage is what is actually happening in my marriage,” Stone said. “Everybody else could do something completely different and it wouldn’t change what’s happening in my relationship in any way. It’s just not related.”
Lavelle’s own framing of the judgment she faced was simple and hard-won: “What I’m doing is not a threat to you or your existence.”
Rebuilding a Life on Your Own Terms
The version of starting over that Lavelle expected, something like a movie montage, a soundtrack, a clean arc toward triumph, was not the version she got.
“It didn’t go like that,” she said. Dating felt foreign after years out of practice. Friendships thinned as some people had “the capacity for that” and others didn’t. She started hot yoga expecting to hate it and found it became a genuine anchor.
Growth came in small, deliberate steps: saying yes to weekend trips, going to dinner alone for the first time, slowly widening what felt survivable. Eventually she moved to New York City, a decision she made only once she trusted she could handle isolation if it came to that.
“I knew at the time just after my divorce, I don’t think I would have been able to do it,” she said. “So I had taken a couple years, and I knew I could survive just going into it cold.”
Doubt didn’t disappear once the big decisions were made. “I would go on a bad date or a string of bad dates and be like, these dating apps are the worst,” Lavelle said. “It was just these, like, you did this to yourself.” But the doubt never outweighed the certainty underneath it. “I would wake up and I’d be like, you got this, you can figure it out.”
Why Lavelle Went Public With Her Story
Lavelle didn’t set out to become a public voice on any of this. What changed her mind was watching other women respond, quietly, over and over, with recognition instead of judgment.
“I was a product of your struggle stays invisible,” she said. “You don’t want to reveal a chink in the armor.”
She built a career in tech, a male-dominated, hustle-driven world that rewarded exactly the perfectionism and people-pleasing she was trying to unlearn. But as she started opening up, first about the divorce, later about autoimmune conditions and a history of disordered eating, the response surprised her.
“The amount of women that would be like, me too,” she said. “What I used to think was my own little special mixture of issues was not so special.”
That pattern of recognition became the foundation for her memoir and podcast, both titled “Invisibly Unwell.” Lavelle is careful to distinguish honest disclosure from the internet’s more corrosive version of vulnerability. “There are places online where people go to just like spiral out and it’s like a negativity competition,” she said. “I learned very quickly to step away from those.”
The Fulfillment on the Other Side
Lavelle’s story doesn’t offer a shortcut. It offers something more useful: proof that the boredom, the wellness detours, the fear of judgment, and the doubt are not signs of doing it wrong. They are what the process actually looks like for most people.
Standing in that kitchen with her matching coffee mug, Lavelle couldn’t yet see where the question “who is this person” would lead her. What she has now, a life built from her own choices rather than an inherited blueprint, didn’t arrive on a predictable timeline. It arrived because she stayed with the discomfort long enough to answer honestly.
Finding fulfillment after a picture-perfect life falls apart rarely looks like the montage. It looks like a series of small, uncomfortable decisions, made one at a time, by someone who finally decided her own answer mattered more than everyone else’s opinion of the question.
This article was inspired by an interview with Paige Lavelle and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/listen or https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectadulting This article was drafted with help from an ai tool and the transcript of the interview. To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Self-Discovery After Divorce Transcript: Paige Lavell with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | September 2026
Amy Stone [00:00:00]:
This is The Art of Imperfect Adulting. I’m your host, Amy Stone.
Amy Stone [00:00:05]:
I share stories from real people who have already been through some hard stuff. Why? So that you don’t feel alone while you’re busy figuring out your own life.
Amy Stone [00:00:15]:
Let’s do this. Well, hello friends. My guest today is Paige Lavelle. Welcome to The Art of Imperfect Adulting, Paige. Are you ready for a fun chat?
Amy Stone [00:00:27]:
I’m ready.
Paige Lavelle [00:00:29]:
I am so ready for a fun chat. Thank you for having me.
Amy Stone [00:00:31]:
Oh, you are very welcome. I start all my conversations with the very same question, so I’m always ready to go. What part of the world do you call home?
Paige Lavelle [00:00:38]:
I live in upstate New York, western upstate New York, in Rochester. Um, been here about 3 years, and what I love— I didn’t mean to skip ahead. I read, I read the second question. What do I love about living there? I’ve lived in some huge cities. I’ve lived in New York City. I lived in Austin during kind of the tech boom there. Um, and I’m at a chapter in my life where having my in-laws, having family nearby, and having my day-to-day life just be very convenient, uh, is, is kind of a top priority. So I really love being here for this chapter, especially having a young child at home.
Amy Stone [00:01:10]:
That is, that is a really wonderful answer. How big is Rochester?
Paige Lavelle [00:01:14]:
Ooh, that’s a— I should know that. Um, I want to say at the most maybe a million people, but—
Amy Stone [00:01:21]:
That’s it.
Paige Lavelle [00:01:21]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:01:21]:
So, so it’s, it’s, it’s a big city. I heard somebody say a couple months ago, um, I was listening to—
Paige Lavelle [00:01:27]:
1.05. I’m very proud I’m proud of myself for being that close.
Amy Stone [00:01:30]:
There you go. I was listening to somebody’s conversation. I don’t remember who it is. I can’t give them credit anymore, but they were generally saying that their impression of people at the moment is that a lot of people are looking for smaller, more local-feeling, mid-sized towns and communities. It was really interesting because like you, I’ve always been a big city person, but it’s like I am very much appreciating the conveniences that go with slightly smaller towns. And that feels weird for me to be living through that in my own life. I like to talk about me too, right? Okay, Jessica, next question.
Paige Lavelle [00:02:03]:
Here we go.
Amy Stone [00:02:04]:
What generational description matches you? Silent Generation, Baby Boomer, Gen X, Gen Z, Millennial? Which are you?
Paige Lavelle [00:02:11]:
I am a Millennial. I’m an elder Millennial, but I am a Millennial for sure.
Amy Stone [00:02:16]:
It’s like the most insulting form of that, the elder Millennial. It’s like the geriatric pregnancy. I’m like, that was bad branding, the elder Millennial. You can own the Millennial.
Amy Stone [00:02:28]:
I’ll give it to you.
Amy Stone [00:02:29]:
I give it to you.
Paige Lavelle [00:02:29]:
But I do, I’ll meet people that were born 10 years after me and there’s a lot we don’t completely relate on, so I just call it out because it’s kind of that chunk of the millennial crew.
Amy Stone [00:02:37]:
Fair enough. I think that’s a valid— I think that’s very valid. Okay, here we go. So what we’re gonna talk about today, you and I, Paige, is self-discovery, self-actualization, and the choices that went with that for you. You shared with me in your guest pitch that you filled out a long time ago, and you may not even remember, that when you were 30, you had a picture-perfect life. And we can put that in those little air quotes. But I want you to start by telling me, what does that mean to you? Or what did that mean to you, a picture-perfect life?
Paige Lavelle [00:03:09]:
I had what, up until that point in my life, I was taught, conditioned, kind of pushed on myself in certain ways to believe was the picture-perfect life.
Amy Stone [00:03:20]:
I had—
Paige Lavelle [00:03:21]:
I owned a home, I had completed graduate school, I had I was at the time, I was married and I had a husband. We looked great on our Christmas cards. I had a very busy social calendar. I had a great job. It was all the boxes that I had been convinced of and convinced myself that if I check these, I’m gonna wake up happy. And come to find I was not. And I was trying to grasp at all these different things to try to find that happiness and find that fulfillment. And it was a pretty rude awakening to realize, like, I’ve gotten all these things. I never paused along the way to consider, are these things I even want?
Amy Stone [00:04:04]:
Mm-hmm.
Paige Lavelle [00:04:06]:
Or is this specific thing something I want? And it was a very difficult realization to truly sit with and to consider what I would have to change and how damaging some of those changes could be and the process around them. So it was— you would have these people tell you when I started to question it, it was very much an internal thing for a long time. But when I started sharing those feelings, obviously very supportive in a therapeutic environment, but when you start sharing them with family and friends, you would get the, but you have everything, what are you talking about? Like, why are you upset? Why would you consider making changes?
Amy Stone [00:04:43]:
We’re going to talk some more about that in a minute because I have all kinds of personal experience and thoughts about that, but I have experienced Waves of that and it is interesting. All right, so did— I would love to talk a little bit before we go into that, if you know or have a sense of where this concept of the picture-perfect life came from, because you mentioned conditioning and socialization. Talk a little bit about that. Like, where do you think your idea that it was the graduate school degree, the job, the marriage, the Christmas card?
Amy Stone [00:05:17]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:05:17]:
A lot of it came from family. I also just the environment I grew up in. So I grew up in very suburban cookie-cutter areas. I initially grew up in a suburb outside Philadelphia, but when I was fairly young, 4th grade, we moved to a suburb outside Houston. And every— everyone looked like me. It certainly had some privilege around that that I will not ever deny having. So I had this very cookie-cutter life. But there was a lot of unrest, a lot of financial troubles at home, a lot of instability in the kind of emotional environment that I grew up in. And my parents— I love my parents, I have a much healthier relationship with them now— but there was always this— I was smart and I performed well in school. I’m an eldest daughter to the nth degree. Whenever you read articles or books about being the eldest daughter, I am so that person. It almost infuriates me a little bit how easy it is to categorize it. But I was told, you know, you’re smart, go after a law degree, go after a medical degree. Like, this is how you make the money, this is how you do better than we did, was what I was pretty consistently told.
Amy Stone [00:06:29]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:06:29]:
And my parents are intelligent people. My mom is a very talented artist, and she went to art school, never finished, and eventually worked in kind of artistic roles like merchandising things where she got to set up, you know, visual displays in stores, but she never got to where she wanted to be. And I think that kind of informed how she handled me. And I was always a very— I was always very drawn to writing as a medium. Definitely did not inherit the art gene as far as painting goes. I’m terrible. But I always would write. I would start writing like fiction books and about my life and my thoughts when I was not even 10. And I wasn’t really encouraged. It was kind of a, that’s a cute hobby, but you need to make money. You need to use your brain. You need to do XYZ. And so even though I had this resistance to it, I felt this pressure of if I don’t want to be stuck in the financial difficult type situations that my parents constantly dealt with and shared a lot with, with me when I was young, um, I felt this pressure to not support them, but to get to a better position than they were in. Um, I was just exposed to very, you know, nuclear family, suburban US. This is what a family looks like. Um, so that also became part of the, the goal.
Amy Stone [00:07:56]:
That is a very— so you moved around a lot. You’ve lived in a lot of places. A lot might be the wrong word there, but you’ve lived in several places, which is, um, amazing. There’s quite a few more once I I became an adult, so yes, I would no longer dare to say.
Amy Stone [00:08:09]:
Okay.
Amy Stone [00:08:10]:
So that is— I think that’s an engaging part of the story. And, you know, we can only know— this is my experience— I think that we can really actually only know our own experience when we were children. You know, so that’s the representation of the things we see and what our families look like. And it is a part of the transformation stories that I hear and tell a lot. You know, I think it’s— you know, you can have a very challenging relationship with the adults in your life and a lot of times Their hope is just that, you know, the phrase sometimes is that, you know, our floor is their ceiling. You know, a lot of times adults want us to achieve more than them.
Paige Lavelle [00:08:45]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:08:46]:
Comes from a good place. And definitely even today, the, you know, the advice around, you know, pursuing a creative pursuit like writing or something like that as a career, I mean, the trope of the starving artist is still out there, you know, definitely, definitely still. There. Coming from someone who got a degree in something that is a hobby for many people, I will say it’s not always the worst advice if you’re looking for a stable income. But, you know, like you just don’t really know. All right. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. All right. So you describe yourself as being miserable at this time in your life. Picture perfect from the outside, but you describe that you were miserable. I would love for you to tell us more about what this miserability, which may not even be a real word, but what it felt like to you at the time as you remember it.
Paige Lavelle [00:09:40]:
Yeah, it wasn’t, uh, it wasn’t something that was necessarily obvious, uh, to anyone around me. I was very good at putting on a face. And I just started— I would say the, the first clue was just this extreme level of boredom. And not to say I shouldn’t have been out there taking risks and doing crazy things, but I was so unfulfilled. I would just sit at home and be like, there’s got to be more. than this. And it wasn’t just my relationship, it wasn’t just work, it wasn’t just like where I lived. It just felt this like, I do not belong here.
Amy Stone [00:10:15]:
Hmm.
Paige Lavelle [00:10:16]:
And I, again, I got an MBA, I had a good job, I was checking boxes. It wasn’t like I was hitting rock bottom and having these feelings. So it triggered this like, what is wrong with you? Like, I just kept thinking like, why are you not happy? What is wrong with you? And I would just sit and kind of like fantasize about I could just move to the city by myself and I could do something on my own. And I had this understanding in those moments where I was just really sad and kind of using those fantasies to get out of that feeling. In those moments, I would think, okay, even if that’s not it, like even if what I try isn’t it, at least I’m trying something different because this clearly doesn’t work. And the lack of fulfillment, the— I hate to say boredom. It just sounds kind of like a silly thing to say, but it was just this deep sense of this isn’t it and you want more.
Amy Stone [00:11:11]:
I think that— I mean, I think, yeah, go with the word that feels true because I think that my goal with that question is that for people in the audience who might be experiencing something, we don’t necessarily associate boredom. It’s just nice to hear what people actually experience, like what did it feel like to you? Because people who are at different parts of transition in their own life, we do tend to internalize it. It’s like, oh, if this isn’t going well, it must be my fault. And that is across so many of these changes from doing well at work, relationship, all of these things. It’s just this idea that it’s like, well, if it’s not working, if it’s not excelling, it must be my fault. So Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not.
Paige Lavelle [00:11:55]:
And I even— I used to wish, and I wrote about this in my book actually, I would catch myself wishing for something terrible to happen, like wishing for my ex-husband to have an affair or have me catch him cheating on me, or to be fired from work, or something that made the bad person someone else and gave me an excuse to kind of have someone else blow up my life so that I didn’t have to. And when I started realizing that I was wishing for these terrible things, that was a pretty big indicator like this— something’s wrong.
Amy Stone [00:12:30]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:12:31]:
People do not drive home from work and hope that they catch their partner cheating on them just so that they would have a way to escape. And, um, and it wasn’t an abusive situation. He was, he was a good person. Um, I just want to be very clear about that. But it was like the escape that I desired from my life and my circumstances.
Amy Stone [00:12:49]:
So you would develop these sort of mini fantasies of an event happening so that you didn’t have to go public and make the big decisions and make the change.
Amy Stone [00:13:00]:
Exactly.
Amy Stone [00:13:01]:
That is very interesting. I’m sure that there are a lot of people who will resonate with that in different parts of their life. It’s like we know we need to do something and we don’t wanna— we’d rather have somebody else step in and do it. So you mentioned that you think you did a pretty good job of masking this. But if I push on that a little bit and ask you, did anybody around you know that you were miserable?
Paige Lavelle [00:13:23]:
A couple of times. Well, after I shared what was going on and after I did blow up my life, so to speak, my dad said he was kind of curious. I didn’t seem fully myself. Part of me is like, okay, that’s convenient to say after the fact. But he did share that. And I also, my mom after was like, I never entirely was sure if that was like, she’s like, I liked him. I just didn’t know if that was the best match for you. I was like, again, this would’ve been good feedback a long time ago. Now, to be fair, they were, to give credit where credit’s due, they were being respectful that I was an adult and I was making my own decisions. But I did hear a little bit of feedback like that.
Amy Stone [00:14:07]:
The one person that—
Paige Lavelle [00:14:10]:
which is, this should not be shocking— but the one person that I was really kind of floored by their reaction was my, um, therapist at the time. So I started going to therapy just because things were, uh, obviously not great with me, so I thought that would be a good, um, thing to explore. And when I told my therapist I decided to end my marriage, she kind of put her pen down. And I’d been going to her for like 6 months. and was giving all these different things I could change and things I could work on and things I could do better just to be happy and be fulfilled. And she was like, this is the most at peace and just authentic you I’ve ever seen. When I said that, she’s like, it just looks like a weight lifted off your back. And that was— I didn’t feel like she was telling me good job or anything, but I just appreciated that she’s like, this is real. What you felt was real, and having to walk away from that is real. And I just very much appreciated that.
Amy Stone [00:15:12]:
That is very interesting. I think that— I’m not a therapist, I’m not qualified to say the things that I’m about to say. So I think that they’re not supposed to take sides and give, like, you should stay or you should go is the—
Paige Lavelle [00:15:26]:
She never did.
Amy Stone [00:15:26]:
And then there is a comedian, Wanda Sykes the comedian, has a hilarious skit where she’s a marriage counselor and she’s like, I know that I’m not supposed to do this, but you two have no business being married to each other. It’s a really, really funny, hilarious, not at all realistic skit. But it is an interesting thing because, you know, it’s like they try to be professional by not giving opinions, but a lot of times we really want people to, you know, weigh in. And I can also understand why nobody else should weigh in because we really should make those decisions ourselves. It’s a hard process. All right, so enough rambling by me. So, So people may have had some doubts, but nobody came out and talked to you about it until you put your changes out there in the world. I said we’d come back and talk about this. You got some feedback. Well, let’s talk about the changes you made. You made some big changes in your life. You blew everything up and burned everything down. You got a divorce, you moved.
Paige Lavelle [00:16:25]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:16:27]:
And so those were those. So when you were doing those things, you began to get some pushback from the people— or not pushback, but feedback from the people in your life about this. Funny the way as soon as you do things, people feel that they’re free to comment on the things you’re doing in your life. Worse now than ever before because of social media. How did that go?
Paige Lavelle [00:16:48]:
So they definitely felt free to comment. I also learned after a lot of reflection and trying to take to heart that expression that 99% of what people do and say is about them and not necessarily about you. Now, to be clear, people are entitled to their opinions, and if you think what I did was terrible, I don’t necessarily think you have to tell me, but you have the right to tell me. Okay. Uh, but the people that it triggered the most were people who I know— and this is not me making assumptions, this is stuff that I know— these were people that were in unhealthy relationships and weren’t happy.
Amy Stone [00:17:26]:
Hmm.
Paige Lavelle [00:17:27]:
And me taking that step and walking away, which is, I would say, in the top 3 hardest things I’ve ever had to do, the guilt was extreme. The, oh my God, I’m starting over in my 30s, what am I doing? Um, it triggers people.
Amy Stone [00:17:48]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:17:48]:
And I didn’t want— I hope I didn’t— I didn’t want to project what I was going through on anybody. But there were people that were like, it’s marriage, you stay, you figure it out, you work through it. And I wasn’t raised particularly religious, but I was raised Catholic, so it was like that. You were going to Mass, like don’t give me any crap about it.
Amy Stone [00:18:06]:
That’s the way it was in my house.
Paige Lavelle [00:18:07]:
But we didn’t like— yeah, we didn’t like, you know, our day-to-day life was not built around that. Um, but I was raised in a very large Catholic family. You didn’t get divorced.
Amy Stone [00:18:17]:
Yes.
Paige Lavelle [00:18:17]:
So it was jarring, and I think I wasn’t prepared for what it would bring out in people that felt triggered by it. And There were some people that, yeah, they just, they made me feel like they didn’t say this verbatim, but it was almost a like, how dare you type of energy that was coming off of them. And that, that took me a while to really process and work through.
Amy Stone [00:18:43]:
I bet you that, that was hard. It is. So, yeah. So I also grew up in a family where, you know, it was like church was not optional. Um, and, um, and there’s plenty of funny stories about that, but my parents were actually divorced. So like, I, I, I had, I went through all of that. Real early I was used to that, but then I married somebody who had been married before. I’m his second— like, he’d been divorced before we met. And it’s been 25 years of coming face to face with some people’s assumptions about me. And sometimes complete strangers will just blurt them out in public and I’m like, wow, you know, there was some space there to keep that opinion, that just judgment to yourself.
Amy Stone [00:19:26]:
You know? Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:19:26]:
It’s very interesting. And so I understand why people don’t sometimes put this stuff out into the world because it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re talking about the flavor of ice cream you want or things happening in your life. There is a subset of humanity that’s like, no, well, you shouldn’t do it that way. And my favorite about this is when you see people and it’s like, it’s already done. Why do you feel like you should be telling me what I should have done when this is in the past tense? It is complete. Your opinion is A, not welcome. And also I can’t revise time.
Paige Lavelle [00:20:01]:
Yes. And what I’m doing is not a threat to you or your existence. Right.
Amy Stone [00:20:07]:
That’s— so yeah, that’s one of the things in my own life that I finally realized. So like my parents were divorced and then I married somebody who’d been divorced. And so like statistically, you know, it was ridiculous. Like the chances of my marriage failing were I think 75% if you looked at the statistics, right? And I realized one day that I was— I revised it for myself. I was like, the only statistic that matters to me about my marriage is what is actually happening in my marriage. Everybody else could do something completely different and it wouldn’t change what’s happening in my relationship in any way. It’s just not related.
Paige Lavelle [00:20:45]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:20:46]:
It’s just not related. It’s like it’s raining in Chicago, that doesn’t mean you can’t go to the beach in LA. They’re not related. So there’s that. Okay, so you made these changes. Which of these things came first? Did you burn it all down and then do the work of getting to know yourself, or was it the process of self-discovery that led to making the changes?
Paige Lavelle [00:21:05]:
So a bit of a complicated answer. I would say I started attempting the process of self-discovery, and I should use air quotes because this wasn’t real self-discovery at this point, um, when I first realized— I have, I’ve written about it because it was a very— it’s burned in my brain, this moment where I was sitting in a kitchen that I had, um, kind of designed and put together to look the way I thought it should look. And everything was so— um, I like West Elm, to be clear, but it was just like a— like West Elm threw up in my house, and there was no— there was no, like, interesting, unique, um, funky stuff that I like. And I was holding a white coffee mug, and it matched all my other coffee mugs, and I was just sitting there, and I was like, who is this person? And who is this house? And like, who are you? And when did I lose touch with you? And instead of using that moment to really dig in, I got really uncomfortable. And I kind of stumbled upon the— I don’t— I think wellness is a real thing, but I’ll use #wellness because there’s a difference between real wellness and the stuff that gets pushed. I, instead of confronting the relationship or my issues, I went hardcore for like between 6 months and a year down this like, you know what the problem is? I have too many toxins in my shampoo and I am eating too much gluten and I am doing all these things. And to be fair, I still—
Amy Stone [00:22:35]:
I need a new planner.
Paige Lavelle [00:22:35]:
100%. And I went so hardcore, like, I’m just gonna— yes. So I didn’t, it didn’t occur to me at the time that the problems that I type A’d my way into could not be type A’d out of.
Amy Stone [00:22:48]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:22:49]:
So I tried really hard to do what would be considered, you know, socially and societally acceptable to fix my situation. And after doing that for a while, I was so burnt out. I was like, this isn’t fixing it. The diet’s not fixing it. The changes to my house are not fixing it. The, you know, working harder and harder at work is not fixing it. And then the first major, major change was having the conversation with my now ex-husband at the time, which was hard. And, you know, nothing is ever sunshine and roses when you’re going through that type of a split-up. But I would say all things considered, I had one of the least contentious divorces of anyone that I know. Didn’t have kids at the time. We were able to handle it as a dissolution. Like, I’m very grateful for that.
Amy Stone [00:23:41]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:23:42]:
But that was the big the big, big, big, big change. We’d been together for 6 years, and at that age, that’s a long, long time. And having to kind of know I was on my own and then choosing to move back to Texas where I grew up, those were the major changes that I think I needed, that physical move and kind of this new start. And I never thought I would move back there, but it almost kind of felt like going home to heal a little bit. And go a little bit inward and do more of that real self-discovery, the really uncomfortable stuff that I hadn’t done before, that’s kind of where I went to do that.
Amy Stone [00:24:21]:
Yeah, so it’s super interesting because one of the things we talked about, people giving their feedback on life choices, and one of the things that is, you know, people will say is wherever you go, there you are. And people will use that as a way to be like almost talk people out of making changes in their life. It’s one of those weird things that is— it’s true, right? Wherever you go, there you are. Yes, yes, that sounds good. It sounds so nice and rosy, but it can almost be weaponized to get people to not make decisions and changes in their life.
Amy Stone [00:24:57]:
100%, yeah.
Amy Stone [00:24:58]:
And there’s a book out there, and this, you know, I didn’t write it, I’m not vouching for it. There’s a book out there called Range, and they talk about a study in the book that they go back and ask people who make decisions and changes, a huge majority of people are just so much happier having made any kind of change at all. Like, it’s really interesting because it’s contrary to like the friend advice that a lot of us get. Although it is sometimes good to have a friend in your pocket who’s like, yes, do jump off the cliff, that’s a good thing to do. Everybody should have one of those friends in their pocket. All right, so you do this. Validate the wellness rabbit hole. I think probably actually, when you think back to that, do you think that you could have shortcut that and gone directly to it or do you think it was probably like you needed to work your way through some of these, maybe it’s my diet, maybe it’s my decor, before you were like, nope, it’s something else?
Paige Lavelle [00:25:58]:
I mean, I think if I were the person I am now, I could do it. Um, I think back then I needed, I needed that.
Amy Stone [00:26:07]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:26:08]:
I was really struggling with what deep down I knew to be true, but I just wasn’t ready to accept it. And back then I didn’t have the tools at all for how to handle that. I didn’t have the words for how to handle it. I was a chronic people pleaser, perfectionist, all the things. And I can look back with wishful thinking and say I could have just bit the bullet. Um, I think I would have had like a A meltdown if I hadn’t have been like, I tried these things, I tried these things, okay, that’s not it, this is bigger. And I could handle that now because I have the ability to. A 30-year-old me did not.
Amy Stone [00:26:48]:
I think that’s good self-reflection. I sometimes feel like I will get— people will offer me a solution, but if I’m not ready to hear it, if I don’t— it’s almost like I don’t even understand it. It’s kind of— well, you have kids. It’s kind of like everybody tells you That the no sleeping at the beginning is hard. It’s like the, you know, it’s like the whole thing.
Paige Lavelle [00:27:08]:
We will never know.
Amy Stone [00:27:08]:
But you cannot understand it until you’re like literally in it. And then you’re just like, oh my gosh, this is what they were talking about. And, you know, you buy all the things, you read all the books, and then you’re in it and you’re like, didn’t understand it. Now I understand it. All right.
Paige Lavelle [00:27:25]:
I was so prepared. And then it was like, you’re— what’s the Mike Tyson? Like everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. That’s what it’s like having a baby that’s up every 2 hours.
Amy Stone [00:27:33]:
I love I love that Mike Tyson quote because I also love the fact that I give out a quote that’s from a boxer. It’s such a good, like, relatable thing about life because it’s so true.
Amy Stone [00:27:44]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:27:44]:
My dad did some boxing as a kid and, like, as a young adult. I think it was— it’s his story and I don’t remember all the details. I’d tell it wrong. But he had a similar version that he was so excited and enjoying it and then he got in the ring and somebody punched him and he was like, wait, what? That’s not what I was expecting. Stupid experience because of course you’re going to get hit back. But okay. So anyway, at 30, you say you felt like you didn’t know yourself. I have a weird question. Into every interview I throw a question that may or may not be a good question. But if I had met you when you were 20, do you think that that version of you knew yourself? Like, was it something that you had?
Amy Stone [00:28:25]:
Oh, God, no.
Paige Lavelle [00:28:25]:
No.
Amy Stone [00:28:26]:
Okay.
Amy Stone [00:28:26]:
So there’s no younger version that knew yourself. Is it that you lost?
Paige Lavelle [00:28:30]:
Um, the one caveat I would say, when I was very young, before I started getting molded, um, I have a picture on my phone of me when I was, I think, 3 or 4. I was a tall kid, so I sometimes struggled to— I’m like, what age was I here? Um, I was wearing— which, my mom always was particular about what I wore, so I was shocked that she let me out of the house in this. But we lived in Philly. I had a tutu on as a bottom. with tights and rain boots, and then I had a Phillies t-shirt on and just looked insane. But I looked so happy and just free. And I found that picture, and the time I was probably in my late 20s, so before all this stuff happened, um, I couldn’t understand why I felt like really moved by it. But it was like she hadn’t had who she was, you know, figuratively beaten out of her yet.
Amy Stone [00:29:23]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:29:24]:
And so I do think that there was probably something, but I was so young, like I wouldn’t even understand. But as far as, as long as I was conscious of what other people thought and what was expected of me, it took till I was in my 30s to know who I was.
Amy Stone [00:29:37]:
I think that’s pretty normal. How old are your kids?
Paige Lavelle [00:29:39]:
My son is very young. He’s 16 months.
Amy Stone [00:29:42]:
Very— oh, so super young. So yeah, it’s— you’ll watch him go through it because there’s very young kids, um, the world ends right at the end of their nose. Really, they’re just aware of themselves. Yeah. And one of my favorite things about young kids, like preschool age, is that, you know, 4 or 5 kids will have a race and they all announce that they’re winners. You know, they don’t even— and they’re not fighting about it or anything. One is clearly like, I’m half a length ahead, so obviously they’re first, and they don’t even notice. They’re like, we won, we won, we won. They’re just not— that’s the way they see the world. And then there’s a point where you’ll be able to watch them, they become aware of external feedback, like people are looking at me. It’s like right around adolescence. And, you know, I mean, adolescence is famously hard, but it was wild. And obviously we lived through it. It’s very interesting to watch other people go through it. Much more— it’s much less painful to watch other people go through it. It still hurts a lot, but adolescence sucks. Or the transition.
Paige Lavelle [00:30:36]:
You couldn’t pay me to— if you could keep my brain now and send me back to adolescence, I would kill it. But you couldn’t pay me to go back and have the brain I had back then.
Amy Stone [00:30:44]:
It’s such a hard time. It’s such a hard time. Okay. So you rebuilt your life on your own terms. What does that look like today?
Paige Lavelle [00:30:53]:
Um, well, I definitely can dispel any assumptions that it was like this cool, fun discovery. It was really hard. Um, I had these delusions of grandeur when I moved back to Texas and I was driving that it was going to be like the indie movie montage of, you know, the girl struggling and then there’s a great soundtrack and then she figures it out and she like moves to New York. And I, to be fair, I did eventually move to New York, but it didn’t go like that. Like, I had never really dated. I dated in college, but it was always like you hung out with someone twice and then you ended up in a relationship or you moved on. And then I was in my early 20s when I met my ex, and so I had never really been out there in that world, and that was really uncomfortable. And then it also moved to Texas where a lot of people got married in their 20s. And so it was like, you know, I almost felt like I had a scarlet D for being divorced. And it was— that was kind of a difficult thing to learn. I started practicing yoga, and at first I was like, I’m going to hate this. This is cliché. And I grew up— I was on the dance team and I swam, and so I enjoyed a little bit more difficult type of activities. And I started doing hot yoga and that was great. Like, that was a highlight of, you know, trying something and pushing myself. But it was hard. It was really hard reconnecting with friends. You could tell pretty quickly who was a solid friend because our lives kind of diverted for a while.
Amy Stone [00:32:27]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:32:28]:
But the friendship was still there to come back to and who you realized we had kind of a superficial convenience connection. And it’s just, you know, we’d gone through different things and I was kind of going through a difficult chapter. And some people don’t have the capacity for that. And that’s okay. But it was hard to try to figure out who was, you know, in that inner circle and who I could rely on and be open with and who I had to kind of play a little bit less deep of a role when I was around them. So— It was trying new things. It was putting myself out there. It was working really hard. It was trying to say yes to more things. If friends were like, hey, we’re gonna go away somewhere for the weekend, like finding a way to make that happen. Trying, you know, going places by myself sometimes. That was something I’d never done before, like taking myself on a dinner date or a coffee date. It just— pushing myself out of my comfort zone, but in little subtle ways more and more. And then when I felt like I had gotten to a point that I was comfortable enough on my own was when I decided to move to New York, which was great. It was difficult, but I, I knew I could do it. And I knew at the, you know, the time just after my divorce, I don’t think I would have been able to do it. And so I had taken a couple years and I knew I could survive just going into it cold, only knowing a couple people who I wasn’t particularly close with. And so when I felt comfortable doing that, I knew I had kind of gotten past the worst of it.
Amy Stone [00:33:58]:
Very interesting. So when you say you moved to New York, do you mean the part of New York you’re in now or New York City?
Paige Lavelle [00:34:04]:
New York City.
Amy Stone [00:34:05]:
So you moved to New York City. I mean, I feel that I grew up in New York City, so my experience there is like a, you know, like we talked, like it’s a child. Like, it’s like I can show you where the good fire hydrants were during the summer. Like, I was not an adult. But I do think that New York Like many, you know, it’s very easy to— it’s very friendly to transplants. There’s a lot of people who are coming there without a lot of connections. And so— but it’s also famously a city that, you know, can just chew you right up and spit you out.
Paige Lavelle [00:34:41]:
Oh, yeah. Unforgiving.
Amy Stone [00:34:43]:
So that is that. Okay, so you rebuild your life, you try new things, you say yes to things, you put yourself in your comfort zone. Were there any times where you found yourself thinking, um, I’m not sure this was, was worth it, or regretting?
Paige Lavelle [00:34:59]:
Oh my God, yeah, yeah. Um, I, I knew deep down it was what I had to do, so there was that certainty, but it was buried underneath a lot of insecurity and a lot of, um, doubt at times. Like, I would go on a bad date or a string of bad dates and be like, these dating apps are the worst, and I would have a friend kind of— I wouldn’t say ghost, but just kind of not be very supportive or not be around. And I was like, what have I done? Like, I had a person I lived with who was there for me. I had a group of friends, like couple friends. And that’s the one thing everyone talks about— you lose most of your couple friends whenever that happens. And, uh, it was just these, like, you did this to yourself. And I would get really hard on myself about doing that. And now I can look back on the other side and I’m so much happier and so glad that I had just the gumption to walk away. I sometimes look back and knowing the state I was in mentally and emotionally back then, I’m kind of shocked that I was able to do it.
Amy Stone [00:36:02]:
That’s interesting.
Paige Lavelle [00:36:04]:
And there just must have been something deep in me that was like, if you don’t do this now, you’re never going to do it and you’re going to wake up in 10 years even sadder. than you are right now. And so, yeah, it was, it was, um, yeah, this— I lost track of the initial question.
Amy Stone [00:36:23]:
Yeah, no, the initial question was, did you ever look back and be like, why, you know, maybe I made a mistake? Did I, did I do the wrong thing?
Paige Lavelle [00:36:28]:
Yeah, yeah. I never, I never, never felt that strongly enough to try to go back and mend that, but I definitely had those moments of doubt where you’re just lonely. And you’re like, what have I done? But the next day I’d wake up and I’d be like, you got this, you can figure it out.
Amy Stone [00:36:44]:
Okay, so there’s that.
Amy Stone [00:36:48]:
The—
Amy Stone [00:36:50]:
you have written— okay, so share with me, if you can, what is your motivation? I know you’ve written a book and you’ve got a podcast, so what is the reason that you have decided to share this publicly? Because that is a choice that is always behind The choices that we talk about in the conversation, the choice to go public with it, because you could have gone through this deep transformation, done all of these things, and just lived that experience. What do you— what is the reason you went public with the story, and what do you hope that people who hear it and watch it will maybe learn and take away from it?
Paige Lavelle [00:37:24]:
Yeah, so I was a product of your struggle stays invisible. You don’t want to reveal a chink in the armor. And I chose a path of getting a business degree and working in tech, and it’s very male-dominated, it’s very hustle-minded, and that played right into my perfectionism and people pleasing. I was great at getting gold stars, and I used to— even in that self-discovery and even in that kind of healing chapter that we talked about, I didn’t have any intention of sharing anything because it it felt heavy. It felt— it carried a lot of shame back then. And the interesting thing was the more that I opened up to other women, especially other career-oriented, high-achieving women, and shared this is something I went through and other parts of my life that we haven’t really talked about today, but I have a couple of autoimmune conditions and that’s something that’s really easy to hide for better or worse. And I had a history I thankfully have not for many, many years, but I had an eating disorder. And that’s something that when I would share with other women, like, I’ve been through a divorce, or I deal with chronic illness that you can’t see, um, the amount of women that would be like, me too.
Amy Stone [00:38:43]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:38:44]:
It started to feel odd for them not to say that. And I was like, okay, like, I love to write, I like to share. This is clearly something much bigger than me. And what I used to think was my own little special mixture of issues was not so special. And obviously we all have unique stories and unique circumstances, but there was definitely this underlying theme of women I met who were just going through this period or had gotten past this period of like, is this really what I want? I need to look at my health. And I personally don’t think you can remove mental and emotional health from physical health because ‘Cause they definitely affect each other. And the disordered eating was the most interesting because to an extent there’s still some, there’s a lot of shame with that. And so when you can connect on the autoimmune conditions and you can connect on something like divorce even, it’s a little less heavy of a topic. So it was almost like you would let your guard down a little talking about those things. And then if you shared, you’re talking about health, for example, like I really wanted to try this certain, wellness trend or diet protocol, but I have a history of disordered eating, so that stuff is really dangerous for me. And they would just be like, yeah, I do too. And it was like, once you got to that level, it was like, oh, there’s something here that we can connect on. And it felt like by not sharing and by not being opening, I was— or not being open with that story.
Amy Stone [00:40:11]:
Yeah.
Paige Lavelle [00:40:12]:
I was kind of doing a disservice to other women who were going through it and didn’t quite have the words to Very interesting.
Amy Stone [00:40:19]:
Thank you for sharing all of that. There’s a saying from one of the mental health organizations. I think it’s old, so I don’t know if they use it anymore, but it used to be like shining a light on the stigma is what makes it go away.
Amy Stone [00:40:34]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:40:36]:
And I think there’s a lot of truth in that. Now, there is the other side of that coin that we all know people who share When things are maybe not quite ready to be shared or they overshare.
Amy Stone [00:40:46]:
There’s a line.
Amy Stone [00:40:47]:
There’s a line. There’s a line.
Amy Stone [00:40:49]:
I don’t—
Amy Stone [00:40:49]:
it’s different for everybody. Like we talked about, we all, you know, there’s—
Paige Lavelle [00:40:52]:
There are places online where people go to just like spiral out and it’s like a negativity competition. And I learned very quickly to step away from those.
Amy Stone [00:41:00]:
That’s what the divorce forums, any of the divorce forums, they can be very, very, you know, this is the sadness Olympics. competition, you know, or the suffering. Yeah, it’s a— there’s some weird pockets of group, and it’s like, you know, social media and online stuff amplifies things. And that’s one of those things that it does feel like it’s like, wow, if there was ever a need for some curation, it is in this space.
Paige Lavelle [00:41:26]:
Yes, completely.
Amy Stone [00:41:28]:
So very good. All right, so you have written a memoir and you have your own podcast. I think they are both named Invisibly Unwell.
Amy Stone [00:41:36]:
Is that correct?
Paige Lavelle [00:41:36]:
Yes, that is correct.
Amy Stone [00:41:37]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:41:38]:
So I’m gonna put the links for the book and the links for your show in the show description. You also have an offer for the people who are in the audience, which is a Make Yourself Heard guide. And so we’ll put the link to that in the show description, the show notes. The easiest way to get the link for that is to be a subscriber to the Imperfect Adulting email list because that’ll be a link that people can click. I wanna thank you for that generous offer for the audience. Are you ready to wrap this up with my final 2 questions?
Paige Lavelle [00:42:06]:
Yes, absolutely.
Amy Stone [00:42:07]:
Let’s do it. All right, so the world is full of information, but personal recommendations are still really helpful. What is something that you would suggest for the people in the audience that is like a fun thing, like an entertainment thing? It can be a movie, it can be a TV show, it can be a book, something that you would recommend that you think that people in the audience should try for themselves.
Paige Lavelle [00:42:26]:
Oh, that’s a really good question. I, so I’m like a huge nerd, so I just, just gonna wave my nerd flag here. I find that Jeopardy is my absolute best daily ritual because even if I’m like completely caught up in work, it’s mentally stimulating enough. Even if you don’t know a lot of the answers, it’s mentally stimulating enough to get you out of your own head. And there is not a single time I have turned off the TV and not learned, have learned something that I find interesting that then I add file away as a fun little factoid for the future. So for me, that’s such a little half hour of positive, engaging entertainment, and I would suggest it to anybody.
Amy Stone [00:43:07]:
Very good. Do you do any of the, like, online sort of game things? Or here’s a better question, a new question revised. I’m making it, I’m jumping. Have you ever taken the quiz to be a contestant?
Paige Lavelle [00:43:18]:
I haven’t. I don’t know why I avoid taking it.
Amy Stone [00:43:22]:
I’m worried I’m not going to make it.
Paige Lavelle [00:43:24]:
But I’m pretty good at it. My husband also is, so we get pretty competitive with it. And it’s— there’s a million things that we wouldn’t be mad at each other for watching if one of us travels. And that is one that you do not watch if the other person is not there. So it’s in both of our to-do lists to take that test, but I have not to date, no. And I prefer to watch the show than to do it online for sure.
Amy Stone [00:43:45]:
Okay.
Paige Lavelle [00:43:45]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:43:46]:
Very good. All right, here we go. I call this section of the show, wrapping up with unsupervised online shopping. What is something that you have purchased recently online that was a pretty great purchase? And I mean, it doesn’t have to be recent, but something you bought online that you think that we should all consider.
Paige Lavelle [00:44:00]:
Oh, that’s such a good question. I buy— I mean, I have a toddler, so the amount of stuff that’s just for toddler activities is huge. But let me think of something that everyone should know about.
Amy Stone [00:44:14]:
Hmm.
Paige Lavelle [00:44:20]:
I can’t believe I can’t think of something right now.
Amy Stone [00:44:22]:
You can share a toddler purchase. They take over all of our shopping. They take over all of our shopping.
Paige Lavelle [00:44:26]:
Um, if anyone has a toddler, actually we’ve been getting these since he was an infant, um, but Lovevery is the subscription for toys that are all like age-specific appropriate for their development. And my son is the first grandchild on both sides. So both my mom and my mother-in-law love to bombard us. They mean well. With an insane amount of toys and just junk that piles up in our house. So to be able to kind of store those and weed through those, but get this like very curated set of mentally, developmentally appropriate toys for him is great. And it keeps our play area from just getting completely out of control. Um, the only other one I— we got a— now that I’m saying, I thought of one right at the end. Um, I got— we got a whole house water filter. And it has been such a game changer for life to be able to just go and get water out of any faucet in the house. And that sounds silly, and I realize I’m getting old by being jazzed about that, but it has been incredible. My showers are less dirty. I can fill my water bottle anywhere and not think twice about it. And if anyone— if you have the means and the time to get that installed, it was such a game changer for us.
Amy Stone [00:45:35]:
That is very— so a whole house water filter. Are you like on municipal water or well water?
Paige Lavelle [00:45:42]:
We’re on municipal water, but just being kind of in that health space that I talked about, it was like, let’s just do it.
Amy Stone [00:45:47]:
We had— we moved into a house that had a well, and there had been filters on every single sink, but they were old and gummy. So we pulled them out and we had the water tested, and it was safe. It was totally safe. So we were like, all right, we’ll just drink the water. And we went to dinner, and my whole family was drinking this restaurant water, and they’re like, this is the best water we’ve ever had. our life. I was like, no, it’s that the water, the well water at the house tastes terrible. I, like, from the restaurant, like, ordered, like, water delivery service. I was like, oh my God. It was very, just very minerally and very hard. So we had a massive water softener to, like, save our showerheads and our appliances. But we drank filtered water and filtered ice because the taste was just— it just was— probably there were people that wouldn’t have noticed it, but for us it was not good. It just was not delicious.
Paige Lavelle [00:46:40]:
It’s not delicious. It’s funny what I get excited about as I get older. I would have laughed at me 20 years ago saying I got a whole house full of floss. But it’s been so wonderful.
Amy Stone [00:46:50]:
No, I completely understand that. I’m at an age where I’m like, wow, I really enjoy flossing. And I’m like, I’m old. This has, you know, hit the point. All right, thank you very much. I want to say thank you very much. for sharing your story with us today and being a guest on the show.
Paige Lavelle [00:47:09]:
Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Amy Stone [00:47:13]:
Thank you for joining me today.
Amy Stone [00:47:15]:
I hope you enjoyed the show.
Amy Stone [00:47:17]:
Before I go, I want to encourage you to become a bigger part of the conversation. Please subscribe wherever you’re listening or watching the show. That helps my stats. A request from the bottom of my indie creator heart is to please tell your friends about the show. That is the real way new people discover it. If you feel motivated, I would love it if you rated the show or wrote a review on whatever platform you are using. Please be sure to head over to imperfectadulting.com and sign up for the email community. I call this the village. You’ll get some free stuff right away, and you’ll begin to get the weekly email that I send. This includes the links for special offers from any guests on the show and cool stuff I put together for the community. There’s a lot more going on than just this show, and the only way to find out is to get the emails. Plus, you’re busy, you don’t have time or desire to follow every single tidbit on social media, and you don’t have to because I’m happy to send it to you. If you have a story you’d like to share with the audience, I have an open application for guests. Guess where you’ll find it? That’s right, on the website and in the emails. And that’s a wrap for this episode. Until next time, remember that the journey is the destination. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, not me. Well, until just now. I did just say it. But what I want you to hear today is that if your adulting journey isn’t going the way you expected, that just may not mean you’re lost. It may mean that you’re just And now the fine print. The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast and streaming video show is a copyrighted work created and produced by Amy Stone and Amy Says So. The music was written and produced by Todd Thompson at Dharma Bomb Studios. All rights are reserved. Anything expressed on this show is offered as entertainment, and the views of the guests may not always represent the ideas and viewpoints of the host. that’s me. Amy Stone does not intend to hold myself herself out to provide professional advice or recommendations of any kind. In the end, you and you alone need to make those kinds of decisions based on your personal and individual situation, needs, circumstances, and comfort level. Yeah, it’s a little weird for me to talk about myself in the third person, but you get the idea. This is Amy Stone, signing off.