Jackie O was deep into a years-long addiction to pills and alcohol until one phone call changed her life. There’s a reason Jackie O kept her addiction to pain medication and alcohol a secret for so long: shame. But now, she wants to share her story of recovery and healing with the world and to help other people get the help they need - and so she’s sharing the hard truths of the years she spent struggling. Jackie and her best friend Gemma sit down for a searingly honest conversation with...

Nikki Parkinson's husband kept assuring her that her suspicions about infidelity were all in her head. And then one day, she got an email in the middle of the night that changed everything...What happened next took Nikki's life apart piece by piece.  Six years on, former lawyer Nikki says she made so many mistakes during that time she never wanted other women to do the same. Now she's turned that into her work, becoming a Divorce Coach, Separation Strategist and Co-Parenting expert, and she...

For many years Paulina Porizkova was the most recognized face in fashion & beauty - from her iconic Sports Illustrated cover to being the face of Estee Lauder. When she married rock star Ric Ocastek from the iconic band, The Cars. From the outside looking in, it seemed like she was living the dream. To look at her, she really did seem like the woman who had it all. But while Paulina was as visible as you could be…she didn’t feel like she was being heard. Not by the photographers and...

It’s not an actual list of dickheads, although let’s face it, by this stage of life, we’ve all met a few of those. No, this list is for Kasey Chambers herself. It’s a list that signals to her that she isn’t listening to her gut - something that, by now, many of us MIDs have learned is our secret weapon... Kasey has built a career tuning into her gut - she calls it her little foghorn. The foghorn told her that her first album should be called The Captain, despite the suits thinking it was a...

Welcome to this special episode of But Are You Happy. In this episode, Clare Stephens sits down with one of her idols, Missy Higgins—the Australian musician whose emotive songwriting has deeply connected with so many people. They discuss prioritising happiness over expectations, navigating a new phase of life, and how music can be therapeutic when processing pain. Missy shares how creating her latest album, The Second Act, has helped her heal. Is Missy Higgins happy? You’ll have to listen...

Gen X can be funny about food. A lot of us were raised on a diet of Kate Moss, cigarettes and coffee. We were happy to talk openly about skipping meals, cutting carbs, and cabbage soup cleanses. We swam in a sea of celebrity diet tips, fads and…shame. In today’s episode of MID, Holly is talking about food and the absolute necessity of small joys with Virginia Trioli. Virginia Trioli is one of the most highly-regarded journalists and broadcasters in Australia. She’s a two-time Walkley Award...

Welcome to our first MID episode about hormones & peri & meno…we meant to do it earlier, but, you know: brain fog. For more than twenty-five years, Grace Lam lived and breathed the rarefied air of high fashion as a Vogue editor. Everything was going according to plan for the talented, organised, focused Grace until hormones entirely upended her tidy world. She’s going to tell you about exactly what that felt like. Fast forward a few years, and Grace has become a loud and important...

To kick off Season 3 of MID we are bringing you a conversation that Holly says kind of changed her life. We think it will change yours, too. Inspired by her book - and it’s really a very good book - We Are The Stars - we talk about all that loss, all those different seasons of life she’s lived through, from being a wild young girl with a baby bird in her pocket, mercilessly bullied at school, to being a starry-eyed raver at the peak of Sydney’s club scene, to being a survivalist who falls in...

Season Three Of MID with Holly Wainwright will be back in your ears on Tuesday 15th October with more conversations for - and with - Gen X women who are anything but.  THE END BITS:  Share your feedback! Send us a voice message or email us at [email protected]  Follow us on Instagram @MidbyMamamia or sign up to the MID newsletter, dropping weekly here.  CREDITS: Host: Holly Wainwright Executive Producer: Naima Brown Producer: Tahli Blackman Audio Producer: Tegan Sadler Mamamia...

It's the last conversation of MID, Season Two, with our guest Alison Brahe Daddo. Ali was THE Australian model of the late 80s, on every magazine cover and on many a teenage girl’s wall. She had a huge career here and overseas, and then she married the equally famous and swoon-worthy Cameron Daddo, backed right away from the industry, settled in LA and raised a family. Now, as Alison Brahe Daddo, or Ali, as very many of us know her, she’s also become just the most honest, interesting voice...

You've heard about the incredible invisible women of MID. One minute we're there, the next we're unseen by the naked eye, our voices only audible to dogs. Well, what if there was a way to reappear? Jane Tara is a writer whose brilliant novel Tilda Is Visible follows a woman who - literally - begins to disappear, and how she brings herself back into view. Not just the world's, but crucially, her own. When it comes to disappearing, Jane’s lived it. In the year she turned 50, life was hammering...

Welcome to MID, the podcast for Gen X women who are anything but.Today we’re talking with Gen X Aussie icons, Vika and Linda Bull, all about family, and sisters in particular, and how they hold you and shape you and give you something to push back against as you grow into mid. If, like Holly, you don’t have a sister, there’s still plenty of things to find in this conversation, because the women in it are excellent. Frank and funny and no b******t and full of stories formed by not only being...

Liane Moriarty sits down with Holly Wainwright for this episode of MID. Holly and the best-selling author of Big Little Lies, Apples Never Fall (and so much more) are talking about time. The thing we have too much of when we’re young and have learned all to well not to take for granted as we get older. Liane’s new book Here One Moment, is, in large part, about mortality, time and what you would do if you knew exactly how much of it you had left. But Liane also talks with Holly about how...

Angry, much? Yep, we get it. Today we’re talking to Jacinta Parsons about rage. The ABC radio presenter and author has written a sharp and clever book called A Question of Age. It’s not an angry book, but she writes brilliantly about one of the most common - yet surprising - things about midlife: The fury. In this conversation, we talk about why anger might be a very rational response to many things about… life. Like many women, she lives with a chronic illness, is a parent, and has a big...

Simmone Jade McKinnon was - and is, to many - Stevie from McLouds Daughters. She joined that iconic Australian show fresh from another era-defining TV moment, Baywatch, with a Hollywood star fiancé on her arm and a creative career in full flight. And then everything changed. Simmone and her son Madigan have been living in a caravan and then a shed in her family’s back paddock for the best part of a decade. She’s been making ends meet with carer’s subsidy, odd jobs like jillaroo and by...

Kylie Gillies is telling Holly Wainwright about The Shift. You know, the moment when you realise things have changed - your children were tiny, and now they’re not. Your parents were giants, and now they’re not. You were the bold young thing in the office. And now you’re not. Kylie has been in living rooms across Australia for 17 years as co-host of The Morning Show with Larry Emdur. Not only is Kylie an experienced, engaged journalist, but she's also a MID woman perfectly placed to talk...

Overlooked, touched-out and too tired. That's how many MID women feel about sex. It's how Leslie Morgan felt, too. At 49, her marriage ended, and after not having sex for three years, she decided to change that. Over the next year, Leslie found five boyfriends and discovered her sexual self wasn't actually dead, she was just having a good lie down.  In this interview with Holly Wainwright, author and advocate Leslie Morgan discusses what women really mean when they say they no longer care...

Sex. Money. Sandwich. Season Two of MID with Holly Wainwright is coming back to your ears and your hearts on Tuesday 6th August. You're not going to want to miss these incredible conversations with (and for) Gen X women who are anything but. Follow and subscribe so you don't miss a thing, wherever you listen your podcasts.  THE END BITS:  Share your feedback! Send us a voice message or email us at [email protected]  Follow us on Instagram @MidbyMamamia or sign up to the MID...

By MID, you've woven a big, beautiful, messy life. Some of it joyful, some of it devastating, some of it entirely unexpected. Today's guest, the iconic Australian musician Christine Anu has woven plenty of stories about all these things. In this very frank conversation, she talks about rebuilding herself, her life, her relationship with her kids and her career after a divorce knocked her off her feet. Now, about to release her new album, Christine is reckoning with how all the parts of her...

It goes so fast. Did you want to pinch the people who said that to you when your babies were small? And now you know it's true. Welcome to the season of parenting when they're taller than you, they're eating the fridge and apparently, you've done your job right if they need you less and less every day. This episode of MID is a reunion. Holly hosted This Glorious Mess with author, presenter and Australian icon Andrew Daddo for years. Her kids were tiny, his were teens and together they...

By MID, you've likely lived through some loss. You know grief has no time for fancy words and clever jokes. In fact, it hasn't a lot of time for words, full-stop. It's a full-body experience that can change you on every level.  No-one wants to talk about death, except for our guest: interfaith minister, author and death-walker Dr Jackie Bailey. Jackie has experienced a great deal of loss, and she spends her life walking others through it, helping people prepare for it, and acknowledging it...

Your relationship with your body might be the most complicated one you'll ever have. So says comedian and podcaster Helen Thorn. And she'd know. Helen has been performing onstage in a skin-tight gold spandex catsuit for years, at all sizes and shapes, as one half of the Scummy Mummies comedy duo. She says that she always felt "f*cking powerful" in it, and laughed off the patronising head tilts of those who declared her "brave". But when Helen found out her husband was cheating on her,...

Burn-Out, says author Katherine May, is what happens when you repeatedly ignore your own needs. Sound familiar? The first signs are often that you can't focus. Can't read, maybe. Can't sleep, or sleep too much? Can't eat, or can't stop eating? You're Tired All The Time. You have that cold that just won't leave.The cure, everyone says, is simple: Slow down, Darl. But it's not so easy when everyone needs something from you. Author and advocate Katherine May -  creator of the Sunday Times and...

Most Gen X-ers did not grow up idolising 5am-rising yoga girlies. For many of us, drinking "like the boys" was almost an act of feminist pride, and certainly the way we knew we were having a "good time". Holidays, celebrations, milestones. Wine o’clock, and the witching hour and the glass (or two) that marks the end of the work day... Alcohol is woven into our social lives in an almost invisible way. So what happens when you realise that the habit you thought of as your little helper is...