So many women tell the same quiet story:

"I'm fine. I'm grateful. I'm doing it all."
And yet…
There's a glass of wine waiting every evening just to soften the edges enough to keep going.

In this week's episode of Things Your Mother Never Told You, I sit down with Colleen Freeland, the woman redefining what sobriety means for high-achieving, overwhelmed women. Her work is not about labels or lifelong abstinence. It's about emotional sobriety - the art of living without the chaos, pressure, and self-abandonment that make us reach outside ourselves for relief.

Colleen brings a radically compassionate perspective:
Most women don't have drinking problems.
They have disconnection problems.

Inside this conversation, we explore:

• Why Type A, hyper-capable women often use alcohol as a bridge to survive the life they've built.

• How emotional numbing becomes a default for women who never learned to feel their own needs.

• Why shame-based sobriety models can backfire - and what actually creates lasting change.

• The truth about "mommy wine culture" and the billion-dollar industry marketing alcohol as self-care.

• How creating small, honest moments of pleasure and regulation can begin to untangle long-held patterns.

• What happens when a woman finally tells the truth: I'm not okay, and I can't keep living this way.

• The real reason midlife becomes a turning point, and why so many women "wake up" during these years.

This episode is an invitation to pause.
To listen inward. To meet the woman you've been overriding for far too long.

If something in this conversation lands in your body - share it with someone who needs to hear it.

And if you are ready to lead your life from truth, steadiness, and self-knowing, join me inside CROWNED.

Your revolution begins within.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Connect with Colleen Freeland:
https://www.instagram.com/thehangoverwhisperer/
https://emotionalsobrietycoaching.com/

Join the Crowned Mastermind
http://www.amandahanson.com/crowned

Most of us were taught some version of the same story:
Good women are modest. Quiet. Selfless.
Desire is dangerous. Pleasure is suspicious.

But that story is not holy. It is a tool of control.

In this conversation, I sit down with my dear friend Dr. Kimberly Rose Pendleton - intimacy scholar, coach, and former evangelical insider - to talk about how purity culture, patriarchy, and religion have shaped our bodies, our bedrooms, our marriages, and our sense of worth as women.

We speak about the heartbreak of watching purity culture move from private dogma into national policy...while raising daughters in the midst of it. And we name something I see every day in my work: women who are exhausted from doing it all, flirting with "trad wife" fantasies, simply because they're desperate for one place to finally surrender.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• How purity culture quietly trains women to disconnect from their bodies, their desire, and their pleasure.
• Why so many powerful women secretly fantasize about being dominated - and what's really underneath those fantasies.
• The rise of "trad wife" culture and the hidden longing for safety and rest that makes it so seductive.
• How to hold both: being a woman in her full power and having a place to soften, lean back, and be cherished.
• What happens in our marriages when we stop dimming, start telling the truth, and allow our identities to expand.
• Why your pleasure is not frivolous - it is a form of spiritual and political rebellion that liberates everyone, including the men you love.

This conversation is for the woman who feels a million miles away from her own body...the woman who is quietly wondering, "Is it selfish to want more?"

It is not selfish.
It is your birthright.

If this episode stirs something within you, share it with another woman who is ready to step out of martyrdom and into her own aliveness.

And if you are ready to remember who you've always been - to reclaim your desire, your voice, and your pleasure - join me at MAGNETIC in Phoenix, December 5-6.
The revolution begins within.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Connect with Dr. Kimberly Rose Pendleton:
https://www.instagram.com/drkimberlyrosependleton/
https://www.kimberlyrosependleton.com

Join the Movement at MAGNETIC in Phoenix – December 5–6
http://www.amandahanson.com/magnetic

For generations, women have been taught to quiet themselves in love - to shrink, to compromise, to hold the emotional weight of the relationship while asking for so little in return.

But something is changing.

In this episode, I sit with my daughter Ava, and with the man she chose, Chris,
and together we step into a conversation that feels less like an interview and more like a blessing. What they are building together is not naïve young love - it is intentional, emotionally intelligent, a deeply human partnership.

What unfolds in this conversation is not perfection.
It is evolution.

It is a story of a young woman who would not abandon her truth, and a young man who chose to rise and meet her. A story of the next generation doing what so many before them could not: building a relationship from intention rather than inheritance.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• What happens when a young woman refuses to abandon her values in order to be loved.
• What it looks like when a man chooses curiosity over defensiveness - and growth over comfort.
• The importance of accountability, communication, and repair in healthy partnership.
• How generational healing happens through the relationships our children create.
• The power of raising boys - and men - to listen, witness, and emotionally attune.
• Why the next generation of love demands emotional intelligence, not perfection.

This is not just a relationship conversation.
It is a generational conversation. It is a window into what becomes possible when daughters are raised to honor themselves, and when sons are encouraged to feel deeply rather than armor up. It is the embodiment of the evolution so many of us have prayed for.

It is proof that the next generation is not waiting for change.

They are creating it.

If this episode moves you, share it with your daughters, your sons, your partners, or the people in your life who are crafting their own path in love.

And if you are ready to deepen into your own becoming - to soften, awaken, and rise - join me at MAGNETIC in Phoenix, December 5–6.

The next generation is rising.
Let us rise with them.

Connect with Dr. Amanda on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Join the Movement at MAGNETIC in Phoenix – December 5–6
http://www.amandahanson.com/magnetic