The Present Day Wise Woman
by Jennifer Jefferies
This isn’t just another podcast.It’s a reckoning — and a rally cry.Hosted by Jennifer Jefferies — corporate speaker, naturopath, author, and proud midlife disruptor — The Present Day Wise Woman Podcast is where fierce, funny, wise women come to be seen, heard, and celebrated.Because midlife women are ready to stop shrinking and start setting fires.Each episode spotlights women who’ve faced the flames and come back stronger. We talk power, purpose, ageing boldly, speaking up, starting over — and everything they told us to quiet down about.No fluff. No beige. No pretending we’ve got it
Episodes
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Rogue Wisdom - Why Rest Isn’t Fixing Burnout | Ep. 92
You took the holiday. By Wednesday back, you were exactly where you left. If rest fixed burnout, you’d be fixed by now. In this episode, Jennifer Jefferies joins Dr Joe Dispenza’s idea of memorised emotional states with her own work on identity exhaustion. What if you’re not tired from what you…
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Marcia Hines Owning Your Voice Your Music and Your Legacy | Ep. 91
“I’ve always believed that great music never really gets old, it just finds a new way to make you feel something. " You’ve spent decades making it all happen. So why does stopping feel like failing? At 16, Marcia Hines left Boston for Sydney with her mother’s blessing and a six-month promise.…
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The Travelling Nanas 85 And Enjoying The Ride | Ep. 90
The travelling nanas. Around the world at 80 When did you last plan something purely because it would be fun? Today's guests did. At 80. Ellie Hamby and Dr Sandy Hazelip are best friends from Texas, both widows, with every reason to slow down. Instead, Sandy asked Ellie, "Wouldn't it be fun to go...
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Rogue Wisdom - The Label That Exhausted You | Ep. 89
You say yes when you mean no. You smooth the tension before anyone else has even noticed it. And somewhere along the way, someone called you a people pleaser. What if that label was wrong all along? In this Rogue Wisdom, Jennifer Jefferies separates two patterns that look identical from the...
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Choosing To Be Lifefull with Robyn Moore | Ep. 88
You've heard her voice in almost every Australian home. You probably don't know her name. Robyn Moore AM, the voice of Blinky Bill, breast cancer thriver and 33-year Make-A-Wish patron, shares how she fully enters life, no matter the circumstances. Why she's a thriver, not a survivor. The one…
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Midwife to Dominatrix with Vicky Feeney | Ep. 87
At 16, Vicky Feeney told her dad she wanted to be a midwife. He asked if she thought she was clever enough. She shelved the dream for 10 years, then went back and flew through it. Since then she's been a midwife, a Dominatrix for 20 years, a club owner running a team of 54, and now the producer…
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Don't Shrink Get Loud with Menopunks | Ep. 86
Twenty-three years. That's how long the medical establishment buried the truth about HRT while women disappeared from public life.Award-winning filmmaker Alicia J. Rose could've accepted the erasure. Instead, she picked up the camera.Menopunks is her documentary-in-motion: a 23-year reckoning and…
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Rogue Wisdom - I Didn't Want to Live in That World | Ep. 85
There's an exhaustion that has nothing to do with sleep. In early 2025, after 30+ years as a naturopath and activist, Jennifer Jefferies' hit it, hard enough to tell her wife, Alice, "I don't want to live in a world like this." Alice's answer: "We have to fight." What followed: a TEDx talk, "Who...
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Angela Counsel – Permission To Not Know | Ep. 84
When you’re successful on paper but exhausted in your bones, the instinct is to optimise harder. Angela Counsel built that empire. Embrace Menopause was thriving, with hundreds of women getting results. So she walked away from it all. Not because it failed, but because she realised the real…
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The Roads Less Travelled with Catherine DeVrye | Ep. 83
She's been to 150 countries. Published ten bestselling books. Built a global platform most people dream of. And learned that none of it was the answer. Catherine DeVrye has spent two decades helping organisations and leaders turn obstacles into opportunities. But somewhere on those roads less...
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The NaNaz - When Years Left Get Lounder Than Years Lived | Ep. 82
You're fifty, perimenopausal, running on empty, and you've got less years ahead of you than behind you. So what do you do? You pick up a guitar. You form a punk band. You play a dingy venue in Newport so raw and chaotic that other musicians call it "the most punk rock thing I've ever seen." This…
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The Oncology Doula What Fifty Years at the Bedside Taught Me About Living with Ann Wax | Ep. 81
If you've built a life that looks right but doesn't feel right anymore, this one's your permission slip to ask the harder question. Ann Wax RN has spent fifty years at the bedsides of people facing cancer, and what she's learned isn't just about illness. It's about what matters when we stop...
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Rogue Wisdom: What's Really Behind Burnout | Ep. 80
She wakes at 2am, not from a deadline, not just the hot flush. She wakes because a question has surfaced she's been outrunning for years: whose life is this? Naturopath Jennifer Jefferies has spent nearly four decades working with burned out women, starting with her own burnout in her twenties.…
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The Housing Fix Hiding in Plain Sight with Vicki Robin | Ep. 79
Vicki Robin has a question for women over fifty who did everything "right" financially and still feel exposed: what if the fix isn't more money, it's more community? Her In-Home Suites project turns surplus space, basements, over-garage rooms, into dignified, affordable housing for the essential...
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Will Someone Fear My Son with Katheryne Imabayashi | Ep. 78
One moment of fear changed everything. When Kathryne Imabayashi felt a flicker of unease around a group of teenage boys, she caught herself and asked a question that would define the next chapter of her life: will someone fear my son simply for being male? That question sent her thirty years deep...
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The Woman Who Decided Which Ideas Change the World Inside TED with Kelly Stoetzel | Ep. 77
Kelly Stoetzel's dad took her to a TED event when she was young. She never really left, spending nearly two decades deciding which ideas were ready to change the world. As former Head of Conferences at TED, and now curator of projects like TED Democracy Philadelphia, Kelly has mastered the...
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What We Don’t Heal, We Hand On with Sharyn McKenzie | Ep. 76
"What we don't heal, we hand on." Energy healer Sharyn McKenzie joins Jennifer Jefferies to unpack how inherited trauma and childhood programming quietly run the show, anxiety, people-pleasing, the martyr pattern, and why none of it may have started with you. A grounded, practical look at…
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Midlife Identity and the Question That Changes Everything | Ep. 75
There's a moment many women hit in midlife, not the sports car kind of crisis, but the quieter, more disorienting version. The one where your life looks fine from the outside and feels strangely hollow from the inside. In this episode, Jennifer Jefferies asks the question that cuts straight...
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What Wouldn't You Be Caught Dead in with the Gippsland end of life doulas | Ep. 74
Death is the one appointment none of us can cancel, yet most of us are completely unprepared for it. Glenda Aurisch and Ros Berry are end of life doulas from regional Victoria who are bringing death back into community, back into conversation, and back into the hands of women and families who...
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Stop Blaming Start Building Martha Mok on What That Actually Takes | Ep. 73
Reinvention, relationships, emotional healing, and AI. Martha on what it actually takes to stop suffering in silence, why the goal is not to let go of the past but to gain closure on it, and how to move from I need you to I want you. Martha Mok walked away from a 19-year abusive marriage, a…
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What a 69 Year Old Aromatherapist Can Teach You About AI with Danielle Sade | Ep. 72
In a world where so many women our age are told technology is not for us, Danielle is proof that curiosity has no expiry date. At 69, aromatherapist Danielle Sade is writing songs on Spotify, cutting weeks of research to seconds, and building a creative life most women half her age haven't…
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The Cost of Being the Strong One with Tammy Silk | Ep. 71
Walking in Two Worlds: Tammy Silk on Strength, Softness and Showing Up for Yourself What does it really cost to be the strong one? Tammy Silk is a proud Tagalakka / Wallangamma woman, mother, nurse and relational leader who has spent decades showing up for everyone around her. In this…
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Corporate Culture Is Cannibalising Midlife Women | Ep. 70
The most dangerous kind of burnout is the one that still shows up to work looking capable. If you're a high-achieving woman in midlife who is exhausted in ways you can't fully explain, waking at 3am, running on caffeine, holding everything together while quietly falling apart, this episode is for...
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Healing the Wounds Between Women with Hanna Milling | Ep. 69
What if the biggest obstacle to women's collective power isn't out there, it's between us? Hanna Milling is a PhD cultural studies scholar, mediator, trauma and breath therapist, and peace researcher behind From Women to Women, a global project dedicated to healing the wounds of sisterhood. In…
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Pull Up Your Own Chair with LJ Kennealy | Ep. 68
This week's guest changes the rooms she walks into, and changes them for the women coming next. LJ Kennealy spent three decades in the Royal Australian Air Force, rising to Wing Commander and Gender Adviser to the Chief of Air Force. She's been deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and worked…
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The Bias Baked In Tracey Spicer on AI Power and Women | Ep. 67
The global backlash against women's rights, Me Too six years on, why AI is quietly replicating old prejudices at scale, and what we can do about it. Sharp, funny, fierce and full of hope. Tracey Spicer spent three decades anchoring national programs for the ABC, Ten and Sky News. She's a multiple...
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Breaking the Too Late Myth Starting Over in Your 40s 50s and Beyond with Lisa Nichols | Ep. 66
She went from wrapping her baby in towels because she couldn't afford nappies to reaching 88 million people worldwide. Lisa Nichols is a New York Times bestselling author, keynote speaker, and one of the featured teachers in The Secret, and in this conversation, she holds nothing back. We talk...
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Rogue Wisdom – The Wait Trap | Ep. 65
You already know who you want to be. You can feel her. She's the woman who moves through her day with energy, who stopped apologising for taking up space, who is done waiting for the right moment to start living her life. So what's actually in the way? In this episode, The Present Day Wise Woman...
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Don’t Do What Is Expected with Cherisa Peace | Ep. 64
From the front lines of Timor-Leste to the local surf break, Cherisa Pearce is a former Army Major with 21 years of service who traded her uniform for a new mission, community, connection, and radical resilience. Now Secretary of the Currumbin Palm Beach RSL Sub-Branch and Chair of the Veterans'...
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Seattle Women’s Chorus with Beth Ann Bonnecroy | Ep. 63
She recorded vocals for World of Warcraft. She sang on film scores. She spent over two decades shaping the voices of young girls through Northwest Girl choir. And her very first date with her husband? A Seattle Men's Chorus holiday concert — in 1989. Now, more than thirty years later, she's...
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What happens to a community when its elders are erased, with Raga D'Silva? | Ep. 62
Raga D'Silva, activist, author, co-creator of Older Queer Voices, and co-founder of the UK's only queer-led speakers' agency, has spent years refusing to let that question go unanswered. A lesbian of Indian origin who came out in her 50s, she knows what invisibility costs. In this conversation…
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Reinvention Real Beauty and Saying Yes to Yourself with Jane McCann | Ep. 61
What started as a joke became a movement. Jane McCann built an audience of 200,000 women not by having it all figured out — but by being radically honest about figuring it out at all. In this conversation, Jane and Jen explore what midlife actually gives you when you stop treating it as something...
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ROGUE WISDOM: REWIREMENT not RETIREMENT | Ep. 60
Jen challenges the concept of retirement, noting its etymology means "to withdraw, pull back, go away." She argues this narrative was built for men working in depleting systems, not for women in midlife who are "just getting started." Rather than fading away gracefully as society expects, women…
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Truth-Telling, Sisterhood and the Power of Story with Anita Heiss | Ep. 59
Anita Heiss is an award-winning author, professor, public intellectual, and proud Wiradjuri woman. She writes romance and joy alongside truth-telling and sovereignty - creating space for urban Black women to be seen in their full humanity. Her new novel, Paradise Pact, is exactly that: a story...
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The Night They Arrested Mardi Gras with Kate Rowe | Ep. 58
The Night They Arrested Mardi Gras with Kate Rowe It was 1978. Kate Rowe was 26, sitting on the bonnet of a truck rolling down Oxford Street, chanting at the top of her lungs. Sydney's very first Mardi Gras. Just one year after coming out to herself. Not a protest, a party. Until the police...
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The Art of Not Slowing Down with Mama See | Ep. 57
Most of the world expects women to put on an 'invisibility cloak' after a certain age, but today’s guest didn't just refuse it—she shredded it. At 72 years young, Lak Nge Mooi—the legendary Mama See—is here to prove that age isn’t a decline; it’s just the beginning. SHOW NOTES Lai shares how she...
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Cricket Grannies Redefining the Golden Years | Ep. 56
Think age is an expiration date? In Uganda, a group of women aged 50 to 79 - affectionately known as the Cricket Grannies - is proving otherwise. Trading traditional retirement for cricket bats at the Jinja Cricket Academy, these women are building a powerhouse community on the shores of Lake...
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Why We Don't Listen to the People Who Love Us Most | Ep. 55
Why is it easier to take life-changing advice from a stranger than from your own mother? In this solo episode, Jennifer cuts to the uncomfortable truth: we don’t reject wisdom because it’s wrong. We reject it because of who it comes from. Drawing on lived experience, cross-cultural insight, and...
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The Courage to Be Fearless with Anita Mattu | Ep. 54
Anita Mattu knows what it means to step out of the shadows. After becoming a primary caregiver at just 24 and later navigating a dyslexia diagnosis, Anita transformed her life’s challenges into a mission for global change. As a Transformation Coach and author, she now helps others dismantle the...
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Perimenopause. Menopause. The midlife transition. With Ann Marie McQueen | Ep. 53
Perimenopause. Menopause. The midlife transition. Somehow still one of the most misunderstood, under-researched, and over-opinionated spaces in women's health. My guest today is on a mission to change that. Ann Marie McQueen is a veteran health journalist, award-winning reporter, and the founder…
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No More Disappearing Andi Osho on Owning Midlife Out Loud | Ep. 52
She's been on your screen, on your bookshelf, and now she's showing up in the perimenopause conversation with the same fearless energy she brings to everything she does.Andi Osho — award-winning actor, bestselling author, and someone I've known for nearly a decade since we met at a Marianne...
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Marathons Mastectomies and Going Topless with Louise Butcher | Ep. 51
Her mammogram was clear, 3 weeks later she had cancer, 6 weeks after the surgery she ran a marathon. Then she took her shirt off and never put it back on. Louise Butcher is an athlete, an advocate, and the author of Going Topless and who is literally stripping away the stigma surrounding breast...
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Unfit to Ultra Endurance Redefining DNF with Heather Rickard | Ep. 50
Transformation has no expiration date. In this episode, we sit down with wellness educator and endurance athlete Heather Rickard (better known as Grannybelle), who didn't even run her first Parkrun until age 58. By 65, she was conquering 100km ultramarathons. Heather joins us to share the raw...
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Reclaiming Your Message with Tamsen Webster | Ep. 49
Stop being invisible. It’s time to say what they can’t unhear. Tamsen Webster is the "Idea Whisperer" behind some of the world’s most powerful TED talks and author of Say What They Can’t Unhear. We explore why the Western world has airbrushed out the Matriarch and how women in midlife can move…
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The Microbiome Matriarch Why Your Internal Dirt Matters with Martha Carlin | Ep. 48
When a Parkinson’s diagnosis left her husband without answers, Martha Carlin taught herself genetics and chemistry to find them. Now a gut science powerhouse, she joins Jennifer to discuss fixing your "internal engine" to reclaim lasting energy and reject the "midlife decline". We dive into how…
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Uncovering the Legend of Amelia Earhart with Rachel Hartigan | Ep. 47
“They say when a woman reaches a certain age, she starts to disappear. But my guest today knows that being ‘lost’ is often just the beginning of a bigger story. Today, I’m joined by investigative powerhouse Rachel Hartigan. A veteran journalist with over a decade at National Geographic, Rachel…
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Why Your Tolerance for Fools Drops Sharply as You Age | Ep. 46
In this raw, unscripted conversation, Jennifer names what so many midlife women feel but are told to dismiss: you’re not angry or “hormonal”, you’re done. Done with nonsense, over-explaining, soothing egos, and tolerating inefficiency. She explains how the natural drop in estrogen isn’t a problem...
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Compassionate Badassery – The Wise Woman In Residence with Dr Alice Mackinnon | Ep. 45
Stop shrinking. Stop rushing. It’s time to inhabit your authority. In this episode, Jennifer Jefferies sits down with writer, emotion coach, and self-described "Stillness Ninja," Dr. Alice Mackinnon. As the co-creator of the Wise Woman in Residence program, Alice is on a mission to help women…
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How One Woman Turned Period Poverty Into a National Movement with Rochelle Courtenay | Ep. 44
No one should have to choose between dignity and basic needs. In this confronting and necessary episode, we sit down with Rochelle Courtenay, the force behind Share the Dignity, the charity that changed how Australia talks about period poverty. What began as a single “check your privilege” moment...
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Resisting Silencing and Reclaiming Women's Power with Wendy Harmer | Ep. 43
From the comedy stage to prime-time radio, Wendy Harmer has spent decades using humour and heart to amplify women’s stories and challenge the status quo. In this conversation, she reflects on her journey as a fearless storyteller, from her first nervous open mic night to becoming one of…
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About this show
This isn’t just another podcast.It’s a reckoning — and a rally cry.Hosted by Jennifer Jefferies — corporate speaker, naturopath, author, and proud midlife disruptor — The Present Day Wise Woman Podcast is where fierce, funny, wise women come to be seen, heard, and celebrated.Because midlife women are ready to stop shrinking and start setting fires.Each episode spotlights women who’ve faced the flames and come back stronger. We talk power, purpose, ageing boldly, speaking up, starting over — and everything they told us to quiet down about.No fluff. No beige. No pretending we’ve got it
Hosted by
Jennifer Jefferies