Sometimes life brings you to a place where you feel detached from the person you once were, and it takes an unexpected, sometimes tumultuous turn of events to connect with her again.
That happened to Laura Friedman Williams in 2018, when she found out her husband of 22 years had been having an affair and considering leaving her. The 47-year-old mother of three was devastated. For more than two decades she had been a devoted wife and parent, but her picture-perfect world was now crumbling. She no longer recognized herself or the life she and her husband had built together.
Months after the separation, Laura found herself doing something she never would have imagined: embarking on a journey of self discovery and healing—fueled by the sexual curiosity she’d never had a chance to explore in her youth. With a renewed erotic appetite and a desire to find herself again, she slept with 10 men in eight months and wrote about the encounters in her memoir, Available: A Very Honest Account of Life After Divorce.
In this candid episode, Laura opens up about:
- How she overcame mom guilt, gave herself permission to tend to her own needs as a woman, and reawakened parts of herself that had become dormant
- Why she felt desperate when she first started dating in midlife, and how she got over it
- What she felt she had to prove—both to herself and her children—in the aftermath of the separation
- Why she doesn’t want to be in another long-term monogamous relationship (at least not right now)
- Why she says the events of the past four years have made her a more open-minded, less judgmental human being
Laura’s story proves that sometimes, just when you think your story’s over, it’s actually just beginning…and that the beauty of midlife is getting to choose your own path forward even after you’ve been shattered.
You can find Laura on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Medium.
In this episode, we talk about another book that inspired Laura (and apparently, a few of my other podcast guests!):
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön.
This episode was edited by Ryan B. Jo.
