Well, we made it to another 18th episode! Sort of. We are re-releasing part of Episode 18 from Season 1 “The #!!@*&% Holidays” with an updated beginning section reflecting on 2024 and our intentions for 2025. We wish everyone a happy holiday season as we prepare for whatever 2025 will bring our way!

RBL hosts Samantha and Cathy are both single, over 50 and living in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, Rust Belt, USA. They have lots of feelings, thoughts and questions about love, friendship, relationships, family, single life, dating and more…

Samantha is a master’s level independently licensed clinical social worker supervisor, licensed chemical dependency counselor supervisor and DBT-Lineham Board Certified Therapist with over 20 years of experience in field of mental health therapy. She has two children.

Cathy is a program manager in a local healthcare system and is a certified yoga instructor and coach. She has four children.

Subscribe and tune in to hear their stories and conversations about life and relationships. Find and follow Rust Belt Love on Instagram @RBLovePod

Podcast music: Outside Friend https://on.soundcloud.com/W197DLsn7WDGrJDo9

Podcast artwork: Good Parts @goodpartscle

Samantha’s friend and former colleague, Joanna Hardis, LISW-S, joins the pod to talk about her new book “Just Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of Your Way”. Joanna is a local cognitive behavioral therapist who treats adults with anxiety disorders and OCD spectrum disorder. As you will hear, her book came from her own personal situation, when she had to apply the skills she teaches others to herself and her life. As relates to mid-life dating and relationships (and just life in general), she shares tips and tools in her book and in her (free!) mini-course for identifying what makes you anxious and the resulting reactions and behaviors that have become your automatic response through the years which may not be serving you well. She shares that you can train yourself to “do nothing” when chaotic feelings and thoughts start coming up so that you can better engage in experiences and situations that you might normally avoid or try to control.

Website: www.joannahardis.com

Instagram: @joannahardis
RBL hosts Samantha and Cathy are both single, over 50 and living in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, Rust Belt, USA.

Samantha is a master’s level independently licensed clinical social worker supervisor, licensed chemical dependency counselor supervisor and DBT-Lineham Board Certified Therapist with over 20 years of experience in field of mental health therapy. She has two children.

Cathy is a program manager in a local healthcare system and is a certified yoga instructor and coach. She has four children.

Find and follow Rust Belt Love on Instagram @RBLovePod

Podcast music: Outside Friend https://on.soundcloud.com/W197DLsn7WDGrJDo9

Podcast artwork: Good Parts @goodpartscle

Today we welcome the exExperts, T.H. Irwin and Jessica Herzberg to Rust Belt Love. They are long time BFFs who got divorced at the same time and were lucky to have each other through the process. So, to pay it forward, they organized their divorce experiences and advice into a website chock full of information and resources, an online support network, a coaching program, a weekly newsletter, a web series and a podcast that helps folks who are thinking about getting divorced, are in the middle of divorcing and for those on the other side of divorce. And they are fun to spend an hour with and very honest about what they’ve been through and where their lives are now. Find exExperts on social media—links below:

Website: www.exexperts.com

Podcast

Instagram: @exexperts

TikTok: @exexperts

RBL hosts Samantha and Cathy are both single, over 50 and living in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, Rust Belt, USA.

Samantha is a master’s level independently licensed clinical social worker supervisor, licensed chemical dependency counselor supervisor and DBT-Lineham Board Certified Therapist with over 20 years of experience in field of mental health therapy. She has two children.

Cathy is a program manager in a local healthcare system and is a certified yoga instructor and coach. She has four children.

Subscribe and tune in to hear their stories and conversations about life and relationships.

Find and follow Rust Belt Love on Instagram @RBLovePod

Podcast music: Outside Friend https://on.soundcloud.com/W197DLsn7WDGrJDo9

Podcast artwork: Good Parts @goodpartscle

Cathy’s brother and sister-in-law join the pod to share their story of being the parents of two amazing kids, one who happens to be a highly competitive, skilled, and elite diver. From junior and high school levels to D1 college athletics and two Olympic trials, she excelled in the 10 meter platform event but has now moved on to medical school and hung up her shammy towel, leaving her parents to figure out what to do with their lives…

RBL hosts Samantha and Cathy are both single, over 50 and living in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, Rust Belt, USA. They have lots of feelings, thoughts and questions about love, friendship, relationships, family, single life, dating and more…

Samantha is a master’s level independently licensed clinical social worker supervisor, licensed chemical dependency counselor supervisor and DBT-Lineham Board Certified Therapist with over 20 years of experience in field of mental health therapy. She has two children.

Cathy is a program manager in a local healthcare system and is a certified yoga instructor and coach. She has four children.

Subscribe and tune in to hear their stories and conversations about life and relationships. Find and follow Rust Belt Love on Instagram @RBLovePod

Podcast music: Outside Friend https://on.soundcloud.com/W197DLsn7WDGrJDo9

Podcast artwork: Good Parts @goodpartscle

Today’s guest is Alison Battaglia, PhD, a fabulous single woman with paraplegia. She talks with us about her marriage, divorce, and dating and shares her mid-life revelations about managing the intrusive questions and indecencies she’s been subjected to daily for almost 40 years—and take note, she has some really great come-backs. She is reflective on her life experiences and resiliency and optimistic and excited about her next chapters in love, life and career.

You can find Alison

Instagram @alibattaglia Facebook: alison.battaglia.1 Dr.ali@globalcai.com

RBL hosts Samantha and Cathy are both single, over 50 and living in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, Rust Belt, USA. They have many feelings, thoughts and questions about love, friendship, relationships, family, single life, dating and more…

Samantha is a master’s level independently licensed clinical social worker supervisor, licensed chemical dependency counselor supervisor and DBT-Lineham Board Certified Therapist with over 20 years of experience in field of mental health therapy. She has two children.

Cathy is a program manager in a local healthcare system and is a certified yoga instructor and coach. She has four children.

Subscribe and tune in to hear their stories and conversations about life and relationships. Find and follow Rust Belt Love on nInstagram @RBLovePod

Podcast music: Outside Friend https://on.soundcloud.com/W197DLsn7WDGrJDo9

Podcast artwork: Good Parts @goodpartscle

Menopause and aging are coming out of the shadows with Gen X and Boomer celebrities talking candidly about it publicly and on social media and women reacting to ageist and misogynistic commentary making too many headlines these days. To start a conversation about this, we asked Dr. Sheryl Kingsberg to join us. She is a clinical psychologist and researcher at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center where she is the Chief of the Division on Behavioral Medicine in the Department of OB-GYN and professor of reproductive biology, urology and psychiatry at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She is an expert in female sexual disorders, menopause and reproductive mental health and has been working in this field for over 30 years.

Tune in to learn about GSM (genitourinary symptoms of menopause), which she says 50-80% of women will develop symptoms of, and HSDD (hypoactive sexual desire disorder) and the array of treatments we are likely not even aware of.

More about Sheryl Kingsberg, PhD

University Hospitals' menopause site

Dr. Jen Gunter ("Vagenda" newsletter) instagram @drjengunter

Terms and medications mentioned in this episode:

Intrarosa, Estradiol, Vagifem, Ospemifene, SERM (selective estrogen receptor modulator), Addyi, Vyleesi, AndroGel, Veozah, WASO (wake after sleep onset)

RBL hosts Samantha and Cathy are both single, over 50 and living in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, Rust Belt, USA. They have lots of feelings, thoughts and questions about love, friendship, relationships, family, single life, dating and more…

Samantha is a master’s level independently licensed clinical social worker supervisor, licensed chemical dependency counselor supervisor and DBT-Lineham Board Certified Therapist with over 20 years of experience in field of mental health therapy. She has two children.

Cathy is a program manager in a local healthcare system and is a certified yoga instructor and coach. She has four children.

Subscribe and tune in to hear their stories and conversations about life and relationships. Find and follow Rust Belt Love on Instagram @RBLovePod

Podcast music: Outside Friend https://on.soundcloud.com/W197DLsn7WDGrJDo9

Podcast artwork: Good Parts @goodpartscle

Jennie Young, PhD, is the founder of the Burned Haystack Dating Method (BHDM) and a writer and Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin. She explores rhetoric, language and metaphor analysis and how it applies to dating in this day and age. She is also a daughter of the Rust Belt, a feminist and prolific at using social media to get the word out about BHDM. We talk about the 10 BHDM rules, a few of the rhetorical patterns found in communications and profiles of men on the apps as well as the growing movement her method has fostered.

Jennie Young on Instagram @word_case_scenario

BHDM private Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/9116647515019601

Jennie’s Substack: https://burnedhaystack.substack.com/

RBL hosts Samantha and Cathy are both single, over 50 and living in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, Rust Belt, USA. They have lots of feelings, thoughts and questions about love, friendship, relationships, family, single life, dating and more…

Samantha is a master’s level independently licensed clinical social worker supervisor, licensed chemical dependency counselor supervisor and DBT-Lineham Board Certified Therapist with over 20 years of experience in field of mental health therapy. She has two children.

Cathy is a program manager in a local healthcare system and is a certified yoga instructor and coach. She has four children.

Subscribe and tune in to hear their stories and conversations about life and relationships.

Find and follow Rust Belt Love on Instagram @RBLovePod

Email us: rblove@rustbeltloveohio.net

Podcast music: Outside Friend https://on.soundcloud.com/W197DLsn7WDGrJDo9

Podcast artwork: Good Parts @goodpartscle

Cathy and her childhood neighbor and BFF, Kirsten, reconnected a few years ago on Facebook after having lost touch for 30 (ish) years. The first thing Cathy noticed was that Kirsten was recently married and the man she married was the young man Cathy vividly remembered Kirsten being crazy for in high school. Kirsten shares her story of finding her way back to her first love, both having been through a few marriages and some hard times. She talks about what is different in their relationship now and how it's working out, eleven years in.

RBL hosts Samantha and Cathy are both single, over 50 and living in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, Rust Belt, USA. They have lots of feelings, thoughts and questions about love, friendship, relationships, family, single life, dating and more…

Samantha is a master’s level independently licensed clinical social worker supervisor, licensed chemical dependency counselor supervisor and DBT-Lineham Board Certified Therapist with over 20 years of experience in field of mental health therapy. She has two children.

Cathy is a program manager in a local healthcare system and is a certified yoga instructor and coach. She has four children.

Subscribe and tune in to hear their stories and conversations about life and relationships.

Find and follow Rust Belt Love on Instagram @RBLovePod

Email us: rblove@rustbeltloveohio.net

Podcast music: Outside Friend https://on.soundcloud.com/W197DLsn7WDGrJDo9

Podcast artwork: Good Parts @goodpartscle