The Midst is a community bringing together women over 40 who play by their own rules together. As a collective, we’re in the midst of life pivots, career and relationship upgrades, building businesses, perimenopause, and more juicy stuff. Together, we’re shaping the messy middle into a time of growth, exploration, and possibility.
On September 18, women from around the U.S. will meet in Pasadena to connect with new friends, share their ideas and experiences, and learn from inspiring leaders. Many of us are professionals, creatives, parents, partners, and community builders who enjoy connecting with like-minded women. A growing number of women in The Midst community are building businesses, a second rodeo, a body of work, or life as a solopreneur or portfolio worker.
Join us September 18, from 2–6 p.m.
Justina Blakeney will join me in a conversation about how she’s grown The Jungalow from a one-person creative to an international design brand and beyond.
Justina will sign copies of GROW: Pathways to Passion, Purpose & Peace (available for purchase at the event).
Bring your business cards or promo cards! We’re setting up a display table for everyone to share info about their projects and services.
Stay tuned for a soon-to-be-announced panel of more inspiring women founders and creators.
$55 includes light refreshments
Heads-up! We anticipate tickets will sell out, so don’t wait until the last minute!
About Justina Blakeney
Justina Blakeney is a multidisciplinary designer, artist, and New York Times bestselling author whose work lives at the intersection of creativity, color, and culture. She’s best known as the founder of Jungalow®, a pioneering lifestyle brand that began as a personal blog and blossomed into a global movement grounded in the belief that home should be a reflection of who we are: vibrant, layered, and alive.
Raised in California by a culturally blended family with roots and seeds scattered around the world, Justina’s perspective has always been expansive, drawing on nature, intuition, and pattern as tools for storytelling and self-expression. She helped crack open the design world, making space for color, culture, and personal story in a field long dominated by minimalism and sameness.
Whether she’s painting, designing, making, or writing, Justina’s creative practice is an ever-evolving multi-magical experiment. Her newest works include a body of fine artwork that explores themes of identity and regeneration and Grow: Pathways to Passion, Purpose, and Peace, a book and oracle deck co-authored with her mother, developmental psychologist Dr. Ronnie Blakeney.
Justina’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue, Architectural Digest, and Elle Decor, and she was named to Architectural Digest’s AD100 list. She’s shared her insights on stages and podcasts including: SXSW, New York Times Live at Home, Unlocking Us with Brené Brown, and We Can Do Hard Things. Through her art, books, speaking engagements, social platforms (where she’s built a combined audience of over 3 million), she shares not only her vibrant aesthetic but the deeper philosophies that fuel her work: joy as resistance, nature as healer, and creativity as a vital force for both personal and planetary wellness.
She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Jason, their wildly creative kiddo Ida, two mystical, mischievous cats named Juju and Nova, and a lush indoor jungle that serves as both muse and mirror — for a life spiraling upward.
About the venue, Altadena Girls
Altadena Girls is a 501c3 charity and social movement to support teenage girls who lost their homes and belongings in the Eaton Canyon Fire. When you purchase a ticket to this Midst event, you are helping Altadena Girls provide teen girls with the essentials, emotional support, and community that they need to feel empowered, especially during times of crisis, recovery, and change.
About Emily Wagner
Moderator of our soon-to-be-announced panel about the modern midlife experience
You might remember Emily from her role on ER as paramedic Doris Pickman.
Emily Wagner is a midlife health and wellness editor, writer, fitness trainer, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Groomed LA, where she covers wellness, fitness, aesthetics, menopause, and the realities of growing older through a smart, funny, and deeply personal lens.
For years, Emily has reported on the issues affecting women in midlife while also working directly with women as a trainer, helping them navigate changing bodies, strength, energy, confidence, and the often confusing flood of information surrounding this chapter. Her work brings together extensive editorial experience, firsthand knowledge, humor, and an understanding of what women are actually experiencing in their daily lives.
She is also the founder of Micropause, a line of daily wellness gummies made with functional mushrooms, adaptogens, and botanicals to support women through perimenopause and midlife. With products like Girls Gone Mild, So Mush Support, and All Glown Up, Micropause was one of the earliest midlife wellness brands to leave menopause beige behind and welcome women into their “Give Zero Fucks Era.”
A lifelong storyteller, Emily is currently creating Emily Is a Magnet for Miracles, a darkly funny short-form series launching on Instagram. The series explores what it means to arrive at midlife supposedly having everything figured out, only to feel completely lost, professionally invisible, and increasingly suspicious that everyone else received a script for adulthood that you somehow missed. Through comedy, it takes on reinvention, aging, online performance, self-worth, and the deeply human experience of still trying to become yourself while pretending you already know exactly who that is.
Interested in sponsoring this event?
Email me at amy@the-midst.com for more information.
About me, your host
I’m Amy Schroeder, Founder of The Midst, a thriving community for women over 40. The Midst is part media, part community, and part entrepreneurial mastermind groups.
I’m a serial entrepreneur and founded my first business, a magazine called Venus, at 19 and sold the company before 30. After that, I led content strategy for Etsy, Minted, Writer AI, Unusual Ventures, and other organizations.
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