Making Up For Glossed Time

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Jen Polt• Confidence Coach, Speaker
Inspiring & coaching midlife women
Creator of Your Aunt LBD
Join The Confidence Clubhouse:
https://tinyurl.com/4j4ffe3v

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10/12/2026

Are you in a situationship?

Hi kiddos

Just learned this word from the kids… “Situationship.” It’s a relationship where it’s not quite everything that you want but you keep that person around to fill a void for a while.

Had this conversation with my girlfriend Barbara from down the street. She’s got somebody in her life that she knows is not the right guy for her, but she’s been keeping him around because they have a fun night out once a week, some good chemistry, and she figures it’s better than being lonely.

I told her she’s got herself a placeholder— someone that you know isn’t going to be in your life forever, but you’re allowing to hold space in your life and in your heart until you find the person who is right for you. We do this in romantic relationships and in friendships. Looking at people with rose colored glasses, and holding onto the little glimmers of fun and connection, even though we know deep in our heart that this person is not right for us for the long haul.

But here’s the thing, kiddos. Holding onto people like that is like when you go to one of those fancy dinner parties and someone has assigned all the seats. It’s comforting at first, because you know who you will be sitting with. On the other hand, it may also be a roadblock for you to make new connections, maybe encounter someone who is right for you— who will show up in all of the ways that you need, and love you for all of your awesome. Although keeping placeholders in our life can seem like a good short term fix, in the long-term what they wind up doing is becoming a source of expended energy— and that energy we are spending on them keeps us from being fully gassed up for when we meet someone wonderful.

So take an inventory, kiddos. Divide up the people into your life into “A “people and “B” people. Your “A” people should be people who meet you where you are, who love and support you, who give just as much as they receive. Your “B” people need to be looked at more closely…consider if they are worth your energy.

Maybe ask yourself, “do they love me the way my Aunt LBD does?“
That answer will tell you everything.
Love you, kidd

09/26/2026

Breaking hearts since ‘71. 😜

09/15/2026

How young is too young?

Last week I mentioned that I was going on a date with someone in their 30s, and a lot of you caught onto that. Some of you celebrated me, and quite a few of you said that you’ve been thinking about dating younger, but have had some concerns about their intentions and also about how it will look if you are dating someone who’s not much older than your own children.

Here’s what I’ll say about it: I’m 55 years old and most of my friends are younger than me. I believe that age is an energy and you attract energies into your life that align with yours.

In the last three years that I’ve been single, I have dated mostly men in their 30s and 40s. I don’t look at it as some “ego boost“ for me… I believe it’s because my energy attracts them. I’m fun, I love to live life, I want to go out and experience new things. And I have found that that energy aligns better with men who are younger. Many of the men who I have dated from my generation and older, are sort of stuck in their ways and are expecting someone to be stuck along with them.

I’ve done that. For too many damn years. And I’m going to spend the second half of my life living it the way I want to.
And a guy needs to figure out if he can keep up.

All of my gals who are worried about how it will look if you’re dating someone much younger, I’ll ask you this:

Are you limiting your potential joy based on optics?
Are you really going to walk away from someone who’s potentially a great match for you just because society tells you that you shouldn’t?
And are those opinions coming from people you even give a s**t about?

I’ve spent a lot of of my years worried about what other people thought. I’m no longer worried about who’s age-appropriate for me. I’m going to seek out those who are lifestyle appropriate.

Live a big, full fu***ng life, kiddo. Whatever your age.
And f**k ‘em if they can’t handle it.

Love you 💋
Aunt LBD

09/13/2026

Please, Retta, don’t hurt ‘em

09/12/2026

Rosie went for a 30 second swim today.😂

09/11/2026

Let’s have a heart to heart, kiddo.

It’s September 11, and every year on this day I always take some time to reflect.

I grew up just on the other side of the river from Manhattan. And I have so many memories of standing across the river and looking at New York City and those two majestic towers, standing tall at the southern end of the island. From time to time, I will come across an old picture of me with the skyline behind me and the towers still visible, and my heart will ache just a little bit.

After the towers came down, I remember going home and the first time I saw the skyline, I lost my breath. I could FEEL the loss of them. It was like seeing a family portrait with one person missing. Something didn’t feel right. And it never did after that.

I remember walking the streets in my hometown and all the shop windows were papered with photographs of the lost, the missing. Loved ones that would never be found. There was a heaviness in the air. It lingered for a long time.

People were angry, tensions were high, it was a painful, painful time. And a lot of people wanted someone to blame—so they turned to people who looked like the people they saw on the news. Whose names sounded similar, who came from the same place. Seeing the backlash toward that community was heartbreaking.

But what I also remember…was the love.

This feeling of community— where people slowed down, took their time, and were kinder and gentler with each other. I was proud to be an American then. That’s what I thought America was supposed to feel like.

I don’t know what happened, and I can’t pinpoint when it did, but that has changed. We are suspicious of each other, trying to read someone’s intentions and motives and beliefs, just by looking at them. We’ve lost sight of each other, and of ourselves.

We lost the love.

I hope, deep in my heart, that it’s not too late to get it back. I gotta believe that it isn’t. Because the alternative is just too hard to bear.

I love you, kiddo. ♥️

09/08/2026

No one asked you, sir.

Yesterday, I was telling the story about my decision to stop seeing Tony the Butcher. And this stugots rolled up into my comment section to offer up his ‘never asked for’ male perspective. (I have since blocked him because it’s one thing to disagree with me, but it’s another thing to insult My Kiddos in the comment section and I won’t stand for it.)

This kind of s**t fires me up because it’s messaging that us girls have been given our entire life— that we are not allowed to set boundaries, that we should always give someone the benefit of the doubt, a second chance, a sixth chance.

That our love should be unconditional.

F**k that.

I don’t believe in unconditional love. I believe that you should absolutely put conditions on access to your love. I’m not saying build walls… I’m saying build guard rails. Make it clear for everyone how they need to behave in order to be given the gift of your love.

After 55 years of living, I know what all of that old messaging has done to me: it kept me in relationships where I was only getting crumbs when I deserved the whole cake. It made me think that because I was the more emotionally intelligent one, that because I had done the work, I had the empathy to see why they might be acting this way or treating me unkindly.

That it was up to me to love them through their stuff.

And couple that with the guilt that women are often given when we do decide to set boundaries… well, that’s a s**t sandwich I’m no longer eating.

Tony is a good man. I know this. But he’s not a ready man.
Both things can be true.

However, I am no longer giving All Access Passes to my heart to men who haven’t accumulated the emotional currency to get one.

Set the boundary, girls. Guilt free.😘

09/07/2026

A story to be continued…

Hey kiddos. I know a lot of of you started following me when I told you about Tony the butcher asking me out on a date. And it’s been sweet how invested all of you have been in the potential of our budding relationship.

I ran into him over the weekend, and unfortunately, I think the potential is not quite what I thought it was.

Tony admitted to me that he still has some walls up after his divorce, some stuff he still has to work through. And from what I can tell, he isn’t doing much to work through that stuff except waiting for it to sort of work itself out on its own.

And these days, that’s not enough for me.

You see, kiddo, I’ve been that gal for most of my life— I’d see the potential in someone, latch onto that, and ignore what they were telling me every day to my face. I would take someone telling me the truth about the limits of what they could be for me, and I would see it as an opportunity instead of an admission. And then my empathetic side would kick in and think that I could love them through their stuff.

Here’s the thing, kiddo— people aren’t broken birds. We’re not supposed to pick them up, put them in a soft little box, and wait for them to heal on their own. People have the resources to help their own healing before they bring their broken wings to someone else. And I am no longer in the habit of tending to broken birds, no matter how beautiful they may be.

I’m not saying that this is the end necessarily, but it’s definitely on pause. Because seeing him, even casually, is going to put me in that energy of trying to “help“ him. I know me well enough to know that. And I also know that men really like that about me— I’m a good listener, I give good advice, and I’m quick to offer my heart to someone who hasn’t quite earned it yet.

This is my reciprocity era, kiddos. I can’t do one-sided anymore. And I don’t think you should either. We deserve someone who is going to work on themselves as much as they work on their relationship with us. And who don’t expect us to just sit around and wait for them to figure things out.

So, I get to keep Tony as a friend. And I get to still go t

09/03/2026

You probably don’t want to hear this.

I have had MANY conversations with clients and friends trying to build a brand online, and here’s what I have heard:

“I don’t want to be on camera.”
“I don’t want to be known for the bad thing that happened to me.”
“I don’t want to talk about ‘my stuff’ online.”

And I get it. And I know what they want me to say—they want me to tell them that they don’t have to be on camera, that they can just share the stuff they WANT to share—all of the positive/informational/wisdom/“wow” content, and that will build their brand.

But after 6 years of building a brand literally from scratch, and all of the trials and tribulations that have come along with it—all of the research, all of the courses I took about social media content, all of the advice I’ve followed—I can tell you that the one thing that built my brand wasn’t my editing, my hooks, my messaging, or my knowledge.

IT WAS MY VULNERABILITY.

Yes, I have wisdom. Yes, I have experience. Yes, I have good content and things that help people build their confidence. I’m good at what I do.

But I know WHY they wanted to listen to me—it was because I was vulnerable. I was willing to share the ugly stuff, the ridiculous things, the times when imposter syndrome creeped in, the times when I felt frustrated and unmotivated. When I showed up on the Internet without a stitch of makeup on. When I shared about getting dumped at my kitchen island by my husband 3 weeks after I walked away from my big corporate job to bet on myself. I have cried many times on the internet—something I once thought was cringy, was something that connected people to me.

People BELIEVED that I would be a good coach for them because I had been through it myself.

I became a GUIDE instead of a coach.

And in a world of AI, that’s the one thing that will make your brand stand out. Put the PERSONAL in personal brand.

And if you need help building your confidence in your brand, comment CONFIDENCE below.

09/01/2026

This blew my mind.

In my coaching membership for women over 40, The Confidence Clubhouse, I bring in guest coaches to share their wisdom with the community.

A couple weeks ago, Samantha Brand, did an incredible session about journaling. And something that she said in that session cracked my head open.

Listen, I always wanted to be “journal girl.“ To have volumes of handwritten accounts of my thoughts, my dreams, my escapades, etc. I like to think that I’m cool enough to fill books full of my thoughts.

But I’ve never been consistent. I would get on a journaling kick for a few weeks, forget to journal for a couple days, then go down some shame spiral about being a few days behind and then stop.

As I was telling Sam that I’ve never been consistent in my journaling, I was quick to correct myself— I’ve actually been very consistent for the last six years—here, with all of you.

As she was quick to point out, journaling doesn’t have to be writing things down. It can be video, it can be voice notes or emails or text messages to yourself. The way you outward process is irrelevant. It’s the process that matters.

And then she said the thing that hasn’t left me:

when you are in a consistent journaling practice, your voice becomes the loudest in your head.

And when she said that I made the connection: here I am at 55, feeling the most confident I have ever felt. I have built a business around confidence. And all of that was built while I was outwardly journaling my life, thoughts and feelings to all of you. Doing that drowned out all of the other voices— friends, family, coworkers, trolls on the Internet— and has built this unshakable and unf**kwitable sense of self in me. I am proof positive that what Sam shows people in her journaling workshops is true.

So, Sammie inspired a month-long journaling discovery that we will be doing in The Clubhouse. To join us, comment CONFIDENCE.

And to be sure to check out Sammy’s workshops: Samantha Brand

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