In this conversation, Rebecca walks Karen through the four-year sleep struggle with her young son that no traditional method could solve, and the empathy-based breakthrough that became the foundation of “The Growing Bed.” She talks candidly about what those four years actually felt like inside her household, the thousands of dollars spent on sleep trainers, the methods tried and abandoned, and the dawning realization that her son was the only one of the three of them doing fine. She also walks through the surprisingly approachable path from idea to published book: a colleague’s warm introduction to a publisher, a brief pitch that landed faster than she expected, an illustrator who backed out when COVID hit, and a second illustrator she found on a gig platform who became a true creative partner across thousands of miles.

Takeaways

You can become something you never planned on becoming, and it often starts with one small yes from a person who happens to be in the right room at the right time.
Empathy-based parenting can work where traditional sleep methods fail, but only once a child is developmentally ready to understand that their choices affect other people.
A warm introduction to a publisher can move you faster than years of cold submissions, and a thoughtful conceptual pitch is often enough to earn the first yes.
Imposter syndrome quiets down once you have hard evidence of yourself doing the hard thing, and that evidence tends to compound across unrelated areas of your life.
Modeling lifelong learning in front of your children, whether through piano lessons, public speaking, or a published book, teaches them more about identity than any conversation ever could.

Sound bites

“The only thing you have to lose by putting your idea out there is time.”

“If I can make Beef Wellington, I can make anything.”

“I wish I hadn’t waited so long. But I had to wait for the idea and the timing to be right for my son.”

“Mom’s not just mom. Mom’s not just the resident Uber driver. She’s still a person, and she’s still learning.”

Inside the Conversation

The job she fell into with a red Sharpie and a glass of wine.

Rebecca’s twenty-plus-year career in talent acquisition did not come from a master plan. She was in a sales role she disliked, came home one night with a bottle of wine she had been trying to sell, sat down with a newspaper and a red Sharpie at the kitchen table, and started circling jobs. The one line in the ad that caught her attention was “must be willing to travel.” She had a passport and no obligations, so she said yes. Two decades later, she is still recruiting the designers behind cars she could never draw herself. The story is small, but it sets the tone for everything that follows: Rebecca’s life has been shaped less by grand strategy and more by saying yes to the next interesting thing in front of her.

Four years of not sleeping, and the moment everything shifted.

Rebecca and her husband tried what felt like everything. Sleep trainers, methods, hundreds of dollars at a time, all the traditional approaches a tired parent reaches for. Her son was four years old before he slept through the night reliably. As she puts it in the episode, if someone had told her to bathe him in a pool of Jell-O she would have asked what flavor. The shift, when it came, was not another technique aimed at the child. It was a conversation. Rebecca and her husband sat their son down and honestly explained what happens to mom and dad when nobody in the house sleeps. His empathy kicked in. So did his developing desire to be a big kid. That conversation, and the bedtime concept that grew out of it, became “The Growing Bed.”

Why this is not another cry-it-out book.

Karen and Rebecca dig into the developmental reason this approach works. The same explanation will not land on a six-month-old, but for a child old enough to understand that their parents are people with needs, the empathy-based approach unlocks something cry-it-out never could. It also travels. The same concept works on vacation, at grandma’s house, at sleepovers, and during the inevitable regressions that come with a new sibling, a move, or any other big life change. Rebecca describes it as the book you hope you will never need, but probably will at some point.

The publisher who said yes, and the illustrator who said no.

The path to publication started with one warm introduction from a colleague who had recently been signed. Rebecca pitched her concept verbally to the publisher, who happened to have seven grandchildren and immediately recognized what the idea would have done for her own family. She offered Rebecca a yes on the spot and asked for the manuscript. Rebecca, who did not yet have a manuscript, went home and started writing. COVID arrived shortly after and quietly extended every deadline, which she now sees as a gift to a first-time author. Her original illustrator pulled out when gig work felt too unstable, so she found a second illustrator on a freelance platform who turned out to be a generous collaborator who treated the book as hers. The whole arc is a master class in how often a “lucky break” is actually the result of being ready when a small door opens.

Imposter syndrome, and the friends who tell you the truth.

Rebecca is direct about the inner voice that says there are already a million books on every topic, who am I to add another one. Her counter is equally direct. There are a million cookbooks, a million parenting books, a million books on everything, and your version still matters because different messages land for different readers. She also makes a quiet but important point about feedback. Talk about your idea casually with the right people, not as a pitch but as a conversation, and the right people will tell you the truth. If you do not have those people in your life, do it the old-fashioned way and send the first three pages to a publisher. Either way, you will get the honest signal you need to keep going or to redirect.

What happens after you do the thing.

The deepest part of the conversation is what Rebecca describes as the after-effect of finishing the book. Becoming an author was never on her bucket list, but completing something she did not believe she could do reframed everything else. At 47 she sat down at a piano recital, an instrument she taught herself alongside her son, who briefly got further in the lesson book than she did. A TED talk is now on her list. A master’s degree she does not need but has always wanted is now on her list. And underneath all of it is the lesson she traces back to making Rachel Ray’s individual Beef Wellingtons as a newlywed who could not cook: if I can do this one fancy, intimidating thing, what else can I do.

The model her son is watching.

Rebecca is clear-eyed about what her son is absorbing in real time. He is not just watching his mom drive carpool and pack lunches and pour a glass of wine at the end of the day. He is watching her learn an instrument badly, then less badly, then well enough to perform. He is watching her hold a book she wrote. He is watching a woman become more of herself in the middle of her life, not less. That, more than any single parenting technique, is the quiet message of this episode.

Rebecca closes with a message for anyone sitting on an idea they keep talking themselves out of. The only thing you stand to lose is time, she says, and the confidence you gain from doing one hard thing tends to ripple into every other corner of your life. Her own evidence is a published children’s book, a piano recital performed at 47, a TED talk and a master’s degree both newly on her radar, and a quietly growing list of bucket-list items she now believes are within reach. The throughline is simple: do the thing, and let the thing show you what else is possible.

Connect with Rebecca

Find “The Growing Bed” signed and personalized at thegrowingbed.com, or pick it up at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and Walmart.

Join the SWW list: Stories, resources, and more for women riding their second wind. [list link]

What Karen is offering right now: secondwindwomen.com/now

Keywords

accidental author, children’s book author, empathy-based parenting, sleep struggles toddler, talent acquisition career, midlife reinvention, second career, imposter syndrome, publishing a children’s book, working mom author, bucket list goals at midlife, Rebecca Linney The Growing Bed