✨The Empress Questionnaire: CK Steefel Welcomes You to the Meet-Cute ✨👑
Friendship, Faith, and Laughing Through the Long Middle
✨ A vibrant space for midlife women, The Empress now reaches over two million readers through our networks of networks. ✨ From bestselling author Alisa Kennedy Jones. ✨ If you enjoy content about midlife, humor, and agency, I’d love to welcome you as part of our community. ✨ For only $50/year ($4.17 a month!) or $5/month, you’ll gain access to all my articles, Monday columns, book clubs, and virtual events.
Fellow Empresses, Welcome to another EQ—our last of 2025! 🎉
I’m trying to remember exactly how I met C.K., and the truth is—I can’t. Which feels oddly right. Some friendships don’t arrive with a meet-cute so much as a quiet recognition, like realizing you’ve been speaking the same language all along. Maybe it’s because we both passed through NYU in neighboring eras. Maybe it’s because we’re comedy writers trying to excavate the funny during what are, by any reasonable metric, very dark times. Maybe it’s chronic health stuff. Or maybe it’s just that there is so much loneliness out there, and you can spot a kindred nervous system from across the room.
People often ask me to characterize comedy writers, to name what makes them work. What I recognized immediately in C.K. is something I’ve seen in performers like Jean Smart and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Like Jean, C.K. knows how to relax into a bit—how restraint can actually heighten the joke. Like Julia, she’s fearless about the physical, goofball absurdity of being human. She commits. Fully. And that commitment opens up new ways of seeing a moment, a marriage, a body, a life.
But underneath the comedy—the sharp timing, the self-awareness, the jokes that land sideways—you find someone deeply invested in family, ritual, and creating a sense of belonging. And that, to me, feels essential right now. Especially in midlife. Especially in a culture that keeps telling us to optimize instead of connect.
This week’s Empress Questionnaire is with C.K.—a writer, performer, empty nester, and strategic badass (you’ll meet Yael). Her answers are funny, tender, embodied, and wise in that sneaky way that only comedy can be. I’m so glad she’s here.
About C.K.
C.K. wrote, produced, and performed an award-winning one-woman comedy, which received the Backstage Bistro Award (New York) and a Top Ten Best New Plays in the Village View (Los Angeles). She optioned her first screenplay, which placed second in the Diane Thomas Screenwriting Award organized by Amblin Entertainment and UCLA. She was later commissioned to write a romantic comedy, based on an original concept she created. C.K.’s comedy, “PTA Wars,” was a semifinalist in two comedy festivals and was optioned. Her spiritual/family script, “Emails From Heaven,” was a quarter-finalist in the Table Read My Screenplay-Park City and the International Faith and Family Screenwriting Competition and is currently a quarter-finalist in the Page Turner Screenwriting Competition.
CK has been published in Defenestration Magazine and Chicken Soup for the Soul, and maybe more if she carved out the time to submit. She is currently developing comedic videos on IG, TikTok, and figuring out aspect ratio on YouTube. She writes personal, mostly humorous, essays and interviews Funny AF Women on her Substack, Good Humor. She is currently working on a gift/humor book and a historical fiction novel.
Extreme Seinfeld fans know her as Gucci in the episode, “The Keys,” and Sylvia in “The Cigar Store Indian.”
C.K. received her B.F.A. from New York University and is a joyfully married empty nester. She’s still waiting for her kids to text her back.
About Good Humor
Humor, marriage, family, and anti-inflammatories. Still waiting for my son to text me back. I now have an upstairs and downstairs Tylenol bottle.
1. What is your idea of perfect midlife happiness?
Having Shabbat dinner with my family. Hubby and I just moved to the East Coast to be closer to our grown kids. For years, it was just hubby and me lighting candles, me baking challah for him (I’m gluten-free), and celebrating the Sabbath every week. But now I get to spend it with my kids—and they love my challah. I wasn’t expecting to see them more than once a month, but it’s been surprisingly often. I’ve adopted the Sally Field euphoria. They like me! They really, really like me!
2. Which empress, queen, goddess, or mythical figure do you most identify with?
I’ve always put a lot of significance on the names we are given. They are divine. Carissa means “loving” in Greek. I strive every day to live up to that name.
For this Empress purpose, I thought about my Hebrew name, Yael. I had no idea who she was until I looked her up for this interview. Yael was a little-known warrior in the Torah (Old Testament). The famous Jewish scholar, Rashi, said that Yael’s actions were “more blessed than those of the Matriarchs.” She helped the Israelites defeat the Canaanites by slaying their General, Sisera. Yael, in Hebrew, means “mountain goat,” which symbolizes bravery, agility, and independence. I hope these qualities deepen within me as I grow older—without the “goatee.” I am post menopause after all. I now keep tweezers in my purse.
3. Which living midlife woman do you most admire? (And why?)
My sister, Vicki. Her self-awareness and badassery are inspiring and contagious. She was diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast Cancer (found in her spine), yet she continues on a path of enlightenment and self-discovery. She shares her knowledge with anyone who wants to listen. And she knows a lot! After her first bout with the disease, she became a breast cancer advocate and started a charity. With everything she’s going through, she’s still a great listener, even if I whine about an ingrown toenail.
4. What aspect of midlife or the peri/menopausal journey do you most deplore?
I had to have a radical hysterectomy and oophorectomy. Losing all my baby-making parts changed me. While I was thrilled that I couldn’t get pregnant at 54, hello Naomi Campbell, I worried about the forced renovation of my vajayjay. Would I need new paint and spackle? Restoration of that room was not in the This Old House catalog. (Thanks, Alisa, for the redecorating prompt.)
5. What do you most treasure or value about this phase of life?
The little things I used to take for granted. My chargeable tea mug. An empty dishwasher. And when it was hubby who emptied that dishwasher. These are everyday miracles.
I especially value it when I wake up, and there isn’t a new pain in my joints or muscles. With these physical changes, there’s a comfort in my soul, an acceptance of who I am and what is important to me. I used to say that my husband knows me better than me. Now I feel like I finally know myself best. My honesty is more forthcoming. I can now admit that I wasn’t listening when hubby was telling me about the wrench he needed at Home Depot.
6. If you could share one key midlife lesson, hack, or nugget of wisdom, what would it be?
Amelia Bassano (the true author of Shakespeare—hehehe) said, “To mourn the mischief that is past and gone is the next way to mourn new mischief on.” The modern version would be, Move on, bub. If the past doesn’t serve you, let it go.
Also, don’t let the dinner dishes sit overnight; you might get ants, food stuck on your favorite roasting pan, you’ll be scrubbing the next morning, you’ll have to buy Dawn because the environmentally friendly product doesn’t work...
7. What gives you the greatest sense of agency in midlife? (i.e., “Knowing that I can…”)
I can fail and still get out of bed. I can succeed and will still be loved. I can achieve a Zen state while peeling the shell of a hard-boiled egg.
8. Give us the headline for your Empress Age. (one that captures the bold narrative you are rewriting for the latter half of your life)
“Life is short, but you don’t have to be in a hurry to live it. And—I’m never too old to try something new—except for a hip hop class.”
CK’s Empress Edit!
My chargeable mug that keeps my tea hot for a couple of hours.
A picture of hubby when he was about 7 and chubby, and wore a bolero for the school photo (OK, we know this isn’t Jeffrey, but it is a bolero as worn by a Matador—so perhaps, use your writerly imaginations?)
My teal throw blanket—yes, I still have a blankie.
Simple Mills gluten and dairy-free Chocolate Chip cookies. We LOVE these!
And books: The Four Agreements, Positivity Bias, The Torah, and I’m always drawn to women's empowerment novels, memoirs, and biographies. This year—The Churchill Sisters, Becoming Madame Secretary, Quickies, and most recently, Unfixed.
Where readers can find you:
csteefel.substack.com
IG– @emptynestercomedy
https://www.instagram.com/emptynestercomedy/?hl=en
https://www.youtube.com/@emptynestercomedy
https://www.tiktok.com/@emptynestercomedy
Here’s to a merry and bright 2026!
Wishing you all the warmest and best!
Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,
PS - I am a human typo. Amnesty appreciated.
*The information contained in this post is intended for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any illness. Before using any practices or products referenced in this piece or others, always consult your healthcare providers, read all labels, and heed all cautions that come with the products. Information received from this piece, or anywhere in this Substack, should never be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have any adverse conditions, please consult your healthcare providers immediately. This Substack, including Alisa Jones and any other writers or editors, disclaims any responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of any information contained herein. Opinions of any writers in this Substack are their own, and the Substack does not accept responsibility for statements made by writers. This Substack does not make any representations or warranties about a writer’s qualifications or credibility.
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