Filming nude scenes helped Sarah Shahi embrace her body. Playing an unhappy wife made her realize she should get a divorce.

Sarah Shahi is younger than I am, but in reading her new book, Life Is Lifey , and talking to her about it for Yahoo's Unapologetically series, she radiates wise, big-sister energy — the kind that comes from hard-earned perspective, not age.

The Paradise actress — who turns 46 on Jan. 10 — shares that self-exploration in a book, out Jan. 27, that blends memoir and advice. Central to her evolution is the fact that six years ago — around the time she was cast in Netflix's Sex/Life — the Texas native took a hard look at her own life, realized she wasn't living her dream and began blowing it up.

She filed for divorce from Shameless actor Steve Howey, with whom she shares son William, 16, and twins Violet and Knox, 10, and began prioritizing her happiness and goals.

"I think I spent a large majority of my life before then functioning as a shadow of myself and putting a lot of other people first," Shahi says.

Playing Sex/Life' s Billie Connelly, a mom who's dissatisfied with her marriage and sex life, made Shahi "ready to shed the old" in her own life. She says the role also made her an unofficial therapist for real women navigating life recalibrations, ultimately inspiring the book.

In our conversation, Shahi opens up about finding herself in her 40s, her Dallas Cowboys cheerleader past and how nature helped her get over her breakup with Sex/Life costar Adam Demos.

You write that playing Billie in Sex/Life — a role that involved significant nudity — flipped a switch in you in terms of fully accepting your body.

Definitely. There's a lot of pressure placed on women to look a certain way. The beauty standards are very high and seem impossible at times. Sex/Life was very revolutionary for me in the sense that I had to play this very sexually voracious character, and I couldn't really be concerned if my tits were down to my knees. I had to just let it all go. It was very liberating.

You write about moving to L.A. from Texas at 20, and, having had no sexual experience, taking a two-day course teaching oral sex instruction to women led by The Big O author Lou Paget. I bring it up not to embarrass you, but because it reads as empowering.

I was not somebody who was promiscuous in high school — and still am not. I was very intimidated by sexuality, by men, by body parts. It was not something that was really talked about in my house. I have a very strict Middle Eastern, Persian mom who put the fear of God in me when it came to sexuality.

When I signed up, I didn't even know who [Paget] was or that she was such a legend in her field. She really broke down the anatomy of a penis in a way that was biological. It didn't feel so overwhelming. It didn't feel like you had to be this porn star in order to know how to sexually please your partner. It was about biology. ... I learned a lot — and now I feel very confident.

This really fun thing happens when women get together. We exchange so much energetically — whether it's sexual topics or life topics. Women possess this ancient knowingness. I have found when I'm with a group of women, it really comes out ... and I wish we had more of that. That's really what I wanted my book to be: your favorite girls' group chat. The one you go back to for those permission slips — to mess up, to take a night off from the kids — because we don't give that to ourselves enough.

You also dedicate a chapter to progesterone . After turning 41, you suddenly gained weight and felt depressed, eventually learning through a hormone panel that you had low progesterone , which was treated with medication. You wrote that it's our responsibility as part of the sisterhood to talk about these things. It made me think about how hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was a popular topic at a recent high school reunion dinner I had with girlfriends — and something I embarrassingly knew little about.

There's such a double standard. Something like Viagra ... rolls off of everyone's tongue, but if you want to talk about progesterone or estrogen deficiency , you have to do that behind closed doors. That's taboo to talk about. So it's important to normalize these things because it's human and everyone experiences them.

Former agents discouraged you from writing this book, saying you didn't "have anything to say." What does it feel like proving them wrong?

I'm not gonna lie — it definitely feels yummy to do something people told me I wasn't able to do. There's something very satiating about that feeling. At the same time, I'm not ... a revenge person. I never make it about, Ha ha, I'm going to show you . My competition is always against myself. I wrote this book as my therapy and to heal. And, in it, my goal was to heal others [too]. That's really what I was thinking about.

You also reflect on going against advice when you sent a letter to Dan Fogelman years ago, telling him you wanted to be on his show This Is Us . While it didn't lead to a job, it paid off when you auditioned for Paradise and he knew who you were. What did it teach you?

It showed me to be an outlaw for your beliefs — an outlaw for yourself and the things that you want. You're always going to have people tell you "no." But if you're feeling something so deeply inside, there's a reason, and it takes a lot of guts to be able to silence the naysayers and go after the life you want. Any time I've ever been able to make a ripple, whether it's in my personal relationships or in my career, it's always been from the chances that I took on myself — even when people were betting against me.

Who do you look to as examples of women aging well?

Meryl Streep looks amazing and can really do no wrong. Penélope Cruz is not old by any means, but she's allowing herself to age and is still stunning. I've always felt Susan Sarandon is just so beautiful.

What I admire about these women is that they're not trying to out-cute the kitten. They're not trying to hold on to their youth. They're aging gracefully in a way that lets so much more than their beauty shine. It's their hearts, their brains, how they operate in the world and how they take up space. It's things like that I feel become more noticeable as a woman ages — and allows herself to age.

Look, I'm not here to judge anybody, and I love a strategically placed injection myself, but I think it's wrong when you start erasing wrinkles. There's something about it that makes me sad. It's like you're erasing your history and things that you've been through in order to chase something that's so fleeting, superficial and surface-deep.

At 45, I would not trade this time in my life for who I was at 30. That expression "Youth is wasted on the young" is so true. I feel more alive. I feel more myself — more vibrant and energetic — than I ever have in my life, and I don't want to change that for anything.

Before you came to Hollywood, you were a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader . What did you learn from that experience?

I learned that women are not always nice. Look, those women work incredibly hard. Being an NFL cheerleader is not for the faint of heart. You're expected to be a full-time student or have a full-time job and also rehearse for about six hours in the evening. What I learned from them was really the discipline and the work ethic. They are an incredible dance team. They put in hours long after midnight. A large part of my life has been experiences that taught me how to work hard and push myself. Cheerleaders really do that, and I respect them for that.

What's your co-parenting journey like these days?

It's been an interesting one. I will say that the thing that we share is our incredible, undying, massive love for our children, and everything comes from that place for us. So when we look at it from that perspective, we are incredible partners for one another, and I'm very grateful that the kids have a father who will do anything for them. But, just like everything, it's trial and error. Sometimes you just have to give [it] time — and beautiful things can happen when you do that.

You write about the importance of quality time with yourself — a topic that comes up in this series a lot, like Jen Hatmaker doing something she calls " Me Camp ." How important is "me time" to your well-being?

You can't pour from an empty cup. As women, we are good at balancing everybody's needs at once. But what happens is our needs get buried under everyone else's. It isn't until you take time for yourself that you realize how much you've neglected your own voice.

For me, being able to take a day or afternoon — sometimes you can't take a weekend — allows me to reset and for my nervous system to decompress. I start realizing again who I am in the world without attachment. How loud my laughter can get. How raunchy my jokes can be. I don't have to taper myself or pay attention to anyone else. I sleep in, take luxurious baths, do face masks and talk to whoever I want. It shouldn't just be in our 20s — we should be allowed to do those things as we continue to age as well.

When you do go back to your life — to the children or to your responsibilities — you have something to give. We're not machines. We have to take some time for ourselves.

What's something you've done to prioritize your health and wellness these days?

I started becoming a hardcore devotee of running outdoors after my breakup. I had a well-known, publicized breakup [in 2025 with Sex/Life' s Adam Demos after five years of dating], and then the day after that, my dog got eaten by a coyote . I'm only mentioning this because it's already been talked about, so I'm not spilling any tea on anything.

Grief really swallowed me in a way that I thought I was going to change forever. I was scared I'd never be the same again. One day, I was crying so hard — I had so much to cry over, so much to mourn — that I just started running. Whether or not I was trying to stop the tears or run from my pain, I don't know. But I ended up looking at the trees and feeling nature in a way that I hadn't in the past. It started to heal me.

Now it's just become something that I have to do, even if it's just for 30 minutes a day. I have to be outside and connect with nature. There's something about it that feels so grounding and makes you realize, at the end of the day, these experiences are so minuscule. We're here for a short amount of time. We have to try to choose laughter and joy as often as we can, even in the midst of the messy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.