Nobody really sold me on midlife.
There were plenty of warnings. Plenty of solutions from big companies.
Your metabolism will slow down, but here’s a supplement. Your hormones will go rogue, but here’s a cream. Your skin will change, but here’s a serum. Your hair will thin, but here’s a vitamin. Your body will soften, but here’s an eating plan, an exercise program, a medication, a shapewear situation and possibly a red light mask you should apparently be wearing while you do all of it.
There are entire industries built around making sure women know exactly what is about to go wrong with us.
And then, of course, there’s the midlife crisis.
The cultural story of midlife has mostly been about loss. Losing youth. Losing relevance. Losing fertility. Losing whatever version of yourself could stay out until midnight and still function the next morning.
Nobody told me there was an upgrade.
Nobody told me that somewhere around here, you might start giving significantly fewer fucks about building a life that looks right and become almost unbearably interested in building one that feels right.
Nobody told me I might actually like myself more.
That part has been a surprise.
I thought I was supposed to keep becoming someone new
I’ve spent a lot of my life reinventing myself.
I’ve owned businesses. Closed businesses. Started new ones. Built websites. Taught yoga. Opened a coffee shop. Written newsletters. Started communities. Bought buildings. Dreamed up things I was absolutely certain were my next thing, until they weren’t.
I am very good at beginnings.
Give me a blank sheet of paper and a ridiculous idea and I am IN.
For a long time, I thought growth meant becoming.
Become more successful. Become more disciplined. Become more interesting. Become healthier. Become a better business owner. Become someone with a five-year plan. Become the kind of woman who has matching food storage containers and knows where all the lids are.
Still working on that last one.
But lately I’ve been wondering if the work of midlife isn’t becoming at all.
Maybe it’s unbecoming.
Or, even better, refining.
Taking everything you’ve collected over four or five decades and finally asking:
Is this actually mine?
This ambition?
This expectation?
This business?
This relationship?
This habit?
This definition of success?
This belief about what a good mother or wife or business owner or woman is supposed to do?
Do I actually want this?
Or have I just been carrying it for so long that I forgot I was allowed to put it down?
Sometimes the easiest way I’ve found to answer those questions is to go back to my core values.
That’s the upgrade
I used to think knowing yourself meant being able to describe yourself.
I’m an entrepreneur.
I’m creative.
I’m a business owner.
I’m a mother.
I’m a wife.
I’m a yoga person.
I’m a writer.
I’m this. I’m that.
Now I think knowing yourself has much less to do with nouns.
It’s knowing what makes your body soften.
The thing that brings your shoulders away from your ears.
What drains you before you’ve even started.
The things that makes you want to cancel plans before you’ve even put it on your calendar.
Who you can sit next to without performing.
The person who’s call you never ignore.
What kind of work makes three hours disappear.
The projects that make time fly.
What you’re willing to work incredibly hard for and what you’re no longer willing to struggle through just because you technically can.
The hard thing you choose versus the hard thing you keep choosing because you don’t know how to stop.
It’s knowing the difference between this is hard because it matters and this is hard because it doesn’t fit anymore.
That distinction alone might be worth getting older.
I don’t think midlife makes us less ambitious
I think it makes us more specific.
I still want things.
Big things, actually.
I want to write. I want to make the kind of money that makes me stop worrying about money. I want to travel. I want to create beautiful things. I want work that matters to me. I want people around my table. I want to use my house. I want to laugh a lot. I want to be outside. I want to make things and grow things and try things.
I still want a lot.
Maybe more than I ever have.
What I have less appetite for is ambition at any cost.
I don’t want the business if I hate my life while running it.
I don’t want the impressive title if I spend Sunday dreading Monday.
I don’t want the thinner body if getting it requires me to hate the one I’m living in.
I don’t want the friendship that requires me to edit myself.
I don’t want to prove I can do something simply because someone, somewhere, might be impressed that I did.
And I definitely don’t want to spend the second half of my life maintaining things the first half of me built simply because dismantling them might look like failure.
That one is especially uncomfortable.
Because sometimes the life that once fit you beautifully stops fitting.
That doesn’t mean you chose wrong.
It means you kept living.
Maybe this is why midlife can feel so disorienting
We’re changing at exactly the same time we’re being told we should have everything figured out.
By now, aren’t we supposed to know?
Career. Marriage. Money. Parenting. Body. Purpose. Retirement. Skincare routine.
Surely there is a spreadsheet somewhere.
Instead, a lot of us arrive here and realize we’re asking bigger questions than we did at 25.
Who am I if I don’t want what I used to want?
What if I’m good at something I don’t want to do anymore?
What if the thing I worked so hard to build isn’t the thing I want to keep building?
What if I don’t need a bigger life?
What if I need a truer one?
Those questions can feel like a crisis.
I’m starting to think they’re the upgrade.
I’ve started thinking less about where I should be by now and more about what season of life I’m actually in.
Because now we have evidence
At 25, so much of life was theoretical.
We were choosing careers before we’d really worked. Choosing partners before we’d really understood ourselves. Making decisions about money, motherhood, success and adulthood based largely on what we’d been shown.
Now?
We have data.
A LOT of data.
We know what burnout feels like.
We know which friendships survive hard seasons.
We know that getting the thing doesn’t necessarily produce the feeling we thought the thing would give us.
We know grief.
We know disappointment.
We know that some endings are devastating and some endings are enormous reliefs.
We know we can survive things we once thought would flatten us.
And we know, in a way I certainly didn’t when I was younger, that time is not theoretical either.
People die.
Kids grow up.
Bodies change.
Businesses end.
Houses get sold.
Plans get interrupted.
Whole versions of your life can disappear between one October and the next.
That can make you afraid.
But it can also make you incredibly unwilling to waste your life.
I think that’s what’s happening to me
I’m not becoming fearless.
Please.
I can still catastrophize with the best of them.
I’m becoming less interested in letting fear make all my decisions.
I’m less interested in asking, What will everyone think?
And more interested in asking, What will I think if I spend another five years doing this?
I’m less interested in proving that I can hold everything.
I’m more interested in deciding what’s worth holding.
I’m less interested in reinventing myself every time something feels uncomfortable.
I’m more interested in refining.
Keep this.
Release that.
More of this.
Less of that.
This still fits.
That doesn’t.
Not a dramatic new identity.
Just a life that gets increasingly difficult to mistake for somebody else’s.
Nobody warned me about that part
Nobody told me getting older might make me more interested in my life.
That I might feel more creative.
More curious.
More willing to change my mind.
More comfortable saying no.
More protective of my time.
More interested in pleasure.
More aware of what matters.
More willing to admit what doesn’t.
I thought midlife would be the point where possibilities started narrowing.
Instead, I’m beginning to wonder if this is the first time I’ve actually been able to see them clearly.
I’ve written before about what manifestation looks like in my actual life, and increasingly I think this kind of clarity is a much bigger part of it than wishing for things.
Not infinite possibilities.
Not every life.
My life.
The one I have already built.
The one that has broken my heart.
The one that has surprised me.
The one I’m still allowed to change.
Maybe the midlife upgrade is realizing I don’t need to become an entirely different woman to make the next part good.
I already have decades of evidence about who I am.
Now I get to use it.
And maybe that’s what this season is asking of me.
Not:
Who should I become next?
But:
What feels more like me from here?
Not sure what season you’re in?
Sometimes you don’t need another reinvention. You need to understand what this particular season is asking of you. Take the Season of Life Quiz →
