I love that for you!

Earlier this month, on a Zoom call with my therapist, I told her about something I’d already started working on. I was excited to share it. I’d already floated it past a couple of friends, but I wanted her perspective because she sees the patterns I tend to miss.

I told her I’d started creating a space to write. Not for the sake of writing, but because I needed a place to tell the truth about this chapter I’m in — the raw, confusing, strangely universal one so many of us hit and rarely talk about.

I had a bit of a plan. I wanted a platform, a do-over of sorts, where I could write about what I was navigating because deep down I knew I wasn’t the only one. The conversations I was having, the things I was reading, the signs showing up everywhere… it all felt too aligned to ignore. This wasn’t about rushing back into work or slapping a positive spin on midlife. It was about using this in-between season instead of fighting it. It was about paying attention.

In the end, I wasn’t looking to leap right back into a job (much to the chagrin of my fiscally conservative husband). I wanted a space. A place to land the truths of this unnerving but strangely clarifying season I’ve found myself in at 48.

For months, every session circled the same themes: how unmotivated, unsettled, and disconnected I’d felt from the career I’d spent more than two decades building. I was used to living in the fast lane. I treated my career the same way I treated my workouts: full throttle until something eventually snapped.

Mid-year, I’d walked away from a job and a team I genuinely loved for something less demanding. Something quieter and simpler — even more junior and lesser pay — because I thought that’s what I needed. Who was I? I didn’t recognize this version of myself at all.

And then that “easier” role blew up almost immediately. The signs were there, but I tried to outrun them. The whole thing unraveled before I could make sense of it, and it became clear very quickly that it wasn’t the right environment for me and I had to leave. So there I was, standing in the wreckage of a choice I’d made with the best intentions and suddenly handed the opportunity I didn’t ask for but probably needed.

So when the idea of creating something that was mine, honest and unfiltered and aligned with where I actually am, finally slipped out of my mouth, it landed differently.

My therapist smiled, put her hand to her heart, and said, “I love that for you.”

So I took the plunge.

Because this didn’t come from nowhere. It started the moment I stopped fighting the discomfort and actually sat in it, quietly and reluctantly but fully. And once I did, the signs started landing everywhere. The algorithm gods kept serving me creators and voices that felt uncomfortably accurate, like someone had been reading my private thoughts. Creepy? A little. Timely? Absolutely.

Call it intuition, call it midlife math, call it the universe being nosy, the message was clear: pay attention. As Oprah puts it, failure isn’t the opposite of success, it’s part of it. It’s the tap on the shoulder whispering, “Excuse me… wrong direction.”

So here we are.

Along the way, I picked up the book When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd because a friend said, “This book will be the companion you need right now.” She was right. Sue writes about the cocoon, the chrysalis, the dissolving middle, that sticky, shapeless stage where nothing looks like progress but everything essential is happening. You can’t rush transformation any more than you can rush yeast activating and bread dough rising. And trust me, I’ve tried. Impatience is my toxic trait (and yes, I’m working on that too).

Doubt tried to move in, light a candle, and redecorate, but doubt isn’t the enemy. Stagnation is.

So while I’m consulting again, I’m very open to the right role, and I’m also giving myself permission to be patient and to build something here, something honest and unpolished and rooted in real time.

This space isn’t just about the pivot. It’s also where I’ll share the career I’m proud of, the brands I’ve helped build and dust off, and the work that still matters to me, even if I’m no longer interested in climbing the ladder for the sake of it.

If you’ve ever read The Motherload by Sarah Hoover, you’ll get the tone I’m leaning into here. Not exclusively the motherhood memoir part, but the raw-and-funny, “let’s stop pretending this is polished” part. That’s the lane I’m in.

If you’re in your own messy middle — wiser than your twenties, not ready to coast, feeling the shift before you can name it — you’ll probably find yourself here.

And if you know me at all, you already know what you’re in for: honesty, transparency, vulnerability, and the occasional overshare. When you let yourself be all of those things, it’s wildly cathartic.

Welcome to the chrysalis. Slow, necessary, uncomfortable, and occasionally hilarious in its timing.

And if this chapter isn’t yours, pass it along. It might be someone else’s.