Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I am Judit, and I’m a podiatrist, mum and grandmother, and I suppose I’m in a steady, active stage of midlife. I work, run a business, and stay physically active. I feel well in myself and fairly settled in how I live day to day. A big focus for me is just staying strong and healthy so that I can keep up with work and family life.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

The main thing that has surprised me is that I haven’t really had symptoms so far. I know that is not the common experience for many women. My mum and grandmother both went through menopause later and had children in their late 40s, so I think my expectations were always a bit different.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

Probably the assumption that midlife or menopause is automatically a difficult experience. When your experience doesn’t match that, it can feel a bit like you are waiting for something to happen or questioning whether you should be feeling differently. I think the reality is that it varies widely, but that is not always reflected in how it is discussed.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

Keeping a consistent routine. I stay active, I eat fairly well, and I try not to overcomplicate things. I don’t drink much, and I eat locally produced food when I can. I have never really approached it as managing symptoms, more just maintaining health in a steady way over time.

What are you unlearning?

I am unlearning the idea that ageing for women automatically means decline or stepping back. I still work, I am still active, and I still have responsibilities that keep me busy. It feels more like a continuation than a change in identity.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

To keep doing what you are doing with health and fitness, because it does make a difference long term. And not to worry too much about ageing in general. It is not as dramatic as it sometimes gets made out to be.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

There is a wide range of experiences. Some women have difficult symptoms, some don’t, and both are normal. It is not one single story.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Staying active every day in some form. It does not have to be anything structured, just movement and keeping going with normal life. It helps me feel balanced and well.

What I appreciate about Judith’s answers is the calm clarity they bring. She reminds us that midlife is not one single story, and that matters. Some women face intense symptoms. Some don’t. Some experience big identity shifts. Others feel more like themselves than ever. All of it is valid. Judith’s approach is simple but powerful: keep moving, eat well, don’t overcomplicate it, and trust that long-term care of your body makes a difference. I also love her refusal to buy into the idea that ageing for women automatically means decline or stepping back. For her, this chapter feels like a continuation, not a collapse. And maybe that’s its own kind of wisdom, a quieter, steadier one. If your experience of midlife doesn’t match the dominant narrative, let Judith’s words reassure you: that’s normal too.

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective

, , and now, proved me wrong almost immediately.

Chris is a futurist, technologist, and philosopher, someone who’s spent a career thinking about what’s coming next. But what struck me most in his answers wasn’t anything about the future. It was how plainly he talked about the present. About strength, catching up with him in ways he didn’t expect. About needing rest in a body that, mentally, still feels exactly as sharp as it always did. About realising, almost by accident, that somewhere along the way, he’d already succeeded, and hadn’t stopped long enough to notice.

There’s something quietly important in hearing a man say that out loud.

Nomads 50+ Midlife Recalibrated, Travel Optional.

Redefining freedom, reinvention, and meaning after 50. Inspiration Tuesdays, interviews on Thursdays, city guides on Fridays, and location-independent business ideas on Sundays. Travel optional.

By chris kalaboukis

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now (work, health, family, identity)?

Chris Kalaboukis, and I’m a futurist, technologist and philosopher. I’m in my 60s, so early mid-life (for me, I’d say ;)

What surprised you most about getting older and being a man in midlife?

I’d say that the physical issues catching up to me are the hardest: loss of strength, pain, etc. Mentally, I feel just as fit as I was, but I get more physically tired.

What’s been the hardest part that men rarely say out loud?

The hardest part is being able to give myself time to rest and recuperate, things I never needed to have before.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, therapy, community, lifestyle changes, medication if relevant)?

I get up at 5 am every weekday, and I need some alone time to meditate and think.

What are you unlearning about masculinity, success, or what it means to be a good man?

I’m go go go all day, and I find it hard to slow down. I realised at one point that even though I was still trying hard to succeed, I neglected to look back and notice that in some ways, I had already succeeded.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

I wish I could tell my 35-year-old self to be less careful about my reputation and take more risks.

What do you want other men to know they’re not alone in?

I’d like men to realise that it's okay for us to step back from our responsibilities if we have to. We need more time to rest.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady day to day?

The meditation ritual and actually spending time connecting with people on Substack are great.

The line that’s stayed with me is the one about reputation.

I wish I could tell my 35-year-old self to be less careful about my reputation and take more risks.

I think a lot of us, women and men alike, spend our 30s and 40s building something so carefully that we forget to ask whether that caution has ever served us. Chris’s honesty about that, and about needing to rest in a way he never used to, feels like exactly the kind of conversation this series exists for.

Thank you, Chris, for being so open.

And to everyone reading, if there’s a man in your life who’s never quite given himself permission to slow down, maybe this is the one you send him.

Kiran x

This series exists because when one woman tells the truth, another woman exhales. If something in this conversation made you exhale, if you recognised yourself in her words, there is a space where that feeling has a home.

The Midlife Circle is where the deeper conversation lives. Not just other women’s stories, but yours. Bi-weekly essays and The Midlife Edit, a private podcast, tools across all five areas of this season of life, from £19/month or £149/year.

And if you’re ready to go all the way in, the Midlife Inner Circle at £297/year includes the Midlife Manifesto Audio Training, The Midlife Reset course, and four quarterly 1:1 calls with me. Real, personal support for the redesign you’re already beginning.

Come inside →

Daphne Ogle-Glenn

Transformational Coach, Priestess, and Safe Space Holder embracing the second half of life by honoring my need for quiet, deep reflection and meaningful connection. Grateful to be in community where slowness and authenticity are valued.

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m Daphne, a woman-centred transformational coach living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m also a mom, a wife, a daughter, and someone who deeply loves life, nature, and meaningful conversation.

For most of my career, I worked in user experience design and strategy, helping organisations better understand people. Now I bring that same deep listening to women.

I would describe this chapter of my life as a season of reclamation, though for me, it feels less like reinvention and more like remembering. The work I do with women is about releasing the roles and masks we’ve carried, often without realising it, gathering the wisdom of our lived experience, and intentionally designing what comes next.

Along the way, I trained as a women-centred transformational coach and was also initiated as a Priestess of Avalon, which has deepened my connection to nature, intuition, and the sacred cycles of life.

Midlife, for me, has been less about becoming someone new and more about coming home to the woman who was always there.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

One of the lighter surprises was discovering that, underneath decades of colouring my hair, there was a beautiful silver that I now absolutely adore. It feels like another quiet way of becoming more myself.

More deeply, what surprised me is how much wisdom emerges when we stop performing.

For decades, I was admired professionally for my clarity and leadership, yet privately I still carried a quiet self-doubt. Midlife has been the season when those hidden stories began to surface.

The surprising part is that the transformation didn’t come from trying harder. It came from slowing down enough to listen to my body, my intuition, and the deeper voice that had been there all along.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

The identity shift. So many women spend decades being the dependable one, the one who holds everything together. When that role begins to loosen, it can feel surprisingly disorienting.

On the outside, your life may look stable, even successful. But inside, you may be asking deeper questions: Who am I now? What actually matters to me? What do I want to create with the years ahead?

Those questions can feel lonely, even though so many women are quietly asking them. What I’ve come to see is that this questioning isn’t a crisis. It’s a doorway to a deeper, more honest relationship with ourselves.

What has helped you most?

Learning to listen inward again. Nature walks, meditation, and creating more spaciousness in my life have been essential. So much of modern life pulls us outward, toward productivity, expectations, and constant noise. When we’re disconnected from ourselves, our beautiful brains try to solve everything at once, and life can feel chaotic and overwhelming. Clarity tends to emerge in quieter spaces.

I’ve also embraced a deep growth mindset, learning to hold both my brilliance and my imperfections with compassion. Mistakes and missteps no longer mean something is wrong with me. They’re simply part of being human and part of evolving.

Much of my training involved being coached through this work myself, which helped me see something powerful: the stories many women carry about worth, success, and self-sacrifice are not personal failures but inherited cultural patterns.

Realising that can be incredibly freeing. You begin to understand you’re not broken, you’ve simply been living inside a story that was never entirely yours.

What are you unlearning?

The belief that my worth comes from how much I produce. Like many women, I learned to overprepare, overdeliver, and overgive. I thought if I just worked harder and proved myself enough, the self-doubt would eventually disappear.

Midlife has been the slow unlearning of that pattern. And at the same time, I’m discovering something beautiful: this stage of life is not the beginning of the end. It’s often the beginning of the real work.

Many of us have spent decades gathering wisdom through lived experience. Midlife is when we finally begin using that wisdom fully, bringing our gifts into the world in ways that feel deeply aligned. Some days, I still have to pinch myself that I get to do this work.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

You don’t have to push so hard. The life you’re trying to force will unfold more beautifully when you begin trusting yourself instead of trying to meet everyone else’s expectations.

And perhaps most importantly, you don’t have to control everything. Life flows more like a river than a plan. When we stop swimming upstream and allow ourselves to float, something remarkable happens. The current begins carrying us in directions we could never have orchestrated alone.

You still make choices, navigating rocks, choosing which currents to follow, deciding whether you’re up for wild rapids or a quieter stretch of water. But you’re no longer fighting the river. You’re co-creating with it.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

The quiet self-doubt that can live inside even the most capable women. Many of the women I work with appear confident and accomplished, yet privately wonder if they are truly enough. There is often a layer of shame around that doubt, which keeps it hidden.

But the ache they feel is real, and so are the possibilities. Often, we don’t have reference points for the next level of who we are becoming or the impact we’re meant to have. That can feel both exciting and unsettling.

What I want women to know is that they don’t have to figure it all out alone.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Morning stillness. Before checking email or stepping into the day, I sit quietly for a few minutes and ask myself a simple question: What wants to emerge today?

And throughout the day, I’m learning to notice when I feel disconnected, when my mind starts to swirl, and when everything feels a little chaotic. When that happens, I pause. I take a few deep breaths. Sometimes I step outside into the sunshine.

And instead of pushing uncomfortable feelings away, I try to greet them gently.

“Hello. I hear you.”

That small shift, allowing what’s present rather than resisting it, often brings me back to myself.

What stayed with me most in Daphne’s words is the gentleness of her truth. Midlife, as she describes it, is not a crisis to fix but a doorway to walk through. A return. A loosening of the old role of being the dependable one, the over-preparer, the over-giver, the woman whose worth was tied to how much she could carry. She reminds us that the quiet self-doubt so many capable women feel is not proof that something is wrong with us. Often, it’s the residue of inherited stories that were never really ours to begin with.

I also love the way she talks about life flowing more like a river than a plan. There’s such wisdom in that. You still choose. You still navigate. But you stop fighting yourself so hard. And her morning practice, asking, “What wants to emerge today?” feels like a beautiful question for this entire season of life. Not what should I force, prove, or perfect, but what wants to emerge. If you’ve been feeling the identity shift, the longing for more space, more alignment, more truth, let Daphne’s words remind you: you don’t have to figure it all out alone. Sometimes the next chapter begins the moment you stop resisting what’s already trying to rise.

This series exists because when one woman tells the truth, another woman exhales. If something in this conversation made you exhale, if you recognised yourself in her words, there is a space where that feeling has a home.

The Midlife Circle is where the deeper conversation lives. Not just other women’s stories, but yours. Bi-weekly essays and The Midlife Edit, a private podcast, tools across all five areas of this season of life, from £19/month or £149/year.

And if you’re ready to go all the way in, the Midlife Inner Circle at £297/year includes the Midlife Manifesto Audio Training, The Midlife Reset course, and four quarterly 1:1 calls with me. Real, personal support for the redesign you’re already beginning.

Come inside →

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m , a mom of 3 grown daughters, a new grandmother and the Founder of Flourishing Over Fifty ®, a community to inspire and empower women in midlife. I am in that season of leaving behind managing my kids’ lives and leaning into being a grandmother (the best!) while building a new career as a motivational speaker, so lots of transition.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

The fact that I woke up one day and thought to myself, “Is this all there is?” It feels like when we reach midlife, whether that’s 40, 50, or whenever you are ready for it, we are often faced with so many challenges that life can feel very difficult. Because I thought that when I reached midlife, everything would be settled and figured out. I did not account for the losses and challenges many of us, myself included, face.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

For me, it has been the number of challenges and losses I have faced. Some of this was when I was younger, when my father died when I was 10, and in my twenties and early thirties, when I lost my brother-in-law and then my sister. But then midlife came, and I lost my mother, was diagnosed with breast cancer and was laid off, all in the same year. For a while, I had a very difficult time just waking up in the morning.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

What helped me the most was a mindset shift. I was able to go from that thought of “Is this all there is?” to a place where I could begin to consider the possibilities of life, of happiness, again.

What are you unlearning?

I am unlearning the habit of trying to control every situation, especially with my daughters. I now step back and wait for them to discover their path on their own without me giving unsolicited advice.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

Take time to be in the moment and spend time on your overall well-being.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

They are not alone in this journey we call life, especially in midlife. You can create a new story for your life; it’s never too late.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

My non-negotiable, what I call The Daily Joy Practice. I spend 3 minutes every day on this. I sit in stillness for 1 minute, think of what I am grateful for, for 1 minute, and I spend 1 minute thinking about my intention for the day. Do this every day, and it will not just keep you steady but can change your life.

What stayed with me most about Jen’s answers is her honesty about how heavy midlife can be. So many women enter this chapter expecting ease, only to find themselves carrying grief, loss, illness, change, and questions they never saw coming. Jen doesn’t pretend that part away. She names it. And then she offers something deeply hopeful: the reminder that even after the hardest seasons, you can still create a new story for your life. That shift, from “Is this all there is?” to “What else might be possible?” feels like the heartbeat of her whole interview.

I also love the simplicity of her Daily Joy Practice because it proves that steadiness doesn’t always come from grand reinventions. Sometimes it starts with three quiet minutes: stillness, gratitude, and intention. A small ritual, repeated daily, that helps you come back to yourself. If you’re in a season of transition, grief, or quietly wondering what now, let Jen’s words remind you that you are not alone, and it is never too late to flourish.

This series exists because when one woman tells the truth, another woman exhales. If something in this conversation made you exhale, if you recognised yourself in her words, there is a space where that feeling has a home.

The Midlife Circle is where the deeper conversation lives. Not just other women’s stories, but yours. Bi-weekly essays and The Midlife Edit, a private podcast, tools across all five areas of this season of life, from £19/month or £149/year.

And if you’re ready to go all the way in, the Midlife Inner Circle at £297/year includes the Midlife Manifesto Audio Training, The Midlife Reset course, and four quarterly 1:1 calls with me. Real, personal support for the redesign you’re already beginning.

Come inside →

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

Who I am: I am a wife and a mom, and I’ve spent the past 25 years as a fitness and nutrition expert, dedicated to helping women live their best lives. I’m a former bodybuilder who still puts on bodybuilding shows, and I’ve recently started organising events to help women thrive in the South Bay. This work is a true passion of mine, and I really enjoy doing it while also being present and available for my family.

My current season of midlife: At 48, I am two years post-menopause. I began perimenopause just before turning 40, so I’ve experienced a lot of change over the past decade. While I know 48 is younger than most for menopause, I’m grateful that my hormones have finally levelled out and balanced, giving me a new sense of stability and energy.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

When I turned 40, I was completely surprised by how early and drastic the changes were. I’ve been in the fitness and nutrition industry since 2000, and all of a sudden, I gained 25 pounds of body fat even though my nutrition and exercise hadn’t changed. I felt exhausted, anxious, and even depressed at times, with moments where it felt like I just couldn’t keep going. My brain felt foggy, and I even worried I might have early-onset dementia.

This was back in 2018, before perimenopause and menopause were widely talked about. I remember talking to my business partner, Dr Stacia Kelly, who has her PhD in holistic health, and she suggested we look at our hormones. Our estrogen and progesterone were fluctuating, affecting our metabolism (even though ALL my labs at the doctor were normal). We created a natural protocol that helped me lose 25 pounds and helped her lose 65 pounds, simply by balancing metabolism hormones and adjusting our nutrition and training/exercise demands. That journey showed me just how transformative understanding your hormones can be during midlife.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

I think one of the hardest things, and what most people don’t talk about enough, is that there’s no magic pill. Everyone is looking for the latest solution, whether it’s GLP-1 for weight loss or hormone replacement therapy, but the reality is that when our sex hormones drop, all of our metabolism and regulatory hormones have to figure out a new balance.

What really makes the difference is lifestyle: the nutrition that’s right for your body, exercise that feels good rather than punishing, and prioritising sleep, even though it can be tricky during this phase. For many women, perimenopause hits right at the height of their careers, so they’re expected to juggle it all while their bodies are changing dramatically.

The women I work with often hide behind their health, but I help them find balance, navigate these changes, and reclaim control. Once I reached menopause, I realised I had made it through that challenging phase, and life feels expansive and full of possibility on the other side.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

I’ll be honest, at first, I stayed away from HRT, but once I hit menopause and was diagnosed with osteoporosis, I knew I needed it to protect my bones. I also have a family history of heart disease, so it was the right choice for me.

That said, what’s helped me the most has been consistency with my nutrition and lifestyle habits. When my hormones started changing, foods that I used to eat all the time, things I thought were healthy, stopped working the same way. Carbohydrates, for example, don’t process the same in a perimenopausal body because we’re more insulin-resistant.

Cutting back on sugar, moderating alcohol, and being mindful of my overall nutrition have made a huge difference. When I stick with my habits, I notice fewer aches and pains, less brain fog, and I feel more balanced overall. That’s why I focus so heavily on nutrition with my clients; it’s the foundation for thriving through midlife.

What are you unlearning?

I’m unlearning the habit of comparing myself to others. I remind myself that I have no idea what anyone else is going through, whether it’s the woman who looks more fit than younger women who seem to have it all together. Everyone is unique, and honouring that has become my focus.

I’m also unlearning the idea that I need to push harder, faster, or stronger like I used to. It’s okay to pause, to choose exercise that my body enjoys, and to give myself grace. I focus on strength training and walks that feel good, knowing that my body now needs a different approach to staying fit and well. It’s not what it used to be, and that’s okay.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

I would tell my 35-year-old self to love and enjoy your body. Looking back, that body, before perimenopause and menopause, was something I would now give anything to have back. The next 10 years are going to be a roller coaster, hell on wheels, as your hormones shift, much like puberty all over again, but you’re going to learn so much about yourself, your resilience, and how to take care of yourself. My advice would be: don’t give up, don’t quit, and stay the course; you can get through it and come out stronger on the other side.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

I want every woman to know that they are not alone; every single woman with a uterus will go through perimenopause and menopause at some point. It’s not just you; this is something we all experience, much like puberty, and we all have to navigate and push through it.

One of the things that has helped me most is humour, finding the funny side of it, laughing with friends, or sharing stories on social media. Little moments, like forgetting your keys or being interrupted by your kids, remind us that we’re in this together.

Connecting with other women, especially those 5–10 years ahead of you, sharing experiences, and hearing how they navigated this stage is key. It helps to remember that this isn’t the end, and it won’t feel like this forever. By talking, laughing, and supporting each other, we make the journey not only manageable but also empowering.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Every morning, I walk. I take my dog out for a walk, which I think of as my “walking meditation.” It’s my moment to be present and at peace. I use that time for prayer, reflection, listening to uplifting podcasts, or just jamming out to my favourite songs.

This ritual helps me set intentions, clear my mind, and ground myself for the day. It brings me back to step one, literally and figuratively, and gives me a sense of balance and calm. I prioritise this every single day, and it’s one of the best practices I do for my well-being.

What I love about Corry’s perspective is that it’s both real and reassuring: there’s no magic pill, and you’re not failing because the old rules stopped working. Midlife isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a physiological shift. Corry names the temptation to chase quick fixes, then brings you back to what actually creates change: nutrition that fits your new body, movement that supports rather than punishes, and the boring-but-brilliant power of consistency.

She also speaks honestly about choosing HRT when osteoporosis entered the picture, a reminder that personalised care matters, and that strength in midlife includes making the decisions that protect your future self. Her daily walking meditation is the perfect closing note: a small, steady ritual that says, I’m allowed to pause, I’m allowed to reset, I’m allowed to meet myself where I am. And if you’re in the thick of the roller coaster right now, Corry’s message lands clearly: stay the course. You can get through it. And life can feel expansive again on the other side.

This series exists because when one woman tells the truth, another woman exhales. If something in this conversation made you exhale, if you recognised yourself in her words, there is a space where that feeling has a home.

The Midlife Circle is where the deeper conversation lives. Not just other women’s stories, but yours. Bi-weekly essays and The Midlife Edit, a private podcast, tools across all five areas of this season of life, from £19/month or £149/year.

And if you’re ready to go all the way in, the Midlife Inner Circle at £297/year includes the Midlife Manifesto Audio Training, The Midlife Reset course, and four quarterly 1:1 calls with me. Real, personal support for the redesign you’re already beginning.

Come inside →

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I am a Physician Assistant specialising in functional and integrative medicine, specialising in hormone replacement, and a passionate advocate for women navigating midlife with power rather than fear, and I am absolutely in the thick of midlife, and I’m loving it!

I’m officially an empty nester, which feels both surreal and deeply empowering. My 30s were devoted to raising good humans. My 40s were about launching those incredible humans into the world. And now? Now I have the luxury of turning inward.

This season is about rediscovery, it’s about asking:

• Who am I now?

• What do I want?

• What energises me? What are my passions?

For the first time in decades, I have the space to focus on myself. This includes my health, my personal growth, my career, and, excitingly, experiencing new things. Midlife for me isn’t winding down; it is about reigniting and finding my passions.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

What surprised me most is even as a healthcare provider deeply immersed in menopause care, I still underestimated my own symptoms.

I’ve been preparing for menopause for over a decade. I work in this space. I lecture and educate others about it. I encourage women to be proactive. I truly try to practice what I preach. And yet, when I look back at my 40s, I realise how many of my “frustrations” were actually hormonal shifts.

The creeping weight gain didn’t respond to the same strategies. The brain fog made me question myself. The quiet fading of libido felt confusing and uncharacteristic. I normalised a lot of it.

When I finally started estrogen therapy (I was already using Progesterone and Testosterone), the shift was profound. My clarity returned. My metabolism stabilised. My desire came back. It wasn’t about vanity; it was about vitality. What surprised me most wasn’t that hormones helped. It was how much better I could have felt sooner. That realisation deepened my commitment to helping women recognise symptoms earlier, advocate for themselves, and understand that suffering in silence is not a rite of passage into midlife.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

From my perspective as a healthcare provider and as a woman in midlife, the hardest part that people don’t talk about or are afraid to voice is the mental impact of perimenopause and menopause.

We talk about hot flashes, we talk about weight gain, but we don’t talk nearly enough about the cognitive and emotional toll. I experienced it myself: walking into a room and forgetting why I was there, struggling with word retrieval, losing names mid-sentence, and feeling my motivation dip in a way that felt foreign to me.

For high-achieving women, especially, this can be terrifying. In my practice, I see women recording meetings so they don’t miss details. Covering their desks in Post-it notes, double-checking emails repeatedly before sending them. Quietly wondering: Is something wrong with me? Am I slipping? Could I lose my job? The fear isn’t dramatic; it’s subtle and persistent. And it’s rarely spoken out loud.

The other deeply unspoken struggle is what has been called the “quiet quitting” of relationships. Not because women don’t love their partners. But because of hormonal shifts, vaginal discomfort, decreased libido, stress, and lack of support, intimacy can begin to feel complicated… or exhausting. Many women feel resigned, as though a downturn in their physical relationship is simply the price of ageing.

It’s discussed in whispers, if at all, among girlfriends. But in my exam room, I hear the grief, the confusion and the sense of loss. What breaks my heart is that so many women believe this is just how it is now. It doesn’t have to be

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

For me, the most powerful shift started with understanding why this was happening. For most women, knowledge removes fear.

When you understand that the brain fog, sleep disruption, weight gain, and mood shifts are all rooted in hormonal changes, you can stop internalising them as personal failures. You can also stop thinking you’re the only one.

Normalising the experience is incredibly empowering. In my office, I see accomplished, intelligent women whisper their symptoms as though they’re uniquely broken. The moment they realise they’re not alone, you can almost see their shoulders drop. Tears of relief flow because they are finally being heard and validated.

Hormone therapy has played the most important role for me personally. It gave me back the foundation on which functional medicine is built: sleep, clarity, energy, and drive. And once that foundation was restored, I could implement the lifestyle changes that truly sustain long-term health. I could lift weights consistently, stay active without feeling depleted, and I could think clearly enough to lead at work. Hormones weren’t the whole solution, but they made the rest possible.

And then there’s community. My community is amazing and diverse, and it is everything to me. Finding like-minded practitioners to collaborate with in patient care has been invaluable. But even more importantly, I’ve built what's been called my “MenoPosse”. This is a circle of women who support each other without judgment, who can say, “Is this happening to you too?” and be met with understanding instead of dismissal.

Midlife can feel isolating if you try to navigate it alone. It becomes expansive when you find your people. Community changes everything.

What are you unlearning?

Growing up as a competitive athlete, I was conditioned to push through and perform. To carry responsibility without hesitation. Stepping back wasn’t part of the training. That mindset served me well for decades. As a mother of three, a wife, a daughter, a friend, and a healthcare provider, I became very good at being everything to everyone.

What I’m unlearning now is the belief that I am responsible for everything and everyone. Midlife has asked me to examine where my energy goes. To be more intentional, and yes, a little more selfish. That word used to feel uncomfortable. Now it feels necessary, my therapist asked me to change my word from selfish to self-love. I am trying!!

Choosing who and what gets my energy is a stark shift from the years of constant output. Sometimes it looks like saying no to invitations, projects, or relationships that don’t align with how I want to feel or where I see myself going next. I’m learning to trust my intuition instead of overexplaining my decisions. I’m learning to make choices for myself, even if they disappoint someone else. This is not always easy and sometimes really uncomfortable, but it is growth for me.

Perhaps most importantly, I’m learning that protecting my peace isn’t weakness, it’s wisdom.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

I would tell her that Life is so busy right now, and that’s normal. You’re juggling motherhood, marriage, career, expectations, and a never-ending to-do list. Some days you’re barely keeping your head above water, and you quietly wonder if you’re doing any of it well. I would reassure her that she is enough and is doing a great job.

I would tell her it’s okay not to be 100% everything to everyone. Taking time for yourself is not selfish; it’s necessary. You don’t have to earn rest, and you don’t have to justify caring for your own body and mind.

I would reassure her that she’s going to get through this season and be incredibly proud of what she's built. A woman is waiting on the other side of this intensity. A woman with more clarity, more confidence and more space. A woman ready to flourish and keep growing.

“The days are long, but the years are short” is more than an adage; it’s the truth. The day-to-day can feel overwhelming, and in that overwhelm, it’s easy to lose yourself a little, but you will get back to yourself.

I would also say: don’t sweat the small stuff. If your daughter wants to wear the same dress for two months straight, let her. If your son wants a mohawk, have at it. If your family hates the dinner you just made, they won't starve; breakfast is in a couple of hours. Choose your battles wisely. It’s okay for your children to feel uncomfortable sometimes. Life is uncomfortable at times, and that’s where growth happens. And for you? Growth is happening too, even when you can’t see it yet.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

Every woman will experience some form of perimenopausal or menopausal transition. Every single one. For some, the symptoms are obvious and in-your-face: hot flashes, disrupted sleep, mood shifts. For others, they’re subtle: a creeping anxiety, joint aches, loss of motivation, changes in confidence or desire. Some shifts are so gradual you barely notice until you look back. Every journey is different. But every journey is valid. Let’s hold space for that.

What you are feeling is real. It is not “all in your head.” You do not have to accept dismissal as the final word. If you feel unheard, keep looking. Find someone who will listen, explain what’s happening physiologically, and offer reassurance and options. It may take time to fine-tune what works for you, but this experience is very, very real.

It is also okay to talk about it. There is hope. There are solutions. This is not our mothers’ menopause. We are learning more every year about brain health, bone health, cardiovascular protection, sexual wellness, and hormone therapy. The narrative and treatment options are changing. Ask questions. Stay curious. Share your experience. Find your community. You are not alone, and you were never meant to navigate this on your own.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Every morning, I walk my dog. Thea’s enthusiasm for the day, the wagging tail, the eager eyes, the absolute joy over something as simple as a walk just sets the tone before my feet even hit the floor.

I love having a reason to get up. Someone offering unconditional affection (and enthusiastic face licks if I don’t move quickly enough). There’s something incredibly grounding about beginning the day with that kind of pure presence.

Stepping outside, feeling the morning air, letting sunlight into my eyes, and moving my muscles before the world starts demanding things of me make a profound difference. I often walk through the woods near my home, and that quiet time with no notifications, no conversations, just contemplation really steadies me. It’s simple. But it’s powerful.

That daily ritual reminds me to start the day with movement, gratitude, and perspective. And honestly, I’m deeply thankful for her persistence because even on the mornings I don’t feel like jumping out of bed, she makes sure I do. And it always makes the day better, Portuguese Water Dogs will do that!

What stayed with me most in Jennifer’s answers is the way she names the quiet fear so many women carry but rarely admit: the mental impact. Forgetting words mid-sentence, double-checking everything, wondering if you’re slipping, worried you’ll lose your edge or your job. And then the other whisper-topic: the quiet quitting of intimacy, not because love disappears, but because hormones, discomfort, stress, and a lack of support can make connection feel complicated. Jennifer brings compassion to both and offers options. Knowledge removes fear. Validation changes everything. And hormone therapy, for her, wasn’t the whole solution, but it made the rest of the solution possible: strength training, movement, energy, sleep, and the capacity to lead. I also love her emphasis on community, her MenoPosse, and the reminder that every woman’s journey is different and still valid. If you feel unheard, keep looking. If you feel dismissed, don’t stop. There is hope, there are solutions, and this chapter can be expansive with the right support. And if you need a gentle nudge to start your day well, borrow Jennifer’s ritual: step outside, let the morning air meet your face, follow the dog’s joy, and remember you’re allowed to take up space in your own life again.

This series exists because when one woman tells the truth, another woman exhales. If something in this conversation made you exhale, if you recognised yourself in her words, there is a space where that feeling has a home.

The Midlife Circle is where the deeper conversation lives. Not just other women’s stories, but yours. Bi-weekly essays and The Midlife Edit, a private podcast, tools across all five areas of this season of life, from £19/month or £149/year.

And if you’re ready to go all the way in, the Midlife Inner Circle at £297/year includes the Midlife Manifesto Audio Training, The Midlife Reset course, and four quarterly 1:1 calls with me. Real, personal support for the redesign you’re already beginning.

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Grace & Grit Letters - Where grace meets grief by Angie Hanson

Grace & Grit Letters is where grace meets grief. I’m Angie—writer, grief educator, and founder of Butterflies + Halos—sharing honest letters about loss, faith, resilience, and the long way through.

By Grace and Grit Letters

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m Angie Hanson, a 53-year-old writer, grief educator, and the founder of Butterflies + Halos, a stationery brand and community that speaks hope into grieving hearts. I live in Nebraska with my husband, and most days you’ll find me writing, creating, or trying to turn life’s hardest stories into something that helps someone else feel less alone.

Midlife, for me, hasn’t been a crisis. It’s been a reckoning and a rebuilding. After losing my son, my husband, and my brother within a few short years, life forced me to ask some very big questions about who I was and who I wanted to become.

This season feels less like starting over and more like starting from wisdom. I’m learning to live with deeper intention, softer expectations, and a stronger voice about the things that truly matter.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

What surprised me most about midlife is how much clarity it brings.

You start realising how much of your earlier life was spent trying to keep everyone comfortable — being agreeable, shrinking yourself, saying yes when you meant maybe. Somewhere along the way, that instinct begins to loosen its grip.

Midlife has given me a quieter kind of confidence. Not loud or flashy, but grounded. The kind that says, I know who I am now, and I’m not interested in apologising for it.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

One of the hardest parts people don’t talk about is how much identity can shift in midlife.

Roles change. Children grow. Relationships evolve. Grief shows up in ways you didn’t expect. And sometimes you wake up and realise the version of yourself that carried you through earlier chapters doesn’t quite fit anymore.

That can feel disorienting. But it can also be the beginning of something beautiful — the slow work of rediscovering who you are underneath all the roles you once held.

What has helped you most?

What’s helped me most is community and purpose.

Grief taught me that we are not meant to carry life alone. Being surrounded by people who understand hard seasons has been incredibly grounding.

And purpose has been my anchor. Writing, speaking, creating cards and resources for others walking through grief — those things have helped me transform pain into something meaningful. When your story starts helping someone else breathe a little easier, it changes how you carry it.

What are you unlearning?

I’m unlearning the idea that I have to be everything for everyone.

For a long time, I believed strength meant holding everything together. Midlife has taught me that real strength often looks like boundaries, rest, honesty, and sometimes saying, “I can’t carry that right now.”

I’m also unlearning the belief that my worth is tied to productivity. Some seasons are meant for building. Others are meant for healing.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

I would sit beside my 35-year-old self very gently, because she was standing in the middle of a storm she never saw coming.

I was a year out from having just lost our son, and not long after, I was also watching my husband fight the cancer that would eventually take his life. At 35, life wasn’t about reinvention or self-discovery. It was about surviving the unimaginable, one breath at a time.

So I would tell her: slow down and trust your own voice sooner.

Stop worrying so much about whether you’re doing life “right.” The approval you’re chasing won’t matter nearly as much as the peace you’re postponing.

And I would tell her that even when life breaks your heart in ways you never thought possible, it won’t break your ability to love again, to laugh again, or to build something beautiful from the pieces. In time, the very story that feels like it’s ending will become the one that helps someone else keep going.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

I want women to know they are not alone in feeling like they are reinventing themselves in midlife.

So many of us are quietly asking the same questions:
Who am I now? What do I want the next chapter to look like? What parts of me are still waiting to be explored?

Those questions aren’t signs that something is wrong; they are signs that something new is beginning.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady?

One small practice that keeps me steady is writing.

Some days it’s journaling. Some days it’s a letter to my younger self. Some days it’s a note to someone who might be grieving. Writing helps me process what I’m feeling and reminds me that even the hardest experiences can hold meaning.

It’s a quiet ritual, but it helps me stay grounded in gratitude, faith, and the belief that every chapter of life still has something to teach us.

What stays with me after reading Angie’s words is the depth of her clarity. Not the hard, brittle kind. The lived kind. The kind that knows life can break your heart and still leave room for love, laughter, and beauty to return in new forms. She speaks so honestly about the identity shifts of midlife, how the roles that once defined you can fall away, and how disorienting that can feel, especially when grief is woven through it all. But she also reminds us that this unravelling can be the beginning of something beautiful: the rediscovery of who you are underneath all the roles you’ve carried.

I love her reminder that strength doesn’t always look like holding everything together. Sometimes it looks like boundaries, rest, honesty, and admitting you can’t carry one more thing. And her writing practice feels like the perfect thread through it all, a quiet way of processing, witnessing, and turning pain into something that helps someone else breathe a little easier. If you’re in a season of reinvention, grief, or quietly asking bigger questions about your next chapter, Angie’s words are a gentle reminder that nothing is wrong with you. Something new may be beginning.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

My name is Allison Chawla. I am a psychotherapist, one who works mostly with young and middle-aged women, even a few senior, glorious gals. I’m a mother and a teacher of Buddhism who has the gift of spending most of my time travelling with Thai monks. I just turned 49 recently, and according to my calendar and period tracker, I am 12 months without a period and in menopause!

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

What surprised me the most was how early my peri-menopause began. I lost my mother early in life, and had very little information surrounding what menopause would have been like for her. She passed away at 48, and had gone into early menopause due to cancer treatments. So, my path was not only a blurry one, but quite frankly, a mystery. I have this idea of 50 being the end for most, which to me logically meant 48 or 49 would be the onset. I was wrong. I also began symptoms of peri-menopause during the isolation of the COVID pandemic; so each symptom, instead of bringing clarity to my life phase, made me wonder if I was simply getting depressed or going insane from lack of human contact! Was I sweating in the middle of the night because I was having nightmares? Was I drinking too much red wine on certain evenings like so many others were? Should I get another dog? A giant trampoline? An Indoor sauna? Should I get divorced? Maybe I should just have another baby….? Little did I realise I was not breaking down. I was going through the beginning of my life transition into menopause. I was also shocked to find that while they meant well, when I started sharing my experience and insight into what I believed was entering peri-menopause, most women responded with ’no way, you are too young!! Let the shame begin, I thought.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

The hardest part, and the part no one talks about, was the beginning. Before I even knew what was happening, I had to first convince myself I wasn't losing my mind. I was just starting to notice the changes, quietly building the confidence to trust what I was feeling in my own body, when the reactions from others sent me completely sideways.

And they meant well. Every dismissal came with kindness. But because I wasn't showing any outward signs and frankly, because I was still looking younger than my age, no one believed me. Being told, however gently, that you're imagining it doesn't just sting. It pushes you into a much darker place: suddenly, you're not wondering about menopause anymore, you're wondering if something is seriously wrong with you.

Yes, and that’s not the same as being well. The hardest part was realising I would have to become the student of my own body: healing my gut after radiation damage, learning how to truly support detox pathways, rebuilding liver resilience, restoring nervous system regulation, rebuilding muscle, sleeping with intention, and eating in a way that was not just “healthy” but therapeutic.

No one told me how powerful a lifestyle could be. How strategic sleep, strength training, and nervous system regulation are. How a nutrient-dense, specific diet can heal. How cortisol patterns matter. How blood sugar stability changes everything. The grief wasn’t just losing the body I knew. It was realising survival wasn’t the same as restoration. I didn’t want to just be alive; I wanted to feel strong, clear, whole.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

What helped me most and began the shift in my perspective and journey was a conversation I had with a supervisor. I shared how I was entering menopause before most friends seemed to be, and while I was ready to not have a menstrual cycle anymore (one that had been based on horrid cramping and heavy bleeding for most of my life until I had my daughters), I had not quite found a place for the reality of this age and how others viewed it. She smiled, then proceeded to tell me, Allison, you are about to become the most productive, the most creative, the most prolific, and liberated part of yourself.

My eyes widened. I smiled but cocked my head with curiosity. Think about how much time you are going to get back from not worrying about when you are getting your period? Do you have pads and tampons at home? Will you get cramps? Will you be travelling during your period? Will it come early? When will it stop? Can you wear white?’ And so forth. She made me realise that while I thought my youth behind me was the end, in fact, it was just the beginning. How blessed I was to be here entering it.

I just had my first HRT appointment, and I’m going for it. Science has come such a long way; the side effects are so much more manageable than what our mothers were told to fear, and the women in my life who are already on it? They all say the same thing: best decision they ever made. But beyond HRT, what’s quietly shifted everything is community. Finding women who are in it too, who get it without explanation, has been everything. There’s something powerful about not having to justify how you feel or prove that what you’re experiencing is real. That alone has been its own kind of medicine.

What are you unlearning?

That menopause is an ending. That it's a wilting rather than a rebirth.
What I'm learning instead is that I've been warming up for the most exciting part of the race. Yes, there's fatigue. Yes, there's discomfort. But there's also something clarifying happening, a shedding of what no longer serves and a sharpening of what does. The women who framed this as a curse or a burden may have genuinely believed that. But I think they were missing something. Every season of life brings difficult changes, puberty, motherhood, loss, and reinvention. Menopause is no different. It's not what happens to you, it's how you choose to move through it. Ageing isn't a curse. It's a gift. And I'm just now starting to unwrap it.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

Girl, it only gets better. You are just getting started. Keep your eyes on the target, don’t let anyone make you feel bad about being you, and share that with others!

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

ALL OF IT. Nothing should be off the table for discussion! Nothing needs to feel abnormal or shameful to discuss. And definitely, chin hairs...

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Gratitude. Watching myself change, realising I am still here and alive. Asking questions, seeking support, being open to things like HRT and sitting back without so much estrogen that in the past may have caused me worry, anxiety, and self-doubt that is now dissipating and allowing me to become the bad-ass bitch I have waited all of these years to become

This week, I want women turning 50 to remember:

Turning 50 is not the beginning of the end, but it’s the start of a new chapter of freedom and clarity. And age is just a number. So feeling good, staying empowered and keeping focus on our goals will keep us onto in midlife and beyond!

What I love about Allison’s perspective is the refusal to treat menopause as a fading. She calls it a rebirth, and you can feel how that belief changes everything. Her turning point, a supervisor telling her this could be her most creative, prolific, liberated era, is exactly the kind of reframe women deserve earlier, before we spend years thinking we’re breaking down. She also names something important: dismissal can be kind and still be harmful. When you’re not believed, you start questioning your sanity instead of trusting your body. That’s why her emphasis on community feels so vital: being around women who get it without you having to prove it is its own kind of medicine. Add in her openness to HRT, gratitude as a daily practice, and her commitment to speaking about all of it, and what you’re left with is a message that lands like permission: nothing is off the table, nothing is shameful, and this is not the end of you. It might be the chapter where you finally become the woman you’ve been waiting for.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Kath Cheng|Her MidWay

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m Kath. I mentor midlife women, but none of this was planned. What began as my own personal journey, where I was quietly questioning where I was in life, and wanting something more which I couldn’t fully name, slowly grew into something bigger than me. Women started saying, “I feel that too.” And I realised this wasn’t just my awakening. It was a shared one.

I am in the season where I have woken up. I can see the old narratives for what they are. I can see how easily we shrink ourselves. And although I resisted stepping forward at first, I now recognise that this isn’t about me anymore. It’s a calling. To help women in midlife see that there is more available to them, more purpose, more passion, and more possibility, if they choose it. Because we all deserve “more”

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

What surprised me most was realising how long I’d been living inside a box and not even knowing it. From the outside, everything looked fine. I was responsible. Safe. Doing what made sense. I could easily have stayed there, comfortably contained in a life that ticked all the right boxes. But I wasn’t truly living. I wasn’t thriving. I was surviving, and I genuinely thought that was the aim. I thought life was about keeping everything steady, being grateful, getting to the end, having done it “well.” Then I started to feel restless, is this it in life?

At first, it felt uncomfortable, even confusing. Nothing was “wrong.” My life wasn’t bad. I appreciated it. So why did something feel off?

Now I see that quiet dissatisfaction was a sign that I was ready for something more. That was my defining moment. If I hadn’t explored the restlessness and confusion, I might have carried on, none the wiser, never discovering this entirely new chapter of possibility I’m living now.

More people talk about the changes in our body dealing with the menopause and less about the mental challenges in midlife, which is where a lot of us suffer in silence. We’re taught to suck it up, don’t draw attention to yourself.
Realising that there’s more in midlife surprised me and excited me at the same time.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

How lonely it can feel, even when you’re surrounded by people who love you.
When you begin questioning your life, or admitting that something inside you wants more, it can unsettle others. Especially family. Long-term friends. The people who know you as the version you’ve always been.

I’ve had moments where sharing how I felt was met with confusion, almost concern, as if wanting something different meant I was having a crisis moment: “Why can’t you just be happy? Why rock the boat?” And after a while, I learned to say less, I started wondering if maybe I was being dramatic; “Maybe I should just be grateful and get on with it.” That quiet self-doubt can be the hardest part.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

Undoubtedly, community. Finding other women who are also questioning, expanding, and redefining what this chapter means has changed everything for me. There’s something powerful about being in rooms or conversations where you don’t have to explain your restlessness. Where wanting more isn’t judged, it’s understood. We support each other. We reflect back possibilities to one another. We remind each other that growth isn’t a crisis, it’s evolution.

Our family and long-term friends often love us deeply… but they’re used to who we’ve been. Sometimes it simply takes them longer to understand who we’re becoming. And that’s okay.

One thing I’ve learned is to be discerning about where I share my dreams. In the early stages, they’re fragile. They don’t need debate or doubt; they need space to breathe. Not everyone is meant to understand your vision immediately. Some things are just for you until they’re strong enough to stand on their own, and protecting that early spark can make all the difference.

What are you unlearning?

I’ve had to unlearn the belief that being grateful meant I couldn’t want more. I’m deeply grateful for the stability and security our family business has given us. But gratitude and desire can exist together. Wanting more for myself doesn’t cancel out appreciation. It simply acknowledges that I’m still growing.

I’ve also had to unlearn the idea of “waiting for the perfect time”. Waiting for the children to leave home. Waiting for the shop to sell. Waiting for the right time, waiting to feel certain.

At some point, I realised certainty often only comes with hindsight. If I kept waiting to feel completely ready, I would never begin, and perhaps the hardest thing to unlearn was the need to remain the version of me everyone else felt comfortable with.

For years, I was the responsible one. I fixed things. I was mum, always there to sort things out. Kept the peace, the one who didn’t rock the boat, but it also kept me small.

When I started choosing myself in midlife, not everyone understood. From the outside, a woman shifting can look unsettling. I was questioning long-standing patterns. I wasn’t automatically prioritising what was expected of me anymore. That creates unease. People like clear plans. Reassurance. Certainty. But I didn’t have all the answers. I just knew I couldn’t stay where I was.

So I’ve had to become comfortable saying, “I’m still figuring it out.” Without shame. Without over-explaining. Without shrinking to make others feel settled. Growth is messy before it becomes clear. And if you wait until you can articulate every step perfectly, you never move. Learning to sit with that discomfort, theirs and mine, has been one of the biggest releases of all.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

Trust the quiet voice sooner. You don’t have to wait until everything lines up neatly, and don’t build your life purely from logic. Leave space for desire. The things your heart wants aren’t random. They’re clues.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

Many of us in midlife feel quietly called toward something we can’t yet fully name. You can love your life and still feel the pull for more; that doesn’t make you selfish, it makes you alive.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Noticing how I feel today. And asking “What do I need right now?” And honouring it. It might be taking an intentional pause, having a chat with a friend, or going for a walk.

What Kath names so beautifully is the emotional truth of midlife change: it can feel lonely, even when you’re loved. Because when you start evolving, the people who know you as the old version may feel unsettled. Wanting more gets misread as ingratitude, or worse, a crisis. And then the self-doubt creeps in: maybe I should just be grateful and get on with it. Kath’s antidote is community and discernment. Finding women who don’t need you to justify your restlessness, who understand that growth isn’t a breakdown, it’s evolution. And learning to protect your dreams while they’re still tender, before they’re strong enough to stand on their own.

Her biggest unlearning is one I know will land for a lot of women: gratitude and desire can exist together. You don’t have to stay small to be a good person. You don’t have to wait for the perfect time to begin. And you don’t have to over-explain the fact that you’re still figuring it out. Midlife doesn’t ask for a flawless plan. It asks for honesty and a willingness to listen to the quiet voice inside you. Even if the next step is small: what do I need right now, today, and can I honour it?

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m Dr Trina Read, Canadian Sexologist and best-selling, award-winning author. I’m 57, married, raising two teenage boys, and one year past my final period.

This season feels like a recalibration. My body has changed. My energy has changed. Even my ambition has changed shape. I’m no longer reinventing myself; instead, I’m refining.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

How disorienting it can feel, even when your life looks “successful” from the outside. I didn’t expect the internal wobble or the random anxiety. Or those moments of, “Who am I?” I assumed with age came certainty. Instead, there’s been a strange mix of feeling confident yet extremely vulnerable.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

The unpredictability of your body. One day, you feel strong. The next day, something hurts for no clear reason. A rash appears. Your hair thins. Your hips ache. Your sleep disappears. As a Sexologist, I intellectually connect the dots to hormones. Emotionally, it’s still unsettling to feel like your body is completely out of your control.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

Community. I started a mastermind for women solopreneurs, and we meet in person every month. Being in a room with women who are building businesses, navigating hormones, parenting, ageing parents, and marriage normalises everything. When one woman says, “Is this happening to you too?” and the group nods, the shame evaporates.

What are you unlearning?

Control disguised as care. I’m unlearning the instinct to smooth the road for my teenage sons. I’m still figuring out where support ends, and coddling begins. I need to let my sons struggle and fail while resisting the urge to rescue.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

You don’t have to grip life so tightly. I was so driven. So serious. So focused on proving myself. I wish I’d trusted that things would unfold at the perfect time. That success is hollow if you don’t know how to push yourself away from your desk and go out to enjoy a slow Tuesday afternoon.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

Feeling insecure in a body that suddenly feels unfamiliar. As a Sexologist, I see how many women quietly worry that their changing bodies will make them less desirable. The bloating. The dryness. The weight “redistribution.” The drop in libido. We assume we’re the only ones. We’re not. Almost every woman I speak to is negotiating that same body shame. Most are doing it in silence.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Meditation. Fifteen to twenty minutes every morning for over a decade. It doesn’t make life perfect. It makes me less reactive. It gives me space between a hormonal wave and a decision. In this chapter, that pause has become everything.

What I appreciate most about Trina’s answers is the blend of expertise and humanity. She can connect the dots intellectually because she understands hormones for a living, and she still admits how emotionally unsettling it can be when sleep disappears, joints ache, hair thins, and your body feels out of your control. Her reminder about body shame is especially important: so many women quietly worry they’ll be less desirable as their bodies change, and most are carrying that fear in silence. Trina’s antidote is simple and powerful: a community that normalises, and a daily meditation practice that creates space between a hormonal wave and a decision. That pause, she says, becomes everything, and you can feel why. Add in her honesty about unlearning control disguised as care, especially with teenage sons, and this interview lands like a permission slip: you don’t have to grip life so tightly to be safe. This chapter can be softer, steadier, and more true, and you’re not alone in any of it.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Paul Strobl

Native Texan, Life & Executive Coach who has been location independent since 2008. "Don't trade your life for a living."

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now (work, health, family, identity)?

I’m 52. A curious person (with a degree in Anthropology and an MBA). American, living in a small mountain village in Bulgaria near the Greek border, coaching clients mostly in the U.S. from a stone house older than my home country. I also spent a decade in Argentina.

My current season feels less like building and more like editing. More interested in building a life that feels true on a Tuesday morning, “under the radar.” No one needs to know what I’m doing unless it can help others in some way. My work still matters. Health matters more than it used to. Relationships matter more than both.

What surprised you most about getting older and being a man in midlife?

How many men look successful from the outside and a bit lost on the inside?
I thought midlife would be about decline. For many men, it’s actually an identity reckoning. Despite the cultural myth that you get to a certain level and everything is solved, you can have competence, money, status, experience, and still wonder, “Now what?”

What’s been the hardest part that men rarely say out loud?

Many men built themselves around usefulness: to provide, produce, solve, and endure. Then one day, the external demands ease a bit, and they realise they don’t know who they are without being needed. That can feel embarrassing to admit.

What has helped you most?

Training consistently. Walking outside. Cooking simple food. Limiting noise.
Quelling uncertainty with curiosity and forward action. A tremendous wife who puts up with me.

What are you unlearning about masculinity, success, or what it means to be a good man?

That stoicism means emotional distance. That success automatically transfers into meaning. That strength is dominance. I think real strength now looks more like steadiness, honesty, responsibility, and the ability to stay open and curious.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

Don’t confuse momentum with direction. Some goals are worth achieving only so you can discover they were too small. Take care of your body earlier. Protect your attention. Choose people carefully. And stop assuming there’s one correct life.

What do you want other men to know they’re not alone in?

Feeling grateful and dissatisfied at the same time. Loving your family and still wanting more space. Being successful and still anxious. Wondering if you missed your real path. You’re not uniquely broken, you’re human.

What’s one small ritual that keeps you steady?

Slow mornings before the world starts asking things from me. Coffee. Quiet. Walk the dog. A little thinking.

I’ve also written an evening “prayer.” It sits on my nightstand. It focuses on gratitude and how I’m nothing in the cosmos, but still something and part of all of it.

What stayed with me most in Paul’s answers is the way he names something so many men feel, and so few say out loud: the loss of identity that can come when usefulness has been the foundation of self-worth. If you’ve built your life around providing, producing, solving, and enduring, what happens when the pressure lifts and you’re left asking, now what? Paul’s response isn’t dramatic. It’s grounded. Train consistently. Walk outside. Cook simple food. Limit noise. Stay curious. Keep moving. And maybe that’s exactly why it lands.

His version of masculinity feels mature, not performative: strength as steadiness, honesty, responsibility, openness, and curiosity. I also love his reminder that you can feel grateful and dissatisfied at the same time, successful and still anxious, deeply loving and still wanting more space. That doesn’t make you broken. It makes you human. And perhaps that’s the real edit midlife offers, not a total reinvention, but a quieter, truer life built around what actually matters.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Rise Wise

Where psychology meets soul in midlife

By Linda Cooper

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m Linda Cooper, a writer, guide, and what I often call a story midwife, someone who has spent the last decade trying to make sense of what midlife awakens in a woman.

I’m the author of When EVERYTHING Changes: The Midlife Collision of Body and Life, a book about the profound convergence of menopause and life transitions many women experience in midlife, and The Conscious Coach, which explores how women can turn their lived experience into meaningful work guiding others.

I’m also the founder of the Legacy Writer’s Studio, where I help people turn their life experiences into meaningful books. I’ve come to believe that our stories carry wisdom we don’t always recognise until we look back and mine the gold to make sense of them.

Personally, I’m a mother of three grown children and grandmother to a beautiful granddaughter, who reminds me that the way we, as women, live our lives now becomes part of the story the next generation learns about what a woman’s life can be.

As for my own season of midlife, I would say I’m on the other side of the great upheaval. I’m post-menopause now, and I’ve moved through many of the transitions that can shake a woman’s life: identity shifts, relationship changes, losses, and the question that eventually arises… who am I now?

I’m not finished evolving, none of us ever are, but I’m far enough along the path to see the shape of it. And that’s the place I write and guide from now, helping women understand that what feels like everything falling apart in midlife is often the beginning of something wiser trying to emerge. It’s the heart of what I call the Rise Wise philosophy.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

Honestly, how unprepared I was. The extent of the conversation most of us received was fairly simple: after a year without a period, you’re officially in menopause, and there may be some hot flashes along the way. What I wasn’t prepared for at all was the psychological and emotional shift that came with it.

No one had ever connected those dots for me. There was no conversation about how a profound biological transition might also reorganise your inner life, how the way you think, feel, and relate to the world can begin to shift as well.

For a while, I honestly thought something was wrong with me. I didn’t realise that the restlessness I felt, the questioning, the sense that parts of my life no longer fit the way they once had, might actually be part of the same transition.

Looking back now, it seems obvious. When a woman moves through such a significant biological shift, it makes sense that it would ripple through the rest of her life, too. But at the time, there was no language for it. And I think many women are still navigating that part alone, trying to make sense of changes that are far deeper than the physical symptoms we’re usually told about.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

I think one of the hardest parts is the loneliness that can come with it.

Not necessarily the loneliness of being alone, but the loneliness of feeling like the person you used to be is dissolving while the world around you continues as if nothing has changed.

From the outside, life may look exactly the same. You’re still showing up for work, family, and responsibilities. But internally, something is shifting, and it can be difficult to explain that to the people around you, especially if they aren’t experiencing it themselves.

Many women reach this stage and begin questioning parts of their lives they had long accepted: relationships, roles they’ve played for decades, the expectations they’ve carried. That kind of inner reckoning can feel incredibly disorienting.

Another part that isn’t talked about enough is how much emotional responsibility women often carry in relationships. For many of us, we’ve spent years being the stabiliser, the one who smooths things over, holds everything together, takes care of everyone else’s emotional needs. Midlife has a way of bringing that pattern into the light.

You begin to realise how exhausting it is to carry the emotional weight of an entire household or relationship. And when you start stepping back from that role, even a little, it can create tension and confusion because the system everyone is used to suddenly starts changing. That’s a difficult moment.

But it’s also an important one, because it’s often the beginning of learning how to live and relate to others from a more honest and sustainable place.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

The single biggest shift for me was understanding that midlife is not just something to get through, it’s a developmental stage of life.

We tend to think of growth as something that happens when we’re young. Childhood, adolescence, early adulthood. But no one really explains that midlife can be another profound period of psychological and emotional development.

Once I began to see it that way, everything started to make more sense. The questioning, the restlessness, the desire to look more honestly at the life I had built. Instead of seeing those feelings as something going wrong, I began to see them as signals that something inside me was trying to evolve.

Writing also became incredibly important during this time.

It gave me a way to slow down the noise in my mind and begin listening more carefully to what I was actually feeling and thinking. Over time, it helped me develop a deeper inner dialogue with myself, something many of us never really learn to cultivate earlier in life.

And perhaps most importantly, hearing other women speak honestly about their experiences helped enormously. When we start sharing these conversations openly, something powerful happens. We begin to realise that what felt confusing or isolating is actually part of a much larger human experience.

Midlife can feel like everything is coming apart. But when you understand what’s happening, it can also become the beginning of a much wiser and more intentional way of living.

What are you unlearning?

Midlife has asked me to unlearn quite a lot. For me, it meant going back to the beginning and questioning many of the beliefs and patterns I had been living inside of for most of my life. I started asking myself where certain assumptions about relationships, responsibility, and even my role in the world had actually come from.

Some of it was familial. Some of it was societal. Some of it was simply the coping mechanisms I had developed earlier in life that helped me navigate difficult situations.

Those strategies served me at one point. But what helps us survive one chapter of life can begin to limit us in the next.

So a lot of my midlife journey involved a kind of reflective process, what many people now call shadow work, where I began looking honestly at my reactions, my patterns, and the roles I had unconsciously taken on in relationships.

It meant recognising parts of myself that were shaped by conditioning rather than conscious choice.

Midlife can be a pivotal moment where you realise you are being redefined. And for me, that meant becoming very intentional about what I was willing to carry forward into the next chapter of my life, and what I was ready to leave behind.

Because some parts of ourselves were never really ours to begin with.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

More than anything, I think I would want her to feel safe enough within herself to speak her truth.

At thirty-five, I was doing what so many women do. I was trying to hold everything together. I was meeting expectations, being responsible, taking care of the people and roles that mattered to me. From the outside, life looked stable and successful.

But inside, there were parts of me that were still small, still cautious about saying what I really felt or needed. I would want her to know that her voice matters more than she realises.

So many of us grow up learning to be agreeable, accommodating, careful not to disrupt the harmony around us. We become very skilled at adapting, smoothing things over, and carrying emotional responsibility for the people around us. And while those qualities can come from a place of love, they can also slowly lead us away from ourselves.

If I could speak to her now, I would encourage her to rise more fully into herself, to trust her instincts, to stop hiding parts of who she is, and to understand that speaking honestly does not make her difficult or selfish.

At the same time, I would hold a great deal of compassion for the woman she was then. She was doing the best she could with what she knew at the time. Most of us are.

Finding your voice is not something that happens all at once. It unfolds over years of living, learning, and sometimes losing the certainty you once held. But when a woman finally begins to speak from the truth of who she is, something powerful shifts, not only in her life, but in the lives of the people around her.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

I would want women to know they’re not alone in that strange in-between season that can arrive in midlife. There often comes a time when you realise you are no longer the person you once were, but you are not yet fully the woman you are becoming. The roles and identities that once shaped your life begin to shift, motherhood changes as children grow, relationships evolve, careers are questioned, and even your relationship with your own body changes. For a while, it can leave you feeling untethered, as though the ground beneath your feet is rearranging itself.

It can feel disorienting, even frightening at times, because we are used to defining ourselves through the roles we occupy and the structures that have guided our lives. When those structures begin to loosen, we can mistake that feeling for being lost.

But what I have come to understand is that this in-between space is not emptiness. It is a threshold. It is the moment before something new takes shape.

In many ways, it reminds me of the moment when a baby is held before being born into the light. There is a pause there, a sacred, unseen period of becoming where everything is changing beneath the surface, even though the new life has not yet fully emerged.

And I think many women in midlife find themselves standing in that same place, waiting, changing, gathering the courage to step into the next version of themselves.

If a woman finds herself there, feeling uncertain or ungrounded, I would want her to know that she isn’t alone. She is simply in the middle of being reborn.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

For me, it’s less a specific ritual and more a perspective that I return to again and again.

Over the years, I’ve come to see my life through a much deeper lens. I believe I’m a soul having a human experience, and that belief has changed how I relate to the challenges and transitions life inevitably brings.

Instead of seeing difficult moments as things that are happening to me, I try to look at them with curiosity and ask what they might be inviting me to learn or become. In many ways, I’ve begun observing my life from a higher perspective, noticing the patterns, the lessons, and the ways certain experiences seem to call me toward growth.

This perspective has been incredibly steadying.

Midlife has especially asked me to expand, to question old assumptions, to practice courage, to let go of identities that no longer fit, and to step into a more honest version of myself. When I look at those moments through a spiritual lens, they stop feeling like disruptions and start looking more like invitations.

That way of seeing the world has become the foundation of how I move through my days now. It reminds me that even the difficult chapters of life can be part of a larger unfolding, one that is continually asking us to grow wiser, more conscious, and more fully ourselves.

What I love about Linda’s perspective is that she doesn’t reduce midlife to a problem to solve. She sees it as a developmental stage, a threshold, a sacred becoming. That reframing alone is powerful, because when you understand that the questioning, restlessness, grief, and untethering are not signs that something is wrong but signals that something inside you is evolving, everything begins to soften.

She also names with such clarity the loneliness of this season, not necessarily being alone, but feeling like the woman you once were is dissolving while the world around you carries on as normal. And for so many women, that coincides with the exhausting realisation of just how much emotional responsibility they’ve been carrying in relationships for years. Linda’s wisdom is an invitation to step back, reflect, and become more conscious about what is truly yours to carry forward, and what was never really yours to begin with.

Her image of midlife as a kind of rebirth stays with you; not empty, not lost, but a threshold, a pause before something new emerges into the light. If you’re in that strange in-between, no longer who you were, not yet fully who you’re becoming, Linda’s words are a steady reminder: you are not broken, and you are not alone. You may simply be in the middle of becoming wiser, more conscious, and more fully yourself.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I am transitioning out of midlife and making my way in post menopause.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

What surprised me most was the pressure of being in the sandwich generation in midlife with the stresses of teenage offspring, work, a working spouse, ageing parents and the challenges of trying to do self-care as my body changed.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

The hardest part is finding time to take stock of where you are in life, where you want to be, and how to get there. At the same time, you are learning to care for yourself differently as you experience changes in your brain (brain fog) and physical changes in your body. And all around you, there are mounting demands that don't support self-care and drain your time and energy.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

What helped me most was scheduling time to take stock at least once a week and scheduling exercise in my calendar as I would a doctor's appointment or other commitment.

What are you unlearning?

I am unlearning how to put my needs last.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

I would tell my 35-year-old self to schedule quiet time regularly, identify what you find rewarding, and take steps to start doing it.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

I want women to know that changes affect every individual in different ways at different times. We need to respect each other's experiences as each of us is unique. We each will make specific choices at specific times that may not apply to our friends, coworkers and relatives. Midlife is not a one-size-fits-all experience.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

One small ritual that keeps me steady is waking up before my family and before I get calls from my office. During this protected quiet time, I can think about my day and what I might like to accomplish besides what is on my schedule.

What I appreciate most about Julia’s perspective is its practicality. She doesn’t romanticise midlife. She schedules it. She puts exercise in the diary like a medical appointment. She blocks out quiet time before the world wakes up. She actively unlearns the habit of putting herself last. There’s something powerful in that. Midlife may not be one-size-fits-all, but the reminder to respect our own unique timing, energy, and needs feels universal. If you’re in the thick of the sandwich years, feeling stretched between everyone else’s demands, let this be your nudge: protect your mornings, schedule your well-being, and give yourself permission to matter in your own life.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m Jessica, a registered dietitian, women’s health coach, mom of three, and someone a few years into perimenopause. I spend my days supporting women through this transition, and then I come home and live it myself. It’s humbling in the best way.

I’m in that season where things still mostly work… but not the way they used to. It’s subtle some days. Loud on others.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

How random it felt at first. No one talks about the early symptoms, the nerve pain and numbness, the irritability that feels disproportionate, the insomnia that stretches into month four, the flashes of rage, the forgetfulness that makes you question yourself.

And if you’re on the younger end, the dismissal. Being told you’re “too young” or that it’s just stress. Gosh, when you are crazy stressed and told just to relax. How do you think that lands?

What also surprised me is how physiological this all is. As estradiol declines, inflammation rises. Weight begins to creep even when nothing changes. Cholesterol and blood sugar can shift. Women are more likely to be diagnosed with an autoimmune condition during this window.

It’s not in our heads. It’s biology. But no one hands you that memo.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

The identity shift. I’ve always been competitive. Driven. Hustle culture made sense to me. I wanted to win, to be the best, to do all the courses, strength train every morning, and show up at 100 per cent.

But after being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, my window of stress tolerance already narrowed. Layer perimenopause on top of that, and the window shrank even more.

No one talks about how much midlife asks you to slow down, not because you’re weak, but because your body demands boundaries. She’s seeking support and new ways. Our old strategies are no longer effective. So get that old mantra of eat last move more out of your head. And, it’s grieving who you used to be while learning who you are becoming.

What has helped you most?

Community. Without question. I’m fortunate to work in this space, so I get to learn from women ahead of me while supporting those behind me. That creates this beautiful bridge; we remind each other we’re not crazy. We laugh about wanting to burst into tears because someone is chewing too loudly. We validate each other when insomnia makes us feel unhinged.

Practically, nourishing my body consistently has helped. Prioritising protein. Protecting sleep. Getting outside. Forest bathing. Laughing often.

Oral micronised progesterone has helped tremendously with sleep and nervous system steadiness. And a lot of grace. A deep, ongoing practice of grace.

What are you unlearning?

Hustle and diet culture. I used to believe that if I couldn’t work out for 60 minutes, it didn’t count. If I couldn’t complete my full morning routine, I had failed.

Now I use what I call the accordion theory. Some days I can expand, gratitude, journaling or meditation, a little education, half-caff coffee with soy milk or protein, and strength training. Other days, I need to shrink it down, a short inspirational reading with my coffee and ten minutes of movement. Ten minutes count. Listening counts. Midlife is teaching me flexibility. Not all-or-nothing.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

Changes are coming. They are hormonal. Don’t be afraid. Set boundaries earlier. Protect your stress load. Women with autoimmune conditions are more likely to enter perimenopause earlier. You are not broken. You are shifting. And I would tell her to start building community sooner. You don’t have to muscle through everything alone.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

The confusion. The feeling of not recognising yourself. The way your body can feel foreign some days. The frustration of trying supplement after supplement because the internet told you to.

There is so much hype and misinformation out there. So many people are eager to sell something to women in this vulnerable window. Find a practitioner you trust. Get educated. Make decisions from clarity, not fear.

And understand that bioidentical hormone therapy addresses symptoms at the root hormonal level. For many women, it is far more effective than stacks of supplements.

You are not weak. You are not dramatic. You are not alone.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Conversations with friends who get it. A supportive husband. Time in nature. Fresh air resets me faster than almost anything. It reminds me that seasons change. Bodies change. And that change is not the same thing as decline. Midlife isn’t the end of something. It’s the refinement of everything.

What I love about Jessica’s perspective is that it removes the shame. The brain fog, the rage, the insomnia, the confusion, the feeling like your body has become a stranger, none of it is a personal failing. It’s a physiology meeting a life that’s often already full. Her story is also a quiet invitation to release the old midlife reflex of trying harder: more discipline, more workouts, more restriction, more supplements, more pushing. Instead, she offers flexibility with what she calls the accordion theory: some days you expand, some days you shrink, and both count. She reminds us to find a practitioner we trust, to make decisions from clarity, not fear, and to lean on community because muscling through alone is not a badge of honour. Midlife isn’t decline, she says. It’s refinement. And honestly, that’s exactly what this conversation feels like.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I'm a leadership & executive coach, multi-award-winning author, speaker, and consultant. I'm in my mid-50s.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

It snuck up on me! I still think of myself as young, and it surprises me every time something "age-related" comes up. Mostly physical issues: For example, I just moved a few days ago. I've moved a ton; I have the routine down. But this time, I hurt my back pretty seriously just unpacking boxes. I was being careful, but I've always been prone to injury, and I just tweaked something that didn't want to move; however, I moved it.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

I think it's a combination of the new physical limitations, what I was just talking about, and the emotional hit that comes when we realise we can't turn back the clock. This is our new reality.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

A couple of things. I have much more community, including a lot of women in midlife, than I had when I was younger. And some mindset shifts: There are definitely advantages that come with age. I trust my intuition more. I don't put up with bullsh*t or other things I tolerated before. I'm wiser and more confident in who I am and how I show up in the world.

What are you unlearning?

Great question. I'm unlearning a lot, but it's not all down to midlife, or at least not directly. I learned in my early 50s that I'm neurodivergent, and that I've been masking all my life. This is something a lot of women in midlife are discovering: the estrogen drops we experience in perimenopause and menopause can exacerbate symptoms we've been hiding all our lives because we're so good at coping. So I'm unlearning that, peeling away all those layers that I built up over decades. I'm also unlearning pride and the independence I used to value so highly. None of us can do this alone.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

Focus on building community now; don't wait. Work isn't nearly as important as you think it is. Have a lot more fun; find more ways to bring joy into your life. And put some money away. And then more.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

They're not alone in any of it. In the physical or emotional challenges, or in the wins. We all need support, and we need to share the good, too. Celebrate together.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

I sit down at the end of each day and think about (and write down) all that went well and all that I'm grateful for. It's sending the universe a message, "More of this, please." I'm also restarting stretching exercises in the morning; ironically, I started a few days before I injured my back. But it's so important to move more, especially for those who sit at desks all day and are less active than they used to be.

Rachel’s interview is a reminder that midlife isn’t just a physical shift, it’s a reckoning and a refinement. There’s grief in realising you can’t turn back the clock, yes, but there’s also relief in the wisdom that arrives with that truth. I especially appreciated her reflections on unlearning: discovering neurodivergence later in life, recognising years of masking, and noticing how hormonal changes can amplify things women have been quietly coping with for decades. And then the most important thread running through it all: community. The older we get, the clearer it becomes that independence isn’t the same as strength, and none of us is meant to do this alone. Her daily practice of writing what went well and what she’s grateful for feels like a gentle way of saying, More of this, please while her recommitment to stretching and movement is the kind of practical care that keeps you steady for the long haul. If you’re navigating the physical changes, the emotional shifts, or the unexpected identity discoveries of midlife, let Rachel’s message land: you’re not alone in any of it, and you don’t have to carry it by yourself.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I am Lana Antonova, the founder and creative director of Webvixxen Design, as well as a multi-founder across several ventures. I am in the reclamation season of midlife. I don’t mean the season of reinvention, necessarily, but the season of refinement. I mean the season where I am no longer performing but instead aligning. I am clearer, less apologetic, and much more intentional about where I am putting my energy. I think this season is less about proving and more about building from wisdom.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

I’m not in menopause yet, but what has surprised me most about midlife is how much of it is internal. You expect surface-level changes, but you don’t expect the deeper recalibration. Your priorities shift. Your tolerance shifts. Your definition of success shifts. There’s a psychological refinement happening that no one really prepares you for.

Midlife is not about dramatic change; it is about subtle change. It is the quiet awareness of one’s finite, hence precious, energy. It is this awareness that alters the way one goes through the world.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

The hardest part is the shift. On the inside, I feel like the same woman I’ve always been. My ambition is there. My humour is there. My drive is there. But on the outside, things change. Energy changes. Appearance changes. Dynamics change. And that contrast can be disorienting.

There’s also a quiet reshuffling of priorities and relationships. Friends move into different life stages. Some are raising children. Some are newly married later in life. Some are building entirely new chapters. The circles evolve, and sometimes you find yourself slightly outside of conversations you once belonged to. No one really talks about that subtle loneliness.

Midlife asks you to adjust, again and again. But what it also gives you is the skill to do exactly that. By this stage, you’ve learned how to recalibrate. You’ve learned resilience. You understand that change is not a crisis, it’s a transition.

What feels hardest is not the ageing itself. It’s the pace of the world around us. Everyone is online. Everyone is distracted. Real conversation feels rarer. And yet this is the stage of life where depth matters more than ever.

That realisation is actually shaping something I’m developing now, something rooted in presence and human connection. Because if midlife teaches you anything, it’s that being heard and hearing others is no longer optional. It’s essential.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

What has helped me most is not giving in to change but embracing it. I have realised that priorities change, energy levels change, and some friendships change. However, I have also realised that I should not give up on my ambitions and myself in the process.

Movement has been one of the cornerstones of my journey. I have enjoyed long walks, weight training with adequate recovery time, eating with intention, and sleeping with intention. I have also realised the importance of honest conversations with women who are not afraid to say that everything is not as easy as it looks. Community has been more important than ever, and I have finally come to appreciate my body instead of trying to negotiate with it.

What are you unlearning?

I’m letting go of the idea that I have to be the same to be relevant. I’m letting go of the need to challenge myself beyond my limits just to prove that I can do it. I’m letting go of the idea that a friendship has to last for it to have been meaningful.

Most of all, I’m letting go of the need to keep up with a world that is hyper-digital and doesn’t stop. Depth is more important to me than noise.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

Slow down. You are not behind, and you do not need to prove your worth by pushing yourself to exhaustion.

Take care of your health from the beginning. Nurture your nervous system. Be discerning about the company you keep. And understand that reinvention is not a singular act, but rather one that unfolds in layers. You are allowed to evolve, without apology.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

You are not alone in feeling like there is a disconnect between your inner being and the way you are changing on the outside of life. You are not alone in the way your friendships are being rearranged. You are not alone in wondering what’s next.

And you are not alone in your desire for a deeper connection in a world that often feels like it’s just surface-level. Your desire for real conversation, real connection and real understanding is not a weakness. It’s maturity.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Meditation and movement have been the anchors of my life for decades. I was always someone who had faith in the power of the mind. I know that what I think about grows. Training my mind to think about possibilities rather than limitations has been one of the most stabilising forces of my life.

Meditation has been about allowing change to happen rather than fighting it. It has been about being open to change rather than being afraid of it.

Movement has been my second meditation for many years. Training, walking, working out, and pushing myself physically have been a part of who I am. In recent years, nerve damage in my neck and hands has forced me to dial it way back in ways that have been very hard for me to accept. Yet still, I move. I walk. I use my body as much as it will allow me to. For me, being steady and stable has nothing to do with how hard I am pushing myself and everything to do with how consistent I am with training my mind and working with my body, no matter what it asks of me. Two things have been with me through every season of life and are with me still.

What Lana articulates so beautifully is that midlife isn’t always a dramatic rupture. Sometimes it’s a series of subtle recognitions: your tolerance changes, your friendships reshuffle, your body asks for a new pace, and suddenly depth matters more than noise. She doesn’t frame these shifts as failure or loss, but as maturation, the kind that teaches you to recalibrate again and again without making it a crisis. I also love her devotion to presence in a world that’s become hyper-digital and distracted. Her anchors, meditation and movement, feel like a steady refusal to abandon herself. Even with nerve damage forcing her to dial things back, she keeps moving, not to prove anything, but to stay in a relationship with her body and her life. If you’ve been feeling that disconnect between who you are inside and how life looks outside, Lana’s words are a reminder: your desire for real conversation, real connection, and a quieter kind of success isn’t weakness. It’s wisdom.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

What Effort Reveals

Research-based and personal reflections on effort, learning, and the self beneath performance. Writing that pays attention to what falls away as we stay curious, and show courage as we learn and change.

By Marc Dupont

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now (work, health, family, identity)?

I’ve never liked reductionist labels. So I suppose you could say I’m a French Canadian strategist, writer, endurance triathlete, hiker, foodie, sommelier, traveller, father, husband and training partner and human to our sweet dog Rocket. All of the above. None of it is quite sufficient on its own.

Work is still demanding. I’m still ambitious. I compete hard. But now I’m less interested in proving myself and more interested in being unmistakably honest with others and about what I value.

Physical health? I still push. But I no longer bully my body into denial when it asks for rest. Injuries take longer to heal. Prescriptions have joined the routine. The illusion of endless vitality has faded, replaced by something softer but more durable: respect. Something I try to give myself and that I am slowly getting better at.

Identity-wise, I suppose you could say I’m in a season of integration. Not softness for softness’ sake, though. Not aesthetic gentleness. Wholeness. Emotionally available and decisive. Protective without being possessive. Competitive without being consumed. If that makes any sense?

A lot of my recent writing, including a book I finished and a long series on fear and armour, has been my way of staying close to that work. The slow undoing of performance as a survival strategy.

Throughout my life, curiosity has probably been my secret weapon. I have always questioned things and wanted to learn and grow. Even as a younger man, when something about the script felt off, I pulled at it. That curiosity is what allowed me to see the mask at all.

My daughter tells me that even as I enter my sixties, I am still learning. That may be the thing I’m proudest of. Not the races. Not the titles. Not the roles. The willingness to keep growing, even when growth exposes you.

What surprised you most about getting older and being a man in midlife?

How quickly it happened! As all of us our age know too well. One day, you still feel like yourself, but you notice the world has started reading you differently. Ageism slips in casually. You’re no longer the young promise. You’re the experienced one. or just the older one. It starts when people in the grocery store start calling you sir and you almost get offended. Now people start asking when you are retiring (I preferred being called sir).

But the bigger surprise was internal.

I expected a decline. What I didn’t expect was this: the more I let go of the need to be liked, to be right, to be impressive, the stronger I became. Not louder. Not harder. Stronger in the sense of being less reactive. Less easily pulled off centre. Less dependent on applause.

I guess you could say that midlife didn’t so much make me softer, as much as it made me harder to hide. That was not AI prose by the way, I cam sup with that myself :-)

There was relief in that, by the way. When the mask drops, you feel exposed at first. But you also feel real. As James Hollis calls it, you enter the middle passage. Something no longer feels quite right. Something more honest insists on being lived. You start feeling that pull, that of returning to the real you. You don’t quite have words for it; it’s more like an inner voice. Who you were before you started playing social roles and wearing masks. For me, it was that kid in me that came back to take his place.

What’s been the hardest part that men rarely say out loud?

Feeling insecure and afraid, basically fear. I don’t mean dramatic fear. More like the fear of being irrelevant, no longer being admired, or not being needed in the way we once were, of discovering that some of what we called strength was actually a coping mechanism.

Many of us were handed a narrow definition of manhood and told to defend it. Questioning can feel like betrayal. Expanding it can feel like weakness. So when the culture shifts, or when our partners grow, or when our children leave the nest, it can feel less like progress and more like diminishment.

That loss, if we don’t examine it, ferments. And what often ferments comes out as anger.

While fear might explain insecure behaviour, I’m not proposing it excuses it. But if we don’t name it, it keeps “running the show” as I often say.

If a man feels threatened by your growth, it may not be because you are shrinking him. It may be because he is confronting a fear he has never examined, that he was only ever lovable when he wasn’t really himself. That doesn’t mean you should shrink to protect him. Expressing boundaries is important, but insufficient. It just means the work is his to do.

The hardest part for me wasn’t removing the mask. It was admitting I had built parts of my identity around not being rejected in the first place.

What has helped you most?

Disciplined self-inquiry and disciplined practice.

Writing forces honesty. Physical endurance training through sports does too. You can’t bluff a long run, let alone an Ironman race. Effort exposes what’s actually there. For years, I used intensity as proof. Now I use it as information.

And then there’s gratitude. Not as a mood, but more as a kind of training.

Every night before sleep, I think of five things that happened that day for which I’m grateful. Every morning before getting up, I think of five things in my life I’m grateful for. It takes less than a minute. It sounds simple. It isn’t.

It rewires attention. More than that, it literally rewires the brain.

The brain strengthens what it rehearses. If I rehearse resentment or scarcity, those pathways deepen. If I rehearse sufficiency and appreciation, something steadier forms. Gratitude doesn’t eliminate fear, but for me at least, it reduces how quickly I default to defensiveness.

It’s not sentimental. It’s neurological. And moral, even. It reminds me I have enough, that I am enough, even when I’m not performing.

So I guess you could say that for me, midlife hasn’t so much been a crisis as a kind of reckoning. A slow realisation that some of what I called “me” was actually adaptation. A mask I didn’t know I was wearing until the day I felt it slip off.

So I would have to add that therapy in my 40s helped with that. A lot. It helped me deal with mental injuries, just like physical therapy helped with my physical injuries (there were a lot of those, too).

What are you unlearning about masculinity, success, or what it means to be a good man?

I don’t think masculinity needs to be dismantled. If I can be blunt here for a second, I’d say this: “I think it needs to grow up.”

I don’t believe growth means swinging to the opposite stereotype and putting on a different costume. It isn’t about trading in boots for beads, a military buzz cut for a man bun, or loud certainty for soft-spoken new-age performance. Not that there’s anything remotely wrong with any of that. What I mean is that it’s not so much about becoming decorative or gentle in tone that signals evolution, or deliberatively adopting what we once labelled as traditionally feminine traits. That too can still be performance. Just a different script.

The real shift has nothing to do with how I look or how I signal myself culturally. It has everything to do with how I defend how I feel internally, how I treat people with respect and kindness. And no, do not for a second think that is feminine. I can still compete. I can still be ambitious. I can still desire and be desired. I can still take up space. But I no longer grip so tightly around what that must look like.

And here’s where I’ll be blunt. I honestly believe women are stronger than men. Not as a slogan. Not as self-flagellation or self-deprecation. As pure observation. I’ve watched women carry emotional complexity without collapsing into defensiveness. I’ve watched them adapt, endure, give birth, rebuild, and keep moving forward when many men would shut down or lash out. I’ve seen that strength up close.

And yes, even physically, I see more women pushing limits once thought untouchable, running farther, lifting heavier, refusing the ceilings we quietly assumed were fixed. That doesn’t diminish me. It doesn’t threaten me. It impresses me. It challenges me.

That strength calls men forward. Not to compete with it. To mature alongside it.

That doesn’t mean men are weak or have to act inferior to make a point. Men and women are equal. Full stop, I say. But it may mean we have catching up to do in certain domains, though. Honestly: pretending otherwise hasn’t served us well.

And to be fair, women have been pushed in the opposite direction at times, taught to harden, to adopt aggressive postures to be taken seriously. That’s adaptation, too. The goal isn’t to swap stereotypes. It’s to outgrow them.

Being a good man, to me now, isn’t about applause. It’s about honesty, kindness, authenticity and accountability. It’s being a good person.

Noticing the surge of defensiveness in your body and choosing not to let it decide who you are. That’s discipline. And discipline, especially when no one is watching, is, in my humble opinion, real strength.

Maybe being a good man makes less sense than being a good person. Whole. Integrated. Responsible for your impact.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

The armour you’re wearing might feel necessary, but it isn’t permanent.

At 35, I was still performing in ways I couldn’t see, trying to be impressive, trying to be liked, trying to outrun the old fear that if I stopped achieving, something essential about me would be exposed.

I wouldn’t tell him to be softer. I’d tell him this: You don’t have to earn your right to be here. And you can’t secure love by being impressive or being what other people want you to be.

De-armouring is lonely at first. People won’t automatically understand you more. Some may even like you less. That’s not failure. That’s clarity. Do it for yourself, not for approval. The more securely you stand in who you are, the more cleanly you can love someone else.

What do you want other men to know they’re not alone in?

The loneliness of doing this work internally. And the courage it takes.

Most of us were not taught how to examine our inner world. We were taught to cope, compete, fix, and endure. So when the mask starts to slip, it can feel destabilising. It isn’t. It’s a transition.

And mental injury deserves the same language as physical injury. We don’t whisper about broken bones. We shouldn’t whisper about broken thinking and feelings. Seek help the same way you would for your knee or your heart.

Your home is not in the roles you’ve played. It’s inside you. Letting go of guilt and old definitions of worth is hard, but you’re not the only one struggling with that. Talk to others. Letting go isn’t betrayal. Its growth. And it’s never too late.

What’s one small ritual that keeps you steady?

It’s two things, if I may: Always stay curious, and brave and ask the hard questions of yourself. And always be grateful. On purpose. Especially when the day feels off.

Like endurance training, both those things compound over time, and they build something durable. And durability, with discipline and authenticity more than dominance, is what I call strength.

What stayed with me is how clearly Marc names the thing men are rarely taught to admit: fear. Not dramatic fear, but the quiet insecurity of becoming irrelevant, less admired, less needed, and the uncomfortable realisation that some versions of strength were actually coping mechanisms. He doesn’t excuse it, but he does explain what happens when fear is left unnamed: it ferments, and it often comes out as anger. His antidote is disciplined practice, writing that forces honesty, endurance training that exposes what’s real, therapy that treats mental injury with the same seriousness as physical injury, and gratitude as an intentional rewiring of attention. Not sentimental, neurological. Moral, even.

Marc’s take on masculinity is blunt and refreshing: it doesn’t need to be dismantled, it needs to grow up. Outgrow the costumes, the scripts, the defensiveness. Be a good person. Whole. Accountable for your impact. If you’re a man doing the internal work in silence, his closing message lands like a hand on your shoulder: you’re not alone. The mask slipping isn’t a crisis. It’s a transition. Stay curious. Ask the hard questions. Be grateful on purpose. That’s the kind of strength that lasts.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Alison Bame, RDN, AFMC

For healthy women whose body no longer responds to the old rules after 40. Weekly insights on midlife metabolism, sleep, hormones, and sustainable weight loss.

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m Alison, a Registered Dietitian, Functional Medicine Practitioner, and a woman who has walked through cancer, early menopause, and the quiet rebuilding that follows both.

I’m in what I’d call the reclamation season of midlife, not trying to prove, not trying to hustle, not trying to look 35 again, but deeply invested in feeling strong, resilient, clear, and at home in my body.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

What surprised me most was how quickly your body can feel unfamiliar. You can look “fine” on the outside, but feel like your internal thermostat, metabolism, and mood control panel have all been rewired: same food, same workouts, different response, and how little guidance there is beyond, “It’s just ageing”, or in my case, “Be happy you are alive.” I am thrilled for every birthday, and that’s not good enough. I want to feel great again.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

The gap between surviving and actually healing. I am profoundly grateful for conventional medicine. It saved my life, but when it came to menopause at 42… to radiation-induced colitis… to adrenals that barely released cortisol… to a liver burdened from chemo and radiation… to autoimmune thyroiditis... There weren’t real tools; there was monitoring, there was symptom management, there was, “This is normal.”

Yes, and that’s not the same as being well. The hardest part was realising I would have to become the student of my own body: healing my gut after radiation damage, learning how to truly support detox pathways, rebuilding liver resilience, restoring nervous system regulation, rebuilding muscle, sleeping with intention, and eating in a way that was not just “healthy” but therapeutic.

No one told me how powerful a lifestyle could be. How strategic sleep, strength training, and nervous system regulation are. How a nutrient-dense, specific diet can heal. How cortisol patterns matter. How blood sugar stability changes everything. The grief wasn’t just losing the body I knew. It was realising survival wasn’t the same as restoration. I didn’t want to just be alive; I wanted to feel strong, clear, whole.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

Learning how to truly nourish my unique body, especially after the damage of treatment. Chemo doesn’t just “kill cancer,” it scorches terrain: gut lining, mitochondria, hormone signalling, stress response.

Pulling my body back together led me to train in functional medicine: testing instead of guessing, rebuilding my gut, stabilising blood sugar, strength training to rebuild muscle, protecting sleep like it’s sacred, eating enough protein, managing cortisol, not just calories, and faith.

Midlife has been less about control and more about stewardship: listening when symptoms whisper, responding with care instead of punishment, trusting that God designed the body to heal when we give it the right conditions.

Now I know there is a way through, and I can’t unknow that, which is why I help women who are suffering and don’t know where to turn. We don’t have to suffer. We shouldn’t suffer.

What are you unlearning?

That pushing harder fixes everything. That exhaustion is normal. That’s better. That rest must be earned. I’m unlearning the idea that my body is a project to conquer. It’s a partner. It’s wise. It keeps score. And it responds to how it’s treated.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

• Build muscle sooner.

• Eat more protein.

• Guard your sleep like it’s gold.

• Don’t glorify stress.

• Don’t fear a healthy weight.

• And this: Your body isn’t fragile. But it does keep score. Support it now so it supports you later.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

• Waking up at 3:17 a.m.

• Feeling like your waistline changed overnight.

• Wondering why what “always worked” suddenly doesn’t.

• Feeling strong one day and inflamed the next.

• Wondering if this is just how it is now. It’s not, your body is responding to the environment and hormonal shifts it’s in. There is logic to it, and there are solutions.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Morning yoga and prayer before anything else, before the phone, before email, before input, just the breath, stretch, scripture.

Getting outside daily, even if it’s just ten minutes of light on my face, and a pre-bed routine that looks suspiciously like what I used to do for my toddlers: warm bath, good book, lights low, wind down with intention.

Midlife has taught me this: Health isn’t built through dramatic overhauls; it’s built through steady rhythms.

What Alison makes crystal clear is the gap many women fall into after a health crisis or a hormonal shift: you survive, but no one shows you how to restore. And so you become the student of your own body. You learn that symptoms aren’t drama, they’re data. That gut health, blood sugar, cortisol patterns, sleep, strength, and nervous system regulation aren’t wellness trends; they’re foundations. I love the way she reframes midlife as stewardship: listening when symptoms whisper, responding with care instead of punishment, and building health through steady rhythms rather than dramatic overhauls. If you’ve been waking at 3:17 a.m., feeling like your waist changed overnight, or wondering why nothing works the way it used to, let Alison’s words land as reassurance and a challenge: there is logic to what’s happening, and there are solutions. You don’t have to settle for just being alive. You get to feel well.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

My Menossance

My Menossance is about midlife as a season of authorship, where we stop performing the life we were handed and start writing the one we actually want. A space to rethink, reimagine and rewrite our next chapter.

By Laurie Flynn

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m Laurie Flynn, a 53-year-old divorced mother of two grown boys, living in Boston and navigating life somewhere in what I like to call the “Menoverse.” Peri? Meno? I am not quite sure. But I do know I am in the thick of it!

By day, I am the president of an elementary literacy-based nonprofit. We’ve donated more than 1,000,000 books to children and schools in need. I am also a certified life coach, a writer, and a devoted reader. At this season of midlife, I find myself holding tightly to two beliefs: in the transformative power of female friendships and in our own capacity to reinvent ourselves and our lives, even when we did not see the need for reinvention coming.

I’ve come to think of this chapter as my midlife renaissance (thus My Menossance!), where I get to rethink, reimagine, and reinvent who I am and where I want to go on this gloriously unpredictable journey.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

What has surprised me most is the sheer paradox of it all. On the one hand, midlife has introduced a level of unpredictability I have never known before. There are days when my body feels like it’s operating with a will entirely its own. Sleep, energy, mood, and even focus can shift without warning. It has been humbling to realise that I am no longer fully in charge in the ways I once believed I was.

And yet, on the other hand, there is a steadiness that has arrived alongside the chaos. While my body may feel less predictable, my inner world feels more anchored. I find myself caring less about what others think, trusting the voice inside of me more readily, and feeling increasingly pulled toward desire rather than expectation. There is a quiet confidence that comes from having lived long enough to know what matters and what does not.

So, the surprise has been this: just as my body has become less certain, I have become more so.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

The hardest part of this stage of life for me has been caring for ageing parents. For my mother in particular.

Just as I was entering perimenopause, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. What followed was a long and brutal illness. It was not just the loss of her that was so painful, but the way we lost her. Slowly and in pieces.

There is something profoundly disorienting about watching the people who once cared for us become the ones in need of care. The role reversal is shocking, even when we know it is

inevitable. To find yourself guiding, protecting, and making decisions for someone who once did all of those things for you is both an honour and a heartbreak.

As a mother myself, it was a constant reminder of how precious and fragile life is. That there are no guarantees. That time moves in one direction only. It forced me to confront how quickly roles can shift, and how important it is to make the most of the time we have, even in the midst of hot flashes, exhaustion, and everything else midlife brings.

It is a kind of grief that does not get talked about enough. The grief of losing someone while they are still here.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

What has helped me most? Hormones. Hormones. Hormones!

Thanks to a combination of pills and patches, I can finally sleep again. And sleep, it turns out, changes everything. It is hard to overstate the relief that comes from feeling like your body is working with you instead of against you.

But alongside medical support, the community has been equally essential. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to navigate this stage of life back when it was considered impolite to talk about it. There is such power in women comparing notes and telling the truth about what is happening in our bodies and our lives - the good, the bad, and yes, the sweaty.

It feels very on brand that Gen X finally said, “Enough.” Now the conversation is out in the open, where it belongs. Sharing the experience, as wild and unpredictable as it can be, makes it far less lonely and a whole lot more navigable.

What are you unlearning?

I love this question! For me, midlife has been about unlearning the lessons that were baked into my little girl's bones about expectation. The subtle messages that told me to stay small and polite. To prioritise being liked over being honest. To worry more about pleasing others than pleasing myself.

I am unlearning the instinct to remain in rooms and relationships longer than I should simply because I thought I was supposed to. I am learning, instead, to trust the boldness that comes with years of experience and hard-earned wisdom. I am practising following my “wants” instead of my “shoulds.”

I want to feel fully embodied in my own life, without contorting myself to fit into tiny boxes someone else created. I want to build a life that feels authentic and unapologetically mine. Unlearning decades of people-pleasing is messy. But man, it’s worth it!

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

To loosen her grip just a little and trust that things have a way of working themselves out. That she does not have to be so damn vigilant all the time. I would tell her to be kinder to herself, especially when it comes to her body. To stop treating it like a problem to solve and start seeing it as a partner in this life. I would remind her that parenting teenagers is hard, yes, but to hang in there because being the parent of young adults will become one of the greatest joys of her life.

And I would tell her this: Laugh more. Eat more. Play more. Travel more. Try more. Just do the thing…you won’t regret it.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

I want women to know they are not alone in the realisation that the story they thought they were living may no longer fit. It is okay to feel the urge to revise. To want something different. To question choices that once made sense. You are not alone in sensing that this may not be the ending…but a plot twist. And that it is never too late to rewrite your story.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

I read The Artist’s Way about a decade ago and have been doing morning pages ever since. At the start of each entry, I write a simple list that reflects the different parts of myself I want to remember to care for: Mind, Body, Spirit, Heart, and Home.

Before I begin my stream-of-consciousness writing about whatever is on my mind that day, I pause and write down one thing I did the day before to tend to each of those areas. It’s a small practice, but it helps me maintain a sense of balance. It reminds me that self-care is not one big sweeping act, but a collection of choices made over time.

What stays with you after Laurie’s interview is the paradox she names so perfectly: just as her body became less predictable, she became more certain. There’s something quietly exhilarating about that. She doesn’t sugarcoat the chaos, the sleep disruption, the mood shifts, the sweaty unpredictability. And she also doesn’t flinch from the deeper midlife grief that so many women carry silently: caring for ageing parents, and the particular heartbreak of losing someone slowly while they’re still here. Laurie reminds us that hormones can be life-changing, yes, but so can the permission to tell the truth out loud, to compare notes, to laugh about it, and to stop living by shoulds. Her practice of morning pages, tending to Mind, Body, Spirit, Heart, and Home, feels like a gentle blueprint for steadying yourself through change. If you’re feeling the urge to revise your life, Laurie’s message lands like a hand on your back: you’re not alone, and this isn’t the ending. It might be the plot twist.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

40 and Giving Zero F's

Honest, funny essays about midlife, ambition, pleasure, and not putting your life on hold.

By Amanda | 40 & Zero F’s

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m Amanda. I’m a writer and a working mom, and I’ve just stepped into midlife. I expected it to feel like an ending, but it’s turned out to be my best chapter yet, by far. When I turned 40 last year, I started my newsletter, 40 and Giving Zero F’s, as a way to explore midlife as a beginning: a season of trusting yourself, letting go of permission-seeking, and choosing yourself with intention.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

What surprised me most is how confident, sexy, and playful I feel in midlife. Yes, I have a few more wrinkles, and my metabolism isn’t what it used to be, but I also think I look damn good! I’ve never felt more comfortable in my body or more at ease owning it, and that combination has been incredibly freeing. It’s changed how I show up: in my life, in my relationships, and in how much fun I’m willing to have.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

Maybe this tension shows up earlier for some women, but midlife is when it hit me hard: I love my life, but I still want more from it. I want to keep peeking around corners, stretching past what feels safe, pushing boundaries, and yes, surprising people who thought they knew exactly who I was.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

Leaning into what I’ve started calling “Zero F’s Energy” has helped me the most. There’s a powerful shift in perspective when you realise you may, or may not, be halfway through your life. The things that once consumed my energy just don’t carry the same weight anymore. I worry less about being liked, stop over-explaining myself, and make decisions based on what actually feels aligned. It’s not indifference, it’s discernment, and it’s been one of the most grounding parts of midlife for me.

What are you unlearning?

I’m unlearning the expectation that midlife is when women are meant to fade into the background. I don’t feel like fading, I feel like stepping forward. If anything, I feel more myself than ever. I want to take up space in my work, my writing, and my life, and keep stretching into whatever feels just a little bit scary.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

I would tell her not to worry so much about running out of time. I had my two daughters at 30 and 34, so my thirties were spent deep in the intensity of parenting while also trying to stay ahead in my career, all with the looming spectre of the “big bad 40s” hanging over me. I’d tell 35-year-old Amanda to take a breath, to trust that nothing is slipping away, and that the life she’s worried about missing is actually waiting for her.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

They’re not alone in realising that the rules they followed so carefully don’t quite fit anymore. That it’s okay to question them.

You don’t have to blow up your life to change it. But you also don’t have to keep shrinking, smoothing, or squeezing yourself into something that feels wrong now. Midlife is allowed to be the season where you say, “This is no longer serving me.”

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

I don’t do it every day, but a few times a week: I’ve started taking evening showers and bubble baths by candlelight. It’s the perfect way to unwind. It feels romantic and indulgent, like a gentle way of choosing myself at the end of the day. Nothing performative, nothing productive, just a small, intentional pause that brings me back to myself.

What I loved most about Amanda’s answers is how she reframes the whole midlife story. She’s not here to fade gracefully. She’s here to step forward honestly. She names that delicious shift that happens when you stop living for other people’s comfort and start living from your own alignment. Her Zero F’s Energy isn’t indifference; it’s discernment, and it’s the kind of discernment that gives you your life back. If you’ve been feeling the old rules stop fitting, let this be your permission: you don’t have to blow everything up to change it, but you also don’t have to keep shrinking to stay acceptable. And her candlelit baths and evening showers are the perfect reminder that choosing yourself doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like a small, romantic pause at the end of the day where you come back to your own body, your own nervous system, your own life and remember: I’m allowed to be here, and I’m allowed to want more.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?