A Few Chapters at Once
On empty nesting, ambition, and discovering that midlife can feel less like fading and more like waking up
This essay is part of the Between Chapters project, inspired by the book. What chapters are you between? How did you get from one chapter to another? Share your story here.
What Chapter Are You…
Leaving:
Building my career around motherhood’s rhythms, where so many choices were lovingly shaped by being close, available, and present for my boys.
In:
Becoming a soon-to-be empty nester, with more space, creativity, and energy to scale my work, launch my first international women’s wellness retreat, and build the legacy and impact I’d put on hold.
Entering:
Expansion, creativity, and legacy, where I have more space to scale my work, deepen my impact, and step even more fully into the opportunities calling me now.
I think I’m in a few chapters at once.
I’m a soon-to-be empty nester. One of my boys just graduated from college, and one just started college. And while motherhood never really “ends,” the daily rhythm of it has changed completely. The house is quiet. The calendar looks different. Suddenly, there are no carpool pickups, no hockey practices, no baseball games, no lunches to pack. The daily logistics that once shaped the architecture of my life are gone.
And I’ll be honest: it’s emotional.
For so many years, I built my life and career around being present for my boys. I have always been ambitious. I have always had dreams, ideas, projects, and a deep pull toward meaningful work. And I did chase those dreams. I built a beautiful career that I’m proud of.
But there were also many moments when I made choices through the lens of motherhood first. I said no to certain opportunities. I stayed close to home. I shaped my schedule around being there at 4 p.m., around hockey practice, around the ordinary moments that don’t look impressive on a résumé but become the very fabric of a family.
I don’t regret that. Not for a second.
Those years were a privilege. A full, messy, beautiful privilege. And while there were certainly times I wondered what might have happened if I had said yes to more, traveled more, pushed harder, or built faster, I also know that being there was one of the great honors of my life.
But now, at 51, something interesting is happening.
I don’t feel like I’m winding down.
I feel like I’m revving up!
There is more space now. More mental space. More creative space. More room to ask: What do I want to build next? How do I want to use what I know? What kind of impact do I want to make with the experience, training, research, stories, and wisdom I’ve gathered along the way?
Because I teach self-care and work to define it beyond the superficial, I also practice it. I think that has made this transition feel less like an ending and more like an awakening. I feel vibrant. I feel alive. I feel clear that I don’t want to shrink in this season. I want to expand.
So the chapter I’m entering is one of creativity, legacy, and impact.
I’m scaling my business. I’m speaking more. I’m writing more. I’m creating more. And I’m launching my first-ever international wellness retreat for women, which feels like a beautiful symbol of this new season. It brings together so much of who I am: self-care, reinvention, community, wellness, reflection, courage, and the belief that women deserve spaces where they can pause, exhale, reconnect, and remember themselves.
That feels deeply meaningful to me.
I think the chapter I’m leaving is the one where my children’s daily needs sat at the center of my schedule. And the chapter I’m entering is one where I can love them just as fiercely while also standing more fully in my own work, my own creativity, and my own sense of purpose.
Of course, there are parts I miss. I miss the noise. I miss the little-boy years. I miss being needed in that physical, immediate way. I miss the car rides where the best conversations happened by accident. I miss the hockey bags, even though they smelled terrible. I miss the version of me who was younger and tired and constantly juggling, but also living inside a chapter I knew was precious, even while it was exhausting.
But I’m also excited.
I’m excited to see who my boys become. I’m excited to see who I become. And I’m excited to prove that midlife is not a fading. It can be a rising. It can be a return. It can be a reinvention. It can be the moment we stop asking for permission and start asking better questions.
What do I want now?
What am I here to give?
What have I learned that could help someone else?
What dream is still waiting for me?
If I could share anything with someone who is changing chapters, it would be this: don’t rush to label the transition as good or bad. Some chapters are tender. Some are thrilling. Some are confusing. Some break your heart and open your life at the exact same time.
Let yourself grieve what is changing.
Let yourself celebrate what is beginning.
And let yourself be surprised by who you are becoming.
Because sometimes the chapter you thought would feel like an ending is actually the one where you finally have enough room to hear your own voice again. Maybe that is the beautiful surprise of midlife: not that we become someone entirely new, but that we finally have the space to return to ourselves.
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