Apparently we were all tired of being self-improvement projects
I think we struck a nerve.
Hi everybody,
First of all, welcome.
Second of all — what just happened? One thousand new subscribers in 72 hours. Two thousand comments spread across various notes over the past five days.
Y’all are thorough.
I tried to keep up as best I could, but somewhere around the point where my notifications started reproducing like rabbits, I realized there was no humanly possible way to respond to everybody. But please know this: I saw you. I read far more than I was able to answer. And I’m genuinely grateful you’re here.
A lot of people found me through the note where I said I was tired of treating myself like a never-ending self-improvement project. Apparently that struck a nerve. Judging from the responses, many of us are exhausted from feeling like every moment of life is supposed to become an optimization strategy.
And then this morning I spent an hour laughing so hard at comedians impersonating other comedians that I had tears running down my face and nearly snorted coffee through my nose.
Honestly? That may have been the healthiest thing I’ve done all week.
For those of you who are new here, let me explain the spirit of this place.
This is not a perfection contest. Not a fix-yourself factory. Not a space where we pretend we’ve transcended being human.
Most of the conversations here revolve around what life actually looks like after 60 — identity shifts, creativity, solitude, reinvention, meaning, and learning how to actually live instead of endlessly preparing to live.
For paid subscribers, we gather every Tuesday evening for Breakthrough — our live Zoom conversation. We meet for about an hour and forty-five minutes and talk honestly about what all of this looks like in real life. No performance. No pretending. Just real people figuring out how they want to live this next chapter.
A separeate email is sent out midday Tuesday of each week with the zoom link for Breakthrough.
For those who missed a few things this week, here are three pieces that generated a lot of conversation:
It Arrived at 4 AM At four in the morning, a thought arrived that I hadn’t been able to shake: what if I’m exhausted not from life itself, but from carrying myself around like a problem that never gets solved? This is the piece that started everything this week.
We Are Not Done Yet Not all of us are living the same version of this chapter. Some are rediscovering creativity. Some are grieving marriages. Some are rebuilding from scratch. But somewhere underneath all of it, many of us are arriving at the same quiet realization: there is still more.
The Day I Realized Invisibility Wasn’t Happening To Me I used to think the world had stopped seeing me. Then I realized I had stopped seeing myself first. This piece explores how that happens — and this week we’re going deeper into the two quiet culprits behind it: comparison and guilt.
Coming up this week: comparison and guilt. Why we do it. Why it becomes habitual. And why so many of us spend decades measuring ourselves against standards we never consciously chose. And how at this stage of life we can give ourselves permission to let those two go!
I’m glad you’re here.
Monica
If this feels like your kind of conversation — come join us as a paid subscriber. Tuesday nights, honest writing, real women figuring this out together. 20% off through May 31st.