This Week, Over and Over, I Came Face to Face with Women Who Outgrew Their Own Lives
5 conversations, one question underneath all of them you may recognize in yourself.
FIVE CONVERSATIONS, ONE QUESTION
If you’ve missed a few emails this week, don’t worry. Life has a way of pulling us in a hundred different directions.
So before we begin another week together, I thought I’d gather the conversations that seemed to resonate most and put them in one place.
I didn’t set out to write a series.
But when I looked back over everything I’d written, I realized every conversation was circling the same question:
What happens when the woman you’re becoming no longer fits the life you built?
Maybe that’s why so many of you wrote to me this week. I woke up this morning to dozens of messages that simply said, “Thank you.” Every one of them reminded me that none of us is walking this path alone.
If you missed a few of this week’s conversations, here they are.
She Stopped Wanting the Things She Used to Want
Sometimes we don’t lose ourselves.
Sometimes we simply outgrow an old version of ourselves.
Doing Was How She Proved She Belonged
For so many women, our worth became tangled up in productivity.
What if it never had to be?
Something Has Been Bothering Me... and I Finally Figured Out What It Is
Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs don’t come from finding answers.
They come from finally asking the right question.
At 69, I Finally Chased the Thing I Wanted at 23
Retirement doesn’t always ask us to invent a brand-new dream.
Sometimes it invites us to reclaim the essence of one we left behind
The Woman Who Cuts Up Wedding Dresses
One woman looked at something everyone else saw as finished... and imagined what it could become instead.
Maybe that’s what we’re doing with our own lives
Set Your Timer to Smile
One tiny experiment.
Sixty seconds.
Sometimes the smallest acts remind us we’re still here.
And one more thing...
If you’re folding laundry, taking a walk, making lunch, or simply craving 45 minutes of thoughtful conversation, Mike Searles and I had a wonderful discussion this week about navigating the void that so many people experience in retirement.
If you’re in that in-between place where your old life no longer fits, but your new one isn’t fully formed yet, this conversation might be exactly what you need today.
Yesterday another writer shared how one of these essays changed the way she was thinking about her own life. Moments like that remind me why I keep showing up here.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for thinking alongside me.
Most of all, thank you for reminding me that none of us is making this journey alone.
And thank you for showing up, whether you’ve been here every day this week or you’re just now catching up.
I’ll see you again soon.
❤️
Monica
PS On this page I’ve gathered a few messages from other women who express their own thoughts about reclaiming their lives at this stage of life