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In my previous post, I discussed what I call “the f*ck it fifties,” a time in a woman’s life when what we need and where we want to put our attention simply changes. Sometimes it happens when our domestic nest empties out, when our usual roles, responsibilities, and identity shift, and our daily structure is lost. But sometimes this internal transformation has no identifiable cause. It’s that time in the life cycle, a rite of passage, when what interests and nourishes us, and brings meaning and purpose, transforms. It’s an in-between chapter in life, when we look the same on the outside, and we’re still surrounded by the same people and activities as we always were, but we are not that person anymore, the one who designed and wanted that life, and for whom it felt so critically important and authentic. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that old life; it just doesn’t seem to belong to us any longer. Who we are has changed and moved on.

As women, we blame ourselves for this natural shift in priorities. We create a narrative that the fact that our interests have changed means that we were faking our old life all along. If we derive less meaning from what used to matter, then what used to matter couldn’t have been real. We’re conditioned to believe that who we are is either this or that, a fixed and knowable thing, rather than what it is—an ever-changing unknowable process that’s constantly transforming and often........

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