Some people will prefer the version of you who was easier to predict.
And they might get loud about it.
There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being very good at being who everyone expects you to be.
People admire you. They depend on you. They tell you how strong you are, how capable, how generous, how lucky they are to have you.
And you may genuinely be all those things.
But somewhere along the way, you learned which parts of yourself were welcome and which parts made life complicated.
You learned to be agreeable when you were furious. Grateful when you were disappointed. Reasonable when you wanted something unreasonable. Strong when you desperately wanted someone else to handle things for a change.
You became fluent in being the woman everyone could count on.
And perhaps less fluent in being the woman you actually are.
I think this is one of the more interesting things that happens as women get older.
The performance becomes exhausting.
Not necessarily because we have been dishonest. Most of us have been sincere in the roles we've played. We loved the people we cared for. We believed in the work we did. We made decisions that made sense at the time.
But sincerity doesn't mean a role should last forever.
You can be a wonderful mother and want a life that isn't organized around motherhood.
You can love your partner and want the relationship to change.
You can be successful at something and have absolutely no desire to keep doing it.
You can be grateful for your life and still want considerably more from it.
And you can disappoint people without having done anything wrong.
That last one takes some practice.
There is an enormous amount of freedom waiting on the other side of no longer needing everyone to agree with the woman you're becoming.
Some people will prefer the version of you who was easier to predict. Some will miss the access they used to have. Some will be genuinely confused when you stop volunteering for responsibilities you've carried for twenty years.
They are allowed to have feelings about that.
You are allowed to keep changing.
I want women to have lives in which they are recognizable to themselves. Lives with room for their appetites, contradictions, intelligence, beauty, ambition, peculiarities, and pleasure.
I want them to be loved without having to disappear into being useful.
And I want them to discover what happens when they stop auditioning for approval in a life that already belongs to them.
This is the work we do in private coaching.
We examine the roles you've inherited, the expectations you've internalized, the relationships you've organized yourself around, and the places where your own desires have become negotiable.
Then we begin changing things.
Not just how you think about your life. How you actually live it.
Private coaching is available now. If you're ready to become more fully yourself, I'd love to work with you.
