Letter from Louise

Hello!

Welcome to the September edition of Guided Possibilities | Members Edition.

I’m so glad you’re here.

September has always felt like a fresh start. Summer is behind us and kids are going back to school. This year I wanted to hang on to that relaxed summer vibe a little longer. Our oldest child is now out of the house and across the country in their first post university job, and our youngest is settled enough in her university that we’re not needed for September startup anymore.

So, to extend my favourite season I will be taking some time away in September, eating good food, exploring new places, reading, and reconnecting with family, friends, and my husband. I’ll still find time for some writing, maybe just a little less.

I hope you enjoy the new season and all the possibilities it brings with it.

As always, thank you for being here.

Louise :)

This Month’s Reflection

I’ve had mixed feelings about September throughout my life.

During high school years September brought dread.

When my kids were younger it brought space to breathe during the day, then a packed schedule of activities in the evening. A mixture of welcome relief, exhaustion, and reconnection.

Now, it’s just me and my husband (and the dog), and it made me think about what September means now that nobody needs me to buy school shoes and get everyone out of the door.

The true summer months of July and August are more and more often filled with heavy smoke where I live. They confine us indoors with day after day of the same. September comes with lower temperatures and a freshness that makes outside a temptation again, while traveling is less busy and less expensive. So this year we’re extending summer into September and making October the start of the new season.

A chance to rest, to roam, to read, and to slow down a bit. To live without any expectations and to find a little room to plan how we want the rest of the year to look.

While I was thinking about this shift it made me wonder about all of the arbitrary “rules” of life.

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^{photo by Robert V. Ruggiero on Unsplash}

I’m tired.

Yesterday it was summer. Today the day is cool, dull, a breeze blowing gently, cloudy sky. A day requiring long pants for the first time in three months. A day that came with melancholy.

I’m a summer girl. I was born in the summer and I come alive in the summer. The sudden weather change has left me feeling sad. The easy days are coming to a close and the struggle of a Canadian winter will soon be here. It’s time to give myself a talking to. One day does not mean the end of lazy days reading outside, but I was always a fan of being a little dramatic.

I wrote in a previous essay how my husband and I are pushing summer into September this year and I’m happy we did this. An escape to a different environment and weather system will be good for the soul and the mind. New things to explore. New foods to taste. No demands of the real world on my time. But how do I keep that going into winter so I get through those cold dark days with happiness rather than dread?

Retail therapy is often my go to when I need a lift but the short term buzz is not the fix and certainly doesn’t transform the dullness of the life I’m in. My bank account and husband agree!

As I look out of my window at the dull day, I remind myself it is still August. Even if August is holding on with its finger tips. Maybe this year I can make a plan and avoid the dreary mood that will come with the next few months. What if, rather than reaching for the same things that give me a small boost when I’m tired, such as a new shirt, a new book, I find newness elsewhere?

What if the things we reach for when we’re tired aren’t actually the things that restore us?

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Maybe I can think about why summer feels so good, beyond the weather, and carry some of that with me. Summer brings more novelty as we explore more, entertain, go out to dine on patios, and visit lakes and vineyards. Winter seems to contract with dread and sameness. I wonder if I can deliberately build enough novelty, anticipation, and small pleasures into winter so that I stop treating it as something to endure.

I met a new friend for breakfast this morning and the conversation reminded me of the things that energise me. Good conversation, meeting someone new, reading, learning something, getting out of the house. Small, easy things that boost my mood and restore my energy. So why do I give into the doom scroll when I’m down and tired? Maybe the lack of a plan? Like a store cupboard of things I can reach for that will energise me. Like my chocolate, cookie, stash but less calories and longer lasting!

So, over the next few weeks I’m going to make a list. Books I’ve wanted to read. People I haven’t connected with for far too long. Weekend jaunts that are easy and affordable, even if they’re just for a day. Hobbies I’ve set aside, such as crochet and ones I’ve wanted to try, such as paint by numbers. Networking events I often avoid because of shyness but that I know will make me happier once I exercise that social connection muscle.

Maybe I’ve been putting too many things under the word tired. Sometimes I need sleep. Sometimes I need to do absolutely nothing. But sometimes, perhaps, what I’m calling tired is something else. Bored. Restless. Lonely. Under stimulated. Too much time looking at the same four walls and the same phone. Those things aren’t fixed by doing less. Maybe, this year winter isn’t going to be about finding ways to hibernate. Maybe it’s going to be about noticing what kind of tired I am before I decide what I need.

For years, a lot of my life happened to me automatically. Children brought new stages, places, people, and schedules. Life was busy and constantly changing. Now I have more freedom, but maybe the flip side of freedom is that I have to be more deliberate creating things that make me feel more alive. Maybe the next time I hear myself complain that I’m tired, I need to ask myself what kind of tired I am. Maybe I just need more life.

If you enjoy these conversations, you might like Guided Possibilities | Members Edition. A monthly space to explore some of these ideas together through personal reflections, books, small experiments, questions worth carrying, and conversation in the comments.

I’d love you to join us.

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^{photo by Louise Stodola}

I cleared out my oldest child’s bedroom this week.

I filled cardboard box after cardboard box with the evidence of childhood. The artwork, the origami, the puzzles, school drawings, and forgotten clothing items. The once loved childhood books, the binders of schoolwork. Even the tiny stacking cups that had been living under the bed. A ridiculous amount of stuff that had somehow survived every decluttering attempt and I still couldn’t bring myself to throw away.

We hauled the bedroom furniture into the garage and took photos to post on Marketplace, wondering if someone else might give it another life. Then we painted a light, calming shade over the blue walls and moved in office furniture instead.

Over the next few days I slowly moved in my things. My books, my stationery, my laptop. Squishy pillows on the bed that now looks like a cozy reading space, a fluffy rug on the floor. A space that says, someone lives creatively here. I had longed for a room like this for years. A place where I didn’t have to work at the dining room table and pack everything away before dinner. A place to think, write, coach, and build whatever comes next. But underneath the excitement was an unexpected sadness.

It’s a strange feeling watching a childhood disappear into cardboard boxes. A strange sense of loss even when your children go and do what you raised them to do. Our oldest graduated with distinction and now lives across the country in a city they love, working in a permanent position at the university they attended. This is the ending every parent hopes for. They were supposed to leave this room. They were supposed to build a life that didn’t need us the same way anymore.

I’m proud of them and I’m proud of us. But this bedroom has been sitting there for the past four years. A museum of family life that technically no longer existed. Frozen in time. And this week I made room for myself. I expected to feel emotional packing up their things but I didn’t expect to feel guilty unpacking mine. Maybe that’s the part of the empty nest nobody talks about.

Our children leaving creates empty space in our homes, but it can take us a while to give ourselves permission to occupy that space. As my books filled the shelves and my desk took shape, I realised that I wasn’t erasing my child’s place in our family. I was acknowledging that both of our lives had moved forward. Their room became my room, not because they’re gone, because we’re both in a different chapter now.

I have plans for this space. Creative plans. A new work opportunity, maybe. More writing. Coaching conversations. Notes scattered across the desk instead of cluttering the kitchen counter. A room where I get to be fully myself again.

Empty nests aren’t really empty. They’re full of evidence that something worked. The children we raised went out and built lives of their own. They’re also an invitation. Not to replace what was there, but to ask what belongs in the space that’s been returned to us. Not just the spare bedroom. The time. The attention. The energy. The parts of ourselves that stepped aside while we were raising someone else.

Now I’m asking myself, not what do I do with my child’s room? but what part of myself am I finally making room for? I wonder if that’s the real work of the empty nest.

Making Room for Yourself

If this brought up thoughts about your own empty nest, I created a short reflection you can download and spend a few minutes with.

Empty Nest Reflection

86.4KB ∙ PDF file

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If you enjoy these weekly reflections, you can become a paid subscriber and join me for Guided Possibilities | Members Edition — a monthly collection of personal reflections, books I’m reading, small experiments, journal prompts, and other things that have caught my attention along the way.

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A few days ago, I wrote a note celebrating 600 subscribers. Today there are 700 of you!

I really didn’t expect my Substack to grow this quickly.

With so many new people here, I thought it was probably a good time to explain what I’m doing.

I write about midlife, identity, work, change, and figuring out what comes next. Mostly, though, I write about the things I’m noticing in my own life and wondering if anyone else is noticing them too. If you’re somewhere in the middle of life wondering what you want from the next part of it, I suspect we’ll have quite a lot to talk about.

Those weekly essays are free for you to read and I love getting your comments.

I’ve also recently added a paid option for those who’d like a little more.

Once a month, I publish a Members Edition. It’s a collection of things I’ve been thinking about, reading and trying, along with journal prompts and small experiments you might want to try yourself.

August’s edition was called Following the Thread. I started out writing about childhood summers and family memories and somehow ended up thinking about ancestry, moving across the world, and whether some of the things we think make us who we are, actually started generations ago.

September’s is called Seeing Differently, and it’s already in progress.

If you’d like to join me there, I’d love to have you.

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And if not, please keep reading for free. You don’t need to pay to belong here.

I’m just glad you found me.

Louise x

^{photo by Louise Stodola}

As we move through life we collect memories, stories, and histories. Some of those histories we’d rather forget. Some become cherished intervals in our lives. I’m not the only one, I’m sure, who looks back and wonders what my life would be like if a decision had been different, if I’d stayed somewhere longer, if a relationship had turned out differently. But I don’t look back with regrets. What has gone has gone. I look back with fascination as to how a life is built, how one opportunity, choice or rejection shapes what comes next.

When I was around thirteen I became fascinated with other countries. Possibly because I’d never been to one. I figured that being a teacher would give me a career that might take me away to one of these countries. So, I ordered myself the directory of international schools so I could make a plan. This book was massive! I had my eye on Germany because every year the junior football club my family was involved with hosted a contingent from Germany and I was learning German at school. I would sit in bed at night with the huge book, circling possibilities.

A couple of years later my family hosted a German youth in our home. The youth was supposed to be my brother’s age so I dragged myself home the day he arrived expecting another irritating, small, spotty boy to be in the house. I was not expecting a six-foot tall blond god the same age as me! My life had just improved in an instant.

The blond god was happy to see me too. Young, innocent love is the best. He held my hand as we walked home from events together, as my brother rolled his eyes. After he left he wrote me a long letter about how much he loved me and missed me. And I never heard from him again.

The following decade took me to university to train as a teacher but that wasn’t for me. There was an engagement that ended when I didn’t want it to, and later a marriage I chose to leave. All changed the direction of my life in ways I couldn’t possibly have understood at the time.

I spent lots of years looking back on this time. What if I’d stayed? I was still the same person, why did he end it? Could I have turned the marriage around? But experience has taught me that trying to rewrite the past is pointless. What interests me now is where those endings led.

After leaving university and the end of my engagement, I fell into banking where I began working my way up to leadership. Someone I knew from work had immigrated to Canada and when my marriage dissolved he invited me to visit. All of these events were steering me here. On that trip I met the man who would become my husband. The job would qualify me for a skilled immigrant visa. The job opportunities that followed would lead me into a love of developing and coaching people.

Every choice closes one version of our life while opening another, and we rarely know at the time which moments are actually changing the whole trajectory.

In my thirties, I had what looked like a golden career opportunity. I was on a fast track to an executive role in a small, fast growing, finance company.

And then I walked away from it.

My husband and I decided to move to his hometown, where he could join the family business and we could raise the family we were hoping to have. At the time, leaving felt like choosing one possible life over another. I struggled at first to find meaningful work in the new city and wondered at times if we’d made the right decision.

Years later, long after I had left, the company collapsed. The promising career path I had walked away from simply ceased to exist. For years, I’d thought about how I stepped away from an exciting career opportunity. It never occurred to me that staying wouldn’t necessarily have produced the future I imagined.

I sometimes wonder about these lives I almost lived. Where would I be if the relationships had worked out? If I’d stayed with the course, or the job, or the place I once thought might define my future?

But increasingly, I’m more interested in the lives I haven’t imagined yet. We can’t judge our choices against an imaginary version of the life we didn’t live, because we’ve given that imaginary life an ending we could never possibly know.

If you enjoy these weekly reflections, you can become a paid subscriber and join me for Guided Possibilities | Members Edition — a monthly collection of personal reflections, books I’m reading, small experiments, journal prompts, and other things that have caught my attention along the way.

^{photo by Louise Stodola}

I live in a deep valley basin that traps smoke, holding it close to the ground and making it difficult to breathe for weeks most summers. It is hard on the body and it is hard on the mind. It’s especially hard for people with any lung dysfunction. This was the state of the city as my birthday approached last weekend, so as I listened to my husband coughing as he got ready for work on Friday, and I rubbed my gritty eyes for the hundredth time, I casually suggested we take off for a few days.

I wasn’t surprised when I got back “I’m too busy” so I carried on with my morning.

Two hours later, a text pinged. Pack a bag, I’ll be home soon, let’s go!

We used to do spontaneous things often when we were younger but somewhere along the way we’d stopped.

Less than two hours later we were on the road. We drove 4 hours away from the fire zones, not wanting to take a room from an evacuee and wanting to breathe some clean coastal air. My husband had found a small hotel with spare rooms, in a city we’d never stayed in before, but close enough to Vancouver that we could travel in by transit if we wished.

Eating my drive-through lunch as we sped down the highway, I felt like we were running away.

“I think there’s a soccer game tonight,” he said, “check and see if there are tickets.” So I did, and there were. Five minutes later the tickets were ours and we had an evening plan.

I don’t know exactly when we stopped being spontaneous. Probably when the first child arrived, followed by another, three businesses, and all the logistics of family life. When we first met we made fast plans all the time. Maybe because we were dating across continents and time together was always exciting and frantic? Maybe just because we were younger and more impulsive?

Or maybe that’s actually who we are, we’d just forgotten.

The weekend unfolded the same way. A walk along a greenway we’d never been to before. Lunch at a newly opened food court. An impulsive stop at a fashion outlet where we bought too many things. A last-minute reservation at a Greek Taverna overlooking the river for my birthday dinner. An after-dinner quest to find my favourite chocolate cake. A drive to look in a cute boutique I saw online. And a stop for a quick lunch at a newly developed district on our way home. I could feel my shoulders dropping. I felt lighter, freer, dare I say a little younger, even though the calendar had just added another year to my age.

I came home, not just with new clothes, but with a camera roll of memories and a renewed closeness with my husband.

It had only been two nights, but it felt much longer. We were immersed in every moment. We talked to each other about things that didn’t involve business, the house, the dog, or grown children. We laughed, we sang to songs in the car, we shed the weight of midlife and went with the flow.

We have a big trip coming up in the autumn and usually I would plan it to within an inch of its life. Daily itineraries. Tours booked. Trains booked. A dedicated Pinterest board full of ideas. Not this time. This time we’re going to make room for that feeling of freedom we just experienced. We’re going to remember how we travelled when we first met in our late twenties. When a trip was about excitement, time together, exploring, lingering over a meal and talking about things that didn’t have an itinerary or stress attached to them.

We’re going to leave a little room for the unexpected and see where it takes us. Just like our younger selves.

Letter from Louise

Hello!

Welcome to August and the very first Guided Possibilities | Members Edition.

I’m so glad you’re here.

August is my favorite month of the year, and not just because it’s my birth…

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^{photo by Louise Stodola}

I was sitting outside a café in Paris a couple of summers ago, lingering over a coffee and doing one of my favorite things, watching people, when a young couple walked past. They were completely absorbed in each other. She had the unmistakable confidence of someone from London. Black Doc Martens. Short skirt. Tights. Every sentence accompanied by animated hands. He barely spoke. French accent. Cigarette. Watching her as though she’d become the only person in Paris.

Within seconds my brain had invented an entire life for them. I even made a note in my phone to use in a possible story later.

How had they met?
Did she move here?
Had he followed her?
Was this their first date?
Their last?

I never found out, but as I watched them disappear into the Paris crowd, it struck me that I’d been doing this my whole life.

Books and travel have always given me the same gift. They remind me there isn’t just one way to build a life. I’ve always loved both. As a child I’d rather read than play and I spent many nights huddled underneath the sheets with my little red Mickey Mouse flashlight, hoping my parents didn’t know I was reading past my bedtime.

I couldn’t wait to start school so I could learn everything there was to learn and when I discovered libraries, you couldn’t keep me away.

Lots of people I know loved books as children, but somewhere along the way they stopped reading. I’ve always wondered why. Perhaps curiosity changes rather than disappears. Children ask countless questions as they learn. They’re naturally curious about the world. As children, curiosity is almost our job. As adults, productivity often becomes our job. Bills, work, family, appointments. Curiosity can begin to feel indulgent rather than essential. Or perhaps it simply becomes more focused.

Books, travel, conversations, career stories, life stories. Every person carries a story that explains how they arrived here. Looking back, I don’t think I loved books because I loved reading. I loved them because I loved borrowing someone else’s life for a while. I still do! Books, travel and learning were all different ways of doing the same thing. Trying to understand people.

I also realized that my job in career coaching wasn’t really about careers either. People often think they’re coming to see me because they need a resume or interview prep. What they’re really doing is trying to remember the story of who they are. It’s why I love coaching.

People dismiss the experiences that shaped them.

“I was just a manager.”

“I was only home with the kids.”

“I don’t really have any examples.”

But when we start talking, the resume is just where the conversation begins. Every life has stories and uncovering them is where the real experience lives.

I did exactly the same thing when my own life changed.

As my children grew up and the empty nest came into view, I found myself asking a question I hadn’t asked in years. What comes next for me? It would have been easy to focus on job titles. Banking. Finance. Real estate. These were all part of my career journey before becoming a stay at home mum. But when I really thought about them, those jobs weren’t the parts I missed. The thread wasn’t the industries. It was always how I helped the people.

Developing employees.

Helping someone buy a first home or helping a family keep theirs from foreclosure.

Listening to someone’s hopes before talking about consolidating their debts.

Helping students imagine futures they couldn’t quite see yet.

Midlife has a funny way of revealing the patterns we couldn’t see when we were busy living them. The clues were never in my résumé. They were in what I couldn’t stop being curious about. I wasn’t changing direction as much as I thought I was. I was following a thread that had been there all along. It hadn’t led me somewhere new. It had led me back to who I am. Books, travel, conversations with strangers, listening more than talking, asking one more question. Now I think they were all pointing me in the same direction.

The thread I didn’t notice until midlife wasn’t that I loved books, travel, or learning. It was that I’d spent a lifetime interested in people’s stories, trying to understand them. Including my own.

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^{photo by Mathias Reding on UnSplash}

I’ve spent years encouraging people to believe in themselves. Last month, I didn’t believe in myself.

I spent most of last year building a coaching business. Just as I was planning to launch in January, I had an accident which resulted in a terrible injury to my leg and ankle. I’m still waiting for one more quick surgery, still doing lots of physiotherapy, and still learning to walk normally again.

It kept me isolated for months and took away my confidence, enough that I was on the verge of giving up on the business I had been putting my heart and soul into.

Confidence often seems like something other people have.

My time confined to home gave me lots of opportunity to be online, where I scrolled page after page of women confidently promoting their businesses and speaking to their large followings, while forgetting everything I usually tell people I work with.

The light started to dawn that more might be going on here after a conversation with a friend.

I had been to my eldest child’s university graduation (I wrote about it in my essay “Crying In The Bleechers). It was a struggle. The weather was hot. My ankle was swollen like a balloon and I was limping along, with my stick in tow, at a snail’s pace. I told my friend that I felt diminished. People either treated me with an abundance of kindness, similar to how they’d help an elderly person, or they completely overlooked me.

I was no longer the vibrant, capable person I had been just a few months earlier. I worried the injury was the only thing they saw.

She was surprised I felt like this was happening to me.

Yes, it was obvious I had an injury, but it was also a temporary state of being.

She commented on it again when I saw her a week later.

It’s amazing the difference between how we think others see us and how they actually see us. My internal story had become so focused on my injury that I assumed everyone else saw it first too. In reality they didn’t. I was merely one aspect of the whole scene before them.

I began to see that maybe I wasn’t being treated overly kindly because of the injury, but because we had a grad with us, in robes, and the atmosphere wherever we went was jubilant. Maybe they just saw a proud and emotional mum, not someone with an injury who was uncertain about how she was perceived.

So, I began to think again about my business launch, but mostly about my confidence and the comparison between myself and the women I see killing it on Instagram.

How much of what I thought was happening around me was actually only happening in my own head?

So, I did what many of us do, I turned to Google.

And I found something interesting.

It turns out the conversation in our own head is completely different from the one happening in everyone else’s. Psychologists have a name for this. It’s the “illusion of transparency.”

So, I circle back to my Instagram watching and realize that those women killing it online are probably questioning themselves too. In fact I know most of us do because the more women I talk to, the more I realize I’m not alone.

It’s the flip flop between believing in yourself and wondering why you’re doing this to yourself. The spurt of energy, followed by wondering why anyone would want to work with you.

Maybe confidence isn’t something we suddenly find. It’s something we build by doing things before we’re ready. By sharing work that is imperfect.

Maybe confidence is something we build by being just a little more vulnerable than feels comfortable.

Maybe that’s why vulnerability matters so much.

Every time one of us admits we’re scared, uncertain, or still figuring things out, someone else breathes a sigh of relief as they realize they aren’t the only one.

Perhaps confidence isn’t the absence of self-doubt after all. Perhaps it’s simply the willingness to keep showing up while self-doubt is still inside us.

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^{Photo by Anshul on Unsplash}

Yesterday I tried a little experiment. I asked four people who have known me through different chapters of my life two questions:

“If you had to tell the story of my life, what qualities or moments would stand out? What do you think I underestimate or forget about myself?”

As I read the replies, I found myself doing something I suspect many of us do.

I wanted to dismiss them.

“They’re just being kind.”

“They don’t see the self-doubt.”

“They don’t know what goes on inside my head.”

But then I realised that wasn’t the point.

They weren’t describing my thoughts.

They were describing the person they’d experienced over years of family and friendship.

They were telling a different story from the one I’d been telling myself.

I expected them to remember jobs I’d had, qualifications I’d worked hard for, achievements I was proud of, or perhaps the mistakes I’ve made along the way.

Instead, they remembered something else entirely.

I remember fear.

They remember courage.

One talked about the courage it took to leave England and build a life in Canada.

Another remembered my curiosity and lifelong love of learning. Another talked about adaptability, humour in difficult moments, and the people I’d helped along the way.

My husband simply said:

“You chose to take a leap of faith and choose the hope and promise of change over the sameness and ease of what you know.”

Different people.

Different decades.

Different relationships.

Yet they all seemed to be describing the same person.

That made me realise something.

We all spend our lives editing an internal biography.

Ours tends to focus on the moments we worried, doubted ourselves, regretted decisions, or wished we’d done something differently.

The people who love us often remember something else.

They don’t remember what was happening inside our heads.

They remember who we were while it was happening.

That distinction stopped me in my tracks.

I’ve often described myself as someone who lacks confidence. It’s a story I’ve repeated for years.

But none of the people I asked described me as naturally confident.

Instead, they described someone who acted despite uncertainty.

Someone with courage.

There’s a subtle but important difference.

Confidence is how we feel.

Courage is what we choose to do.

It made me wonder whether many of us are asking ourselves the wrong question.

Instead of asking, “Am I confident enough?” perhaps we should ask, “Have I been more courageous than I remember?”

Because if our internal biography only records our doubts, we’ll always underestimate ourselves.

That doesn’t mean every chapter of our lives has been admirable. We’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all taken wrong turns. We’ve all said things we wish we could take back.

But even those chapters often reveal something important.

Resilience.

Compassion.

Growth.

Integrity.

Humour.

The willingness to begin again.

Maybe our lives aren’t defined only by what happened to us.

Maybe they’re also defined by the qualities we carried through those moments.

The people who love us seem to remember those qualities far more clearly than we do.

My brother spoke about my courage in choosing to emigrate and change my life’s course. He wrote:

“I think she underestimates how bold and brave a decision that was … I would love to see her remember her younger self … to achieve whatever it is she wants to.”

We archive emotion.

The people who love us remember character.

Maybe we should remind ourselves more often to do the same?

So here’s a question I’d love you to ask someone who has known you for a long time:

“If you had to tell the story of my life, what would stand out? What do you think I’ve forgotten about myself?”

Then don’t explain.

Don’t argue.

Just listen.

You may discover that the story other people remember is kinder, richer, and far more hopeful than the one you’ve been quietly writing in your own head.

Maybe the story you’ve been telling yourself isn’t wrong.

It’s just incomplete.

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^{Photo by Matt Wang on Unsplash}

I got home last night from attending a World Cup football game in Vancouver with my husband and our friends. It was an amazing experience. Perfect weather, joyful fans, happy excitement everywhere, and in the city I fell in love with 3 decades ago. The city that prompted my move from the UK to Canada. The city where I met the love of my life. The city that formed who I am now.

Although all four of us moved away many years ago, we all lived in Vancouver at the start of our relationships, at the beginning of our marriages, and at the beginning of our careers. As we moved from the game to the Aqua Bus, to a favourite restaurant with a view, the stories began to flow.

“That’s where R taught me to roller blade,” said my friend.

“That’s where we sat when we had THAT great day,” my friend and I said, remembering a fun girl’s trip with a very attractive and attentive waiter.

“That’s where we lived, used to buy flowers, went for dinner all the time...”

The stories spilled out.

It wasn’t really the city we were revisiting.

It was earlier versions of ourselves.

On our way back to the SkyTrain we passed the head office of a bank I used to work for. It sits right by the water with a beautiful view.

“You should see the gorgeous boardroom in this building,” I said to my friend, “the view is amazing.”

“You were in their boardroom?”

Until she asked that question, I hadn’t thought about that boardroom in years.

I’d forgotten the presentations.

I’d forgotten the meetings.

I’d forgotten how nervous I was the first time I walked through those doors. Funny the things our minds remember. The huge, angular boardroom table. The view. The feeling of wondering whether I belonged there.

Funny how quickly our own achievements become ordinary to us.

I hadn’t forgotten the building.

I’d forgotten the version of me who walked into work every morning.

Confident some days. Nervous on others. Learning far more than I realised at the time.

Truth is, I’d been in their boardroom many times. Not because I was a board member, but because the company believed in giving people opportunities they hadn’t yet grown into. They trusted junior managers to present to the board, contribute to projects and learn by doing.

More than anything else, those experiences gave me stories.

It struck me that every place we’d walked through that day carried a story.

And every story quietly revealed something about the person telling it.

I’m a sucker for stories. Always have been.

I’ve devoured books since I was very young.

One of my earliest memories of school is being spanked (it was the 1970s, they did that then). I had cried to the teacher that I didn’t want to play games, I wanted to read.

How dare I!

Our stories reveal so much about who we are.

They speak to our wants, our culture, our growth, our strengths, and our resilience.

When we tell our stories, we become animated, immersed in memory.

It made me wonder how many stories we’ve quietly forgotten.

The ones that remind us we were brave.

Resourceful.

Curious.

Kind.

The stories that explain who we’ve become.

We often think of stories as something we tell other people.

Perhaps they’re just as important for reminding ourselves.

Maybe that’s why storytelling matters.

It isn’t just about helping other people understand who we are.

Sometimes it’s about helping us remember.

_{Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash}

We often think of identity in terms of careers. But roles are much bigger than job titles. Sometimes they’re countries, cultures, relationships, stages of life, or the communities that make us feel like we belong.

And sometimes we don’t realise how much those roles matter until one changes.

Some of the hardest seasons in life happen in the spaces between identities. Strangely, they can also become some of the most exciting.

You’re no longer who you were.

But you’re not sure yet who you’re becoming.

It’s an uncomfortable place, but it’s full of so much possibility.

I’ve had my fair share of these in-between seasons. Leaving university halfway through a degree. Falling into a career I hadn’t planned for. Relationships ending that I thought would last forever. Moving continents. Raising a family. Returning to university in midlife. Becoming an empty nester.

The list is long. As I’m sure everyone’s is. Looking back, what strikes me most isn’t the number of transitions, but how each one quietly changed the way I saw myself.

One of the biggest identity shifts for me was emigrating.

I left the UK in my late twenties and moved to Canada. Just me, a suitcase, and a fairly new relationship with a Canadian who would eventually become my husband.

I didn’t know he’d become my husband, and I didn’t know if Canada would be my permanent home, but I was excited and willing to give it a try.

What I didn’t realise was how much of my identity was rooted in where I came from. Even after becoming a Canadian citizen, it took me more than a decade before I would answer the question “where are you from” with “Canada” rather than “I’m British but live in Canada.”

Looking back, I think I answered “I’m British but live in Canada” for so long because it helped me hold onto something familiar. Being British wasn’t just my nationality. It was my accent, my humour, my references, my memories, and my sense of belonging. It was the lens through which I understood myself.

Perhaps that’s the thing about identity. It isn’t singular. We don’t stop being one thing and instantly become another. Identities overlap. They stretch. They expand. For a long time, I was both British and Canadian, while also not feeling fully like either. Eventually, I stopped seeing those identities as competing with one another. They had simply become different parts of me.

We underestimate how much of our identity is tied to roles until one slips away and we find ourselves at a gathering, faced with a stranger’s question: “What do you do?”

I was a culprit both in the asking and the answering.

When I was raising our family, I took some time out from working, but I always felt I had to answer the “what do you do” question with my old job title. It was as though I had to legitimize myself. Prove I was intelligent and worthy of knowing. But in doing that I diminished the important role I currently had and who I really was.

I’d had enough conversations end with an awkward “Oh, nice” before the person’s attention drifted elsewhere that, eventually, it became a form of self-preservation.

But I’m sure if I had answered the question with “I’m the family CEO,” the conversation would have flowed much easier.

I see this happen after job loss, retirement, divorce, and the empty nest. People often say, “I don’t know who I am anymore.” Usually, what they mean is that one of the roles that helped them understand themselves has changed.

The person is still there.

But their map no longer fits the landscape.

We treat these seasons like waiting rooms. Something to get through as quickly as possible.

We ask ourselves:

What’s next?
What’s the plan?
Who am I now?

But perhaps identity needs a little limbo.

Identity transitions are rarely about becoming someone entirely new. They’re about learning how old parts of ourselves fit into new circumstances and using times of limbo as space to breathe.

The older I get, the more I wonder if these seasons of identity limbo aren’t detours at all.

Perhaps they’re invitations.

We are the sum of our experiences, strengths, values, relationships, and stories.

And maybe that’s why these in-between seasons matter.

They give us space to grieve what has changed.
Space to notice what remains.
Space to loosen our grip on roles that no longer fit.

Because identity limbo isn’t asking us to become someone entirely new.

Perhaps it’s simply asking us to sit with the discomfort of not knowing for a while and trust that although the roles in our lives will continue to change, the strengths, values, and experiences we carry with us are more than enough to help us grow into whatever comes next.

^{photo by Louise Stodola}

I’m seeing a trend among my friend group. Companies are restructuring and after decades in the same role another friend is clearing their desk and lamenting -

“I never thought I’d be looking for work again at this age. What am I going to do now?”

Some opt for early retirement but most have the daunting task of trying to find new work.

I hear the practical questions:

How do resumes look in 2026?

I haven’t had an interview in 20 years, can you help me prep?

But, what I hear most in our private conversations is what they’re struggling with at 3am.

Who am I now?

The problem is that many of us have spent years answering the question “Who are you?” with what we do. When that role disappears, the role that has likely been something that bore their sense of self for decades, it can feel as though part of us disappeared with it.

The title, routine, tribe, sense of competence and contribution are all gone simultaneously, leaving behind grief.

Making it worse can be how we think others see us. The awkward pause when someone asks what we do. The subtle shift in conversation when we say we’re “between roles” or “figuring out what’s next.” The stories we start telling ourselves about our worth, our age, or our future.

This is where I see possibility. A chance to uncover not rebuild from scratch.

It’s also where I see something that often gets missed.

Job loss after 50 is rarely just about work.

By this stage of life, many people are already carrying a lot.

Kids are growing up and moving on. Parents may need more support. Health and relationships can look different than they did ten years ago. Retirement no longer feels like some distant idea.

Then job loss enters the picture and suddenly everything feels up for examination.

Questions like:

Who am I when this role is no longer part of my answer?

What do I still want from the years ahead?

What parts of myself have been waiting for attention?

Most people want answers immediately. That’s understandable. Financial realities don’t leave much room for philosophical reflection.

But life transitions don’t usually work that way.

The next chapter rarely arrives fully formed.

It unfolds through conversations, experiments, unexpected opportunities, and sometimes complete surprises.

Looking back, many people can trace their careers through a series of twists they never planned. A chance conversation. An opportunity they almost didn’t pursue. A role they never expected to enjoy. A skill they didn’t know would become valuable.

At the time, those moments often feel random.

Only later do they make sense as part of the story.

That’s why I encourage people not to rush to define the rest of their lives in the first few weeks after losing a job.

Grieve the loss.

Take stock of what matters.

Pay attention to what sparks your interest.

Notice what keeps showing up.

The path forward is often less about creating a brand-new version of yourself and more about reconnecting with parts of yourself that have been buried beneath years of responsibility and routine.

What nobody tells you about job loss after 50 is that the hardest part is often not finding the next job.

It’s making sense of who you are when the job is gone.

The grief is real.

The uncertainty is real.

The fear is real.

But I’ve also seen something else.

I’ve watched people discover strengths they had overlooked, interests they had put aside, and possibilities they would never have considered if life hadn’t forced them to pause.

Not everyone finds a completely different path. Some return to work that looks very similar to what they did before. But they do so with a clearer understanding of who they are beyond a job title.

And perhaps that’s the hidden work of transitions.

Not becoming someone new.

Learning that a job title was only ever one chapter of the story.

_{Photo by Louise Stodola}

My oldest child graduated from university this week and while I’m incredibly proud, I also suddenly felt bereft.

It took me by surprise.

It shouldn’t have. I help people navigate feelings of grief during life transitions. The empty nest. The feeling that your purpose has ended. The what now? The who am I now? But I didn’t think I would be the client in this moment.

As a bagpiper led in the graduates, I swallowed the huge lump in my throat and rapidly blinked back the threatening tears.

I wasn’t this emotional when both of my kids graduated from high school, so why now?

Now, because my oldest is really an adult.

Now, because the parent-child shift feels greater at this moment.

They’ve already been out of our home and a five-hour plane ride away for four years. Do I really know them fully anymore?

Hearing other mothers talk about this shift, this grieving of change, identity, and role, has shaped much of the work I do in my coaching practice. Helping mothers through empty nest transitions is part of what I do.

Transitions are my focus. I’m surrounded by them and I’m living one.

While some transitions come with obvious grief—such as a mid-career job loss or a relationship breakdown—it took me a few minutes to realize I wasn’t grieving because something had gone wrong.

I was grieving because something had gone right.

And that’s the thing about this stage of life. We did our job. We were successful. That’s why the insecurity about who we are now can take us by surprise and leave us feeling lost, untethered, or unsupported.

These turning points can feel like endings, but they can also be doorways to something new that’s more aligned with who we are now. Everything we’ve lived and learned is still ours. We get to choose what comes next. We get to refocus, rebuild, and reshape who we are in this season of life.

I took my moment in the bleachers quietly. Three deep breaths.

I wasn’t sad. I was grateful.

Grateful for the opportunity to raise this human who was walking across the stage.

Grateful to know I made a difference.

In awe of their accomplishments and the opportunities that awaited.

The goal of parenting isn’t to keep our children close forever. It’s to help them become capable of building lives of their own.

And when they do, there is a strange ache that arrives alongside the pride.

The feeling showed up as grief, or sadness, as many transition-related emotions do.

As I sat there, I realized I wasn’t just adjusting to my child graduating.

I was adjusting to who I was becoming because of it.

For years, “university mom” had been one of my roles. It came with routines, conversations, worries, milestones, and community.

Suddenly, a chapter was closing.

Not my relationship with my child.

Just the version of motherhood that had existed during this season.

I know there will be an adjustment period ahead. My child will be stepping into a new job, a new city, a new apartment, and a new chapter.

I’ll be stepping into a new chapter too.

One with a little more space, a little more quiet, and perhaps a little more rediscovery.

I might have left the online parent group, but for now, I’ll keep wearing the university-logo mom shirt and drinking my coffee from the university-logo mom mug.

Some transitions don’t require us to rush.

Some just ask us to loosen our grip a little at a time.

^{If you're navigating an empty nest, a career change, or another life transition, you're welcome to subscribe. I write about identity, purpose, and finding your footing when life changes.}

You might recognize this feeling.

The nagging voice inside that says you’re less than.

The constant striving to prove your worth.

These often stem from the stories we’ve been telling ourselves.

When combined with other life altering events such as a divorce, job loss, or a life role change, we can feel the need to change or reinvent ourselves. We overhaul or shift how we operate, changing how we outwardly appear to the world.

But, is an outward facing overhaul really enough? What about inwardly?

Is reinvention the right word for what actually happens during a life transition?

When I was younger I decided I was on the wrong career track and dropped out of teaching school. Unfortunately, the person I thought I was going to marry decided that was his cue to leave too, putting me in a spiral of not feeling good enough. A failure. Not smart enough. Those beliefs stayed with me. Even when I achieved the leadership ranks in the banking industry before the age of thirty, my self-worth was tied to believing I wasn’t quite enough because I didn’t have a degree.

I needed to prove that I was something more, to myself and to others and at 53 I graduated with my Bachelors Degree, with distinction. Most people didn’t realize how much that achievement meant to me. Not because of the achievement of completing, or because of my age, but because of what had gone before.

When I sat back and examined my own journey and others I had witnessed, especially friends who had gone through divorce, taken schooling, and confidently entered new careers, I noticed a pattern.

We weren’t less than.

We weren’t incapable.

We weren’t unworthy.

Somewhere in the past we had told ourselves we were those things, or someone else had and we had believed them. All of us already had what we needed inside of us. We just needed to uncover it.

Uncovering feels like a much more authentic way of growing during a life transition. Rather than an overhaul, it is an excavation of what is already there. It’s exposing the things that have been layered over by life.

Caregiving

Marriage

Shrinking to fit

Staying comfortable in a job or routine

Putting others first

These can bury parts of who we really are and what we have to offer. I’m sure we can all think of times when we’ve played small. Some of us have been doing it our whole lives. Putting others needs above our own. Feeling like we don’t deserve to strive for more or we aren’t good enough to achieve it. Until a transition comes along and we think:

“What do I do now?”

If we haven’t experienced it ourselves we know someone who has.

The stay-at-home mum whose children have flown and whose days suddenly feel empty.

The woman navigating divorce or the death of a partner while questioning her worth.

The person laid off after decades in the same role.

An overhaul on the outside won’t permanently fix the need for change if you don’t uncover what already exists within you, freeing it and nurturing it.

When I went back to university, I wasn’t creating something new. I was removing the thoughts and ideas I had about myself that were covering the real me. My capabilities and what really lit me up.

When I got my first glowing praise from a professor I ugly cried. I know you can picture it!

Mascara running, the wailing about how I never believed I was good enough. Maybe the feedback was for someone else and was sent to me by mistake. Yes, I know!

Then came the dawning realization:

Maybe I had always been good enough.

My thoughts do have merit and this ability was always inside of me. I just needed to give it an outlet and trust I had what it takes. I had to stop playing small because someone in my past had made me believe I wasn’t enough.

I’ve witnessed this with other women I’ve worked alongside too. It’s the moment when confidence stops feeling like a performance and becomes a recognition that this has always been you. You just needed to uncover it.

I think uncovering is a kinder, truer story than reinvention. It honours what has happened in your past and shows you that you already have a strong foundation to build on. Reinvention involves an overhaul which can be overwhelming and unsustainable.

Uncovering honours your natural potential.

Reinvention often involves trying to fit a mould that wasn’t meant for you.

That doesn’t mean that uncovering can’t be difficult. Peeling back years of things we’ve believed can be uncomfortable. It can affect our relationships and upset the status quo.

I found the hardest change was finding how to express myself. I was so used to being quiet and swallowing my opinions because of the fear of being judged or challenged, that uncovering my voice and being confident to use it took a while. But there’s immense freedom and happiness in being patient with yourself, slowly testing out the things you know to be true for you, and challenging your internalized beliefs.

Reinvention can be exhausting. Uncovering feels like coming home.

I’m new to Substack, which feels both exciting and a little vulnerable if I’m honest. Midlife has a way of asking us to begin again, and this feels like one of those moments for me too.

I’d love to connect with other women who are building something in midlife — a business, a new direction, a creative dream, or simply a different version of themselves. I’m glad to be here.