Starting Over in Midlife

I can't believe I leave in three days.

I thought this week would feel mostly like getting ready to leave. Instead, I keep thinking about what it will feel like to come home.

Maybe that is because midlife has a strange way of making a life you love feel familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

You can love the life you built and still look around one day, wondering why it no longer fits the way it used to.

Nothing has to be terribly wrong. Sometimes the season changes before we have caught up with it.

The children grow up. The roles shift. The pace that once worked for you no longer works. The things you used to tolerate feel heavier. You begin wanting things you did not know how to want ten years ago.

And somewhere in there, you realize the woman who built this version of your life is not exactly the woman standing inside it now.

Sweet friend, if you have been quietly wondering, I love my life, so why do I feel different inside it, I think this letter may be for you.

The version of home I am leaving

My younger daughter is moving out while I am in Spain.

The house I walk out of on Sunday is not the house I will walk back into.

No Pluto barking when the door opens. Nobody wandering into the kitchen asking if we can DoorDash Chick-fil-A. Her room will belong to a different season of our family.

I have known this was coming. She is ready, and I am proud of her. I am going to miss her anyway.

I am going to miss the version of home where she was still down the hall. I am going to miss the ordinary interruptions I probably did not appreciate enough while they were happening.

That may be one of the strangest parts of midlife. Sometimes the thing breaking your heart is also evidence that something went right. Grief and happiness really can live in the same room.

I had my first daughter in my twenties. Even typing that feels wild. I have spent more than half my life being a wife and a mom. Those roles are not disappearing, but they are changing, and I am learning that changing roles can make you question your identity even when the change is good.

What I'll actually miss

And then there are the smaller things I am going to miss, the ones that make me laugh because, apparently, grief has a ridiculous side, too.

I am going to miss my kitchen. Mostly, I am going to miss being able to wander in whenever I want and find food. No planning. No checking opening hours. Just food, right there, when I want it.

My bathroom is going to be a harder goodbye than I care to admit. A long hot bath can fix a lot. So can knowing there will be toilet paper when I arrive.

Then there is DoorDash. A good meal showing up at my front door without me having to cook it still feels like one of the better inventions of modern life.

And my wardrobe. Cute shoes. Matching outfits. Options. Lots of options. A backpack is not exactly built for that kind of freedom.

The washing machine, however, can survive without me.

And my fur babies. That part is not funny. Leaving them gets harder every time. I miss them before I even pull out of the driveway.

Maybe that is why the ridiculous things belong on the list too. They are part of the ordinary life I am leaving for a little while, and part of what makes it home.

And I realize that what I wasn't expecting is this. I've been so focused on my daughter starting this new chapter and on how life at home will change without her.

However, amidst all those thoughts, another question keeps surfacing: Who am I going to be in this next season?

Sometimes starting over is not burning down your life and beginning again.
Sometimes it is meeting the new version of a life you already love.
~ Jenn

Camino History

The Camino itself has had to begin again.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries are remembered as a golden age of pilgrimage to Santiago. Later, through the Renaissance and Reformation, the number of pilgrims declined. The road never disappeared completely, but it became much quieter.

The cathedral was still there. The old paths were still there. The story was still there.

Then the Camino began to wake up again.

In the modern revival, routes were once again marked, places for pilgrims reopened, and another generation carried forward the story of the road. According to Santiago's Pilgrim's Office, 1,245 pilgrims arrived in 1985. Today, people come from all over the world to walk it.

I find that steadying this week.

The Camino did not have to become a different road to begin again.
It was still itself. It simply entered a new season and was walked by new feet.

Did You Know

Sobrado dos Monxes, a monastery on the Camino del Norte, has its distinct story of beginning again.

Its history reaches back to the tenth century. The monastery was suppressed in 1834, and the buildings fell into ruin. Reconstruction began in 1954. On July 25, 1966, Cistercian monks returned, and monastic life restarted there.

Pilgrims still stay there today.

More than a century without monastic life did not mean it was finished.
It meant there was still a story left to continue.

Scripture Study

Genesis 12:1 through 5

Before you read this section, read Genesis 12:1-5.

God tells Abram to leave his country, his people, and his father's household and go to a land God will show him. He is given a promise, but he is not handed the whole map first.

Then Scripture gives us this simple sentence: Abram went, as the Lord had told him.

That is the part catching me three days before I leave.

I have spent much of my life believing that readiness should feel like certainty. Maybe readiness is simply knowing the next faithful step and being willing to take it before every question is answered.

Abram stood between what was familiar and what came next.

Midlife can feel like that even when you never leave your zip code.

You know the woman you have been. You do not fully know the shape of the woman ahead.

When the life you love does not fit the same

I used to think starting over meant something dramatic had happened. A divorce. A move. A career ending. A loss. Some obvious line between before and after.

Midlife has revealed to me that sometimes starting over is much quieter than that.

Sometimes you are still married, still a mother, still living in a life you are grateful for, and yet something inside you knows the old shape no longer fits the same. You spent years becoming who that season needed you to be. Then the season changed.

And lately I keep wondering what all of this means for me.

My kids don't need me the way they once did. I don't want to keep proving my worth by how much I can carry. And maybe for the first time in a long time, I'm asking myself a different question.

What do I want this next part of my life to look like?

Maybe the reason life does not fit the way it used to is that I am no longer the woman it was built around.

That does not make the old version of me wrong. She got me here.

I can be grateful for who I was and still know I do not have to keep being her in the same way.

Dig Deeper

Verse five says Abram did not go by himself. Sarai, Lot, their belongings, and the people who were part of their household went with him.

That part stood out to me because when one person changes, it usually touches the people around them too. We do not grow in a vacuum. The people we love are adjusting right alongside us.

When you change, the people who love you have to learn you again. And when they change, you have to do the same.

That can be uncomfortable. It can also be holy.

Growth asks us to loosen our grip on who someone used to be and become curious about who they are now.

Maybe the goal isn't to remain on the same page.
Maybe it is staying in the same story while giving each other room to write the next chapter.

That includes us.

Starting over without erasing who you were

Maybe this is the part I most want to tell my midlife friend who cannot understand why her own life feels unfamiliar.

You do not have to hate the old version of yourself to outgrow her.

You can be grateful for the mother you were when everyone constantly needed you, and still want to know the woman you are becoming.

You can honor the career you built and admit you want something different now. You can love your marriage and realize the two of you need to learn each other again. You can miss the noise in your house and slowly discover that quiet has something to teach you.

You are not starting from nothing.
You carry what you loved, what you lost, what you learned, what you survived, and what you became.

When I come home, I do not want to spend all my energy trying to put everything back exactly where it was.

I want to meet the life that is there.

I want to meet my daughter in her new season. My family in ours. And myself in mine.

You cannot go somewhere new without leaving something behind.

Maybe that is what makes some goodbyes so hard. You can be ready for what is next and still be sad about what is ending.

Reflection

Write honestly or do not write at all. Nobody is reading this but you.

1. What part of my life no longer fits the way it once did?
2. What version of myself am I grieving, even if I know I have outgrown her?
3. Who in my family am I being asked to meet differently in this season?
4. What part of my old identity am I trying to preserve simply because it feels familiar?
5. If I did not have to remove what came before, what might I permit myself to become next?

Prayer

Camino Challenge: Meet the New Version

You do not need a plane ticket or an empty nest for this one.

Think about one relationship or part of your life that has changed in the last year.

Write two short lists.

• First: What am I trying to hold the same?
• Second: What is actually changing?

Now look at the person involved, even if that person is you, and ask one question:

Who are they becoming, and am I willing to meet them there?

Do not rush to fix anything. Notice what is different.

Then choose one small way to honor the season you are leaving and one small way to welcome the season that is beginning.

You are allowed to honor the season that influenced you and still make room for the one that is beginning.

Tomorrow We'll Walk...

Two days.

Tomorrow, I want to talk about the thing I am carrying that weighs the least and costs the most.

It fits in the palm of my hand. It has something written on it that I have already told you stays between me and the road.

And there is a mountain in Spain covered in a thousand years of them.

What is changing in your life right now, and what new version of yourself are you learning to meet? Write me back below. I read every one.