It was a Friday night.

I was supposed to be relaxing.

Instead I was deep in a rabbit hole of Zillow listings, mortgage calculators, and Wake County school ratings, negotiating with myself about a three-floor townhouse, a Tudor with a wood-burning fireplace, a farmhouse in the wrong county, and at one point, a serious detour into whether I could keep mini goats on a .4 acre wooded lot in town.

(I cannot. Zoning said no. I’m still grieving.)

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, someone asked me about dating.

And I said:

I don’t even remember which one that was. They all blend together into one giant mediocre man.

I said it and immediately thought…wait. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

Meet Veronica

Somewhere inside me lives a woman named Veronica.

You might know her.

She’s the one in the corner with the monocle and the journal, watching everything unfold with an expression that sits right between exhausted and appalled.

She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t lecture.

She just raises the monocle slowly, opens the journal, and writes.

Dear Diary.

Two words. Maximum devastation.

I have been ignoring Veronica for most of my adult life.

The Wall

Here’s what I know about myself that took an embarrassingly long time to admit.

I wall myself off. I have for years.

Not because I’m cold. If you know me, you know I am the opposite of cold. I feel everything, all the time, at full volume. I follow true crime, because I want to embrace the victims. I carry other people’s pain like it’s my own luggage.

But somewhere along the way, after enough hurt, enough disappointment, enough times trusting the wrong person with the softest parts of myself, I learned to keep the stop sign in my head I developed at age 14, when my boundaries were about to be crossed, and build my wall.

Safe.

Protected.

Alone, but at least predictably alone.

The Crumb

And then.

Then.

Someone would show up and notice me.

Not grand gestures. Not some cinematic moment. Just — attention. The tiniest, most ordinary crumb of genuine interest directed at me specifically.

And my entire nervous system would go: OH. THIS. YES. HIM.

Zero to soulmate in about 45 seconds flat.

My brain…my beautiful, chaotic, ADHD brain that can research school districts and mortgage scenarios and mini goat zoning laws all in one Friday night, would suddenly, completely, catastrophically go offline.

Dear Diary. She’s doing it again.

The Performance

There was always something off. Something closed off, something guarded, something that told me within the first ten minutes that he was just as behind his wall as I was behind mine.

I’d feel it immediately.

And spend the rest of the date trying to talk myself out of what I already knew.

But he was there. He was interested. He had looked directly at me and not looked away.

And for a woman who had been behind that wall for so long, being seen, even a little, even imperfectly, felt like enough.

So I would talk myself into it.

Maybe chemistry takes time. Maybe I’m being too picky. Maybe this is what mature love looks like and I’ve just been chasing something unrealistic.

Veronica, in the corner, monocle raised.

Dear Diary. She’s rationalizing again. How very.

What I Told Myself

I went into relationships with people I couldn’t fully love.

Not because I was cruel.

Because I didn’t believe I deserved better.

Because some quiet, persistent voice had been whispering for years:

This is the best you’re going to get. Don’t be difficult. Don’t want too much. Take what’s offered and be grateful.

And every single time, Veronica would write it all down.

Dear Diary. She did it again. Betty Finn was a true friend and she sold her out for a bunch of Swatch dogs and Diet Coke heads.

Except in my version, Betty Finn was myself.

The Truth About Dating After 50

I am 50 years old. I am in the middle of selling my house and finding a new one and parenting three teenagers and young adults and working my day job and building a business and rebuilding a life I love from the foundation up. Whewwww, that’s a LOT.

I tried. I showed up. I performed the breezy, interesting version of myself across dinner tables and coffee shops and date nights that felt more like job interviews than intimacy.

I came home every time thinking: what is wrong with me?

Here’s what I finally figured out on that Friday night, somewhere between the Tudor fireplace fantasy and the mini goat zoning detour.

Nothing is wrong with me.

But nothing was right with the situation either.

Two Fortresses, One Check

Because here’s the thing nobody says out loud about relationships in your 50s after a long marriage ends:

The good ones… the emotionally available, self-aware, genuinely ready ones…are largely spoken for.

And the ones who are left?

They’re us.

Just as wounded. Just as walled off. Just as starved for real connection and just as terrified of it. Just as done with performing and pretending and settling, but also just as likely to settle anyway because the alternative is being alone and that is its own particular kind of hard.

Two people behind two separate walls, sitting across a restaurant table, performing fine at each other.

Dear Diary. Two emotional fortresses just split the check. How very.

Video: Let me tell you about Shrimp Obama and men.

I would drive home and think: there was nothing there.

But maybe the more honest version is: there was nothing available there. Not from him. Not from me. We were both too locked up, too worn down, too deep in our own rebuilding to have anything left to actually offer.

That doesn’t make it less lonely.

It just makes it make more sense.

The Moment I Finally Got It

My brain had just spent three hours doing what it does best.

Exploring every possibility. Feeling all the feelings. Going from practical to whimsical to absurd and fully committing to each stop along the way.

And I was lit up the whole time.

When was the last time a date made me feel like that?

You cannot author a new life and audition for someone else’s at the same time.

Something has to give.

Dear Diary. She’s finally getting it.

What Authoring Actually Looks Like

So I stepped back.

Not forever. Not bitterly. No dramatic declaration.

Just…not right now.

Right now I am doing the most interesting thing I have ever done.

I am choosing, deliberately, to be the main character of my own life instead of a supporting role in someone else’s.

I am learning what it feels like to be interesting enough to myself that swiping feels boring.

I am letting Veronica put down the journal for five minutes because I am finally, actually listening to her.

The wall is still there.

But I’m not hiding behind it anymore. I’m just not opening the gate for whoever shows up with a crumb and good timing.

That’s not giving up on love.

That’s authoring.

A is for Author Your Next Chapter

The A in RECLAIM stands for Author Your Next Chapter.

Not edit someone else’s.

Not wait for the right person to hand you a better plot.

Not settle for a story that’s fine.

Author.

You pick up the pen. You decide what happens next. You stop outsourcing your ending to whoever showed up at the right time but the wrong season.

My next chapter has a fireplace in it. It has a community of women who finally feel like they belong somewhere built for their brain. It has a business I’m building before the world wakes up. It has three kids I’m figuring out how to parent through their own hard seasons.

It has a woman in the corner with a monocle who is, for the first time in a long time, nodding instead of writing.

It does not currently have a mediocre man in it.

And honestly?

It’s the best chapter I’ve written yet.

Pull up a chair. I saved you a seat. 🔥

About the RECLAIM Framework

R — Recenter | E — Energy | C — Community | L — Let Go | A — Author Your Next Chapter | I — Invest | M — Make Something

This essay is part of an ongoing series working through the RECLAIM framework…a roadmap for neurodivergent women rebuilding in midlife.

If it resonated, subscribe so you don’t miss what comes next.

And if you have your own Veronica, I’d love to hear about her in the comments.

ADHD. Perimenopause. Rebuilding anyway.

I am not a coach.

I want to be clear about that. Not because coaching isn’t valuable, but because I have real respect for what great coaches do.

They’ve done the work. They hold real credentials. They change lives in ways I’m not trained to.

That’s exactly why I’m bringing them in.

What I am is something different.

I’m a peer. A community builder. A woman in her 50s who found out she has ADHD embarrassingly recently.

I’m rebuilding my own life AND this community in real time. In public. So you don’t have to do it alone.

The coaching I’ll leave to the experts.

The room? That’s ours to build.

Bella & Me (Heather Bee)

Here’s what I’ve learned about ADHD women and community.

We need it more than almost anyone. And we’ve been failed by it more than almost anyone.

The communities that exist weren’t built for our brains — ever since preschool.

The accountability structures assume you can just be consistent. The group chats require you to remember to check them. The coaching programs cost thousands of dollars and were designed for neurotypical women who are already organized enough to implement what they’re learning.

And then there’s the all-or-nothing thing.

You know the one.

You go hard for two weeks. Gym every day, tracking everything, showing up everywhere. And then your brain just... stops.

Three weeks go by. You feel like you’ve failed. You quietly leave the chat.

That’s not failure. That’s an ADHD nervous system doing exactly what ADHD nervous systems do.

The community we need isn’t built on streaks and consistency scorecards and pressure to perform. It’s built on showing up when you can, being held by people who understand when you can’t, and having zero judgment either way.

I’ve been doing a 30-day challenge lately — collecting dots, not streaks. Two goals per day: move my body and close my kitchen by 8pm. Some days I get the dots. Some days my brain is completely fried and I don’t do a single thing I planned.

The old version of this would feel like failure.

The new version just means I pick up the dots again on Monday.

That’s the culture I’m building here.

What Her Next 30 Community actually looks like.

I’m building this in public. Which means you get to watch it happen, give me input, and help shape what it becomes.

That’s not a marketing angle. That’s genuinely how I want to do this.

Here’s what I know so far:

Peer-led, not coach-led. I’ll be in the trenches with you, not above you. That’s the whole point.

An advisory panel of experts. Coaches, therapists, researchers, and specialists who understand the neurodivergent midlife experience, coming into our space to offer real support when the week has been rough.

You help me choose who’s in the room. I’ll be interviewing potential advisors on the podcast. You’ll meet them, tell me what you think, and help me decide who belongs here. This is your community. You should have a say.

A Founding Circle is coming. A paid membership with details still being finalized, but the women who subscribe to this free Substack now and follow this build will have access first. Being here early matters.

Who else I’m looking for.

If you’re a coach, therapist, or specialist who works with neurodivergent women in midlife, FOLLOW along and subscribe.

This advisory panel is being built thoughtfully and publicly. If your work aligns with what we’re doing here, there may be a conversation worth having.

If you’re a podcaster, creator, or writer with an audience of women like us, let’s TALK.

I’m looking for people who want to build something real. Not just cross-promote.

DMs are open. I’m a real person who reads them.

How to be part of this.

Subscribe to this Substack. That’s it. That’s the whole ask right now.

The Founding Circle opens to subscribers first. The women in this Substack are the ones who get early access, founding pricing, and a say in how this room gets built. That matters.

Subscribe while it’s on your mind. I can’t remind you to come back. We both know that’s not how our brains work.

I need you here. Not as a number. As a person.

This community doesn’t work without you in it.

About the RECLAIM Framework

RECLAIM is the backbone of Her Next 30, a community built specifically for midlife women with late-diagnosed ADHD who are done shrinking and ready to reclaim their lives. Seven things most of us quietly gave away during the years we were busy performing neurotypicality. Seven things we get to take back.

R — Recenter · E — Energy · C — Community · L — Let Go · A — Author Your Next Chapter · I — Invest · M — Make Something

We go deep on one letter at a time. You’re in the right place.

I love you. I’m here. I’m going through it with you.

— Heather

Her Next 30 is a weekly essay and growing community for late-diagnosed and newly self-aware women with ADHD navigating midlife. If your brain works differently and you’re finally ready to design a life built around that truth — you’re exactly who this is for.

P.S. If you’re a coach, therapist, or specialist who works with neurodivergent women in midlife — I see you too. The advisory panel is being built thoughtfully and publicly. If your work aligns with what we’re doing here, there may be a conversation worth having. DMs are open.

🎬 [4-minute video — watch before you read for the TLDR version]

Real quick before we start: this essay is short. Scannable. Written for our brains, not for people who highlight things in nonfiction books and actually remember what they highlighted.

You’re welcome.

Let me describe my energy system.

Mode 1: I haven’t cleaned my house in three weeks and I genuinely cannot locate the motivation to care. Like, I see the mess. I am aware of the mess. I am thinking about the mess. I am now watching my third episode of something I don’t even like that much.

Mode 2: It is 10pm and I just reorganized every cabinet in my kitchen and I feel INCREDIBLE.

There is no Mode 3.

If you have an ADHD brain — especially if you got that information later in life, like me — you already know exactly what I’m talking about. You have lived in this body. You have had this day.

And for most of our lives, we thought it meant something was wrong with us.

It doesn’t. It means our nervous system runs on a completely different operating system than the one the world was designed for. And nobody told us. For decades.

Here’s what they got wrong.

Every productivity system ever invented was designed for a neurotypical brain.

Time blocking. The Pomodoro Technique. “Just do it for five minutes.” Morning routines with seventeen steps that somehow involve journaling AND a cold plunge AND gratitude practice before 7am.

Cool. Love that for them. Completely useless for us.

Because our energy isn’t about time. It’s about dopamine.

When dopamine is available, we are unstoppable. We hyperfocus. We build the entire website in a weekend. We write the essay, clean the house, start four new projects, and forget to eat lunch and also dinner.

When it’s not? We are horizontal. We know we should get up. We are thinking very seriously about getting up. Nothing is happening.

This is not a moral failure. This is neuroscience. And the sooner we stop treating it like a character flaw and start treating it like accurate data about how our brains actually work, the sooner we can build a life that works with our system instead of constantly fighting it.

What actually works for me.

I’m not going to give you a twelve-step system. My ADHD brain wrote this essay in two sittings and lost my coffee mug four times in the process. I am not the person to give you twelve steps.

But here’s what genuinely helps my brain:

• Notion with checkboxes. That little strikethrough when I check something off? A legitimate dopamine hit. I have built my entire task system around this tiny piece of visual satisfaction. I regret nothing.

• Working from the couch. I know. I KNOW. But I am more creative horizontal than I have ever been upright at a desk. My desk is furniture art at this point. The couch is where the work happens and I have made peace with that.

• Deadlines that actually scare me. Turns out I have never missed a real deadline in my entire career. The panic hyperfocus is real, it is not pretty, and it delivers every single time.

• Adderall. I’ll just say it. It changed my life. Not for everyone, not a judgment either way — but I’m not going to pretend it isn’t part of my energy architecture when I’m sitting here telling you to design your life around the truth of how your brain works.

Three things worth your attention this week.

These are genuinely good. I don’t link to things I haven’t read or watched.

🔗 How Perimenopause and Menopause Impact ADHD Symptoms — ADDitude Magazine — You’ll find out that most women with ADHD struggle way more at this time in life than they did when they were young. And for some reason, there are no good studies yet! We've got to stick together to get through this.

🔗 The ADHD Body Double - A Unique Tool for Getting Things Done - ADD Association — This is the research behind our Her Next 30 Campfire Co-Work sessions. If you’ve ever wondered why you can suddenly do your taxes if a friend is sitting next to you doing literally anything else — this is why.

🔗 Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator - Tim Urban | TED — 14 minute TED Talk on YouTube, completely free, and you will certainly recognize the “instant gratification monkey” inside of you. He is a familiar beast.

Now I want to hear from you.

• How do you manage your energy?

• How do you get the dopamine without disappearing into your phone for four hours?

• How do you get off the couch when your brain has decided today is a horizontal day?

Drop it in the comments. I am genuinely asking. We are figuring this out together.

About the RECLAIM Framework

RECLAIM is the backbone of Her Next 30 — a community built specifically for midlife women with late-diagnosed ADHD who are done shrinking and ready to reclaim their lives. Seven things most of us quietly gave away during the years we were busy performing. Seven things we get to do to take it back.

R — Recenter · E — Energy · C — Community · L — Let Go · A — Author Your Next Chapter · I — Invest · M — Make Something

We go deep on one letter at a time. You’re in the right place.

I love you. I’m here. I’m going through it with you.

— Heather

Her Next 30 is a weekly essay and growing community for late-diagnosed and newly self-aware women with ADHD navigating midlife. If your brain works differently and you're finally ready to design a life built around that truth — you're exactly who this is for.

Get on the Waitlist

Not on the waitlist yet? Get on it here. Click above.

Subscribe now

I was crying. And the thing that scared me most wasn’t the crying… it was that I couldn’t tell you why. There was no single reason I could point to. Nothing had just happened. Nothing was technically wrong. I had the job, the house, the relationship, the life that looked right from the outside.

And I was sitting alone in my car, unable to go in, unable to explain it, unable to pretend for one more minute that I was fine.

If you’ve had a moment like that, your own version of a parking lot, wherever it was. You already know what I’m talking about. That feeling isn’t a breakdown. It isn’t weakness. It’s your life trying to get your attention.

It was mine trying to tell me something I had been too busy to hear: you have been so focused on everyone else that you have completely disappeared.

That parking lot moment was the beginning of everything I’m about to share with you.

Welcome to the RECLAIM Framework.

If you’re new here, I’m Heather, and Her Next 30 is a space for women in the middle of the transition nobody prepares you for. Not a crisis. A reclamation. A deliberate, sometimes uncomfortable, always worth-it process of designing the next 30 years of your life on your own terms.

RECLAIM is the backbone of everything I teach here. Seven letters. Seven things most of us quietly gave away… to our kids, our partners or husbands, our jobs, our families, the endless project of making everyone else comfortable… and seven things we get to take back.

We’re going to go deep on each one. But we’re starting here, with R, because without this first step, none of the others stick.

R is for Recenter.

Which means: stop orbiting other people’s needs.

Here’s what I want you to notice about that phrase. It doesn’t say ignore other people’s needs. It doesn’t say stop caring. It doesn’t say become someone who blows up her relationships and burns everything down in the name of self-discovery.

It says stop orbiting.

There’s a difference between loving people and building your entire gravitational field around them. Between being present for others and losing yourself so completely in their needs that you forget you have any.

Most of us learned to orbit very early.

Maybe you grew up in a home with a parent whose moods set the temperature for everyone else. You learned to read the room before you learned to read a book. You learned that keeping the peace… tiptoeing, pleasing, disappearing a little, was how you stayed safe. That training doesn’t just go away when you grow up. It follows you into your marriage, your friendships, your parenting, your career. It becomes the water you swim in, and after a while, you stop noticing you’re wet.

Or maybe nothing dramatic happened. Maybe you just absorbed, as most women do, the message that a good woman is a giving woman. That your worth lives in your usefulness to others. That wanting things for yourself like time, space, rest, a life that feels like yours, is somewhere between indulgent and selfish.

Either way, you arrive at midlife having spent decades making sure everyone else had their oxygen mask on.

And you’re sitting there, a little breathless, wondering why.

Recentering is not selfish. I need you to hear that, because it will be the first thing your brain offers you as a reason not to do this.

I think about the flight attendant’s instruction every time I say this. Put your oxygen mask on before assisting others. When I was a young mom, I used to hear that and think: absolutely not. My child is more important than me. There is no version of this where I save myself first.

It took me a long time to understand I had been misreading it. It was never about saving yourself instead of them. It was about being whole enough to actually save them at all. If you go down, everyone goes down with you.

Taking care of yourself is not taking from the people you love. It is the foundation of everything you want to give them.

The research on this is clear, but honestly, you don’t need research. You already know it in your body. You know what it feels like to run on empty… the short fuse, the quiet resentment, the way you go through the motions of your own life feeling vaguely absent from it. You know that version of yourself. And you know she’s not the mother, the partner, the friend you want to be.

The woman who takes her walk in the morning. Who goes to therapy. Who protects her sleep and her Saturday mornings and her friendships. Who lets herself want things and then, quietly, goes after them. That woman has more to give, not less. She gives from fullness instead of depletion. She loves from a place of choice instead of obligation.

She put her oxygen mask on first.

Here’s the part that takes some courage to say out loud: the people in your life benefit when you recenter. But some of them won’t like it at first.

When you’ve been orbiting someone for years, your gravity shift disrupts them. It’s supposed to. It’s not cruelty. It’s honesty. It’s the necessary friction of becoming someone who takes up her full space.

Your kids, if they’re older, may need you to model this more than they need almost anything else you could give them. The way you treat yourself is the loudest thing you teach them about how a woman moves through the world. What you want them to see — that a woman matters, that her needs are real, that she doesn’t have to earn rest or joy or space. They will only truly believe it if they watch you live it.

And your relationships, the ones that are real and worth keeping, will expand to meet the fuller version of you. The ones that were built entirely on your smallness may struggle. That’s information too.

So what does recentering actually look like? It looks like a thousand small decisions, made again and again, in the direction of yourself.

It looks like the walk you take alone, not to earn something, just because your body and your mind are worth thirty uninterrupted minutes. It looks like the therapy appointment you keep even when everything seems fine, because you are a person worth understanding. It looks like the girls’ trip you stop feeling guilty about, the book club, the hour on Sunday morning with your coffee before anyone else is awake (this is my favorite). It looks like saying I need to think about that instead of an automatic yes. It looks like noticing, slowly, that you have preferences. That you have a self. That she has been there all along, waiting patiently for you to come back to her.

This is where the next 30 years begin.

Not with a dramatic gesture. Not with blowing up your life.

With you, choosing yourself. Quietly. Persistently. For real this time.

We’re just getting started. Next week we go deeper into the second letter of RECLAIM — and trust me, it connects directly to everything we just talked about.

If this essay found you at the right moment, forward it to one woman who needs it. And if you’re new here, subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming.

About the RECLAIM Framework

RECLAIM is the backbone of Her Next 30 — seven things most of us quietly gave away during the years we were busy taking care of everyone else. Seven things we get to take back.

R — Recenter · E — Energy · C — Community · L — Let Go · A — Author Your Next Chapter · I — Invest Financially · M — Make Something

We go deep on one letter at a time. You’re in the right place.

I love you. I’m here. I’m going through it with you.

— Heather

*Her Next 30 is a weekly essay for women in midlife transition. If you’re ready to stop waiting and start designing your next chapter — you’re in the right place.

On February 12th, I was having an ordinary morning getting ready for work and carpool dropoff, when I did something I do every morning. I opened Facebook on my iphone.

Quickly, I found out that my friend Katie had been murdered. Stabbed to death by her own son. She was 49 years old. And she was stuffed in a garage trash can.

I called out sick. My breath caught in shock, I sobbed. I couldn’t believe that this could happen to this mother, this wonderful, mischievous, vivacious woman who made every room a little more fun and a little more alive.

Katie had been trying to reclaim her life. She moved to a new house. She was trying to start over. She had gone through years of depression, years of fighting in court for her boys against a man who wanted them only out of spite. She had survived so much. And she never got her next 30 years.

That is why I’m building The Next 30. For her. And honestly, for me. And maybe, if you’re reading this, for you too.

—

Here’s what I never say out loud.

I was born into chaos. Holes punched in walls. Things thrown. Yelling. Sobbing. A small girl being called clumsy like it was her fault she existed in a space that wasn’t safe. So I did what girls do in those environments: I became the good child. I kept my mouth shut. I kept my feelings inside. I tried to make everybody happy.

Nobody seemed happy. Turns out you can’t manage other people’s emotions. I know that now. I didn’t know it for the next forty-something years.

I married my first long-term boyfriend. He was an alcoholic, and eventually became abusive toward me and my kids. I got us out. Then I spent the next ten years with someone who was critical - just not right for me, and made my neurodivergent, ADHD household feel unsafe in a quieter, more subtle way. We bought a house together 8 years ago. I told my therapist I would settle and stay because I didn’t have the energy to leave.

She said, “Heather. You dread him coming home from work. You’re walking on eggshells. Your kids don’t even like him. What are you doing?”

And that was the moment. I woke up.

I realized I had never been in love with either of them. I had just wanted to be good. I had wanted to feel loved. And I had spent my entire adult life managing everyone else’s chaos because chaos was what felt familiar to me from the beginning.

—

I’m 50. And something shifted.

I don’t know exactly when it happened. But somewhere around the time I turned 50, I stopped managing other people’s shit. Just stopped. It wasn’t a decision. It was more like a refusal that rose up from somewhere deep and said: no more.

Is it strange that freedom and invisibility arrived at the same time? Men don’t look at me the way they used to. Part of me grieves that. But another part of me feels like I’ve been let out of a cage I didn’t even know I was in. I don’t have to perform anymore. I don’t have to be pleasing or pretty or available. I can just… be. Not to say that I don’t enjoy looking good when I go out, but I do it for me now.

I’m also tired. Burned out. Still doom-scrolling more than I should. Still fighting my ADHD brain, which I didn’t even know I had until my therapist gently, persistently suggested it last year. Late-diagnosed ADHD in midlife women is apparently an epidemic, because we were never the hyperactive boys in the classroom. We were the good girls, masking beautifully, running on empty.

But here’s what I also know at 50: I have at least 30 more years. Maybe more, if I take care of myself. And I am not going to spend those years scrolling TikTok and being angry about the world. I have to choose me.

—

What nobody tells you about turning 50.

There’s a feeling that comes over you. It’s not a breakdown. It’s closer to a reckoning. A strange cocktail of freedom and grief and self-acceptance that arrives all at once. You’re grieving your children growing up. Grieving the end of the version of yourself that was needed in a certain way. Grieving, maybe, your sense of being seen.

But underneath the grief is something else. A strange, quiet excitement. Because for the first time maybe ever, you get to be the center of your own life.

You have wisdom now. You have hard-won clarity. You know who drains you and who fills you up. You know what chaos looks like dressed up as love. You have mothered and nurtured and cared and given… and that doesn’t go away. But now you get to ask: what about me? What do I actually want? Who do I actually want to be?

That question is terrifying. It’s also the most exciting question you’ve been asked in years.

—

RECLAIM.

That’s the word I keep coming back to. Not reinvent. Not restart. Reclaim. Like something that was always yours, that got buried under decades of other people’s needs and your own survival strategies.

I built a framework around it, because that’s how my brain works.

R — Recenter

E — Energy

C — Community

L — Let Go (of what's not yours)

A — Author Your Next Chapter

I — Invest Financially

M — Make Something

To me, personally, RECLAIM means clarity. Momentum. Peace. But the kind of peace you work for, not the kind you collapse into.

—

I’m doing this for Katie.

An amazing trainer at my gym, Wendy, heard the whole story. I was sobbing in her arms at the gym the week after I found out. She put her arms around me and gave me the longest hug. She looked me in the eyes and saw my grief, really saw it, because she’s also a midlife woman, and if you’re a midlife woman, you have seen grief. You have carried grief. You know what it weighs.

Katie should be here right now. She should be doing this. Reclaiming her life, figuring out who she is now that her boys are grown. Finding her people, making something of her own. She had started. She moved to a new house. She was trying. She just didn’t make it.

So I’m going to do it. And I’m going to do it out loud, so other women can find their way to it too.

We are strong women. We have survived so much. We are a force to be reckoned with, and we have earned the right to be treated that way. Starting with how we treat ourselves.

If you’re in this messy middle… if you’re doom scrolling at 11pm wondering what your life is actually for, if your house is quieter than it used to be and you don’t know whether to cry or dance, if you’re walking on eggshells somewhere or just walking in circles, you found the right place.

Subscribe to The Next 30. I’ll be here every week. We’ll figure it out together.

For Katie. For us.

— Heather