Coming Home to Yourself in Midlife
There’s a quiet question that tends to surface in midlife.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
But persistently.
What do I want?
After years of giving, caretaking, surviving, and showing up for everyone else, that question can feel unfamiliar - and sometimes even uncomfortable. For many women, midlife isn’t a crisis at all. It’s a moment of waking up. A return.
In a recent episode of The Midlife Edit, I sat down with Karen Novy and Tara Alexandra, co-founders of Your Odyssey, to talk about what it actually looks like to come home to yourself - not in theory, but in real life.
What unfolded was honest, grounding, funny, and deeply validating.
Why Dreaming Feels Risky in Midlife
One of the first things we talked about was dreaming - and why it can feel so risky for women in midlife to even ask themselves what they want.
So many of us were conditioned to give, to perform, to be everything for everyone else. Somewhere along the way, our own desires quietly moved to the back burner. Not intentionally. Just gradually.
Midlife often arrives with a realization:
I’ve given so much of myself to everyone else that I’m not sure what I want anymore.
And that realization can feel scary - not because something is wrong, but because we’ve been out of practice listening to ourselves.
Reclaiming Yourself Starts on the Inside
One of the most powerful reminders from this conversation was this:
Reclaiming yourself doesn’t start with a big external change.
It starts internally.
Before boundaries are spoken out loud…
Before decisions are made…
Before anything changes on the outside…
There’s usually a subtle internal shift first.
Often, the very first thing that changes is how we speak to ourselves.
Noticing your inner dialogue - the tone, the criticism, the pressure - can be a wake-up call. Many of us would never speak to a friend the way we speak to ourselves. Reclaiming yourself begins with awareness, compassion, and curiosity instead of judgment.
Five Minutes Can Be Enough
We also talked about the idea that self-care doesn’t have to be elaborate or time-consuming to be effective.
Karen and Tara created a simple practice called Take Five to Thrive, five-minute tools designed to support your nervous system and bring you back into your body. Breathwork. Movement. Sound. Gentle self-talk.
Because the truth is:
Most of us have five minutes. We just don’t always give ourselves permission to use them for ourselves.
And those small pauses - five minutes of breath, movement, or stillness - can shift how the rest of the day unfolds.
Voice, Rest, and the Guilt We Carry
Another theme that came up again and again was voice - how many women slowly lose it over time.
Not all at once.
Not because of one big moment.
But through years of being unheard, dismissed, or taught that it was safer to stay quiet.
Reclaiming your voice doesn’t mean becoming louder or more aggressive. It means getting curious about what you feel, what you need, and what you’ve learned to suppress - and then practicing expressing that truth in safe, small ways.
The same goes for rest.
So many women carry guilt around slowing down. We’ve been taught that productivity equals worth, and rest feels like laziness. But rest isn’t quitting - it’s regulation. It’s how we teach our nervous system that we’re safe.
Rest doesn’t take away your power.
It restores it.
Music as a Way Home
Because both The Midlife Edit and Your Odyssey use music as part of storytelling, we also talked about the role music plays in moments of change.
Music reaches places words can’t. It helps us feel what we haven’t been able to articulate. It becomes a companion during transitions - a reminder that we’re not alone in what we’re feeling.
For this episode, the song that captured the spirit of the conversation was F**ckin’ Perfect - a reminder that the version of you standing here right now is already enough.
Midlife Isn’t a Crisis, It’s an Invitation
If there’s one takeaway from this conversation, it’s this:
You don’t need to reinvent your entire life to come home to yourself.
Sometimes it looks like:
Noticing your inner self-talk
Taking five minutes instead of scrolling
Letting yourself rest without guilt
Saying no when something doesn’t feel right
Remembering who you were before the world got so loud
Midlife isn’t the end of anything.
It’s often the beginning of remembering.
If this resonates, I invite you to listen to the full episode of The Midlife Edit with Karen and Tara, and let yourself sit with whatever comes up. You don’t have to act on it immediately.
Sometimes awareness is the first step home.
