When life changes in ways we never imagined, it’s tempting to freeze in place—looking back at what was lost, or forward at what feels too uncertain.

But healing isn’t just about letting go of the old story. It’s about learning how to live into a new one.

That doesn’t mean rushing ahead or pretending the past didn’t happen. It means asking: What kind of story do I want to write with the life I have now?

Writing Forward with Intention

Living into a new story is less about bold, sweeping changes and more about small, consistent choices:

• Choosing rest instead of pushing through exhaustion.

• Saying “yes” to connection when isolation feels safer.

• Trying something new—not because you have it all figured out, but because curiosity is a doorway to healing.

Each choice becomes a line in the new chapter you’re writing.

Living With Both/And

Part of writing forward is accepting that grief and joy, loss and new beginnings, can coexist. Your new story doesn’t erase the old—it carries it. But it also makes room for hope, possibility, and even delight to have a place alongside the pain.

Try This Today

Give this chapter of your life a title. Something that reflects where you are right now—not where you “should” be, but where you truly are. It could be as simple as “The Year of Learning to Breathe Again” or “The Season of Small Joys.”

Let that title remind you: you are still writing.

✨ Want to go deeper?
Inside the Pathfinder and Inner Circle memberships, this month’s masterclass You Are the Storyteller Now: The Power of Narrative in Healing explores exactly how to live into a new story with compassion and clarity. And through our 30-day challenge, members are practicing daily prompts that help them embody and sustain their reclaimed identity.

If membership feels like too big a step right now, you’re still welcome in the Midlife Surprise Society, our free community where women walk alongside each other in the messy, beautiful process of midlife change.