And yet, your body may not have received the memo.

Maybe you still felt tired.
Maybe your sleep felt unsettled.
Maybe your energy came in waves.
Maybe you wanted to move more, but your body needed gentleness.
Maybe you expected to feel alive again, but instead felt tender, hormonal, emotional, or slower than you hoped.

If that was your experience, nothing has gone wrong. Especially in midlife. Our bodies are not machines that respond instantly to seasonal shifts. We are layered women with hormones, histories, responsibilities, nervous systems, emotional loads, and lives that do not always pause just because the daffodils have appeared. Spring may offer more light, but it doesn’t erase what winter asked of us.

Today is about listening to your body without judgment. Not criticising what didn’t happen, not shaming yourself for what you didn’t keep up with, not turning your well-being into another project. Just listening.

How did your body experience spring?

• Did it feel supported?

• Did it feel rushed?

• Did it feel nourished?

• Did it feel ignored?

This is important because your body is always giving you information; it tells you what energises you, what drains you, what rhythms support you, and where you are overriding yourself.

And midlife has a way of making that information louder. What we could once push through, we now have to listen to. What we once dismissed, we now feel in our bones. And while that can be frustrating, it is also a gift. Your body is not trying to hold you back; it is trying to bring you home.

Spring may have shown you that you need more consistent nourishment: more protein, more hydration, more sunlight, more walking, more rest, more strength, more softness, more boundaries around your time and energy.

Or maybe it showed you that your well-being is already being supported by small things you don’t give yourself enough credit for.

The evening walk.
The earlier night.
The glass of water before coffee.
The meal you made instead of skipping lunch.
The moment you stopped and breathed instead of pushing through.

These count.

Today, we gather that wisdom. Not so you can overhaul your life before summer, but so you can carry forward one small rhythm that supports the woman you are now.

Journaling Prompts

1. How did my body feel this spring?

2. What gave me energy?

3. What depleted me?

4. Where did I expect too much from myself?

5. What well-being rhythm do I want to carry into summer?

Today’s Practice: Choose One Well-being Rhythm

Choose one small well-being rhythm to carry forward into summer. Keep it simple.

Examples:

• A glass of water before coffee

• Protein with breakfast

• A gentle walk after dinner

• Stretching while the kettle boils

• Ten minutes of morning light

• Earlier nights twice a week

• A proper lunch instead of grazing

Write this sentence in your journal: “This summer, I will support my body by…”

Share in the Comments

What did your body teach you this spring?

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, we’ll explore Self-Discovery and reflect on the woman who became more visible this spring.

But here’s the thing: spring doesn’t always arrive inside us as quickly as it arrives outside our windows. Sometimes the world begins blooming while we still feel tired. Sometimes the season offers fresh energy, but our body, mind, or heart needs longer to catch up. Sometimes we start the season with good intentions, only to realise that what we wanted to grow needed more time, more space, or more tenderness than we expected.

So today, we begin not with pressure, but with reflection. Not, “What did I achieve this spring?” But, “What began to bloom in me?”

This is the first question of our Spring Reflect & Reset because the end of a season is not only a moment to move on but also a moment to pause and gather. To look back softly; to notice what shifted, what opened, what awakened, and what still feels tender.

Spring is the season of emergence, but emergence doesn’t always look dramatic.

It might look like a desire you finally admitted to yourself.
A boundary you began to honour.
A habit you returned to after months of feeling disconnected.
A conversation you finally had.
A room you cleared.
A walk you took.
A small moment where you thought, There she is. I’m still here.

In midlife, these moments matter because by then we know that becoming isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it happens in the middle of an ordinary Wednesday. Sometimes it looks like choosing yourself in a way no one else would even notice.

Spring may have asked you to become visible to yourself again. Not to the world, not to prove anything, but to you.

Today is about noticing what began. Not forcing it to become anything more just yet, not rushing it into a summer plan, just honouring the first signs of life.

Maybe something bloomed beautifully. Maybe something only just began. Maybe something didn’t grow at all, and that taught you something, too. All of it belongs here. This is your spring review: a soft inventory of what the season held.

So before we move into the rest of this journey, give yourself permission to look back without judgment: you are not behind, you are not late, you are not meant to bloom on demand, you are allowed to grow in your own rhythm.

Journaling Prompts

Take your time with these. Let the answers come honestly.

1. What did spring awaken in me?

2. What began to feel possible again?

3. What surprised me about this season?

4. Where did I feel myself coming back to life?

5. What still feels tender, unfinished, or uncertain?

Today’s Practice: Your Spring Inventory

Create three columns in your journal:

1. What bloomed

2. What began

3. What still needs time

Write freely under each one, don’t overthink it. This is not a performance review; it’s a gentle gathering of evidence that something has been moving, even if quietly.

Share in the Comments

What began to bloom in you this spring?

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, we’ll look at Health & Well-being and gently reflect on how your body responded to spring.

It’s not unhappiness. You know what unhappiness feels like, and this isn’t it. It’s quieter than that. Softer. Almost polite in the way it shows up, never screaming, just whispering. A low hum beneath the surface of an ordinary Thursday morning.

“Is this it?”

And the moment that thought forms, you feel the guilt rush in right behind it. Because how dare you? The house is warm, the children are loved, the bills are paid, and the people in your life are good people. By every measurable standard, your life is fine.

And that, right there, is the problem. ‘Fine.’ Fine has started to feel like a beautiful room with no windows: comfortable, safe, and completely, quietly suffocating.

Here’s what nobody tells you about midlife:

It doesn’t always arrive as a crisis. It doesn’t always look like running away to Tuscany, cutting off all your hair, or falling for someone inappropriate. Sometimes it arrives as restlessness. As a drawer, you reorganise for no reason. As a wardrobe clear-out that doesn’t actually make you feel any better. As 45 minutes of scrolling through images of women who seem to be living in a way you can’t quite articulate, saving them to a folder you’ve never shown anyone.

Sometimes it arrives as that book you keep picking up and putting down. That course you keep almost signing up for. That conversation you keep almost having.

The longing doesn’t announce itself clearly; it arrives in fragments. In sighs. In moments where you catch yourself thinking, “There has to be more than this”, and then immediately hating yourself for thinking it.

But here’s what I need you to understand: That longing is not your enemy, it’s your compass.

Think back to your twenties, your thirties. “More” was easy to define then, wasn’t it? More success. More money. More recognition. More love. More proof that you were doing it right, living it right, being it right.

There was always a finish line to run toward, but somewhere in your forties, something strange happens. You reach some of those finish lines, or you realise you’ve stopped believing in them, and suddenly “more” doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

The ambition that once set you on fire now exhausts you. The life that once looked like your dream now looks like a costume you’ve been wearing so long you forgot you put it on. The version of success you inherited, from your mother, your culture, your younger self, no longer fits the woman you are quietly, stubbornly, unavoidably becoming.

And that is disorienting in a way that’s almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t felt it. Because nothing is technically wrong. And yet everything feels slightly off-key. Like a song played just half a note flat. You’d have to really listen to notice it. But you do notice it. You notice it all the time.

So what is it, really, that you’re longing for? Not more stuff. You’ve probably got enough stuff. Not a different husband, a bigger house, a more impressive job title, though sometimes it feels easier to blame those things, to make the longing about something concrete and fixable.

No. What I think you’re longing for is something far more terrifying and far more sacred than any of that. More truth.

More you.

More of the woman who exists underneath all the roles you play, the capable one, the reliable one, the one who holds everything together, the one who doesn’t make a fuss, the one who is fine, more of her, given actual space to breathe.

More alignment between who you are inside your own chest and who you are inside your own life. More permission to stop performing a version of yourself that you designed for someone else’s expectations. More courage to say: comfort is not the same as fulfilment, and I know the difference.

That’s the “more” you’re after. And it’s not selfish. It’s not ungrateful. It is not a midlife crisis, a red flag, or evidence that something is wrong with you. It is evidence that something in you is waking up.

And I know what it feels like to try to ignore it; to stay busy, to stay useful, to stay needed, to stay small enough that the longing has nowhere to land.

I know how easy it is to dismiss it as tiredness, as hormones, as a phase, as the sort of thing women like you don’t take seriously because there are too many real problems in the world and who are you to complain?

I know how quickly you can talk yourself out of your own inner life.

But here’s the thing about a longing that’s been suppressed: it doesn’t disappear. It just finds other exits. It leaks out as irritability. As a low, inexplicable sadness. As if you’re watching your own life from somewhere just outside it. As the sense that you are going through motions that used to mean something and now feel hollow in your hands.

You cannot outrun it. You cannot organise it away. You cannot stay busy enough to silence it forever.

So what do you actually do with it?

You start by doing something radical; you stop calling it a problem. You let it be there. You sit with it, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it makes you feel ungrateful, even when you can’t explain it to your partner or your best friend or even to yourself in the mirror.

You get curious about it instead of ashamed of it. You ask: “What is this really? What is the part of me that’s asking for more actually asking for?”

You don’t have to blow your life up. You don’t have to leave anything. You don’t have to have answers yet, but you do have to start listening. Properly listening. Not managing the longing, not muffling it, not scheduling it for later, listening to it like it has something important to say. Because it does.

Longing is not noise; it is a signal. It is the most intimate kind of information, your inner life telling you something your outer life isn’t yet reflecting back. It is the woman you are becoming knocking quietly on the door of the woman you’ve been. It deserves to be answered.

Here’s what I want you to do today. Right now. Not a big thing, just a true thing.

Find ten minutes, not a whole afternoon, just ten minutes, and write down, without editing yourself, without managing what you say or making it reasonable or palatable, what ‘more’ means to you right now. Not what it should mean. Not what you’re allowed to want. What it actually means, if you’re honest.

More of what? Less of what?

What parts of your life feel alive? What parts feel like you’re just maintaining them, like a garden you tend out of obligation rather than love?

You don’t need a plan, you don’t need to act on anything yet, you just need to stop dismissing your own inner life long enough to hear what it’s actually saying.

Because of this restlessness, this ache, this quiet sense of more, it’s not a sign that something is broken; it’s a sign that something in you still believes in the possibility of a life that feels more fully, more honestly, more completely yours.

And that belief? That’s not a problem to solve. That’s the most alive thing about you.

Don’t you dare ignore it.

The Practice

This week, don’t ask yourself to solve your whole life, just ask yourself this:

Where in my life am I quietly craving more truth, not more things?

Let that question sit with you, not as pressure, but as a doorway.

Member Content: Join The Midlife Circle to Continue Reading

The full Midlife Circle version of this piece goes deeper into what it means to feel that quiet ache for “more” without rushing to fix, name, or explain it too quickly.

Inside, we explore:

• The difference between wanting more things and craving more truth

• How to listen to restlessness without turning it into guilt or panic

• A simple “More List” to help you uncover what your longing is really asking for

• A gentle one-degree shift to help you move towards a more honest life this week

No dramatic reinvention. No shame for wanting more. Just a softer way to listen to the woman in you who is ready for something truer.

UPGRADE TO PAID

The More Beneath the More

Sometimes the ache for “more” is not asking you to add anything. It is asking you to listen more honestly.

That’s the part we often miss. We assume restlessness means we need a new plan, a new goal, a new project, a new identity, a new room to decorate, a new thing to buy, a new version of ourselves to become.

But sometimes the real “more” is much quieter.

More breathing room.
More truth.
More beauty in the ordinary.
More time that feels like your own.
More relationships where you don’t have to perform.
More work that doesn’t drain the life out of you.
More mornings that don’t begin with dread.

The longing may not be vague because you’re confused; it may be vague because it’s still becoming safe enough to be named. So don’t rush to define it too quickly. Let it speak in fragments first.

Practice 1: The More List

Take a blank page and write at the top:

What I think I want more of…

Let yourself write the obvious things first. More money. More time. More space. More romance. More confidence. More freedom. Whatever comes.

Then underneath, write: What I may actually be craving is…

Now go deeper.

For example:

• More money may really mean more safety

• More time may really mean more ownership of your days

• More confidence may really mean permission to stop waiting for approval

• More romance may really mean tenderness, touch, and being chosen

• More freedom may really mean fewer obligations that were never yours to carry

Let the second list tell the truth behind the first.

Practice 2: The One Degree Shift

Choose one area where you feel the ache for ‘more’ is most strongly:

• your body

• your home

• your work

• your relationships

• your creativity

• your daily rhythm

Ask yourself: What would one degree more honest look like here this week?

Not a full reinvention, not a dramatic decision. One degree.

Maybe it’s clearing one drawer.
Saying no to one thing.
Starting the morning without your phone.
Writing for ten minutes.
Booking the appointment.
Wearing the outfit that feels more like you.
Telling someone the truth gently.

The “more” you’re longing for often begins as one small act of alignment.

Practice 3: The Quiet Longing Check-In

At the end of the week, sit with a cup of tea and finish these sentences:

• This week, I noticed I felt most alive when…

• I felt most flat when…

• I kept craving…

• I no longer want to pretend that…

• One small thing I’m ready to make room for is…

You are not trying to solve your whole future; you are learning the language of your own longing.

That is enough for now.

If this is your season…

If this piece has stirred something in you, that quiet feeling of wanting more but not yet knowing what more actually means, you don’t have to rush the answer or figure it all out alone.

The Midlife Reset is a gentle place to begin if you want to reconnect with yourself, listen to what’s been quietly asking for your attention, and start creating your next chapter with more clarity and intention.

And if you’re craving more personal support as you untangle what this “more” might mean for your life, you can explore working with me 1:1 so we can look at where you are, what’s shifting, and what kind of life wants to emerge next.

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now?

I’m Dr Trina Read, Canadian Sexologist and best-selling, award-winning author. I’m 57, married, raising two teenage boys, and one year past my final period.

This season feels like a recalibration. My body has changed. My energy has changed. Even my ambition has changed shape. I’m no longer reinventing myself; instead, I’m refining.

What surprised you most about midlife or menopause?

How disorienting it can feel, even when your life looks “successful” from the outside. I didn’t expect the internal wobble or the random anxiety. Or those moments of, “Who am I?” I assumed with age came certainty. Instead, there’s been a strange mix of feeling confident yet extremely vulnerable.

What’s been the hardest part that people don’t talk about?

The unpredictability of your body. One day, you feel strong. The next day, something hurts for no clear reason. A rash appears. Your hair thins. Your hips ache. Your sleep disappears. As a Sexologist, I intellectually connect the dots to hormones. Emotionally, it’s still unsettling to feel like your body is completely out of your control.

What has helped you most (a habit, a mindset shift, support, HRT or no HRT, community)?

Community. I started a mastermind for women solopreneurs, and we meet in person every month. Being in a room with women who are building businesses, navigating hormones, parenting, ageing parents, and marriage normalises everything. When one woman says, “Is this happening to you too?” and the group nods, the shame evaporates.

What are you unlearning?

Control disguised as care. I’m unlearning the instinct to smooth the road for my teenage sons. I’m still figuring out where support ends, and coddling begins. I need to let my sons struggle and fail while resisting the urge to rescue.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

You don’t have to grip life so tightly. I was so driven. So serious. So focused on proving myself. I wish I’d trusted that things would unfold at the perfect time. That success is hollow if you don’t know how to push yourself away from your desk and go out to enjoy a slow Tuesday afternoon.

What do you want other women to know they’re not alone in?

Feeling insecure in a body that suddenly feels unfamiliar. As a Sexologist, I see how many women quietly worry that their changing bodies will make them less desirable. The bloating. The dryness. The weight “redistribution.” The drop in libido. We assume we’re the only ones. We’re not. Almost every woman I speak to is negotiating that same body shame. Most are doing it in silence.

What’s one small ritual or practice that’s keeping you steady in your daily life?

Meditation. Fifteen to twenty minutes every morning for over a decade. It doesn’t make life perfect. It makes me less reactive. It gives me space between a hormonal wave and a decision. In this chapter, that pause has become everything.

What I appreciate most about Trina’s answers is the blend of expertise and humanity. She can connect the dots intellectually because she understands hormones for a living, and she still admits how emotionally unsettling it can be when sleep disappears, joints ache, hair thins, and your body feels out of your control. Her reminder about body shame is especially important: so many women quietly worry they’ll be less desirable as their bodies change, and most are carrying that fear in silence. Trina’s antidote is simple and powerful: a community that normalises, and a daily meditation practice that creates space between a hormonal wave and a decision. That pause, she says, becomes everything, and you can feel why. Add in her honesty about unlearning control disguised as care, especially with teenage sons, and this interview lands like a permission slip: you don’t have to grip life so tightly to be safe. This chapter can be softer, steadier, and more true, and you’re not alone in any of it.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Seriously. Think about it.

When did rest become something you have to earn? When did a slow morning require an explanation? When did booking a massage, taking a day off, or simply saying “I need some time alone” become something a woman has to defend?

We say things like: I’ve been so busy, I really deserve this. Or: Once I’ve finished everything, I’ll take a break. As if care is a reward. As if your body, your nervous system, your inner life, have to queue behind everyone else’s needs and prove themselves worthy before they’re allowed a turn.

I think about how early this conditioning starts. The girl who was praised for being helpful and low-maintenance. The teenager learned that needing too much made her difficult to deal with. The young woman who confused busyness with value and rest with laziness. The mother, daughter, colleague, friend who became so practised at putting herself last that she stopped noticing she was doing it.

And now here she is in midlife, finally trying to choose herself. And the first thing she feels is guilt.

Not relief. Guilt.

That guilt is not a character flaw. It is the accumulated weight of a lifetime of being told, in a hundred subtle ways, that your needs are negotiable and everyone else’s aren’t.

But here’s what I know. You cannot pour from a nervous system running on empty. You cannot show up fully for the people you love when you have quietly abandoned yourself. You cannot build something meaningful, think clearly, feel deeply, love generously, when you are running on fumes and calling it strength.

Taking care of yourself is not a luxury. It is not selfishness dressed up nicely. It is not something you do after everything else is done. It is simply the foundation. Everything else is built on it.

You don’t need a reason. You don’t need to have earned it. You don’t need to explain it to anyone.

You are allowed to take care of yourself simply because you are a human being who deserves to be well.

That has always been enough.

And on a different but related note, I’ve been slowly moving through my home lately.

Not dramatically, not all at once, just steadily, honestly, asking of each thing: Does this serve the life I’m actually living? Or does it belong to a version of myself I’ve quietly outgrown?

I was brought up with the mindset that having more meant living better. More space, more things, more of everything that signalled, to others, and quietly to myself, that I was doing well. What I didn’t realise was how much of it I was curating for an audience. How much of what I owned, kept, and accumulated was less about what I actually needed and more about what I wanted my life to look like from the outside.

Midlife has a way of making that very clear, very quickly. Because at some point the question stops being “What should I have?” and becomes something much more honest: “What do I actually want my daily life to feel like?”

When I started answering that truthfully, not with the version of me that wanted to impress, but with the woman who just wanted to feel free, the answers were so much simpler than I expected.

I want mornings that feel spacious. A home that breathes. Surfaces that are clear. Less to maintain, less to carry, less to think about before the day has even properly started.

What I’m learning is that the question of what you own is never really about things. It’s about how you want to live. What you want your days to feel like. How much of your energy goes to maintaining a life that looks full versus actually being full?

A simpler life isn’t a lesser life. For me, it’s turning out to be a freer one.

This week in the Midlife Circle: a post I’ve been sitting with

This week’s piece is called The Fear of Wasting the Second Half of Your Life, and it goes somewhere real. That particular kind of midlife urgency. Not panic, not regret, but that quiet, unsettling awareness that time is no longer abstract. The second half has already started, and you want to make the most of it.

Over at The Sattva Collective: a conversation I’m proud of

This week, I published my interview with Tafiq Akhir, widely known as Mr Menopause, on The Sattva Collective website, and I want to make sure you don’t miss it.

Tafiq has been working in menopause education for over 25 years. He came to it not through a clinical credential but through watching his mother suffer in silence behind a closed bedroom door, not knowing what was happening to her, not knowing there was a name for it, not knowing she deserved support. That realisation broke his heart. And it redirected his entire life.

This conversation matters particularly for South Asian women, because Tafiq speaks directly and honestly about the cultural silence that so many of us grew up inside. The expectation to endure quietly. The conditioning that puts everyone else’s needs first. The healthcare system was not built with us in mind.

His message is simple and worth repeating: you are not crazy, you are not weak, you are not simply getting older. You were never properly told what was happening to your body. And that changes when we finally start talking.

Episode 100 of the Midlife by Design Podcast is here

One hundred episodes. I’ve been quietly looking forward to this one.

One hundred conversations about identity, reinvention, health, relationships, purpose, and what it actually means to stop living by default and start designing a life that feels like yours. I started this podcast because I believed these conversations needed to exist, and you have consistently shown me that they do.

And if the podcast has ever given you something, a moment of recognition, a shift in perspective, a morning that felt a little less lonely, I would love it if you’d mark this milestone by leaving a review on Spotify. It takes two minutes, and it means more than you know.

Thank you for being part of this. On to the next hundred.

Coming next week: 7 Days to Close the Season

From the 25th to the 31st of May, I’m hosting a free 7-day End of Spring Reflect & Review. Each day, a gentle prompt, a journaling practice, and one small action to help you close this season with intention before stepping into summer.

Here’s what the week holds:

• Day 1: The Spring Review. A soft inventory of the season. Not what you achieved, but what began to bloom in you.

• Day 2: Health & Wellbeing. An honest look at how your body experienced spring, what supported it, what depleted it, and one rhythm worth carrying forward.

• Day 3: Self-Discovery. What became visible in you this season? The desires you stopped dismissing. The truth became harder to ignore.

• Day 4: Relationships & Connection. Who nourished you? Where you felt yourself shrinking. What became clearer about how you want to be loved and known.

• Day 5: Work, Money & Energy. Where your energy actually went. What grew. What needs pruning before summer begins?

• Day 6: Quality of Life. The texture of your days, what made them feel lighter, what made them feel too full, and one small shift to carry into the next season.

• Day 7: Integration & Spring Closing Ritual. A simple ceremony to gather what the season gave you, release what you’re no longer carrying, and step into summer with intention.

It starts on Monday, so keep an eye out for your inbox!

Until next week, take care of yourself first. Not last. First.

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective

That’s what I felt reading ’s answers. She’s 52, coming out of a 25-year career in software business development and moving through a season shaped by caring for elderly parents with serious health challenges. What I loved most about her answers is their gentleness. There’s no performance here. No pressure to make midlife sound glamorous or perfectly figured out. Just the steady honesty of a woman learning to breathe, to be mindful, to protect her energy, and to come back to herself in small, supportive ways.

And maybe that’s what makes this conversation land. It reminds us that midlife growth does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like choosing calm, choosing breakfast, choosing gratitude, choosing not to abandon yourself while life asks a lot of you.

What stayed with me most was the simplicity of her answer about gratitude, not because it’s a new idea, we’ve all heard gratitude talked about endlessly, but because when a woman says she begins the day with it and ends the day with it, not as a performance, but as a practice that genuinely changed something for her, it lands differently.

I also loved the tenderness of her morning routine. Nothing punishing. Nothing overwhelming. Just something repeatable and supportive. Gratitude. Breathing. Moving her body. A nutritious breakfast. A yummy coffee with protein. Honestly, there’s something so midlife about finally understanding that support does not have to look extreme to be effective.

And I think that matters. Especially for women who have spent years running on urgency, over-functioning, or believing they have to earn their own care by reaching some invisible threshold of exhaustion first.

There’s wisdom here, too, in what she says about fun. That belief that you have to stop doing the things you love because you’re older: skiing, biking, writing, as though age should make your life smaller. Her refusal of that story feels quietly powerful.

Who are you, and what season of life are you in?

I am Jocelyn Parker, a 52-year-old woman, learning to breathe and explore new interests in midlife after a 25-year career in software BD and a transition into caring for my elderly parents with serious health challenges.

What surprised you most about your 50s?

The complexities of navigating and understanding menopause symptoms and treatments, both natural and HRT.

One thing you’ve stopped doing (and you’re better for it):

It’s not perfect, but I am working hard on not overreacting to the world around me.

One thing you’re choosing instead:

Calm. Controlling my thoughts, being mindful. Breathing.

One boundary you now honour, no apology:

I try to limit my exposure to people who sap my energy or give off negative energy.

One micro-decision that changed everything:

Practising gratitude. Waking with gratitude as soon as I wake up, and a gratitude journal before bed.

One practice that keeps you steady:

A simple repeatable morning routine. Nothing stressful or overwhelming. Something supportive: gratitude, breathing, moving my body and eating a nutritious breakfast that includes a yummy coffee with protein.

One belief about midlife you no longer subscribe to:

That you stop doing all the fun things you loved because you are “older”. Skiing, biking, writing, etc.

The best thing about being in your 50s:

All the knowledge you accumulated from life experience, and the confidence to be yourself.

At 50+, I am…

More self-aware, more mindful, have stricter boundaries and more forgiving of me and others.

This week, I want women turning 50 to remember:

To take care of themselves. Make yourself a priority. A healthier, stronger you is one of the greatest gifts you can give to the people you love.

My Note to My Future Self

What I love about Jocelyn’s answers is how softly they remind me that taking care of yourself is not selfish, dramatic, or indulgent; it is necessary, especially in the seasons where life is asking a lot, especially when you are caring for other people, especially when your own body is changing and your energy is no longer something you can spend carelessly.

I think there’s a certain kind of maturity in building a life that supports you, rather than constantly asking you to override yourself. A life with better boundaries, gentler mornings, more mindfulness, more forgiveness. Not because you’ve given up on ambition or joy, but because you’ve finally realised that peace matters too.

And maybe that’s one of the real gifts of this decade: not becoming perfect, but becoming kinder to yourself.

If you’re following along this week

• My Stop: Where am I still overreacting or absorbing more of the world than I need to?

• My Start: What would choosing calm look like in one small part of my life today?

• My Boundary: Who or what is draining my energy more than I’m willing to admit?

• My Micro-decision: What simple daily ritual could help me feel more supported right now?

• My Practice: How can I make caring for myself feel easier, gentler, and more consistent?

Journal prompt: What would change if I stopped treating my own well-being like the last item on the list?

If you’d like to be part of the ‘85 Weeks to Fifty' series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: What is your takeaway from this interview?

Episode 100 falls on a day that carries more weight than a milestone. It falls on what would have been my brother’s 36th birthday. And so, instead of a celebration, I wanted to do something I’ve never quite done on this microphone before.

I wanted to tell the truth.

In this episode, I reflect on a hundred episodes of showing up, what it actually took, what the last couple of years have taught me about grief and growth and editing your life down to what is real, and why the women in this community are the reason I kept going through every season of doubt.

This is a love letter. To my brother. To you. And to the quiet, determined act of building something that matters, in the cracks of your life, over time, with more heart than strategy.

If you have ever carried grief alongside your growth, this one is for you.

If you have ever kept building when part of you wasn’t sure why, this one is for you.

And if you have ever wondered whether midlife could be the most honest, intentional, deeply alive chapter of your life, you already know the answer.

You would not still be here if you didn’t.

Thank you for 100 episodes. Truly.

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective

You’re folding laundry, or scrolling through your camera roll, or watching your child reach past you for something on a shelf they could never reach before, or you’re just standing in the kitchen, again, always the kitchen, and a memory surfaces from twenty years ago so vividly it takes your breath away.

And then it lands. “How did I get here so quickly?” Not with panic, not at first. With something quieter, a kind of sober, aching tenderness, because suddenly the second half of your life isn’t an idea anymore. It’s not something happening to other women, older women, women further along than you. It’s here. You are standing inside it.

And before you can catch it, soften it, busy yourself past it, the thought forms: “What if I waste it?”

Stay with that for a moment, don’t rush past it. What if you keep postponing yourself? What if you spend the next decade managing life instead of actually living it? What if you keep waiting for the right time, the calmer season, the moment when everyone else is sorted and there’s finally something left over for you, and you look back at seventy and realise the right time never came, because it was never going to come, because you were always the one who had to make it?

What if “someday” was just a very gentle, very convincing way of abandoning yourself?

I know that fear, I’ve felt it in my own chest, not as panic exactly, but as a kind of urgency. A pressure without a name that won’t go away, and I want to say something about it that I think we don’t say enough:

That fear is not anxiety; that fear is wisdom.

It is the most honest part of you, trying to get your attention. It is the part that knows your days are finite and your potential is not. It is the part that is done drifting, done with autopilot, done letting “someday” hold your dreams hostage while you handle everyone else’s everything.

Don’t dismiss it. Don’t medicate it away or distract yourself past it. Listen to it.

Because here’s what I see when I look at women in midlife, and here’s what I suspect you see when you look in the mirror:

Someone incredibly capable. Someone who is handling it. Working, caring, managing, remembering, organising, showing up, holding space, carrying the invisible weight of an entire household’s emotional weather without anyone ever asking if she is okay.

Someone who, from the outside, looks fine. And inside? Inside, there’s a whisper. Small but persistent. A question that surfaces in the quiet moments between all the doing: “Is this what I want my life to feel like?”

Not because you hate your life. That’s the part that makes it so hard to talk about. You love parts of it deeply and genuinely. You love your people. You love your home. You love what you’ve survived, what you’ve built, who you’ve become through the difficulty of it all.

But love and truth can live side by side. You can be grateful and honest. You can cherish your life and refuse to sleepwalk through the rest of it. Those things are not in conflict. The conflict is staying silent about the gap between the life you’re living and the life that’s waiting for you to claim it.

I’ll be honest with you: as I move closer to fifty, this question has grown louder for me. Not because I think of fifty as an ending, I don’t. I think of it as a threshold. a doorway, a moment where life puts a quiet hand on your shoulder and says: “Pay attention. You don’t get this chapter back.”

And I’ve noticed that when that realisation hits, it does one of two things: it makes you panic, or it makes you honest.

Panic sounds like: “You’re behind. You’re running out of time. Do everything. Catch up. Prove yourself. Hurry.”

Honesty sounds like: “Something matters here. Let’s stop pretending it doesn’t.”

The panic response leads to frantic reinvention, the kind that burns bright and burns out, that looks dramatic from the outside but changes nothing fundamental, because it’s driven by fear rather than by truth.

The honesty response leads somewhere different, somewhere quieter, and far more powerful. It leads to authorship.

This is the invitation that the second half of your life is extending to you right now. Not to blow everything up, not to become someone unrecognisable, not to earn the right to your own life by first doing something impressive or courageous or Instagram-worthy. Just to stop treating yourself like an afterthought in your own story.

To stop giving your best energy, your sharpest hours, your most creative thinking, your deepest care, to things you no longer believe in, to obligations you took on in a different life, to a version of yourself you’ve quietly outgrown.

To stop calling exhaustion a personality trait. To stop postponing joy until everyone else is sorted, knowing full well everyone else is never quite sorted, knowing full well that particular finish line was never real. To stop making your own becoming the thing that gets whatever’s left over at the end of the day; the scrapings, the exhausted remnants, the five minutes before you fall asleep.

You deserve more than the scraps of your own life.

So here’s what this actually looks like. Not in theory, but in practice.

It looks like one different yes this week. One thing you say yes to because it genuinely lights something in you, not because you’re needed or obligated or it’s the sensible choice.

It looks like one cleaner no. One thing you stop doing because you’ve been doing it out of guilt, out of habit, out of an old idea of who you’re supposed to be, and you let it go.

It looks like ten minutes given to something that matters to you, not an hour, not a grand gesture. Ten minutes. A page written. A walk taken. A call made. A small, deliberate act of choosing yourself.

It looks like one honest conversation you’ve been avoiding. One relationship made a little more real. One thing said out loud that’s been sitting, unspoken, taking up space.

It looks like a morning made softer. A body finally treated with kindness instead of criticism. A dream given air instead of another year of burial.

None of this is dramatic; all of it is revolutionary, because the way we waste our lives is rarely obvious. It rarely looks like laziness or indifference. More often, it looks like busyness, it looks like a life so full of doing that there’s no room for being. It looks like doing everything, everything, except the things that actually matter to you.

That is the ache you feel, and that ache is also the invitation. The second half of your life is not a consolation prize; it is not what’s left after the real part is over, it is not diminishment or decline or the long exhale after the exciting bit.

It can be the most honest chapter you have ever lived. The most intentional. The most fully, unapologetically, recognisably you. But only if you decide, consciously, deliberately, starting now, to actually show up for it. Not perfectly, not with a plan, not after you’ve lost the weight or sorted the finances or got through this particular hard season.

Now.

With the life you have. With the woman you already are. One choice at a time.

One day, you refuse to simply manage and instead decide, even in some small way, to actually live. That’s how you don’t waste it. That’s how you begin.

The Practice

This week, instead of asking, “Am I too late?” ask yourself: “What is one thing my future self would thank me for beginning now?” Not everything, just one thing.

Let it be small enough to do and meaningful enough to matter.

Member Content: Join The Midlife Circle to Continue Reading

The full Midlife Circle version of this piece goes deeper into the tender fear of wasting your life, not as something to panic over, but as an invitation to become more conscious, honest, and present with the time you still have.

Inside, we explore:

• How to tell the difference between fear that panics you and fear that points you towards truth

• A letter-writing practice from your 80-year-old self to the woman you are today

• A “Someday Inventory” to help you stop postponing what quietly matters

• A simple way to define what a successful day looks like in this season of life

No urgency. No self-criticism. Just a clearer relationship with your time, your choices, and the life that is still asking to be lived.

UPGRADE TO PAID

Turning Fear Into Direction

The fear of wasting your life can be brutal if you let it become panic.

It starts whispering things like:

You’re behind.
You should have done more by now.
You’ve wasted too much time.
It’s too late.
Everyone else figured it out sooner.

But fear is not always here to punish you; sometimes fear arrives because something matters. So the work is not to silence the fear, the work is to translate it.

• What is it trying to protect?

• What is it asking you to stop postponing?

• What truth have you been avoiding because naming it would require change?

This is where the second half of life becomes sacred, not because you suddenly need to become a completely different woman overnight, but because you finally begin spending your days like they belong to you.

Practice 1: The 80-Year-Old Self Letter

Write a letter from your 80-year-old self to the woman you are today.

Begin with:

“Dear love, I’m not asking you to rush, but I am asking you to stop postponing…”

Let her speak. Let her tell you what she wants you to start now. Let her remind you what will matter less than you think. Let her point gently to the thing you already know but keep delaying.

Then finish with:

“The one thing I’ll thank you for beginning now is…”

That line is your clue.

Practice 2: The “Someday” Inventory

Write down everything you’ve been putting into the “someday” pile.

Examples:

• Someday I’ll start writing properly

• Someday I’ll sort my health

• Someday I’ll travel more

• Someday I’ll change how I work

• Someday I’ll have the conversation

• Someday I’ll stop accepting this

• Someday I’ll make my home feel better

• Someday I’ll take my desire seriously

Now choose one. Not five. Not the whole list.

One.

Ask:

• Why does this matter to me?

• What has postponing it cost me?

• What is the smallest honest step I can take in the next seven days?

Then take that step. This is how “someday” becomes today without overwhelming your whole life.

Practice 3: Define a Successful Day Now

At this stage of life, success needs a new definition.

Not the old one.
Not the performative one.
Not the one inherited from a younger, proving version of you.

Write:

“A successful day for me now feels like…”

Then answer through your real life:

• How do I wake up?

• How do I care for my body?

• How do I work?

• How do I connect?

• How much space do I need?

• What makes the day feel meaningful?

• What makes the evening feel peaceful?

Circle three things from your answer that you can begin practising this week, not because you’re running out of time, but because your time matters.

If this is your season…

If this piece has made you realise that you don’t want to keep postponing yourself, not out of panic, but because your time feels more precious now, this may be the moment to begin gently coming back to yourself.

The Midlife Reset is designed to help you pause, reflect, and reconnect with what matters, so you can start shaping your next chapter with more self-trust, clarity, and care.

And if you know you’re ready for deeper, more personal guidance, you can explore working with me 1:1 to look honestly at where life is asking for change, what you’ve been putting off, and how to begin moving forward without overwhelming yourself.

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective

In this episode

• The real reason saying no feels unsafe

• Guilt, discomfort, and the freedom on the other side

• A boundary script you can borrow

Ritual: Practise one small thing this week, kindly, without apology.

The Midlife Circle. Members-only audio. Upgrade to paid to listen now.

The growth I’ve experienced in this season hasn’t felt like addition; it’s felt like subtraction. Like shedding. Like sitting with the discomfort of not yet knowing who you’re becoming, and trusting her anyway.

Every time my life has asked something new of me, the version of me who got me to that point couldn’t get me through it. The woman who rebuilt after heartbreak was fierce and capable. She needed to be, but she couldn’t build something soft and sustainable, because she didn’t yet know how to put the armour down. The woman who hustled and proved got me somewhere real, but she couldn’t rest, or receive, or trust. She’d never been allowed to stop.

Every next level asked me to let go of the very thing that felt like my greatest strength.

That’s the part nobody warns you about.

Midlife has asked me to become someone quieter than I expected; more discerning, less interested in being impressive, more interested in being honest. That woman is different from who I was at 35, at 40, even at 45. And she’s still arriving.

If you’re in the middle of becoming someone you don’t quite recognise yet, you’re not lost, you’re just at the next level.

And while we’re talking about showing up, can we also talk about what that actually looks like?

Not the version we imagine, where we arrive full and focused and running at a hundred per cent every day. The real version. The one where some days you manage everything you planned, and some days you manage a quarter of it, and some days the whole achievement is that you opened your laptop and wrote one sentence.

For a long time, I told myself that it didn’t count. The self-criticism cost me more energy than it would have for the rest.

What midlife has slowly been teaching me is this: consistency doesn’t mean identical; it means returning. The half-days count. The day you just lit a candle, read one page, went for a slow walk and called it done, that counts too. You are not a machine. You are a woman moving through seasons of the year, of your hormones, of your grief, of your healing. Some weeks you’ll have everything, and some weeks? You’ll have very little.

Showing up anyway, even partially, is not failure dressed up as effort; it is the effort.

This week’s #85WeeksToFifty is with Femi Oke

Some women answer these questions with deep reflection. Others do it with a sharp truth, a wink, and just enough humour to make you laugh before the wisdom lands.

That was Femi Oke.

She describes her life at this stage as a TV show coming to the end of season five, beloved characters, dramatic moments, and only she knowing who’ll be back for season six. Playful, yes. But also quietly profound, because that really is part of the work by now, isn’t it? Deciding what comes with you. What doesn’t? What kind of next season do you actually want to make?

What stayed with me most was her honesty about the urgency that can arrive in your fifties. Not panic, not regret, but more like an acute awareness that time is no longer abstract. It becomes personal. Tangible. And with that comes a deeper desire to focus, to stop waiting for the perfect moment that’s never quite coming.

I also loved her candour about the responsibilities of this season: menopause, ageing parents, the emotional weight of holding life at both ends. These are real midlife experiences. And her refusal to navigate them in silence felt important. Necessary, even.

And yes, there was a perfectly timed moment about lubricant that made me smile. Because midlife needs more of that kind of honesty, too.

On the website this week, a conversation about your gut

We talk about hormones constantly in midlife. We talk far less about the gut, even though, for so many women, that’s where the shift is felt first. The bloating that appears from nowhere. The new food sensitivities. The sluggish digestion that no one warned you about.

This week I sat down with , nurse practitioner, host of the Everyday Wellness podcast, and author of The Menopause Gut, and it’s one of those conversations I think many of you will find genuinely useful. She connects the dots between oestrogen decline, gut permeability, insulin resistance, and the inflammation that drives so much of what we’re told to simply accept as ageing. Her approach is practical, grounded, and refreshingly free of overwhelm, because it always comes back to foundations. Diverse food. Quality sleep. A nervous system that isn’t constantly running on cortisol.

Common, she reminds us, is not the same as inevitable.

Read the full interview here.

A little milestone coming next week

Next week marks something I’ve been quietly looking forward to for a while.

Episode 100 of the Midlife by Design Podcast.

One hundred conversations about the season we’re in. About identity, reinvention, health, relationships, purpose, and what it actually means to design a life that feels like yours. I started this podcast because I believed these conversations needed to exist, and the response over the years has consistently shown me that they do.

If the podcast has ever given you something, a moment of recognition, a shift in perspective, a morning that felt a little less lonely, I would love it if you’d mark this milestone by leaving a review on Spotify. It takes two minutes, and it means more than you know. It’s how more women find their way here.

Thank you for being part of this. On to the next hundred.

Leave a review on Spotify →

The Sattva Collective CIC turned one this week

I’m still sitting with that, honestly. A year ago, The Sattva Collective CIC was an idea I believed in deeply but couldn’t yet fully see. What it would become, who it would reach, and whether the women who needed it would find it. A year on, they have. And the community that’s grown around it, the conversations, the honesty, the sense of recognition that happens when South Asian women are finally given a space to speak about midlife without apology, that has been one of the most meaningful things I’ve built.

We are just getting started.

The Sattva Collective CIC

One Year In

There’s a moment, early on in any new endeavour, when you genuinely don’t know if it’s going to work. When the idea exists, the website is live, the name is printed, and yet you’re still not sure whether it will find the people it was made for…

Read more

12 days ago · Kiran Singh

On Substack this week, Substack LIVE

If you caught the Substack Live this week, you’ll know it went somewhere real.

We talked about growing on Substack when you’re over 40, not interested in chasing trends, and building something that actually means something. About what it looks like to show up consistently without burning yourself out. About the difference between writing for an algorithm and writing for the woman who genuinely needs to read it.

What I loved most was the honesty in the room. Women at different stages, some just starting out, some a year or two in, all navigating the same quiet tension between wanting to be seen and wanting to stay true to why they started.

If you missed it, the replay is here (or watch below). Worth a listen, especially if you’ve been second-guessing yourself lately. Which, if you’re building something meaningful, you probably have been.

Also, this week, a conversation I loved

I was part of something rather beautiful this week. , over at Feminine Energy for Midlife Women, brought together twelve women from across the midlife Substack community to answer two simple questions: “What makes you feel like a woman, and what do you love about who you’ve become after 40?”

A nosering and slow mornings. Wild, curly hair as an expression of the soul. Wearing perfume to bed. A husband who still looks at you like it's a first date.

What struck me wasn’t the variety of answers; it was the common thread. Women who have stopped performing femininity and started inhabiting it. Women who, somewhere between 40 and 60, found their way back to themselves.

Read the full piece here, and give Csilla a follow while you’re there.

If something in this week's edit landed for you, I'd love to hear it. Drop a comment, reply to this email, or simply share it with a woman who needs to read it this week. The right words have a way of finding the right people, and you probably know exactly who that is.

Until next week, keep becoming. Even on the quarter days. Especially on those.

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective

That’s what I loved about Femi Oke. She describes her life as though it were a TV show coming to the end of season five, heading towards the finale, with beloved characters, dramatic moments, and only she knowing who’ll be back for season six. Honestly, what a way to speak about midlife. It’s playful, yes, but also quietly profound, because by this stage of life, that really is part of the work, isn’t it? Deciding what comes with you, what doesn’t, and what kind of next season you actually want to make.

What stayed with me most in her answers is the mix of urgency, humour, practicality, and self-awareness. The realisation that fifty can bring a sharper sense of time. The shift from saying yes too easily to learning how to say no without guilt. The honesty about menopause, ageing parents, and the things women are still too often expected to navigate in silence. And then, right in the middle of it all, a perfectly timed answer about lubricant that made me smile because, frankly, midlife needs more of that kind of candour too. There’s wisdom here, but there’s life in it as well. And I think that matters.

What stayed with me was that line about suddenly feeling a sense of urgency in her fifties, which really stayed with me, because I think that’s something many women feel, even if we don’t always say it out loud. Not panic exactly, not regret, but more like an acute awareness that time is not abstract anymore. It becomes personal, tangible, and with that can come a deeper desire to focus, to procrastinate less, to stop acting as though there will always be another perfect moment waiting somewhere further down the line.

I also loved her honesty about the responsibilities that arrive in this season: menopause, caring for elderly parents, and the emotional load of holding life at both ends. These are real midlife experiences, and yet so many women still move through them feeling underprepared and strangely alone. Her refusal to subscribe to suffering in silence feels important. Necessary, even.

And then there’s the confidence piece. That deep self-knowing that can make this decade so powerful. Not because everything is sorted, but because you understand yourself better, you know your rhythms, you know your limits, you know when yes is real and when no is the wiser answer.

Also, the ‘keys’ line? Iconic.

Who are you, and what season of life are you in?

I'm Femi Oke, an entrepreneur, journalist, broadcaster and co-founder of the all-female global events company, Moderate The Panel. I'm coming to the end of Season 5. If my life were a TV show, we'd be heading towards the season finale. The characters are beloved, and there have been some dramatic moments, but only I know who'll be back for season 6.

What surprised you most about your 50s?

My attitude to being a fifty-something surprised me because I've always been comfortable and quite blasé about my age. When I turned fifty, I suddenly felt a sense of urgency regarding what I still wanted to do with my life. It's a slightly uncomfortable state of mind, but it's pushing me to procrastinate less and focus more, so I'm embracing it.

One thing you’ve stopped doing (and you’re better for it):

Staying up all night and taking a hot shower in the morning instead of getting a good night's sleep, because my to-do list is so long.

One thing you’re choosing instead:

Staying up just half the night and waking up early to work is much more productive for me.

One boundary you now honour, no apology:

As an optimist, saying yes comes easily to me. Now I'm learning to say no when appropriate and not feel bad about it.

One micro-decision that changed everything:

Buying lubricant :)

One practice that keeps you steady:

Checking in on family and friends.

One belief about midlife you no longer subscribe to:

I wish I'd been more prepared for the responsibilities and worries that come with caring for elderly parents and navigating menopause. Why don't we discuss these challenges more openly? I no longer subscribe to suffering in silence; there's power in community and learning from each other.

The best thing about being in your 50s:

The confidence that comes from knowing and understanding yourself.

At 50+, I am…

Choosing to identify as a 40+ woman, and will act accordingly.

This week, I want women turning 50 to remember:

This week, I want women turning 50 to remember where they left their keys.

My Note to My Future Self

What I love about Femi’s answers is that they remind me that midlife does not have to become unbearably serious to be meaningful.

Yes, there is depth here. Yes, there are real responsibilities and harder truths. But there is also wit, perspective, and the kind of confidence that lets a woman speak plainly about what works, what doesn’t, and what she’s no longer willing to keep quiet about.

I think that’s part of the beauty of this season, too. Not just becoming wiser, but becoming more honest, more humorous, more willing to say the thing, laugh at the thing, and tell the truth about the thing all at once, and maybe that’s its own kind of freedom.

If you’re following along this week

• My Stop: Where am I still saying yes too quickly out of habit, optimism, or guilt?

• My Start: What would it look like to focus more clearly on what I still want from this chapter?

• My Boundary: Where do I need to let no be a complete sentence?

• My Micro-decision: What one small practical choice could improve my quality of life right now?

• My Practice: Who do I need to check in on, or let check in on me, this week?

Journal prompt: If my life were a series, what would I want the next season to feel like, and who or what is definitely not being renewed?**

If you’d like to be part of the ‘85 Weeks to Fifty' series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: What is your takeaway from this interview?

In this episode, I sit down with , a former corporate finance executive turned pole dancer, choir singer, and Substack writer based in Spain. Six months ago, Csilla had three subscribers, one of whom was herself. Today she’s building a quietly powerful community of midlife women, one joyful, honest conversation at a time.

Together, Csilla and I pull back the curtain on what actually moved the needle for both of us, and it wasn’t the algorithm.

We talk about the co-authored article that changed everything for Csilla, why easy questions get the most honest answers, and the compound effect of ten women showing up together.

I share my own turning point, the moment I stopped performing as the expert and started writing from the messy middle: real, 3 am version of myself. And what happened when Instagram and Facebook suspended my accounts without warning, and why it turned out to be something of a gift.

This is a conversation about vulnerability as strategy, connection as currency, and what it looks like to build something that genuinely belongs to you, not to a platform that could disappear tomorrow.

If you’re a woman over 40 writing into the void and wondering if it’s worth it, this episode is for you.

In this episode:

• Why Csilla went from 3 to 145+ subscribers by asking one simple question about joy

• The mechanics behind a co-authored article that actually builds community

• What made me finally drop the expert persona, and what happened when I did

• On vulnerability online: healing, not oversharing

• Why focusing on one platform changed everything

• The truth about algorithms, suspended accounts, and building something that’s actually yours

Links mentioned:

• Csilla’s Substack: Feminine Energy for Midlife Women

• Joy Over 40: Part 1 & Part 2

• Kiran’s series: 85 Weeks to Fifty

• Midlife Circle membership: £8/month or £80/year

Nobody tells you the truth about growing on Substack.

They tell you to post consistently. To find your niche. To optimise your headlines. To study what’s working for other people and reverse-engineer it.

What they don’t tell you, and what I’ve been learning, slowly, sometimes painfully, is that none of that is actually the point.

The point is connection. Real, human, sometimes awkward, occasionally vulnerable connection. And if you’re a woman over 40 who has spent years being told to be more polished, more strategic, more algorithm-friendly? That might be the hardest thing you ever learn to do.

I had this conversation live on Substack recently with ; a Hungarian woman living in Spain, former corporate finance executive, pole dancer, choir singer, and the writer behind Feminine Energy for Midlife Women. We had never met in person. We had exchanged a few messages, and a brief call last week, and within forty minutes, we had covered burnout, joy, vulnerability, perimenopause, and the strange quiet ache of rebuilding yourself after forty.

That’s Substack, when it works.

Csilla’s story: from three subscribers to a movement about joy

When Csilla first joined Substack, she had three subscribers. One of them was herself.

For about six months, she wrote into the void. Posted occasionally. Waited. Nothing happened.

“I didn’t know anything,” she told me. “So I just left it.”

It wasn’t until November last year that something shifted. She decided to actually try, not just write, but show up. She started commenting on other people’s notes and articles. When a new subscriber found her, she would DM them a welcome message and ask a simple question: “What resonated with you enough to subscribe?”

Many people didn’t reply, some did, and those who did became the beginning of something.

By April, she had hit 100 subscribers. Five months, three to one hundred. She let herself feel the weight of that milestone.

And then, on a spontaneous Saturday afternoon, she had an idea: she wanted to ask women a question. Not a complicated one. Not a therapy-adjacent deep dive. Something lighter, but still real: “What are three things that bring you joy? And what do you celebrate about yourself after 40?”

She reached out to about twenty women, ones she had been in conversation with, even briefly. She sent the message by DM. She asked them to contribute to a co-authored article.

Almost every single one said yes immediately.

“I think it’s because the questions were easy,” she explained. “Joy isn’t so vulnerable. Some questions can feel like too much to share publicly. But joy, most women were willing to talk about that.”

The articles went out. Ten women, ten photos, ten voices talking about what lights them up after forty.

• No Filter. No AI. Just 10 Women Over 40 and Our Joy. PART 1

• No Filter. No AI. Just 10 Women Over 40 and Our Joy. PART 2

In the two weeks that followed, she gained 45 new subscribers.

To put that in perspective: it had taken her five months to reach the first hundred. One article, built on genuine connection and a simple joyful question, nearly tripled that pace.

The most visited article on her publication now has 475 views, a 49% email open rate, 63 likes, and 65 comments. For a writer who was publishing to silence just months before.

What actually made it work

Csilla was generous in walking through the mechanics, and I want to share them here, because this is the kind of thing that gets lost when people talk vaguely about “community.”

Before the article went out, she posted shoutout notes for each contributor. Something like: “Kiran will be the fifth woman in this article,” and then she tagged me. Which meant her audience saw my name. My audience saw it. The circle widened before a word of the piece was published.

On the day of publication, she sent the article to every contributor and asked them to comment, share, and restack. They were in the piece. Of course they wanted to celebrate it.

Every co-author appeared as a guest author on the article, which meant it showed up on each of their pages, regardless of their subscriber count. Csilla’s 100th subscriber had only three followers herself. Csilla included her anyway. Because the point was never about numbers, it was about the compound effect of ten women, showing up together.

She also did shoutout notes after the article, featuring one woman at a time, her photo, a line about what brought her joy. Each one tagged. Each one linking back to the full piece.

Was it a lot of work? Yes, she said plainly. It is not a thirty-minute project, but it was also the moment her Substack stopped being something she was doing alone.

Feminine Energy for Midlife Women

For midlife women who want to reconnect to their feminine essence. Who want to feel like a woman again: radiant, sensual, soft, powerful, having a life full of joy and pleasure.For women over 40 who want to be featured in my co-authored article series. 

By Csilla 🌹 Feminine in midlife 💃

My story: dropping the expert

I came to this conversation from a different direction.

I have been online since 2008: websites, blogs, podcasts, social media, every platform you can think of. I have been on the BBC. I have won awards. I know how to present myself as the person who has the answers.

And none of it built what I was actually looking for.

For a long time on Substack, I did what I had always done: I scheduled articles in advance. I showed up as the expert. I wrote good content and waited for it to find people.

It didn’t.

The shift came when I stopped being the expert and started being myself. A woman awake at 3 am, unable to sleep, navigating perimenopause and loneliness and the strange terrain of midlife. I wrote about not having many close friends. About my non-existent love life. About the gap between how capable I look from the outside and how uncertain I sometimes feel within.

That’s when women started to move toward me. Not because I had the answers, but because I was willing to say that I didn’t. That I was in the middle of it too.

“People don’t want an expert,” I said to Csilla during the live. “They want a human being.”

I believe that more every week.

What I’ve learned about growing on Substack

Around the same time, I started an interview series: first ‘5-minutes with…’, and then 85 Weeks to 50 (I’ll be fifty next October, and I’m documenting the whole journey by interviewing someone over 50 on their journey, week by week, one person at a time).

What I discovered is that people love being asked about their lives. It doesn’t matter if they have five subscribers or fifty thousand. When you reach out to someone, genuinely curious, not transactional, and ask them to share their story, the answer is almost always yes.

I’ve interviewed people from Substack, but I’ve also emailed brands, companies, people I’ve admired from a distance for years. A bodybuilder and boxer in her mid-seventies. People who have absolutely nothing to do with the midlife wellness space and everything to do with what it means to keep evolving.

The secret is simple: most people want to be seen. If you can offer that, even through a short interview or a collaboration, you are giving something genuinely valuable.

And then give credit. Always. Tag people. Restack their quotes. Let them know their words mattered. That generosity comes back to you, not as a strategy, but as a natural consequence of treating people well.

The thing about algorithms

Two months ago, Facebook and Instagram suspended my accounts without warning. Out of the blue. No clear reason. Just gone.

I appealed. I waited. And eventually I thought; “Actually, fine.!

Because here’s what I know now that I didn’t fully understand before: those platforms are not yours. The algorithm is not your friend. You can pour years into building a following somewhere, and it can disappear overnight. I’ve watched it happen to women I admire, and then I watched it happen to me.

Substack is different, not because it’s immune to change, but because what you’re building here is a direct relationship. Your readers chose to be here. Their email addresses exist because they wanted your words in their inbox. That is something no algorithm can take from you.

The shift I made; focusing on Substack and LinkedIn, and nothing else, has brought me more genuine engagement in a few months than years of being everywhere brought me before.

Pick one place. Go all in. Be willing to fail, to learn, to try something that doesn’t work and try something else. That’s not a productivity tip, it’s just what growth actually looks like.

MIDLIFE BY DESIGN: CURATING YOUR NEXT CHAPTER

For the woman who has outgrown a version of herself and isn't quite sure who she's becoming yet. This is where she figures it out.

By Kiran Singh

On vulnerability

Someone asked us during the live: “Have you ever been too honest and regretted it?”

Both of us sat with that for a moment. The honest answer is no. Not really.

Csilla posts her pole dancing videos on Instagram. At 47, after leaving a twenty-year corporate career, she is reclaiming her body and her joy in a way she never permitted herself before. That’s not oversharing. That’s healing, made visible.

I’ve written about perimenopause and loneliness and the love life I don’t currently have, not because I’m performing vulnerability, but because I know women are reading this at midnight, wondering if they’re the only ones who feel this way.

They’re not. We’re not.

“When we stop hiding parts of ourselves,” Csilla said near the end, “it heals. It’s not a secret anymore.”

That’s it, really. That’s the whole thing.

What this season is asking of us

Midlife has a way of stripping away the performances we’ve been running for decades. The expert. The capable one. The woman who holds it all together. One by one, the costumes come off. And what’s underneath is just, us. More honest. Less armoured. Occasionally bewildered, often more alive than we’ve ever been.

Substack, at its best, is a place to be that woman out loud. Not polished, not optimised, not performing for an algorithm that will change its mind next month anyway, just real, curious, and connected.

That’s what I’m building here. And if this resonates, if you are somewhere in your forties or beyond, writing into the void and wondering if it’s worth it, I want to tell you: stay. Keep going. Comment on someone’s article today. DM a new subscriber. Ask a simple question and see who answers.

The numbers will follow. But the women you meet along the way? Those are the ones you’ll still be talking to long after you’ve forgotten what your open rate was.

What did this bring up for you? I’d love to know in the comments.

Get more from Kiran Singh in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

But outgrowing yourself?

That feels different. Because this isn’t about rejecting who you were, it’s about realising that a version of you who once saved you, carried you, protected you, or helped you build a life, can no longer come with you in the same way. And that can feel like betrayal, even when it isn’t.

There are versions of ourselves we worked very hard to become.

The strong one.
The capable one.
The independent one.
The woman who could handle everything.
The woman who never asked for too much.
The woman who became practical because life demanded it.
The woman who survived by staying busy.
The woman who learned to make things beautiful even when her inner world was in pieces.

And for a while, those versions were necessary. They helped us get through; they paid the bills, raised the children, rebuilt after heartbreak, held the family together, got up every morning, managed the crisis, smiled when needed, carried what no one else saw.

So when you begin to outgrow her, it can feel confusing, because how do you release a version of yourself you are also deeply grateful for?

I think this is one of the quietest forms of grief in midlife. You wake up one day and realise the identity that once gave you structure now feels like a cage.

The life you once wanted now feels too tight.
The habits that once kept you safe now keep you small.
The ambition that once fuelled you now drains you.
The strength everyone praised you for now feels like loneliness in disguise.

And because you worked so hard to become her, you may feel guilty for wanting to change.

That is where I’ve found myself at different points in my own life. There was a version of me who needed to be fiercely capable. She had no choice. She had a daughter to raise, a life to rebuild, and no space to collapse. She became resourceful. Determined. Independent. Practical. She learned to carry things, because things needed carrying.

I honour her deeply, but I don’t want to live forever inside the armour she built. That sentence has taken me years to understand, because when you are praised for being strong, it becomes very easy to confuse strength with identity. You start believing your value lies in your ability to cope, hold, manage, produce, and keep going.

Then midlife arrives and asks an uncomfortable question: “What if coping is no longer enough?” Not because coping failed you, but because coping was never meant to be a permanent home. That is the truth.

The version of you that helped you survive may not be the one that helps you feel alive, and this is where the shift begins; outgrowing her does not mean abandoning her, it means thanking her.

It means saying: “You got me here. You were magnificent. You carried what had to be carried. But now we are allowed to live differently.” That’s not betrayal, that’s evolution.

Midlife is full of these private identity funerals; the ones no one sees, the ones where you quietly stop choosing things you used to think defined you.

You stop saying yes so quickly.
You stop wearing clothes that feel like an old performance.
You stop chasing goals that no longer feel alive.
You stop being available for dynamics that rely on you staying the same.
You stop calling burnout dedication.
You stop mistaking being needed for being loved.

And sometimes, as you change, people won’t understand. They may miss the older version of you.

The easier one.
The more available one.
The one who didn’t question so much.
The one who kept the peace.

Let them.

You are allowed to grow in ways that inconvenience old expectations. You are allowed to become a woman your younger self could not yet imagine. You are allowed to build a life that no longer revolves around proving, pleasing, pushing, or performing.

And yes, there may be grief. There may be tenderness for the woman you were. There may be a strange sadness in letting go of habits, identities, and dreams you once thought were yours forever.

But grief does not mean you are making the wrong choice; sometimes grief is simply what love feels like when something has completed its purpose.

The Practice

This week, ask yourself:

What version of me am I ready to thank, without continuing to live as her?

That question alone can open a door.

Member Content: Join The Midlife Circle to Continue Reading

The full Midlife Circle version of this piece goes deeper into the strange grief of outgrowing a version of yourself you once needed, loved, and worked so hard to become.

Inside, we explore:

• How to honour the woman who got you here without staying trapped inside her old survival patterns

• A “Version I’m Thanking” practice to help you release an identity with tenderness

• An Identity Edit to notice where your old self is still running the show

• A simple closing ritual for carrying forward what served you and laying down what no longer fits

No rejection of who you were. No rushing into who you’re becoming. Just a gentler way to thank the old version of you and make room for the woman arriving now.

UPGRADE TO PAID

Thanking Her Without Staying Her

There are versions of us who deserve our deepest respect.

The woman who coped.
The woman who held it together.
The woman who rebuilt.
The woman who kept going when nobody really saw what it cost.
The woman who became strong because softness didn’t feel safe.

We don’t heal by rejecting her; we heal by no longer making her do a job that has already exhausted her.

That’s the tenderness of midlife; you can honour who you were and still admit she is not the whole of who you are becoming. You can be grateful for the armour and still choose not to live inside it forever.

Practice 1: The Version I’m Thanking

Write at the top of a page:

The version of me I am ready to thank is…

Then describe her.

• What did she carry?

• What did she protect?

• What did she build?

• What did she help you survive?

• What qualities did she give you?

Be generous with her. She deserves that.

Then write: “I no longer need her to…”

This is where the release begins. Maybe you no longer need her to over-function, to people-please, to prove, to stay small, to be endlessly available, to treat exhaustion as normal, to keep choosing survival when you are ready for more truth.

Practice 2: The Identity Edit

Choose one area where your old identity is still running the show:

• How you dress

• How you work

• How you parent

• How you love

• How you rest

• How you spend money

• How do you ask for help

• How you handle conflict

Then ask: “What would the woman I’m becoming choose differently here?” Keep it practical.

Maybe she would wear the outfit instead of saving it.
Charge properly.
Speak sooner.
Rest before collapse.
Ask directly.

Stop explaining herself to people committed to misunderstanding her. Leave the thing that keeps asking her to betray herself.

Choose one small identity edit this week; something visible enough that your nervous system notices: “Oh. We’re not living entirely from the old script anymore.”

Practice 3: A Closing Ritual for the Former You

This can be as simple as a candle, a cup of tea, and five quiet minutes.

Place one hand on your heart and say, or write:

Thank you for getting me here.
You were needed.
You were brave.
You carried so much.
And now we are allowed to live differently.

Then ask: “What do I want to carry forward from her, and what am I ready to lay down?”

You don’t have to become someone new overnight; you are simply creating space for more of the real you to arrive.

If this is your season…

If this piece has touched something tender in you, the grief of outgrowing an old version of yourself while still feeling grateful for how she got you here, you don’t have to navigate that transition alone.

The Midlife Reset is a gentle starting point for reconnecting with who you are now, releasing what no longer fits, and beginning your next chapter with more intention and self-compassion.

And if you’re ready for more personalised support as you move through this identity shift, you can explore working with me 1:1 so we can honour the woman you’ve been, clarify the woman you’re becoming, and shape a life that feels more true to both of you.

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective

Paul Strobl

Native Texan, Life & Executive Coach who has been location independent since 2008. "Don't trade your life for a living."

Who are you, and what season of midlife are you in right now (work, health, family, identity)?

I’m 52. A curious person (with a degree in Anthropology and an MBA). American, living in a small mountain village in Bulgaria near the Greek border, coaching clients mostly in the U.S. from a stone house older than my home country. I also spent a decade in Argentina.

My current season feels less like building and more like editing. More interested in building a life that feels true on a Tuesday morning, “under the radar.” No one needs to know what I’m doing unless it can help others in some way. My work still matters. Health matters more than it used to. Relationships matter more than both.

What surprised you most about getting older and being a man in midlife?

How many men look successful from the outside and a bit lost on the inside?
I thought midlife would be about decline. For many men, it’s actually an identity reckoning. Despite the cultural myth that you get to a certain level and everything is solved, you can have competence, money, status, experience, and still wonder, “Now what?”

What’s been the hardest part that men rarely say out loud?

Many men built themselves around usefulness: to provide, produce, solve, and endure. Then one day, the external demands ease a bit, and they realise they don’t know who they are without being needed. That can feel embarrassing to admit.

What has helped you most?

Training consistently. Walking outside. Cooking simple food. Limiting noise.
Quelling uncertainty with curiosity and forward action. A tremendous wife who puts up with me.

What are you unlearning about masculinity, success, or what it means to be a good man?

That stoicism means emotional distance. That success automatically transfers into meaning. That strength is dominance. I think real strength now looks more like steadiness, honesty, responsibility, and the ability to stay open and curious.

What do you wish you could tell your 35-year-old self?

Don’t confuse momentum with direction. Some goals are worth achieving only so you can discover they were too small. Take care of your body earlier. Protect your attention. Choose people carefully. And stop assuming there’s one correct life.

What do you want other men to know they’re not alone in?

Feeling grateful and dissatisfied at the same time. Loving your family and still wanting more space. Being successful and still anxious. Wondering if you missed your real path. You’re not uniquely broken, you’re human.

What’s one small ritual that keeps you steady?

Slow mornings before the world starts asking things from me. Coffee. Quiet. Walk the dog. A little thinking.

I’ve also written an evening “prayer.” It sits on my nightstand. It focuses on gratitude and how I’m nothing in the cosmos, but still something and part of all of it.

What stayed with me most in Paul’s answers is the way he names something so many men feel, and so few say out loud: the loss of identity that can come when usefulness has been the foundation of self-worth. If you’ve built your life around providing, producing, solving, and enduring, what happens when the pressure lifts and you’re left asking, now what? Paul’s response isn’t dramatic. It’s grounded. Train consistently. Walk outside. Cook simple food. Limit noise. Stay curious. Keep moving. And maybe that’s exactly why it lands.

His version of masculinity feels mature, not performative: strength as steadiness, honesty, responsibility, openness, and curiosity. I also love his reminder that you can feel grateful and dissatisfied at the same time, successful and still anxious, deeply loving and still wanting more space. That doesn’t make you broken. It makes you human. And perhaps that’s the real edit midlife offers, not a total reinvention, but a quieter, truer life built around what actually matters.

If you’d like to be part of the ‘5 Minutes With…’ series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: what are you unlearning in midlife?

Old systems. Old doubts. Old ways of organising, moving, striving, trying to be seen, and underneath all of it, a quiet question you can’t unhear once it surfaces: Does this still belong to me, or to someone I used to be?

That question changed everything for me this week. It started with something that sounds small: I let go of Notion. I know, not exactly the stuff of transformation, is it? But stay with me.

I spent hours going through everything I’d stored there: old plans, old content systems, old versions of my business, my goals, my ambitions. And what I found, buried under all those folders and pages, wasn’t just information; it was the architecture of older identities. The evidence of a woman who had tried to hold everything together by building more; more structure, more systems, more ways to feel in control.

And I realised something that quietly broke me open: what I’d been calling organisation was actually just carrying. I’d been dragging the weight of old dreams, old strategies, old pressure dressed up as productivity, and calling it discipline.

I moved what still felt true across to something simpler: Trello, and then I deleted the rest. The relief was physical. Like setting down a bag I’d forgotten I was holding.

Because that’s the thing about midlife nobody tells you; so much of the exhaustion isn’t from doing too much, it’s from carrying too much. From holding onto old versions of yourself long after they’ve finished serving you, because letting go feels too much like giving up.

It isn’t giving up; it’s editing. And editing, done honestly, is one of the most courageous things a woman can do.

Maybe that’s why Pilates has felt so deeply right this week, too. I’ve just completed the first module assessment for my Pilates Diploma, and I didn’t expect it to land the way it did. I’ve had a Pilates practice before. I know the mat. I know the quiet burn. I know that feeling of standing taller afterwards, as if your body has remembered something your mind had let go of.

But studying it now, in this season, feels entirely different. What stayed with me most was this: Pilates is not simply about movement; it is about the mind, breath and body working together. The mind and breath must be engaged to allow the body to move correctly. I’d heard versions of this before: Engage your core. Move with control. Use your breath. But this time, it landed somewhere deeper.

Because when you truly focus your mind on the movement of your body, and align that movement with your breath, something shifts. You are not just doing an exercise; you are directing energy through your whole being. You stop moving from force and start moving from awareness. And honestly? That feels like the whole midlife lesson wrapped up in a single sentence.

Not just in Pilates. In everything.

In the way we build our work. In the way we hold our relationships. In the way we choose what stays in our lives and what, gently, finally, needs to go. So much of this season is about learning to stop forcing and start listening.

And that brings me to something harder to admit. For a long time, I told myself that the loudest doubts in my life came from outside. From people who didn’t understand. From platforms that didn’t reward me. From opportunities that never quite arrived. From watching other women step into the things I wanted and quietly wondering, “Did I miss my moment?”

But I’ve had to be honest with myself. Some of the loudest no’s came from me. Not cruelly, not dramatically, just quietly, persistently, in that almost-reasonable voice self-doubt likes to use.

“Maybe I’m not ready yet. Maybe I’m not visible enough. Maybe this is for other women, just not quite for me. Maybe I should wait until I feel more confident.”

And before I even noticed, I wasn’t just facing obstacles, I had become one. That is a confronting thing to realise, and also one of the most freeing things I have ever allowed myself to see.

Because if I have been the one withholding permission from myself, then I also get to stop. I get to say: “I don’t know how yet, but I can learn. I’m scared, and I’m beginning anyway. I have changed, and that doesn’t mean I’m finished. It might mean I am finally, finally ready.”

Next week I’m also going live with on Tuesday, 12th May at 5 pm BST for a conversation called Forget the Algorithm: How We’re Growing a Real Community on Substack in Midlife.

Because so many of us have spent years trying to make social media work by posting, performing, tweaking, chasing reach. And for many of us, the platforms that were supposed to help us connect left us feeling more invisible, more drained, more distant from the work we actually came here to do.

Substack feels different: slower, more human, more rooted in trust.

I hope you’ll join us.

This week’s Midlife Circle piece, Reclaiming the Midlife Horizon, is the one I think many of you will feel in your chest.

Because there comes a point in midlife where the future stops feeling like something to fear or frantically race towards, and starts feeling like a horizon instead.

Open. Unwritten. Still, quietly, yours x

And the #85WeeksToFifty interview this week is with Marilynn Larkin, a writer, personal trainer and natural bodybuilding competitor in her mid-seventies, who is living proof that vitality, strength and becoming do not have an expiry date. Her story expands what’s possible. I think you’ll love her.

So here is where I am, at the end of a week that looked quiet from the outside: I deleted a system that no longer reflected who I am, I returned to a practice that asks me to breathe before I move, I sat with the truth that the biggest obstacle in my path has sometimes been me, and I chose to stop.

I remembered that the next chapter doesn’t begin when everything is perfectly clear; it begins when you make one honest edit, and then another, and then another.

This week, I’m gently editing my life, not because something is broken, but because I want what remains to mean something.

I want it to reflect the woman I am becoming, not the woman I was trying so hard to be.

Before you go, one question to sit with this week:

What are you carrying that belongs to an older version of you?

Maybe it’s a system, a story, a way of moving through your life that stopped feeling true a long time ago. You don’t have to change everything at once.

Start with one honest edit.

That’s often where everything begins.

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective

The conversation, Women on Identity: When Who You’ve Been No Longer Fits, explores one of the most tender and truthful parts of midlife: the moment you realise that an old identity, role, routine, or way of living no longer feels like you.

Together, we talk about identity shifts, becoming, visibility, community, and the quiet courage it takes to admit that something has changed within you, even before you know exactly what comes next.

This episode is less of a polished interview and more of a real-time conversation between women navigating and witnessing the many layers of midlife. Honest, reflective, and deeply human, it’s an invitation to listen in and perhaps recognise your own becoming in our words.

For more reflections and support, visit Kiransinghuk.com and join me on Substack at Midlife by Design: Curating Your Next Chapter.

Kiran x

Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective

That’s what I felt reading Marilynn Larkin’s answers. She begins with such a brilliant line: “According to Google, I am in the winter of my life, but I see myself as a woman of all seasons.” And honestly, that sentence tells you so much. There is humour in it. Defiance, perspective, and a deep refusal to be reduced to a category, an age bracket, or someone else’s idea of what a woman should be doing by now.

What I loved most about Marilynn’s answers is that her 50s were not a quiet winding down, but a decade of risk, movement, embodiment, and expansion. At 54, she entered a natural bodybuilding challenge for the first time. What began as a personal challenge became the beginning of something much bigger: fitness certifications, personal training, posture-awareness work, a DVD, talks, workshops, and, later, another bodybuilding competition as a way to fight back after a cancer diagnosis. That stayed with me.

Because this is what I keep hearing in these conversations: midlife is not the end of the story. For so many women, it is the moment they stop waiting for permission and start becoming visible to themselves.

What else stayed with me most was how Marilynn turned the age of 50 into a challenge rather than a ceiling.

So many people around her were beginning to say, “I’m too old to do this.” Instead of absorbing that belief, she questioned it. What could she do to defy perceptions? Could she take a risk? Could she inspire others not to limit themselves? And then she did.

There is something so powerful about that, because many women don’t realise they are inspiring others while they’re still figuring themselves out. Marilynn didn’t enter that bodybuilding challenge thinking, “This is my legacy.” She entered it as a woman willing to put herself out there. But people saw her. They came up to her. They told her she was inspiring them.

Sometimes that’s how purpose begins. Not with a polished plan, but with a woman saying yes to something brave, only to realise her courage has become a permission slip for someone else.

I also loved her boundaries around fun, money, and learning. Whatever she does must include at least two of the three. That is such a clean, grown-woman filter. It says: "My energy matters. My time matters. My life is not here to be drained by things that give nothing back.”

Who are you, and what season of life are you in?

I’m Marilynn Larkin, and according to my Google search, I’m in the winter of my life. But I really think of myself as a woman of all seasons.

What surprised you most about your 50s?

“50” seemed like such a defining number, a time when many people around me were starting to say, “I’m too old to do XX.” I took it as a challenge! What could I do to defy perceptions? Was I confident enough to tell other people, “No, don’t limit yourself?”, but could I take a risk myself?

I had told myself I didn’t want to be living alone at age 50, but the man I was seeing at the time had other ideas, so that didn’t change. But what did change was my ability to “put myself out there.” For the first time, at age 54, I did a natural bodybuilding challenge, spurred on by my trainer. It turned out they announced my age when they introduced me, and I was wondering why. I found out afterwards that it was one of my first steps toward inspiring others. When I was in training for the competition, people would come up to me and tell me I was inspiring them. So, I decided to get my fitness certifications and start personal training on top of my ongoing writing business.

That led me to develop a posture-awareness program (posture is the key to so much!), make a DVD, and travel around the country giving talks and workshops. All in all, my 50s were a time of intense growth and transformation that set the stage for the years that followed.

Notably, I never entered another bodybuilding competition until two years ago, as a way to fight back against a cancer diagnosis and to start building a legacy project that inspires as many people as possible to get and stay strong, not be deterred by adversity, and forge ahead.

One thing you’ve stopped doing (and you’re better for it):

I stopped worrying about relationships with men and just let them happen.

One thing you’re choosing instead:

Making sure I get something meaningful out of everything I do, rather than feeling like I should do something because someone else wants me to. A recent perfect example was deciding not to enter another bodybuilding competition, even though my trainer wanted me to. I recently started taking self-defence/martial arts classes, which I love, and I would have to take time off from that if I did another competition.

One boundary you now honour, no apology:

Whatever I do has to have two of these features (one isn’t enough): fun, money, and learning. Also, I won’t allow anyone I’m with, for social or business purposes, to drain me.

One micro-decision that changed everything:

Telling myself to slow down (admittedly, I do this intermittently, but I DO do it when needed).

One practice that keeps you steady:

If I’m having trouble deciding what I want to do or how I feel about something, I lie down on the couch and listen to all the voices playing in my head, all with diverse opinions. I separate what “me” is from other voices (remnant of parents, current friends, etc.).

One belief about midlife you no longer subscribe to:

That it’s the beginning of the end.

The best thing about being in your 50s:

I had a tremendous amount of energy and was involved in many physical activities, such as weight training, dancing, and performing in plays and indie films. I still have lots of energy, but not as much as before. I’m glad I took advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves and that I made happen.

Complete this: At 50+, I am…

Strong and happy!

This week, I want women turning 50 to remember:

To live life fully! Don’t underestimate yourself; don’t hold yourself back; don’t let others hold you back. Give yourself permission to learn, grow, and feel proud of yourself. It’s not egotism or narcissism; it’s simply being authentic and allowing yourself to transform.

My Note to My Future Self

What I love about Marilynn’s answers is the permission in them. Permission to take the risk, permission to be proud of yourself, permission to try something at 54, or later, and let it become the beginning of something you could not have predicted, permission to stop seeing age as a warning sign and start seeing it as a threshold.

I keep thinking about her practice of lying down and listening to all the voices in her head, separating what is truly hers from what belongs to parents, friends, expectations, or old conditioning. That feels like such important midlife work. Because by the time we reach this stage, we have collected so many voices. So many opinions. So many inherited fears. And the work is not to silence everything immediately, but to discern: “Which voice is mine?”

And maybe that is what living fully really asks of us. Not to become fearless, but to become honest enough to know which voice we are following.

If you’re following along this week

• My Stop: Where am I telling myself I’m too old, too late, or too far behind?

• My Start: What brave thing would I try if I allowed myself to be a beginner again?

• My Boundary: Does this give me fun, money, or learning? If not, why am I saying yes?

• My Micro-decision: Where do I need to slow down enough to hear what I truly want?

• My Practice: How can I separate my real voice from all the inherited ones?

Journal prompt: What would I do differently if I stopped underestimating myself and gave myself full permission to transform?

If you’d like to be part of the ‘85 Weeks to Fifty' series, or you know a woman whose voice would feel like medicine here, email me at hello@kiransinghuk.com. And if you’re reading this thinking, same, tell me in the comments: What is your takeaway from this interview?

Many of us have quietly learned that by this point, we should just be grateful, keep our heads down, stop wanting more, and settle for a life that’s simply acceptable.

Fine. Comfortable. Acceptable.

Lately, I’ve realised that calling things “fine” might be one of the most destructive things we say to ourselves.

Life rarely collapses in a single moment. It unravels slowly and quietly. Days blur together. We agree without pause, procrastinate, and let ourselves fade in subtle, unnoticed ways. We assume there will always be more time.

That’s the part that gets me.

Not death, exactly. Drifting. The slow, painless drift away from yourself.

There’s a question I keep coming back to. It stops me mid-sentence sometimes, right in the middle of the ordinary:

If I could sit across from the 80-year-old version of myself, would she be proud of how I’m spending this season?

Would she look back and see a woman who was awake to her life? Present for it? Or would she see someone who kept postponing herself, year after year, in the name of practicality, or fear, or tiredness, or just… habit?

That question lands so differently now than it would have at 30.

Time doesn’t feel abstract anymore. You really notice it, not in a gloomy way, but in a way that brings clarity. By now, you know life isn’t lived “one day.” It’s lived in the small moments and the choices you make every day. It’s in rushed mornings when you don’t taste your coffee or evenings spent just getting by. It’s in the quiet ways you use your attention, energy, and presence.

Midlife is when the maths of your life becomes uncomfortably personal.

A day isn’t just another day anymore. It’s a real, irreplaceable part of your life. When you really feel that, it gets much harder to waste time on things that don’t matter. Let go of what doesn’t fulfil you or help you become the person you want to be.

I’m not talking about optimising every second. I’m not interested in turning life into a productivity contest, God, no. That’s not what this is.

This is about choosing, now, to reclaim your life as your own, honouring your time, energy, and self-worth.

Respect.

Respect your time. Respect your attention. Remember that you are shaping your life right now. Try to choose intentionally rather than just following old habits.

In midlife, that resonates most. This is when many of us feel the sting of everything we have deferred.

The book we said we’d write. The business we planned to start. The move we almost made. The relationship we wanted to repair. The body we promised to care for. The life we said we’d build once things calmed down.

Only things don’t calm down on their own, do they?

There’s always laundry to do, emails to answer, and someone who needs something. There’s always a reason why now doesn’t feel like the right time.

If we’re not careful and don’t pay attention, “someday” quietly turns into a place where our real life just waits. And waits. And waits.

I’ve lived inside that pattern myself.

There were times in my life when I was just surviving, taking care of others, and managing everything. I kept things going but rarely stopped to ask if this life felt like my own. I wasn’t lazy or really unhappy; I was just focused on what was in front of me, always moving on to the next thing.

And that’s how years pass.

Time passes not always in chaos. Sometimes, just through distraction.

That’s why I believe one of the most powerful things we can do in midlife is learn to step back.

Stop living with your head down. Don’t treat every little thing as urgent and overwhelming. Try stepping back and seeing your life from a higher perspective, like an eagle looking down. Lift yourself above the noise and notice the bigger picture.

Because when you do, so much of what’s been draining you starts to look very, very small.

The petty friction. The endless scrolling. The menial busywork. The compulsion to prove yourself. The burdens that were never yours to bear. All that low-level noise convinces you it’s urgent.

From above, you see what matters.

And honestly? It’s usually not as complicated as we think.

You don’t have to make a huge change or move somewhere far away, unless that’s truly what you want.

It might just mean using the pockets of your day more honestly.

It could be five minutes while the kettle boils, twenty minutes before everyone wakes up, or the half hour you usually spend scrolling on your phone. These small gaps in your day are chances to write a paragraph, jot down an idea, read something uplifting, send an overdue email, take a walk, make a plan, or simply sit with your thoughts.

So here’s a simple challenge for you: today, try using just one of these little moments for something creative or nourishing. Write one honest sentence, jot down an idea, step outside for a breath of fresh air. See how it feels to claim even the tiniest piece of your day for yourself.

Most women underestimate what can be built in the cracks.

We often think real change needs a whole weekend, a retreat, or a month away somewhere peaceful. That would be wonderful, but most real change happens in much smaller moments. It’s in little bits of reclaimed time, in focus you redirect, in daily choices to create, even for ten minutes, instead of only consuming.

That matters more than we give it credit for, and there’s leverage, too.

There comes a point where you have to be honest with yourself: Do I want to keep trading my time directly for money, or do I want to build something that can support me more intelligently?

Not from a hustle place. From a place of freedom.

Time, location, and energy freedom matter to me now. I don’t want to spend my best years reacting, exhausted, and giving everything to systems that don’t care.

If you want a simple way to start finding more freedom in your days, try this. For one week, keep a note or journal to record what drains your energy and when it happens. Notice which routines, tasks, or situations leave you tired. You don’t have to change anything yet, just pay attention. Sometimes, simply noticing is the first real step.

I want to create work that supports my life. Not shape my life endlessly around work.

That’s part of midlife wisdom, too, I think. The really hard-won kind.

You stop admiring exhaustion. You stop wearing burnout like a badge that proves you mattered. You stop thinking that grinding harder is the same as living fully.

You start asking new questions.

What am I building? Who is this really for? What kind of life is this work creating? What will this look like in five years if absolutely nothing changes?

And the one that hits hardest: Does the way I’m living right now actually honour the life I say I want?

Clarity makes a difference. Not just wishful thinking or saying, “I know something needs to change,” but real, honest clarity that comes with experience.

What does a genuinely successful day look like for me now? Not five years ago or for someone else. For me, in this body, in this season, with the life I actually have.

• What do I want my mornings to feel like?

• What work do I want to spend energy on?

• How much rest do I actually need to feel like a human being?

• Which relationships feel genuinely nourishing, and which ones quietly hollow me out?

• What am I no longer willing to spend my precious, irreplaceable life force on?

These are grown-woman questions.

Midlife is the perfect time to ask these questions. By now, you know what doesn’t work. You have the experience to trust yourself more, and the lessons to know that nothing meaningful happens by accident. You have the wisdom to stop being passive and start taking charge of your story.

Maybe that’s the real invitation of this chapter.

Not to slip into resignation. Not to keep waiting for a future that never arrives. Not to settle for a life that appears acceptable on the outside but feels empty within.

The invitation is to reclaim your midlife horizon: to consciously create the life that feels most authentic to you, rather than simply accepting what comes.

Lift your eyes and recognise that your time is precious. Stop surrendering your days to tasks, people, and commitments unworthy of them. Build something that genuinely belongs to you. Choose daily to live with presence, intention, and self-respect.

Because someday is not coming to rescue you.

In so many ways, it is already here.

Member Content: Join The Midlife Circle to Continue Reading

The full Midlife Circle version of this piece goes deeper into what it means to reclaim your time, stop drifting through your days, and begin shaping a life that feels more honest, spacious, and truly your own.

Inside, we explore:

• The quiet ways women lose themselves in midlife, often without realising it’s even happening

• A Midlife Horizon Audit across your five core life areas

• How to stop living in “someday” and start creating from the life you already have

• Journaling prompts and a gentle practice for defining what a successful day looks like right now

No hustle. No panic. Just a clearer, more self-respecting way to live.

The Midlife Horizon Audit

Where is your life asking to be reclaimed?

Here’s the thing about reclaiming your life in midlife: it rarely begins with one huge, sweeping decision.

It usually starts with a series of quieter recognitions. Small, uncomfortable moments of honesty.

You notice that your days feel overly full but somehow oddly empty. You realise you’ve been constantly busy, and yet somehow untouched by your own life. You see, really see, how much of your time disappears into maintenance, management, emotional labour, and the low-grade noise of just… keeping everything going. And one day, almost by accident, a question slips through:

Is this really how I want to spend the next ten years?

That question can be both terrifying and the most liberating thing you’ve ever let yourself think.

Because once you ask it honestly, you can’t fully un-ask it.

This reckoning has come for me in waves. Not as some dramatic awakening, more like a growing, quiet discomfort with the idea of drifting. I don’t want to spend the next chapter of my life managing myself into neat exhaustion. I don’t want to be efficient but absent. Productive but unfulfilled. Capable but completely disconnected from what I actually want from this one life of mine.

I want to be in a real relationship with my life.

That means I have to look at my life honestly, not harshly or with shame, but with maturity and kindness. Self-reflection can feel uncomfortable, but it’s important to remember that self-compassion is part of the process. You can be gentle with yourself as you gain clarity.

That’s what this audit is for. Not to prove you’re doing everything wrong. But to help you see where your life is quietly asking for your attention, your honesty, and your authorship.

1. Health & Well-being

This is where time gets deeply, personally felt.

Because how you spend your days affects everything. Your body. Your nervous system. Your hormones. Your sleep. Your mood. Your capacity to show up for the things and people you actually love. Your sense of self.

Midlife often reveals all the ways you’ve ignored your own needs for too long. Your body notices, even if your schedule seems manageable. Eventually, it becomes impossible to ignore.

The question here isn’t just: Am I functioning?

It’s:
Does the way I live actually allow me to feel well?
Am I honouring my energy, or constantly spending it into debt?
Am I using my body to really live, or slowly using it up?

Reflection:

• Where in your daily life are you leaking energy unnecessarily?

• What habits are keeping you just well enough to cope, but not well enough to feel fully alive?

• What would a more life-giving rhythm look like in this season of your life?

2. Self-Discovery

So much of midlife, when we let it, is about finally seeing ourselves clearly.

Not as the woman others needed you to be. Not as the younger version of you who thought she had to prove everything to everyone. But as the woman you actually are right now, with everything you’ve learned, everything you’ve survived, and everything you still want.

This is where time and identity collide.

What you spend your time on shapes who you become. If your days are filled with things that numb, distract, or drain you, it becomes harder to hear your own voice beneath all that noise.

Reclaiming your horizon means making room to know yourself again.

Reflection:

• Who am I becoming through the way I currently spend my time?

• What parts of myself are getting air in my days, and what parts are being quietly neglected?

• Where do I need more solitude, more truth, more creative oxygen?

3. Relationships & Connection

Midlife quickly shows you who and what drains your energy, sometimes in a very clear and direct way.

You begin to see that not every relationship deserves equal access to your energy. Not every invitation deserves a yes. Not every expectation, including the ones you’ve held for years, deserves your continued obedience.

Time is relational. Where you give it, who you give it to, and how you feel in your body afterwards, all of it matters.

The question here isn’t just, “Who do I love?” It’s also, “What kinds of connection make me feel more like myself, and what kinds make me feel smaller?”

Reflection:

• Which relationships feel reciprocal, genuinely nourishing, and emotionally safe?

• Where are you still overspending yourself out of habit, guilt, or an identity you’ve outgrown?

• What would it look like to protect your time like it matters, because it does?

4. Purpose & Money

This is the area where “someday” gets especially seductive.

Someday I’ll start the thing.
Someday I’ll leave the role that’s draining me.
Someday I’ll charge what I’m actually worth.
Someday I’ll build something that fits.
Someday, I’ll stop giving my best energy to work that slowly takes the life out of me.

But often, “someday” is just fear in disguise.

And midlife is not the season to keep outsourcing your vision to a future version of yourself you’re hoping will be braver.

This isn’t about recklessness. It’s about honesty. Real, clear-eyed honesty.

What are you building? What are you postponing, and why? What kind of structure or support would allow your work to hold you more gently, instead of constantly consuming you?

Reflection:

• What do I want my work to make possible in my life?

• Where am I still trading too much of myself for too little meaning or freedom?

• What small act of creation could I begin right now, even in the cracks of my day?

5. Quality of Life

This one matters more than many of us allow ourselves to believe.

Quality of life isn’t a luxury or something extra. It’s the real feel of your daily life, your mornings, your home, your pace, your rest, the space you give yourself, the beauty you notice, and the pleasure you allow yourself to feel.

You do not need to earn a life that feels good to be in.

Still, many of us keep putting off comfort, ease, and joy until we feel we’ve done enough, given enough, or proved enough. We wait until the kids are grown, the mortgage is smaller, or the to-do list is finally shorter.

Midlife asks a bolder, more uncomfortable question:

What if now counts too?

Reflection:

• Does my daily life feel genuinely supportive, or just functional?

• What small shifts would make my days feel more beautiful, more spacious, more mine?

• Where have I accepted “good enough” in ways that quietly diminish me?

From Consumption to Creation

What are you doing with the cracks in your day?

I keep coming back to this because it’s one of the most practical turning points I know.

You may not have endless time. You may not have perfect conditions. You may not have long, gorgeous, uninterrupted stretches to reinvent your life.

But you do have cracks.

And what you do in those cracks matters more than you think.

Those ten minutes before everyone wakes up. That half hour before bed when you usually disappear into your phone. That note you could write instead of scrolling. That message you could send. That page you could draft. That idea you could capture before it slips away again. That small, consistent act of creation that keeps your life moving toward something that actually belongs to you.

A meaningful life is rarely built in those big, cinematic moments.

It’s built in the small moments you reclaim, the attention you redirect, and the daily, simple choice to show up for your own growth.

Journaling Prompts for Reclaiming Your Time

• If I were 80 looking back, what would I want to thank myself for beginning right now?

• Where am I drifting rather than consciously choosing?

• What am I still postponing under the label of “someday”?

• What does a genuinely successful day actually look like for me in this season?

• What no longer deserves my time, my attention, or my emotional labour?

• Where could I shift from consumption to creation, even in the small cracks of my day? Maybe it’s jotting a line in your journal, sketching a quick doodle on a scrap of paper, recording a voice memo to capture an idea before it slips away, humming a melody, snapping a photo of something that made you pause, or cooking something new just for the pleasure of it. Creation can be as simple and personal as making a list, writing a thought, or celebrating a fleeting moment in whatever way feels most like you.

• What would it feel like to treat my time as something sacred, rather than endlessly available?

A Gentle Practice: Define Your Midlife Day

Take a notebook. Find five quiet minutes. Write this at the top of the page:

A successful day for me right now looks like…

Then let yourself fill it in.

Not the fantasy version, not the Instagram version, and not the version you think you should want. Write the honest version, the one that fits your real life, in this season, with your real body and your real hours.

How do you want to wake up? How do you want to care for yourself? What kind of work do you want to do? How do you want your home to feel? How do you want to connect with the people you love? How do you want the day to close?

Let it be simple. Let it be real. Let it be yours.

Because once you can define a good day clearly and honestly, you can begin building a life around more of them. One day at a time. One small, reclaimed choice at a time.

That’s how horizons change, not in one big moment, but through steadily and lovingly reclaiming your ordinary days.

Before You Go

If this piece has stirred anything in you, even the smallest flicker of recognition, let it be this:

Your life is not waiting somewhere in the distance for the perfect conditions to begin.

It is here. Right here. In this imperfect season. In these messy, beautiful, still-very-much-alive hours.

Midlife is not too late.

Now is the time to lift your head, reclaim your time, and start living with the kind of intention your future self, your 80-year-old self who deserves your best, will look back on and see as love. Choose one small thing today, whether it’s a tiny act, a single change, or a gentle experiment, that brings you a little closer to the life you want. Real change starts with one loving step. Let this be yours.

In this episode

• The self-talk that shapes your choices

• Why boundaries start internally

• A new way t…

Read more