In previous posts, we've gone through this stage of life one thread at a time. Looked at separately, these can feel like a list of things going wrong. Looked at together, I think they're something else: pieces of the same story, told from different perspectives. Something that feels familiar for many women is trying to return to “being how they were”, but instead they start to feel like they’re only really meeting themself for the first time. The Underlying Story There’s a th

Women rarely bring this one up first. It tends to come out after everything else has already been said: and then there's the rage. Many women experience a moment stops them in their tracks, frightened by the tone in their own voice. That moment when someone does something innocuous and you suddenly snap. Sometimes, you may even feel like you don’t recognise that version of yourself. Most women describe this rage as sudden, disproportionate, and deeply out of character – which

My previous post was about exhaustion – the kind that rest doesn't touch. This one is about something that tends to show up right alongside it, often getting loudest exactly when capacity is at its lowest: a harsh internal voice, delivering a verdict that's usually far more severe than whatever actually happened. You might recognise a version of this: you send an email with a typo in the subject line to a client, and your first thought is I'm a mess. I can't even get the basi