I am watching the seawater drip from my bikini now draped on the arm of the patio chair in the sunlight.
Every week, I write to you from the middle of a crossing.
Mine happened to involve selling everything and moving to an island in Portugal, and what this leap is revealing in my life. Yours might be happening at your own kitchen table, invisibly, in the twenty minutes between obligations.
The essays I write here are about me navigating life in an unconventional way in midlife as I start to let my soul lead the way and follow fun, curiosity, and possibility in my 50s, while now living abroad, chasing waterfalls, and working as much as I need. That now looks like part-time, as I have more unscheduled workdays and more penciled-in playdays.
This is the bridge I am building as I step from one familiar identity to embrace what life holds with the version of me still taking shape.
Today, as my bikini dries, I don’t recognize the woman I am becoming through my own clinician lens.
This woman, who is me but still evolving and testing out different hats, is someone I see almost like a shadow self occupying the same space. Like when you notice your shadow on a sunny day. It’s like it is a second you in a way.
Removing layers. Questioning old programming. Letting go of perfectionism.
With one foot standing in the life I built and a toe in the designed life of my dreams, looking curiously at her and wondering how we got here.
There’s a conversation I’ve had so many times in the clinical work I do that I recognize on a woman’s face before she says a word.
A woman, usually in her mid-40s, sometimes in her early 50s, is on the screen in front of me in my now fully remote clinical practice. Competent. Articulate. The person everyone else calls when something breaks. And when I ask what brings her in, there’s a pause, because what’s wrong doesn’t have a clean name.
The kids need her less, or differently. The marriage is running on terms negotiated by two people who no longer exist. The career that once organized her weeks now simply fills them.
Nothing is technically wrong.
And yet.
Eventually, she says some version of the same sentence: “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Here’s what I’ve learned as a therapist and PA-C: that sentence is not a crisis or burnout. It’s a doorway.
The roles that organized her life for twenty years - mother, partner, professional, the reliable one - are loosening, and underneath them is a person who hasn’t had the floor in two decades.
The problem is that nobody hands you a map for this crossing.
This breaking open initially feels like breaking apart.
Your doctor checks your labs. Tells you everything is normal.
Your friends say they feel the same.
Oddly, a part of you is grieving the losses while celebrating the arrival of new possibilities, which may come wrapped in guilt and feelings of selfishness.
Yet you don’t know how to start the honest conversations this phase in life brings.
This is what this year and a half of living across an ocean away from convention is teaching me.
When we left our old lives, leaping into the unknown, I jokingly told our children that we were building a bridge for them to cross, too, as a way of expanding their lives as we attempted to expand ours.
We would take the first leap.
But I realized the start of my writing was the start of my own personal expansion, which I didn’t quite expect. This past year has brought an intersection and an invitation to personal growth. It seems my heart, my ego, and the familiar persona all had other plans for how this was actually going to take shape.
Who was I now?
So I started doing some inner identity work through journaling. The clinician in me is leading the woman on a journey of self-discovery. This brought new insight, some grief, some loosening of roles, and ultimately a deeper love and appreciation for where I stand in my life today.
As I worked through the tough questions, I realized many of you might also find this time confusing. Maybe to use some of the same questions I asked myself.
So I built a map for the journey of your personal identity reckoning and crossing.
It’s called The Bridge.
And to be clear, this isn’t a map that takes you anywhere you can visit. It is a map that takes you to a place inside you where your dreams, passions, and curiosity live.
And while I write from a woman’s perspective, this work is also for men.
This kind of identity work is not just the practical next step on your midlife transition journey; it is the load-bearing scaffolding upon which the next chapter of life is built.
You do this work before you need to.
You do this work before you retire.
You do this work while standing squarely in the middle of your life now, while looking at what’s coming next.
You build the bridge today because who you are becoming requires loosening of what you have been before.
And that in-between, neutral zone can be a bit scary without a process, a plan, and a map.
Avoiding the work altogether is costly.
I have been doing this kind of deep dive personally for a few years, but it was accelerated with becoming a nomad in a foreign land. For those who have been reading along, you know this. You’ve been on this journey with me.
So I packaged up what I have been wrestling with for a year and created a map based on my clinical work and my own personal exploration.
I stand here with you, a clinician, a mother, an entrepreneur, an athlete, while deciding what’s next…
The Bridge is a deck of 50 guided journal prompts, organized into five phases that move in a deliberate order… because identity work has an order, whether we respect it or not:
Taking Stock: name what no longer fits, without fixing it yet
Letting Go: grieve the roles and futures that are ending (yes, grieve; loss is loss even when the thing you’re losing was heavy)
Digging Down: recover what was true about you before you became so useful to everyone.
Choosing: decide your priorities, boundaries, and relationships on purpose, as the woman you are now
Building: turn the new identity into a small, visible, testable action
Ten prompts per phase. Each card has a main prompt and a “Go Deeper” follow-up for the days you have more in you. One card a day is the rhythm I suggest, about eight weeks across the whole bridge.
Slower is allowed.
Skipping ahead is not; the sequence is the method.
This is not an affirmation deck. It is a deep dive into what really matters to you now.
The prompts do what good clinical questions do: they ask precisely, in the right order, and they don’t let you skip the uncomfortable ones.
The printable card deck: print on cardstock, cut, and keep the current phase on your nightstand.
The tablet journal: a 64-page Goodnotes-ready version with a full writing page for every prompt
Phase check-ins: a structured pause at the end of each phase before you cross to the next
The “Who I Am Now” closing page: the one you’ll want to keep
A Start Here guide: the letter, the map, and how to pace yourself
One honest boundary, because you’d expect nothing less from me: The Bridge is a self-reflection tool, not therapy, and it’s not a substitute for care. If the prompts surface something bigger than journaling, that’s information, not failure, and the guide includes resources for exactly that moment.
Become a paid subscriber, and this deck is included - along with everything else I am building! Part of my bridge life is using this Substack to create more resources for paid subscribers.
And if you are already a free subscriber, thank you! If you are considering becoming a paid subscriber, I have discounted the annual subscriber rate by 20% this month. Hit that subscribe button below to upgrade!
Paid subscribers -I will send a separate post with the free download, The Bridge included. You can also check the new “Perks” section in Substack in a couple of days for it, as it will live in the new Practice Vault library I am building. This one’s a thank-you gift for being here first. :)
Let’s get building…
Not ready for the full deck? First Steps with 10 prompts is still free.
I’ll see you on the trail.
XO,
— Jada
P.S. I wanted to create something meaningful and useful, and give back to this community that has been so generous and kind to me. I love to hear your thoughts on this.
P.P.S. Please send this to someone who might want some tools for this stretch of life.
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