I’m turning 38 in a few weeks.
The average life expectancy for women in the U.S. is around 78, which means, give or take, I’m comfortably standing at the halfway point. Half a life lived, half still to unfold. I could reflect on all that has happened, but I am also genuinely unable to get my head around just how much there is to look forward to.
Frankly, what I feel most right now is change. Neither crisis nor regret nor wild, unbridled optimism, just… change.
Slow, cellular, visceral, and inevitable change.
The past year has been full of change. I shared on Instagram a few weeks ago that this included a divorce. I also finally got some answers about my health, but it also opened up new questions, and all of this has required me to name and clarify new rhythms of work and caregiving. Yet what surprises me most is how life keeps moving. How, even in seasons of big change and grief, there’s growth.
When I shared about my divorce, I didn’t expect the response it received. My career was in digital marketing and I’m a metrics gal at heart, so bear with me for a moment: that small post led to more profile visits than any other post I’ve made, and, not surprisingly, quite a few unfollows.
I know there’s stigma in Christian spaces. That’s part of why I shared. It felt disingenuous not to. And I get it. When someone shares something personal, people get curious. I’ve done it too.
But what I share online has never been about disclosure for its own sake. It’s about alignment, about being transparent with the people who follow my work, attend my workshops, pay for coaching, or read my writing.
I didn’t share the intimate details of my marriage and I don’t show my children’s faces. But what I do share is my own story: navigating neurodivergence, disability, caregiving, faith, culture, work, and motherhood, all while learning how to build a life that still feels true.
And I want the people who connect with me—or who consider working with me—to know who I am and what I bring. My divorce is now part of that story, and I won’t pretend otherwise just to avoid judgment.
Honestly, what surprised me most wasn’t the curiosity. It was the judgment that came with it, or maybe the quiet departures that seemed to speak for it.
More people unfollowed me after that post than after I’ve spoken or written about school shootings or the deaths of autistic teens at the hands of police. That data seems to say something about where stigma still lives, and it makes me wonder just how much the church still struggles to hold complexity around these topics.
I’ve also found, again and again, that the people who are most vocally “godly” can be the most condemning. And that those judged most harshly by the church are often the ones who show up with the most tenderness and grace.
Yes, I’ve been so well-loved by many in the Christian communities around me. And I’ve been held through some of the hardest moments by people who are of different faiths or are no longer Christian, many of whom who have actually been deeply hurt by people professing the name of Jesus, sometimes hurt while those individuals were claiming to be acting in a biblical way.
This season has tested every part of me. It’s been complicated for my body, mind, faith, and home. There have been health flare-ups, car troubles, a mold remediation and other home repairs, and endless logistics.
But there have been countless small mercies, too: friends who show up (or send packages when they can’t physically be here), my mother’s generosity, neighbors who notice, laughter with my kids around the kitchen table.
Life feels stripped down now in so many ways. It’s been difficult, but I think my priorities are clearer.
Maybe that’s what this movement and settling into midlife really is: a choice to stop performing and start paying attention (or perhaps shift the attention).
Many evenings at dinner or if we’re just hanging out together, my kids and I will play our own version of twenty questions but about cartoon characters or characters from shows, or we might ask each other questions about each other. Sometimes we make up the questions or we use decks of conversations starter cards.
A couple of nights ago, my son wanted me to ask the questions, and as he took over asking questions, he started guessing what my answers might be. “Who do you admire most?” he asked. Then, before I could answer, he grinned: “Oh wait, I know. You admire us, your kids.”
He wasn’t wrong.
The kids guessed that the thing I like most about myself is that I’m alive and that I’m their mom. That my happiest memory is having kids. That what I’m most proud of is being their mom.
And they’re right. Through everything life has thrown at us, they are still the greatest gift God has ever given me. I start and end every day telling them that I’m so glad I get to be their mom, and I mean it.
If they grow up sure of that, I think I’ll have done something right.
38 hasn’t begun for me yet, and 2025 isn’t over. There’s still so much to enjoy, so much still unfolding.
Maybe the middle years aren’t about reinvention after all, but about return—a return to what’s essential, to the people and practices that keep us steady.
I don’t know what the next forty years will hold. There’s uncertainty ahead. In health, in work, in the world itself.
But I do know this: I want to live the rest of my life with more presence, more softness, more room for joy.
I want to move through the world with gratitude and curiosity, the kind that listens first. I want to be the kind of person who sits beside others in the in-between, the way so many have sat beside me.
Because that’s what this season is, isn’t it? The in-between, the middle years.
May they be beautiful and extraordinary in how ordinary they are. May they be holy, and messy. May they be restful, too.
May the things we like most about ourselves be that we are alive and that we belong to each other.
May we make room for grief and joy to overlap, not to compete, but to soften into something gentler.
And may we keep beginning again, wherever we are.
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