Support for women ripening into their second bite of life.

Dear Reader,

I love planning and preparing.

Welcoming new clients, writing yoga nidra scripts, envisioning workshop curriculum, all of it.

There is something sacred about it — finding the poet whose emotional register matches just so, sitting with a single opening question until it clicks into place, layering in the details that whisper to the women walking in: you are welcome here, you can be cared for here, someone is holding this room so you can finally let go.

And it’s devotional. Until it isn't.

Because underneath that quality of care is, of course, anxiety.

A need to have it all figured out in advance.

The tiresome belief that enough preparation makes life a slam dunk.

That if I choose just right, I can fully meet the moment before it ever arrives.

Which is, of course, a fantasy.

When that bubble bursts — and it always does — you face a choice: stay inside the careful thing you built, or dare to look up from your plan.

Here's the question at the root of that choice:

Do I trust myself enough to meet what's actually here?

Preparation is how we get ready to show up.

Presence is the showing up.

They are not the same thing, no matter how much we want them to be!

I think about the caregiver who arrives with a hopeful heart, only to not be remembered that day.

The writer who sits down with a sharp outline and discovers the real essay is hiding somewhere else entirely.

Last month we dove deep into the topic of overwhelm. This month I want to stay with the discomfort of loosening our grip on THE PLAN.

Not throwing out the preparation, but holding it lightly enough to see what wants to happen next. To see just how trustworthy we actually are.

What's alive in you around this topic? What would you love to read about when it comes to control, creativity, and learning to trust yourself in the moment?

(Press reply and tell me. I respond to every email.)

With such love,

Brooke

P.S. More on Sunday — I'm bringing you a blessing and a few questions to help this land somewhere deeper than your to-do list.

DEPARTMENT OF BEAUTY & MAGIC

I brought this poem into one of my groups on a whim a few weeks ago, and it changed the session in ways I hadn't planned for.

It's called Fire, by Judy Brown.

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

I'm Brooke Hofsess—Midlife Midwife for women living their messy, holy second bite of life. Through coaching, creativity, and ritual, I guide women back to the parts of themselves they were taught to tamp down—their wild, their creativity, their intuition. The women I work with are hungry for depth, meaning, and the relief of not doing life alone anymore.

You'll find me in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where I live with my husband Dustin, our daughter Thea, two clever border collies, and an ever-growing collection of handmade mugs for Egyptian Licorice Mint tea.