Support for women ripening into their second bite of life.

Hi Reader,

Today I want to talk about that sketchbook you keep meaning to open, the melody that hums somewhere in your chest with nowhere to go.

If you’re anything like the women I coach, there’s a good chance you've put creativity largely on the back burner.

Maybe it was the years you poured into your children's imaginative lives while yours went dormant.

Or the graduate program that trained you to think in arguments and evidence rather than wonder and instinct.

Maybe it's a partnership that asks for practicality, or a career that rewards flawlessness.

Whatever the reason, your self-expression slipped into the background over time. And now the prospect of returning feels enormous.

It looks like watching tutorial after tutorial and bookmarking them to return to someday.

Making a list of supplies you absolutely have to have before you can begin.

Needing to build a shed out back where you can be totally and gloriously alone.

Waiting until the website is done, the branding is just so, the offer is perfect.

Staring at the blank page, the empty notebook, the paint set still in its packaging, and something in you just freezes.

The overwhelm you feel is not a character flaw. It's what happens after a long separation from something essential in you.

Here's my very practical and unsexy advice:

Starting small is everything.

Not a ten-week course or a studio renovation or a complete set of professional-grade anything. One cheap watercolor set. And if the blank page feels like too much to face alone, bring someone — sit at a coffee shop, make things side by side, let the presence of another person hold you while you remember this part of you.

Focus on pleasure, not pressure.

Rather than fixating on how many words you wrangled or the missed stitch in your crochet, let yourself have the joy of losing yourself for a little while.

Let your way back be genuinely mediocre — and more fun than you're expecting. What you're after isn't a creative life that looks impressive. It's a life that feels less divided against itself.

If you have the feeling that you could use a thought partner when it comes to reigniting your creativity, book a free Next Steps call with me here.​

We'll talk about what's bringing you to coaching, what you'd like to be different, and whether working together is right for you. You'll leave with a clear map of your first three focal points — and a solid sense of whether this is the right fit.

To your second bite,

Brooke

P.S. I'll be back on Sunday with a blessing and a few journaling questions to help all of this sink in a little deeper.

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.