Who do I become when I can't be who I was?

Support for women ripening into their second bite of life.

Dear Reader,

I'm just going to say it.

It's been a ferocious start to the year!

It's my dear friend in Minnesota reaching out in pain and terror about what is happening to her community and neighbors.

It's my dad – linking his arm in mine outside the hospital ward, steering me away from my mother's room, saying: We need to talk about her last scan before you go in. Honey… it's so bad.

It's my sister (of all people) lashing out.

And for a moment, I am small again, the one who wants to fix this, who cannot fix this.

And then, in the magical way that my work often works, I pull some words of nourishment for the opening session of Second Bite (my yearlong group program for midlife women seeking permission and practical support to live more authentically).

Among them are words I've carried for years—from the beloved Irish poet and philosopher, John O'Donohue:

To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge. It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging. This becomes essential when a threshold opens suddenly in front of you, one for which you had no preparation. This could be illness, suffering or loss. Because we are so engaged with the world, we usually forget how fragile life can be and how vulnerable we always are. It takes only a couple of seconds for a life to change irreversibly. Suddenly you stand on completely strange ground and a new course of life has to be embraced. Especially at such times we desperately need blessing and protection. You look back at the life you have lived up to a few hours before, and it suddenly seems so far away. Think for a moment how, across the world, someone's life has just changed – irrevocably, permanently, and not necessarily for the better – and everything that was once so steady, so reliable, must now find a new way of unfolding.

Reading these words again, something shifts. My wise woman energy returns—not with answers, but with the steadiness to hold the questions.

(It beats doom-scrolling at 11 p.m., so I'm calling it a win.)

Here's what I'm thinking: for the love of all that is sacred—to me, to you—let's commit to holding onto ourselves. And each other.

Maybe this is what midlife actually is.

Not the crisis we've been warned about, but the stripping away. All those careful constructions of who we thought we'd be by now, dissolving.

We're left with what's essential: the courage to stand in the rubble and ask—

Who am I when everything I built myself around changes?

Who do I become when I can't be who I was?

And I wonder about you, Reader. Where in your life are you standing on strange ground?

I'm learning that we don't cross these thresholds alone, even when it feels like we do.

Even in the loneliest hour, someone else is standing on strange ground too—reaching for blessing, for protection, for a new way forward.

Maybe that's enough for now. To know we're not alone in the not-knowing.

Love,
Brooke xx

P.S. On Sunday, I'll send some journaling questions to sit with—questions that might help you hold on to yourself in the unknowing.

Hi there! 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.

Midlife isn’t a crisis—it’s a wild, holy becoming.

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The Second Bite

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