Have you ever looked at your life and thought, How did I end up here? Not because you’re unhappy. Just because if your twenty-year-old self could see you now, she’d probably have a few questions. I know mine would. When I was younger, I was convinced I was going to become either a teacher or a doctor. Fortunately for everyone involved, I realized pretty quickly that medicine wasn’t my path. I admired it, but I also knew it wasn’t where my gifts lived.
Teaching was.
I loved everything about it. I loved helping people discover what they were capable of. I loved asking questions that made students think a little differently when they walked out than when they walked in. Eventually, I became a university professor, and if you had asked me then, I would have told you that’s where I’d spend my career.
I couldn’t imagine wanting anything different. But life has a funny way of introducing us to new versions of ourselves. Within a short period of time, I found myself navigating cancer, divorce, and raising two young children. The life I had carefully planned no longer matched the life I was living. It wasn’t that I stopped loving education.
It was that my family needed something different from me. I needed flexibility. I needed financial security. I needed options. So I did something I never imagined I would do. I chose a completely different path. For a long time, I wondered if I had somehow failed. Had I walked away from the career I loved? Had I given up on the dream I’d spent years building?
Looking back now, I don’t think I changed my mind at all. I think life changed me. And the woman I had become needed something different than the woman I had been. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Somewhere along the way, we decided consistency was a virtue. We admire the people who never change. They build one career and stay there.
They host the same holidays year after year. They keep the same routines. The same opinions. The same expectations for themselves. And there’s something admirable about commitment. Until staying the same starts costing you the person you’re becoming. Because here’s what I’ve realized. We expect ourselves to stay the same while life quietly keeps introducing us to new versions of ourselves.
It teaches us through heartbreak. Through joy. Through raising children. Through losing people we love. Through illness. Through success. Through disappointment. How could we possibly live through all of that and expect our hearts, our priorities, and our dreams to stay exactly the same? Maybe your story isn’t about changing careers.
Maybe it’s realizing you don’t want to host every holiday anymore. Maybe it’s choosing slower mornings over a calendar packed from sunrise to bedtime. Maybe it’s discovering that success means peace instead of achievement. Maybe it’s letting go of friendships that no longer feel like home. Maybe it’s deciding this next chapter deserves something different than the last one.
None of that means the woman you were was wrong. She got you here. Every version of you has prepared you for this one. I think that’s one of the greatest gifts of midlife. We finally have enough life behind us to realize we don’t have to keep proving we’re the same person we’ve always been. We’re allowed to evolve.
We’re allowed to choose differently. We’re allowed to become someone our younger selves never could have imagined—not because she wasn’t enough, but because she hadn’t lived enough yet. Maybe becoming isn’t about chasing someone new. Maybe it’s about making room for the woman life has been introducing you to all along.
So here’s your permission slip for today. You don’t need permission to stay the same. You need permission to trust that the woman you are today gets a vote. And if she wants something different… She’s allowed to change her mind.
