The Midlife Advice That's Keeping You Stuck
There’s a word running through every piece of advice aimed at midlife women right now, and that word is “reinvention”.
Rebrand. Pivot. Level up. Become the next best version of yourself. The whole conversation works on the assumption that the woman you are now is something to be repackaged.
Every time I watch reels or read think pieces on reinvention, I find my body rejecting the language.
Change is part of life, and there are few life stages that come with quite as much change as midlife. But the word reinvention carries an undertone that bothers me.
Reinvention treats you as the problem.
The woman you are now is framed as insufficient and in need of a refresh. The language borrows from corporate strategy, as though the task is to make yourself marketable again. It hits women in midlife particularly hard, because we’ve already spent decades adapting and shape-shifting into whatever a given situation required of us. Reinvention asks us to do that once again, usually with a new wardrobe.
What I’m more interested in is reclamation.
The distinction is important
Reclamation isn’t about nostalgia or going back to who you were at 25. It’s about remembering who you were before all the societal conditioning and expectations were piled on you. The longings you never quite let go of. The things you wanted that got set aside because they weren’t practical, or weren’t approved of, or weren’t what the people around you expected to see.
In your twenties and thirties, there’s usually too much going on to consider what you want underneath all of it. You’re too focused on proving yourself or people pleasing. Or maybe you’re so busy rebelling against the norms that you’re still clouding what’s true for you. Either way, there isn’t much room to hear yourself clearly.
What midlife forces to the surface
The body changes. So does the part you’ve played for years in your family, your work, and your friendships. Children grow up and leave, or stop needing the kind of care they once did. Parents need care now, or they’re no longer here at all. Marriages either deepen or drift apart. The path that made sense in your thirties can start to feel like someone else’s plan.
And underneath all of it, a question keeps surfacing: is this it?
That question is where the reinvention industry meets you with an answer. Get certified in something new. Move house. Begin a whole new career. Sometimes one of those changes might be the right step for you, and you should take it seriously when it is.
But for most of the women who find their way to me, the answer isn’t a new business or a new persona. They’re not looking for something else to become. They’re looking to stop carrying on as a version of themselves they no longer recognize.
Reinvention or reclamation: which is yours
Reinvention and reclamation can look similar from the outside. Both involve change. Both can include leaving things behind. What separates them is what’s driving them.
Reinvention is most often shaped by an idea of who you should become. There’s a future-you that you’re constructing, and the energy tends to be more upgrade focused.
Reclamation is pulled by a longing for something already within you. A return to what you know to be true at your core. It’s about recovering what feels true to you rather than constructing a whole new self.
Why mistaking one for the other costs you
If you yearn for reclamation but chase reinvention, you'll likely find yourself feeling the same set of frustrations even when your external circumstances change.
You sign up for the courses and hire the coaches. You build a brand new life. But you've added another layer that wasn't needed, rather than stripping back the layers to see what's underneath.
Meanwhile, the woman you're trying to come home to keeps waiting.
What reclamation makes possible
When you stop living as a version of yourself you’ve outgrown, you’re able to hear what you want now. You have the ability to listen to your own knowing without everyone else’s expectations drowning it out.
From that place, your choices start changing. You stop auditioning for approval.
Reclamation offers you an opportunity to become someone your younger self yearned to be. You stop abandoning parts of yourself that have been trying to get your attention for years.
A clarifying question to ask yourself is this: are you trying to become someone new, or trying to come home to who you’ve always been?
If the answer is reclamation, that shifts what you’re reaching for. You stop trying to bolt on a new identity and start clearing space for the one that’s already been there all along.
Ready to reclaim your true self?
A Customized Ceremony marks the truth you’re claiming for yourself. A Touchstone helps you stay connected to that truth in daily life.