Essays on Transition, Reinvention, and What Comes Next

Your Next Chapter: When Reality Clears Its Throat Most mornings, I read a piece that begins: "Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today."I've read those words hundreds of times. Yet I found myself in Sedona, Arizona, unwilling to accept that a 3,000-foot altitude gain was kicking my ass. We arrived with plans. Trails to explore. Places to see.Instead, my body let me know it wasn't consulted.The altitude forced me to slow down. And by slow down, I mean come to a dead stop. The...

Your Next Chapter: I’m Still Changing “Most of my clients aren’t lost. They’re just at a turning point.”That’s the first sentence of the first issue of this newsletter. In March 2025, my goal was simple: find coaching clients and prove I understand midlife transition. I had no idea how much I was about to learn. When I wrote, “Midlife change isn’t something I just talk about—it’s something I’ve done.” I had the evidence to back it up. I bounced through twenty jobs in fifteen years before...

Your Next Chapter: Finding Common Ground I just finished a ten-week memoir writing class. On the final session, we submitted our work to a small group for discussion. But we really did more than that. We opened ourselves up for scrutiny in a way that doesn’t often happen in midlife. We didn’t just share our work; we shared our stories—our real stories. At our core, we all asked versions of the same question: Who am I, and how did I become this person? On the surface, we had little in common....

Your Next Chapter: The Grace I Couldn’t Give Myself Last week, I attended the memorial service for a mentor who changed my life. Ed served 28 years in the military before we met. He brought into business the kind of calm that comes from living through things most people only read about. One afternoon, he asked about my military service. I told him about being a young Air Force intelligence specialist in 1979, tasked with preparing a top-secret status briefing for the commander of Tactical Air...

Your Next Chapter: Starting To Belong I’m still unpacking from our move. The kind of unpacking where every box becomes a decision: keep / toss / why did I move this? This week I opened one filled with black-and-white composition notebooks from 2023. I started flipping through them and found two versions of something I’d once called my founder’s story. What I’d been through.What I stood for. What I wanted to build. Reading them was strange.Because beneath the language,the positioning,the...

Your Next Chapter: In the Deep End I was sitting on a Zoom call with 20 classmates and our instructor. Nervous.Tired.Self-conscious about my work. I was about to hear my most personal writingdiscussed and dissected. I almost didn’t show up. I had already written the instructorwith a good excuse. It would have been easy to back out.Protect myself. But I logged on. And took the risk. I’m taking a memoir writing classat the University of Washington. I had just turned in my first 2,000-word...

Your Next Chapter: Staying in the Gray. For most of my life,I could give you the benefit of the doubt. If you made a mistake—I could make room for it. For me? Different rules. It’s right or it’s wrong.I’m a success or I’m a failure. The world is black and white. No space in between. I spent years working in substance abuse treatment centers.Helping people understand relapse.Helping them start again. I knew what to say. Progress, not perfection. Telling them there’s a lot of space for gray...

Your Next Chapter: What Happens When You Don’t Act? In the last issue, I wrote that it’s OK not to know what’s next. That sounds great on paper. But it feels different in reality. Because if you don’t know what’s next —and you don’t rush to act —how can you control what happens? There was a time in my life when not acting equaled losing control. And that felt risky. If I wasn’t driving the project, it might fall apart.If I stepped away, something might unravel.They might see I wasn’t really...

Your Next Chapter: It’s OK Not to Know What’s Next Over the past few issues, we’ve talked about what happens when something quietly finishes. Nothing is broken.Competence is intact.The role still works. And yet something feels different. Once we stop forcing the puzzle pieces, another question appears. Not: What should I do next? But: What am I not ready to admit to myself? For some, the answer might be: “I’m afraid to start over again.”“I’ve built too much to walk away — but I don’t want...