Essays on Transition, Reinvention, and What Comes Next

Your Next Chapter: What Comes After Expertise? For much of my life, when I learned something that helped me, I had to tell others how it would help them. I became an evangelist. I’d say, “You should try this,” and push you toward my answer. During a dark season in my late teens, I was treated for anxiety, and my life changed. I went back to school, changed my major to psychology, and talked about stress reduction. Everywhere. I was a campus peer counselor; I interned in the community with...

Your Next Chapter: Loosening the Finger Trap When I was a kid, I always smiled when a finger trap showed up in a birthday-party goody bag. The harder you pulled, the more stuck you became. I guess I had so much fun with them I kept recreating them in my life. For a long time, I responded to uncertainty by pulling harder. I’d stay busy, search for answers, and try to force my way forward. Time after time, I’d find myself in another finger trap, stuck while I pulled in different directions....

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: 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: 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...