I mistook the doubts for failure—
the cracking skin, the restless ache,
the slow unraveling of plans once held
like gospel in my clenched fists.
This wasn’t the script I was promised.
Midlife, they said, would be
a summit with a view—
not a room with no doors,
not the sound of my own voice
echoing questions I feared to ask.
But here, in the hush between identities,
I feel it.
The hush is not absence.
It’s a womb.
The world calls it a crisis.
But what if it’s a chrysalis?
Butterflies know.
To fly, you must first dissolve.
Inside the shell, there is no map,
just memory, marrow, and mystery
rewriting the self.
Here, time is compost.
Ambition softens.
Roles disintegrate.
What remains is essence—
raw, radiant, un-nameable.
I am not broken.
I am becoming.
Let others rush to reinvent.
I will sit in this sacred dark
until the wings form
If this sparked something for you, a new question, a new perspective, or a quiet knowing, you don’t have to explore it alone.
Join my newsletter
Or book time to connect.