There's a particular kind of guilt that comes with wanting something different when you've already got a perfectly good life. It's difficult to explain because, technically, you don't have much to complain about. You've worked hard, made sensible decisions, built relationships, achieved things you once hoped for and managed to create a life that probably looks pretty decent from the outside. And yet, every now and then, you catch yourself wondering whether this is really what you want for the next twenty or thirty years.
Not because you hate your life or because everything has gone spectacularly wrong. But because something about it doesn't feel quite right anymore. I think this is an uncomfortable place for a lot of women to find themselves, particularly once we reach our forties. By this stage, we've usually spent a considerable amount of time working towards something. We've made decisions, accepted responsibilities and built lives around the things we believed were important. And for years, those things probably were important. But here's something I've been thinking about lately. Why do we assume that because we once wanted something, we have to keep wanting it?
Think about the person you were ten or fifteen years ago. The things that mattered to you, the goals you were working towards and the decisions you made based on what you knew about yourself and the world at the time. I'd be concerned if you hadn't changed at all. You've had experiences you couldn't have anticipated, learnt things about yourself and probably discovered that some of the things you thought would make you happy weren't quite as extraordinary as you imagined. Perhaps you've also realised that things you once considered essential don't matter nearly as much anymore. That's not failure. That's life. But we don't always give ourselves permission to acknowledge it.
Instead, we start negotiating with ourselves. We remind ourselves how fortunate we are, how hard we've worked to get here and how many other people would love to be in our position. And there's that word again. Grateful. I have absolutely no issue with gratitude. I think recognising the good things in your life matters enormously. But somewhere along the way, we've turned gratitude into an argument against wanting anything different. As though appreciating what you have means you're no longer entitled to question whether it's what you want.
I don't agree with that. You can love your family and still want more time for yourself. You can be proud of your achievements and still feel drawn towards something completely different. You can appreciate the life you've built and recognise that certain parts of it no longer fit. Those things can exist at the same time, although you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise given how much explaining women seem to feel obligated to do whenever they want to make a change.
What interests me is how often we feel the need to justify wanting something different. We seem to think we need a sufficiently dramatic explanation before we're allowed to make another decision. Something has to become unbearable. A relationship has to fall apart. A situation has to become so uncomfortable that nobody could reasonably expect us to stay. Only then does change become acceptable. But why should we have to wait until we're miserable before we're allowed to reconsider something?
I started asking myself questions like these when I realised I'd become exceptionally good at managing a life I wasn't entirely sure I'd consciously chosen. There were plenty of things I loved about it, things I was proud of and things I had absolutely no intention of changing. But there were also things I'd simply accepted because they'd become familiar. Responsibilities I'd taken on without questioning whether they were mine, expectations I'd continued meeting because that's what I'd always done and decisions I'd made based on what seemed sensible rather than what I actually wanted.
And I think that's where the real work begins. Not with deciding to blow your entire life apart, but with being willing to look at it properly. To ask whether the things you're doing still reflect what matters to you. Whether the responsibilities you're carrying are actually yours. Whether the goals you're working towards are still things you want, or simply things you've been pursuing for so long that you've forgotten to question them. You might discover that you're perfectly happy with most of your life. Wonderful. You might also discover that there are a few things you've been avoiding acknowledging because changing them would be inconvenient. That's worth paying attention to.
I don't believe turning forty means you suddenly need to reinvent yourself. I'm not particularly interested in the idea that every woman needs some dramatic midlife transformation, complete with a new wardrobe, a questionable haircut and a sudden desire to move to Italy. Although, to be fair, I wouldn't entirely rule out Italy. What I do think is that reaching this stage of life gives us an opportunity to reconsider things. Not because we've run out of time, but because we've finally got enough experience to recognise that time is worth being deliberate about.
So here's something I'd like you to think about this week. If you took away the guilt, the expectations and the need to explain yourself to everyone else, would you still choose the life you're currently living? Not necessarily all of it, but the parts you actually have some control over. And if the answer is no, perhaps it's worth asking why. You don't need to make any enormous decisions today, and you certainly don't need to justify wanting something different simply because what you already have looks perfectly fine on paper.
You can be grateful for the life you've built and still want something different. Those two things were never mutually exclusive.
Sarah x
