Our Midlife Experiment - The Launch

My long-awaited (!) first post

I have had write my first proper post on my Substack to-do list for weeks.

Turning over the same questions: What topic will set the tone? What should my pillars be? Do I know enough about Substack yet? Do I need one more webinar? And then – is this even the right platform for me? Will it end up being just another social media feed, rather than the place for deeper connection and fuller expression that I’m longing for?

And then I remembered.

My liberating word. The one I return to every time I start something new.

Experiment.

Ironic I almost forgot that – particularly given that this Substack is called Our Midlife Experiment.

It’s a pattern I keep noticing: we write about, teach, and explore the things we most need to remember for ourselves.

The moment I gave myself permission to experiment – to play with this platform, my voice, the directions I might explore – I felt an expansion in my body. Not the contraction, the fear, the second-guessing that comes with needing all the answers first.

It reminded me of starting my first business about 15 years ago – selling jewellery online in Australia, a completely different world from where I am now. Before I began, I made two simple agreements with my husband:

1. Permission to experiment and learn

2. Make more than I lose

Those two rules let me start. They let me enjoy the process, most of the time. And yes – I did both, exceeding my own expectations, in ways that were integral to everything that came after.

So here I am, 15 years later. In Spain. A life coach now, at 53. A British woman navigating a season of real transition – a fresh pivot in my work, my first child leaving for university in a few months, my second the year after.

Threshold times.

And I’m giving myself full permission – as much as I can right now – not to have all the answers. To connect to my values, to what matters most, and to let that guide both my life and my writing here. My hope is to build a community where we can all feel permission to be ourselves – heard, nurtured and free to figure it out as we go.

It won’t be smooth sailing. But I have left the dock.

Want to join me on board?

One of my favourite quotes and so applicable for so much right now at this time of life:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - H. Jackson Brown Jr.