The Unglamorous Middle.

Nobody warns you about the middle. Everyone talks about beginnings, everyone talks about endings, and then you're standing in the part nobody prepared you for, the one that shows up without an invitation. A house grows still after the children leave. A city that once felt like yours stops feeling that way before the next one has had the chance to. A role ends before the next one takes shape, a baby arrives and the world reorganizes itself overnight, a chapter closes and you're left standing in the doorway of it, whether you were ready to leave or not.

This is the unglamorous middle. Most of us have stood here at least once, whether we wanted to admit it or not.

We reach for whatever word is closest, emptiness, limbo, grief, because nobody handed us the actual name for this one. It is a space where the old no longer fits and the new has not yet found its shape. Which is its own kind of undressed, isn't it, standing in a room between who you were and who you're about to be.

Within this space, the inner world feels exposed. Routines that once anchored us loosen their hold, and the mirrors we used to recognize ourselves in stop reflecting back clearly. You reach for the version of yourself that used to answer the phone on the first ring, and she's not there anymore.

So the mind naturally rushes in, searching for certainty, reaching for anything to grasp: an answer, a distraction, a purchase, a plan. Anything that might relieve the discomfort of not knowing who we are becoming. I've bought dresses for a version of my life that hadn't happened yet, as if the closet could catch up to who I was trying to become.

There's no escaping the in-between, only living inside of it, even if it feels like you're in the mud, or climbing up a hill that never seems to descend, and this is where loneliness can appear, though we are rarely truly alone in it; our identity is shifting beneath us, and something within us senses change before we’re ready for it. In that unraveling, there is grief and tenderness and fear and wonder, all moving through us at once, none of them waiting their turn.

Some of us rush forward to not feel, some of us freeze, some sink into sadness, and some pretend nothing has changed at all, perfecting the art of 'I'm fine' until even they start to believe it. And some of us slowly begin to notice what is still here: the breath, the body, the room we are standing in, the light at a different hour of the day, the simple act of placing one foot in front of the other.

You don't get answers in the messy middle. You get presence instead, and it isn't a problem to solve, but a season to be witnessed. When we allow ourselves to stand here, without panic or rushing past it, something within begins to settle, it's a sense of being held by life itself, even here, especially here.

The unglamorous middle isn't a disappearing act, although we sure want to. It's where we run into ourselves again, like an old friend at a party we almost didn't go to, and realize we're still glad to know her. So maybe nobody tells you this part: you don't get to skip the middle, you just stop fighting it the day you stop grieving the version of your life you thought you were supposed to have.

And if the middle you're in feels less like a season and more like drowning, that's your sign to ask for help, not your sign to try harder. Even the most self-possessed woman you know has a therapist on speed dial.