Reader,

After my youngest daughter left home, I found myself walking around my favorite Seattle park one day feeling so lonely, invisible, and unmoored I thought I might just disappear without anyone noticing.

After Covid, a broken relationship, and decades of being everything everyone needed me to be, my kids had moved on, and I felt stuck — unrecognizable to myself.

Is this it? I wondered.

So I took some advice from a midlife Facebook group, and tried volunteering, making new friends, and even joined a birding club where I found a group of women 20 years my senior lusting after the hot, middle-aged docent. I couldn’t blame them, he was a snack and a half, but he was also married, which only served to remind me what a failure I was at relationships and life.

Then I started journaling in one of my daughter's old composition notebooks. My first entry is raw and written in the third person because I was so disconnected from myself I had to narrate my own pain like it was happening to someone else.

“She now believed he'd been cheating on her longer than she first thought.”

It was so hard sitting with the memories and emotions that surfaced when I met myself honestly on the page.

But I did. First a few notes every couple of months. Then every few weeks. And eventually almost every day.

Soon I started asking myself some tough questions. Big questions. Scary questions. Some-of-the-most-important-of-my-life questions.

Who am I separate from all these roles? What do I want for this next chapter of my life? And what's stopping me from getting it?

I'm creating space for women to ask exactly these questions. Chat and write with me about it on March 21. One hour. Just us and our journals.

Books Are My Love Language 📚

I just finished Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage (2026) by Belle Burden, and I almost didn't. Belle Burden is a wealthy heiress with two homes and a hedge fund ex-husband. She's never applied for SNAP benefits, lost her only home to foreclosure, or wondered how she would survive in retirement. On paper we have almost nothing in common.

But as a woman completely and utterly betrayed by the father of her children and the man she trusted the most, I could totally relate.

She writes about being labeled a bad mother for telling her story publicly and the voice inside her that pushed back. What if her kids actually benefit from watching their mother rise? What if giving clarity to their shared experience is the greater gift? "Isn't this possible too?" she asks.

I've asked myself the same question.

Have you read it? What did you think? What are you reading these days? Hit reply and let me know.

Weekly Journal Prompt ✍️

When do you feel most like your true self? Describe the last time it happened — where you were, who you were with, what you were doing.

Write bravely, my friend. See you next week.

-Amber 🥰

PS. Ready to start before March 21? My Midlife Magic journals will meet you right where you are. Explore the full series.

• ​Empty Nest Recovery Journal​
• ​Divorce Recovery Journal​
• ​Family Estrangement Recovery Journal​