The other morning, I went for a walk with a close friend and our sons. We were talking about life, motherhood, work, and the quiet ways we’ve both been changing. But somewhere along the way, our conversation took a turn into deeper territory - into that subtle, unspoken shift many of us feel as we move into a new season of life.

My friend shared something she had recently been reflecting on, and as she spoke, we both felt full body shivers. Everything she was saying resonated with me. It was the kind of moment where your soul leans in because it recognises a truth it’s been waiting to hear. She said that for so much of our early life, we unknowingly operate from a single question:

“What does the world want from me?” And it’s true. We spend years and sometimes decades, moulding ourselves around the expectations of others. We build a version of ourselves designed to fit, to please, to prove, to survive. A provisional self created to keep the peace or maintain the image or meet the standard. But after enough time in that mode, something shifts. Once we’ve spent years meeting expectations, we inevitably reach a quiet, confronting crossroads where we ask: What now? Why am I here? What is the deeper purpose of all this striving?

As we kept walking, we both recognised that moment in our own lives where questions begin to come from a completely different place within us. For me, this was something I experienced in my mid twenties after graduating from university and starting my YouTube channel. Now, as I embark on my new journey of motherhood, I’m once again faced with another season of reflection, introspection and change. Instead of asking what the world wants from us, a new question emerges:

What does my soul want from me?

What is longing to be expressed?

What part of me is ready to come alive?

My friend then shared a metaphor she had come across that left me chanting ‘yes!’ over and over as we walked down the street. Instead of seeing this season as a mid-life crisis, what if we saw it as a mid-life chrysalis? Think about it: A caterpillar spends the first stage of its life gathering, consuming, growing, much like we spend our early years absorbing expectations, roles, and identities. And then, instinctively, it retreats into stillness. It enters the chrysalis: a dark, quiet space where the old form shifts and something new begins to take shape.

What if our mid-life is that chrysalis? Not a falling-apart, but a becoming. A deep transformation. The end of who we thought we had to be. Our adulthood brings with it an opportunity for the soft unravelling of the self we once created to meet expectations… and the emergence of the self that is aligned with our soul. And maybe that’s the gift of this season; to meet ourselves again, in a more honest way. To stop performing. To stop pleasing. To stop rushing. To honour the quiet pull toward something more meaningful, more authentic, more us.