There is a great deal written about midlife and very little of it sounds like anyone who is actually living it. The Journal is our attempt at the other thing — honest essays about transition, reinvention, and the particular strangeness of knowing yourself well and not knowing what comes next. No listicles. No advice you have heard a hundred times. Just the conversation we wish someone had been having with us.
Wherever you are in the world, there is a question people ask to work out who you are, and for thirty years a job title answers it for you. When the role changes, what is missing is not an identity. It is language.
Read the essay →Midlife is not a crisis to be survived, and it is not an identity to be reinvented on a deadline. It is a design problem — and that is both a more accurate and a far more respectful description of this chapter.
Read the essay →The survey is where we learn what this chapter actually looks like for the women in it. It takes about ten minutes, and your answers genuinely change what ends up on this page.
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