So I Am Writing Another One

The important things need to be finished… even when they’re scary AF!

The cover of the Real Girls Guide: Midlife Workbook is here!

Before anyone hears the word workbook and thinks “Hard. Pass. I am not doing homework right now, or ever!” - don’t worry. This isn’t that kind of work. No grades. No catching up. No doing it wrong. It’s just space to notice what’s shifting and somewhere to think on paper while midlife is busy rearranging things anyway.

And I want to be totally honest about something: writing this one wasn’t part of the plan.

Making Real Girls Guide to Midlife took almost twenty years… not because I was drafting it the whole time (I wasn’t… and if you know the red folder story, you know that idea was literally buried for a while), but because it took that long to live enough life to write it honestly.

Finding that red folder again wasn’t just a reminder that I had once planned to write this book. It was a realization that many of the things I had been wrestling with in my mid-30s and into my 40s: the massive changes, the uncertainty, the pressure, the questions I didn’t yet know how to name were things I had already moved through.

Not perfectly. Not cleanly. Not without battle scars. But I had made it to the other side of many of them.

By my mid-50s, I was carrying a whole new set of questions and realities I couldn’t have imagined back when I first tucked those notes away.

I wasn’t writing toward a life I hoped would make sense someday. I was writing from one I had already lived through… and finally understanding that the woman I am now is the one I trust to carry me through whatever comes next.

Finishing the book mattered in a different way, too. I wanted to prove to myself that I could see something that big all the way through. And I wanted my boys to watch me do something that required hard work, grit, faith, and perseverance.

We finish what we start. We take risks. We bet on ourselves.

That mattered to me more than I understood at the time.

What I didn’t expect was what happened after the book came out.

So many women wrote to me. They told me what felt familiar. What surprised them. What they had been carrying quietly for years. They shared stories they hadn’t planned to share with anyone.

This workbook (which truly was never part of the original plan) exists because of those conversations.

It’s for the moment when something shifts… not dramatically, just enough that you start noticing what no longer fits the same way it used to. The roles you’ve carried. The relationships you’ve managed. The expectations you learned to meet without question. Even the version of yourself everyone got used to.

You don’t need a grand plan to begin. You don’t need to reinvent your life. You just have to start noticing what’s already changing.

If you’ve already read Real Girls Guide to Midlife, this is the next step. And if plan on starting here, you’re in exactly the right place.

This one comes out soon, and I’ll be sharing a few behind-the-scenes moments and things I didn’t expect to learn while writing it right here as we get closer.

So if you want the real-time version of what’s unfolding (and the occasional midlife field report along the way), make sure you’re subscribed to The Real Girls Guide here on Substack. That’s where everything shows up first.

I’m incredibly grateful to this community and to every person who has read the book, shared it, or taken the time to tell me what it meant to them. This second book exists because of you more than you realize.

Truly… thank you for being here with me.

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#RealGirlsGuideWorkbook #MidlifeJournal #RGG #MidlifeMantras

We’ve earned every wrinkle. Might as well make more laugh lines together.
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