WORK IN PROGRESS: MEMOIR

I’m writing a memoir about what happens when you find yourself suddenly single at 55, just as your children are leaving home—living in the Midwest, with no family nearby, surrounded by friends still deep in their own marriages and child-raising.

It’s a memoir about rediscovering yourself in midlife—after the marriage, after the kids, after the life you thought was the story. 

This book speaks to the millions of midlife women who wake up one day realizing the life they built no longer fits. Divorced, widowed, empty-nested—or simply done pretending—they are ready to start over. These are women who have spent years taking care of everyone else and now want stories that tell the truth about what comes next.

They devoured Eat Pray Love twenty years ago. Now they listen to We Can Do Hard Things and Wiser Than Me, follow Substacks on midlife reinvention, and devour Instagram reels about solo dates and empty-nest freedom. They want books that show them it’s not too late.

The cultural conversation is shifting. When And Just Like That ended with Carrie deleting her happily-ever-after ending, women exhaled. A viral Vogue essay soon followed, asking, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” Now women across generations are publicly questioning why their worth is dependent on the roles of wife, mother, girlfriend.

At the same time, the so-called “gray divorce” wave has surged. Today, more than a third of divorces involve people over fifty, and the divorce rate for adults over fifty has more than doubled since 1990. Nearly half of women 65 and older are single, and millions of older adults now live solo— the vast majority of them women. These numbers show a shift in society: women are increasingly choosing the solo life.

This memoir joins this movement. It’s what happens when you have already done everything you were supposed to—marriage, motherhood, self-sacrifice—and decide that your peace matters more than being partnered. It expands the independence conversation beyond youth culture and shows that reinvention doesn’t have an expiration date.

Women are no longer waiting to be chosen. They’re choosing themselves.

My book meets this moment. It’s not about chasing a man. But it’s also not anti-relationship or anti-love. It’s about finding peace. It speaks to every woman standing at midlife’s crossroads asking, who am I now?