Hold the Next Act—I’m Taking an Intermission

Forget the reinvention memoirs and mountaintop goat yoga for now. Sometimes midlife isn’t about a comeback, it’s about catching your breath.

I’ve recently been informed—mostly by targeted ads, glossy articles featuring women doing goat yoga on a mountaintop, and lifestyle “gurus”—that I’m supposed to be entering my “Second Act.”

You know what I’m talking about. They’re the tearfully inspirational profiles about the former corporate exec who gave it all up to chase her dream of growing heirloom cabbage in Colorado. They release memoirs with titles like I Went From PowerPoint to Power Yoga or From Burnout to Bliss In Bali: How I Learned to Embrace My Inner Cactus.

That’s nice. I’m happy for her.

But I’m not her.

And I’m not ready to be.

Suddenly every middle-aged woman is being treated like a failed startup that just needs a new logo, vision board, and five-part podcast series before she can finally reach her true potential.

It’s all meant to be empowering.

Except it sounds exhausting.

I have an alternative proposal: How about … no?

What if I just stay right here, on this couch, and the extent of my “reinvention” is switching brands of sprouted grain bread until I’m ready to jump back in?

Does that somehow make me less valuable—and who gets to decide?

Here’s What’s Wrong With the ‘Reinvention’ Narrative

The “reinvention” mantras all have the same theme: “Midlife is just the beginning!”

No, it’s not. It’s the middle. The whole point of the middle is that you’ve already started something and you’re not done yet. Nobody tells a man halfway through eating his lasagna that he needs to stop and “reinvent” it as a kale salad. He gets to finish the lasagna in peace, likely with a side of garlic bread and no shame.

But women?

We’re told the lasagna doesn’t count.

Past the “best by” date.

Apparently decades of working, caregiving, and holding the entire backbone of society together was just the appetizer. Now we have to start over from scratch. The message is clear: Thanks, but what will you do now to justify your continued existence? How will you still prove your worth?

First step, pay the invoice. Because reinvention isn’t a lifestyle. It’s an industry—and women are the product. Buy the Botox. Drink the $18 green juice that tastes like lawn clippings. Sign up for the $10,000 retreat taught by a woman who claims she manifested her Tesla into existence.

Men, on the other hand, are generally allowed to keep doing whatever they’ve always done. Their gray hair is “distinguished.” Their paunch is “dad bod chic.” The societal bar for personal growth is literally: Buy slightly nicer cargo shorts and take up golf. Nobody demands they launch a Substack about their “hero’s journey to self-actualization.”

And nobody is making them pay for it.

The Burden of Inspiration

But we’re never allowed to just be. We must inspire.

No one wants the story of the woman who just … persisted. Who kept going to work, kept everyone else happy, kept it all together despite more ups and downs than a spin instructor during class. Publishers aren’t looking for the memoir titled I Kept Everyone Fed, Alive, and Only Cried in My Car Twice This Week.

That’s not profitable.

(Although honestly, I would read that.)

Instead they target us with TED talks about giving it all up and going to Bali to find enlightenment in a coconut. Founding nonprofits that save penguins in the Sahara. Running startups and marathons in heels—bonus points if you can do both simultaneously.

Me? The only running I’ll be doing is away from someone saying, “Have you thought about taking up chanting? It’s very therapeutic.” No, thank you. My therapy is chocolate and Top Chef.

Besides, I already invented myself once.

It was expensive, exhausting, and honestly? I’m happy with the result. Totally serviceable. I don’t need to roll out Version 2.0 just because a lifestyle coach wearing a caftan says that I should.

My Reinvention Intermission

Middle age is just that—the middle. It’s not the beginning, and it’s certainly not the end. It doesn’t look the same for everyone. And that’s okay.

Sure, I’ll probably have a second act. But first? I want a break. That doesn’t mean I’m irrelevant. It doesn’t mean I’m done. It just means I’m rejecting a system that treats women like limited-edition oat milk: constantly repackaged, rebranded, and sold back to ourselves.

So please stop selling me your podcasts about “finding purpose.” I already did. Right now it’s finding the best deal on organic almond butter and a way to keep the deer from eating my hostas. I’m not signing up for a 10-day retreat where strangers yell “You are enough!” at me while I eat chia pudding in a yurt.

The curtain is staying down on this second act. The bra is staying off.

And if there’s an “inspirational” arc to my story, it’s this: Sometimes the most radical thing a woman can do is to unapologetically do whatever the hell she wants—even if that looks like “nothing” at all.

Because men get to finish their lasagna.

Women deserve that, too.