Why Your Boobs Are Lower And Your Dreams Are Louder

Nobody warned us that midlife would feel like this. The body is changing, the roles are shifting, and somewhere in the middle of loading the dishwasher and the school drop-offs and the job that used to feel like enough, you're asking a question you haven't had time to ask in decades. Who am I now? In this episode, Rachel names the quiet identity evolution that most women are going through, but nobody is talking about, and why it might be the most important thing happening in your life right now.

In this episode:

• Why the scaffolding of your identity starts to shift in midlife and what that actually means
• The moment you realize your roles don't define you the way they used to
• Why "I don't know what I want" is often a protection mechanism, not confusion
• The feelings that never get named out loud: restlessness, grief, guilt, invisibility
• Why staying in "I don't know" feels safer than naming what you actually want
• The difference between an identity crisis and an identity evolution
• Why this moment is not a sign that something is broken. It's a sign that something is waking up.
• The one question worth sitting with right now: who do you want to be in this next chapter?

Links & Resources:

• Free Not Done Yet Reset → rachelaperry.com/notdoneyet
• Follow Rachel on Instagram and TikTok → @rachelaperry

Loved this episode? Share it with a midlife friend who needs someone to finally name what she's been feeling. We're building this movement one conversation at a time, and she is absolutely not done yet.

Transcript

The Tuesday Afternoon “Now What?”

Letting Go After Kids Leave Home

The Quiet Midlife Identity Shift

Restlessness, Grief, Guilt, Invisibility

Choosing Who You Become Next

The Free Reset And Staying Connected

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Not Done Yet, the podcast for midlife women who know deep down their story isn't finished. I'm your host, Rachel Perry, and here we're going to talk about what's really happening in this season of life: the identity shifts, the quiet questions, the courage it takes to listen to yourself again, what it actually looks like to step into what's next, and why our boobs are hitting our knees. If you've ever looked at your life and thought, wait, is this it? Girl, you're in the right place. Because midlife isn't the end of your story, it's the moment you start paying attention to it. So take a breath and let's talk about what's really going on and what you want to do with it. Because, sister, you are not done yet. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to episode three of Not Done Yet. How are we doing? How are we doing today? I am so good because this is my new passion hanging out with you guys, chatting about midlife, hopefully inspiring you and encouraging you and helping you realize that you are so not done yet. But here's the thing: when we hit midlife, we talk about the changes, right? I mean, we have on the past two episodes, but there are so many changes. And I think sometimes it will hits us all differently. Like maybe it's a Tuesday afternoon and the house is clean and nobody needs anything right now. And you're standing by the dishwasher in your kitchen thinking, okay, now what? Like nobody needs me. It's not sad. You're you're not grateful exactly. You're just sort of untethered. I know that happened, that's happened to me a couple of times recently when we dropped John Markoff at school. He's a freshman in college. And I think when we left for so long, so he's my oldest, in case you don't know. And throughout high school, so he has ADHD. Let me just give you a little background on all my kids. So he has ADHD. And he may be on the spectrum, to be totally honest. He's he's quirky and he has anxiety. And so in high school, he he's always been bullied. He's always been picked on. He's an easy target. And he had some serious mental health struggles in high school. I mean, I've always advocated for him, but I had to sort of take it to another level in high school. And there were times I truly didn't know if he would make it through because it got really dark. It got really dark there. So we got him to school, we got him to college, all the things. And I think I felt, I'm gonna be real, it wasn't driving away. It was more like several weeks into the semester, and maybe even more into second semester, because he's in second semester freshman year now. And I realized he didn't need me as much as he needed me before. And I do have two other girls at home. So they, but they don't need me like they needed to like they needed me either. And it was sort of a weird feeling. Like, what, okay, what do I do? Like, what do I do now? Because so much of my life has been focused on them and providing for them, right? It's never been easy. And it, I don't know, it's just been weird for me. And maybe for you, it's something different. Maybe it's that you're in a new job now, or maybe it's that you just had cancer and have, you know, you're in remission. Maybe it's that you're currently going through a divorce or you are divorced. Maybe it's that you are going for a promotion, or maybe it's that you're retiring. Whatever it is, there, there's a moment for all of us where we go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like, what is this? And it's probably more than just one moment because for nearly what, two, three decades, our identity has been organized around either our kids' needs, our our jobs, our husbands, whatever. And then the scaffolding is gone. That foundation is gone. And we're like, what just happened? Who am I? And listen, it might not even be that dramatic. It might just be that, you know, life is quietly humming along, and one day you realize you don't know the answer to that question that you used to know automatically. Like, who am I? You're like, wait, who am I? It's a quiet identity crisis that really almost nobody talks about. It really is because here's the thing. We're prepared as women, we're prepared for all kinds of transitions, right? First job, marriage, motherhood, maybe even retirement to some extent. But nobody sits you down in your mid-40s and says, hey, so by the way, the identity that you built around the roles that you have worn, the hats that you've worn, are gonna start shifting and it's gonna be weird. And that's completely normal. Like nobody says that to us. And all of a sudden it happens, and we're like, wait, is something wrong with me? Because I feel all these feelings, like I feel guilty for feeling lost when my life on the outside looks fine, or I feel ungrateful for wanting something when I have so much already. Or they wonder if they're gonna have a breakdown or if they're going through something shameful that they should just be able to handle quietly, right? But they're not. They're they're going through something universal and it doesn't have a name most of the time. People don't talk about this most of the time. For most women, identity in their 30s and 40s is largely role-based, right? You're someone's mom, you're someone's wife or partner, you're someone's employee or boss, you're someone's caretaker. The roles give us, like give our days that structure and our life meaning. And that's not a bad thing. It's because these roles are real and they and they matter. But the roles shift. For me, the biggest one is my kids growing up. For others, it might be that marriages break or evolve or careers plateau or change, parents age. That's a whole nother thing, too, right? And when the roles that have organized our whole sense of self, when they start to loosen, we're left with a question that we may not have had to answer in a really long time. We haven't had time to answer it. When you strip away what you do for everyone else, what is left? And for a lot of women, the honest answer is that I don't know anymore. And I think that's scary for some of us. But here's the thing that is not a failure. I want you to see it more as an invitation. Okay. One of the most common things women say at this age, and you might have said it to yourself, it's like, I don't even know what I want anymore. Like, what's next? Because we've been on this sort of mission in a way, where we're like, raise the kids, show up at work, do the things, take our kids to sports, do the get them to college. And then it's like, what? What? Right. And it might sound like confusion, but what's actually happening underneath is that you know you have a sense. There's something that's pulling at you, some direction that keeps whispering. But you've been so practiced at putting yourself last, so trained to organize your needs around everybody else's, that accessing your own wants really does feel honestly foreign, like weird, right? And I hear all the time, well, oh, I just feel so. In fact, I stopped a client just the other day. I said, Stop. You are not being selfish. I really want you to use different language because you looking at what you want is not selfish. But we've been sort of trained and raised to think that. So we often think, oh, I don't know what I want. I'm not gonna think about it right now. And that's often a protection mechanism because if you don't name your want, you can't be disappointed by it. You can't fail at it. You can't be told that it's too much, you can't be told that it's too late, you can't be told that it's too unrealistic, you can't be told that's not gonna work. So you stay in that, uh, I don't know. I don't know, which feels safer than the alternative. And I say this from experience. It's easier to think, oh yeah, that's what I what I really want to do is this, but now's not the time. Or I don't even know how to do it, right? But it's not safer than the alternative, you guys. And part of what this episode, this podcast, this whole season is about is helping you get honest with yourself about what you actually want. Not the responsible answer, not the grateful answer, the true one. Okay. So I want, I want to help you name this, this feeling, right? For this experience. So you may be feeling kind of like some of you, okay. So this is based on women that I talk to in midlife and who are have been clients. Some feel this low grade sort of restlessness that you can't quite explain. Like you feel like something's off, but you can't quite point to what it is. You're not depressed, you're not in crisis. It just, there's something that just doesn't feel right. You might be feeling grief, like mourning the fact that you don't get a period anymore. I'm just kidding, I'm not mourning it. But but I think there is a mourning that happens, like mourning a version of yourself or a season of life that's ending. I know I have certainly mourned that. Actually, every time my kids had a birthday, I'd be like, oh, I'm so sad. But now that I have kids who are either in college or heading in that direction, like Caroline's turning 18 this month. There's grief there. They're not my babies anymore, but yet so exciting. I mean, so excited for them. And so while the season has been bumpy, right, raising teenagers, there's still a sort of a sense of grief. And maybe some of you don't feel that. And that that's fine. It's possible to grieve something you were ready to move past, too. I want to say that, right? Two things can be true at the same time. You might be feeling guilty for wanting more when you already have so much, right? Like wanting something for yourself is somehow ungrateful or selfish. And I think this one is incredibly common and really never gets named out loud. You might be feeling invisible, like you're somewhere in the middle of your life, and nobody is really seeing you clearly. Maybe you're not even seeing yourself clearly. And it's not the version of you that exists right now. It's it's weird. It's sort of like, who am I right now? Right. Maybe you are scrolling Instagram or TikTok and seeing women launch things and build things, and you're thinking, wow, that's so amazing. And then you immediately think, that could never be me. And then quietly in the back of your mind, you're like, but what if I could? And then you shut it down. All of that is this identity crisis. It's not dramatic, it's quiet, and it's so real. And I do think it's an identity crisis. Although crisis has sort of a negative connotation, I think it's an identity evolution. Yeah, that's what we're gonna call it. It's an it's an identity evolution because we are becoming who we're meant to be. We're entering that next stage of life, right? So here's what I want you to remember. This moment isn't a sign that something is broken. It's a sign that something is waking up within you. Okay. The identity shift of midlife really does create space, real space. Sometimes for many, it's the first time in decades where you can actually hear yourself. And oftentimes we're like, who is this? Who am I? Like, who is this person, right? But I'm gonna encourage you to really sit with her for a little bit and ask yourself, like, what do you what do you want in this new stage of life? Even if you still have kids at home, even if you love your job, even if you're happily married, whatever it is, I really do want to encourage you that this is a stage of life where there is going to be transition. Okay. What do you want? What do you want? And who do you want to be? The beauty of this is that we can decide who we want to be and what do we want our lives to look like. I was asking a friend last night what she wanted when she retired, what she wanted life to be like. And it was so interesting listening to her because she was bringing other things. It was almost like she was sort of um auditing herself, I guess, as she was doing this. Afraid, maybe, maybe not afraid, but didn't want to say what she wanted because it was big and scary. And it she didn't see a path to that just yet, right? And there is a path to what she wants. It just looks different than maybe she imagined it was going to be, right? Because we don't think we don't know where we're going to be at age 50. And for many of us, we're divorced and we're like, wait, that is not how I expected this life to go. Others are ready to retire. Others are saying goodbye to their kids. I mean, there's so many different transitions. And I think we go, wait a second, what? I'm sorry, what? Because we're so focused on putting one foot in front of the other, right? That we don't necessarily think, who am I now? It's it's truly a really important question that you need to ask yourself, though. Like, who are you? Who are you now as you navigate this life? Who are you now? Because the answer you come up with on the other side of this transition, that's who you get to become in your next chapter. The identity is not gone. It's just not finished yet, right? It's just not finished. And if this, if you are resonating with this, if you're in this stage right now, if you recognized yourself somewhere in this episode, I want you to know that you're in exactly the right place. This podcast exists for this moment. The confusion, the restlessness, the quiet wondering, the excitement, the fun, right? This is the beginning, my friends. It's the beginning. And I'm so glad you're here for it. And listen, I made something for exactly this moment. It's called the Not Done Yet Reset. And it's really just a short audio walkthrough and a reflection guide that helps you start making sense of what you're feeling and what it might be pointing towards. It's totally free. You can go to rachelaperry.com forward slash not done yet. The link will be in the show notes as well. But this is just to help you start navigating that the answer to that question, who am I? Y'all, you know I love you. And I'm so grateful that you are here listening. And as always, I'm going to ask you to share this podcast with a friend who's in midlife because, girl, we need them all here. We need to build this community where we are lifting each other up and we are encouraging one another and we are going out to happy hours and chatting about why our boobs are so long or why our faces are drooping. Don't you think? So let's start here with the podcast. And y'all, I love hearing from you. Please make sure that you're following me on Instagram and TikTok. I'm at Rachel A. Perry on both. So wherever you're hanging out, come follow me over there. Tell me that you listen to the podcast. You guys, this is so new still. I want to hear what you think. What would you like to hear on this episode? Or not this episode, obviously, but what would you like to hear on this podcast? I'm thinking I'm gonna have some friends come and chat and we'll just, you know, chat about midlife and changes and things that we're doing. There are so many inspirational stories of women in midlife who are really starting new things and doing amazing things. And you're like, what? Like, if I knew I could do that at 50, I would not have dreaded this. Whatever. But what do you guys think? I would love to hear. I would love to hear. So listen, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. And I'll be back next week for another episode of Not Done Yet. Until then, my beautiful, beautiful friends, take care of