LIFE & MOTHERHOOD COACH FOR MAMAS IN MIDLIFE

Tag: identity

  • Who Were You Five Years Ago? A Question Every Woman Over 50 Should Ask

    I’ve been on a few night shifts this week — there’s something about working at 4am that makes you see your life very clearly.

    It got me thinking.

    Who were you five years ago?

    What did you put up with that you wouldn’t now? What did you believe about yourself that has quietly shifted? What did you call normal that now makes you pause?

    I ask because I think we wildly underestimate how much we’ve changed. We’re so focused on who we’re trying to become that we forget to notice who we’ve already become.

    Five years ago, I was waking at 4am rehearsing conversations. Replaying things people had said – or hadn’t said. Working out how to phrase something so it wouldn’t cause a problem. Calculating whether my needs were reasonable before I’d even expressed them.

    A constant internal negotiation. An editing of myself before I spoke.

    I don’t do that anymore. Not never – some mornings still catch me. But mostly: I notice when I’m doing it, and I stop. That gap between the impulse and the action – that’s where I live now. Along with a lot more compassion for myself too.

    That didn’t happen in one single lightbulb moment. It happened through a lot of small, uncomfortable choices. Saying something true when it would have been easier to stay quiet. Choosing not to explain myself when I didn’t owe an explanation. Starting REDISCOVERY on a night shift break and thinking: this is real, and I’m going to keep going.

    The Maternal Self in Motion framework – which I studied as part of my Motherhood Studies certification – describes our identity as a train journey. Not a fixed destination. A journey, with tracks and stations and a carriage that carries everything you’ve been through.

    The stations mark the befores and afters. And in our 50s, most of us have been through stations that changed everything. The loss of a parent. The end of a relationship. Children becoming adults. Relocation. The slow, clarifying recognition that the life you’ve been living was assembled partly for other people.

    My mum died in September 2025. I was with her for twelve days in hospital, and then she was gone. It was the saddest thing that has ever happened to me – and also, strangely, one of the most clarifying. She was genuinely warm, kind, and caring. She made everyone feel seen. And sitting with her in those last days, I thought: that’s what I want. Not success or recognition or proving anything. I want to be that real.

    I got back on the train different.

    You have too.

    Look at yourself clearly – not critically, but clearly. See the woman who has been through stations and kept going. Who has learned things the hard way and applied them anyway. Who is, right now, more herself than she has ever been.

    This week’s practice:

    Think of one thing you’ve said or done in the last six months that the woman you were five years ago would not have done.

    One moment where you held your ground. Told the truth. Chose yourself.

    Didn’t apologise for existing.

    Write it down in one specific sentence. Not “I’ve been setting more boundaries.” Something real: “I started something without asking anyone’s permission.”

    Then read it back and say: I did that. That was me.

    Because it was. And the woman who did that is still here, still building, still becoming.

    That’s the beginning.

    With love and best wishes always,
    Susy 

    —

    by

    Susy Rosemary
    in , , ,

    I’ve been on a few night shifts this week — there’s something about working at 4am that makes you see your life very clearly. It got me thinking. Who were you five years ago? What did you put up with that you wouldn’t now? What did you believe about yourself that has quietly shifted? What…

  • The Dream I Carried For Years (And What Happened When I Actually Lived It)

    I want to tell you about a dream I carried for years.

    A house in France. Green shutters. A different kind of life.

    I used to look out of my kitchen window on a grey English morning and think: there has to be more than this. And eventually — after years of waiting, talking myself out of it, talking myself back into it — we actually did it.

    And it was beautiful. The light in France in the early morning is unlike anything I’ve experienced. Warm and golden and slow. Nothing like February in Hampshire.

    But here’s what I didn’t expect: the hard part wasn’t the logistics or the upheaval or the uncertainty. The hard part was deciding that what I wanted was worth the disruption. That the dream — not the sensible choice, not the thing that made logistical sense — deserved to actually happen.

    For decades I’d been building a life around what worked. What was practical. What kept things smooth. I’m good at that — I’m a nurse, I’m a mother, I know how to hold things together. But somewhere in all that holding, I knew I was waiting too.

    You Are Not Going Backwards

    In my Motherhood Studies training, I studied a framework called the Maternal Self in Motion, developed by Dr Sophie Brock. It describes identity using the metaphor of a train journey — tracks, stations, carriages. The idea is that our sense of self isn’t something fixed we return to. It travels. It moves through stations of change, picks things up, sets things down, arrives somewhere new.

    The women I speak with often say they want to get back to who they were. But that woman isn’t behind you. She’s further down the track — carrying more wisdom, more clarity, a harder-won understanding of what she will and will not accept.

    You’re not going backwards to find yourself. You’re going forward, into a version of your life that can fit who you’ve actually become.

    What France Gave Me

    I loved France but it didn’t last. We came back after just a few months — Charlie needed his friends, his language, his home, his school system. People said, Charlie will be fine, just stay! But I knew he wasn’t fine. It simply wasn’t going to be right for him. He’s thriving now and is about to be Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk — which feels like an excellent life outcome.

    But I’m so glad we went.

    Going to live my dream gave me something I didn’t even know I needed: proof that I could choose something just because I wanted it. That the life I wanted was worth the uncertainty of actually trying. And I still feel like I lived that dream, even if just for a short time. It’s changed my life going forward — no more waiting.

    And now I’m planning my next dream. Walking in the mountains.

    So Let Me Ask You

    What do you want? Not what’s sensible. Not what will please everyone. What do you want for your one life?

    Sit down with a piece of paper — not your phone, actual paper — and finish this sentence without editing yourself:

    “The life I actually want looks like…”

    Write for five minutes. Don’t stop. Don’t cross anything out.

    Then circle the one thing that surprises you most. The thing you wrote and then immediately felt you shouldn’t have.

    That’s the one worth paying attention to.

    —

    by

    Susy Rosemary
    in , , , ,

    I want to tell you about a dream I carried for years. A house in France. Green shutters. A different kind of life. I used to look out of my kitchen window on a grey English morning and think: there has to be more than this. And eventually — after years of waiting, talking myself…

  • Sometimes Rediscovery Looks Like a Library Cookbook

    It’s been a fairly ordinary week — some nursing, coaching work, school runs, and February doing its thing with bright daffodils and snowdrops in gardens, parks and meadows.

    But something small lit something up for me this week, and I wanted to share it.

    My son Charlie and I went to the library. We came home with a stack of bright, picture-heavy children’s cookbooks — the kind where you choose recipes by the photos. I’ve been wanting to change my relationship with cooking for a while. Most days it feels like a chore to get through rather than enjoy. I needed some inspiration to energise it.

    So I tried something different.

    We made a Quiche Lorraine. A new chicken dish with mustard. Next up: homemade pizza, a sausage traybake, and lemon muffins for our cousins this weekend.

    Charlie didn’t actually cook with me in the end. But that wasn’t the point.

    The point was: I said I’d try something. I did. And I felt that YES — the “I did it” feeling nobody else can give you.

    Because I have to cook every day anyway. I may as well make it something that brings me alive.

    That’s rediscovery. Not always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just a library cookbook on a Tuesday.

    Rediscovery doesn’t have to mean moving countries, changing careers, or making a grand announcement. It can be as quiet as choosing a different recipe. As small as borrowing a book. As simple as deciding that something you do every day anyway deserves to feel like yours.

    Women over 50 are often waiting for the big moment — the revelation, the sign, the perfect circumstances. But the spark doesn’t usually arrive that way. It arrives in ordinary Tuesday afternoons when you decide, almost without thinking, to do something a little differently.

    That decision — however small — is the beginning.

    What gave you your spark this week?

    —

    by

    Susy Rosemary
    in , , ,

    It’s been a fairly ordinary week — some nursing, coaching work, school runs, and February doing its thing with bright daffodils and snowdrops in gardens, parks and meadows. But something small lit something up for me this week, and I wanted to share it. My son Charlie and I went to the library. We came…