They met on a girls’ trip last year — a day in Paris that neither of them has stopped thinking about. Fifteen women, some strangers, some friends, all at different crossroads of their lives. It was laughter, wine, and truth-telling. A story for another day, perhaps. But that day changed everything.

From that Paris afternoon came a quiet friendship between two women who could not have been more different — or more alike.

One was a Fortune 500 career woman — sleek, decisive, and still mastering the art of balancing heels with purpose. Her life looked immaculate from the outside: corner office, global team, annual bonuses, and the kind of poise that made younger women whisper, goals. Yet inside, she had begun to feel hollow. She had walked away from her husband two years earlier, a man who loved her but could never quite meet her at the altitude she was flying. It wasn’t animosity that broke them — it was distance, a quiet emotional erosion that neither of them could bridge.

The other woman was an entrepreneur — with the occasional 9–5 to keep things steady. Her life was a series of starts and pauses, dreams pursued and bills paid. She hadn’t left her marriage, but she often thought about what it might mean if she ever did. Her husband was kind, dependable, present — a good man, she always said — but the spark between them had long been replaced by a gentle companionship that sometimes felt like duty. It wasn’t that she was unhappy. She was… contained.

Over time, they found safety in each other — two women walking parallel lines, each holding the parts of the other’s story that felt familiar.

One afternoon over coffee, the conversation turned, as it often did, toward what now. The career woman spoke first.

“People always say divorce is freedom,” she said. “But it’s not. It’s more like… silence. You go from constant noise to nothing. I had to learn to fill my own space again.”

The other woman nodded slowly. “And those of us who stay — we have the opposite. Too much noise. I sometimes wonder what it’s like to wake up and not have anyone’s expectations waiting for you.”

They smiled — two sides of the same mirror.

Their friendship had become a gentle classroom of comparison. One had built her life around certainty and spreadsheets; the other, around instinct and intuition. One had learned to let go of control; the other was still learning to trust chaos. Both were, in their own ways, awake.

Midlife had crept up on them not as crisis but as clarity. It wasn’t about youth fading — it was about truth sharpening. They were no longer seeking validation, romance, or the applause of peers. They wanted meaning, peace, and a sense of self that didn’t disappear when someone else left the room.

The career woman had begun painting again — something she hadn’t done since university.

“It’s the first thing I’ve done in years that doesn’t come with a performance review,” she laughed.

The entrepreneur smiled. “You know, I envy that. I’ve been chasing purpose like it’s hiding from me. Sometimes I think the thing I’m supposed to do is just… be still long enough to hear it.”

They both paused, absorbing the truth in that sentence. Midlife was not about reinvention; it was about returning to the parts of themselves they had buried under responsibility, motherhood, marriage, and ambition.

For one, it was a return to softness — allowing herself to be vulnerable after years of armour.

For the other, it was a return to faith — trusting that the quiet inner voice guiding her toward something new wasn’t madness but calling.

That afternoon, they talked about balance and bravery, about how women are taught to keep it all together without ever being taught what to do when things start to fall apart. They laughed about hormones, grown children, and the irony of discovering themselves just when society expected them to start winding down.

They agreed that this — this very moment of awakening — was not crisis, but grace. Because in rediscovering themselves, they had also found each other.

And perhaps this is the #Unshakable truth: midlife is not an ending, nor a reinvention. It is a remembering. A return to the self that once whispered, there is more to you than this, and now finally has the courage — and the quiet — to be heard.

‘See’ you next week.

 

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