Brash: An Unapologetic Midlife

15/10/2023

I've had a really eye-opening couple of weeks that has led me away from chaos and toward happiness.
Please read and share if you enjoy!

Or, how constant change can take you away from happiness

01/10/2023

Failure to listen to your body could be fatal. Here's one reason why:

And other parts of your body

24/09/2023

None of us can escape feeling lonely

We all sit in occasional spaces of uncomfortable isolation

16/07/2023

A couple of years ago, someone asked me this question. I am just now finding the answer

“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you. Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” -RumiThanks for reading Brash Midlife! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. “What are you missing?” I had just started online dating when a man aske...

09/07/2023

All the vacation photos got you down? Maybe they aren't as happy as they look (Or at least I wasn't)

Or, Wherever you go, there you are

29/06/2023

What happens when you stop looking for what's wrong? Perfection. My latest post, now on substack! Please read and subscribe.

Or, how I threw myself a party and changed my life

11/06/2023

Dancing in my underwear helped me banish my internal critic

Wearing only a red bra, black panties, and a sexy matching short robe, I sat with my friend in her SUV, scoping out the people going into the Saturn Bar, an iconic dive bar in New Orleans. “Do you see anybody in their underwear?” she asked. I did not. We had been invited to an underwear party to...

15/05/2022

Over the last couple of years, the one thing I keep learning over and over again is that I am not the only person who is struggling with difficulties in some form or other. Sharing my struggles, and listening to others about their own hard stuff, makes me feel so much less alone.
https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/no-more-sugar-coating-midlife-can-suck

I never intended to be the Pollyanna of middle age. Yet with blog entries about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, feeling joy after feeling pain, and how rebuilding a life after 50 is like Japanese art — I feel that I have, at least on these pages— unintentionally turned into a Pollyann...

24/04/2022

People don’t come to a party for the food. They don’t come for the china or the crystal. They come for the people. Conversation, laughter, stories. Connection. That’s what makes a good party.

https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/letting-go-of-perfectionism-in-search-of-the-perfect-party

When I was 25 or 26, shortly after I was married and had moved to Florida with my husband, I threw a few extravagant dinner parties for my newspaper colleagues. More than once, I made Coquilles Saint Jacques— a buttery seafood casserole — served in a real scallop shell. Out came the Waterford cr...

22/04/2022

10/04/2022

The only one keeping me stuck was me
https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/how-to-get-unstuck-change-your-perspective-choose-a-new-path

Lately I’ve been feeling stuck. Like I can’t get out of neutral. Everything is flowing past me on the river of life and I’ll never catch up and I’m feeling super anxious about it. I’ve been walking around like Eeyore for a few days asking myself “What am I going to do, what am I going to...

03/04/2022

Dating in Midlife - making meaningful interactions one swipe at a time.
https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/playing-the-odds-with-online-dating

I gave up playing Candy Crush after discovering online dating. More dopamine hits, more oxytocin, and so much more entertaining. It’s like playing the odds at a casino. The house will likely win, but you get free drinks while you're playing. On the online apps, there are photos of guys with fish, ...

20/03/2022

Changing addresses changed me
https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/waking-up-to-endless-possibilities

Just a month ago I was sharing an apartment AND a house with my ex-husband. For 16 months one of us stayed in the house with our daughters for a week, while the other stayed in the apartment we shared. It’s called nesting, and it worked relatively well. We switched every Sunday between 2 p.m. and ...

06/03/2022

It's never too late to have your heart broken, and it's not a bad thing. https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/pain-life

I don’t recommend having your heart broken at 53. Not counting the daily heartbreak of raising children—especially when they reach the teen years—I have never had my heart properly broken. You know, like the scene in a chick flick where the girl locks herself in her apartment, eats ice cream a...

13/02/2022

Life isn't all or nothing. https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/feeling-joy-and-grief-at-ending-an-old-life-and-starting-a-new-one

30/01/2022

On dodging the boulders of life and heading toward something better

https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/finding-the-light-when-everything-seems-hard

I had a very “Whoa is me” week. Or maybe a couple of weeks, or maybe a month or six. But this week has been super ridiculously hard. (Keep reading, though, it gets better!!) My house went up for sale, and we had offers, sight unseen, within hours. We settled on “the highest and best” and now...

16/01/2022

I realized the Western way— the way most of us in the United Stats were raised —wasn’t the only way to do things, and it possibly wasn’t even the best way.

https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/changing-perspective-think-that-you-might-be-wrong

A while back, little handmade signs popped up around New Orleans that said “Think That You Might Be Wrong.” “Yes!” I thought self-righteously when I saw the signs tacked up on a telephone pole, “maybe THOSE people might finally begin to think THEY could be wrong.” I, of course, never tho...

01/01/2022

"My 2022 wish for you is that you don’t give up. That you don’t become apathetic. Because things CAN change. But they can’t change if we sit back and expect someone else to make the changes we want to see happen."

Earlier this year, I got a phone call from a close friend and former colleague, Emily Holden. She had recently started a non-profit journalism collaborative called Floodlight, which investigates and holds accountable the corporate interests preventing climate action. Floodlight, working with local r...

26/12/2021

I'm celebrating this Boxing Day by focusing on the internal rather than the external: https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/twas-the-day-after-christmas-why-internal-gifts-top-external-things

Happy Boxing Day! For a long time I thought Boxing Day was a yearly “Trading Places” kind of tradition in the U.K. thanks to an episode of M*A*S*H in which the enlisted men traded places with the officers for the day. Hilarity ensued. (The holiday, I’ve found, had been historically more about ...

25/12/2021

Merry Christmas everyone!

19/12/2021

"My midlife shattering gives me the chance to practice something similar to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, in which broken pottery is fixed with a lacquer mixed with silver or gold."
https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/breaking-and-rebuilding-a-life-after-50

My midlife crisis has gone something like this: I wake up at 3 a.m. and say to myself “oh s**t, now I get it!” In the morning, I have a little clarity around the situation, and then two nights later I wake up again and say to myself “Oh s**t, that wasn’t it at all!” and make another realiz...

12/12/2021

Introducing the OG of curating a perfect image: Christmas cards
https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/christmas-cards-and-the-art-of-curating-the-lie-of-a-perfect-life

Don’t expect a card from me this year… or maybe ever again. I never routinely sent out cards. But when I did, I went all out. One year it was handmade cards. Another it was a drawing of our brand new house. Sometimes pictures of our vacations. The last cards I sent out — probably about five ye...

05/12/2021

Or how changing a fire alarm battery became a Sisyphean task because of my negative mindset. https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/giving-up-the-black-cloud-of-negativity

I recently was enjoying a quiet night at home, seated on the couch, about to open a book when, “BEEP BEEP …… BEEP BEEP….. BEEP BEEP.” The fire alarm battery, again. I thought to myself, “why does this ALWAYS happen when I’m at the house (as opposed to the alternate weeks when my ex is ...

03/12/2021

28/11/2021

No blog post today, Nov. 28. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

21/11/2021

For years, Thanksgiving Dinner for me was a self-inflicted wound. https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/the-unspoken-burden-of-creating-a-perfect-thanksgiving

Thanksgiving week. It used to be a week I looked forward to. It was a week I could show off my culinary skills and impress my family and my in-laws. I remember several years carefully wrapping puff pastry dough around aluminum foil to create a cornucopia, which I then filled with homemade rolls. Cor...

14/11/2021

Those awe inspiring vacation moments? Those are accessible to us right now, we just have to open our eyes. Please share this post with others if you like it!!

This week while I was meditating thoughts crept in (as they always do) and I began imagining how great everything would be if I just lost weight. Then I thought of how life would be even more perfect if I just lost weight, wrote a book and had my own little cottage with a beautiful garden. And then,...

07/11/2021

Don't wait for someone to hand your your happiness. Go out and grab it (or buy a bunch of peonies!) Don't wait for anyone else to bring you joy. Go out and get it yourself.
https://www.brashmidlife.com/post/taking-charge-of-your-own-happiness

When I was a child, in the early 1980’s, there was a peony farm off the road out of my subdivision in South Bend, Indiana. In the summer, around June, the field would be dotted with round purple, pink and white buds. When the peonies began blooming, the owner of the little field cut the flowers, b...