NOTES FROM THE MIDDLE
Age, Life, Everything
December 7, 2025 Issue No. 03
A Small, Honest Moment From This Week
Our children only ever meet us mid-story.
They think they know us because they’ve known us their entire lives. But this, is an optical illusion. What they really know is a single, edited chapter. The parent edition. The version of us who manages logistics and grocery lists and emotional weather systems. The version who says things like “Did you pack a lunch?” and “What time will you be home?”. And "No, you didn't wake me. I was up anyway", when the phone rings at 2am from across the country.
But before this chapter, there were many earlier editions. And each one believes, quite reasonably, that it is still the real one.
There was the version who danced in clubs without checking the time.
The version who didn’t buy toilet paper in bulk.
The version who wore size-too-small jeans with the kind of confidence that now feels medically inadvisable.
There was the version who worked 12-hour agency days, then still had the social stamina, the audacity, really, to go for cocktails. She didn’t check her steps. She didn’t worry about macros. She didn’t spend three days recovering from a night out. She simply… lived.
There were versions who took risks without calculating the exit strategy.
Versions who tried things, failed at things, and agonized over things long before anyone was watching.
There were whole seasons of our lives that our children will never know, because they happened before the audience arrived.
And here’s the part that feels strangely tender: our kids assume the person they see now is the person we have always been.
It’s not their fault. They met us mid-plot.
They entered the theatre after the opening scenes.
They sat down with popcorn during Act Two and assumed that was the whole play.
They don’t know the prequel.
They don’t know the deleted scenes.
They don’t know the director’s cut with all the questionable wardrobe choices and regrettable dating decisions.
When we tell them stories from our twenties or thirties, they look at us with polite disbelief — the way you’d listen to someone claim they had once toured with the band, and you want to believe them, but the current evidence doesn’t entirely support the claim.
This is one of the quiet oddities of parenthood: your children know you intimately, but they do not know you fully.
They know your moods, your habits, your sighs and your kisses.
They know what you look like when you’re frustrated, proud, or trying to remember the password you swear you changed last week.
They know your “please don’t leave your shoes there” voice.
But they don’t know the girl who moved across the country on a hunch.
They don’t know the woman who once believed her whole life could change in a single year.
They don’t know the version who didn’t yet carry the weight of responsibility — or the fear of disappointing anyone.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if my kids could meet those earlier editions.
Would they recognise me?
Would they like me?
Would they be horrified by my irresponsibility?
Would they be impressed that I once thrived on four hours of sleep?
And then there is this: there are versions of us they haven’t met yet, either.
Future editions.
Later chapters.
The selves we are still growing toward.
Maybe that’s the real story: we are always mid-story.
Not just to our children, but to ourselves.
We meet ourselves over and over again.
We forget old versions and discover new ones.
And the people who love us only ever get to see one slice of the whole, unruly, ongoing thing.
It’s not tragic.
It’s strangely beautiful.
A reminder that we have been many things, and will be many more.
And maybe the kindest thing we can do, for our kids and for ourselves, is to remember that every version has been real, every version has mattered, and none of them tell the whole story.
-Danielle
The Midlife Syllabus
Lesson #3:
You are the sum of every version you’ve ever been.
Beauty, Grace & Daily Artistry
I stopped by Sephora and spritzed myself with the perfume I wore in the late 1990s (First by Van Cleef & Arpels, for those who care).
For about eight minutes, I smelled exactly like a past version of myself who had better hair, stronger opinions about nightlife, and absolutely no sense of her own mortality.
What I'm Reading, Watching or Listening to
Watching
In Vogue: The 90s
» From supermodels to grunge, and Stella McCartney’s Central Saint Martins graduation show to Alexander McQueen’s meteoric rise, told through interviews with Kate Moss, Anna Wintour, Naomi Campbell, John Galliano and more. A reminder of the last decade when models were celebrities, fashion editors were minor royalty, and everyone smoked indoors as if health warnings were for less glamorous people. Watch it
This Week on the Blog
I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately — the real kind, the long-haul kind, the people who knew earlier versions of us before we became the responsible, moisturized adults we are now. And how baffling it is that we can love someone deeply and still… not call them back for six months. So this week on the blog, I wrote about the quiet, complicated tenderness of grown-up friendship — the chosen family we forget to reply to, the people who live in the background hum of our lives even when our calendars don’t show it. If you’ve ever texted “Let’s catch up soon!” with no intention of actually catching up, this one’s for us.
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