NOTES FROM THE MIDDLE
Age, Life, Everything
December 28, 2025 Issue No. 06
A Small, Honest Moment From This Week
The Return of the Group Chat (Sort Of)
Sam said to me this holiday season, very casually, as if he were commenting on the weather:
“Mom, you have a lot of mom friends. That must be so much fun.”
I laughed. And then paused. Because it is fun. Walks that turn into coffee. Coffee that turns into lunch. Long voice notes exchanged while loading the dishwasher or driving nowhere in particular. A rotating cast of women who know exactly which parts of your life feel solid and which ones are being held together with competence and a decent coat.
But what I didn’t say, what I hadn’t fully seen until that moment, was this:
I’m about a year and a half into what we still insist on calling the empty nest, though I’m fairly certain we need a new term for it. Nothing about it feels empty, exactly. It feels more like a house that has learned to breathe differently. Quieter in some rooms. Louder in others.
And long before any of that actually happened, I was already grieving it.
I was pre-grieving the emptying. Anticipating the loss. Rehearsing the ache. Bracing myself for the silence, the absence, the imagined loneliness of not being needed in the same all-consuming way. I carried that grief around in advance, as if arriving early might somehow soften the landing.
In doing that, I missed something.
I was so focused on what I thought I was losing that I forgot to consider what Sam, of all people, casually pointed out.
Yes, my kids were moving on to the next chapters of their lives. They weren’t living with me full time anymore. The house was changing. My role was changing.
But I wasn't alone.
Most of my friends were standing in the exact same place.
We were all arriving at this strange threshold together, whether we named it or not. Kids half-gone, half-still-here. Schedules loosening in ways that feel both liberating and disorienting. Identities quietly renegotiating themselves while we pretend we’re just talking about walking routes, perimenopause, and whether we are still eating bread.
There’s a particular ache to this moment that’s hard to explain unless you’re in it. You are proud. You are relieved. You are heartbroken. Sometimes all before breakfast. The role that once structured your entire day has softened around the edges, and no one hands you a manual for what comes next.
And then, improbably, something else begins to happen.
It starts to feel a little like our 20s again.
Not literally, of course. No one is sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Our backs hurt. We talk about supplements. We leave events early because parking is annoying and home is nicer.
But the emotional shape of it is familiar.
In our 20s, we found each other because we didn’t know what we were doing yet. We gathered to make sense of things. We talked endlessly. We went for walks that turned into life conversations. Friendship wasn’t something we scheduled — it was how we survived uncertainty.
Somewhere along the way, careers, marriages, kids, logistics, exhaustion, friendship became something we fit in around responsibility. Compressed. Efficient. A quick coffee between obligations. A text thread that never quite caught up to what was really happening in our lives.
Now, quietly, it’s shifting back.
We’re not parenting in emergency mode anymore. Not striving for the next promotion. We’re not needed in the same minute-by-minute way. The hyper-vigilance eases. There is space, real space, and it can feel unsettling at first. The instinct is to fill it. To stay busy. To prove we’re still useful.
Instead, many of us are turning toward each other.
Long lunches.
Midday walks.
Plans that don’t require military-level coordination.
Text threads that exist for no reason other than connection.
And yes, it has been fun.
Not in a performative way. Not in a “look how full my life still is” way. In a real way. A grown way. A slightly stunned, grateful way.
There’s a tenderness to this phase that caught me off guard. A sense of mutual recognition. Of looking at one another and thinking: Oh. You’re here too. You feel this as well.
I still call them my girlfriends, and I have no intention of retiring that term just because we’re middle-aged women with reading glasses and strong opinions about HRT. These are the women who walked me through the loudest years. Who understand what it took to get here. Who can hold both the relief and the grief without needing to fix either one.
This doesn’t replace what’s changing with our kids. That loss is real. There are still moments when the house feels too still, when you catch yourself listening for footsteps that don’t come.
But the grief softens when you realise you’re not stepping into this next chapter alone.
Sam was right, even if he didn’t know why.
It is kind of fun.
Not shiny. Not loud. But steady. Deep. Human.
And so, as my nest empties out again this season, I'm thinking less about the emptying and more about the quiet re-gathering.
-Danielle
The Midlife Syllabus
Lesson #6:
We prepare endlessly for what we think we’re losing, and rarely for what’s about to meet us there.
Beauty, Grace & Daily Artistry
A small, imperfect pleasure:
In one of those ironies of life, I don't wear make up and rarely do my hair, but almost always have my nails done.
Always the same pale pinky nude colour - "mannequin hands" my sister-in-law calls them. (It's Haven by Luxio by Akzentz for those who are looking).
But this holiday season I got them done fire engine, santa suit, holly-berry red. And honestly, they have made me feel like a 1950s screen siren. (Maybe it was just the next logical step after the cocktail worthy ice cubes).
What I'm Reading, Watching or Listening to
Reading
Busting Vegas by Ben Mezrich, because sometimes your brain gets cheat days too.
» Read it
This Week on the Blog
If you missed it, I wrote about the small joys I usually overlook, the conversations I didn’t plan for, and the moments that mattered more than the ones I thought I was supposed to be chasing. Nothing life-changing. Nothing Instagram-ready. Just the things that quietly held.
⟶ Read more