I have a wonderful group of friends I met on the playground of elementary school.

Our kids were on the same soccer teams and baseball teams. They did swimming lessons and summer camps together. We carpooled. We volunteered for pizza lunch, the late-arrival table, and in-class face painting on Sports Day. We knew who forgot their lunch, who hated math, who needed a quiet word before lining up (spoiler alert, I share DNA with that one).

Those kids are now long past that kind of parental involvement. And somehow, our group of friends has become even tighter.

We’ve moved through it all together. The deaths of parents. Divorces. Health scares. New chapters. The quiet, ordinary joys that don’t need an audience.

Many of them tease me because I still talk about those elementary school years with unmistakably rose-coloured glasses. I’ve openly mourned their loss as our kids moved into high school and then university.

I don’t pretend to be cool about it. I miss that season.

Recently, I came across the Japanese term ikigai. Roughly translated, it means “reason for being” or more directly, “life worth.”

It’s having a moment online right now, usually packaged alongside advice about longevity: take creatine, walk with a weighted vest, increase your VO₂ max, drink less wine. (Fine. Noted.)

But what struck me wasn’t the optimization angle. It was the word itself. Life worth.

Because when I think back to those elementary school years, I realize my nostalgia isn’t really about youth or chaos or even my kids being little.

It’s about purpose.

I. Was. Needed.

I loved the morning structure. Walking sleepy kids to school, kisses at the gate. I loved oatmeal on Mondays, eggs on Tuesdays, smoothies on Wednesdays. I loved practicing spelling words at the breakfast table, laying out clean clothes, getting everyone out the door more or less intact.

I loved the debrief at pickup. Swimming on Mondays. Arts Umbrella on Tuesdays. Playdates on Wednesdays. Planning spring break. Managing the hockey team. Pinning the spring baseball schedule to the wall.

I loved teaching my kids to read. Passing with flying colours when they tested me on the names of every other child in their class. Knowing who belonged where. Knowing where I belonged.

I felt such ikigai then.

And to be clear, my life did not empty when my kids moved on. I have a big career. Plenty of work. Deep friendships. Tennis. A small dog who requires constant attention and believes every meeting should be shorter.

This isn’t grief disguised as longing.

What I find myself musing on now is quieter than that.

If life worth once looked like being the hub—the organizer, the translator, the steady presence—what does it look like now?

What does ikigai become when your kids no longer need you in visible, scheduled ways, but still somehow need you just as deeply? When you watch them navigate the world with competence and courage and realize your job is no longer to manage the calendar, but to hold the line of belief behind them?

I don’t have a tidy answer yet.

But I’m starting to suspect that this next version of life worth has less to do with being indispensable and more to do with being available. Less structure. More trust. Less doing. More witnessing.

And maybe that’s its own kind of purpose.

Quieter. Harder to measure. But no less meaningful.

- Danielle

The Midlife Syllabus

Lesson #9:
Structure gave meaning. Trust might give the next version.

Beauty, Grace & Daily Artistry

A small, imperfect pleasure:
For Christmas last year, James gave me over one hundred small strips of paper. On each one, a single line he’d written. You’re meant to pull a few at random. Without fail, they form a poem.

This week, I pulled one strip each morning, in the dark part of the day, with my first sip of coffee.

Here are my seven lines:

I glow with all the light inside me

Is this the death I choose

I’ve heard about this new thing

To pieces and together again

And then one day it left

But I don’t really feel like changing

Children come together

I need ten thousand arms

Better yet is that each strip is written in his unmistakable handwriting.

What I'm Reading, Watching or Listening to

Reading

Antarctica by Claire Keegan

It is a book of beautiful crafted short stories, but not for the faint of heart.

» Read it

This Week on the Blog

If you missed it, here’s the piece I wrote about if school had been designed for actual life, there would’ve been fewer pop quizzes on igneous rocks and more lessons titled:

How to be disappointed without imploding

What to say when someone is crying in public

What your body is trying to tell you when it can’t sleep for the third night in a row

⟶Read more