Reinventions Are Hot Again | Why Reinvention After 40 Is Really About Coming Back to Yourself

What if the life you built isn't actually the life you were meant to live?

For years, we've been told that reinvention means becoming someone new. A better version. A more successful version. A healthier version. A more polished version.

But for women over 40, something different can start to happen.

You begin questioning the life you once thought you wanted. The career. The relationship. The expectations. The identity. The version of yourself you've spent years trying to hold together.

And suddenly, you realize you're not craving another transformation.

You're craving yourself.

In this episode of The Femme Cast, we're talking about what midlife reinvention really looks like when you stop letting the outside world define who you're supposed to become.

I'll share my own messy journey through starting over, losing myself, rebuilding my life, and discovering what changes when reinvention becomes less about becoming someone new and more about coming back to yourself.

If you're a woman over 40 who feels like something inside you is shifting, if you're questioning what comes next, or if you can feel a new chapter calling but don't quite know what it looks like yet, this conversation is for you.

We'll talk about self trust, intuition, identity, personal reinvention, and why your 40s and beyond may be the beginning of your most powerful reinvention era.

And I'll leave you with a few prompts to help you start exploring what your next chapter might actually be asking of you.

Press play. You might be closer to finding yourself than you think.

Your next chapter might be closer than you think.

The Reinvention Circle is now open to the first 10 women ready to make space for what comes next.

Early Bird is $197 through August 31, then the founding rate is $297.

Curious? Come take a look.
https://www.thefemmecast.com/reinventioncircle

Transcript

Welcome Back And Audio Reset

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Hey you guys, what is up? Welcome back to the show. I am so excited and grateful to have you guys here. Welcome if you're new. I've already recorded this episode, but I want to re-record it because the sound quality was just so not what I like to have for the podcast. So I do apologize because the last one actually went up and it is what it is. So we're dealing with it. But I want to kind of I kind of wanted to circle back to for those of you who are following me on Substack. I had posted something, I don't know, it was about a month or two ago. I posted, I was so over, like no more no more reinvention policy. Like that is it. We are not doing reinventions anymore. I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to talk about it. And I'm tired of hearing about it online. And now I'm about to eat my words. Because and here's the thing. I did a live. For those of you who are following me on TikTok and Subsec, I did a live the other day. And I've been put and I I have been going through a massive reinvention.

The Problem With Online Reinvention

SPEAKER_00 1:58

And it's been ongoing for a very long time. And, you know, what I started to see very clearly is that, you know, it wasn't the it wasn't so much the reinvention that I was having an issue with because you know, I've been reinventing myself my entire life. I finally, after, you know, post-40, learned to do it right. I just have a huge hang up with how I see reinvention being done and being talked about online because I think what is misleading or misguiding or not serving us is this idea. And no one ever actually says this, but it just feels like it's creating this container or this idea that you get to, yes, you get to be whoever you want to be, but here's the difference, and here's what I've learned my entire life, right? Every one lesson after the other of learning this. Make sure that whoever you are becoming is closest as possible to the authentic version of you that you can be right now in this moment. And I just think that there's too much content out there, influencers out there, that are teaching us to reinvent ourselves in ways that basically serves an ideology that we're not meant to fit anymore. You know, we're constantly hearing about do the detoxes, do the ginger cleanse, the green juice cleanse, have a matcha, go do Pilates, which I love Pilates, by the way. I freaking hate matcha. I will never have matcha unless they've like load it with sugar and then it's like drinkable, which to me is like, well, how is that even healthy? But anyway, you know, we're constantly being told this is what life should look like, these are the clothes that you should wear, this is what your body should look like, this is what your hair should look like, this is what your skin should look like, you should guasha, you should this, you should that. Like, it just feels like every reinvention influencer out there is trying to optimize our bodies, our lives, our relationships, and focus on all these external superficial things instead of really focusing on who we are internally. And I really want you to let that sink in for a second. Because, you know, there's one thing I've learned about reinvention, right? Again, I've been reinventing myself my entire life. My first half of my life, I was reinventing myself to be whatever everything that the world told me I should be. The second half of my life, or what I think is the second half, I don't actually know because I don't know how long I'm gonna live, but you know what I mean. I really started to invent myself according to who I felt I was on the inside and who I'd always been, but never really gave space or permission to be out loud because I didn't think the world would be okay with her. And so I rejected her and I I abandoned her again and again. And I created this false version of myself that I thought the world would approve of, that I thought would fit in, that I thought would succeed, that I thought would be loved, that I thought would accomplish amazing things, right? Because that's what the world tells us. And I do apologize because I'm film, I'm recording this in the middle of rush hour. So you're gonna hear a lot of noise in the background. It is what it is. This is the moment that I felt was time to record this. So we're going with it. And so, you know, I posted the other day, I said, you know, if you're

How We Lose Ourselves In Our 20s

SPEAKER_00 5:47

anything like me, you spent your 20s, like you spent your teens just dreaming about who you were gonna become as a woman, right? Who you were gonna be, how you were gonna show up in the world, the things you were gonna accomplish, right? For me, it was a lot of just rebelling against authority too, right? Like I was just, I was just so insufferable as a teenager. But I was really like, I really knew who I was and who I wanted to be, and I really knew what I wanted to say, and and and you know, I I didn't let the world own that. I didn't give, I didn't give the world power over that or or dominion over that. But then somewhere in my late teens, early 20s, that all got like a flip, a switch got flipped. And suddenly I spent my 20s trying to be everything that the world told me I should be, and trying to fit into this external criteria that internally didn't resonate for me at all. And so I started to look a certain way and move through life a certain way and have certain kinds of friends and live a certain lifestyle and set certain goals and you know, all those things. And then I spent my 30s trying to make it all work, and it just felt so bloody hard. And it felt like my relationships weren't working, my career wasn't working, I was constantly getting burnt out. I was on the surface, I had everything the world told me I should have to be happy, and I was so unhappy. And I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought, why am I so unhappy if I have everything that the like I've got it all? I've got everything the world ever told me I should have, and yet still I'm fucking miserable. My relationship is not working. I feel completely estranged from the person who I'm supposed to be with for the rest of my life. I my friendships don't feel, I can't feel I don't feel like I could be myself with my friendships. My career is like swimming through quicksand. Like, get me the fuck out of here. My skin is crawling. I I I literally like when I say I wanted to opt out of my own life, I don't mean in that sense. Although I'm sure even that crossed my mind. But I just wanted to like, like I literally just wanted to get in the car and drive and not stop until I got to Mexico. Like, I had remembered I had a moment one day where I was literally ready to turn my car around on the highway and not stop until I got to Mexico. I'm not even joking. It was, I remember it was a Friday afternoon, it was summer, it was hot, it was smoggy. What's the word? Is that yeah, smoggy? And I was just stuck in this worst ever gridlock traffic heading north of the downtown core on a on a on a Friday afternoon, towards the end of the summer. And I swear, I I just and I was looking at the other side, right? The traffic going south and going into the city. And it was just like lanes were free, hardly any cars. I could imagine myself like literally jumping the guardrail, turning the car around, heading south, and not stopping until I hit Mexico because I just

The Mexico Moment And Blowing It Up

SPEAKER_00 9:02

could not stand five more minutes in my life the way I had created it. And so I lit that was right before I blew everything up and started over and like ended my relationship, left my career, rented my apartment and packed it up and high, hightailed it to Southeast Asia for six months. All of that was because I had created a life and a version of myself that wasn't authentically aligned with who I was. And so from that led up to 40. And then from 40 onward, I still kept reinventing myself. But now reinvention was about becoming who I always was authentically, the truest version of me, the version of me that aligns with what I really wanted, what my soul wanted, not what the world told me I should want and be happy about, but what I truly wanted, which was freedom, which was autonomy, which was creativity, which was, you know, so many things that were that you were not encouraged to want in this life, or we're not encouraged to prioritize. Those are the things that really mattered to me. And so I've spent the last like 10, 12 years really coming back to that authentic version of who I was. And the closest I've ever been was really when I was a teenager, quite honestly. Right. So, and and coming and and bringing all like bringing all of these parts of me back online, who I was when I was a child, who I was when I was a teen, even who I was longing to be when I was 20, right? I always say, you know, bring all the parts of yourself with you wherever you go, you know, and acknowledge them. Never you're all of who you've always been all the time, right? No matter where you go, no matter what you do, no matter who you're with, no matter how far you travel, there you are, right? All parts of you. So acknowledge who were you as a kid? Like, what did you dream about? What did you, what kind of make-believe did you play when you were a child? What did you dream about when you were a teenager? Who did you long to be? What was the world trying to, where were you fighting the world on being that it wasn't allowing you to be? Right? Especially if you were rebellious like me. What was it that you were rebelling against? Who was it that the world was trying to, who was it that you wanted to be that the world wasn't letting you, right? And then who did you abandon in your 20s? What parts of yourself did you leave behind? What parts of yourself did you silence or put on the back burner, right? Because you took on roles that the world told you you should, or made you feel, even if they felt, and I will say this because when I was in my 20s, I really felt like I was doing the greatest things. I thought

Why 40 Plus Is Your Power

SPEAKER_00 11:47

this is great. I'm I really want this, I'm aligned, and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like it felt like me. It didn't feel like a fake version because I think the world gets really good at conditioning us. It gets really good at conditioning us into what we want and what we should be, but it also lets it get really good at conditioning conditioning us as to what is possible. And I think a lot of us now are waking up to hey, there's a lot of other things possible that I've not even thought of, that isn't even on my radar because I've not seen it happen anywhere else. But it's written inside me, it's encoded within me and my soul and my energetic blueprint, and I am ready to make space for that to be revealed to me. That is the kind of reinvention that we're talking about. Right? So, going back to who was it that you turned your back on when you were 20? Who was it that you put on the back burner or silenced or minimized or shrunk because you didn't think that the world would be okay with that part of you? Right? What were the parts that you were in your 30s trying to force to make work that just weren't working that you need to let go of? And when you start to emerge at 40, what is it that's really coming through you? And what is it that really is wanting to emerge and how can you give it more space? All of that is clues to who you are becoming in your reinvention after 40. All of that. And I truly believe that a woman in her 40s and beyond is the most powerful version of herself. And I think that's why society has done a really good job of making us feel expired after 40, you know? And we're not, we're actually stepping, stepping into our most powerful era. Please let's not call it the Crone Age or the Crone era, because for me, Crone has a very negative connotation to it. And I know a lot of spiritual and women and female empowerment communities use that term. Please, can we just like can we just shelf that term for good? Because it crone in its original terms actually means death or corpse or something that's dying. Like it's just, it's just, it's so negative. And I know that we're trying to use it in empowering ways, but please let's not go there. Please, can we call it our queen era or something? Can we coin that? Not prone. But anyway, but we're literally we're entering into the most powerful period of our lives. That is when we have the most confidence, the most influence, when the world is less likely to steer us in a direction that is not aligned with who we really are. And I think that's why I truly believe that's why society has gotten so good at trying to make women who are over 40 feel disempowered. Because how else, how else would it continue the systems that are no longer working if, you know, if it didn't do everything that it could to keep the the women who actually have the power to change it from feeling emboldened to do so, you know? So that being said, if you're experiencing, if you're in your 40s and you're starting to feel like there's this whole other version of you that is coming out, that is coming online, that is ready to be seen, felt, and heard in the world, congratulations, fucking Lations. You're in your reinvention era. And, you know, my wish for you in this era of your life is that you really hone in on, again, all those parts of you that you've abandoned, all those things that you tried to live up to that felt so hard to uphold, all the other things that you wish you would have been instead, or had the freedom to be instead, or do and accomplish instead. I want you to bring all of that with you because all of that is information and all of that is data. And I really want you to open yourself up to the possibility of who you can become when there's nobody in the room listening, watching, or telling you who to be and what to do. Because that is the version of you that you need to give the most time and attention to. And I always say, you know, whenever we're going through a reinvention, we want to number one, really, really, really listen to our intuition. Let that be our guide. Let it be internally guided instead of or internal, internally sourced instead of externally led, right? I always say that, right? Listen to what your intuition is telling you, listen to what your gut is telling you, listen to what your fupa is telling you. Your fupa never lies. Trust your fupa, babies. Trust your fupa. Really take the lessons that you've learned. You know, really take the relationships, the heartbreak, the losses

Let Intuition Guide The Messy Middle

SPEAKER_00 18:17

that have molded you into who you are today and see who it was that they were trying to help you to become. Look at all the versions of you that you that you left by the wayside, you know, along the way, the parts of you that you hid, you shrunk, or or you know, you didn't think were were good enough to be accepted in the world or that the world was ready for. What are those parts of yourself that have been hiding? And just open yourself up to possibilities that you may not be aware of yet, that may not even be on your radar. Like remember, like I know I've always said this story. When I first, when I first started opening up to who I wanted to be in the world and started to go through the process of trying to discover, okay, well, if I know that nothing I've created up to this point really fits, who is it that I'm supposed to be? And I started to really open up to the possibilities there. And I started to do these visually guided meditations. And this is one that I've done with my clients quite a bit. And everybody has like the most profound like experiences with this meditation. I saw myself on a stage speaking into a microphone, lights in my face. I could tell there was a full audience of women, but I couldn't see the women's faces. It was just, I all I could see was the light and blackness. Even though I knew people were there, I couldn't actually see them. And that's because at the time I didn't know podcasting was a thing. I'm not even sure it had begun yet. And if it had, it was just like a bunch of nerds doing it in their parents' basement, right? Nobody was listening unless you were also a nerd. I didn't know this was a thing, but that's what I saw. So it was my intuition telling me that there's something else out there for me that I have not seen anywhere in the world as an option or a possibility, but it's there, it already exists, right? Everything exists simultaneously, every version of ourselves exists simultaneously in the quantum, right? And that was my clue of what it is that I was meant to do in the world. I just I saw it, I didn't know logistically how I was gonna make that happen or what it actually meant. But as I followed my intuition one tiny step at a time, that revealed itself to me. I revealed myself to me. Who it was meant to be revealed itself to me, and that's how this process needs to move. And so, you know, if you are going on a reinvention, right? If you're reinventing yourself, whether you know it's after your twenties, 30s, 40s, 50s, doesn't matter. My wish, my greatest intention for you is that your reinvention always, always, always, always be internally guided instead of being externally led. So that it can bring you home to the most authentic version of yourself. Because trust me, as somebody who's reinvented herself a thousand times, nothing is more uncomfortable or difficult or unfulfilling than constantly reinventing yourself based on, you know, the standards that everyone else tells you you need to live by. Instead of really looking at yourself and saying, Okay, who do I really want to be in the world and how do I really want to show up? What do I really want to do be an express? And the ironic thing, the ironic thing in all of this is that's exactly who the world needs you to be. Because that's who the world created you to be. You just got lost along the way with everything that society tells you to be. And that's actually not who the world needs. The world needs what the universe created you for, and that is in your authentic authentic self, your authentic blueprint, your energetic blueprint. It's all encoded there. So the best thing that you can do for the world, even though it may feel a little clunky or awkward and may get a little messy at first, who gives a flying fuck, right? Let it be messy, let it feel weird, let it feel awkward. But that is exactly who the world needs you to be. Even though sometimes the people around you may not see it that way. Just trust. Trust in yourself, trust in who you were created to be, and trust in what's been coming through you, trust in everything that you've been through, and trust that it's all led you to where you are right now in this moment. You haven't fucked it up, you haven't made a mistake, you didn't take a wrong turn. Even for me, when I took all those wrong turns reinventing myself, it's fed who I am today and who I'm becoming today. Now I'm gonna give you one prompt that I want you to take away with. I want you to take away after this episode and just really journal on and reflect on, okay? But before we go there, I just want to let you know I am launching a new offer. We are starting this September, September 2026. I believe for September 14th is the start date. And this is probably one of the best offers I think I've ever created. And I'm so excited about it because I've actually created an app to go with it. So it's called the Reinvention Circle. It's a 30-day container where we are gonna walk you through to help you embody this next level version of yourself, this version of you that you've always longed to be, but couldn't really wrap your head around or understand or didn't really feel safe to be your entire

A New Offer The Reinvention Circle

SPEAKER_00 23:57

life. So there's gonna be a companion app. We're gonna have four live group coaching sessions. I'm capping it at 10 women only because it's the first time I'm running this. And I'm also keeping it super, super, super affordable because I I I literally want this to be available to anybody and everybody who wants to take this. So the regular price is $297, but we do have an early bridge pricing if you commit before September 1st. So if you if you if you come in before September 1st, it is only $197. So you get $100 off. So the link is in the show notes. So make sure you check it out after this podcast. Okay. Now, here's what I want you to reflect on. So I want you to go back and look at those different area eras of your life. Your teens, your 20s, your 30s, and so on. In your teens, who was it that you were who was it that you were that you were expressing yourself as that the world was trying to suppress in you? In your 20s, who was it that you became because you thought it was going to please everybody else, or was what society was was going to make you happy, or what society told you you should be? In your 30s, what started to feel hard? What started to feel like you couldn't hold on to? What started to feel like this should be fulfilling me, but it's not. It's feeling empty, it's feeling completely unfulfilling. I feel lost. I feel like I'm I'm I'm I'm struggling to hold it

The Journal Prompt That Changes Everything

SPEAKER_00 25:21

all together and make I'm forcing it to make it work, right? And then in your 40s, or wherever you are right now, like this is the most important one. Wherever you are right now, no matter what age you're in, if you feel like you're on a precipice of an of a reinvention, this is the one most important question I want you to ask yourself. Who would I be if I weren't afraid of what everyone else was going to think? Who would I be if I didn't think if I wasn't afraid that I wouldn't be okay, that I wouldn't have the money, I wouldn't have the community, I wouldn't have the friends, I wouldn't have the family, I wouldn't have the partner. Who would I be if I wasn't afraid of all of that? If I thought everything in the world would be there for me on the other side, and I would be loved and I would be supported and everything would be safe, who would I be? What would I love to do? How would I want to express myself in the world? And really pay attention to that. And that is what's going to start to spark this next version of yourself. So, with that, you guys, I will leave you to journal to reflect. Let me know what comes up for you in the comments or reply to the email or whatever the heck you're seeing this. I don't even know where I'm posting these things anymore because again, I'm going through my own reinvention. I'm also on TikTok and Subsex, so you can check me out there. Until next time, you guys, massive love.