This is for the women who are in the messy middle again. And you know it’s not such a bad place, it just feels like you are standing at another crossroads.
Something deep inside whispers or perhaps screams: This is not my beautiful life.
Not because it isn’t beautiful in its own way. Not because you aren’t grateful for what you have. But because somewhere along the way, the woman you were meant to become got buried under the woman you thought you should be.
You aren’t alone in this twilight space between what is and what could be. Every woman hits this crossroads at least once in her life – often several times (tell me about it, I have many changling t-shirts). Sometimes, it arrives with a whisper, sometimes with a shout. Sometimes through loss, sometimes through success. The catalyst doesn’t matter as much as the recognition: something needs to change.
What you know is that the life that fit you six months (or even 6 minutes) ago doesn’t fit anymore. Your body’s exhausted. Your soul’s restless. You can’t quite explain what’s wrong, but something’s unravelling, and you can’t stop it.
It can feel like you are falling apart at the seams. Yet we all know, seamstress or not, you can stitch seams back together. They won’t be the same, but that is okay. It really is.
What if the work that once gave you purpose but now makes you want to scratch your eyes out? Or the relationships that felt right but now feel suffocating. Maybe it’s just this overwhelming sense that you can’t keep living like this – even though you’ve no bloody clue what ‘like this’ means or what comes next.
Yeeharrrr – this is the messy middle.
You may be wondering why I don’t seem concerned or even seem a tad excited. That’s because I am. You know the saying, it’s always darkest just before the dawn – well, it is. I have found myself in many a dark spot and felt like I wanted to jump off the mountain, but there was always something that said you’ve been here before – several times.
I have, and you probably have too. Each time you thought you’d finally sorted yourself out. Found your purpose. Healed your wounds. Set your boundaries. Figured out who you are.
And for a while, it worked. You felt alive again.
Now here you are again – between who you were and who you’re becoming, with no map, no certainty, and a growing suspicion that you’re doing life wrong because you can’t seem to stay transformed.
What if I told you this isn’t failure?
What if the messy middle is exactly where midlife women go to reclaim what decades of self-betrayal stole? What if it’s not a problem to solve but sacred ground to honour? Breathe into that. I know I have to.
What the Messy Middle Actually Is
The messy middle is the edge of transformation. It’s that deeply uncomfortable space where old identities unravel and new ones haven’t taken form yet.
For many women, it often looks like this:
- Old identities unravel. The good wife. The devoted mother. The reliable employee. The selfless friend. The perfect one who never asks for anything. These masks you’ve worn so long, they’ve welded to your face, start cracking. You can’t hold them in place anymore, even when you try.
- New ones haven’t formed yet. You don’t know who you’re becoming. You just know you can’t be who you were anymore. When people ask what you want or where you’re going, you’ve got nothing. Just this uncomfortable knowing that something has to change.
- Everything feels uncertain. Your body’s shouting at you – shingles, migraines, bits that hurt all the time, exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix. Relationships that once worked feel like ill-fitting shoes. Work that once gave meaning feels like shite. You’re questioning everything, and that feels terrifying.
- You’re between lives. One foot in what was, one foot reaching toward what might be, and the ground beneath you feels like it’s moving. You’re neither here nor there. Just suspended in this uncomfortable in-between.
The messy middle often arrives after decades of self-betrayal. There are so many things you have done you could kick yourself for, and the worst is postponing your heart’s desires until ‘later’ (which never came). You’ve been a good girl for so long that your wild heart has nearly forgotten how to speak.
The messy middle feels like failure. Like you should have this sorted by now. Like something’s fundamentally wrong with you for unravelling again at your age. Because let’s face it, you are now a grown-up. You look grown up in the mirror, and you are wearing comfortable shoes – or is that only me?
But here’s what your wild heart knows, even when your head doesn’t: the messy middle is where transformation happens.
It’s not comfortable. It’s not Instagram-worthy. It’s messy, confusing, and sometimes frightening. But it’s real. And your wild heart has been waiting for your entire life.
Why It Keeps Happening (And Why That’s Actually Good)
The phoenix doesn’t rise once and retire to a nice cottage in the Cotswolds or to Spain, in my case.
You thought you’d done this work already. Maybe you left the marriage that was killing you. Started the business. Moved countries. Set boundaries with your family. Found yourself.
And for a while, it worked. You felt alive again. Clear. Certain.
Then life shifted. Or you shifted. And here you are again – standing at another bloody crossroads, wondering if you’re going backwards.
You’re not.
Life moves in cycles:
- Revolution (life demands change)
- Revelation (you see what needs to shift)
- Evolution (you emerge transformed).
Then the cycle begins again – how very dare it.
I know this pattern intimately. In 2018, my spine fractured. My body forced me to stop, and I had no choice but to listen. I learned to slow down, to honour my body’s wisdom. I evolved.
In 2024, shingles knocked me flat for twelve weeks. Same message, different delivery system. I’d stopped listening again. Started pushing through exhaustion. Ignoring the quiet voice whispering ‘this doesn’t feel right’ every time I opened my computer.
Same pattern. Deeper layer.
Each time you find yourself in the messy middle, you’re not starting over from scratch. You’re spiralling deeper. Burning away more of what isn’t you. Reclaiming more of your wild heart.
The messy middle repeats because:
- You outgrow identities. What fits at 35 doesn’t fit at 45, 55 or 65. The version of yourself you built in your twenties can’t contain who you’re becoming in your fifties. That’s not failure – that’s growth. And let’s face it, even if you miss the twenty-something you, it’s not sustainable now.
- Life unravels you. Through illness, endings, losses, grief, and exhaustion. Through circumstances that won’t let you stay comfortable and in that neat little comfort zone. Sometimes the universe whispers. Sometimes it shouts. Sometimes it sends shingles – please never again.
- You stop betraying yourself. And the old life you built on self-betrayal – on toxic yeses and making yourself small – can’t hold anymore. It has to crack open.
- You’re becoming. And becoming never ends. You don’t arrive at some final destination called ‘transformed’ and stay there forever. You keep evolving, keep shedding, keep growing into more of yourself.
The messy middle isn’t where you’re stuck. It’s where you shed borrowed identities and remember who you actually are.
What Happens in the Messy Middle
The messy middle isn’t tidy. If it were, we’d call it something else. Here’s what actually happens in this sacred, uncomfortable space:
- Grief arrives. For the woman you were. The life you built. The certainty you thought you’d found. Even if that life was quietly killing you, grief still shows up. You mourn the masks, even though they were suffocating you. You grieve the old identity, even though you’ve outgrown it. This grief is normal. Necessary. Sacred.
- Fear whispers its poison. What if you’re making a mistake? What if you can’t figure out who you’re becoming? What if people don’t understand? What if you end up alone? What if everyone was right about you all along? Fear gets very creative in the messy middle.
- Resistance fights back. Part of you wants to retreat. Go back to the familiar, even if it was suffocating. The unknown feels more dangerous than the known misery. Your perfectionist wants a plan. Your people-pleaser wants everyone’s approval before you change. Your self-sacrificer whispers that wanting something different makes you selfish.
- But your wild heart gets louder. That voice you’ve been ignoring for decades? In the messy middle, she demands to be heard. She’s done with toxic yeses. Done with perfecting yourself into exhaustion. Done with hiding your truth to keep others comfortable. She’s been waiting for this moment your whole life.
- Your body speaks truth. The exhaustion that won’t shift, no matter how much you sleep. The illness that forces you to stop. The pain that makes you pay attention. The signals you’ve been ignoring become impossible to ignore. Your body has known the truth long before your mind admits it.
- Old identities break apart. The good girl who never causes trouble. The perfect mother who sacrifices everything. The reliable one who never says no. The invisible woman who takes up no space. These masks you’ve worn to survive start falling away. And underneath? You don’t know yet. That’s terrifying. That’s the point.
- The void opens. That space between who you were and who you’re becoming – the sacred void where nothing is certain and everything is possible. This is the hardest part. Sitting in not-knowing. Trusting what can’t be seen. Letting the darkness gestate something new without rushing to fill the emptiness.
- And slowly, quietly, something shifts. Not all at once. Not with fanfare or fireworks. But you start hearing your wild heart more clearly. You begin setting boundaries without apologising. You start choosing yourself, even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when people don’t understand.
The messy middle is where you stop betraying yourself and start reclaiming your wild heart.
It’s messy because you’re dismantling a life built on everyone else’s expectations. It’s middle because you’re suspended between identities. And it’s sacred because this is where transformation actually happens – not in the glossy ‘after’ photos, but here, in the uncomfortable unravelling.
Self-Betrayal Archetypes’ Reaction to the Messy Middle
The messy middle is triggered by the breakdown of these ‘masks’. The core reaction for each archetype is one of crisis and deep fear, as their primary coping mechanism is failing.
| Self-Betrayal Archetype | Their Core Pattern & Fear | How They React in the Messy Middle |
| The People-Pleaser | Belief: Worth is measured by usefulness and likability. Fear: Losing approval; being disliked. | The mask of ‘the selfless friend’ or ‘good wife’ starts cracking, and she can’t hold it in place anymore. She feels intense panic when she says ‘No’ and tries to fix the unravelling by saying more toxic yeses. Her exhaustion is profound as she keeps trying to meet everyone’s needs. |
| The Perfectionist | Belief: Must be flawless to be enough. Fear: Being exposed as a fraud; making a mistake. | The uncertainty of the void is terrifying because it lacks a clear plan. She sees the unravelling as a personal failure. She doubles down, trying to perfect her way out of the mess – creating hyper-detailed plans or judging herself mercilessly for not having it ‘sorted by now.’ |
| The Invisible Woman | Belief: Taking up space is dangerous; safety lies in disappearing. Fear: Being seen, hurt, or disappointed. | She feels the urge to retreat and go back to the familiar. The messy middle forces her to take up space and make a difficult change, which is the very thing she is wired to avoid. She’ll withdraw emotionally and physically, aiming to be the ‘invisible woman who takes up no space’ to stay safe from the pain of transformation. |
| The Self-Sacrificer | Belief: Love must be earned through endless giving; worth is measured by how much she does for others. Fear: Becoming unneeded or selfish. | She faces the horrifying thought that wanting something different makes her selfish. The exhaustion from decades of giving until the well runs dry is now shouting at her. She grieves the loss of the ‘perfect mother who sacrifices everything’ and feels extreme guilt over putting herself first. |
| The Self-Doubter | Belief: Trusts everyone’s judgment except her own. Fear: Being wrong; not being ‘good enough.’ | The requirement to trust what can’t be seen is nearly impossible. She seeks external validation like insurance policies against her uncertainty. She’ll ask everyone what they think she should do, deferring to any authority figure rather than listening to the inner voice of her wild heart. |
| The Postponer | Belief: Her heart’s desires are luxuries to be postponed for ‘someday.’ Fear: Starting before the ‘perfect moment’; not being ready. | She feels immense resistance to the work of the messy middle. She’ll continue to postpone the ‘heart projects’ and instead try to fill the void with new obligations, deadlines, or busyness, all while waiting for the ‘perfect moment’ that never comes. |
| The Abandoner | Belief: If she’s not here, it can’t hurt her. Fear: Feeling the truth of how far she’s strayed. | She takes self-betrayal to its end by checking out emotionally and spiritually. Her reaction is to numb herself with busyness, substances, or scrolling to avoid feeling the truth. She will go through the motions of life while her soul has packed its bags, attempting to disappear from the transformation process itself. |
Journal Prompts: Defining the Unravelling
These prompts help you identify where you are in the Messy Middle, recognise the self-betrayal patterns that are cracking, and understand the cyclical nature of transformation.
1. Identifying the Crossroads
- What is the specific change or feeling that made you realise the life that fit you six months ago doesn’t fit anymore?
- If your deepest self could scream a single sentence right now, what would it be (e.g., ‘This is not my beautiful life’)? Why is this true, even if you are grateful for what you have?
- The Messy Middle is often triggered because the woman you were meant to become got buried under the woman you thought you should be. What is one specific ‘should’ you have been living by?
2. Recognising the Cracking Masks
Review the self-betrayal archetypes and answer the following:
- Which of the archetypes (People-Pleaser, Perfectionist, Invisible Woman, Self-Sacrificer, Self-Doubter, Postponer, Abandoner) is loudest in your life right now? Not sure? Take the quiz.
- Describe a recent moment where this ‘mask’ (old identity) started to crack or was too heavy to wear (e.g., ‘My People-Pleaser said ‘Yes’ to an event, and my body instantly gave me a migraine’ ).
- The old identities served you once; maybe they kept you safe or loved. What was the initial benefit you got from wearing that mask?
3. Understanding the Cycle (Revolution & Revelation)
- Think back to a previous time you were in the ‘messy middle’ (a past revolution). What was the revelation you had that led to your last evolution (e.g., ‘I realised I needed to leave that job’)?
- The text suggests you are not starting over, but spiralling deeper. What is the deeper layer of truth or the new identity you are now outgrowing?
- If your body is shouting at you through exhaustion, pain, or illness, what specific truth do you think it is trying to make you pay attention to?
Ready to start reclaiming your energy? Discover which archetype is holding you back with the Self-Betrayal Archetype Quiz and join me for the next step: How to navigate the messy middle.
I’d also love to invite you to read my book – Words From The Wild – it’s part memoir and part self-help and looks at betrayal.
