The Awakening of a Midlife Butterfly

The Spark

It started in a tiny boulangerie in France when I was just eleven. I stood there, heart pounding, summoning all the courage I could muster to order a baguette in French.

The thrill when the baker understood me lit something deep inside—a spark of independence, of curiosity, of connection. That single, dusty moment became the seed of a lifelong love affair with travel and a quiet knowing that the world had more to teach me than any classroom ever could.

The Wanderlust Years

By sixteen, I was standing at the helm of a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, wind in my hair and the wide world opening up before me. We sailed through Greece, wandered the streets of Jerusalem, explored ruins in Crete.  I didn’t just fall in love with places—I fell in love with possibility.  For the first time, I felt truly free. Free from expectations. Free from being the “good girl.”

Free to ask: What else is out there? And who might I become if I find it?

My twenties were a whirlwind of movement. I said yes—a lot. I lived abroad, worked in new cultures, tasted everything, soaked up languages, and kept chasing that spark of freedom wherever it led me.

Then came my thirties: career building, motherhood, and emigration to Australia. I had created a good life—but one built on duty, not desire.   Somewhere along the way, I stopped listening to myself.

The Unraveling

Then came menopause. The great unraveling.  My son was getting ready to leave home. My job had me running on adrenaline.  My nervous system was fried.  I looked in the mirror one day and barely recognized myself—not in a dramatic movie-scene kind of way, but in that quiet, aching “Where the hell did I go?” kind of way.

I didn’t need a makeover. I needed a resurrection.