Have you ever had a moment where you didn’t have the answers yet… but your whole body knew something had shifted?

As I sat on that ferry to Salerno watching the beautiful pink full moon rise behind the mountains. I knew something had changed. I just wasn’t quite sure what yet. I was coming to grips with this new page in the Midlife book I’m writing.

The metaphorical ‘storm’ I’d experienced in Puglia had passed. It was as if it had washed away the dust of the past few intensely emotional months. I felt almost cleansed from everything I’d been holding and, for the first time in what felt like ages, I could breathe just a little easier.

 
You know that feeling? It’s both exhausting, yet refreshing too.

Leaving somewhere earlier than planned can feel like failure, but I knew I was in a state of change. I trusted that I was making the right call. I could feel a new beginning gently forming - one I didn’t have words for yet.

 
Arriving back in the UK wasn’t the smooth landing I’d imagined. No trains, no direct routes and somehow I ended up on a local bus. But it was perfect. As it wound its way through tiny Essex villages, I found myself smiling and a sense of peace. Instead of getting frustrated, I just flowed with it. It mirrored back to me what Puglia had already shown me… that I needed slowness.

When the train finally pulled into the last station, I knew I wasn’t the same woman who’d left a week earlier.
I felt lighter. Clearer. More grounded.
Ready.

A chapter had quietly closed… and another was already writing itself.

Full-Circle Realisations: Decisions, Alignment, and the Moment Everything Clicked

Over the next few days, clarity arrived like a truth quietly turning up its light so you can finally see it.

Long walks, journaling, and giving myself permission to sit in the uncomfortable space of not-knowing, that’s when the next road map started revealing itself.
I realised I wasn’t going back to my old life.
Not to my old job.
Not to the version of me who’d lived in adrenaline mode.

 
I could feel the rightness of the decision in my body. Morocco had taught me I could trust myself completely, and that trust was still guiding me.
I had faith as I sat with my new friend - patience.

Then the signs started lighting up like lanterns on a dark path:
• Conversations guiding me towards Margaret River, Western Australia
• Offers of support
• A place to live appearing exactly when I needed it
• New connections forming out of nowhere
• And the dates… oh, the dates.

When I checked flights, I saw I’d be landing back in Australia on the 27th of November — exactly two years to the day since I left.

It felt like the Universe saying, “This way.”
That was the moment I knew.
This wasn’t just a decision.
It was alignment.

The signs, the dates, my intuition, and me — all saying yes.

The Shift from Fear to Self-Trust

The conviction felt so right I stopped doubting myself.
I stopped apologising to myself, or anyone else.
I was making choices from a place of self-trust, not fear.

This is what midlife has taught me: these shifts aren’t really about geography or circumstance. They’re about coming home to yourself, finally hearing the voice of the woman who got drowned out by years of busyness, duty and responsibility.

Travel always reminds me how to listen.

Italy and that pink full moon held up a great big mirror and showed me everything I still needed to face — an honest reckoning with who I am now.

The process had given me my strength back.
Choosing Australia, choosing WA, choosing me — felt like the most natural next step.

I was ready in a way that didn’t need perfection or a five-year plan. Just courage. Just presence. Just that quiet, unshakable knowing.

(And to be honest, I’ve never been a long-term planner anyway. I mean who knows what is going to happen! Let the magic happen, I say.)

The Energy of Becoming: A New Chapter and a New Self

There’s a certain energy when you stop resisting the life that’s calling you. I’ve started calling it my “energy of potentiality”, a beautiful vibration of anticipation, alignment, and self-love all mixed together.

I felt it when I booked the flights, when I walked on the beach, when I held my mum’s hand that week, and when I decided to start packing my suitcase again (a whole 6 weeks early like an excited teenage backpacker!).

 
This journey isn’t escape. It’s deliberate, intentional forward motion.
And the biggest realisation of all?
I wasn’t choosing Western Australia.
I was choosing myself.

The woman who trusts her intuition without question..
The woman who isn’t afraid to start over.
The woman who is finally ready to put herself at the centre of her own life.
And that, my beautiful midlife butterflies, is what midlife re-awakening actually is.

 
It’s when you stop asking permission and start listening to the voice within.
It’s when you stop waiting and start choosing.
It’s when you stop hiding and start shining.
It’s when you come home to yourself, fully and unapologetically.

This is the heart of The Midlife Butterfly Effect — the Evolve stage happening in real time.
Not theory.
Not metaphor.
Lived, messy, beautiful experience.

I’m stepping into a new chapter.
And I am so ready.
I don’t know how this will unfold, and that’s exactly the beauty. The story is writing itself.

So I’ll leave you with this.
💭 What part of your life is no longer serving you?
💭 What decision have you been delaying out of fear or guilt?
💭 Where is your intuition trying to guide you if you’d only listen?
💭 And what would shift if you trusted yourself the way you trust others?

🦋 Sometimes the re-awakening isn’t the end of the journey.
It’s the beginning of becoming a beautiful Midlife Butterfly.
This chapter? It’s yours now.

🌙 Want to explore your own reawakening?

I’ve created something small but powerful to support you through this season. A Midlife Reawakening Mini-Guide.

For now, it’s available only to newsletter subscribers.
You’ll be the first to receive it before I share it anywhere else.

If you’d like to receive it:

💌 Sign up for Letters from a Midlife Butterfly and you’ll be notified the moment it’s released and you’ll receive subscriber-only reflections, stories and offerings each week.