The Reinvention Series: Finding Your Way Home

So many of us are currently navigating life transitions—a marriage or career that ended, the kids grown and gone, a parent who needs your caretaking. Perhaps a version of yourself that you spent decades building, and you're not certain it's the one you want to carry forward.

Chip Conley has a name for that place. He says every transition has three parts: the ending, the messy middle, and the beginning of something new. Most of us are living in the middle—and it can feel lonely.

So Maria sat down with four people who have lived in that middle, and who found their way through with more clarity, more courage, and more heart.

Here is what this community teaches us over and over: we don't move through change alone. We move through it together.

As Martha Beck says, “I just want to help people come home…I finally came home, and it’s wonderful.” 

Maria's response says it best: “They don’t put you on the cover of Success or Fortune Magazine for finding your way home. But there is nothing more important or more difficult to do than to find your way home."

That's what these four conversations are for. We hope the guidance and wisdom help bring you home to yourself.

Martha Beck on Moving Beyond Anxiety to Find Our Purpose

Martha spent sixty years with anxiety before she found her way out. What she discovered while researching her book Beyond Anxiety changed how she lives, and here’s some of what she shares:

• Anxiety and creativity cannot run in your brain at the same time. Anything you make quiets the fear: a recipe, a card for a friend, mud pies with your grandchildren.
• When you're stuck asking "what can I do," try asking "what could I make" instead. Martha explains why that one word shifts your brain.
• A five-minute sensory exercise that brings anxiety down on the spot.

Chip Conley on Radically Reframing Midlife

Chip's late forties came apart all at once. He rebuilt, then founded the world's first midlife wisdom school. He and Maria talk about what our culture fails to give people in transition, and how to give it to yourself.

• The anatomy of any transition: the ending, the messy middle, and the beginning of something new. Naming your stage tells you what you actually need.
• If you're 54 and you live to 90, you have as many years of adulthood ahead of you as behind you.
• Four pathways to purpose, and how to find yours when you can't leave the job or the caretaking.

Jen Hatmaker on Rebuilding and Reinventing Yourself After Heartbreak

After 26 years, Jen's marriage ended. She was certain she would never be happy again. Five years later she calls it “the best worst thing that ever happened to her.”

• Why the villain-and-victim version of the story is the easiest one to tell, and what she found when her therapist made her look at her own contribution.
• Investing in your closest friendships is never wasted time. Build those connections in daylight, because the dark night comes for everyone.
• The question she kept beside her laptop while writing: will I be proud of this in five years?

Joanne Lee Molinaro, The Korean Vegan on Faith, Identity, and Storytelling

Joanne spent twenty years as a trial lawyer before going all in on the life she actually wanted. She talks with Maria about inherited fear, creative work, and choosing yourself at 42.

• Generational trauma versus generational wealth, and why she carried a fear of losing everything that was never hers to begin with.
• Start it as a hobby. She spent four years on The Korean Vegan with no deadlines and no plan to monetize, and allowed her hobby to flourish. 
• What it means to be married to someone who believes in you when you don't believe in yourself.

Wherever you are in navigating your own transition, we hope the wisdom and guidance inside these conversations help you find your way back to yourself. Thank you for being here with us!

P.S. We'd love to hear from you in the comments: what's one thing that has helped you through a transition, big or small?