Somewhere along the way I wrote a rulebook for myself. I do not remember doing it. But it was definitely me.
Welcome to this week's Thought Gem — your reminder to pause, breathe, and choose your focus.
It had rules about how a good mom shows up. Rules about what success was supposed to look like and in what order it was supposed to arrive. Rules about how agreeable to be, how much to ask for, how long to sit still before feeling guilty about it. Rules about whose comfort came first and how far down the list mine was allowed to be.
A lot of them made sense once. For a different season, a different version of me, a different life. But I kept carrying them into new chapters like they still applied. And some of them have been running the show for way longer than they should have.
Angela Burk, founder and author of Real Girls Guide to Midlife, knows all about this too well. Her forties hit hard. Divorce. Menopause she did not see coming. A career leap into a startup with no safety net. A man in Australia she somehow fell in love with anyway. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, she looked up and realized the rules she had been living by were costing her the best parts of herself.
So she burned the rulebook down. And she's sharing what happened next on Wednesday's podcast episode.
Your invitation for this week:
Sit with one rule you are still following that you wrote a long time ago for a life that looks nothing like your life right now. Where did it come from? And does it still deserve to be there?
Come hang Wednesday. Stay until the end because Angela is bringing gifts. Three lucky listeners are walking away with a copy of her book and the details are coming Wednesday.
Catch you then!
xo Tracy
P.S. Go deeper with us on A Beautiful Fix this Wednesday. If you're not already following the show, you can find it on Apple or Spotify and we're also on YouTube!
