Tomorrow I turn 53 (shout out to my September Virgos!) and I don’t know about you, but birthdays always get me thinking.

But first, I had an overwhelming (in the best kind of way) response to last week’s Thoughts on Home. Which made me even more sure about creating that space for us that I’ve been working on. I've spent a lot of this week reading your stories about home, family, identity and the chapters of life you're navigating right now, and all week I kept thinking the same thing:

I wish you could read each other's stories.

I'll come back to that, because it has everything to do with our own little corner of the internet I've been hinting about these past few weeks. ❤️

But this morning, I was thinking about what I want to write about on the last day of being 52. September has always been my own little fresh start, and my birthday is usually that opportunity to make plans for the year ahead.

This year, though, I’ve been looking backward more than normal because 52 did not turn out at all like I thought it would.

There are parts of this past year I've shared with you and parts I haven't. Some I'll eventually talk more about, but I can tell you it has been one of the more disorienting and sometimes painful years of my life.

A lot of the identity pillars I've had for decades started to crack. Motherhood changed as my kids became adults and didn't need me in the same ways anymore. My relationship with work and success changed, big time. My relationship with being visible changed too, although tbh I never really felt fully comfortable with that one anyway.

Even some of the things I'd spent years thinking I wanted started to feel different once I actually had them. For a person who has spent most of her life feeling safer when she knows what happens next, you can imagine how much fun I've been having with all of this.

Exactly ZERO. 😂

But here's the part I didn't expect: as some of those identities started crumbling, the things underneath them became more solid.

My marriage grew stronger, for one. Craig and I showed up for each other over and over again through some hard stuff we both individually had going on, and my relationships with my kids changed too, in beautiful ways.

At our Mother's Day dinner, each of them reflected back to me what they loved most about me as their mom. Almost none of it had anything to do with what I'd accomplished, how successful I'd been or what I'd provided for them. They reflected me back to me, just pure unconditional love, which was so full circle and healing for someone who grew up aching for that.

For years, so much of my identity had been wrapped around being the mom who was needed or the founder who could figure everything out. I was the one who kept producing, showing up, solving problems and carrying the next thing.

I jokingly tell my therapist that I’m the prefrontal cortex for a whole lot of people and she agrees. 😂 Motherhood alone can turn you into the household air traffic controller, but add a business that grew much bigger and more complicated than I ever imagined and apparently at some point your brain files a formal complaint.

Mine did and I was burned out.

Correction: I AM burned out.

I'm incredibly proud of what I've built and grateful for what it has given my family, but this year made me ask a question I hadn't really allowed myself to ask before:

What if something can be good and successful and still cost you more than you want to keep paying for it?

I honestly don't have all the answers yet, and maybe that's one of the biggest things 52 has taught me.

I don't have to.

As some of those identities have started taking up less space, I've found myself making more room for things that feel much more fundamental to who I am, which brings me back to one of your replies this week.

A woman wrote after Thoughts on Home and told me how much she's enjoying my essays. She said she'd always known me as a stylist, but not a writer, which made me laugh because I've never really thought of myself as a stylist.

But I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember.

My love for it started in third grade when I had a poem published in our local newspaper. In fifth grade, my journaling practice started with my first diary I got for Christmas, complete with lock and key like every good 80s girl's diary. 😂

I was lucky enough to have amazing English teachers in high school, but the core memory that really stuck with me happened in college when, on the last day of my first college English class, my professor pulled me aside and said, “No matter what you do, make sure you write every day. Even if you only write for yourself. You have an incredible gift for it.”

And I’ve followed that advice almost every day. I filled paper journal after paper journal until eventually switching to a digital one that I've written in regularly for the past 15 years. It now has over two million words, and believe me, my old laptop feels every bit of that every time it struggles to open that doc! 😂

Writing has always been how I process big feelings and make sense of things. It's where I tell myself the truth and document the little details in my days that would otherwise be forgotten.

Even Get Your Pretty On started because I wanted somewhere to write. Back then, I didn't think I could just write essays about my life and expect anyone to read them because honestly, I didn't think I was all that interesting! So style became my way in.

Eventually I wrote The Ultimate Book of Outfit Formulas, built businesses and created more content than I could possibly count. Writing never disappeared for me, it just became attached to a lot of other things.

Unfun things like content, marketing, algorithms, products, deadlines. Ugh.

What feels different now isn't that I've rediscovered my love of writing.

I've created room for writing to be an expression of ME again.

I'm starting to think rediscovering myself isn't about becoming someone new at all, maybe it's just making more room for the parts of me that were there all along.

I've also had this weird grief sneak in at unexpected times, grief for all the years I spent so caught up in the doing that I missed out on some of the being. I don't regret those years because they helped create a life I'm incredibly grateful for, but I also don't want to go back.

I'm figuring out that burnout recovery isn't just about resting. For me, it's about rebuilding a relationship with my actual life by doing things like cooking and writing, lifting weights, doing yoga, being outside and listening to the birds. Just doing things I enjoy without immediately wondering what they could become.

Spending more time being where I am and less time trying to figure out where I'm going.

That's a very different way of living for me because I've spent most of my life planning, anticipating and trying to know what happens next. I thought that was how I kept myself safe, but now I'm experimenting with something else.

What if I don't need to know yet?

What if I can pay attention to what feels good and true and alive, take the next step when it appears, and let some things unfold without immediately needing to know where they're going?

I'm trying very hard not to turn rediscovering myself into another thing I need to be successful at because that would be extremely on brand for me, but I'm onto myself now. 😂

And these Sunday letters have become one of my favorite examples of what happens when I stop trying to plan ten steps ahead. I just wanted to write again, so I did.

And you started writing back.

The response to last week's Thoughts on Home was overwhelming in the best kind of way. There were so many beautiful stories and, by the way, some of you are also incredible writers!

I heard from women grieving their own childhood homes, women who have moved countless times and learned that home is wherever they create a gathering place, and one woman who told me she’s still deep in the years of raising young kids and that hearing from someone farther down the road helps her hold the long view while she’s in the messy middle of it.

Different women at different ages with completely different lives and somehow, we're all talking about the same things.

Some of what you've shared with me has stopped me in my tracks, and I keep thinking: I wish you could read this. Not my response.

Each other's.

Because maybe the woman grieving the loss of her anchor needs to hear from the woman who learned she could create a new one. Maybe the mother deep in the years of being needed could use the long view from a mother whose kids have already grown, or maybe the one grieving her child going off to college just needs a good cry with someone else going through it.

We're all ahead of someone and behind someone else in different parts of life and there is so much wisdom in that.

Sometimes the best response to Does anyone else feel this way? is simply another woman saying, Yes! Me too. I've been there.

Which brings me to what I've been dying to tell you.

I made us a space. ❤️

For the past few weeks, I've been building the Rediscovering Me Community, a private gathering place where we can take the conversations we start here and actually have them with each other.

And one of the things I'm most excited about isn't something I'm going to create for you.

It's putting all of you in the same room.

Because we're not all in the same place. Some of you still have kids at home and are living through years I remember so clearly, others are right where I am figuring out what life looks like when the house gets quieter and roles we've held for decades begin to change, and some of you are 10 or 15 or 20 years ahead of me and have already walked through things I'm only beginning to wonder about.

I need your long view too.

That's the kind of Community I want this to be. Not a place where I have all the answers, but a place where we bring what we've learned so far.

I've hosted large free communities before and learned a lot from them, including how quickly an open space can become noisy and start feeling a whole lot like the social media we were trying to get away from.

I want this to feel different. Smaller, more intentional, thoughtfully hosted and moderated.

That's why Community will be a paid space, while these Sunday letters will remain completely free. We'll use the weekly letters as a jumping-off point, take our Breadcrumbs deeper, share what we're navigating, swap ideas and recommendations and celebrate what's going well.

And not everything needs to be deep. 😂 I’m dying to know what book you can't put down, what you're wearing on repeat, your favorite skincare products, where you just traveled, what you're making for dinner and whatever random thing you're ridiculously obsessed with right now too.

Because rediscovering ourselves isn't one giant existential conversation, it's our actual lives.

Most of all, I want this to become a place where you start recognizing names, where you remember what another woman shared last week and wonder how she's doing, and where you find women whose stories make you think, Oh, you too?

You know, the kind of connection we miss from the old days of the internet.

I'll be there starting conversations, sharing, commenting and participating too, but I don't want to be the center of the Community, I want to be part of it.

And because the kind of room we create together matters to me, this won't be another place to debate politics or religion, promote ourselves, diagnose each other, judge someone else's choices or prove that we're right. There are plenty of places online for all of that.

We won't all believe the same things or make the same choices, and that's okay. Curiosity, kindness and respect are how we'll take care of this space and each other.

Think less social media. More sitting around a table with women who get it.

When the doors open, you can join for $9/month, or through September 30 become a Founding Member for $49 for your entire first year, the best annual rate I'll offer.

But... it's not quite ready for you to join yet. 😂

I'm putting the finishing touches on everything now, and I'd rather invite you into a room that's ready than one where I'm still shoving things into closets.

Next Sunday, September 13, I'm opening the doors.

For now, I just wanted you to know that I made us a gathering place, and after reading your stories this week, I'm more certain than ever that we need it. ❤️

So what do I want from 53?

For once, I don't have a giant list or a five-year plan and honestly, I don't even really want one.

I want to write. I want to travel AND I want to be home. I want to get stronger, use my hands, spend time with the people I love and notice the hummingbirds.

But mostly, I want to be where I am.

I want to spend less time predicting my life and more time living it, to notice what feels alive without immediately asking what it's supposed to become, and to have direction without demanding certainty.

I spent a lot of my life believing safety came from knowing what happened next, but at 53, I'm allowing for the possibility that maybe I don't need to.

52 didn't turn out anything like I thought it would. Some of the things I thought were holding me up cracked and somehow, underneath them, I found my marriage stronger, my family closer and my writing waiting for me.

And, unexpectedly, all of you.

I went into 52 thinking a lot about what I was going to do next, but I'm leaving it thinking much more about who I already am.

The writer was already there. The woman who loves making a home was already there. The mother is still here, even though mothering looks different. The woman who likes cooking for hours, wandering outside and noticing the birds was always here too.

I don't think I need to reinvent her.

I think I just want to slow down and give her more room.

This week's Breadcrumb 🌱

What part of yourself has been there all along that you might be ready to give more room to?

Not something you need to learn, accomplish or become, but something that's already yours.

Maybe you've been wanting to paint again, write, garden, sing, read books for hours, make things, travel, play music or sit outside and do absolutely nothing useful. (My favorite!)

Or maybe you just don't know yet. Pay attention this week to what pulls at you because there might be a breadcrumb there.

As for me, I have no idea exactly what 53 is going to look like, and maybe for the first time in my life, I'm starting to think that might be the best part. ❤️

xo

Alison