Fearless Friday: Forty-Eight Days
Transitions don't always mean loss
Forty-eight days of silence.
I’m not going to apologize for it. I’m going to tell you what happened inside of it.
Because here’s the thing about disappearing for a season is that sometimes you’re not hiding. Sometimes you’re just in it. Head down, hands full, doing the work that life put in front of you. And that’s exactly where I’ve been.
My youngest daughter is getting married. She wants the wedding. She does not want to plan the wedding. So guess who’s been in full coordinator mode since Christmas? Me. And I’m not complaining because planning and coordination is one of the gifts God put in me and I have learned to stop running from what I’m actually good at. I build the right team. I delegate. I lead. And I find genuine joy in it. The kind of joy that tells you you’re operating in your lane.
At the same time, I was coordinating our women’s conference at church for 150 women, and speaking at it. So between the wedding and the conference and my own health journey, these forty-eight days were full.
Let me talk about that health piece for a second.
I started HRT a few months back (read more here). And for the first stretch of it, I felt alive again. The fog lifted. The mood swings stopped. I woke up excited. I felt like the version of myself I had been missing and I didn’t even realize how much I’d been missing her until she showed back up.
And then my body started pushing back.
Nineteen days of bleeding. Nineteen days of wondering. Nineteen days of being scared and still not wanting to stop because I knew what I’d felt was myself again and I wasn’t ready to give that back. Long story short, I got answers, we’re making adjustments, and I’m doing well. But I want to say this clearly: HRT is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Your story inside of it may look nothing like mine. That doesn’t mean one of us is doing it wrong. It means we are different, and we need to stop expecting that one formula fixes all of us the same way.
We are all worth the nuance.
Now, let me talk to you directly for a second.
This community is growing. And every time I see a new subscriber, a new follower, a new face, I ask myself: What does she need? What brought her here? And what I keep coming back to is this: you’re not here for fluff. You’re here because something in you is awake. Something in you is asking questions. Something in you knows there is more - more life, more purpose, more fire - and you just need someone to confirm what you already feel.
So let me confirm it. You are not winding down. You are gearing up.
Transitions don’t have to mean loss. They can mean expansion. Think about the first time you moved from an apartment into your first home - remember that feeling? That excitement? You weren’t shrinking. You were stepping in. The second half of life can feel like that. It should feel like that. But it requires you to stop treating this chapter like a consolation prize and start treating it like the main event.
I’ll be 53 this year. Behind the scenes I’ve been pulling old memoir drafts back out. Dusting off a book I put on a shelf that keeps calling me back. Building content for you that isn’t polished or performative, but real. Because that’s what this space is going to be.
Raw. Bold. Real. For women who still have fire in them and just need someone to hold up a mirror. That’s what I’m here for.
Maybe these forty-eight days were not just preparation for me, but for you too. Maybe today is your forty-eight days ending also. Maybe this is the yes you’ve been waiting on and it hit your inbox.
Take it.
With you in it,
Michelle