3 Things I Wish I Had Known a Year Ago as a High-Achieving Woman in Midlife

Last fall, I ended a week with back-to-back client meetings, hours of prep for a board presentation, and yet another skipped lunch. From the outside, it looked like everything was exactly as it should be. I was productive, respected, “on it,” and performing at a level most people would describe as impressive.

But internally, I felt something I couldn’t shake.

I wasn’t overwhelmed. I just felt off.
I wasn’t emotional. I just felt muted.
I wasn’t exhausted. I just felt disconnected from myself in a way that didn’t make sense.

It wasn’t burnout in the dramatic, falling-apart type of way. It was burnout in the subtle, quiet way that feels like your drive has dimmed, your emotions have flattened, and your sense of groundedness has disappeared. I remember thinking, “I don’t want to run away from my life I just want to feel like myself again.”

Looking back, what I actually needed was not an escape, but a new rhythm that supported my changing hormones, my nervous system, and this new stage of life I was entering without realizing it.

If you’re a woman in your forties who feels the most unlike yourself you’ve ever felt, I want to share three things I wish I had known just a year ago before I completely changed my approach to wellness, energy, and longevity so I could keep operating at a high level without sacrificing myself in the process.

01. Pushing Through Is No Longer a Strategy

In my thirties, I relied on willpower, adrenaline, late nights, and caffeine to get through any challenge. I could run on empty, make it work, and recover quickly. The rhythm of “push, produce, perform, crash, recover, repeat” felt doable not healthy, but doable.

By my forties, it stopped working.

What used to give me momentum now left me depleted, irritable, and foggy. I kept trying to operate the same way because it was familiar, but my body no longer responded with fuel. It responded with shutdown.

Midlife teaches you a truth no one prepares you for: the strategies that built your earlier success are not the strategies that will sustain your next chapter. You cannot out-willpower physiology. Your rhythm has to change before you crash — not after.

02. Hormones Are Running the Show, Even if No One Talks About It

Most high-performing women are conditioned to treat emotional or physical symptoms as personal shortcomings. If you feel unmotivated, you assume you’re slacking. If you feel irritable, you assume you’re being dramatic. If you feel foggy, you assume you’re not trying hard enough.

What no one tells you is that the unpredictable mood shifts, sleep disruptions, inflammation, anxiety spikes, bloating, and brain fog that show up in midlife are not personality problems — they are physiological events.

They are evidence that the brain, nervous system, and endocrine system are reorganizing. They are signals, not failures. And yet, women are constantly told to manage them with more discipline, more productivity hacks, and more pressure on themselves to “get it together.”

We don’t need more hacks.
We need a new playbook.

One that respects the biology of a changing body and doesn’t shame women for experiencing it.

03. You’re Evolving, Not Failing

One of the most disorienting experiences of midlife is the feeling that the person you’ve always been has disappeared without warning. Many women interpret that shift as decline or failure.

But midlife is not collapse.
It’s reconstruction.

Your biology is shifting. Your identity is shifting. Your capacity is shifting. The systems that supported you in one era of your life are no longer aligned with the era you’re stepping into now.

You are not falling apart.
You are being redesigned.

And with that redesign comes an opportunity to build a leadership model that is not built on urgency, depletion, and self-abandonment, but on clarity, nervous system stability, hormone-aligned routines, sustainable energy, and long-term vitality.

Why I Created The Jubili

When I started to understand what was happening in my body, I searched for a space that understood both the biology of midlife and the ambition of high-achieving women. I wanted a framework that didn’t just tell me to meditate more, drink water, or try harder. I wanted a space that taught me how to build a life, a leadership model, and a wellness rhythm that aligned with my physiology and my goals.

I couldn’t find it, so I created The Jubili.

It exists for women who are navigating the quiet unraveling of midlife while still holding big dreams, big responsibilities, and big roles in the world. It is for the woman who can tell that something is changing, even if she can’t name it yet. It is for the woman who wants to thrive, not just cope.

If you are in your forties or beyond and you feel like your internal operating system is rewriting itself without your consent, you are not alone. And you are not broken.

You’re evolving.

Let’s Say the Quiet Things Out Loud

Midlife has long been treated as something women should endure privately and quietly, without disrupting the narrative that success should look effortless. But that silence has served no one.

So let’s start saying the truth out loud.
Let’s start acknowledging what is actually happening.
Let’s support each other in the transition.

What is one truth you wish someone had told you about midlife before you hit it head-on?