The Creative Threshold: Returning to What’s Natural

I don’t know if it happens all at once, or if it creeps in slowly, but I know so many women who hit 55 and feel everything start to shift. They wake up one day and realize they are not the same person they were before. The life they built no longer fits quite right. There’s a pull—subtle at first, then undeniable—toward something more creative, more alive, more them.

I was 55 when I stopped fighting the current.

For so long, I had been swimming upstream, doing what I thought I was supposed to do—working hard, proving my worth, holding it all together. Creativity had always been there, whispering to me, but I pushed it aside, telling myself I didn’t have time for it, that it wasn’t practical, and that I needed to focus on what mattered.

Then my mother died.

Then Covid happened.

And suddenly, my whole world went quiet.

I was living alone. The coaching work I had built slowed to a trickle. There was nothing left to do but sit with myself—and that kind of stillness has a way of stripping away everything that isn’t real.

So I picked up needle felting. I didn’t think too much about it at first. It was just something to do with my hands, something tangible when everything else felt uncertain. But as I worked, I felt something shift inside me.

I was creating again. And not just making things—I was making meaning.

Menopause and the Creative Reckoning

Now, looking back, I can see that it wasn’t just grief, the state of the world, or the sudden stillness of my life that cracked me open. It was menopause, too.

No one tells you that menopause is a threshold—not just of the body, but of the self.

There’s this idea that it’s an ending, a slow fade into the background. But for so many of us, it’s the exact opposite. It’s a wildfire. It burns away the old rules, the old expectations, the old roles we played. And in that clearing, something new begins to take root.

It’s no coincidence that women return to creativity during this time. I hear it again and again—women who, after years of caring for others, managing careers, and meeting expectations, suddenly feel the need to make. They pick up paints, thread, clay. They start weaving, writing, singing. Not because they’re looking for a hobby, but because something inside them is calling.

Menopause is an alchemical shift. And creativity is the language of that transformation.

Creativity as Energy: The Pulse That Awakens Us

As women, we spend so much of our lives adapting—shaping ourselves into what is needed, what is expected. We become fluent in productivity, in responsibility, in making things work.

And then, at some point, we realize: We are not here just to function.

We are here to create. To live creatively.

This isn’t just about crafting or making art—it’s about awakening to a deeper energy that has always been moving through us. Creativity is not just an action; it’s a force. It’s the current that fuels insight, inspiration, and transformation. And for many of us, menopause is the moment when that energy rushes back in, demanding to be felt.

There is something deeply natural about this pull toward creativity in midlife. It’s not just nostalgia for lost time; it’s a return to an essential part of who we are. As kids, we made things freely. We sang, we painted, we played. We didn’t question whether it was useful or worthy—we just did it because it felt right.

Somewhere along the way, we were taught to suppress that instinct. To prioritize real work. To be serious. To grow up.

But menopause rewires us. It strips away the conditioning, the shoulds, the need to please. It invites us back into our own rhythms—ones we may not have listened to in decades. It asks us to follow our impulses and to trust the pull toward whatever creative act feels good, even if we don’t yet understand why.

And when we listen, we feel something we haven’t felt in a long time.

Alive.

Creativity is Not a Luxury—It’s a Life Force

This is the part that matters most: Creativity is not an indulgence.

It’s not extra. It’s not something we do when everything else is taken care of.

It is a current running through us, a force that wants to move. And when we open that channel, when we start making again, it’s not just our art that comes back to life—it’s us.

We start seeing the world differently. We feel more possibility, more intuition, more ourselves.

That is the revolution of menopause.

Not invisibility. Not decline. But a rebirth into a more creatively aligned way of living.

So if you feel it—the itch to paint, to sing, to build, to make—follow it. It’s not frivolous. It’s not a distraction. It’s the call of something ancient and wise.

It’s you.

And it’s time.

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Let’s Keep Creating

This is why I do what I do—why I create spaces for women to return to their creativity, to their own rhythms. Because this phase of life isn’t about fading out; it’s about stepping fully into who we were always meant to be.

And we start, simply, by making.

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