When my life no longer fitted the shape it once did

How success, loss and change led me to question what I wanted from the next chapter of my life

There came a point in my life when I realised that the life I had spent years building no longer quite fitted me. Nothing happened overnight. There wasn’t one dramatic moment when I decided everything had to change. It was more subtle than that, a growing awareness that the things I had worked so hard to create, the business, the responsibilities and the roles I had taken on, no longer told the whole story of who I was or what I wanted from the next part of my life.

I didn’t set out to build an international brand. PacaPod began at my kitchen table while I was nursing my six-month-old daughter. At the time, I knew nothing about manufacturing, importing, intellectual property, retail distribution or raising investment. What I had was an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone and a determination to find out whether I could turn it into something real.

To fund the first production run, I remortgaged my house. Looking back, it was equal parts courage and naivety. I remember lying awake wondering whether I had made a terrible mistake. There were moments when building a business felt exhilarating and others when it felt absolutely terrifying. Like many entrepreneurs, I believed that if I worked hard enough, thought creatively enough and stayed resilient enough, I could solve almost anything.

For a long time, that seemed to be true. PacaPod grew into an internationally recognised brand sold around the world. I travelled extensively, won awards, exhibited at trade shows, negotiated with suppliers and spent decades building businesses. From the outside, it looked successful, and in many ways it was. But one of the things nobody really tells you about success is that what feels like success can change as you do.

When achievement becomes responsibility

The thing that begins as an exciting idea gradually becomes a business. The business becomes a responsibility, and that responsibility can become a thousand moving parts requiring your attention every day. Somewhere along the way, the creativity that started the journey can get squeezed into the gaps. I became very good at achieving, very good at coping and very good at carrying things.

Perhaps you recognise some of that. It doesn’t have to be a business. Maybe you’ve spent years raising children, building a career, supporting a partner, caring for others or simply being the dependable one. Life can become so full of responsibilities that we gradually lose contact with ourselves. Not dramatically or overnight, but quietly, while we’re busy keeping everything else afloat.

Sometimes change announces itself loudly. A relationship ends, children grow up, someone dies, our health changes or a career that once defined us no longer feels right. At other times, it is simply a growing restlessness. Something that once excited you doesn’t anymore. You find yourself wondering about a different life, or asking an uncomfortable question: I’ve spent years creating this life, so why doesn’t it feel right anymore?

That question doesn’t necessarily mean something has gone wrong. It may simply mean you have changed.

The tap on the shoulder

I’ve had several of those taps on the shoulder. The ending of a long-term relationship, the challenges of raising a neurodivergent child while navigating systems that often seemed unable to see the child standing in front of them, grief, loss and changes in my health. Each experience was different, but together they prompted a deeper question: What happens when the life you’ve built no longer feels aligned with the person you’re becoming?

I wasn’t ungrateful for the life I had created, nor did I suddenly want to throw everything away and start again. I simply became aware that the version of success I had been working towards for decades no longer felt like the whole picture. I suspect this is where many of us find ourselves in midlife, not necessarily in crisis, but standing somewhere between who we have been and who we might become next.

We hear a lot about reinventing ourselves in midlife, but I’m not sure reinvention is always what we need. Sometimes it feels more like returning. Returning to interests that disappeared beneath responsibility, to creativity, adventure, friendships, nature and the parts of ourselves that became lost underneath all the roles we accumulated.

Parent. Partner. Business owner. Employee. Carer. Provider. Problem-solver. When those roles have defined you for years, a surprisingly difficult question emerges: Who am I when I put those labels down?

Learning to ask better questions

Coaching entered my life during this period of change. Initially, I thought I was learning a profession. What surprised me was how much it changed me first. Coaching didn’t hand me answers. It taught me the value of curiosity.

For years, I had been busy solving problems, meeting responsibilities and moving on to the next challenge. Coaching encouraged me to examine some of the assumptions I had carried without questioning them: that working harder is always the answer, that resilience means pushing through, that changing direction means failing at the original plan, and that achievement and fulfilment are the same thing.

They aren’t.

Instead, I began asking different questions. What matters to me now? What am I carrying that I no longer need to carry? What am I doing because I genuinely want to, and what am I doing simply because I’ve always done it? What part of myself have I neglected? And perhaps the biggest question of all: If I stopped measuring my worth by what I achieve, who would I be?

You don’t have to know the answers immediately. Sometimes asking a better question is where change begins.

Finding my way back

For me, curiosity led me back to creativity. Back to painting, being outside, long walks on the North Devon coast and adventure. At 55, I learned to ride a motorbike. Not because a motorbike is some magical prescription for midlife fulfilment, but because I wanted to. It reminded me that growth doesn’t have an expiry date.

There were still things I hadn’t tried, places I hadn’t been and parts of myself I hadn’t met yet. That was a wonderfully liberating thing to discover in the middle of my life.

Recognising that your life no longer quite fits doesn’t mean you have to blow it up. You don’t necessarily need to leave everything behind, sell the house or disappear to Bali. Sometimes the most meaningful changes are much quieter. Setting a boundary. Picking up a paintbrush. Applying for something. Going somewhere alone. Saying no without feeling obliged to provide a lengthy explanation. Making space for yourself in a life that has gradually become about everybody else.

Change doesn’t have to begin with a grand plan. It can begin with curiosity.

What might your next chapter look like?

The people I coach often arrive somewhere around here. They are thoughtful, capable people who have spent years building careers, businesses, relationships, families and responsibilities. From the outside, many appear to have everything together. Inside, there’s a quieter conversation happening: Something needs to change, but I don’t know what.

It can be an uncomfortable place to stand because we’re conditioned to believe we should know the answer. But sometimes the first job isn’t deciding what comes next. It’s creating enough space to hear yourself think. To work out what you’ve outgrown, what you want to keep, what matters now and what might be possible if you stopped assuming the next chapter has to look anything like the last one.

That’s often where coaching begins. Not with somebody telling you how to live your life, but with the space to untangle what you’ve outgrown, reconnect with what matters and become curious about what you want the next part of your life to look like.

I’ve come to realise that those moments when life no longer fits aren’t necessarily the end of the story. Very often, they are the beginning of a new chapter. One that is less about proving yourself and more about knowing yourself, less about becoming what the world expects and more about discovering what feels right for you now.

If you’re standing somewhere between the life you’ve built and the life you haven’t quite imagined yet, this is exactly the kind of crossroads I work with.