Welcome to Meanwhile Way

A space for the moments between what was and what comes next.

Today is the Fall Equinox, and it feels like exactly the right day to begin.

Not because everything is finished. It isn't.

Not because I have everything figured out. I most certainly don't.

But perhaps that's the point.

Meanwhile Way was born in the space between what was and what comes next. The place where life is still happening even when we aren't entirely sure where we're going.

I call that place the Meanwhile.

Most of us will find ourselves there more than once.

Sometimes we arrive because something has clearly changed. A relationship shifts. Children grow up. Work changes or ends. Our bodies begin speaking a different language. Someone we love dies. A belief we've carried no longer fits. A role that once defined us suddenly doesn't.

And sometimes nothing dramatic happens at all.

Life looks perfectly fine from the outside, but somewhere underneath all that functioning, something begins to stir.

Is this still the life I want?

Where did I go in all of this?

What do I need now?

Who am I becoming?

What comes next?

I know something about those questions.

Like many women, I've spent much of my life caring, working, adapting, managing, loving, grieving, holding things together and being what was needed in the moment.

I became very good at showing up.

What took me longer to recognize was how possible it is to keep showing up for your life while gradually becoming less present within it.

There wasn't one dramatic moment when I suddenly realized I'd lost pieces of myself. It happened in the thousand small adaptations we make over a lifetime.

And eventually, something inside me began asking for my attention.

Not necessarily for a different life.

But for my own presence in the life I was already living.

That question and everything it began to uncover is part of what eventually became Meanwhile Way.

Why the Meanwhile?

We tend to be much more comfortable with beginnings and endings than we are with the messy space between them.

We want to know the plan. Name the problem. Make the decision. Find the answer. Get through it. Move on.

But some of life's most meaningful transitions don't work that way.

Sometimes there is a season when the old no longer fits and the new hasn't yet revealed itself.

That's the Meanwhile.

And I've come to believe that it isn't simply a place we need to hurry through.

There can be something important here.

A chance to pause.

To notice.

To grieve what needs grieving.

To question what we've accepted simply because we've always accepted it.

To reconnect with parts of ourselves that have grown quiet.

To listen for what may be emerging before rushing to decide what it needs to become.

Meanwhile Way grew from that belief.

What you'll find here

This Journal will be one of the places where I explore all of that.

There will be reflections on midlife, identity, relationships, grief, transition, wellness, spirituality, meaning, end-of-life, self-trust and the complicated business of being human.

There will probably be some science.

There will definitely be stories.

And knowing me, there will be paradoxes, observations, questions, occasional irreverence and hopefully more than a few laughs along the way.

I don't want this to be a place that pretends life can be reduced to five easy steps or that every difficult experience needs to be transformed into something inspirational.

Sometimes life is beautiful.

Sometimes it's painful.

Sometimes it's absurd.

Frequently, it's several of those things at once.

I want Meanwhile Way to have room for all of it.

And perhaps that's why beginning on the Fall Equinox feels particularly fitting. A moment balanced between seasons, reminding us that we, too, sometimes find ourselves somewhere between what was and what comes next.

I don't know exactly what Meanwhile Way will become.

And strangely, that feels appropriate.

Because this work isn't about having the whole path mapped before we begin. It's about learning to be present enough to notice where we are, honest enough to acknowledge what is changing, and curious enough to wonder what might come next.

So today, on the Fall Equinox, I'm beginning.

Not finished.

Not certain.

But here.

Welcome to Meanwhile Way.