Choosing Yourself Without Apology: A Midlife Reckoning

It feels like January arrives each year with a very specific sort of pressure: New year. New goals. New promises to do better, be better, try harder.

And my least favorite: New you! (Because honestly, what’s wrong with the old you?)

Additionally, for many women, especially those of us in midlife, there’s an unspoken expectation that follows us all year: don’t take up too much space while you’re reinventing yourself. Improve quietly. Heal politely. Don’t inconvenience anyone along the way.

What if the new year is actually asking something entirely different of us?

What if January weren’t about self-improvement at all, but about choosing ourselves without apology?

Choosing Ourselves Without Apology in Midlife

Choosing ourselves without apology isn’t performative. It doesn’t require a dramatic announcement or a manifesto posted on social media. It’s actually a lot more powerful when it shows up in quieter moments: in the pause taken before we say yes out of habit, in the breath drawn before we explain ourselves, in the choice made to stop justifying what we already know to be true.

The Hidden Cost of Apologizing for Our Lives

Many women have been taught, explicitly or implicitly, that apologizing is a form of kindness, niceness, politeness. As knee-jerk responses, we soften our statements, preface our boundaries, and cushion our choices so others won’t feel uncomfortable.

And it sounds like this:

• “I’m sorry, but I can’t….”
• “This might sound selfish, but….”
• “I know I should be grateful, but….”

Over time, these apologies add up. They subtly erode our connection with our intuition and our trust in what that inner wisdom is telling us, teaching us that our needs require permission to exist and that our boundaries must be defended in the court of public opinion.

And yet, no one asks us to justify why we’re tired. Or why something no longer fits. Or why we’re choosing differently now than we did ten or twenty years ago.

Midlife has a way of making this painfully clear. The roles that once defined us, good girl, good wife, good mother, good employee, begin to feel heavy. Not because we failed at them, but because we’ve outgrown them.

Choosing ourselves without apology begins with noticing where we’re still living by old agreements we never made, at least not consciously.

Boundaries Are Not Arguments

One of the most powerful shifts we can make is learning to set boundaries without over-explaining them.

A boundary is not an invitation to debate. It is not a referendum on our worth. It does not require a carefully constructed rationale to be valid.

And it sounds like this:

• “I’m not available for that anymore.”
• “This no longer works for me.”
• “I need to do this differently now.”

Full sentence. Full stop. No need for explanation. These are not acts of selfishness. They are acts of clarity.

So many of us exhaust ourselves trying to make our boundaries palatable, wrapping them in reasons, softening them with apologies, hoping they’ll be accepted if we can just explain them well enough.

Boundaries don’t exist to be approved. They exist to protect what matters.

And what matters changes as we do. Which means boundaries are also changeable, only by us when we change yet again.

Redefining Success on Our Own Terms

At midlife, many women discover that like our boundaries, our definitions of success were inherited or imposed on us, not chosen. Significantly, they were inherited by living too long in a world made by and for men.

Success was productivity and financial gain.

Success was being needed, usually by a man, whether father, husband, son, or boss.

Success was holding everything together between work and home without complaint so said man could be even more successful outside the home.

What if success now looks like spaciousness? Or rest? Or saying yes to desire instead of obligation?

Redefining success doesn’t mean rejecting ambition. It means reclaiming authorship and aspiration. It means deciding that health, energy, joy, and most importantly, integrity and alignment are not optional extras, but central measurables of a life well lived.

This kind of redefinition requires us to question the stories we tell, about ourselves and to ourselves. It helps us to see as fallacies the assumptions we’ve been making about reality. When something doesn’t feel right, our minds are quick to leap to negative conclusions about ourselves: I’m failing. I should be doing more. Other people manage this better than I do.

And these conclusions are rarely facts. They are interpretations layered under years of conditioning. Pausing to examine them, rather than accepting them as truth, is another way of choosing ourselves without apology.

The Courage to Be Misunderstood

Our people-pleasing has infected the very boundaries we try to establish around not people-pleasing. Letting go of it is not about becoming hard or indifferent toward others; it’s about becoming softer with, and on, ourselves.

There will be moments when choosing ourselves disappoints others. When our no is inconvenient. When our change of direction doesn’t make sense to the people who benefited from us staying the same.

This is not a sign that we’re doing something wrong.

Choosing ourselves means releasing the need to be understood by everyone else. It means trusting our inner knowing more than external advice or validation. It means accepting that being kind does not require self-abandonment.

And yes, this can feel deeply uncomfortable at first. Especially for women who have spent decades anticipating needs, smoothing rough edges, and absorbing emotional labor as if it were simply part of the job.

And discomfort is not danger — it is what we experience with growth.

Choosing Rest, Desire, and Change Because It’s Time

There comes a moment, sometimes quietly, sometimes with a jolt, when we realize that waiting for permission is no longer an option.

• Permission to rest.
• Permission to change our minds.
• Permission to want what we want, as Mary Oliver might say, to let the soft animal of our bodies love what they love.

Midlife invites us into a different relationship with time. We become acutely aware that this one precious life on this planet, again, thanks to Mary Oliver, is not infinite, and that realization can be both sobering and liberating. We no longer have the luxury of living on autopilot, of postponing ourselves until some mythical “later.”

Choosing ourselves without apology may look like working less or working differently; like tending our bodies, minds, and spirits with curiosity instead of control; like stepping away from roles that no longer nourish us, even if we once loved them.

Want to know how to start? It’s simple, if not easy: keep asking yourself my favorite coaching question. What is right for you right now?

Practical Ways to Practice Choosing Yourself

Choosing yourself without apology isn’t a one-and-done matter. It’s a practice.

Here are a few gentle ways you might begin:

• Honor your desires as data. What you long for is not frivolous; it’s information from your intuition.
• Redefine one metric of success. Choose a measure that reflects your values now, not who you are or thought you were expected to be.
• Question your assumptions. When you feel guilt or resistance, ask: What story am I telling myself right now? Is it true? Is it really true?
• Notice your apologies. Pay attention to when you say “sorry” out of habit. Ask yourself whether an apology is truly needed, or whether a statement or reason would suffice.
• Pause before explaining. Try offering your boundary without the backstory. Let it stand.

A Quiet Revolution

Choosing yourself without apology is not about rejecting others. It’s about refusing to disappear from your own life.

It is a quiet revolution, one that unfolds in kitchens and calendars, in conversations and inner dialogues. A revolution that replaces influencers with intuition, obligation with intention, and endurance with alignment.

January is not a motivation to fix yourself. It’s an invitation for you to choose yourself, clearly, compassionately, consistently, and without apology.

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About the Author:

Liza is a certified Integrative Nutrition® Health Coach, author, and passionate advocate for women’s wellness in perimenopause and beyond. 

Her EAT | Your Way to Health™ and Stewarding Emotional Eating™ programs support women in renegotiating their relationship with food, stress, and themselves, finally coming into full alignment their intuition and entering a season of sacred harvest in place of decline.

You can learn more about Liza here: www.simplyhealthcoaching.com