Over the past few months, I have found myself in a series of conversations with women I admire: founders, creatives, mothers and longtime friends. We may begin by talking about work, children, creativity or what is happening in our lives, but eventually the conversation shifts.
Different women. Different circumstances. The same questions underneath it all:
Does this still serve me?
What do I want from the next chapter?
Who am I now?
What do I want my life to feel like?
What is my purpose?
Maybe it is our age, or simply this season of life. Many of us have spent fifteen or twenty years building something: a career, a business, a family, a community or an identity. We have become capable, responsible and accustomed to moving forward. Then, somewhere along the way, we begin to wonder whether the life we have built still fits who we are becoming.
Is this what they call a midlife crisis? Or maybe it is a midlife recalibration: the moment when the life we have built and the life we still want begin to have a conversation.
I have been inside this questioning myself. After spending more than fifteen years as Sapahn’s founder and sole owner, the company became deeply woven into my identity. As my role has changed, I have found myself asking: Who am I beyond the role I have held for so long? What parts of myself have I not had time to explore? What do I want the next decade to hold?
Intentionality has always been a cornerstone of how I live. I do not want to wake up at 50 and realize I moved through my 40's on autopilot, faithfully tending to a life that no longer fully fit. Yet I am also discovering a tension within intentionality. If every interest must connect to a goal, reveal my purpose or tell me exactly what to do next, curiosity becomes another form of pressure.
So I have begun asking a different question:
What if the goal is not an immediate answer, but a deeper understanding of ourselves?
How might we discover who we are becoming if, for a while, we simply paid attention to what makes us feel curious, energized and alive?
A PRACTICE FOR THE IN-BETWEEN
These past 6 months I am learning that these questions may not have one clean answer. Instead of trying to solve them, I have been gathering evidence.
Evidence of what brings me joy.
What catches my attention.
What gives me energy.
What I keep thinking about or returning to.
Here are three practices that have been helping me:
01. COLLECT BEFORE YOU CONCLUDE
Last year, I started a practice of creating yearly folder on Instagram called 25 Reflections. Whenever something made me pause, think, laugh or feel something, I saved it. It might be a sentence, a beautiful room, a creative idea, an interesting woman, a place I wanted to visit or a perspective I had never considered.
There was no strategy. It was simply a record of what moved me.
Going back through it now feels like finding a trail of breadcrumbs to myself.
02. FOLLOW THE SMALL 'YES'
Embrace the yes. Something peaks your interest, say yes to it. These past 6 months I have also embraced saying ‘yes’ to things that interest and excite me. These past few weeks I have said yes to being a curator for a women's mom group called Mysha, WLTH WALKS (female founders walking group), a cake decorating class, and a founders online community. And, what’s in common here; I love building community and connection.
03. LOOK FOR PATTERNS, NOT AN ANSWER
After you have collected enough, return and notice what repeats.
What colors continually draw you in?
What kinds of people fascinate you?
What ideas give you energy?
What do you keep imagining, saving or talking about?
I have to remind myself that I am not searching for one perfect answer. Clarity does not always arrive as a fully formed plan. Sometimes it emerges through a collection of small interests, observations and experiences that make me feel more like myself. Looking back, I can see that Sapahn was built the same way, with each small idea becoming a building block for the next.
ON MY MOOD BOARD
Copenhagen Fashion Week was last week, and I am still thinking about Bermuda shorts with heels, funnel-neck and napoleon jackets and the elevated Adidas looks. I’d totally pair any of these with the Staney.
The most memorable outfits were not necessarily the most complicated. They were the most individual. For once, the question did not seem to be, “How can I make myself look smaller?” Quite the opposite. There was volume, confidence, personality and a willingness to take up space.
That is the energy I am drawn to for fall and perhaps beyond: expressive, confident, a little unexpected and unmistakably you.
FROM THE SAPAHN STUDIO
Many of you have been asking what is coming next. Here is one small hint: think rich, deep colors. And yes, one of them will come with silver hardware. And, yes to new designs.
SOMETHING TO PONDER
Perhaps the work of this season is not to decide exactly who we are going to become. Perhaps it is to pay closer attention to what is already waking up inside us. So I will leave you with the question I am asking myself:
What might become possible if I stopped asking every interest to prove its purpose and simply followed what made me feel most alive?
We may not find an immediate answer. But we might begin to understand ourselves more deeply.
With love,
Brooke
Founder + Chief Creative Officer
Sapahn
