Why It’s Time to Ditch New Year’s Resolutions in Midlife

Written by Cora Darlington, Menopause & Midlife Transformation Coach

Cora Darlington challenges the narrative that midlife is decline. As a Menopause and Midlife Transformation Coach with 20+ years of experience, she is the creator of HOMECOMING and the "Menopause as Sexy" movement, empowering women globally to claim their power years as their most transformative, potent, and vibrant season.

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It is 3 am. You are awake again, unsettled and restless for no reason that you can name. In the early morning darkness, you reach for comfort and familiarity, but none comes. What is in its place is an odd inner displacement that you don't know what to do with.

You have been holding it together for everyone for a long time. Your family, your work, your friends. You are the capable one. The strong one. The one who has her shit together. But something fundamental is shifting on the inside. Only you know.

The roles that once fit like your second skin now feel ill-fitting and claustrophobic. You look in the mirror and barely recognise the woman staring back.

Your mind says, I am falling apart. Your soul says, no, not falling apart. Divinely re-arranged. My love, listen to me carefully. You are not falling apart. You are being lovingly dismantled by your own soul.

What you are experiencing is a sacred crisis, soul rebellion. Your body, your psyche, your soul, they are staging a magnificent coup against everything that has kept you small, silent, and disconnected. Every system in your being is rising up and saying "no more." This is a breakdown. That will ultimately lead to your glorious rise.

If you say "yes" to it.

What is really happening in midlife?

We live in a culture that punishes and shames women for coming undone.

From the moment you could understand language, you have been taught to hold it together. To accommodate. To observe what was needed for you to gain love and approval.

You became an expert in managing everyone's emotions, whilst burying your own so deep you eventually forgot they even existed. You sacrificed yourself quietly and called it love, called it duty, called it being a good woman. A strong woman. And good, strong women do not crumble, they do not unravel, they do not grieve, and they certainly do not rage.

But when the seismic dissolution of midlife comes, when the foundations you have carefully built your entire life upon begin to crack, you panic. You think that surely something is catastrophically wrong. And that wrong thing, well, it must be you. The medical establishment is only too happy to confirm this.

They tell you that you are hormonally deficient, that your body is malfunctioning, that your symptoms need managing. And the message is brutally clear, you are a problem that needs to be solved. The wellness industry packages it differently, of course, but the message is fundamentally the same.

The relentless drive to sell you supplements and meditation apps, all designed to help you "get through" to help you "feel like yourself again." As if the goal is to go backwards.

And then there is the forced emergence of January. A 'new year', and with it the expectation to be a 'new you'. As if what you need right now is another performance to perfect.

But here is the truth that needs to be told. What if falling apart is the most powerful thing you will ever do? What if your body, in its fierce wisdom, is orchestrating a sacred dismantling because the old structures can no longer contain the potent and powerful woman you are becoming?

The intelligence of your dissolution

Let me be absolutely clear, I am not romanticising this. The unravelling is brutal. It is confronting in ways you have never experienced.

Some nights, you will wake with panic beating loud in your chest and throat, convinced that you have wasted your entire life. That it is too late. That it is over for you.

But here is what I have discovered in the fire and ashes of my own death and rebirth. There is a fierce, powerful, uncompromising intelligence in your dissolution.

There is a Divine power that is driving it all, and it is not punishment, it is love.

Your body's rebellion

Your body is not broken. She is just refusing.

For decades, your literal biology has been in the service of others, reproduction, nurturing, caregiving. Your entire energetic output has been directed outwards. Towards everyone but you. And now? Your body is staging a revolution. She is saying, "My turn. Finally."

The decline of oestrogen during menopause is not a deficiency disease, it is an evolutionary shift. Your body is redirecting your precious life force. She is calling it back home, to you. She is taking back what you have been lovingly giving away for decades.

Research shows that up to 80% of women experience hot flushes during menopause, and studies indicate that 40-60% report significant sleep disturbances. But here is what the medical establishment does not tell you, anthropological research suggests menopause evolved as an adaptive advantage, redirecting women's energy from reproduction to wisdom-keeping and community leadership.

So, consider this. The hot flushes? Your body is burning away all that no longer serves you.

The insomnia? Your nervous system is finally saying, "I will not remain on high alert for everyone else's comfort anymore."

The brain fog? Your brain refuses to scatter her attention like crumbs. She is done serving everyone else's hunger while starving herself.

These are not symptoms of decline. They are somatic acts of liberation. She is speaking, "I will not be ignored. I will no longer accommodate and enable your smallness. I demand that you finally be with me."

Your psyche's uprising

Your identity dissolution? It is not you losing yourself. It is your psyche tearing off the roles and the masks. The good daughter. The devoted mother. The supportive partner. The reliable friend. The strong woman who never complains. These roles served you well once. But somewhere along the way, they became prison bars.

Now your psyche is ripping those roles apart. They do not fit the woman you are becoming. They are becoming lies.

The disorientation? It is the liminal space between who you have been pretending to be and who you actually are.

The grief? It is acknowledging and honouring what is ending.

The rage? It is fire-filled evidence of every single compromise you ever made, every time you abandoned yourself to keep someone else comfortable, every moment that you chose the approval of someone else over your own soul's truth.

Your dissolving is making space. Because you cannot emerge as the woman you came here to be whilst clinging desperately to the version of you that no longer exists.

My own reckoning

By my mid-40s, despite a rocky and difficult start, I had created what everyone called a successful life. A thriving coaching practice. Impressive track record. A beautiful husband and daughter.

But inside? I was slowly but surely disintegrating. I had been so clear, so sure, now I was questioning everything! I became a stranger to myself. And the rage? It threatened to destroy me.

All the times I had pretended that something did not matter, when it did. All the times I had pushed away the pain of my heartbreak in the name of being so wise and understanding. All the times I had worn the responsibility and burden and shame that was never mine to carry. It burned through me, literally, often spilling out in a way that I just could not control.

Every tool I had diligently learned in order to manage myself no longer worked. There was no 'managing' the deep truth screaming inside of me, I had outgrown my entire life. And my soul would not be silenced.

For a while, I tried to hold it together. Because I am a coach, I am supposed to have answers. But my unravelling did not give a shit about my credentials. It was going to have its way with me. And so, finally, on my knees one day in the shower.

I surrendered.

Here is what I discovered when I finally stopped fighting. My falling apart was the most sacred and necessary rite of passage for me to move through.

It was my soul saying, "The life you have built is too small for who you are becoming. Let it burn." My death led to my rebirth. What brought me to my knees also brought me home.

That is when I created homecoming, because there was nowhere to go that honoured this passage as sacred initiation rather than a steady, trauma-filled decline.

A permission slip for your own unravelling

So here you are. January. The month everyone else is telling you to construct a newer, better version of yourself. I say, F***k that.

• What if you just give yourself permission to breathe, to feel, to fall apart without immediately putting yourself back together?

• What if you just give yourself permission to destroy the false versions of you so that the real one can emerge?

• What if you just give yourself permission to not know who you are, or what you want, or what is next, for now?

• What if you just give yourself permission to gracefully disappoint others in the name of your own truth?

• What if you just give yourself permission to grieve and rage and fume fiercely?

• What if you just give yourself permission to be who you are, exactly as you are, now?

• What if you just gave yourself permission to give up the fight?

You can do it. The woman who held it together for everyone? She was surviving. The woman who made herself small? She was keeping herself safe. Mourn her. Thank her. And then let her go. She brought you here. But she cannot take you where you are going.

If this is landing in your body like a deep truth, I want to gift you something. My ebook "The Great Surrender: A Guide to Your Homecoming" is the companion I so desperately desired during my own dissolution.

The type of self-inquiry that transforms everything

Once you have given yourself permission to fall apart consciously, here are the questions that will guide you through. Instead of asking yourself "What is wrong with me?", ask the fiercer questions:

• What is falling away because it was never mine to carry?

• What roles, expectations, and obligations are dissolving because they were always someone else's agenda, not mine?

• What versions of myself am I shedding because they no longer fit the woman I am becoming?

The good girl. The people pleaser. The woman who does not rock the boat. Which masks am I finally ready to tear off? Who am I when I'm not performing for anyone? What is my soul yearning for? Who is the woman of my wildest dreams?

Because underneath all of the performance, you are more powerful than you have ever dared to believe.

Why you need a guide through this threshold

You cannot guide yourself through the threshold alone.

Not because you are not capable, you are ferociously capable. But threshold spaces require witnessing. They require a woman who has walked the terrain and can look you in the eyes and say, "This is normal. This is sacred. You are not crazy. You are being initiated."

When you are in the wilderness, you need a guide who knows the wilderness intimately.

This is the heroine's journey that we take in my 12-month programme, "Homecoming".

We do not bypass the falling apart. We do not manage ourselves through it. We surrender to it and honour it as the sacred and divine rite of passage that it is.

We walk through all four passages together – The Great Undoing, The Deep Forgiveness, The Reclamation, and The Rise. Real transformation demands the full arc.

It takes a full year because sacred passages cannot be rushed. The integration happens between our calls, in the living of your actual life. The wisdom emerges in the practice. In the daily choosing of yourself.

But it all starts here. With this first passage. The Great Undoing. With giving yourself fierce permission to fall apart consciously.

My invitation

If you are reading this and recognising yourself, the 3 am awakening, the stranger in the mirror, the exhaustion of holding it together, I need you to hear me. You are not faulty. You are not failing. You are not crazy. This is not the end. You are simply in the empty and liminal wilderness. And this wilderness is where women become wise.

So my love, stop running, stop fighting. Lay down your masks and walk toward your crown. This is your initiation into power. This is your homecoming. And you absolutely do not have to walk it alone.

Ready to go deeper? Homecoming, my 12-month transformational journey begins enrollment mid-September 2026 and is limited to 24 women.

Follow me on Facebook and Instagram for more info!

Read more from Cora Darlington

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Cora Darlington, Menopause & Midlife Transformation Coach

Cora Darlington turned her own midlife unravelling into a revolutionary approach to menopause. With credentials in NLP, CBT, life coaching, women's wellbeing, executive coaching, meditation, and yoga, she has spent two decades guiding women through transformation. She created HOMECOMING – a 12-month journey through The Great Undoing, The Deep Forgiveness, The Reclamation, and The Rise – for women aged 40-60+ who refuse the disempowered narrative.

Her work passionately challenges mainstream menopause coaching that treats this passage as a medical problem rather than a sacred initiation. Author of "The Great Surrender," Cora's approach is bold, unapologetic, and rooted in lived experience. Her mission: No woman left behind.