Welcome to The Clearing
This Isn’t a Crisis. It’s a Passage.
You’ve built a life that works—on paper and often in practice. You’re capable, responsible, successful. Yet something has begun to shift.
The drive that once carried you feels less reliable. The goals that once animated you feel strangely hollow. Your ideas about yourself—what to strive for, how to measure success, where meaning comes from—no longer hold in the same way.
You’re not unhappy exactly. But you’re no longer convinced by the story you’ve been telling about who you are or what comes next. You’re not lost. You’re between identities. And you’re starting to sense that the next chapter can’t be found using the old map.
Your Midlife Passage is Underway.
What you’re experiencing is a milestone of adult development—one that has long been understood in theory, but far less discussed in our lived experience. Many of us reach this moment and assume something has gone wrong—that they’ve lost their edge or their drive. But this isn’t burnout or failure. It’s what happens when a way of being that once made sense reaches its natural limit.
During this time, it’s common for the frameworks that shaped your choices to stop offering the same clarity. For many of us, those frameworks were built around values that once made life make sense:
Achievement — striving, excelling, and measuring worth through progress, performance, or external success
Contribution and Responsibility — being useful, needed, and dependable; holding things together and carrying what others couldn’t or wouldn’t
Approval — staying attuned to expectations, being seen as good, competent, or acceptable
These ways of orienting yourself are not mistakes. They are intelligent adaptations. Often shaped by a desire to conform, avoid failure or please others, they become burdensome and hollow over time -- losing their power to guide what comes next.
What emerges in their place is not yet fully formed. This moment asks for patience, reflection, and a different kind of listening. The unsettling part is not knowing—yet—what, or who, is coming next. But you’re not disintegrating. You’re recalibrating. The work at this threshold isn’t to rush toward answers, but to notice what is shifting and begin to experiment with what wants to take shape. Welcome to your Clearing.
You’re at the Edge of What’s Next.
People arrive at this moment having learned different ways to succeed, belong, or stay safe. These are familiar strategies—ways of moving through the world that once worked well and may now be asking to be re-examined. You may recognize yourself in one, or move between several.
If excellence has been your way forward:
You learned early that doing things well opens doors. You are capable, driven, and respected. You know how to deliver—and you often do.
Lately, striving feels heavier. The next milestone doesn’t offer the same sense of arrival. You’re still successful, but less convinced that success alone will tell you who you are now.
What are you ambitious for—beyond the next rung?
If caring for others has been central to who you are:
You are deeply attuned to others. You anticipate needs, stabilize systems, and carry emotional weight with grace. People depend on you—and you rarely let them down.
Somewhere along the way, your own desires grew quieter. You’re beginning to wonder what you might want if tending weren’t your primary role.
What has gone unattended in you?
If being agreeable, conscientious, or “good” shaped your success:
You learned how to read the room, meet expectations, and succeed without taking up too much space. You are thoughtful, conscientious, and accomplished.
But the cost of being “good” is starting to show. You feel constrained by roles and rules you never consciously chose—and less willing to contort yourself to fit them.
What would change if approval mattered less?
What Is The Clearing?
The Clearing is a space to slow down and listen beneath the noise, so you can honor what has carried you, name what is no longer true, and begin to author what comes next.
It’s not about reinvention for its own sake, nor abandoning what has mattered so far. It is about integration: bringing who you’ve been into relationship with who you’re becoming—and translating insight into choices you can live.
Possible Outcomes of The Clearing
People move through The Clearing in different ways. Over time, many participants notice shifts:
Greater clarity about what no longer fits—and the confidence to stop forcing it and begin choosing differently.
A more trusting relationship with uncertainty.
Less urgency to have everything figured out, and more capacity to stay present with what’s emerging—even when it’s incomplete or uncomfortable.A shift from proving to choosing.
Decisions begin to come from inner authority rather than obligation, comparison, or external measures of success.Insight that leads to action, not just understanding.
Reflection translates into small, meaningful experiments—conversations or changes you can try in real life.A new way of relating to ambition and motivation.
Less pressure to perform or strive reflexively; more discernment about what’s actually worth your energy now.Language for experiences you may have carried silently.
Relief in being able to name what you’re living—and to recognize it as part of a shared developmental passage, not a personal failing.Increased alignment between inner values and outer commitments.
Work, relationships, and choices begin to reflect who you are becoming, not just who you’ve been.A sense of companionship through the passage.
Whether in private or group work, the feeling of having to navigate this transition alone begins to ease.
One Clearing, Three Paths
People enter The Clearing in different ways, depending on what they need at this moment.
Private Coaching
Coaching is a private, sustained space to surface identity shifts, interrupt long-held patterns, and try new ways of being. It offers support to reflect, test new choices in real life, and integrate what you learn into how you live and lead.
Group Coaching for Women
A facilitated small-group experience for women navigating similar questions - who want clarity, momentum, and practical ways forward, gained by learning alongside others walking the same terrain.
The Clearing Retreat for Women
An immersive, in-person gathering for women and nonbinary individuals who crave the company of others standing at a similar edge. Together you will clarify what’s shifting and why; name patterns you wish to change; and identify experiments to put your reflection into action following the session.
Meet Rachel Simmons
When I reached midlife, I hit a wall. The identity I had built — the speaker, the doer, the achiever — no longer felt like it fit. The drive that defined my success began to feel like a burden. Suddenly, my tools and beliefs began to fail me.
So I did something I’d never done before: I slowed down. I questioned everything I thought I knew about success, worthiness, and what it means to be enough.
I’ve spent decades listening closely to how people make sense of themselves, their ambition, and their place in the world. I built The Clearing because, after years of achievement, I couldn’t find language or support that reflected what I was actually going through.
Success Stories
If something here resonates, you don’t need to know exactly what you’re looking for yet. There are a few ways to begin:
Explore Private → or Group → Coaching
For ongoing, one‑on‑one or group support as you navigate identity shifts and what comes next.
Learn More About The Retreat →
For a daylong, in‑person pause to reflect, listen, and mark this passage in community.
If you’re unsure which path is right, share a little about what’s shifting and we’ll explore what support might fit.