Starting Over at 50: What Nobody Tells You About Being a Beginner Again
I went to a reading the other night and the author, Dr. Susan A. Miele, was talking about 'Paused: Redefining Identity When Our Story No Longer Holds Us — her book about what’s left when the job you defined yourself by is gone. She was a Chief People Officer at a Fortune 500 company before a series of disruptions took that life apart.
Somewhere in the middle of listing what she'd been along the way, she mentioned she'd taught Pilates for a “hot minute."
Everyone thought it was funny. It stuck with me because I’m 53 years old and recently became a Pilates instructor myself - not full time and not to replace my previous diplomatic career, but as something I found interesting and engaging to me through this otherwise insanely difficult year of transition.
A hot minute. She'd tried it on. It hadn't fit. She'd put it back.
The Thing I've Been Getting Wrong
Here's what I've been doing since I left the Foreign Service, and I suspect I'm not alone in it.
I've been treating starting over at 50 as a single problem with a single correct answer, which I am late in finding. As though somewhere out there is The Next Thing, and my job is to identify it, commit to it, and then explain it in one sentence at dinner parties the way I used to say "I'm a U.S. diplomat" and watch people nod.
That framing is why the last year has felt so much more difficult than it needed to. Every new thing I try becomes a referendum. Is this it? Did I pick right? Have I wasted a year? It turns every experiment into a verdict. And everyone asking if this is my new “job.”
This author completely reframed it for me. You don't find the next identity. You try them on. Some of them last a hot minute. That's not the process failing. That is the process.
Why This Is Harder Coming From an Institution
For twenty years, I never chose an identity. I was assigned one. Muscat, Sarajevo, Washington, New York, Baghdad, Kaiserslautern, Geneva, Baghdad again — every two or three years the State Department handed me a new role, a new brief, a new country, and I stepped into it. I was excellent at that. I genuinely thrived on it.
But notice what was never required: I never had to audition anything. There was no trying-on. There was a cable telling me where I was going and who I would be when I got there. The identity arrived pre-fitted, and it fit in one sentence. And underneath all those different job titles, everyone still knew I was a diplomat and that meant something specific to them.
So I have almost no practice at this. Thirty years of constant change and zero years of choosing it. When people say "you've reinvented yourself so many times, this should be easy" — that's the misunderstanding. Being reassigned is not the same skill as trying things on. But you do sink or swim.
What I'm Currently Trying On
I teach Pilates. I run a travel company with my own name on it and no institution behind it. I co-host a podcast about the trials and tribulations of starting a new business with Nina, because we couldn't find enough of this conversation anywhere else. I consult on geopolitics, which is the closest thing to my old life and therefore the most comfortable and possibly the most suspect. I own a house in Maine, which after thirty years of packing out every two years is its own kind of identity, and a strange one. And to be honest, it’s also one identity I’m looking to shed this year. Selling and leaving Maine for a new adventure.
Some of these will last. Some of these are hot minutes and I don't yet know which. A year ago that uncertainty would have kept me up. Now I'm fairly sure it's just what the middle looks like.
Hot Minutes Are Not Failures
The reframe I'd offer anyone standing in this, because it's the one I needed:
A thing you tried and stopped is information, not evidence against you. I know the Pilates certification taught me something even if I teach for two years and stop. It taught me I could be publicly bad at something at 53 and survive the afternoon.
Comfort is not the same as fit. The consulting work is the easiest thing I do because it's closest to who I was. That's exactly why I watch it. Easy and right are different measurements and I keep having to check which one I'm using.
Say the quiet part to other people. The most useful hours of my last year have been with former colleagues in the same in-between — none of us pretending to have it sorted. Nina and I built a whole podcast out of that conversation. The isolation is the part that makes this unbearable, and it's the part that's most fixable.
Stop demanding it resolve. I miss the old life. I'm building a new one. Both are true most days and I've quit trying to force them into a single tidy narrative. That stopped being a contradiction the moment I stopped insisting it was one.
The Version I Didn't Design
There's a Cynthia showing up lately that I did not plan. She teaches Pilates. She gets on planes and visits family and friends whenever she chooses. She has real dinners with people she loves instead of emailing them from nine time zones away. She spends an unreasonable amount of time with a dog who has never once asked what her title used to be.
I don't know which parts of her are permanent.
If you're somewhere in this — what are you trying on right now? And what have you already put back?
(If what you need is a few days to think about it somewhere that isn't your own kitchen, the Coastal Edition in Kennebunk this September was built more or less for that.)
I wrote down what this actually looked like — the five stages nobody warns you about, and the three questions I now give everyone standing where I once stood. It's free. It's called The Next Chapter Field Guide.
—Cynthia
Cynthia L. Plath spent twenty years as a U.S. diplomat before founding Sojourn & Soirée. She co-hosts the podcast Next Chapter, Anywhere.