💬 Weekly Discussion: What was your first act of midlife rebellion?

I consider my first intentional midlife rebellion to be letting myself go gray.

Some people might not have one major act of rebellion but instead a series of smaller, quieter rebellions that led to an entirely new path toward liberation.

For me, it wasn’t a single act but a cascade of major life events that stacked up one after the other.

Still, I consider my first intentional midlife rebellion to be letting myself go gray.

Here's a snippet I shared in a post about it:

About a year before we got married, I told my future husband I was going to let myself go gray after the wedding. I was touching up roots every two weeks, and had been for at least a decade, and was tired of it. But one morning, shortly after Thanksgiving, looking into the mirror and inspecting the flecks of silver along my hairline staring back at me, I made a snap decision and declared myself done with dying, wedding hair be damned.

Read the full post here.

At the time, it felt a little rebellious—a subtle declaration of freedom—but I had no idea how much that long grow-out process would both test me and embolden me.

The 2+ year transition to gray

That decision to embrace my natural self sparked other acts of rebellion, including:

• Quitting a job I thought I was going to be fired from (and being the first person in the company to ever willingly leave)

• Quitting diets cold turkey so I could finally create a more peaceful relationship with food and my body.

• Staying steadfast in that decision even as I gained weight while the rest of the world seemingly discovered Ozempic.

• Leaving my professional, stable career to pursue my dream of writing.

• Cutting all my freelance marketing and editing clients so I could focus on writing full time.

• Embracing being a stay-at-home mother versus a bread winner for the first time at age 49.

So now I’m curious: What was your first act of midlife rebellion? 

Was it something bold and public, like quitting a job or ending a relationship?

Or was it quieter but no less transformative, like choosing to dress in a way that made you feel alive again or reclaiming time for yourself?