Welcome to Midlife Anti-Hero!

Anti-heroes are complex and imperfect, but we root for them anyway. Midlife anti-heroes learn to rescue themselves first. That’s what this newsletter is about.

Reinvention, resilience, and rebellion for women in the middle of their lives.

I write about my midlife reinvention—how I left a 30-year career without a plan or a purpose. Advertising, social media, and the self-help industrial complex told me it was my time to be “what I might have been.” But what? I wasn’t sure.

In my mid-50s, I moved to Vermont, hired a life coach, and quit a three-decade marketing career, intending to reinvent myself—to find my purpose. This made me the ideal target for the midlife marketing mega-trend.

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” 

What if that “never too late” adage is nothing more than a 19th-century marketing tagline meant to instill women with a sense of regret or make us feel like a problem to be solved? Followed by a buy-now-limited-time-offer link to some product or service that would come to our rescue.

To quote Tina Turner (RIP), “We don’t need another hero.” This newsletter is about rescuing ourselves.

Benefits of Subscription

Free:

  • Weekly posts, in the form of Postcards from Reinvention Road. Sneak peeks at scenes from my memoir (in progress) about finding myself again after leaving a 30-year business career.

  • Occasional longer-form personal essays and cultural commentary.

Paid:

  • Membership in a virtual writing group with monthly prompts and live chat threads

  • 10% discount on mentoring services (annual subscription required)

  • Downloadable extras to help plan your reinvention

Join the Midlife Anti-Hero community.

Hi. It’s me, Catherine.

I quit my marketing job in 2018 and then spun out in a race to reinvent myself. I read everything, signed up for all the workshops, downloaded Podcasts, and followed midlife influencers on social media. I craved “likes” like I used to chase atta-girls and spot bonuses. I got a tattoo, toyed with sobriety, studied yoga, took social-media marketing workshops, and made vision boards and sparkly collages. I networked and Zoomed.

The midlife reinvention quest to find my purpose was exhausting, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I should be something. I just didn’t know what.

I have an MA in marketing communications and earned an MFA in creative writing during the pandemic. I used to manage brand and thought leadership marketing for technology companies, but it was time to write my own story.

You can find my published work in The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, American Literary Review, and other literary journals. I am a frequent contributor to AARP’s The Ethel Magazine and am currently writing a memoir, Typing Lessons.

I live in a 200-year-old farmhouse with a one-eyed cat, an anxious yellow Lab, and my partner of 16+ years (who says I can write anything about him as long as I call him Felix.) Yes, I moved to Vermont, but I do not raise chickens, make jam, or save my small town—life isn’t a Hallmark movie.

Thanks for joining me on this adventure called midlife.

Work hard. Be brave. Believe.

Some anti-heroes work alone, but this one is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber.


To learn more about the tech behind this newsletter, visit Substack.com.

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Anti-heroes are complex and imperfect, but we root for them anyway. This newsletter is about reinvention, resilience, and rebellion for midlife women.

People

Recovering corporate marketer. Used to write stories for tech companies. Now I write my own. Published in The Boston Globe, AARP's The Ethel, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Currently writing TYPING LESSON, a memoir of midlife reinvention.