December Market Update

I am starting the best new chapter of my life.

In 2025, all three of my kids moved out. After spending decades raising children, running a business, managing a household, getting divorced and being responsible for what felt like a million things at once, my house suddenly became very quiet. At the same time, I was in a partnership that had started going off the rails, and by the end of 2025, I knew the relationship was going to end. At the beginning of 2026, I finally ended it and found myself solo and unpartnered again.

For the first time in my adult life, I am truly living alone. No kids. No boyfriend. No pets. My cat moved out with my son, and my dog passed away in 2024. After so many years of being surrounded by people and having someone who needed something from me 24/7, it is literally just me. There is something incredibly strange about that, but there is also something incredibly peaceful about it.

I don’t think I realized how much of my life had been spent taking care of other people until there was suddenly no one left in my house to take care of. For most of my adult life, my days were shaped around children, relationships, work, bills, schedules, responsibilities, problems that needed solving, and people who depended on me. Even when things were going well, there was always someone else to consider. Now I can wake up in the morning and, other than my business and the people I love, my time belongs almost entirely to me.

Having an empty nest and being solo gives you a tremendous amount of time to ponder and reflect. Recently, I went on a retreat because I wanted to disconnect from my business and give myself enough quiet to actually think about my life. Without the constant emails, phone calls, responsibilities, and distractions, I found myself looking at my life from a distance in a way I don’t normally have time to do. While I was there, I came to a realization that surprised me: this may very well be the happiest, lowest stress, and maybe even the best chapter of my entire life.

It is a strange thing to realize at 46 that perhaps the life you have been working toward all along is finally here. I am still young-ish, and hopefully I have decades ahead of me. I have a career I genuinely enjoy that gives me an enormous amount of flexibility. I have worked incredibly hard to create financial stability. My children are grown. I have wonderful friends. I have a home I love. I have ideas and interests and places I want to see, and for the first time, I have both the freedom and the resources to explore what I actually want.

The world feels more open to me than it ever has before. I can travel. I can learn new things and start new hobbies. I can spend more time with friends. I can date and meet interesting people without feeling like I need to immediately turn a relationship into a life plan. I can design and situate my house and pursue ideas that have been sitting in the back of my mind for years. I can cook because I enjoy cooking, golf because I want to golf, create things, take a trip on a whim, spend an afternoon with a friend, or spend an entire evening alone without feeling like I am neglecting anyone. And maybe most importantly, I can rest.

Rest is something I don’t think I have ever been particularly good at, probably because for much of my life it didn’t feel like an option. There was always another problem to solve, another person to take care of, another financial concern, another relationship issue, another family crisis, another business crisis, or another unexpected situation requiring me to figure things out. I became very good at being strong because I had to be. But there is a difference between being strong because you choose to be and being strong because there is no one else coming to rescue you.

Looking back, I realize how much of my life was spent in some version of survival mode. I grew up learning how to survive difficult circumstances, and adulthood brought its own collection of challenges. I raised three children, built a business, went through divorce and difficult relationships, worried about money, worried about my kids, and carried responsibilities that sometimes felt much bigger than I was. There were years when the goal wasn’t happiness or fulfillment. The goal was simply to get through whatever was happening and make sure everyone was okay on the other side. I was white-knuckling my way through life.

I think that is why this chapter feels so different. This may actually be the lowest trauma period of my entire life. It took me 46 years to get here, and there is something both heartbreaking and beautiful about being able to say that. I wish some parts of my life had been easier. I wish there were things I had never experienced and battles I had never needed to fight. But I am also deeply grateful that I kept going through all of them.

Every time life knocked me down, eventually I stood back up. Sometimes quickly and sometimes not. Sometimes I was strong and optimistic, and sometimes I was exhausted and depressed or angry and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But somehow I kept building. I built a career. I built financial security. I built a real estate portfolio. I raised my children. I built friendships and community. I kept creating a life even during the years when it felt like life was mostly happening to me. And now, for the first time, I feel like I get to enjoy some of what all that work was for.

My life certainly isn’t perfect. I periodically battle depression. I live with periodic chronic pain from hip dysplasia. I have scars from things that have happened to me, and there will always be parts of myself that I am still figuring out. I will probably worry about my children until the day I die because apparently motherhood does not end just because everyone has their own address. There will still be heartbreak, disappointment, uncertainty, health problems, bad decisions, difficult people, and all of the other things that come with being alive.

But the problems are different now. For the most part, I have first world problems instead of the constant drama, instability, and trauma that seemed to be present through so much of my life. I have choices now. I have stability. I have a safe home. I have financial independence. I have people I love. I have the ability to leave situations that aren’t good for me instead of feeling trapped in them. That last part might be one of the greatest freedoms I have earned.

For much of my life, the questions I asked myself were about survival and responsibility. What do my children need? What does my partner need? How do I make enough money? How do I keep everything together? How do I solve this problem? How do I get through this next difficult thing? There was always something that needed an answer. I did all of this while battling mental illness and pain. I have invisible disabilities that nobody can see. Now I find myself asking a completely different question: What do I want now?

It sounds like such a simple question, but when you have spent most of your life being responsible for other people, it can actually be surprisingly difficult to answer. I am realizing that I don’t completely know yet, and I am also realizing that I don’t need to know. I have time to figure it out.

Maybe that is what makes this chapter so exciting. I get to experiment with my own life. I can try something simply because it sounds interesting and quit if I don’t like it. I can travel somewhere because I am curious about it. I can spend more time golfing, cooking, creating, learning, dating, laughing with friends, or sitting quietly in my house doing absolutely nothing. I can meet new people and allow relationships to become whatever they naturally become instead of feeling like every relationship needs to fit into some predetermined version of what adulthood is supposed to look like.

There is something incredibly powerful about realizing that I am no longer waiting for the next crisis, the next relationship, or the next stage of motherhood before I give myself permission to enjoy my life. I don’t have to earn rest anymore. I don’t have to prove that I am strong. I don’t have to stay in situations that make me unhappy simply because leaving would be difficult or societal conditioning says staying in it is the right thing to do. I don’t have to organize my entire existence around taking care of everyone else. I get to take care of myself now, too.

Some people spend their entire lives trying to escape the circumstances that shaped them. Some never get the opportunity. I don’t take for granted that I have reached a place where I have choices, independence, stability, and peace. I know exactly how much work it took to get here.

My trauma will always be part of my story. It shaped parts of me. It made me resourceful and independent, and probably a little too comfortable carrying things alone. It taught me lessons I never would have voluntarily signed up to learn. There are pieces of it I will probably continue unpacking for the rest of my life. But my trauma does not get to write the rest of my story.

For most of my life, I have been incredibly good at surviving. I know how to fight. I know how to rebuild. I know how to keep moving when things are hard. Those skills got me here, and I am grateful for them. But maybe I don’t need to fight so much anymore.

Maybe the next chapter isn’t about overcoming something. Maybe it isn’t about proving anything. Maybe it isn’t about taking care of everyone or holding everything together. Maybe it is simply about living. I want to be curious. I want to travel. I want to love people without losing myself in them. I want to spend ridiculous amounts of time with my friends. I want to try things I am terrible at. I want to meet interesting people. I want to laugh more. I want to rest when I am tired. I want to enjoy my children as adults instead of feeling responsible for every decision they make. I want to use the life I worked so hard to build.

It took me 46 years to get here, but I am here.

My trauma is part of my past, but I will not let it define my future. For the first time in a very long time, I am not asking myself what I need to survive next. I am asking myself what I want to experience next and that feels like an entirely different way to live.