50 Days of Summer

It's almost 5pm here in Paris, where I've been since July. Sunday night I leave for home, and it's always so hard to leave.

I sit here watching the summer sun filter through the afternoon light, feeling the European breeze—that soft wind that caresses my face with such gentleness. There's a chill in it now, a whisper that summer's end is approaching.

The leaves dance and rattle in response, and I close my eyes to breathe it all in.

I think of home.

Where is home, exactly?

I think of my seventeen-year-old daughter Sophie, who will be leaving me for university next year. She won't be living with me anymore.

The empty nest looms ahead like an uncharted territory I never thought I'd have to navigate alone.

Where is home for someone like me—divorced, having devoted my life to raising my children?

Social media tells us that strength must come naturally now for middle-aged women. We're expected to rise, to not yield to our tears over broken hearts and soon-to-be empty nests. We're supposed to have it all figured out, to celebrate our independence with perfectly curated posts and inspiring quotes.

But no one told me this when I decided to devote my life to my family. No one warned me that times would change, that people would turn, that even family might forsake you. No one prepared me for this particular kind of reckoning.

So as I watch the summer sun once more, I think about what home truly means in these middle years of mine. I wonder what I can do to educate other women like me—or the young ones who might choose to walk the path I chose—about the realities that await.

As I feel the summer wind across my cheeks, I make myself a promise: I will build a better plan for women who, like me, have been unknowingly punished for choosing their families instead of themselves.

I will speak the truths that no one spoke to me.

And as I take another breath and close my eyes, feeling the wind still around me, I realize something profound.

I know that I have found home.

Home isn't a place or even people who stay or leave. Home is this moment of recognition—of my own strength, my own worth, my own capacity to rebuild and redefine what matters.

Home is the promise I make to myself and to other women who need to hear that their sacrifices matter, that their love matters, that their futures still hold infinite possibility.

The wind picks up again, carrying with it not just the scent of approaching autumn, but the seeds of whatever comes next.