Midlife Emergence is a revelatory memoir and an inviting guidebook; it is a compassionate companion that belongs in the collection of every woman who finds herself burning to reclaim powerful parts of herself that social conditioning locked away. Midlife doesn’t need to be a crisis or an emergency—rather, it’s an emergence, an opportunity to make those beautiful, unexpressed facets shamelessly visible.

Psychotherapist and coach Jen Berlingo guides those yearning to peel back acculturated, adaptive layers of identity as they soulfully construct their second act of life. Many women who have followed society’s prescribed path to fulfillment seem to land in their 40s with a dull emptiness and an inner voice that perpetually asks, “Is this all there is?” Underneath the stories of her clients, Jen clearly hears their soul’s longings—each one unique, but all harmonized in their aching for so much more. They feel enticed to explore beyond the familial and social prescriptions, obligations, and expectations they’ve followed, a pioneering act that can be simultaneously terrifying and electrifying.

As Jen traversed her own midlife portal in her 40s, she began to live more fully into her queer identity, experimented with ethical non-monogamy, and reframed divorce as an expansive form of love for her family and herself. Outside the specifics of her journey, she became a cartographer, marking the waypoints and pinpointing universal signposts so others would not have to walk this path alone. The vulnerability of Jen’s story ignites a flame of recognition inside those who yearn to illuminate parts they may have buried in darkness. Throughout the narrative, Jen shares enlightening journaling and art prompts and potent, personal rituals designed to support the woman in midlife in freeing her own inner fire.

Midlife Emergence is both an inspiring, tender story and a wise, warmhearted guide for the woman in midlife who feels a gut-flipping longing she may not yet be able to name. It validates the adult in untangling her personal values from those imposed by family or cultural lineages. It embraces the parent ready to break out of habituated martyrdom to show her children how not to abandon themselves. It emboldens the woman who has come of age under the patriarchy to finally claim her sovereignty. It speaks to the person who has been conditioned into compulsive heterosexuality in exploring her intrinsic sexuality later in life. It empowers the recovering “good girl” and the drained people-pleaser in taking courageous steps toward unfurling into her full integrity for the second half of life.