For years, I knew exactly who I was.

I was a mother.

A wife.

A daughter.

A business owner.

I could tell you what I did for a living. I could tell you what my family needed from me. I could tell you what was on my calendar that week and probably what needed to get done around the house.

But then I started asking myself a different question.

Who am I when you take all of those roles away?

And I didn't have a very good answer.

That bothered me more than I expected.

Because after spending decades building a career, raising a family, taking care of responsibilities and working toward the life I thought I wanted, I realized I knew a lot about what I did.

I wasn't nearly as sure about who I was.

And I have a feeling I'm not the only woman in this stage of life asking that question.

When Your Identity Becomes Your Roles

Think about how we introduce ourselves.

We often start with what we do.

I'm an attorney.

I'm a teacher.

I'm a business owner.

I'm retired.

Or we describe ourselves in relation to someone else.

I'm a wife.

I'm a mother.

I'm a daughter.

I'm a grandmother.

There's nothing wrong with any of those identities. I'm incredibly proud to be a wife, a mother, a daughter and a business owner.

Those roles have helped shape me.

But they're still roles.

And somewhere around my mid-50s, I started realizing how much of my identity had become attached to them.

Ask me about marketing or running a business and I could talk for hours.

Ask me:

“Lora, what do you like to do just because you enjoy doing it?”

That was harder.

What are my hobbies?

What am I curious about?

What would I do with an entire day if nobody needed anything from me and there was nothing productive that needed to be accomplished?

I didn't really know.

I hated that.

I felt strangely one-dimensional.

We Spend So Much of Our Lives Building

I think a lot of us spend the first half of adulthood in what I've started calling the accumulation phase.

We're accumulating a career.

Money.

A house.

Furniture.

Possessions.

Retirement savings.

Accomplishments.

Security.

At the same time, we're building families, relationships and careers.

There's always another goal.

Get the promotion.

Grow the business.

Pay down the mortgage.

Put money into retirement.

Help the kids become independent.

Make sure everyone is okay.

Keep going.

And to be clear, I don't regret that part of my life.

My husband and I worked hard. We both built successful businesses. We've been able to live comfortably, help our families, develop wonderful friendships, travel and experience things that once seemed like distant goals.

I'm enormously grateful for that.

But eventually I started wondering:

When do we stop building the life and actually start living it?

And perhaps the harder question:

Do we even know what we want that life to look like when we get there?

Loss Changed the Way I Looked at Time

For me, these questions became much harder to ignore after a difficult few years.

My brother died from COVID in 2021.

He was only 52 years old.

Then, in 2024, my dad died from brain cancer.

Losing people you love changes you in all kinds of ways.

For me, one of those changes was the way I thought about time.

“Someday” suddenly didn't feel quite as reassuring.

Someday we'll take that trip.

Someday I'll have more time.

Someday work will slow down.

Someday I'll figure out what I want to do.

Someday I'll enjoy everything I've spent all these years building.

I began thinking less about how many years I'd already lived and more about what I wanted to do with the years ahead of me.

And that's when I ran into an uncomfortable problem.

I wasn't completely sure what I wanted.

What Happens When Work Stops Being the Center of Your Life?

At 48, I would have had a very different perspective.

I was still hustling.

I was building my business, helping our daughter become independent and thinking a lot about financial security and our future.

If someone offered me client work, I took it.

More business meant more success.

And I spent more time than I'd like to admit watching what everyone else was doing.

What were other business owners doing?

What was happening on social media?

What was the latest trend?

What should I be doing next?

I got very good at being productive.

Ten years later, something has changed.

I still enjoy parts of my work. I'm not retired. I'm not ready to completely stop working.

But I don't have that same desire to hustle anymore.

And that's created an unexpected question:

If work isn't going to be the center of my life anymore, what is?

Why Is Free Time So Uncomfortable?

Here's something I've noticed about myself.

When I have a busy workday, I know exactly what to do.

When my client work is finished and I suddenly have several free hours?

That's when things get weird.

You would think I'd feel liberated.

Instead, I start looking for something else that needs to be accomplished.

Throw in a load of laundry.

Clean something.

Answer an email that absolutely could have waited.

Find some household project.

Apparently, give me enough free time and no junk drawer is safe.

And I've started wondering why.

Why is it so difficult to have a few hours that don't produce something?

Why does an ordinary day need an accomplishment attached to it before it feels worthwhile?

And when did being productive become part of my personality?

I'm beginning to suspect that learning how to enjoy freedom may be just as important as creating it.

Why I'm Trying to “Find Tuesday”

This is actually where the name Finding Tuesday came from.

One of my biggest fears about eventually retiring isn't that I'll miss my job.

It's that I'll wake up on some completely ordinary Tuesday morning and think:

Now what?

No client work that needs to be finished.

No meeting on the calendar.

No deadline.

Nobody particularly needs anything from me.

It's just Tuesday.

And after spending decades having my days defined by work, family and responsibilities, I'm not entirely sure I know what to do with a day that belongs completely to me.

I've already gotten little glimpses of this.

When my client work is light or I've finished everything that needs to be done, I sometimes feel almost...lost.

I know I don't want to start another project simply so I can feel productive.

But I also haven't completely figured out what I'd rather be doing.

So I make the bed.

I do another load of laundry.

I find something around the house that needs attention.

I stay near my office because somewhere in my head, Tuesday is still supposed to be a workday.

And that's what I'm trying to change.

I don't want work to be the only thing that gives an ordinary day purpose.

I want to wake up on a Tuesday and know what I want to do.

Maybe I grab my camera and go somewhere I've never photographed.

Maybe I go kayaking.

Maybe I meet a friend.

Maybe I learn something.

Maybe I go outside with the dogs and spend two hours doing absolutely nothing productive.

I don't know yet.

That's the whole point.

Finding Tuesday isn't really about Tuesday.

It's about figuring out who you are when your time finally starts becoming your own.

It's about having interests outside of your career.

It's about having purpose when nobody needs anything from you.

It's about reaching a point where an empty calendar doesn't feel empty.

I want to find my Tuesday.

And if you're somewhere in this messy middle too, maybe you're trying to find yours.

The Messy Middle of Life

I think there's a particular stage of life many women find themselves in somewhere around their 50s.

We're not necessarily retired.

We're not finished with our responsibilities.

Our children may be grown, but that doesn't mean they never need us.

Our parents are getting older and may need us more.

We have marriages and friendships we want to nurture.

We may still have careers or businesses requiring our attention.

We're thinking more seriously about our health because we want our bodies to let us do all the things we're finally going to have time to do.

We're somewhere between the life we've spent decades building and whatever comes next.

It's a strange little in-between.

And while we're making sure everyone else is okay, there's another person we're starting to hear from again.

Ourselves.

What do I want?

What do I like?

What am I interested in?

Who am I becoming?

Those sound like simple questions.

I'm discovering they're not.

Maybe We Don't Need to Reinvent Ourselves

There's a lot of language around “reinventing yourself after 50.”

I'm not sure that's what I want.

Reinvention makes it sound like the woman I've been for the last several decades needs replacing.

She doesn't.

I'm proud of her.

She worked incredibly hard.

She raised a daughter.

She built several businesses.

She survived some really difficult things.

She created a life I'm grateful to have.

I don't want to become someone else.

I think I want to get reacquainted with myself.

There's a difference.

Maybe this stage isn't about inventing a brand-new identity.

Maybe it's about paying attention again.

What makes me curious?

What makes me happy?

What do I want to learn?

Where do I want to go?

Who do I enjoy spending time with?

What makes me lose track of time?

What would I try if I didn't need to be good at it?

And maybe just as importantly:

What don't I want anymore?

I don't have answers to all of those questions yet.

That's kind of the point.

Who Are You Without Your Job?

So now I'm asking you.

Take away your job title for a minute.

Take away mother.

Wife.

Daughter.

Grandmother.

Caregiver.

Boss.

Employee.

Volunteer.

The responsible one.

The person everybody calls when something needs to get done.

What's left?

Who are you?

What do you actually enjoy?

What are you curious about?

And if I gave you a completely ordinary Tuesday with no work, no appointments and nobody needing anything from you...

what would you want to do with it?

If you can answer immediately, I genuinely love that for you.

But if your answer is...

“I have absolutely no idea.”

You're exactly who I wanted to find.

Because I don't think there's anything wrong with us.

I think we spent decades becoming really good at taking care of business, taking care of people and building secure lives.

Maybe now it's time to become curious about ourselves again.

That's what Finding Tuesday is about.

I'm not here because I've figured out life after 50 and want to tell you how to do it.

I'm here because I haven't.

I want to explore it.

I want to try things.

I want to travel.

I want to get stronger.

I want to figure out what my interests are.

I want to question some of the things I've always assumed a successful life was supposed to look like.

I want more freedom, adventure, experiences and curiosity in the years ahead.

And I want to talk honestly about the weird, exciting, uncomfortable transition between the life we've spent decades building... and the life we get to choose next.

Maybe we can figure some of it out together.

So let's start with one question:

Who are you when your career no longer defines you?

You don't have to know yet.

Neither do I.



I think that's where we start.