Unbecoming

Let's stop waiting to be chosen

Jun 03, 2026

When I was growing up in the 80s, I remember hearing some man on the telly say a woman was unbecoming. I’ve no idea who he was talking about, or what terrible crime against society she had committed, but I remember asking my mum what the word meant as we did the dishes after dinner.

“Unbecoming?” she replied. “It means a woman who doesn’t act like a woman should.”

“Does it not apply to men not acting like men?” I asked.

She mused for a moment and then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

She moved away to finish tidying up the dinner, but I stood for a long while with the tea towel in my hand wondering about what she had said.

I was at that age when I was in the process of becoming a young woman and beginning to take note of what was being expected of me. Like most obnoxious teenagers, I was always looking for a fight and the “system” seemed like a worthy opponent. This was the era of lads’ mags and a confusing mix of girls and women being vocal and ballsy, entangled with endless social messaging that we also needed to be good and demure.

But this stumped me.

Unbecoming.

An unbecoming woman was one who wasn’t behaving properly. She was unbecoming if she laughed too loudly (or “cackled”).

Unbecoming if she farted in public.

Unbecoming if she showed too much skin.

Unbecoming if she behaved in ways that men had been behaving forever.

It felt really confusing because I was also being told women now had equal rights and I could do anything and have it all.

Like so many words women are reclaiming, perhaps it’s time we reclaimed this one too. Boss Bitch has become an empowering rally cry and apparently (don’t shoot the messenger) my daughters tell me “cunty” is now being used by girls to mean something is fantastic.

So since we are the generation of women redefining midlife and how women can live and be, perhaps it’s time we redefine unbecoming too?

I feel I’ve been in an unbecoming phase for a while now. Not that I’m farting in public per se, but in the way I am reassessing who I am in this next stage of my life.

Because I don’t think we have a midlife crisis as such.
I think midlife is actually a process of unbecoming.

Not falling apart (although it can feel like it at times).

Not losing yourself (although it can definitely feel like it at times).

Not having a crisis (although it can absolutely feel like it at times).

But an unbecoming: the gradual shedding of layers that were never really you in the first place.

The rinsing off of obligations that became identities rather than simply roles.

The loosening of the grip of should, allowing us to spend a little more time in the possibility of choice.

The reduction in fucks given as age, experience and hormones combine to make us ask a very important question:

What if I don’t want this anymore?

Not necessarily the marriage, the job, the family or the responsibilities (we can’t all go full Eat. Pray. Love.)

But the way we’ve been carrying them. The way we’ve been carrying ourselves within them.

Many of us arrive in midlife with a strange sense of disappointment we can’t quite explain. We’ve done everything right. We’ve ticked the boxes of the Checklist of Success we started writing when we were eighteen and knew absolutely nothing about ourselves.

A list heavily influenced by the people, place and time we happened to be born into.

A list written before we had any idea who we might become.

And yet there comes a moment when we look around and think:

Is this it?

Not because our lives are bad. But because somewhere underneath all the role-playing, we lost contact with ourselves.

Cheryl Strayed once wrote that in youth we ask, “Who am I?” In midlife we ask, “Who am I really?”

That’s the shift. That’s the unbecoming. I see it all the time with clients: a recalibration.

And it’s messy and miraculous. It’s scary and sacred.

An unfurling.

An unclenching.

A return, even.

But it’s not rushed.

Like everything else in our mile-a-minute lives, we’re often trying to do it while living in a culture obsessed with telling women they’re running out of time.

Everywhere we turn we’re told to hurry up.

Hurry up and meet someone.

Hurry up and have children.

Hurry up and build a career.

Hurry up and stay young.

Hurry up and stop ageing.

Hurry up and make something of yourself.

Women are sold urgency as if it’s the oxygen we live by, as though we’re permanently late for a life we’re already living.

I don’t know how many times I tell women who come to me for coaching that they don’t need to have all the answers by 5pm on Friday.

They need time. Time to explore who they are again. Time to base their decisions on that, not some prescribed should.

I read a piece recently that said that once your children leave home, the time you spend with them thereafter amounts to just two years. Which made me want to faceplant on the floor.

Some of it is true, of course. Life is finite and tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. But there is also truth in we do have time.

We may not have unlimited time, but we often have far more time than we’ve been led to believe. We’re living longer than any generation before us. Many of us have another twenty or thirty years ahead before we get “old”.

Living years (Maybe now more as you.)

Learning years (Fleshing out your life, not always running on empty.)

Loving years (I still believe at 56 I’ve yet to meet the love of my life.)

Adventure years (Abso-fucking-lutely.)

Years to discover things we never had time to discover while everyone needed something from us.

Perhaps that’s why I bristle at the constant message that time is running out. Because the opposite is often true. Things take time. Gardens take time. Healing takes time. Finding yourself takes time.

Unbecoming takes time.

It’s taken me ten years to tame my garden after my ex-husband left. Ten years to slowly transform it from a garden that belonged to my old life into one that reflects this life. Ten years of planting, pruning, removing, adding and waiting.

It had to unbecome what it once was before it could become what it was meant to be.

And so am I.

It’s taken me years to find my voice. Years to stop apologising for taking up space. Years to realise that I don’t need all the answers by five o’clock on Friday.

In fact, one of the greatest gifts I think I give women through coaching isn’t advice.

It’s spaciousness.

Permission to stop forcing immediate certainty. Permission to sit with questions without having immediate answers. Permission to trust that clarity often arrives more slowly than we’d like.

Because all we ever really have is time. And choice.

Time to choose.

Choice about how we spend our time.

That’s it.

Even if I died tomorrow, all I would have until then is time and choice.

The choice of how I spend my attention.

The choice of who I become.

The choice of how I want to feel.

The choice of whether I continue living according to somebody else’s script.

Women have spent generations waiting to be chosen.

Chosen by a man.

Chosen by a boss.

Chosen by a friend group.

Chosen by society.

Chosen as worthy.

Chosen as enough.

Midlife is where many of us finally realise we can do the choosing instead.

Not selfishly. Not narcissistically. Just consciously.

We’ve spent decades wearing hats.

Mother.

Partner.

Daughter.

Employee.

Caregiver.

Friend.

Volunteer.

Problem-solver.

The trouble is we forget to take one off before putting another on. Remember dressing up as children? We’d play one character for a while, then we’d change costume and become somebody else.

These days we just keep piling the costumes on. One on top of another. Until we’re carrying so many identities we can barely breathe. No wonder we’re exhausted. No wonder we’re overwhelmed.

No wonder so many women arrive in midlife thinking something has gone wrong. Or that time is running out.

Maybe nothing has gone wrong. Maybe you’re simply being called to unbecome?

To remove what no longer fits. To loosen what no longer serves. To stop dressing up. And start living in your own skin.

This year has become my year of saying yes.

Not yes to everything (I’ve done enough of that!)

But yes to myself. Yes to adventure. Yes to curiosity.

Yes to choices that reflect who I am becoming rather than who I thought I was supposed to be.

It’s not easy. It’s messy.

I’m still recovering from perfectionism.

I’m deeply aware of my tendency to people-please.

I still wrestle with imposter syndrome in certain parts of my life.

They haven’t disappeared. The difference is that unbecoming has become a practice of choosing differently whenever I can.

Because perhaps that is what midlife really offers us.

Not a countdown. Not a crisis. Not a desperate race against time.

But the space to unbecome. To shed what was handed to us. To loosen what no longer fits. To stop measuring our lives against somebody else’s checklist.

And to finally become ourselves.

Are you ready to be an unbecoming woman? I’d love to know in the comments!

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