You Say Yes to Everything. Except Yourself

The messy muddle of midlife

May 20, 2026

If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you’ll know this is my year of saying YES!

(Not yes to the draining requests that leave me depleted. Not yes to more stress because BUSY is the buzzword of the decade. But yes to fun, space, and adventure. Yes to love, laughter and living. Yes to me.)

And that is no easy feat. For most of us women in the messy middle of life, the hardest yeses are the ones to ourselves. In fact, we can forget they’re even available.

I know. Twenty years of parenting (much of it single), 15 years of parent-caring have taken their toll. I went from adventurer in my own life to facilitator of the lives of others.

Lately, I’ve been taking a breather amid that messy mayhem (because I know the pause won’t last forever) to focus a little more on facilitating my own life.

And this weekend I remembered why saying YES to myself matters - and why it can be so hard.

Because exactly 30 years ago, I wrote myself a letter.

I was 26 years old and deep in a Borneo rainforest trying to figure out my place in the world. (A strange place to go looking admittedly, but in hindsight, it was pretty perfect.)

Having worked a few years in London after uni, I’d headed off as a volunteer Communications Officer on a Raleigh expedition - taking young people on community, adventure and conservation projects. Rainforests, orangutans, building schools.

Clutching a flimsy blue airmail sheet, I’d found a quiet spot (though it’s never really quiet in a rainforest) to naval gaze and ponder my life - most of which still lay ahead. And at 26 I still had the naivety to believe it was all in my control (how we all can laugh at that!).

As I sat there, pen poised for greatness, I paused, looked around me, taking in where I was.

This was 1996. I’d never heard of mindfulness or meditation, but what happened next was something close to a spiritual experience. (No mushrooms had been consumed!)

I stared at the intertwined ecosystem around me - every vine, every leaf, every insect, every plant - each utterly absorbed in its own purpose. All connected. And I felt so utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, it was the most liberating experience of my life.

For the first time, I realised how little was actually about me. How little of the noise in my busy, boisterous mind truly mattered. Everything around me would continue exactly as it was, whether I was there or not.

I felt so small, and so connected, that I wondered if this was what death felt like - a deep sense of aliveness.

I went back to my letter and wrote:

“Dear Alana, never forget this moment. Never forget this time when you exist just because you are. Never forget that you are always part of something bigger. Whatever lies ahead, there is always this place.”

But of course… I soon forgot. I sent the letter home and spent the next 18 months backpacking around Asia and working in New Zealand. When I returned to my Belfast bedroom, among the two years of student debt letters sat a flimsy airmail blue envelope. It took me a moment to recognise my own handwriting.

And it immediately took me back to that moment. But I didn’t sit with it too long. I had a LIFE to be getting on with. Back to that Checklist of Success I’d formed years earlier.

Education. Check.
Travel. Check.
Career. Semi-checked.

Time to check the rest of the boxes. Marriage. Family-forming. Home.

Over the next 30 years, that letter would come back to me in flashes - usually in moments of stress, panic or fear - when life felt anything but peaceful.

And part of saying YES this year is remembering that truth again. That not everything ‘out there’ is as important as it feels - and that reconnecting to myself matters more than reacting to the busy boisterous noise in my head. Because life is always busy.

This weekend, I met up with pals from that expedition. A core group of us have stayed close - our jungle adventure a springboard into everything that followed: careers, relationships, break-ups, children, divorces, dying parents. Between us, we’ve lived a lot of life.

For 30 years we’ve loved each other, laughed, cried, celebrated and held each other through it all. Weddings, anniversaries, quiet divorce dinners, loud 50th’s. And fun weekends remember who we are separate from our other roles and responsibilities.

A disparate group of people, bonded forever by one wild adventure in a Borneo rainforest.

They were literally there the weekend my marriage ended (I had married one of the original Borneo crew). And more importantly, they were there in the months and years after - when remembering who I was was really fucking hard. And through all my messy midlife experiences, they have been here for me.

And now some of them are struggling. So we gather again (I’m feckin’ delighted that it’s not my drama for a change!). We commiserate, support, laugh, share. And as always, in doing that, I reconnect with the girl I was back then - before life got so serious.

We had our adventures this weekend - an off-track trek through a forest (I was banned from leading as I can barely navigate Tesco) and wine tasting in a stunning Sussex vineyard. And we did what we always do and picked up where we left off.

Deep conversations. Ridiculously shallow conversations. Both equally important.

I don’t see them most of them often, but they hold a part of me. If I wrote my life story in tattoos instead of through words on a page, they would have some prime real estate on my body.

Because with them, I remember who I am beneath the layers. When saying YES to myself felt so much easier. One evening, someone asked, “What has surprised you most about the last 20 years?”

Now this is a group of capable, resilient, successful people: one is a former RAF fighter pilot, another a genius business owner who’s worked incredibly hard and just sold his business. And yet…every single one of us said a version of the same thing:

“It’s been much harder than I thought it would be.”

If you’ve been reading my work long enough by now, or heard me speak you’ll know my favourite mantra is - when life feels hard, it’s usually because it is hard. Now ask yourself, what can I do to support myself through it.

Life is beautiful. And brutal. And busy. And brilliant. And we often don’t acknowledge that enough. We just get on with it.

Life is hard. Which means it’s even more important to remember who we are within it. To get really intentional about saying YES to ourselves, because it may be a while before a pause arrives naturally.

So I came home feeling loved and clear that my YES’s needs to be intentional.

Not just reactive. Not just squeezed into the gaps. But chosen.

Because this life - this mad, messy, middle bit - is not a rehearsal. And it’s very easy to get distracted by the noise.

The to-do lists.
The responsibilities.
The endless mental chatter.

And suddenly, years pass.

So if you’re in that place too, here’s something I use with clients: the Happiness Plan.

We tend to think happiness comes from big moments - the highs, the experiences, the dopamine hits. And yes, that matters.
For me, that might be reading quietly in the sun (having declared myself unavailable for parenting for the next hour) or sipping wine in a vineyard with people I love like I did this weekend.

But there are two other types of happiness we often overlook.

The first is growth. This is the deeper satisfaction that comes from doing hard things over time.

Training for something.
Ending something.
Starting again.
Setting boundaries.
Going to therapy.
Changing direction.

It doesn’t always feel good in the moment - but it moves you forward.

And the third is value. Not people-pleasing. Not being everything to everyone. But contributing in a way that feels meaningful.

Raising your kids with intention.
Supporting someone without rescuing them.
Using your skills to make a difference.

And it’s the balance of all three - joy, growth, and value - that creates a life that actually feels like yours. Standing in your life - not disappearing inside everyone else’s.

Because here’s the greatest surprise of midlife.

It’s not that life didn’t turn out the way we planned. It’s that it keeps going. Full. Fast. Demanding. And unless we choose otherwise, we can spend it managing everything… and missing ourselves.

That 26-year-old version of me understood something I easily forgot at times”

That life is not something to control.
It’s something to experience.

And you don’t need a rainforest in Borneo to remember that. You just need to pause long enough to ask:

What am I saying yes to?
And does it include me?

Because life is short. The middle is messy. And it’s very easy to drift.

So say yes. And say it on purpose.

As always, I’d love to know what duality you need to process.

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