About this episode

Zoë Routh reflects on identity recalibration during midlife and late-career transitions, exploring the emotional landscape and introducing a framework for navigating these changes.

In this solo reflection, Zoë Routh explores the tender, unsettling terrain of midlife and late-career transitions, a season where identity fractures, ambition recalibrates, and something new begins to form. Drawing on her own move to Newcastle, scaled-back alpine hiking plans due to injury, and the creative emergence of her new Chrysalis program, Zoë names what many leaders are feeling: exhaustion, grief, restlessness, and the quiet question, who am I now? She introduces four types of transitions, anticipated, unanticipated, non-events (fizzers), and sleepers, alongside three spheres of change: personal, physical, and professional. From menopause and andropause to redundancy, retirement, and empty nests, she explores how transitions unsettle not just circumstances, but identity itself. At the heart of the episode is step one of her five-step framework: Release the Performer, an invitation to let go of proving, striving, and performing younger versions of ourselves in order to step into mature authority and stewardship. Key Quotes: "Transitions are loss before gain, we have to honour the grief before we grasp the new." - Zoë Routh "If I'm no longer who I was, who am I now and who…

People in this episode

Host: Zoë Routh

Topics covered

• midlife transitions
• identity recalibration
• career changes
• personal growth
• leadership

Keywords

• identity
• transitions
• midlife
• career
• leadership
• grief
• authority

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Newcastle

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