Dear Charlotte,

I’ve built a life that looks good from the outside. I have a partner who is kind and stable, children I love, and a job that pays the bills and even occasionally fulfills me. I try to be grateful. But underneath it all, I feel this ache—like I’ve veered off course somehow, or lost something I didn’t know was precious at the time. I have moments where I wonder: is this it?

It feels shameful to even voice this. I’ve had friends who’ve experienced real tragedy, and here I am, stewing in some quiet dissatisfaction like a spoiled child with a full toy box. I worry that if I go digging, I’ll unearth something I can’t put back. But if I don’t, I’m scared I’ll just keep drifting further from myself.

Is this a midlife crisis? Is it selfish? Or is there something I’m not naming?

—Secretly Restless

Dear Secretly Restless,

Ah, the ache beneath the okay. It’s more common than you think—though that probably doesn’t make it any less unsettling.

Let’s start here: restlessness isn’t a flaw. It’s a flare. An intelligent, inconvenient signal from some buried part of you that wants attention. And no, this isn’t about being ungrateful or selfish. Gratitude and hunger can coexist. You can love your life and still long for something more vivid, more true. We’re allowed to want depth, not just stability. Beauty, not just function. A life that feels like it fits.

What you’re describing isn’t a crisis so much as a reckoning. A time when the old narratives—the ones about success, identity, what you were supposed to want—start to thin, and the truth gets louder. You’re not broken. You’re waking up.

The fear that you’ll unearth something you can’t put back? That’s real. Self-reckoning is not a tidy process. But what’s the alternative? Drifting in a performance of contentment, numbing yourself into someone else’s version of meaning?

You don’t have to blow up your life to honour what’s stirring. But you do have to listen. Start by naming the ache without shame. Write to it. Ask it questions. Let it have a voice. It might tell you something sacred.

This isn’t the end of the story. It’s the part where the heroine gets curious. And that is never a waste.

With you,
Charlotte