Hi, I’m Serena — and I almost missed this entirely.
For most of my adult life, I was the person who helped everyone else find what they were looking for. I raised my kids, homeschooled them through their early years, navigated a separation and divorce, rebuilt myself through sales and marketing, and eventually landed in a career I loved — working in communications and philanthropy for local non-profits. I was good at my job. I showed up for everyone. But somewhere in all of that living, I quietly stopped showing up for myself.
The conversation that changed everything
A few years ago, a young man I worked with said something that stopped me cold. I had been telling him — as I often did — that I was genuinely worried about retirement. Not financially. Creatively. ‘I have no hobbies,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know what I’d do with myself.’ He looked at me and said: ‘Serena, if you worked as hard at trying different hobbies as you do at your job, you just might find something you enjoy.’ I drove home with that sentence rattling around in my head. And then I picked up a craft. And then another. And then I couldn’t stop.
I spent years believing I wasn’t creative. I was wrong. That outside-the-box thinking I used every single day at work? That WAS creativity. I just never gave it that name. And the other thing I believed — that if I made something, it had to be perfect, or what was the point? Also wrong. The wonky stitch IS the point. The imperfect pour painting IS the point. The permission to just start, with no plan and no pressure — that’s where the spark lives.
You don’t need a plan. You just need to start.
That’s what That MidLife Crafter is. It’s the place I wish had existed when I was looking for permission to begin. If you’re standing at the edge of something — a new hobby, a creative chapter, a quieter and more joyful version of your life — I want you to know: you’re already there. You just took the first step by being here. Pull up a chair. Let’s make something.
how the journey started and continues to grow.
No journey is linear and mine really had some curveballs. That being said, this has evolved over the years to be a story not arriving; rather finding paths of meaning. Learn more about my journey or see the tool I created to track the impact of chronic pain - they are both available on Amazon (worldwide).
