you are blooming in your own season

On midlife, Oubaitori, and the work of recalibration

Apr 15, 2026

A note before we begin: since my last letter, new wanderers have found their way here. I'm Adriana. A designer, artist, illustrator, writer, and mom. A Colombian living in the US. Working in the corporate world. This newsletter is where I write about all of it: building a creative midlife, the immigrant life, motherhood, and the small things that hold everything together. Letters, Cafecito Stories, art. I have a lot of dreams that start here. Welcome, I'm glad you're along for it.

Dear fellow wanderer,

Last summer, I celebrated my 42nd birthday sitting on our deck in Colorado, soaking in the view of my garden. I have a garden, I thought. I had just returned from Europe. My first time. And I kept returning to one moment: standing at the entrance to the Queen's garden at Versailles, looking down a long green path through an arch of hedges. Like standing at a threshold. Like going through a door.

Last summer also marked my tenth year living in the United States.

Something shifted that summer. A slow awareness that some of what I was carrying had never really been mine. That I had been running toward a life I had imagined at twenty-five and somewhere along the way had forgotten to ask whether I still wanted it. That the roles I had grown into, the achiever, the immigrant who made it work, the one who keeps going, had started to feel like a costume I couldn’t quite remember putting on.

Maybe you know this feeling. That sense that life is rearranging itself around you, asking a question you’re not sure you’re ready to answer.

If any of this sounds familiar, stay with me. Let me share something I’ve learned, something that might help you.

One word: Oubaitori

Oubaitori is a Japanese concept that comes from four characters: cherry blossom, plum, peach, and apricot. Each blooms in its own season, in its own particular way. None compares itself to the others. None tries to bloom before it is ready. None mourns that it is not the other.

The philosophy is simple. Your life has its own season. Your growth has its own shape. The work is not to measure yourself against someone else’s bloom. It is to tend your own.

We talk a lot about not comparing ourselves to others. To the friend who got there faster, the colleague who seems to have figured it out, the stranger on the internet whose life looks like the one you imagined. That comparison is corrosive, and most of us know it.

But there is another comparison that is harder to see.

The one you make against the version of you at twenty-five. The thirty-year-old who was certain about things you’re no longer certain about. The self who was supposed to have arrived somewhere by now. That ghost is just as present as any external measure. Sometimes more so, because she knew you. She was you.

Oubaitori doesn’t ask you to lower your expectations. It asks you to question whether the expectations you are carrying are still yours.

I had the philosophy. I needed the practice.

How do we recalibrate our lives through the lens of Oubaitori

Before we dive in, I want you to remember something I often remind myself of. You are the author of your own life. Each season has had its own version of you, reaching toward something. The work is to look at everything you've accumulated and choose what to keep, what to release, and what to finally give its proper place.

Review your seasons.
Sit down with a notebook and go back through your decades. Assign each one a season, to see clearly what you’ve been carrying and how long you’ve been carrying it.
In my case, for a long time, I kept proving to everyone that I could succeed even after becoming a single mom. That drove almost everything. I am not in that season anymore. Knowing that changed what I was willing to carry forward.
Some questions to sit with: What did you inherit that you never chose? What have you been carrying because you started it and didn't know how to stop? What belonged to an earlier season that you're still holding on to out of habit?
Reclaim the current season.
Once you’ve looked at where you’ve been, name where you actually are.
I say my forties feel like Fall. Cozy and spacious. The urgency has quieted. I don’t want to be remembered as the person who was always busy. I want to feel alive.
Some questions to sit with: What does your current season feel like? What does it want from you that the last one didn’t?
Define your season values
Ask whether your days actually reflect what you want now. Not what you should want. This is where drift becomes visible. The ambitions that once felt alive and now feel like an obligation.
For me, the values that keep coming back are rest, curiosity, joy, gratitude, and gentleness with myself. Slowing down enough to actually feel my life. Identify small steps you can take to start moving towards them. A boundary finally set. A morning protected.
Some questions to sit with: What do you actually value right now, in this season? Where have your days drifted from that? What is one small correction you could make this week?
Honor all the versions of yourself.
Every season added a layer. None of them canceled the others out.
I am the Colombian at the American table. The artist in the corporate environment. The mother who is still becoming. Recalibration doesn’t ask you to resolve these things. It asks you to stop pretending they aren’t all yours. The tenderness and the ambition. The grief and the gratitude. All of it.
Some questions to sit with: Which parts of yourself have you been leaving out of the room? What would it feel like to bring all of them with you?
Acknowledge the unlived paths. Thank them. Set them down.
Some paths didn’t bloom. And that deserves acknowledgment.
I wanted to be an animator in college, then become a researcher in academia. For a long time, I measured myself against other Fulbrighters and felt behind. I am not behind. I am just on a different path. A path that looks nothing like what I imagined and everything I actually wanted.
Some questions to sit with: What path are you still mourning? What would it feel like to finally set it down?

Why this is worth doing now

Over time, our identities as women blur. Our roles change and evolve. Somewhere along the way, we lose the thread of what was truly ours. Some roles that once fit us perfectly no longer belong to this season.

Taking time to reflect and recalibrate helps us look honestly at what we’ve been carrying, season by season, and choose what still belongs.

That is why I believe midlife might be the most honest season of our lives.

We know what we are keeping. We know what we are letting go.

I have been working on something for you. A simple guide to help you start your own recalibration. Questions worth sitting with. A few honest prompts to help you find the thread. Not a prescription. A beginning.

With love, Adriana

Thank you for reading.
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