“I had work friends. I had mom friends.”
A simple line from the new version Matlock series stopped me in my tracks — not because it was dramatic, but because it was true. Spoken by the character, Madeline “Mattie” Matlock, the sharp, septuagenarian attorney portrayed by Kathy Bates, an actress undergoing her own reinvention — this understated line carried more than mere dialogue. It echoed a quiet knowing. A reckoning wrapped in grace and grit.
Watch the moment here.
The moment is tender and real — her voice both steady and soaked in memory. It wasn’t just a throwaway line in a courtroom drama. It was a mirror. A reminder that many of us — especially women in our second and third acts — have lived lives shaped by the roles we’ve played. And now? Now we’re standing in the in-between, asking ourselves: Who am I, when I’m no longer needed in the same ways I once was?
That single sentence from Mattie Matlock evokes what many women of a certain age feel but rarely articulate: I’m in a different circle now. The shifting rhythms of friendship. The soft grief of aging. The quiet resilience and invisible job of reclaiming oneself. And yet, she stands. Not diminished but distilled. With a steadiness shaped by storms weathered. She’s still becoming, carrying her history like a compass, not a burden.
In my life and work, I’ve heard versions of that line whispered in coaching sessions, murmured in midlife circles, and written between the lines of late-night journal entries. For decades, many of us moved through life tethered to roles — worker, parent, partner, leader. But what happens when those roles fade, shift, or no longer define us?
This isn’t a crisis. It’s a canvas.
Midlife reinvention isn’t about going backward. It’s about becoming. And for women who’ve lived across cultures, creativity, artistry and craft often becomes the sacred brushstroke that reveals who we are now.
Throughout the world, and most especially in the Middle East, women have long told stories not just with words — but with their hands. For example, through tatreez, the intricate art of Palestinian embroidery, and the careful placement of tesserae in Jordanian mosaics, generations have stitched memory, meaning and resilience into beauty.
Tatreez, traditionally passed from mother to daughter, serves as a living archive of personal and collective histories, with each motif symbolizing aspects of identity and experience.
Similarly, in Madaba, Jordan, women artisans create mosaics that narrate cultural tales, each tiny piece contributing to a larger story. These crafts are more than art — they are acts of preservation and empowerment, reflecting the intricate layers of women’s lives across generations.
Much like these traditions, midlife creativity can feel like that slow, sacred stitching, each gesture of self-expression becoming part of a larger design. We may not always see the pattern right away. But the fragments — grief and growth, legacy and longing — begin to shape a new whole.
KEILA DAWSON
Take Keila Dawson, for example, a culturally fluid educator turned children’s book author who brings this concept of layered identity to life.
Raised in the 7th Ward of New Orleans, La., U.S.A. — a cradle of Creole culture, resilience and storytelling, Keila grew up immersed in a world where the vibrant fusion of language, music, cuisine and folklore mingled like spices in gumbo. Her international sojourns began in adulthood, yet she remained grounded in heritage, culture and family traditions passed down from her New Orleans and Caribbean roots.
After raising her two Adult Third Culture Kid (ATCK) children and living abroad in the Philippines, Japan and Egypt, she began writing stories that reflected her family’s heritage as well as other activist and global perspectives.
In this season of her life, Keila Dawson has emerged not only as an award-winning author but as a vibrant example of what it means to step into a new identity chapter rooted in cultural wisdom, truth-telling, and reinvention.
“As a community organizer, former educator, and family historian, I’d always been a truth-seeker,” Dawson says. “Today … my role has shifted to being a truth-teller.”
Dawson is a multiple-award-winning children’s author whose books explore culturally relevant stories, some rooted in her New Orleans upbringing and others inspired by diverse histories, identities and justice.
Her books, like “Yumbo Gumbo” and “No World Too Big; Young People Fighting Global Climate Change,” serve as mirrors for children of color and as love letters to tradition and activism.
In a recent conversation, Dawson describes writing as her post-parenting reinvention — a way to remain connected to truth, justice and cultural belonging.
Dawson shares that she had difficulty of anchoring into the community after years of expatriate life and the need to stay rooted in authenticity. For her, writing and creativity is not just about the art, but also became a way for her of anchoring, remembering, reimagining and reclaiming.
Her voice underscores what many women feel but haven’t always named: that midlife creativity can help us metabolize who we were, and name who we are becoming.
Dawson’s own reinvention came as a surprise to her. What began as a reply to an online prompt turned into an eight-year collaboration and four poetry anthology book deals.
“Writing is often solitary,” she reflects, “but working in a group project with other writers and poets in an anthology means forming a community.” With each chapter — motherhood, expatriate life, advocacy, storytelling, Dawson continues to become.
In times of upheaval when identity unravels, when grief reshapes the ground beneath us, when the roles we wore no longer fit, creativity becomes more than expression. It becomes survival. But as Dawson offers, it’s even more than that.
“Survival isn’t the goal,” she says. “Death is inevitable. It’s about thriving. Becoming is about living my best life — the life I lived in my youth. It’s about holding on to that same energy, that same quality of life and surrendering as little as I can to what age and time try to take.”
Whether through movement, story, stitching or song, engaging in creative acts helps us metabolize the unspoken, reorient to meaning, and reconnect with the self beneath the rubble. In the wake of what author Bruce Feiler calls “lifequakes,” creative practice becomes a compass and a balm guiding us toward reinvention and also toward restoration.
It’s not about art for art’s sake. It’s about stitching ourselves back together, one creative act at a time.
These moments, whether stitched in stories, danced into light or journaled by lamplight — exist in what I’ve come to call memory heritage and culture music.
It’s that sacred, often invisible place between who we were and who we are still unfolding into. A space where identity is no longer fixed, where creativity becomes compass and where culturally fluid women, especially, are called to reclaim and themselves.
Becoming is about living my best life — the life I lived in my youth. It’s about holding on to that same energy, that same quality of life and surrendering as little as I can to what age and time try to take. — Keila Dawson
It is not a void — it is a threshold. Maybe that’s what Mattie Matlock was really saying, in that quiet line about “work friends” and “mom friends.” Not just naming the past, but asking: What now? What next? Where do I go from here?
Who are we when the titles dissolve, the applause quiets, and the mirror shows a woman we’re still learning to love? Women like Keila Dawson, and like so many of us, are answering those questions. Not with urgency, but with artistry. Through page and pattern, rhythm and remembrance, we are reclaiming the space between “used to be” and “not yet.” The space where becoming lives.
This is the art of midlife reinvention. It’s not about filling the silence but about listening to it. It’s not about proving worth but rather creating meaning.
It’s all the women who’ve ever stood at the edge of a former self, peered into the unknown and whispered, “I’m still becoming.”
Learn more about Keila Dawson here.
