Why We Wrote This
“Women in their forties and fifties are not declining. They are becoming.”
We wrote this book because we’ve spent decades navigating the quiet chaos of midlife. We’re not here to offer a prescription, but a research-backed, irreverently honest guide for women who are done saying 'fine' and ready to find out what's actually true about life after forty.
“Women in their forties and fifties are not declining.
They are becoming.”
Rachael Gass
Rachael Gass, PCC, MS, is a Professional Certified Coach who has spent the past decade helping women navigate the biggest transitions of their lives: career reinvention, caregiving, perimenopause, and the identity shifts nobody warns you about. She holds a Master's in Organizational Psychology and a B.A. in Marketing from Arizona State University. She's also an executive coach and Managing Partner of BeKindLyfe, where she and co-founder Andie Herbert help organizations build genuinely kind — not just nice — workplace cultures. In this book, she brings that same honesty to the page: real, unfiltered stories about hormones, hard conversations, disappearing into motherhood, and finding her way back out.
"Fine' isn't an answer. It's a bandaid — and it's covering something that actually needs air."
Andie Herbert
Andie Herbert has lived through nearly every transition this book covers: a career change, caregiving for a parent with dementia, a cross-cultural relocation to a homestead in the Caribbean, and singlehood by design. She brings over two decades of corporate experience to the pages, plus a
The founder of Be Kind Lyfe Consulting & Coaching, she's not consulting anyone. She's telling the truth about what forty plus actually looks like. No performance, no polish.
"Nobody tells you the decade you're dreading might be the one where things actually get good. I didn't believe the research either, until I lived it."
