Why I Write About Women Beginning Again

I used to think beginning again was something that happened when life went wrong.

A marriage ended. A career disappeared. Someone died. A plan fell apart. Something happened that forced you back to the beginning, and you reluctantly started putting the pieces together again.

Beginning again sounded like recovery.

Like Plan B.

Like the life you built because Plan A didn't work out.

I don't believe that anymore.

Now I think beginning again is simply part of being alive.

And maybe that's why I keep wanting to write about women standing right in the middle of it.

The Age When We're Supposed to Have It Figured Out

There's something particularly interesting to me about women in the middle chapters of their lives.

By then, we're supposed to know things.

We're supposed to know who we are. What we want. Who we love. What our careers look like. Where we belong.

We've spent decades making decisions and building lives around them.

And then sometimes—quietly or spectacularly—something changes.

The children who needed you every day grow up.

A relationship ends.

A parent dies.

A career that once felt meaningful doesn't anymore.

Your body changes.

A friendship shifts.

A dream you tucked away years ago starts tapping you on the shoulder again.

Or maybe nothing terrible happens at all.

Maybe one day you simply look around at a perfectly acceptable life and realize you have no idea whether it still fits you.

I think that can be terrifying.

But I also think it can be incredibly interesting.

Because eventually, underneath all the practical questions, there is usually a much bigger one:

What do I want now?

Not what did I want at twenty-five.

Not what was expected of me.

Not what would make everyone else comfortable.

Not even what makes the most sense on paper.

What do I want the next part of my life to look like?

That question fascinates me.

I'm Not Interested in Saving Her

When I began writing Rainbow Season, there was one thing I knew very early about Paige Martin.

I wasn't going to save her with a man.

That doesn't mean there can't be romance. There can be attraction and connection and the delicious possibility of meeting someone when you least expect it.

I love all of that.

But I didn't want Paige's happy ending to depend on someone else deciding she was worthy of one.

She had spent enough of her life being chosen—or not chosen—by other people.

Her story needed to become about choosing herself.

That distinction mattered to me.

Because I think women are often handed a very specific version of the happy ending.

Find the person.

Build the life.

Keep the life.

And if that life falls apart, find another person who makes everything okay again.

But what if the most important relationship in a woman's second act is the one she rebuilds with herself?

What if she learns that being alone and being lonely aren't the same thing?

What if she discovers she is capable of doing the thing she thought she couldn't do?

What if she gets on the plane?

Climbs the mountain?

Starts the business?

Writes the book?

Takes the trip?

Says no?

Says yes?

What if the love story is bigger than romance?

Those are the stories I want to tell.

Beginning Again Doesn't Have to Look Dramatic

We tend to recognize the big beginnings.

The divorce papers.

The resignation letter.

The moving truck.

The plane ticket.

The first date after years of marriage.

The giant leap that announces, Everything is different now.

But some beginnings are almost invisible.

Sometimes beginning again is setting a boundary.

Sometimes it's applying for something before you're convinced you're qualified.

Sometimes it's admitting you don't actually want what you've spent years trying to achieve.

Sometimes it's going to dinner alone.

Sometimes it's booking the trip.

Sometimes it's saying, "I don't know what comes next," and discovering you don't have to know yet.

And sometimes beginning again is simply allowing yourself to imagine that your best years might not be behind you.

I especially want to write about that woman.

The one who hasn't burned her entire life to the ground.

The one who may look completely fine from the outside.

The one who is standing somewhere between who she has been and who she might still become.

There is so much story in that space.

Maybe Courage Looks Different Than We Think

For a long time, I thought courage belonged to naturally fearless people.

You know the type.

The people who apparently wake up thinking, What mildly terrifying thing should I do today? 😂

I assumed brave people simply weren't as afraid.

I've learned otherwise.

Some of the things I'm proudest of doing in my own life happened while I was scared.

Traveling somewhere unfamiliar.

Climbing a mountain I wasn't entirely sure I could climb.

Starting over when I would have preferred not to.

Writing something personal enough that other people might see themselves in it.

And eventually putting my name on the cover of a novel and saying:

I wrote this.

Courage, I've discovered, isn't the absence of fear.

Sometimes courage is simply refusing to let fear make every decision.

That realization inevitably finds its way into the women I write.

I don't need them to be fearless.

Actually, I don't want them to be.

I want them to hesitate.

I want them to second-guess themselves.

I want them to occasionally make spectacularly questionable decisions.

I want them to be complicated and funny and scared and strong and occasionally a complete mess.

I want them to feel like women we know.

Maybe even like us.

And then I want to see what happens when they take one more step anyway.

The Women I Want to Write

I want to write women who have lived enough life to have scars and stories.

Women who have made mistakes.

Women who have stayed too long.

Left too soon.

Trusted the wrong person.

Ignored their instincts.

Put themselves last.

Done everything "right" and discovered that right didn't guarantee the ending they expected.

Women who love their children fiercely and still want something that belongs only to them.

Women who are successful in one part of their lives and completely lost in another.

Women who are allowed to be ambitious and vulnerable.

Independent and lonely.

Strong and exhausted.

Hopeful and terrified.

Women who are still becoming.

Especially those women.

Because I think one of the strangest ideas we absorb as adults is that eventually we're supposed to arrive.

As though somewhere around forty or fifty we cross an invisible finish line and become the final version of ourselves.

I hope that's not true.

I don't want to be finished becoming.

And I don't want the women in my stories to be either.

There Is Still So Much Story Left

Maybe that is ultimately why I write about women beginning again.

Because I know how easy it is to mistake an ending for a verdict.

To believe that because something didn't work out, we failed.

To look at the years behind us and wonder whether we've already used up our chances to do something different.

I don't believe we have.

I think there are entire versions of ourselves we haven't met yet.

Places we haven't stood.

People we don't know exist.

Things we're going to laugh about someday that haven't happened yet.

Dreams we haven't dreamed because we haven't become the person capable of dreaming them yet.

That doesn't mean every ending turns into something beautiful.

Some endings are simply painful.

Some losses remain losses.

Some things we would never choose.

But an ending can be real and devastating without being the end of everything.

There can still be another chapter.

And another.

And another.

That's what I want a woman to feel when she closes one of my books.

Not that everything will magically work out.

Not that someone is coming to rescue her.

Not that she needs to blow up her life and buy a plane ticket tomorrow.

Although, admittedly, I'm rarely going to argue against the plane ticket. 😂

I want her to feel possibility.

I want her to remember that she is still allowed to want things.

Still allowed to change.

Still allowed to surprise herself.

Still allowed to become someone she couldn't have imagined being ten years ago.

And still allowed to believe there are beautiful things ahead that she cannot see yet.

Maybe that's the kind of happy ending I'm most interested in writing.

Not:

And she finally had everything figured out.

But:

And she realized she didn't have to.

She just had to be willing to begin again.

A Note From Tara

Rainbow Season begins with an ending Paige Martin never expected and follows what happens when she finally has to ask herself what she wants the rest of her life to become.

But Paige is only the first of the women I hope you'll meet through my stories.

Different women. Different places. Different reasons for beginning again.

The question underneath them may often be the same:

What if there is still more waiting for you?

I hope there is.

Actually, I'm counting on it.