If I had a dollar for every permission slip I’ve signed over the years, I could probably fund an all-inclusive spa retreat for a month. Academic, sports, theater, medical—you name it, I’ve signed it.

And yet, for all the ink I’ve spilled granting others permission to participate, it took me far longer than I’d like to admit to understand the importance of writing and signing my own permission slip as I step through my midlife passage.

One of the most beautiful gifts of ritual is that it anchors us in time. Without intentional pauses, the months can slide by in a blur of to-do lists and routines. But when we stop to notice the big thresholds—the solstices and equinoxes—we give ourselves a chance to mark change, restore our sense of wonder, and deepen our belonging to something bigger than ourselves.

I often remind myself:
✨ Rituals make the ordinary extraordinary.
✨ Rituals amplify the meaning of a time or occasion.

That’s what these four annual thresholds invite: not perfection or elaborate ceremony, but simply pausing to say, this matters.

“Hey Mom, light a candle for me today; I’ve got that big presentation.”

“Will do, honey,” I text back—before heading to my candle box to select one and pause for a quick ritual on behalf of my grown kiddo.

That’s really all ritual is: a pause. A moment of attention. A way of turning the ordinary into something extraordinary.

I like to think of ritual as an exercise or activity designed to make the ordinary extraordinary and/or intentionally amplify the meaning of a time or occasion.

Over the years of practicing what I call becoming a Well-Seasoned

There’s something deeply grounding about beginning and ending our days with intention. The older I get, the more I realize it isn’t the grand gestures that shape my life as much as the small, repeated ones.

A routine, after all, is simply this: a series of curated and ordered practices and/or habits. And in midlife, these practices become more than “nice to haves”—they’re the scaffolding that holds us steady through change.