By Heather & Jenny | Soul Sister | Women’s Wellness
Key Takeaways
She was sitting across from us at one of our wellness retreats for women in Ontario, stirring her tea and choosing her words carefully.
“I don’t understand what’s happened to me,” she said. “I used to be the calm one. The one who held everything together. Now I wake up anxious before I even remember what I’m anxious about.”
She was 44. She had a career she’d worked hard for, a family she loved, a life that looked — from the outside — completely fine.
And yet there she was. Anxious all the time. Exhausted by it. And quietly convinced that something must be wrong with her.
We’ve heard this story so many times we’ve lost count. Different women, different cities, different details — but the same thread running through all of it.
If you’re a woman over 40 and anxiety has become a constant companion you never asked for, this is for you
Let’s be very clear about something: the anxiety surge that many women experience in their 40s is real, it’s documented, and it has identifiable causes. It is not weakness. It is not you falling apart. It is your body and life going through significant change — often all at once.
Understanding why it’s happening doesn’t make it disappear. But it does make it less frightening. And that matters.
One of the most significant and least talked-about contributors to anxiety in women over 40 is hormonal change.
As women move through perimenopause — which can begin as early as the mid-30s but is most common in the 40s — oestrogen and progesterone levels begin to fluctuate. Both of these hormones play a direct role in regulating mood and anxiety.
Progesterone, in particular, has a calming effect on the nervous system. As levels drop, many women notice they feel more on edge, more reactive, less able to manage stress that they used to handle with ease.
The result can feel like an anxiety disorder — but it’s actually a hormonal shift. And for many women, it comes completely out of nowhere.
If you’ve noticed your anxiety worsening in the last few years and you’re in your 40s, it’s worth having an honest conversation with your doctor about where you are hormonally.
Here’s something else we see consistently in the women who come to our health and wellness retreats for women.
By the time a woman reaches her 40s, she has often been carrying enormous amounts of stress — for a very long time. Careers. Children. Aging parents. Relationships. Financial pressure. Years of putting everyone else first.
None of it killed her. She adapted. She coped. She kept going.
But the nervous system keeps score. And what often happens in the 40s is that the accumulated weight of years of chronic stress — stress that was never fully processed or released — begins to surface.
It’s not that life suddenly got harder. It’s that the system that was holding it all together has finally reached its limit.
The 40s also tend to bring significant life transitions — children leaving home, career shifts, relationship changes, the loss of parents, the beginning of menopause. These aren’t small things.
And underneath many of them is a quieter, more unsettling question that many women in this season are grappling with:
Who am I now? What do I actually want? Is this it?
That kind of existential reckoning can feel a lot like anxiety. Because in many ways, it is. It’s the discomfort of being between one version of yourself and the next — and not yet knowing who that next version is going to be.
Personal growth in midlife isn’t always comfortable. But it is meaningful. And it is possible.
The 40s also tend to bring significant life transitions — children leaving home, career shifts, relationship changes, the loss of parents, the beginning of menopause. These aren’t small things.
And underneath many of them is a quieter, more unsettling question that many women in this season are grappling with:
Who am I now? What do I actually want? Is this it?
That kind of existential reckoning can feel a lot like anxiety. Because in many ways, it is. It’s the discomfort of being between one version of yourself and the next — and not yet knowing who that next version is going to be.
Personal growth in midlife isn’t always comfortable. But it is meaningful. And it is possible.
We’ve saved this one for last because we feel strongly about it.
One of the most underrated and most powerful tools for anxiety relief — particularly for women — is genuine human connection. Not social media connection. Not surface-level small talk. But the kind of real, honest, witnessed connection that comes from being truly seen by other women who understand.
Research consistently shows that social connection is one of the most effective buffers against anxiety and stress. It regulates the nervous system. It reduces cortisol. It reminds us, on a deep biological level, that we are safe.
If anxiety has been making you withdraw — from friends, from community, from events that once felt nourishing — we gently encourage you to move toward connection, not away from it. Even when it feels hard. Especially when it feels hard.
Anxiety in women over 40 is common, understandable, and treatable. It has real causes — hormonal, physiological, emotional, and circumstantial — and it responds to real interventions.
You are not falling apart. You are navigating one of the most significant transitions of your life, often with very little support and almost no road map.
That deserves compassion. Not pushing through. Not performing fine.
If any part of this resonated, start with one thing today. One conversation. One honest moment with yourself. One small step toward the support you actually deserve. 💛
Does this sound like your experience? Share in the comments — or send this to a woman in your life who needs to read it today.
Jenny McKee and Heather DelRosario are the co-founders of Soul Full Events and passionate community builders and retreat facilitators who help women reconnect with their authentic selves beneath the noise of everyday life, with no fixing or pretending, first through their own journeys past burnout and now through the intentional wellness gatherings they create.
