How women can find their superpower in midlife

by Carolyn Ray

“Do you want to be a beginner or a dinosaur?” That’s the question Christine Sperber asks me when we meet on a Zoom call. She’s just come in from the desert in sunny Baja, Mexico, where she and partners Chip Conley and Jeff Hamaoui founded Modern Elder Academy (MEA), the world’s first midlife retreat, creating a safe space for mid-lifers to reframe aging from a time of decline to one of learning, opportunity and growth.

MEA offers science-based workshops around the MEA Method, which has been designed in collaboration with academics from Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Yale, who have dedicated themselves to understanding modern midlife. There are in-person workshops at two campuses, one in Baja, Mexico and Santa Fe, New Mexico, with luminaries like Pico Iyer, Anne Lamott and Martha Beck. For those who prefer not to travel, The Digital Campus offers masterclasses, immersion courses and on-demand learning.

“As we age, it’s really common for our scope to narrow,” Sperber says. “The journey from 20 to 50 feels like forever, right? But 50 to 80 is the same amount of time. At 20, there was nothing that you would say, “Ah, it’s too late for me to learn that.”

Sperber says that all the curriculum is based on scientific research from established academics, gerontologists and medical doctors who specialize in midlife, menopause, perimenopause and reframing aging. She cites a piece of research from Yale’s Becca Levy that has proven that a positive mindset about aging correlates to seven and a half to eight years of additional lifespan.

“It’s not uncommon to hear someone say, ‘It’s too late for me to go back to school. It’s too late for me to start a new career. It’s just too late,'” she says. “And it’s absolutely not too late. In the U.S., if you make it to 60, your chances of making it to 80 are in the 90th percentile. We’re living longer, our healthspans are longer, and we have more time. So, when you put that lens on, 20 to 50, 50 to 80, it opens up a lot of potential, right?”

The catalyst for change, she says, is the realization that most of us have so much more time than we realize. ”It’s critically important that we’re still able to ignite our curiosity and allow ourselves to be beginners or we risk becoming dinosaurs.”

Sperber calls out the incredible opportunity that women have in midlife to understand and activate their superpower.

“As mature women, we are an incredible force,” she says. “We have experience. We have sophistication, we’ve travelled, we have emotional intelligence. If we understood our power better, I think we could have such a much bigger impact on the world. And I think the world needs emotional intelligence right now more than ever, needs wisdom right now more than ever.”

This is not a time for women to step back, Sperber says.

“I don’t look how I used to look,” she says. “I’m not as strong as I used to be. People don’t treat me the same way. But to serve ourselves and our communities, we have to step forward. We have to step forward, and be better for us, and better for the world.”

How women can find your superpower in midlife

1. Embrace the transitions

One of the topics that Sperber is passionate about is normalizing transitions, an area where women get often roadblocked by stereotypes or the idea that we ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be doing something at a certain age.

“Human midlife is filled with transitions,” she says. “How do we get better at recognizing the stages of a transition, recognizing the traps in a transition, and moving through them with more fluency?  We need to get away from the ‘shoulds’ — I ‘should’ be here, I ‘should’ be doing that, and instead recognize that all transitions begin with an ending.”

Sperber believes there is power in bringing people together to have conversations with those going through the same thing, whether it’s caring for their parents, their children career changes or divorce and widowhood. MEA offers both online and in-person workshops on managing transitions at both its Baja and Santa Fe campuses.

2. Step out of your comfort zone

As travellers, we know that curiosity is part of the joy of travel. It’s no different in midlife. When we stay in the comfort zone that often equals boredom.

“When we stay curious, are willing to try new things, then life is more fun, more exciting,” she says. “We’re nicer to be around when we’re curious. It’s really about not getting stuck in the things that we know.”

One of the ways we can do this is by rediscovering our purpose, a topic that MEA teaches in its ‘Cultivating Purpose” workshops. Examples include “ROAR into Midlife: Build Your Bold Second Act” with Michael Clinton and Chip Conley, and “Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose” with Martha Beck and Chip Conley.

“What lights us up now is different once we’re in our 50s, and sometimes we feel a mismatch,” says Canadian Jill Nykoliation, who teaches a workshop called “Who Am I Now?” for MEA. “If you’ve been yearning to honour that voice inside of you, or feel stuck, MEA is an opportunity to gift yourself with a week in a safe space. It’s time to do something for you.”

3. Play games you aren’t sure you can win

Sperber cites an interesting quote that I’m curious about: “As we age, it’s important to continue to play games we aren’t sure we can win.”

“We’ve had an entire lifetime of being rewarded for the things we know, for being sophisticated, for being prepared,” she says. “This is our time to embrace our superpower and be ready to fail.”

This is an opportunity to cut through the noise about aging and reconnect with our bodies.  Sperber teaches several workshop on women’s health, including “Women’s Health: Reclaim Your Agency, Power and Freedom”, which helps women build vitality and mental clarity for years to come.

4. Find community

To provide social spaces and support, there is a strong alumni community that stays together after the workshops.

“The connectivity and support and community has been the most beautiful byproduct of this,” Sperber says “We have our cohorts that come through a workshop and an app that allows people to have private social spaces, as well as local chapter events where people have meetups and get together.

“In adolescence, we’re often with a cohort or partner, and there are social structures designed to support us through that time,” she says. “However, when we get to midlife, we are isolated or alone because we’ve been focused on raising a family or having a career. You pick your head up and look around and say, “Oh, where did my community go?”

With MEA, Sperber hopes to create a business with double impact — one that impacts communities and people.

“There’s impact for our guests who are coming to reframe aging and think about how they’re going to really be intentional about the second half of their lives, and at the same time, that that could create an engine of impact for local community. That was a pretty inspirational place to start from.”

Disclaimer: We’re proud to feature women-led businesses in our Women’s Travel Directory, including this feature, which is sponsored by Modern Elder Academy. Claim an exclusive 20% discount on a workshop with travel industry guru Pico Iyer from August 18-24, 2025 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. To learn more and get exclusive discounts visit Modern Elder Academy here.

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