On finding the word we actually deserve.
We throw debut parties for maidens. We throw baby showers for mothers.
Then a woman reaches her fifties and we hand her a pamphlet about vaginal dryness.
Something about that feels wildly disproportionate.
I’ve been noticing this whenever I talk about SecondSpring — the brand Carlos and I built for women navigating perimenopause.
The language itself seems to make people flinch.
Midlife. Menopause. Middle-aged.
Three words that should carry weight and dignity. Three words that somehow arrive in the room already apologizing for themselves.
And every single time, I watch something happen in the room. It might be a slight recoil with raised eyebrows. Or a polite smile that doesn’t reach the eyes. A subtle but unmistakable pulling away from the word — and by extension, from the stage of life it describes.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realized the problem wasn’t the women.
It was the welcome. Or to be more precise, the lack of one.
We celebrate maidens. We celebrate mothers.
Think about how we mark the transitions.
A girl becomes a young woman and we throw her a debut. Eighteen candles, eighteen roses, eighteen treasures. A gown. A waltz. A room full of people saying: look at her, look at who she’s becoming, look at how much we love her.
A woman becomes a mother and we throw her a shower. Games, gifts, a table full of food, everyone gathering to say: this is significant, this matters, we see you crossing into something new.
And then.
A woman steps into her 40s and 50s — having done more, survived more, learned more than either of those earlier versions of herself could have imagined — and we give her... a euphemism. A hushed conversation with her doctor. A wellness article that begins with an apology.
No ceremony. No name. No room full of people saying: look at her. Look at who she’s becoming now.
That gap bothered me more the longer I looked at it.
So I went looking for the word
The existing framework gives the third stage a name: Crone.
I’ve never quite made peace with it. Not because older women aren’t powerful. They absolutely are. And most definitely not because wisdom isn’t valuable. It is.
But because no one ever says the word without immediately rushing to defend it.
No one needs a campaign explaining why Maiden is actually a beautiful word.
No one writes essays about why Mother isn’t as bad as it sounds.
Yet every conversation about Crone seems to begin with the same disclaimer:
“I know it sounds awful, but...”
That’s usually a sign the word isn’t working.
The third stage deserves better than a word that arrives with an asterisk.
So I went looking for another one. And I kept coming back to the letter M.
Not just because of alliteration but because the M words that actually describe this stage kept multiplying the more I paid attention.
The M words that actually fit
We are in menopause — or perimenopause, which is where most of us live for a decade before anyone uses the official word. A biological transition that is real, significant, and still wildly under-discussed.
We are navigating midlife — which I’ve stopped saying apologetically, because I’ve started noticing that the women I most admire are all here, and none of them look like the culture’s version of decline.
We are mentors — formally or not, whether we signed up for it or not. The women behind us are watching how we do this. Our daughters, our nieces, our younger colleagues. They are taking careful notes.
We are makers — of decisions, of businesses, of second chapters. The data is striking: women over 45 start businesses at higher rates than any other demographic, with higher survival rates. It turns out that experience is an asset. Who knew.
We are, in short, a lot of M words. And the one that I believe captures what this stage actually is — the one that I would love for us to be known for — is this:
Maven.
From the Hebrew mēbhīn. Literally: one who understands.
Not one who used to understand. Not one who once held power and now offers it gently from a distance. One who understands — present tense, actively, specifically.
The original mavens were people who knew which butcher to trust, which doctor was worth the wait, which advice was actually sound. Practical expertise with real stakes. Earned, not inherited. The kind of knowledge that only comes from having paid close enough attention for long enough that patterns emerge on their own.
A maven isn’t wise in a vague, ambient way. She’s the person you call because she knows. Because she’s been paying attention since before most people in the room understood what was worth paying attention to.
That’s the third stage. That’s what this season is the gateway to.
Maidenhood. Motherhood. Mavenhood.
I’d like to propose a new framework. And with it — a proper welcome.
Maidenhood — the years of becoming. Identity forming, possibility opening, the world still being sorted into what matters and what doesn’t.
Motherhood — the years of deep investment. This doesn’t require children. It means the season when your energy flows outward — into careers, relationships, families, communities. You give more than you keep.
Mavenhood — the years of mastery. You’ve paid attention long enough that things make sense in ways they didn’t before. You’ve stopped performing and started discerning. You know your own body, your own mind, your own limits. You know what you’re for.
This is not a consolation prize for youth that has passed. Mavenhood is the graduation.
You don’t leave the other stages behind
The maven carries everything. The maiden’s curiosity doesn’t disappear. The mother’s capacity for deep investment doesn’t evaporate. They become part of the foundation she operates from.
What changes is the altitude. The maven operates from higher ground — not because she’s retreated, but because she’s earned the elevation. She sees further. She wastes less. She’s stopped outsourcing her own authority.
So here is my provocation and proposal
If maidens get a debut and mothers get a shower — then women stepping into Mavenhood deserve a moment of recognition too.
Not a party, necessarily. Not eighteen roses. But at minimum: a name. A framework that says this stage is significant, this matters, we see you crossing into something new. A word that doesn’t need defending.
If you’re navigating perimenopause right now, you are standing at that threshold.
The question isn’t whether your body is changing. It is — and there’s real, specific nutrition science that supports what your body needs at exactly this stage, which is what SecondSpring was built around.
But before the science, the question is simpler: are you ready to step into your Mavenhood?
Because unlike the debut and the shower — this one, you get to throw for yourself.
That’s the real work of Mavenhood. Not waiting for the invitation, but becoming the woman who writes it.