By: Kate Sarmiento

Somewhere along the way, midlife got a terrible publicist. The years when a lot of women finally have the perspective to ask what they actually want somehow ended up labeled a “crisis.” Anna Rosa Parker, founder of EVOKE Your Story™, sees those years differently. Her methodology brings together identity work, storymapping, neuroscience, and heart intelligence to help people understand the stories that have shaped them, and midlife can be when those stories become harder to ignore.

If you’re a woman in your forties, fifties, or sixties, some of this may sound familiar. You may have spent decades building a career, and your children, if you have them, may need you differently now. Your body is changing, and so are your relationships and the roles that once took up most of your time.

With that much changing, feeling uncertain makes sense. Underneath it all sits one question that’s hard to shake: Who am I when the roles that used to define my days no longer define me in the same way? Calling that a crisis implies something has gone wrong. EVOKE frames it as an identity transition instead, a shift in how you understand yourself and what you want next.

Anna Rosa has changed roles more than once herself. She grew up in Iceland, where she competed in and taught aerobics, before studying drama and playwriting at the University of Washington. In New York, she developed brand voice and storytelling for brands including Baccarat Hotel & Residences, 1 Hotels, Sóley Organics, Furtuna Skin, and EleVen by Venus Williams. She is a Certified HeartMath® Coach and has been a Guest Lecturer at New York University since 2022. EVOKE grew out of Anna Rosa and Shanga’s own experiences with identity, purpose, and reinvention. Anna Rosa originally created the framework for actors, and her husband, Shanga Parker, joined as co-founder in 2023 to help develop it further.

The Crisis Most People Never Actually Have

The midlife crisis is a familiar idea, but researchers have questioned its inevitability for decades. In a 2000 study of 724 American adults, Cornell sociologist Elaine Wethington found that about a quarter said they had experienced one. But when their answers were examined more closely, most were describing major life events and transitions, such as a serious illness or job insecurity, rather than turmoil caused by getting older. Women, by the way, were just as likely as men to say they had experienced a midlife crisis. (Source: Elaine Wethington, “Expecting Stress: Americans and the ‘Midlife Crisis,’” Motivation and Emotion, 2000.)

Long-term research on midlife is more encouraging, too. Drawing on longitudinal data from the national Midlife in the United States study, researchers found that well-being during the middle years looked more positive than earlier studies suggested. They describe midlife as a pivotal stretch of life that balances growth in some areas with decline in others. Nobody seems to mention the growth part when they’re making midlife jokes. (Source: Margie E. Lachman, Salom Teshale, and Stefan Agrigoroaei, “Midlife as a Pivotal Period in the Life Course,” International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2015.)

So why does the word “crisis” stick? One possible reason is that people understand their lives through stories. We make sense of who we are by shaping what happens to us into an evolving narrative, and that narrative helps form how we see ourselves. If the dominant story about midlife is one of crisis, it becomes easy to interpret every honest question as proof that something is wrong. (Source: Dan P. McAdams, “‘First We Invented Stories, Then They Changed Us’: The Evolution of Narrative Identity,” Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 2019.)

Your Roles Changed Before Your Story Did

Roles like work, caregiving, and partnership can take up so much space that there is little room left to ask what you want outside of them. So when those roles shift, the questions that show up can feel unsettling. For many women, though, it may also be the first time in decades they’ve had enough perspective to ask them at all.

EVOKE’s approach draws on acting technique. Actors use the term “given circumstances” for the facts and conditions surrounding a character, the things that shape what the character wants and how they act. In midlife, many of our own circumstances change. EVOKE helps people examine those changes and uncover the stories they have been carrying about who they are supposed to be.

None of this is about becoming someone new. EVOKE’s view is that lasting change comes from recognizing who you truly are, so the work stays focused on what’s already there.

Change can also be stressful. Frustration and anxiety are associated with more irregular heart-rate variability patterns, while psychophysiological coherence is associated with positive emotional states and improved cognitive performance. Drawing on Anna Rosa’s HeartMath® training, EVOKE introduces practical techniques that can help people regulate stress and create the mental space to think more clearly about what they want. (Source: Rollin McCraty, Mike Atkinson, Dana Tomasino, and Raymond Trevor Bradley, “The Coherent Heart,” Integral Review, 2009.)

A Brand Is Just a Story Other People Can See

The same idea applies to how people present themselves to the world. EVOKE was first created for actors, and its EVOKE Your Personal Brand, Start From Within course puts that work into a simple, practical format. For anyone reading this who wants to build a personal brand that reflects who they are, it is an accessible place to start.

The course costs $29 USD and is self-paced online, so participants can move through it on their own schedule. It begins with the story before the brand, then guides participants through their values, what they want to be known for, their visual and voice expression, and how to share with intention. None of it involves building a persona. The point is to get clear on what is already true and translate that into how they show up in the world. By the end, participants should have a clearer sense of their story and direction, along with one meaningful move they feel ready to make.

Before You Call It a Crisis, Ask a Better Question

If midlife has you asking who you are now, that question deserves more than a punchline. It might be the first time in years you’ve had the room to ask it. Anna Rosa Parker and the EVOKE team work with women, creatives, founders, and purpose-driven professionals who want to understand the stories that have shaped them and become more fully who they are. They offer the EVOKE Your Story™ online program as well as a VIP coaching option for individuals. If you’re curious whether it fits where you are right now, the EVOKE website is a good place to begin.