I didn’t plan to take a sabbatical.

There wasn’t a dramatic walkout, no calendar blocked off a year in advance. But after selling the business I’d built over decades, I found myself in a space I hadn’t occupied in years—one without meetings, metrics, or motion. I went back to school at 56 and wrote a book at 58.  I began building something slowly in my mind from the inside out. InHabit started as a few notes, a few conversations, a hunch that midlife deserved more attention and care. It grew into a platform for coaching, connection, and the kind of questions that don’t fit neatly in a business plan. During my sabbatical, I finally sat with some questions that had been ruminating for years. It was a pause that came disguised as rest but was more like a renovation.

Somewhere in the middle of all that tearing down and rebuilding, I got curious about what happens when other people hit pause. Not the vacation kind of pause that comes with a hammock or a hashtag; the what-am-I-doing-with-my-life kind. 

What follows are five midlife sabbatical stories. Each one is deeply personal. None of them are linear. I spoke with every person directly (some over email), and each story left a mark.

If you’ve ever dreamed about pressing pause but weren’t sure how to do it or what might come of it, you’re not alone. Maybe it’s time we thought about sabbaticals a little differently. Less as an escape and more as a return. Less about checking out and more about paying attention. Not a break from life, but a way back into it.

Before we dive into the stories, let’s zoom out for a moment. I’ve been digging into the research on sabbaticals; what they are, what they’re not, and why they matter. And one voice that really stuck with me is DJ DiDonna, founder of The Sabbatical Project.

He puts it plainly: “Sabbaticals are not vacations. They are rites of passage.”

His team has studied hundreds of people who’ve taken extended time away from work, and what they’ve found is that most sabbaticals tend to follow the same rough arc:

• Release – Letting go of your roles, your schedule, and sometimes your sense of who you are.
• Explore – Stepping into the unknown with nothing but curiosity and maybe a lightly packed bag.
• Return – Coming back changed or energized, with a new vantage point and story to tell.

It’s helpful language. Because not everyone calls what they did a “sabbatical.” But in each of the conversations that follow, I could hear this rhythm (release, explore, return) woven through the experience.

Let’s meet them.

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When the body says stop: Katherine Tilley

Katherine didn’t plan for a sabbatical. Breast cancer made the decision for her.

In the fall of 2023, after years of running businesses and raising two boys, she was diagnosed. What followed wasn’t a detour. It was a total reroute. Chemotherapy. Surgeries. Eighteen months of treatment. It became her full-time job. But as she quickly realized, healing required more than medicine.

A friend and fellow survivor offered a different kind of wisdom: Don’t just heal your body. Heal your whole self—so you don’t carry this into whatever’s next.

That stayed with her. It reframed everything.

Katherine stepped away completely. No part-time checking in. No halfway return. She treated chemo like hibernation. She walked. She let her nervous system rest. And when her body was ready, her mind slowly followed. Joy came in strange, small forms—like MasterClass videos that made her curious again.

Don’t wait for a health crisis to give yourself permission to pause

This wasn’t about her job anymore. It was about her life.

She re-educated herself in workplace wellbeing and psychological safety. She started asking better questions about how we live and work. She talked to mentors. She gave herself permission to dream—not in a someday kind of way, but in a what-if-we-started-now kind of way.

And when she reemerged, she began building something new.

Today, she leads The Workjoy Company, helping workplaces become more human, more healing, more whole. She’s taken everything she’s lived through and turned it outward—for others.

“Don’t wait for a health crisis to give yourself permission to pause,” she told me. “Rest is where the next, stronger version of you is built.”

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From hustle to whole: Marc Bitanga

Marc and I have traveled in similar leadership circles. His story didn’t just sound familiar—it felt familiar.

For years, he built his life around work. Full-time job by day, freelance projects by night. Always producing, always performing. He never took more than seven consecutive vacation days. “My identity,” he told me, “was work.”

But that kind of pace catches up with you. It always does. Stress started to speak through his body. Subtle at first, then louder. Until one day, out of nowhere, a recruiter reached out. They’d seen his leadership experience and wondered if he’d ever considered becoming a coach.

It was the gentlest of nudges, but it was the lifeline he needed.

I’m not just a marketing guy anymore,” he told me. “I’m a sketch artist. A traveler. A coach. A father who’s present.

He said yes and stepped away. No grand announcement, no sabbatical budget, no five-point plan, just a clear decision to try something different.

He slowed down. He sketched. He picked up a camera again. He practiced yoga. He traveled—this time not for work, but with his family. He made time for coffee with friends. And in the stillness, something surprising happened.

He remembered what beauty looked like.

His sabbatical didn’t have a name at the time. It wasn’t about leaving anything behind. It was about turning toward what had always been there, waiting.

“I’m not just a marketing guy anymore,” he told me. “I’m a sketch artist. A traveler. A coach. A father who’s present.”

Sometimes a sabbatical isn’t a break from something. It’s a return to someone.

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Dream days: Karen Gray

Karen had walked the Camino before—twice, actually. She already knew what it meant to put one foot in front of the other, to let the rhythm of walking do what words and wellness plans often can’t. But this time, she needed something harder.

Burnout had moved in and unpacked. She’d lost an in-law, had a major health scare, become an empty nester and the demands of her role had become unsustainable—late nights, constant pressure, and the creeping exhaustion that doesn’t show up all at once, but accumulates slowly, like interest on a loan you forgot you took out.

So she chose the Via Francigena, from Canterbury to Rome. 2000 kilometres. 90 days. No rest days—thanks to visa constraints and a personality that doesn’t ease into half-measures.

“I just wanted 90 days of nothing,” she told me. “To walk, eat, sleep, and be outside.” No spreadsheets. No small talk. Just the basics, on repeat.

“I just wanted 90 days of nothing,” she told me. “To walk, eat, sleep, and be outside.

She walked with her partner Penny, a former Olympic athlete, which sounds lovely until you realize it means being gently outpaced for three months straight. Some days were so hot the tar melted beneath their feet. On one of those, heart racing and water gone, she recorded a video for her kids—just in case. On other days, in quiet churches along the route, she wept with gratitude and felt more grounded than she had in years.

When she returned, she didn’t just feel rested. She felt rewritten.

She picked up a guitar and started a meditation practice. She tried out for Canada’s Masters Field Hockey team. She made small, meaningful changes that stuck. And then she started writing a book about it. She’s calling it Dream Days.

Because that’s what it turned out to be: A return to the kind of life she forgot she could have.

“Doing nothing gave me space to ask how I wanted to live,” she told me.

And if you’ve ever carried too much for too long, you know: doing nothing is never just nothing.

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Walking it off (for 316 days): Jordan Bower

Jordan’s story has all the makings of a documentary. Wide shots. A coast. A lone figure on a long road. But beneath the cinematic sweep, it’s deeply, painfully human.

His first sabbatical didn’t start with a dream. It started with a breakup that knocked the wind out of him.

It had been his girlfriend’s idea to walk the west coast of North America. And after she left, he held onto the plan like it might bring her back. Secretly, he hoped she’d meet him in Seattle, maybe even with snacks and a change of heart. She didn’t.

But by that point, he’d already told everyone, raised money, and made it public. There was no backing out. So he started walking from Vancouver to the Mexican border.

Three hundred and sixteen days. Not on a protected trail, but along highways, through towns, over the Golden Gate Bridge, into forests and out again.

He never actually wanted to walk the coast. But it turns out, the coast was just a decoy.

I thought I was doing it for her,” he said. “But I was walking into myself.

“I thought I was doing it for her,” he said. “But I was walking into myself.”

Along the way, strangers opened up to him—fully, weirdly, beautifully. They shared their love stories, their regrets. He recorded some on his phone. People trusted him with the kinds of things you usually save for long-time friends or therapists.

And he listened. Not as a coach or a facilitator or a guide. Just as a human. One foot in front of the other. One story at a time.

What he found was humility. Not the performative kind. The real, stripped-down kind. The kind that arrives when you’re cold and hungry and wondering what you’re doing out here—and then someone hands you a sandwich, tells you a story, and it feels like grace.

Ten years later, during the pandemic, he walked again. This time with his wife. This time on purpose. They followed the Camino, carried stones in their pockets, and walked all the way to Finisterre—the edge of Spain, literally translated as “end of the world.”

At the coast, they threw their stones into the sea.

“That stone held the version of my life that was over,” he said. “I needed to let it go.”

His story is a reminder that sometimes the long way around is the only way through—and that letting go isn’t something we think our way into. It’s something our bodies learn to do, one mile at a time.

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The way appears: Rosemary Lodge

When I spoke to Rosemary, there was a grounded ease in her voice. The kind that only comes after you’ve been through the storm and made peace with the rain.

But getting there wasn’t graceful. It was burnout. Full stop. Years in public engagement and communications had taken a toll. Too many Zoom calls, tight timelines, and the quiet erosion of self. She pushed through until her body said no. Medical leave followed. And though she returned to work, she carried a knowing: she couldn’t keep doing life like this.

So when her husband got a posting in Mumbai, she didn’t hesitate. She quit her job. She gave up half their household income. She said yes to the unknown.

There was no sabbatical playbook. She had tried to plan—a course in Buddhist psychology, maybe some structure—but it fell through before she even boarded the plane. India, in its chaotic wisdom, offered no itinerary.

As you start to walk the way,” she told me, quoting Rumi, “the way appears.

She followed what felt right. She studied traditional yoga in a country where it wasn’t just exercise but an ancient way of living. She traveled solo to Rishikesh, Dharamshala, and Goa. She earned teaching certifications in breathwork, meditation and coaching. She began weaving together the threads of who she was before the burnout, before the striving.

And then there was the singing.

In one of her first meditation classes, the teacher asked students to chant each of the mantras. Alone. In Sanskrit. With no music. Rosemary panicked. Her chest tightened. When it was her turn, the words caught in her throat. She stumbled through a few syllables, then gave up. She went back to her room and cried.

But the next day, she came back determined to try. And she sang.(She later discovered she was quite good at it). 

That class became her favourite. Not because she nailed it, but because she didn’t run.

India didn’t just teach her how to breathe. It taught her how to begin again. Not by mapping it all out, but by showing up and walking anyway.

“As you start to walk the way,” she told me, quoting Rumi, “the way appears.”

That line stuck. Not because it was poetic, but because she had lived it.

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What if you did nothing and it changed everything? 

None of the people in these stories stepped away because they had some tidy five-year plan. Most of them walked into the unknown holding nothing more than a hunch and a little bit of hope. They didn’t call it reinvention at the time. They just knew something wasn’t working anymore.

There’s a moment, and you probably know it, where staying the same becomes more uncomfortable than trying something new. It doesn’t often show up like a thunderclap. More often, it arrives in whispers. You cancel the vacation. You keep pushing. And then one day, your body or your spirit or your inbox reminds you that this way of living might not be the only way.

And that’s when it gets interesting.

Stepping away doesn’t always mean giving up. It might mean tuning in. Tuning in to the questions you’ve been postponing. To the quieter parts of yourself that don’t speak over meetings or deadlines. And no, it doesn’t have to mean a Himalayan retreat or a coast-to-coast pilgrimage. It might look like turning your phone off for the weekend. Asking for a leave, even when it feels impossible. Reclaiming your weekends. Letting your mind wander without trying to monetize it.

You don’t have to call it a sabbatical. You don’t need the perfect timing or a three-page proposal. You just need the willingness to ask: what might happen if I actually stopped?

That question won’t land the same for everyone. Which is the point.

What kind of break are you craving?

No two breaks are the same. No two returns look alike. Some people come back softer. Others, sharper. Some start companies. Others start baking. But all of them carry a new way of seeing. A shift. A clarity.

So what about you?

What kind of break are you craving? And what kind of life might appear if you gave yourself the space to listen?

Thinking about a sabbatical?

If the idea of a sabbatical is tugging at you but feels out of reach or unclear, you're not alone. Most people don’t know where to start.

The Sabbatical Project

This research-backed platform is one of the best places to begin. It offers personal stories, practical insights, and a helpful framework for what a sabbatical can actually look like—from short breaks to extended time away. Whether you’re craving rest, meaning, clarity, or change, this is a good place to start.

🔗 thesabbaticalproject.org