ABSTRACT
There are countless stories in the media of individuals who opt out of their professions and lifestyles to live their dreams. There are articles, TV shows, and an abundance of self-help books that give advice on how to change one’s life and pursue what one really, perhaps secretly, has always yearned to do. However, although opting out, reinvention and adopting new lifestyles has been celebrated in the media and portrayed as exciting and enviable, little attention has been paid to the emotional distress that women go through when they opt out. As I have explored in the previous chapters, the time before opting out is often filled with feelings of inadequacy, a lack of agency and a difficulty creating coherent life narratives. For the women in my study, opting out has also been filled with crisis and turmoil, and it was a time of searching before they knew what they wanted to opt in to instead.
