Put on trial

for waking up rested.

Who put me on trial for waking up rested?

Nobody. That’s the unsettling part.

It was Tuesday, which is usually one of the days I publish. Normally, that would have meant needing an idea. A plan. A point. Something useful to say.

But this morning, there was nothing.

ENTER THE PROSECUTOR: Why don’t you have an idea? Why aren’t you already producing something? Why are you wasting a perfectly good morning? What kind of woman wakes up rested and does not immediately turn that energy into production?

What the hell? Where did that set of prosecutorial thoughts come from?

More importantly, how many women over 60 are still doing this to themselves every day? Not because anyone is standing over us with a clipboard.

Because the clipboard has moved inside ourselves.

Retirement did not come with a handbook. Just like our babies didn’t come with a handbook back when parenting felt like one messy moment figured out at a time: “Nobody handed me a handbook when they gave me you. Figuring this out as I go.” I recall saying this to one of kids during those aggrivating “ teen” years.

Our generation is standing on a different frontier. We are trying to figure out what retirement means for women who do not want to disappear.

This is not our mothers’ retirement.Many of our mothers had a script. It may not have been fair. It may not have been expansive. But it was recognizable.

Mostly, it was the same script from before retirement, just turned up louder. Whatever got expected of her at forty got expected of her at seventy, only more of it, with more free time now available to deliver it.

Be helpful. Be pleasant. Keep the house. Watch the grandchildren. Join the committee. Go to church. Do not make too much noise. Do not want too much. Do not become inconvenient.

But what happens when a woman reaches this stage of life and realizes she is not done?

What happens when she does not want her life reduced to appointments, errands, casseroles, and being available?

What happens when she wants wonder?

This is why the Invoke Awe and Wonder video is sitting at the bottom of this piece.

Because wonder may be one of the first permissions we lose.

Not all at once. Not dramatically. Nobody walks into the room and says, “Hand over your wonder, ma’am. You are too old for that now.”

It happens more quietly.

We get busy. We get practical. We get needed. We get praised for being dependable. We get rewarded for being useful. We get very good at tending to everyone else’s life.

Here’s what got rediscovered by accident: Shannon ( my daughter) send me a bouquet of pink roses.( pictured above ) A single petal fell down to the table. I picked it up and began thoroughly exampining it.

Something made the moment slow down enough to actually look — really look — at one petal. Then at the veins running through it, branching and thinning toward the edge like something had planned it on purpose.

The body relaxed first. Shoulders dropped an inch without permission being asked.

Then something wilder happened.

Ideas started arriving. Not the tidy kind, the kind that show up on a to-do list. Strange ones. Curious ones. Thoughts that would never have surfaced on purpose, slipping in sideways through one small, useless act of noticing a petal.

Turns out the soul knows a trick worth learning: hand it one unguarded moment of wonder, and it sneaks in through the opening with an idea nobody sat down and planned. A curiosity worth chasing. A thread worth pulling. A whole new direction, offered up like a gift, simply because attention finally slowed down enough to receive it. All of a sudden my mind was filled with thoughts of more wonder “ what if…” became a mantra for that day. ( it was fun!)

That’s the part worth getting excited about. Wonder isn’t just a nice feeling to have.

It’s a launch pad. Look closely enough at one small, ordinary thing, and an entirely new runway opens up — full of ideas about what to bring into this next chapter, ideas that were always there, just waiting for a still enough moment to be noticed.

And somewhere along the way, stopping to be amazed by light on a wall, rain on a window, a dandelion, a bar of soap, a bird, a color, a memory, or the sheer absurd miracle of still being here can start to feel childish, in the best possible way.

Or indulgent.

Or unproductive.

There it is again.

The prosecution.

Here’s a question worth sitting with before reading any further: what’s the clipboard checking on this week? Name it. Not the metaphor — the actual thing. A garden left too wild. A closet not organized. A Tuesday spent doing nothing worth reporting to anyone.

Now ask the follow-up: who’s actually holding that clipboard? Because it isn’t a person anymore. Nobody’s grading this.

Maybe this new frontier of retirement is not about withdrawing from life.

Maybe it is about finally withdrawing our consent from the rules that made life too small.

Maybe we are not here to age gracefully.

Maybe we are here to age truthfully.

Curiously.

Loudly when needed.

Quietly when desired.

With lipstick or without it. With a paintbrush, a passport, a garden trowel, a microphone, a nap, a new business, a new love, a new boundary, or a Tuesday morning where we do absolutely nothing useful and refuse to apologize for it.

Nobody gave us a handbook.

Fine.

We will write one with our lives.

And chapter one might be very simple:

Permission granted.

Court adjourned.

Now go look for wonder.

Court’s not fully adjourned, though — not for the paid subscribers who show up for what doesn’t make the free docket. The essays that go further into the clipboard, the wonder, the whole case for a life that doesn’t need to justify itself. This week, new paid members get 20% off. before the discount closes the case.

And since wonder’s the whole subject today — here’s where it started.

And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.