I recognize you: the more than capable women who can remember what your husband liked for dinner.
You can remember which child hated having the crust cut off her sandwiches.
You can remember birthdays, anniversaries, everybody’s favorite Christmas dessert, and a thousand little details about people who have occupied your life.
But can you remember what YOU wanted?
Before the marriage. Before the children. Before the responsibilities and the endless accommodations.
What did that young woman dream about doing with her life?
I asked a woman that question during a live conversation on Substack last recently.
She couldn’t remember.
Not that she had abandoned her dreams. Not that she’d changed her mind about them.
She couldn’t remember ever having them.
And that made me furious.
Not at her. Good Lord, no.
At the enormous machinery of expectations that can swallow a woman’s life so completely that she forgets she ever wanted anything for herself.
And here’s what I’ve come to understand since that conversation.
Nobody had to steal her dreams. She was conditioned to put them away herself.
That’s the insidious part.
Nobody necessarily sat her down and said, “Your dreams don’t matter.”
Instead, she learned to be helpful. Accommodating. Responsible. A good wife. A devoted mother. A woman who could be counted on.
And she was good at it!
She became so accomplished at taking care of everybody else’s needs that eventually she stopped recognizing her own.
She didn’t wake up one morning and decide to surrender her life.
She surrendered it in a thousand little decisions that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.
And then the children grew up.
The responsibilities changed.
The house got quiet.
And suddenly there she was, perhaps 60, 70, or 80 years old, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do with the rest of her life.
Here’s what troubles me.
We tell women to find a hobby. Join a club. Volunteer. Travel. Stay busy.
Busy doing WHAT?
And for WHOM?
Haven’t we been busy enough?
I don’t believe the answer to an unfulfilled life is finding another collection of activities to fill the hours.
I believe we have to go further back.