The Day I Realized There Was No Room for Me

And why so many women finally become “difficult” later in life.

Every summer, my first husband took two weeks of vacation. Without me. One week he’d go whitewater rafting with his buddies. Another week he’d take off on some adventure with his friends, traveling to different states, doing whatever they wanted to do.

It never occurred to him to ask how I felt about it. He simply made his plans and went. Meanwhile, I stayed home and kept everything running.

I was married to a preacher. For seventeen years, I played the role that came with being a preacher’s wife. I helped make everything happen for everybody. That was my place in the family, and heaven knows there was plenty to do. But somewhere in all that doing, I had practically disappeared.

Here’s something I’ve never forgotten. My husband never sat down and had a real conversation with me. I’m talking about one of those wonderful conversations where two people exchange thoughts, share stories, explore ideas, and genuinely want to know what’s going on inside the other person’s head.

Never. Not once.

Then I met a man who would eventually become my husband. His name was Bob. We’d sit on the couch for hours talking. He listened to my stories, my thoughts, my opinions. He was actually interested in what I had to say.

And something began to happen.

I started remembering that I was a person. Not somebody’s wife, not the person who kept everything running, not the woman everybody depended on. I was a woman with thoughts and interests and stories of my own.

And for the first time in a very long time, there was room for me.

I eventually divorced the preacher. The truth is, I didn’t love him, and I had finally recognized how little of myself existed in that marriage.

Do remeber the attitude that many of the older laides in our lives - the aunt, the grandmother, the Sunday School teacher, etc- the so-called difficult old woman. You know the one. She’s opinionated. She complains. She doesn’t go along with everybody else’s plans anymore. She’s suddenly become demanding, and the family wonders what on earth happened to her.

Well, I have a few thoughts about that.

What if she hasn’t become difficult at all? What if she’s simply exhausted from spending a lifetime making everything easy for everybody else?

Think about how many women spent their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties arranging their lives around husbands, children, jobs, churches, and family obligations. They were the ones who figured out the schedules, remembered the birthdays, organized the holidays, made the sacrifices, and kept the peace.

And somewhere along the way, they learned that their own preferences were negotiable. Everybody else’s needs came first, and theirs could wait.

Until when?

That’s the question, isn’t it?

Because one day the children are grown, the career is over, and the woman who spent forty or fifty years being agreeable starts having some opinions about how she wants to live.

Maybe she doesn’t want to cook Thanksgiving dinner anymore. Maybe she doesn’t want to travel across three states for Christmas. Maybe she doesn’t want another volunteer position, another responsibility, or another damn list of things she’s supposed to accomplish in retirement.

Suddenly, she’s difficult.

Or maybe she’s finally present in her own life.

What struck was how deeply the expectation to accommodate others remains embedded in us. Even when we recognize what’s happened, we can still feel guilty about speaking up. We still worry that somebody will think we’re selfish, ungrateful, or demanding.

Good grief, ladies. How many years are we supposed to spend asking permission to have a preference?

I don’t believe retirement is supposed to be another chapter of making ourselves available to everybody else. I believe it can be the first opportunity some women have ever had to discover what they actually want.

Not what their husbands wanted. Not what their children expect. Not what society says a woman of seventy ought to be doing.

What she wants.

And I want to tell you something else. It doesn’t have to take another person coming along and listening to your stories before you begin listening to yourself.

That’s something I understand now that I didn’t understand all those years ago.

I spent a lot of my life playing roles, some of them beautifully, some of them badly, and some of them long after they stopped fitting. But I’ve reached a place where I don’t have to justify the life I’m choosing to live.

Neither does any other woman.

So if somebody thinks you’ve become a little difficult lately, consider the possibility that you haven’t become difficult at all.

Maybe you’ve simply stopped disappearing.

And wouldn’t it be a shame to spend the rest of your life doing that?

Your Life Is Still Yours

If you’ve spent most of your life making room for everybody else, it’s time to remember there’s room for you, too.

That’s exactly why I wrote Your Life Is Still Yours, my new $7 guide for people who are tired of being told what retirement is supposed to look like.

It’s not another list of things to accomplish, another plan for finding your purpose, or another set of rules to live by. Good grief, haven’t we had enough of those?

It’s an invitation to question the expectations you’ve been carrying, rediscover what you actually want, and start living the life that belongs to you.

You don’t need permission. You don’t need another purpose. And you certainly don’t need another damn assignment.