What Do We Owe Ourselves Now?
Not the walking group. Not the organized photographs. Something deeper.
What Do We Owe Ourselves Now?
This is what owing yourself something looks like. Yours will look different. But it will feel exactly like thisIt occures to me that we are OWED!
What do women owe themselves after sixty?
Not in the cute little checklist way.
Not “take up a hobby,” “clean out the closets,” “join a walking group,” or “finally organize the photographs” — although God bless the woman with that kind of stamina.
I mean deeper.
What do we owe the woman who got us here?
One day the structure changes and the world says: Congratulations, you’re retired.
As if that explains anything.
As if a woman is supposed to know who she is simply because the old calendar stopped bossing her around.
I don’t really think of myself as retired.
That word has never felt quite right in my mouth.
I think of myself as a woman no longer organizing her life around tending to everyone else’s existence.
That is different.
And that difference matters.
Because retirement is a status.
Reimagining is an awakening.
So here is what I think we owe ourselves now.
Not as a checklist. Not as a project. Just — as a truth worth sitting with.
We owe ourselves the chance to change how we think about ourselves.
Not just how we think about retirement.
How we think about ourselves.
Because that is where the real shift begins.
We owe ourselves the space to dream without immediately turning the dream into a plan, a responsibility, or a performance.
We owe ourselves the time to feel what we actually want now — not what would have made sense twenty years ago, not what looks reasonable from the outside, not what keeps other people comfortable.
We owe ourselves the dignity of no longer assuming that our useful years were our meaningful years.
And we owe ourselves a new relationship with our own potential.
Not potential as achievement.
Not potential as productivity.
Not potential as what can I produce, what can I prove, what can I justify?
Potential as aliveness.
Potential as curiosity.
Potential as the quiet stirring that says — there may still be more of me I have not met yet.
That is what I think we owe ourselves now.
Not a walking group.
Not organized photographs.
The chance to meet the woman we became while we were busy living.
If something in this piece landed —
if “the dignity of no longer assuming that your useful years were your meaningful years” stopped you for a moment —
I want to tell you about Tuesday evenings.
That’s when a small group of paid members meets with me on Zoom for the Breakthrough Circle.
Not a class. Not a workshop. Not a program with modules and milestones.
A conversation.
Between women who are done organizing their lives around everyone else’s existence — and are figuring out, together, what they actually owe themselves now.
We sit with the hard questions. We say the things that don’t get said at dinner. We meet the women we’ve been becoming while we were busy living.
If that sounds like the conversation you’ve been looking for —
it is.
Become a paid member by subscribing.
The uncomfortable thoughts you don't say out loud? We say them on Tuesdays.
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.