Where did she go? The one who used to want things.
She didn't go anywhere. She just stopped being asked.
The Waiting Was Part of the Joy
I caught myself getting irritated yesterday waiting for a video to render.
Thirty seconds. Maybe a minute.
And I could feel it — that little edge of frustration rising up. Come on. Let’s go.
And then I started laughing.
Because I remembered a time when we took a roll of film to be developed and waited five to seven days to see what we had.
Five to seven days. And we didn’t stand there tapping our foot. We lived our lives in the meantime — and underneath everything was this quiet excitement. You couldn’t wait to pick up those photos. You’d flip through them right there at the counter, then again in the car, then again at home. You’d put them in your purse. Show your friends. Make copies for family.
The waiting wasn’t the problem.
The waiting was part of the joy.
Somewhere along the line we sped everything up, made everything instant — and stripped out something we didn’t know we were losing.
Anticipation.
Here’s what I want you to try.
Think back to the last time you felt genuinely pulled toward something. Not obligated. Not needed. Pulled. That low hum of I can’t wait — not urgent, just present. Just real.
When was that?
For a lot of us, if we’re honest, it takes a moment to answer. Not because life stopped offering things worth wanting. But because we got so practiced at moving toward what was required that the quiet signal of personal desire started coming in faint.
And then retirement arrives.
And you think — you have thought, maybe for years — I can’t wait. When it’s finally my time. When I can finally breathe.
And then it arrives. And instead of the exhale you expected —
I thought I’d love the freedom. It’s terrifying.
Not sad, exactly. Just... unmoored.
That feeling has a name. And it isn’t boredom, and it isn’t ingratitude, and it has nothing to do with how much you love your life.
It’s the absence of anticipation. And most people never realize that’s what they’ve lost.
For thirty, forty years, anticipation was built into the architecture of a working life. The next project. The next review. The next phase. Even the hard things gave us something to move toward. Anticipation was delivered, daily, whether we wanted it or not.
And underneath all of it was something else we didn’t examine too closely:
I built my life around being needed. Now what?
Now the delivery stops. The external machinery that spent decades generating that forward-leaning feeling — gone. And in the silence where it used to be, a lot of women find themselves asking a question they don’t quite know how to say out loud:
Where did she go? The one who used to want things.
She didn’t go anywhere.
She just stopped being asked —— by others!
Here is what I want you to hear — really hear:
The fact that nothing is handing you anticipation anymore is not a loss. It is the first time in your adult life that anticipation is entirely yours to generate. Yours to aim. Yours to design around what actually calls to you — not what’s practical, not what makes sense to anyone else, not the trip everyone expects you to take or the role everyone expects you to fill.
What you want.
And it doesn’t come from the calendar.
It comes from deciding to finally learn the thing you’ve been meaning to learn for twenty years — not to be good at it, just to find out what it’s like to begin. It comes from starting a project with no deadline and no audience and no one waiting on the result. From picking up what you set down somewhere in your thirties because there wasn’t time — the instrument, the canvas, the half-finished manuscript in a drawer, the language you always meant to speak.
It comes from making a promise to yourself small enough to keep — and keeping it.
Not because anyone is watching.
Because you are.
That’s where anticipation lives now. Not in other people’s needs. Not in a structure someone else built.
In the quiet decision to become someone you’re still curious about.
Those photos you couldn’t wait to pick up?
You were excited because something real had been developing in the dark. Something you made. Something that was entirely yours.
You still have that capacity.
The question isn’t what’s on your bucket list.
The question is: what are you ready to put in the developer?
If something in my article stayed with you — if you felt the recognition before you felt the words for it — I want you to know there’s a place for that.
I’ve been quietly building something called the Monirose Soul Circle. It’s a small group of women who are done waiting for their life to feel like theirs again. Not a support group. Not a place to process pain, though we understand it. A place to think out loud with women who have lived enough to know what they’re talking about — and who want peers, not cheerleaders.
We share what’s true. We ask the real questions. We hold each other to the version of ourselves we’re trying to grow into, not the version we’ve been performing.
If you’re just beginning to understand that you’re allowed to want what you want — that’s exactly the right moment to come in.
You don’t need to have it figured out. You just need to be done pretending you don’t care.
Here’s how Diane feels about it:
“Vouching for our Soul Circle. My time in our circle has helped keep me from giving up and staying quiet. Love the encouragement and sparks that come from our conversations.”
Come see if it feels like home.
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.