Women over 60: We Were All Duped
And the moment you see it, everything changes.
Let me tell you a story.
Not a tidy one. Not the kind with a neat little bow at the end. The kind that starts in the dark and finds its way to the light — not because someone handed you a flashlight, but because you finally decided to strike your own match.
It starts on an ordinary morning.
I woke up slow. Foggy. That low, quiet disconnection that had become so familiar I’d stopped questioning it. Just shuffled to the bathroom, shuffled back, sat on the edge of the bed and stared at nothing in particular.
And then came that voice. The one most of us have running in the background like an old radio we forgot to turn off.
What is wrong with you.
Not a question. A verdict.
And because I had spent most of my life in a world that rewards sharp starts and early risers and women who have it together before the coffee finishes brewing — I accepted that verdict without a trial. Without a single piece of evidence. Without so much as asking whether it was even true.
I just… agreed.
Here’s what I didn’t know yet.
That voice? The one handing down verdicts before I’d even had breakfast?
It wasn’t mine.
It had been borrowed. Absorbed. Built up over decades from a thousand different sources — expectations I never consciously agreed to, standards I never actually set for myself, roles I stepped into because someone needed filling and I was standing there.
Daughter. Wife. Mother. Caregiver. The one who holds it together. The one who shows up. The one who keeps moving no matter what.
And I had done all of it. Every single bit of it.
But here’s the AHA that cracked something open in me.
Somewhere in all that showing up for everyone else — I had quietly, without ceremony, without even noticing — stopped showing up for myself.
Not dramatically. Not all at once.
Just… gradually. The way a river changes course. Slowly enough that you don’t see it happening until one day you look up and realize you have no idea where you are.
Now I want to talk about something that might sting a little.
Because I think a lot of us — women in this season of life — are carrying something we haven’t fully named yet.
A feeling that somewhere along the way, we got duped.
Not by any one person necessarily. Not by one dramatic betrayal. But by a system. A set of unspoken rules. A culture that handed us a script and told us this was what a good woman looked like — selfless, available, endlessly giving — and we followed it. Because we were good women. Because we loved our families. Because that’s what you did.
And now?
Now the kids are grown. The demands have eased. The noise has quieted.
And we’re standing in the middle of our own lives wondering why it doesn’t feel like ours.
That feeling has a name.
It’s grief. And it’s also anger. And underneath both of those — if you’re willing to go there — is something much more interesting.
It’s power.
That is the second AHA.
You just felt something shift, didn’t you.
That’s not an accident. That’s the part of you that already knows it’s time.
What comes next — the part about where the real power lives, how to acknowledge what wasn’t fair without letting it hollow you out, and how to form the new positions that will carry you into the life you actually want — that’s for the women who are done waiting.
If that’s you, I’d be honored to have you inside.
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