The Most Important Question Women Over 60 Are Not Asking Themselves

I want to ask you something that might be a little uncomfortable.

When did you last ask yourself what you actually want?

Not what your children need. Not what your grandchildren would enjoy. Not what would make the holidays easier or the family gathering run more smoothly or the situation with your adult child less complicated. What you want. From this chapter of your life. From the years that are genuinely still in front of you.

I’m asking because I’ve spent a lot of time with women over 60 – through my writing, through the platforms I run for women navigating midlife, and frankly through just being a woman in my late 50s navigating the same territory myself – and I’ve noticed something remarkably consistent.

We are extraordinarily good at deferring that question.

We’ll get to it. After the holidays settle down. After the grandchildren get a little older and less demanding. After we figure out the living situation. After things calm down – which they never quite do, because life never quite does.

No Guarantees

I understand that impulse deeply. I lived it for decades. I was a criminal defense attorney for 35 years, which meant I was perpetually in service to someone else’s urgent need. Before that I was a mother, which is its own version of permanent availability. The habit of putting my own question last was so deeply grooved that even when the external demands finally eased, I kept reaching for other people’s priorities like a woman who had simply forgotten she was allowed to have her own.

Here is what I want to say as plainly as I know how to say anything: after is not a guarantee. And the life you keep meaning to sit down and think about is happening right now, while you’re waiting for a better moment to pay attention to it.

I am not trying to alarm you. I am trying to offer you the truth, which is something I have always believed women in this season deserve far more of than they typically receive.

Turn Toward the Questions

Here is the other truth, and I want to say it just as clearly: it is not too late. Whatever you’ve been telling yourself has passed you by, whatever chapter you’ve been quietly afraid you missed – you haven’t missed it. The research on meaning and purpose in later life is consistent and encouraging on this point. The women who report the highest levels of genuine flourishing in their 60s and 70s are not the ones who figured everything out early. They are the ones who kept asking. Who kept turning toward the question instead of away from it.

The women I know personally who are thriving in this season share one quality above all others. They answered the question. Not all at once. Not without doubt or uncertainty. But they decided that who they are now matters – not who they were, not who their families need them to be, but who they actually are today – and they started treating that as worth knowing.

Start Small

What does that look like in practice? It starts smaller than you might expect. It starts with 20 minutes of honest reflection and a willingness to sit with what surfaces. It starts with questions like: What would I do if I genuinely believed there was still time? What have I been telling myself I’ll get to someday? What does thriving look like for me, specifically, in my real and actual life – not the imagined one I keep putting off?

Those are not small questions. But they are available to you right now, today, regardless of your circumstances or your history or what has come before. They do not require a dramatic change or a perfect set of conditions. They require only a willingness to take yourself seriously.

I put together something free to help you begin. It is called the Second Act Soul Check-In – three questions to help you locate yourself honestly in this season. Where you have been, where you actually are, and where you might be heading. It takes about twenty minutes. It will not tell you what to do. It will help you hear yourself more clearly, which I believe is the most useful thing I can offer.

You have more life ahead of you than you may be allowing yourself to believe. The only question is whether you are going to pay attention to it. That question is worth answering now, not after.

DOWNLOAD FREE — SECOND ACT SOUL CHECK-IN

Let’s Discuss:

Do you find it hard to prioritize your own wants? Where do you think that habit came from?