At first, getting to your sixties feels unsettling. Not loudly, but quietly. Somewhere beneath your thoughts, you realize that time is no longer endless — not in the way it once felt when you were young. There is more life behind you than ahead, and that awareness has a way of turning you inward.

When you were younger, you believed there would always be time later.
Later, when the children were older.
Later, when life was more stable.
Later, when you could finally turn toward yourself.

So you set aside your dreams and hopes without fully noticing. You stepped into clearly defined roles — mother, wife — loving deeply, giving fully, believing fulfillment would naturally follow. And for a long time, that felt like enough.

But life moves quickly. Faster than we expect. One day you look up and realize that time has passed. You are older now, and many of the things you once imagined doing feel distant — not because you failed, but because aging is simply part of being human.

That realization invites honest reflection.

Was everything I gave myself to worth it?
My time?
My energy?
My whole being?

Was I right to set aside my personal hopes and dreams to focus so completely on one role? Or was I chasing an idea — an ideal life, a promise of happily ever after that exists mostly in fairy tales?

I eventually understood that whatever I was chasing, it wasn’t fair to lose myself in the process, only to arrive feeling empty again. What I was really searching for wasn’t success or recognition — it was something missing inside me.

I needed appreciation.
I needed love.
I needed reassurance.

But those things are unstable when you rely on others to give them to you. They can disappear. They can change. And when they do, you are left questioning your worth.

What I truly needed was acceptance.

Acceptance of myself as worthy of love and respect — not because of what I did for others, but simply because I exist in this world too.

I didn’t receive that early in life. There was little guidance, little reassurance. And without realizing it, that lack of guidance misled me into believing I wasn’t worthy of love. I became hard on myself, holding standards no one else could meet, believing something was wrong with me.

With time, another realization came — one that brought peace instead of pain.

Sometimes what you need in order to heal is no longer possible or available. And that doesn’t mean anyone failed you. Often, people were doing the best they could with their own limitations and struggles.

I wasn’t a victim of other people.
I was a victim of my limited understanding as a child.

And no one can blame a child for that.

Healing, I learned, doesn’t always mean going back or finally receiving what was missing. Sometimes it means accepting that the past cannot be rewritten — and choosing to lay it down anyway.

This is the wisdom that comes with aging.

You stop fighting what was.
You stop needing explanations that may never come.
You stop waiting for permission from the past.

And in that acceptance, something gentle happens.

You find peace in staying exactly where you are. You no longer rush to the next thing or measure your worth by how much you accomplish. You give yourself permission — to slow down, to not be perfect, to say no without guilt, to acknowledge your own effort even if no one else does.

You begin to understand that not everything needed to be fixed.
Some things simply needed to be understood.

And in that understanding, you finally arrive.

Doing less.
Yet somehow…
receiving more.