A quiet word for women who have been making themselves smaller for a very long time
I do not remember when I started doing it. Making myself smaller. Quieter. Easier.
Taking up less space at the table, not literally, but in every way that matters. Softening an opinion before I had even finished thinking it. Laughing off something that was not funny. Saying I do not mind when I did mind. Saying whatever you think when I knew exactly what I thought.
I was good at it. You get good at things you practice long enough.
I do not know if it was a woman thing or a people pleaser thing or just a me thing. Probably all three. But somewhere along the way I absorbed the idea that taking up space, having an opinion, holding a preference, asking for what I wanted, was somehow a problem. Inconvenient. Too much. I spent much time over the years simply assuming that was my family role, and middle age was when I finally started to question it.
The funny thing is, I was not always like this. I have been carrying a quote around for ten or twelve years now, since my Between Sisters Between Friends days. Charles Bukowski, of all people: ‘Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?’ It landed then and it has never quite left.
And then I turned fifty, and something shifted. Not all at once. Not dramatically. Small changes, mostly, the kind nobody else would have noticed but me.
One thing I want to name, because I have written before about being a wallflower, about loving the edges of a room and meaning it. That is not what I am talking about here. Loving quiet, preferring a small gathering to a large one, choosing the corner over the center, none of that is shrinking. That is simply temperament, and there is nothing wrong with it. Shrinking is different. Shrinking is what happens when you are tired, or you want to seem agreeable, or you are trying to make someone else’s life easier at the cost of your own preferences. It has nothing to do with how loud or quiet you are by nature. It has everything to do with how often you erase yourself to keep the peace, and at this particular life stage, with society’s standards finally loosening their grip a little, I think it is worth naming the difference in real life and not just in theory.
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The Cup of Drinking Chocolate
Every morning I make real drinking chocolate, the kind I first had in Paris in 1982, in a French toile cup, and I have been doing this for so long it no longer feels like a choice. It simply is what I drink. Not coffee. Not tea. People notice. People ask. Someone will be standing in my kitchen and watch me prepare it and say, with perfectly friendly curiosity, oh, is that hot chocolate, like a kid’s drink, and laugh a little, not unkindly, just genuinely puzzled that a grown woman starts her day this way instead of with coffee like everyone else.
The old me would have laughed along and half apologized. Would have said something like I know, it is a little silly, I keep meaning to switch to coffee like a normal person. Would have made my own preference sound like an eccentricity that needed defending or explaining away.
Instead I just say yes, it is drinking chocolate, and I love it, and keep stirring. I have noticed this is one of the little things midlife women seem to give themselves permission for more easily than older adults sometimes expect. New things are not required. Just the nerve to keep doing the old thing without apologizing for it.
It was a very small moment. But I noticed it.
What Shrinking Actually Looks Like
It does not look like what you would expect. It is not always dramatic. It does not announce itself.
It looks like changing your order at a restaurant because the person you are with made a face. It looks like not mentioning the book you loved because you are not sure anyone else would find it interesting. It looks like apologizing for the temperature in your own house, the speed you drive, the fact that you need to leave a party by nine.
It looks like prefacing every strong opinion with I might be wrong, but, when you are not wrong. When you have been thinking about this for years and you know exactly what you think.
It looks like taking the smallest piece even when you are the hungriest person at the table.
I know women who have been doing this since girlhood. Women who were told, not always in words, that their wants were secondary. That being agreeable was the same as being good. That taking up space was selfish, and being selfish was the worst thing you could be. Putting the needs of others ahead of your own personal life starts to feel like the only acceptable way to live, and family dynamics often reinforce it long after the family roles that created the habit have changed. Even now, scrolling social media, I see other women my age performing a version of contentment that looks suspiciously like the same old comfort zone of staying quiet and agreeable.
We are not girls anymore. And I think it is time we stopped acting like it.
The Permission Nobody Gave Us
Here is the thing about turning fifty, and then fifty-five, and onward. Nobody hands you a permission slip.
There is no moment when someone official sits you down and says, you have done enough for other people. You are allowed to have preferences now. You can say what you think without putting a question mark at the end of it.
You have to give that to yourself.
I did not find this easy. I still do not, honestly. There are days when the old habits are quicker than the new ones, when I catch myself mid-apology for something that needed no apology at all. But I am catching it. That is different. It has taken real hard work and a fair amount of practice to set clear boundaries even with the people who love me most.
What helped me, more than anything, was simply paying attention to the cost. The cost of shrinking is not just what you give up in the moment. It is what it does over time to your sense of who you are. You cannot spend decades making yourself smaller and then be surprised when you feel like a stranger to yourself. The feelings of resentment that build underneath it are real, even when nobody else can see them. The first step, for me, was admitting that this life transition required something more than waiting for it to feel different on its own. It required a sense of purpose I had to build myself.
What It Looks Like to Stop
It is not loud. It does not have to be a declaration.
It looks like ordering what you actually want. Saying you would rather see the French film than the action movie, because you genuinely would. Keeping the room the temperature that is comfortable for you. Taking the bigger piece.
It looks like finishing your sentence. Not trailing off at the end because you are worried it is too long, too much, too specific. Finishing it. Landing it.
It looks like saying I really do not want to do that without a four-paragraph explanation of why, without a counter-offer to soften the blow, without three apologies attached to the front of it. This is its own form of self-care, even though nobody ever taught us to call it that. It is also, I think, what personal growth actually looks like in midlife, quieter and slower than the version we were sold, mostly just learning to trust your own inner voice again.
It looks like walking into a room and deciding you belong there, instead of waiting for someone to confirm it.
I still make my drinking chocolate every single morning, in the same toile cup, the same way I always have. I did not switch to coffee. I never will.
One More Thing
Pisa and Patches are currently arranged on the sofa in such a way that they have taken up roughly eighty percent of the available space. They feel no conflict about this whatsoever.
I am taking notes.
Here is what I want to leave you with. You have been useful and kind and accommodating and generous. You have shown up, and kept showing up, and that matters. And also, it is time to stop apologizing for your preferences. For the things you love. For the space you take up simply by being a fully formed human being with opinions and tastes and needs.
You do not have to earn the right to exist loudly.
I am curious, where do you catch yourself shrinking? Is it in conversation, in your own home, somewhere else entirely? I would genuinely love to know.
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You Have Earned This: A Permission Slip for Women Over 50
