Welcome in fascinating sagers, so glad you are here with me today. If you are new, welcome. And, on that note, I want to welcome in some new subscribers, and thank you for joining the journey:
Colleen Schaefgen (I would love to do a live interview with you)
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I want to close out this year with something that has been sitting in my brain, heart, and my entire essence for a while. Well, a long time actually, more like since I turned 50, if I’m being brutally honest with you all and myself. And I am seeing it come up in other fascinating sagers’ publications on Substack.
I was not going to address it, but it came up for me again when I read Betty Boldbrew piece, The Age of Invisibility . If you do not know who Betty Boldbrew is, you must check out her publication.
I absolutely love the way she writes a story with so much growth all rolled into one experience through characters that come for coffee (and a pastry) in The Coffee Queer Café in Brewtonia. What is Brewtonia? Betty writes,
“Brewtonia feels cozy and the coffee knows your name. At The Coffee Queer Café, Betty Boldbrew brews warmth, wonder, and second chances. It’s not just a café. It’s a soft little spell stitched into the rhythm of the everyday.”
So, in this particular piece, let me set the scene so you can get a sense of The Coffee Queer Café. It is set on a lively Monday morning. The café is warm, busy and kind of magical in its atmosphere. In walk two saging regulars, Greta and Marjorie, who sit in their usual corner and start talking with Betty (who is also the barista in her café) and a younger group of workers and patrons nearby. These two ladies get into a conversation about a specific experience. As they’ve gotten older, people treat them like they’re invisible. Not literally unseen, but socially dismissed.
It was funny, sharp, and yet painfully familiar. The first time I read it, I really felt what Greta was going through as she describes being cut in line, spoken over in public, being ignored when standing next to younger women, to which Jasmine and Mack, two younger baristas (sorry, I made a mistake podcast) are pulled into the conversation and could not understand. And yet, they too were dismissing the experience. The same article came up again a couple of days ago, and this time I did not focus on how culture, marketing, and even healthcare often erase us sagers. No, this time what hit me was that invisibility is not new. It just changes outfits over the decades.
I remember the first time I felt the feeling of invisibility. I was in my thirties at a wedding, sitting with some twenty somethings, engaged in conversation, and somewhere mid sentence I realized I had vanished. They were not being cruel. They just did not see me. And I never forgot that feeling. Back then I chalked it up to an age bracket thing. I had a baby, worked my ass off, had a common law partner, and these twenty somethings were young, wild, and fancy free. Inside I still felt like I was in my twenties. In fact, to this day, I still feel like I am in my twenties, which the mirror constantly reminds is not the case. Yet there I was being socially dismissed. I think invisibility can happen in every age group, but it stings a whole lot more now that I am fifty-someth’n-someth’n.
So I want to ponder this with you because I do not think we talk about it out enough. And I am sure glad that I am not the only one going through this. Perhaps we need to reframe the entire experience, put our focus on a different angle, and just reappear. What do you think?
Let me ask you…. when was the first time you remember feeling invisible even for a moment? Was it about age, or was it about something else like status, beauty, confidence, or who you were with? What did invisibility cost you back then: your voice, your appetite, your playfulness, your courage? What does invisibility cost you now? Is invisibility happening outside of you, or inside of you, or both?
And here is another one. Who makes us feel invisible? I think this is a big, complex answer. And what about the collective? Who benefits when women over fifty feel quiet and small?
Who taught you, directly or indirectly, that your value had an expiration date? And then, we need to look a little deeper. Why are we feeling this way? Is there a deeper lesson we need to learn in the focus of the feeling of invisibility? Such as whose gaze are you still trying to earn? Men? Peers? Younger women? Family? The culture? Your own inner critic? And if you stopped trying to be seen by that person or group, what would you do with the energy you get back? Imagine that time and energy going to things that bring you pleasure.
Because if we are honest, a lot of this is about who we are trying to feel visible for in the first place. And that may be the starting point. Now, I will also say society does not make it any easier with having us women believe that we need to start anti aging in our childhood. I am looking at you Drunk Elephant, Glow Recipe, and Bubble Skincare marketing to our tween sisters. I suspect by the time they reach their fifties they will not know what aging is thanks to modified genes and surgery. But unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, that is not an option for us.
And we also need to understand who the heck we are trying to be seen for. The twenty year olds caught up in a fog of insecurity? The thirty year olds chasing stability? The forty year olds in fear of their fifties flashing before their eyes?
Have you thought about this…. If nobody else ever applauded you again, what part of your life would you still want to live out loud? What kind of visibility actually nourishes you? Being admired? Being respected? Being listened to? Being loved? Being needed?
Now I want to walk through the decades because it helps us see how the script was written for us, and where we can rewrite it.
In our twenties we live in a fog of exploration. We are trying on identities like costumes. We are proving independence. We are discovering ourselves.
But oh my gosh, the things that felt urgent then. Thinking going out to a bar or club was a financial plan. Treating sleep like an optional subscription. And believing the right mascara could fix your whole personality. Getting emotionally wrecked because someone took five hours to text back. Thinking you need a five year plan when you cannot even plan dinner without a five person group chat.
We were trying to be visible by being impressive, desirable, and endlessly available. We thought being noticed was the same as being valued.
Then come our thirties. We start coming out of the fog. We still want the make up, the outings, and endless social media pics. But there is an ever so slight shift. We are chasing stability. Deeper commitments. Refining priorities. Meaningful connection. Or at least trying to.
But the thirties also turn busyness into a badge. Bragging about being busy like it is a love language. Believing we can power through anything on caffeine and grit. Thinking the right throw pillows or pantry system will heal our nervous system. Trying to look young while also trying to look like you have it together, which is basically a full time job. Convincing ourselves we will rest later, and later never comes. Oh, and crying about adulting because it is okay now to cry about adulting. Thank goodness you did not have to experience what your mum and grandma went through at thirty. There would be endless adulting crying parties for sure, possible life long trauma. Could you imagine a 30 year old today living in early 1900’s?
Ahh, the thirty-something, we were trying to be visible by being capable, dependable, low maintenance. This is where many of us became shape shifters, squeezing into the versions of acceptable womanhood handed to us.
Then the forties. The decade we are shaped into fear. The decade society says the enviable old age is coming and should start losing ourselves. This is when we think if we start working out now and get a “this is 40” body we will have physical freedom vitality, and still hold on to our freedoms, beauty, and relevance well into our 80’s. And, unfortunately, this story is now being told our sisters in their teens. Sad indeed.
You know what I remember about my forties? Waking up injured from sleeping. Realizing my face is doing things I did not authorize. The very next day after my fortieth birthday, a hair sprouted out of my left cheek. What the heck? I called my mum. “Mum, I have a hair that sprouted from my cheek. I am only 40.” To which she replied after a good laugh, “Wait until you are 60.” That did not sit well, let me tell you. Ahh, our 40’s. How about needing reading glasses for your phone but refusing to admit it for at least a year, perhaps five years. Having zero patience for nonsense but still apologizing for having boundaries because we still cannot cry about adulting unless it is on social media. Our 40’s, we still have not quite got the unapologetic roar, but there is something stirring, almost an awakening happening. Like the end of a very long cryogenic sleep.
And now here we are. Fifties, sixties, and beyond. We are called invisible because the world forgets how to value anything that does not sparkle with youth in North America and in the UK, which I did not know until I had a conversation over FaceTime with Jo Blackwell , author of her publication Midlife and Beyond with Jo Blackwell. She is a sager in her sixties and it is happening there too.
The culture calls it losing. I call it shedding.
It feels like loss until you realize it is relief. The truth is you are not disappearing. You are decompressing from decades of performance. Take a big deep breath in. Doesn’t that feel better? Guess what? We no longer have to perform.
But I also think another kind of invisibility is happening. The one where we do not even see ourselves clearly anymore because we have been looking through other people’s fog for so long. A fog that is imposed so that we stay at our invisible level so that others can keep from feeling uncomfortable. It is amazing what others will do to keep another person from growing so they do not feel uncomfortable.
This is where I want to bring in something personal because I have been trying to finish my book and some days I feel like the world is against me. And I know it is not. It is just a universal message or a learning I need to learn in order to move on. I am not there yet, obviously, but somewhere in the year of caring for others I eventually had to let my clients go, it was just too much with caring for my mum, my husband, my niece, and my cat Zazu, who is in the beginning stages of kidney disease, and somewhere in there trying to care for me. My book took a back seat.
Every week I meet with my accountability partner, Barefoot Rob Nugen. He is such a breath of fresh air and truly holds space for me. But the past several months it has been an embarrassment for me, not holding up my end of the bargain. And on our last conversation I was flustered and embarrassed yet again. I felt like I had more excuses than accomplishments. I also felt like a failure and a fraud, the boy who cried wolf. I keep saying I am coming out with a book, and I just do not seem to find the time to write it. I keep saying, “I am going to accomplish this much this week,” and show up embarrassed and small to our meetings. Not that Rob makes me feel that way. It is me.
The truth is, it is done. It is in the fact checking phase. But when I show up each week I feel like I let Rob down. His book is out and I am so happy for him, and it makes me shrink even more.
And out of frustration I blurted something out at one of our meetings. I said, would it not be great if we as women could write out a resume of all of our paid and unpaid service and work into a curriculum vitae or resume? Things like cleaning, cooking, organizing, tending to health of others, playing doctor, nurse, vet tech, maintenance of vehicles, scheduling, counseling, tech support, the list goes on… all the invisible labor that kept everybody else upright. What would that look like on a resume?
Rob said, you know, there is something there, and you should write about it. Ok, I thought about it, and I was not going to do it. But what really cinched it to make this the end of the year podcast is this. In fact, let me give you a real time example of what I mean by invisible labor, because it happened last week and I was laughing and wanting to cry at the same time…. nod if you have been in a similar situation:
In case you are new here, 👋 welcome. I live full time in a motorcoach with my husband and two cats. I have been driving this beauty now for 2 years or so but I do not have a lot of mountain time under my belt yet.
So, here I am. I am driving my forty five foot vintage motorcoach along the Columbia River, from Washington to Oregon. The wind is 25 to 35 miles per hour, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is whipping so hard the coach feels like it is doing the tango. I am terrified of the wind gusts, and of course I do not like driving in the rain up and down mountains. And guess what? The rain is coming in sideways, the road is winding, my shoulders are up around my ears, and I am fully locked in on staying between the lines. And right in the middle of this white knuckle situation, my husband decides now is the time to have me hook his phone into the dashboard sound system. You have to understand that driving a bus (the size of a Greyhound bus) is no small feat. You can not take your eyes off of the road like you can in a car. We have a planet audio system that you can do all sorts of hookups to. It is a car radio system but there are speakers throughout the entire coach, so it is like a home theater while driving. So while I am white-knuckle navigating, absolutely freaked out from the storm on a mountain river road, I am also walking him through bluetooth settings, helping him find the right input (all without looking), and then apparently upgrading the situation to get his iPad connected so he can watch the football game in stereo. Seriously, what planet are men from?
So the Universe is obviously a well seasoned woman. She throws me a “Rest area 1 mile” sign. How did she know? I turned in to the rest area to complete my tech support tasks and check my underwear.
As I am setting him up, I am thinking about what Rob said… chauffeur. Tech support. Safety officer. Crisis counselor. Electrical engineer. Marriage counselor. All at sixty miles an hour with my heart in my throat, and I am grateful for the maximum 55 miles per hour.
And then I am thinking, I think Rob is right. What are my unseen skills? If I was to turn them into a curriculum vitae or a resume what would that look like? Let me share mine.
Chief Life Operator
Experienced sager, lifetime specialist in keeping humans alive, homes running, and electronics remote control and tech support.
Professional summary: Multi decade operations leader with an unbroken record of running entire ecosystems without formal authority, adequate sleep, or consistent compensation. Fluent in caregiving, crisis navigation, nourishment, household infrastructure, relationship diplomacy, and the quiet art of keeping everyone functional while juggling paid work in the same hour. Coordinated care for children, partners, parents, clients, relatives, and pets, and carried the invisible logistics that make daily life look effortless to everyone else all without a red cape.
Expert in: human care systems, crisis navigation, nourishment, emotional intelligence, household infrastructure, and long term planning. Fluent in the roles we never list on paper: chauffeur in a storm, tech support at sixty miles an hour, nurse, financial strategist when the numbers are tight, teacher, counselor, translator of doctor speak, keeper of calendars, keeper of peace, and keeper of traditions.
Recognized for: endurance, strategic foresight, and the rare ability to keep everyone fed, safe, seen, and functional.
Core competencies: family operations management, emotional regulation and conflict mediation, medical advocacy and care coordination, nutrition planning and meal production, budget stewardship and resource allocation, home and vehicle maintenance scheduling, calendar architecture and time triage, event planning and social diplomacy, crisis response and contingency planning, mentorship and intergenerational coaching, invisible labor execution with measurable outcomes. Chief nourishment officer, domestic systems engineer, logistics and transportation coordinator, health and wellness advocate, financial and administrative executive, relationship and culture lead, digital programmer, tech support, and crisis management.
Wow, and that doesn’t even include my day job.
There is a point to this, and it is this. We are all fascinating and we all have incredible skills that, in fact, deserve some kind of award for the multiple multitasking things we do every day.
And I am hoping you will take the time to write out your curriculum vitae to help pour the light on that invisibility cloak.
When I did this exercise it really helped me to see just what I have contributed and can still contribute to myself, my family, friends, and whoever wants to take the time to listen.
What if we all took the time to write out a resume or a curriculum vitae of the unseen invisible things we do every day? What would that look like?
And why would we want to do this? Because one of the biggest reasons we feel invisible is that we were never taught to name our own impact.
If we cannot name it, we cannot own it.
And if we cannot own it, we start to believe we do not have it.
But the moment we put words to what we have carried, created, and held together, something shifts. Our value stops being vague. Our story stops being blurry. And we do not suddenly become visible to the world. We become visible to ourselves first. That is where everything changes.
So what are women often invisible to? Let’s just say it.
We are invisible to a culture that worships youth and novelty. We are invisible to workplaces that undervalue experience unless it comes in a younger package. We are invisible to healthcare systems that dismiss symptoms as just menopause or just aging. We are invisible to marketing that acts like your life stops at fifty. We are invisible to family members who forget you are a person, not a service station. We are invisible to partners who got used to your competence and stopped noticing your humanity. We are invisible to younger people who have not yet learned to look for depth. We are invisible to social spaces that reward loudness over wisdom. And we are invisible to our own inner critic that still talks in a thirty year old’s panic voice.
But here is what I want to say clearly. We do not reclaim visibility by getting louder for people who refuse to look or are stuck in their own fogged story, and why would we want to? We reclaim our visibility by standing with people who already do.
Visibility is not a performance. It is presence. It is being, and doing and knowing what we have always had to offer.
This is a place where I want to weave in something small that actually felt huge to m Chitra 🦋 Eder Doctor of Ayurveda and author of The Art of Menopausing joined me recently for a live interview on my publication (the podcast is coming, stay tuned).
We talked about menopause from an Ayurvedic perspective. Chitra was a delight, calm, collected, and very visible in her presence.
And when we closed out, she did not try to impress anybody. She just offered a simple thank you, actually, three. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.
That might sound tiny, but it is not. This is a woman seeing women. This is presence. This is the opposite of invisibility. It is proof that we are still here, still shaping space, still affecting each other. The world may act like we are scenery, but in rooms like this, we are the whole story.
And I want to hold space for you…. and…. all that you have accomplished.
So how do we change invisibility in real life, not just as a concept? Well, it comes back to you. What do you like to do, or what did you like to do that you put on hold? What are your accomplishments? What would you like to try that you have not tried before? How would you like to express from the heart?
We don’t just live in the past with our skills, we keep building now. Take one course or learn one skill that excites us, not one that proves us. We join the library community, clubs, talks, classes, book circles, craft nights, tech help, all the little portals to new people.
I have been taking cooking classes with the local library in Spokane. I have dipped my brush into paint and decorated a vase that will sit on my counter next to the sink where I can remind myself of accomplishing what I want. It is currently at my friends home, I can’t wait to pick it up and hold it.
We say yes to beginner spaces where nobody knows our old role, so we get to feel new again. We rebuild our “seen by” circle, friendships where you are not the fixer on duty. We ask ourselves what we wanted at eighteen that life postponed, then do a tiny version now.
We make something public again. A post, a class, a recipe, a walk group, a volunteer role that lights you up. We practice being the main character in our own errands. Eye contact, voice, posture, no shrinking.
We stop auditioning for approval from people who do not hold our story with care. We keep a running list of our actual accomplishments, paid and unpaid, so our brain cannot erase us. We stop focusing on what we do not want, and focus on what we want. Plain and simple, and just as simple to think as it is to do.
And I want to add hypnosis here because it has become part of my own visibility reclamation. I have been a client of hypnosis and somatic intuitive training in my own journey to letting my past go. I have been trained now for over a year in hypnosis, adding to my repertoire of somatic intuitive training, which gets at the root of what is really bugging you and sets it free, and Mind Body Integrative specialist training because what we hold we become…. just a thought here…. Can you image letting go of what you have been carrying for far too long?
Invisibility has an external layer and an internal layer. Hypnosis and soma training help with the internal layer, the subconscious beliefs that say stay small, stay safe, do not take up space. It interrupts old programming from girlhood and early womanhood, releasing all of the gunk we have been fed by society and the groundswell and even our family members. It helps integrate those younger selves so they stop fighting for the steering wheel. It supports nervous system safety when you start doing new things that feel good. It turns “I am too old for this” into “I am finally free enough for this.” I am seen, I am here, and I am roaring unapologetically.
I learned hypnosis later in life. Not because I was trying to be impressive, but because I was trying to be more me. It was a big part of my past helping me release the pain I had been carrying that made me feel invisible long before my fifties. But don’t get me wrong, I am still working on it. I am human. Every new skill I have learned has been a rebellion against invisibility. A quiet one, but a real one.
So my fascinating ladies… here is the question I want to leave you with as the year closes out.
If nobody else is watching, who are you becoming? What message do you want your sixty, seventy, eighty year old sager self to hear? You do know she is on her way, and she is going to be magnificent if you let her be.
And now my final reflection because this is the one I keep coming back to.
We need to take the time to shed what is holding us back. Through the letting go, we grow. And how interesting is this;
no matter how dirty or dusty the mirror gets, there is always one reflection.
Yours, looking back at you. You just need to wipe it for clarity.
If you are really wanting to let go of the same stuck story echoing in your soul, holding you back for good, now is the time. It just so happens to be the end of the year and what a great time to get started. I am not going to insult you with a new year and a new you.
You will never be new.Instead, what if you imagine the new year as stepping into who you are by shedding the crap that is no longer serving you, letting go of the pain and expectations, and stepping boldly into a confident fascinating sager who has always been there?
It truly is your time to shine, to feel good about who you are, and to be seen for who you are. That sounds like a plan, doesn’t it?
Happy New Year and I will see you then.
~Karen
