“Being a woman in her sixties means inhabiting a paradox. I have never been more visible to myself and yet often feel invisible to the world. There is freedom in this invisibility, a release from expectations that confined earlier decades. I care less about appearances and more about authenticity. I speak more directly, love more openly, and choose more carefully how I spend my days.” Professor Barbara Bernier

“There are days when I feel as if the journey to my seventies has been an express train ride and that I should’ve taken more time to savor each decade on the trip. I know that sounds like regret, and it’s too late to do anything about it now. If I want to, I can rewrite all my memories, as my memory seems flexible and is definitely selective, according to my spouse, so I’m free to create whatever version I want in my own mind, my version of events of the past. But I think it’s better to accept slowing down and to hop on a passenger train that stops at every station and savor the experience of the journey.” Martha.

“One of the many benefits—and there are many—of being in your sixties is that you care less about what other people think. The clock is ticking, and women have rationalized that if society doesn’t want our experiences and our skills, we’re free to reapply these attributes as, when, and where we choose.”

“All my life, I’ve admired strong, and sometimes defiant, women. The kind of women who choose to live life on their own terms, even if those terms make them seem like outsiders to everyone else. Now, in my sixties, with my children settled in their own lives, it is my chance to be one of those women, unfettered by my own ideas of self—and other people’s ideas of me, of who I should be. I can be that woman who does what she says and says what she thinks (and that includes the word ‘no’ ), an independent thinking and acting woman.” Trina

“Love means loss, and by the time we are in our sixties we may be familiar with both experiences and the emotions may have a sense of repetition. And we may have encountered new love and new lives. In the process, we have have been required to reinvent ourselves, multiple times, adapt to new ways of living—and loving—and find new people to populate our lives. Love is always complicated, never simple. No one ever talks about a simple love.”

“One of the many themes that women write about in relation to this decade are the practical shifts that take place. Freed from the daily chores of caring, whether that is raising children or looking after family members, for many women, their sixties may be the first time they do not have someone who relies upon them. As liberating as this might sound, it is also frightening. We may have defined ourselves as caretakers of many people and things in life, and when those responsibilities disappear, who are we now?”

Over the last decade, particularly, I feel that I’ve faded into the background and become a shadow of myself. This is what I feared most of all being in my sixties and approaching my seventies. That it’s all over, in a way, and that the remaining years are those of infirmity, anxiety about maintaining mental faculties, and the onset of physical limitations.

As we age, we women, it’s as if we’ve slipped silently into a room and settled into a quiet corner, unnoticed. The world goes on around us while we sit patiently on the sidelines, waiting our turn.

Recently, I’ve decided that waiting isn’t good enough for me. For as long as I’m still agile I’m going to live my best life and that’s going to involve an attitude shift on my part.” Karen