Welcome to Sacred Musings, a space where I share reflections from the heart on love, life, caregiving, and the lessons that shape us into who we are. My hope is that these words bring comfort, perspective, and inspiration to anyone walking their own path of healing and growth.
In 2017, while attending art therapy, I met a white woman who was somewhere in her late fifties or early sixties. She was angry. She felt disrespected, overlooked, invisible.
What stayed with me was that she seemed to expect a certain deference, not only as a woman, but as a white woman. From the way she spoke, I understood that she felt people of other races owed her recognition, perhaps even a place above them.
I could not relate to that expectation. I still cannot. No race is beneath another.
But today, at fifty-one, I recognize something in the pain underneath her anger.
I know what it feels like to be invisible.
I know what it feels like to look around and wonder: Who is coming to help me? Who sees how much I am carrying? Who will notice that the woman who keeps finding a way could use someone to find a way for her?
And lately, a more painful question has surfaced:
Has anyone ever really come or have I spent decades believing that eventually someone would?
There is a particular kind of grief in realizing that something you thought you had lost may never have been there in the first place.
Perhaps I was never as protected as I imagined. Perhaps being wanted did not mean being cared for. Perhaps being useful did not mean being cherished. Perhaps the attention I received was never the same as someone taking responsibility for how they treated me.
In the rawest language, my thought was this: Maybe I was never “the shit.” Maybe I drank my own Kool-Aid.
That sounds harsh. It feels harsh, too.
But beneath it is a question about what I believed made me special and what I expected being special would bring.
Did I believe beauty would protect me? That love would make someone show up? That being hardworking, generous, and dependable would eventually earn me the same care I gave away?
I cannot speak for every woman. But I wonder how many of us have lived on some version of that promise.
Then middle age arrives, and we begin taking inventory.
The time. The relationships. The dreams we postponed. The energy we spent trying to be loved correctly. The years we gave to men who accepted what we offered without considering what it cost us.
Some days, that inventory feels devastating.
We notice changes in our bodies, our stamina, and the attention we receive. We remember possibilities that once seemed wide open. We wonder how we became so responsible for everyone else while feeling so alone ourselves.
And then there is the complication of wisdom.
I know too much now to give myself away to just any Joe Schmoe. I recognize things I once explained away. I cannot so easily mistake someone’s desire for devotion or someone’s need for love.
Yet knowing better does not erase the longing to be held, helped, or chosen.
That is where some of the anger lives.
I can feel angry about what my younger self accepted and frustrated that my older self will no longer accept it. The familiar way of getting attention may still be recognizable, but I cannot participate in it without seeing the price.
It feels like I have cycled out of the game.
And I am left asking what comes next.
I want to be honest about this without turning my hurt into a verdict against myself. When I say, “Maybe I was never special,” I am describing the collapse of a belief. I am questioning whether the qualities I was taught to prize ever guaranteed the care I hoped for.
They did not.
That realization hurts. It deserves more than a cheerful instruction to love myself and move on.
There are years to grieve. There is anger to hear. There are unmet needs that remain unmet, even when I can name them clearly.
But I am beginning to question the conclusion that because someone failed to value me, there was nothing valuable there.
I still want tenderness. I still want people who show up. I still want a life with companionship, pleasure, and room for dreams.
My wisdom has made me more careful about whom I let close. Now I have to learn how to live with that care without letting disappointment close every door.
Perhaps that is the work before me: grieving what I gave away, telling the truth about what I needed, and deciding what I am willing to give and receive in the years ahead.
Three Questions to Sit With
When you say you feel invisible, what do you most want someone to see and whose recognition have you been waiting for?
Which promises about beauty, love, sacrifice, or being a “good woman” shaped your life, and what has it cost you to keep believing them?
Where has your wisdom protected you, and where might disappointment be keeping you from the connection you still want?
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She’s 50 and that’s quite alright.