I have recently changed the title of my blog from ‘Today’s Older Woman’ to ‘Visible Again – A Woman’s Life After 70’, because I find the new title fits me better now, especially the ‘Visible Again’ part.
I have kept the posts I made in my previous blog in case some of you are interested in reading them, and perhaps commenting too.
One of the reasons I changed the name was because I found it more and more frustrating to notice that I had become ‘invisible’ in so many ways over the years and that it was more or less universal in women of the 70s age group, and even younger.
No matter where you look, when it concerns women everything seems to be addressed and directed towards the younger age groups across the board, from fashion through to horoscopes, yes horoscopes! When they are talking about your working life and career and how busy you are juggling work and family, or relationships – in fact, when they talk about all the things that do not relate to 70 year olds!
I was recently completing an on-line survey when a message appeared after I had put in my age, which asked me to confirm it, saying people in that age group did not usually use the internet! I’m sure many of you have examples of this type of thing and share my frustration.
You know when you get a situation where you can’t change it or get round it in any way, so you have to accept it – well, that’s what I am saying with this new blog. When I say accept it though, I don’t mean as in, roll over. No, I mean use it to our advantage!
We may be invisible to some people, but we don’t care – we still have a voice and an opinion, and in quite a lot of cases we have more life experience and wisdom than them! So, it doesn’t bother us if they dismiss us and/or ignore us, we know our worth and value and we are confident enough in ourselves not to be bothered when this happens. Much like when I was at the gym recently, just on the treadmill and the bike for half an hour, but it was hot and naturally I was sweating, but not that much and the man, in his late 30s early 40s, who looked me up and down as though…. what, shouldn’t I be here, I look quite disgusting? I didn’t say anything to him, although I was angry and wanted to ask him how he dared to look at me like that – and he definitely needed a slap!
What help is there for those of us who missed out on our youth for one reason or another, as I wrote about previously here. I’m 78 years old – only just now learning to know myself, know what I like, what I’m good at. When it came to who to turn to for advice and guidance though – that was hard, again because of my age. I appreciate there is an argument for not needing this kind of help in your 70s, but if it happened to me, then it is happening to many others.
I think part of being ‘Visible Again’ could be to be the help and guidance that some women need – purely because of our life experience which has been gathered through our hardships. Maybe, on the outside, your life seems perfect but inside you are not happy for one reason or another and maybe, it would help you to talk about it in my space, where no one knows you. So please, feel free to do so and, you never know, someone may read about your experience and either they have already been through the same or are going through the same at the moment.
It’s on this basis that I want my blog to grow, where someone identifies with something someone else has written and they respond and then someone else responds to that – like a ripple. That would be so good, I’d love it!
I will be making posts on the first Monday of every month – so the next post will be 6 November.