Fearless Forward: Who Am I When No One Needs Me?

On being the glue, the fixer, the one everyone leans on, and what's left when they don't.

Here’s something I’ve been noticing lately.

Women over 50 usually aren’t confused because they’ve run out of wisdom. They’re confused because they’ve spent a very long time overriding it.

When you’ve spent decades listening for what everyone else needs, wants, expects, and what they’re quietly afraid of, your own wisdom starts to sound faint. Not gone, just quiet. Like a voice you slowly stopped making room for.

I know that voice. For years, I talked right over mine.

Before I was ever just me, I was a daughter, then a wife, then a mother. And every one of those titles came with a job description I never felt qualified for. I’m sure a lot of us can raise our hands to that same feeling.

Yet over the decades, we became the doctor, the caregiver, the listener, the problem-solver, the shoulder to cry on, the taxi driver, and the finder of every lost sock. We didn’t always mind it (though I can do without the sock arguments) because being needed started to feel like the main thing. If someone needed me, I felt useful. And if I was useful, I felt wanted.

What I’m Into This Week

📚 READING: Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett (so far so good, but Audible is where I’m at with this one)

🎧 PODCAST: New Heights - the episode with Prince William bc I’m a sucker for all things Royal!

🌱 FIND: This sweater tank from Pretty Garden. You’re welcome 😉

📺 WATCHING: Sullivan’s Crossing Season 4. You took away Sully! I can do without Liam. Don’t lose me SC!!

That was the math I was banking on and the wisdom I was living by. Need me, and I get to be okay.

But here’s what that math quietly cost me. Every year I ran the numbers and every year my own voice grew a little softer. I didn’t lose myself all at once. I ignored myself, one small yes at a time, one ‘not right now’ at a time, until ‘not right now’ became my whole life.

Then one day, the needing slows down. The house goes still. The people you built your life around begin to need you less and you’re left in the silence with a question you were always too busy to ask yourself:

Who am I when I’m not being useful to anyone?

Here’s what I want you to know because I wish someone had told me. The quiet you feel isn’t proof that you’re lost. It’s the sound of your own wisdom, still there, still yours, waiting for you to slow down and listen again.

For me, it took loss to hear my inner voice again. I said goodbye to my grandfather not long ago. He was 92. Grief has a way of cutting through the noise and bringing you to the only question that really matters. It was never about what I accomplished. It was never about whether I did everything I was supposed to. It was just - Am I happy?

Am I content? Do I wake up and look forward to the day? No agenda, no to-do list, nothing to prove, and simply enjoy it? Because I’m finally understanding that my worth was never in how useful I was. All those titles, all that being needed, none of it is the thing that made me - me. What I want, when it’s all said and done, is for the people I love to be able to say:

She enjoyed her life. She was happy. She was present.

Friends, your wisdom never actually left you. Wanting to feel needed, if I’m honest, never really leaves us. We’ve just been so busy listening to everyone else’s needs, everyone else’s wisdom, that we forgot the sound of your own.

So, let me ask you what I keep asking myself:

When everyone finally stops needing you, who are you?

Michelle

A little something new around here 🪑

These Fearless Forward posts will always be free. But every other Friday, I’m now setting a bigger table - The Friday Table - for paid members: A longer list of my favorite books and reads, little joys, things I’m in to, and our brand new book club. Less newsletter, more pull up a chair.