(What Women Are Really Holding onto When Roles Begin to Change)
Every woman I know has something in the back of her closet she’s holding onto.
For some, it’s the size-6 skinny jeans.
You know the ones.
They’re folded neatly on the top shelf like a tiny denim time capsule from 2003.
We don’t wear them.
We don’t donate them.
We simply… believe in them.
Because one day — after the holidays, after menopause, after we finally stop accepting cheese boards as a legitimate food group — we might slip back into them.
But here’s the truth.
The skinny jeans aren’t really what we’re holding onto.
What many women are actually holding onto are the roles they’ve spent years—often decades—playing.
Mother.
Partner.
Daughter.
Caregiver.
Professional.
The reliable one.
The one who holds everything together.
For years, women often become the gravitational center of other people’s lives.
Researchers call part of this the “mental load.” It’s the invisible labor of remembering everything, organizing everything, and quietly managing the emotional and logistical life around us. Studies consistently show women carry a disproportionate share of this responsibility.
And after a while something interesting happens.
The role stops being something we do.
It becomes something we are.
Then Something Shifts…
Then, at some point—sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once—things begin to change.
For some women, it’s when the kids grow up and no longer need you in the same daily way.
For others, it’s retirement.
A career change.
A relationship evolving.
A parent no longer needing care.
Or simply a quiet realization that the pace and pull of life has shifted.
And suddenly…
there is space.
More time.
More quiet.
Fewer immediate demands.
And with that space comes a question many women weren’t expecting:
Who am I now?
Not who was I before all of this.
But who am I now that things are different?
The Real Obstacle
You might think the biggest challenge at this stage of life would be figuring out what to do next.
It isn’t.
The biggest obstacle for many women is guilt.
The moment they begin to think about themselves — their interests, their dreams, their freedom — something inside whispers:
Shouldn’t I still be doing something for someone else?
Women are often raised to be the glue that holds everything together.
The nurturer.
The peacemaker.
The one who anticipates needs before they’re spoken.
So when responsibilities begin to ease—or simply change—it can feel… uncomfortable.
Like stepping off a treadmill that’s been running for years.
Your first instinct isn’t freedom.
Your first instinct is to look around and say,
“Wait… shouldn’t I be doing something?”
A Radical Thought
Here’s the radical thought.
You can still care deeply about the people in your life.
You can still show up, support, and love in all the ways that matter.
But you can also be someone who chooses herself sometimes.
You can take the class.
Write the book.
Start something new.
Travel.
Learn something just because it interests you.
Or simply drink a cup of coffee while it’s still hot — which, frankly, is still a luxury.
None of this erases the roles you’ve played.
It simply adds another one.
You.
Back to the Closet
And about those skinny jeans.
Maybe the lesson isn’t whether we ever fit into them again.
Maybe the lesson is this:
For years we saved them because we believed one day we’d go back to the person we used to be.
But life doesn’t work that way.
We don’t go back.
We go forward.
Into someone wiser.
More interesting.
Possibly wearing elastic waistbands. NOT!!! LOL!
But also someone who finally understands that taking care of others was never supposed to mean forgetting herself.
A Quote Worth Remembering
Author Audre Lorde once wrote:
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.”
And for many women at this stage of life…
that realization might just be the beginning of something powerful.
A Different Kind of Closet Clean-Out
Maybe the real work of this stage of life isn’t cleaning out the closet.
Maybe it’s deciding which identities we still want to wear.
For years we wore the roles that were needed.
The dependable one.
The caregiver.
The one who held everything together.
Those roles mattered.
They shaped lives.
They made a difference.
But now something new is possible.
Now there is room for curiosity.
For reinvention.
For interests that belong to you alone.
Not because those roles disappeared completely.
But because they’ve shifted… and created space.
And that space isn’t something to fill with more doing.
It’s something to explore.
Because the next chapter of life isn’t about stepping back.
It’s about stepping into the person you are now free to become.
