and the decade that’s mine
Have you ever committed to something important and stayed with it, through the good, the bad, even the moments you considered walking away?
Me too.
In August I turned 52. John and I celebrated 26 years of marriage. That’s half of my life given to one person, one home, and the many versions of myself I’ve shed and stepped into along the way.
At 26, I was a newlywed who knew best. I knew what marriage should look like, what I would put up with, what my husband should do. Loving him meant letting go of that, the “it’s my way or the highway” version of me, so we could build a life together instead of me just running mine.
At 29 I became a mother, and I changed again. I had postpartum depression, though nobody named it that at the time. I loved my son fiercely and was struggling just as hard. Nothing prepared me for a person who needed me constantly, fed, changed, comforted, guided, protected, even on the days I was exhausted, even when John was traveling every week for work, even when I had no idea what I was doing.
At 32 I became the mother of two, and I learned something I couldn’t have known before: my heart didn’t split between my sons. It just expanded. All the caring I’d poured into our first, I kept doing and did it again for our second.
And I was still married. Still a friend. Still a daughter. Still a worker.
I carried a lot of labels back then, and a lot of shoulds. Ideas about what made a “good mom” or a “bad wife.” I threw myself into those identities and set pieces of myself aside. Wants I didn’t make time for. Desires that felt selfish to chase, because I “had it all.” Who was I to want more?
Looking back, I know now that was fear. Fear isn’t a personality trait, it’s a narrative. Mine sounded like: I’ll mess up my kids. I’ll get marriage wrong. He’ll have an affair. We won’t have enough money. I’m not enough, not pretty enough, not doing any of this right. The other moms don’t like me. I don’t really have friends. I’ll never have a career again after being out of the game this long.
Here’s what I know now: fear is inherited. We’re not born with it, we learn it. We absorb the fears and hurts of the people around us and make them our own. We measure ourselves against everyone else, ask am I good enough, and let the imagination, which is always biased toward fear, write us a very convincing story.
What I should have been asking instead was who do I want to be inside all this becoming? I didn’t know. I didn’t plan it. I mostly reacted. I never sat down and asked: who is Gretchen, in this marriage, as a mother, as a woman? What does she want? What does she need? I didn’t consider myself often, or kindly. I ran right over her with a harsh inner voice that said suck it up, keep going.
So I did. And I did. And I did.
Maybe you do too.
Somewhere around 50, I started considering myself. It actually began earlier, around 45, when I wrote the book, started a new career that scared me, traveled, said yes to friends, went deeper into my own inner work.
I didn’t call it anything at the time. It just felt like finally choosing, over and over, instead of only enduring. Looking back, I can name what it was.
I’m in a power decade. It may have started years before I noticed it, but I’m in it. And today, I consider myself.
A power decade isn’t about having more energy or fewer wrinkles. It’s about having enough evidence, finally, that I can trust myself. Twenty-six years of marriage, two sons raised, a career rebuilt, a body of inner work done in rooms nobody saw. That’s the proof. I know how to walk through hard things now. I’ve done it. So the fear that used to stop me, I’ll mess it up, I’m not allowed, who am I to want this, has less to stand on.
This decade is where I get to ask better questions. Not what should I want, but what do I want. Not how do I keep everyone comfortable, but what am I still capable of becoming. What thumbprint do I want to leave? What legacy do I want to break? What do I want to be remembered for? And what do I want to experience now? It’s where I stop waiting for permission and start giving it to myself, for the career move, the boundary, the trip, the rest, the risk.
It’s also where I get to be honest that considering myself isn’t selfish. It’s the thing that lets me keep showing up for John, for our sons, for the women I coach, without resenting all of it. A woman who has emptied herself out for twenty-six years and calls it love isn’t loving from strength. She’s loving from depletion. My power decade is where I finally stopped mistaking one for the other.
John and I have been married to several different versions of each other. Neither of us stayed still. We’ve allowed one another to change, sometimes reluctantly, because change is scary. If I change, what does it mean about me? About my marriage, my mothering, my career, the stable image I built? If he changes, what does it mean?
You can’t outrun change. You shouldn’t try. At dinner for our 26th, we talked about all of it, laughed at the light moments, went tender in the hard ones, and agreed: we’ve done a good job as partners on this journey.
On that journey, we get a combined path and an individual one. That used to scare me, I thought my growth would cause upheaval, that his growth might mean outgrowing me. Now I know that was just fear, dressed up, saying stay the same, don’t risk it.
When I don’t change while change is calling me, I get in my own way, I block whatever I’m meant to create next. I rip myself off. And I rip off the world of whatever I was supposed to bring into it.
So here’s where I’ve landed. Two sons who changed me every time I thought I had it figured out. A career I rebuilt after walking away from it. And now, a decade where I finally ask what I want instead of only managing what everyone else needs.
The fear hasn’t left. I still catch it running old scripts about who I’m supposed to be. But I catch it faster now. I question it instead of obeying it. And I’ve learned that the version of me who considers herself isn’t the version who abandons her marriage, her kids, or her people, she’s the one who shows up to all of it with more truth, because she isn’t running on empty and calling it love.
Twenty-six years with John taught me we were never supposed to stay the same. The goal was never staying still, it was two people brave enough to keep becoming, at the same table, on the same journey, without needing the other to freeze in place so it felt safe.
I don’t know exactly who I’m becoming next. For the first time, I’m not afraid to find out.
As women, we often want what we have and something more, at the same time. That’s not betrayal. That’s evolution. And what we get to explore, for the rest of our lives, if we let ourselves, is simply: who are we becoming?
Which brings me back to that dinner. Twenty-six years, half my life, sitting across from the one person who watched every version of me arrive and leave. He didn’t just witness the woman who kept saying yes to everyone else. He witnessed the woman who sometimes said no to him and yes to herself. Half my life built the woman who could survive anything. This decade is for the woman who knows she has choices and her own arrow to shoot towards where she wants to go and she is capable and willing to follow it.
And you are too! The next time fear gets in your way, hit the pause button and ask yourself, if I weren’t afraid, what step would I take? Email me and let me know your answers.
Much love,
Gretchen
