The Moment I Realized How Much Wisdom Women Carry as We Grow Older

Years ago, while trekking through rice fields in Vietnam, a woman joined us. We didn’t share a language, but her hands told me everything I needed to know. Hands lined with years of experience. Hands that carried wisdom in every gesture. I didn’t know it then, but I was photographing the very truth I would discover about myself years later.

Has anyone asked you what made you happy today?

Or what you’ve learned in your life so far?
Or what you want your legacy will be?
Most people never get asked those questions.
So I’ll go ahead and ask them for you.

These questions have been swirling around in my heart lately, especially as I notice time moving faster and the truth settling in that I want to make the rest of my life matter in a very intentional way.
And then something happened this week that brought all of this into clear, beautiful focus.

A Zoom Call That Opened My Eyes

Our friend and colleague, Kelly, invited Thom and me to speak on Zoom to a group of USC students who are training to become therapists. She asked us to talk about aging and how new clinicians might work with older adults.
The moment I saw their young faces on my screen, something stirred inside me. They were bright, eager, hopeful, ready to help others. And suddenly I felt myself being there not as “an older woman” but as someone who has lived a long, rich, complex life.

As I started talking, something surprising happened.
I realized just how much wisdom I actually have...wisdom I did not even realize I carried in such abundance.
In the middle of that Zoom call I had this quiet moment of:

Jo, you know things
You have lived things
You have survived things 

You have been a therapist for 30 years
You have learned so much more than you ever gave yourself credit for
It was like seeing myself with new eyes.

The Power of a Life Fully Lived

I talked to the students about what it means to sit with someone who has lived sixty or seventy years or more. Someone who remembers life before the internet, before constant distraction, before everything was measured in likes and follows.
We have lived through love, heartbreak, loss, reinvention, joy, grief, raising families, rebuilding marriages, healing wounds we once thought would break us.

There is wisdom in learning how to stand back up after life knocks you down.
There is wisdom in knowing how to begin again.
There is wisdom in waking up each morning and whispering thank you for another day.

Older women carry a lifetime of knowledge.
Yet we rarely acknowledge it in ourselves.

Aging and Relevance

One of the hardest parts of aging is the quiet fear of becoming irrelevant.
You can feel it when you are passed over in conversations.
You can feel it when younger people forget to ask your opinion.
You can feel it when the world seems to celebrate youth and overlook wisdom.

Sometimes we feel invisible.

But here is what I felt in that Zoom meeting
Relevance does not come from age
Relevance comes from presence
Relevance comes from truth
Relevance comes from showing up fully and offering what your life has taught you

The moment I started speaking honestly with those students
The moment I shared what I had lived and learned, I felt completely and powerfully relevant
And it reminded me that our wisdom does not fade
It only waits for us to share it

The Gift of Aging Boldly

Aging boldly means stepping into who you truly are
Not who the world told you to be
Not the quiet version
Not the perfect version
Not the pleasing version

Aging boldly means trusting your inner knowing
Letting go of overthinking
Letting go of the fear of what people will think
And choosing to show up as the woman you have spent your entire life becoming

This is the journey I’m on.
And the journey I’m preparing to guide women through in the coming year

Over to You

Take a moment today and reflect on your own wisdom
Your own lived truths
Your own relevance

Here is a prompt to think about:
What is something life has taught me that I rarely give myself credit for?
How would my life change if I began honoring that wisdom today
Write it down
Sit with it
Let it rise
Because you, my dear, carry far more wisdom than you realize.
And it’s time for the world to hear it