The other day at the pool, a woman in her forties asked me if I was worried about getting older. She’d just turned forty-five and was already planning her “graceful aging” strategy. I told her the truth: I spent my forties and fifties worried about aging.
Now that I’m actually here, at sixty-three, I’m too busy living differently to worry about it.
Most people think your sixties are about winding down. They picture us knitting more, complaining about our joints, and gradually retreating from life. But here’s what I’ve noticed among my friends and myself: we’re not slowing down. We’re shifting sideways into choices we should have made decades ago.
1) We stop explaining our decisions
Last month, I signed up for a pottery class that runs during what used to be sacred family dinner time. Twenty years ago, I would have launched into a whole explanation about why I deserved this, how I’d make it up to everyone, how it was just temporary. This time? I just signed up.
The shift happened gradually. After years of prefacing every personal choice with a paragraph of justification, I noticed something: nobody was actually asking for these explanations. I was offering them up like apologies for taking up space in my own life.
Now when I make a decision, I make it. When I chose to keep working two days a week instead of retiring completely, I didn’t explain to anyone why I still needed the structure, the purpose, the connection to patients. I just did it. The relief of not having to justify yourself is something I wish I’d discovered at thirty.
2) We let friendships find their natural level
Being happily single has taught me something unexpected about friendship. Without a partner to default to for companionship, my friendships have more room to breathe. I show up for people because I want to, not because I’m filling a gap or maintaining some social obligation inherited from a marriage.
Some friendships have deepened. My walking partner and I now cover eight kilometers every Saturday morning, solving the world’s problems and our own. Other friendships have gently faded to Christmas cards and the occasional coffee, and that’s fine too.
I used to maintain friendships like they were houseplants that would die without constant attention. Now I understand that some relationships are meant to be seasonal, and forcing them to be perennial just exhausts everyone involved.
3) We claim our mornings
Three mornings a week, I’m in the ocean by six-thirty. The cold water is the closest thing I’ve found to a reset button. But here’s what matters: I don’t check with anyone first. I don’t wait to see if someone needs something. I just go.
For forty years, my mornings belonged to other people. Getting kids ready for school, making sure my ex-husband had a proper breakfast, preparing for whichever shift was coming. Even after the divorce, I kept giving my mornings away, as if keeping them for myself was selfish.
The shift came when I realized that starting my day with something I chose, rather than something I owed, changed everything that came after. The work day feels different when you’ve already had saltwater in your hair. Problems seem smaller when you’ve watched the sunrise from the water.
4) We stop treating money as shameful
I check my superannuation balance regularly now. I know exactly what’s in my savings account. I’ve got a spreadsheet for my expenses. This might not sound revolutionary, but for someone who spent decades letting her husband “handle the finances,” it’s freedom.
Financial independence isn’t about being rich. It’s about never having to ask permission. It’s knowing you can pay for your car service without checking with anyone. It’s being able to say yes to that pottery class without negotiating for it.
Women my age were raised to think talking about money was unladylike. We handed over our pay packets, trusted others with our futures. Now we’re catching up on decades of financial literacy, and discovering we’re pretty good at it.
5) We reclaim our evenings
Most evenings, you’ll find me on my back deck watching the lorikeets come in. They arrive like clockwork, noisy and demanding, turning the eucalyptus tree into their personal conference room. I sit with my tea and watch them sort out their politics. It’s my version of meditation.
I don’t schedule anything after seven anymore unless I genuinely want to do it. No more obligation dinners. No more events I attend because someone expects me to. My evenings are for reading, for calling my daughters if I feel like it, for watching whatever I want on television without apology.
The lorikeets don’t care that I’m in my pajamas by eight. They don’t judge my dinner of toast and soup. They just do their thing while I do mine, and somehow that feels like the most honest relationship I’ve had in years.
6) We celebrate cooking for one
Sunday roasts happen most weeks at my place. Sometimes my daughters join me if they’re around. Sometimes it’s just me with a book propped against the water jug. I’ve made peace with both versions.
Cooking for one used to feel like failure, like evidence of something missing. Now I set the table properly, use the good plates, pour a glass of wine. The leftovers become Monday’s lunch and Wednesday’s dinner, and that’s not sad, it’s practical.
There’s something powerful about putting effort into a meal just for yourself. It’s saying you’re worth the time, the preparation, the washing up. It took me six decades to learn that cooking for one isn’t about being alone. It’s about being enough.
7) We protect our energy like currency
I’ve become ruthless about energy drains. That includes people who only call when they need something, activities that feel like obligations, and conversations that circle the same complaints without ever moving forward.
At work, I still give everything to my patients. But I’ve stopped volunteering for extra committees, stopped saying yes to covering shifts that leave me exhausted, stopped pretending I have endless reserves.
Energy in your sixties is like money in your twenties. You think you’ll always have more, until suddenly you don’t. So now I spend it carefully, on things and people that matter, on activities that energize rather than deplete.
The truth about choosing yourself
These shifts aren’t about becoming selfish. They’re about finally understanding that you can’t pour from an empty cup, and that keeping your cup full isn’t anyone else’s job but yours.
Women my age spent decades being taught that choosing ourselves was the same as abandoning others. We were wrong. My daughters don’t love me less because I swim instead of being available every morning. My patients don’t get worse care because I protect my days off. My friends don’t feel neglected because I’ve stopped overextending myself.
If anything, they get a better version of me. One who shows up by choice, not obligation. One who has stories from pottery class and observations from ocean swims. One who isn’t secretly resentful about all the things she’s given up.
Sixty-three doesn’t look like I thought it would. It’s not about slowing down or speeding up. It’s about finally moving in the direction I choose, at whatever pace feels right, without asking permission or offering apologies.
The lorikeets will be here soon. My tea is getting cold. And for the first time in my life, that’s exactly where I need to be.
- 7 small lifestyle shifts women make in their 60s that have nothing to do with slowing down — and everything to do with finally choosing themselves - April 11, 2026
- Something shifts in the way a woman dresses after 60 — and the women who get it right aren’t following trends, they’re finally following themselves - April 11, 2026
- I spent 44 years on hospital wards and here’s what I now know about the kind of beauty routine that actually holds up as you age - April 9, 2026