Coming Home to Yourself

By R.D. Armstrong

"Half of my life is gone, and I have let

The years slip from me and have not fulfilled

The aspiration of my youth . . .

Sorrow, and a care that almost killed,

Kept me from what I may accomplish yet."

—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

There comes a moment—perhaps at forty, or fifty, or beyond—when we look at the path behind us and see the footprints of everyone we have carried. Children, partners, aging parents, colleagues, friends. The echo of countless responsibilities. We see meals cooked, appointments kept, crises navigated, reports written, the invisible labor of love and duty stretched like a long, winding road. But where, we wonder, are the markers of ourself?

This is the question that haunts so many of us - men and women alike - but mostly women. In this American culture, like so many others, women do the lion’s share of caretaking, the long hours of unpaid labor that allow the rest of the world to function. At some point most of must ask: When did I begin setting aside my life in service to others, and how do I find my way back to myself?

The Burden of Womanhood in a Culture That Asks for Everything

From girlhood, we are taught to be good. To be kind, accommodating, nurturing, self-sacrificing. We are conditioned to measure our worth by the comfort we provide to others. Even the most rebellious among us, those who built careers and carved out space for ambition, still often find themselves pulled into an undertow of obligation. If not by children, then by parents. If not by family, then by a culture that assumes our role is to smooth the rough edges of the world, to keep the machinery of life running while asking for little in return.

And so, the years slip by. The aspirations of youth—the art left unpainted, the books unwritten, the travels postponed, the dreams deferred—become faint ghosts, barely whispering anymore. We tell ourselves it is simply the cost of love. That one day, when the children are grown, when work is less demanding, when the caregiving season has passed, we will begin again.

But how many women reach that longed-for day only to find themselves too weary, too lost in the habits of self-sacrifice to remember how to begin at all?

Women Are Not “The Giving Tree”

Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree was meant to be a children’s story, but it reads more like a parable of the culture’s expectation of women. The boy in the story comes to the tree again and again, taking—first her apples, then her branches, and finally her entire trunk—until she is reduced to nothing but a stump. And even then, he sits upon her. Even then, she gives.

The boy never asks what the tree might need. Never wonders what she might wish for herself. He simply assumes her purpose is to provide.

How many of us have lived our lives like that tree? Giving and giving until there is nothing left? Being told that love means never saying no, never having needs, never expecting anything in return?

A narcissistic world would love for women to keep believing that this is our highest calling. That our worth is measured by how much we allow ourselves to be consumed. But this will only stop when women themselves redefine their value—when we stop accepting that depletion is our destiny.

The challenge and privilege of adulthood is learning to take responsibility for your own needs, rather than sucking dry another human being. Women must stop modeling themselves after The Giving Tree and start becoming something else entirely—something rooted, strong, alive. Not a stump, but a forest!

The World Needs the Woman You Were Meant to Be

If you have ever felt this sorrow, know that you are not alone. The grief for the life you have not yet lived is real. But it is not the end of the story.

The poet reminds us: “Kept me from what I may accomplish yet.”

Yet.

That is the word that matters.

Because here is the truth: The world does not merely allow the mature woman to rise—it needs her to. Desperately.

A culture that has long benefited from your quiet servitude will not readily tell you this, but let me say it plainly: The wisdom, the depth, the power you have gathered through these decades of giving? It is not meant to be buried beneath duty forever.

It is meant to heal, to create, to inspire.

Women in their 40s, 50s, and beyond hold a force that is both fierce and tender—a wisdom tempered by experience, an artistry shaped by patience, a clarity forged in fire. The world needs women who no longer apologize for their presence, who no longer make themselves small for the comfort of others. It needs your voice, your insight, your laughter, your wild ideas.

It needs you to stop waiting.

Becoming More Yourself is an Act of Service to the World

Reclaiming yourself is not selfish. It is an offering.

A woman who steps back into herself after years of setting her own needs aside does not diminish others—she illuminates them. She becomes a beacon for younger women still trapped in cycles of self-denial. She becomes an elder, not in age alone, but in presence and power.

And she blesses this weary world simply by being fully, unapologetically herself.

So, I ask you: What is the thing you once longed to do? What is the quiet dream that still lingers? What is the calling you have ignored for too long?

It is not too late.

Begin.

Now.

Because this world is too sick and sorrowful to lose one more woman to silence.

And because you, dear one, deserve to live!

The Trees

The trees inside are moving out into the forest,

the forest that was empty all these days

where no bird could sit no insect hide

no sun bury its feet in shadow

the forest that was empty all these nights

will be full of trees by morning.

All night the roots work to disengage themselves

from the cracks in the veranda floor.

The leaves strain toward the glass small twigs

stiff with exertion

long-cramped boughs shuffling under the roof

like newly discharged patients half-dazed,

moving to the clinic doors.

I sit inside, doors open to the veranda

writing long letters in which I scarcely mention

the departure of the forest from the house.

The night is fresh, the whole moon shines

in a sky still open the smell of leaves

and lichen still reaches like a voice into the rooms.

My head is full of whispers

which tomorrow will be silent.

Listen. The glass is breaking.

The trees are stumbling forward into the night.

Winds rush to meet them.

The moon is broken like a mirror,

its pieces flash now

in the crown of the tallest oak.

[“THE TREES” BY ADRIENNE RICH, PUB. 1964 BY LOWELL HOUSE PRINTERS IN CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS]