There is a strange cultural contradiction that happens to women as we age.
By 60, many of us have accumulated decades of experience: careers, marriages, divorces, caregiving, loss, reinvention, financial decisions, friendships, mistakes, resilience, and more than a few hard-won lessons. We know things we did not know at 30, and we know them not because we read about them, but because we lived them.
And yet, just as our experience becomes deepest, our voices often become less visible.
We are frequently spoken about as a demographic: women over 60. A market segment. A niche audience. A group to be targeted with products for joint pain, retirement planning, or wrinkle cream.
But women over 60 are not a niche.
We are an enormous reservoir of lived expertise, and much of it is going unused.
We tend to reserve the word “expert” for people with credentials, titles, or advanced degrees. Those things matter, of course. But there is another kind of expertise that is rarely acknowledged: knowing what something actually feels like from the inside.
A woman who has cared for an aging parent understands parts of elder care that no policy document can capture.
A woman who has rebuilt her life afte...