Did anyone ever treat you in a certain way, and not too much later you were, as my grandmother would have said, so angry you could have spit tacks? Well, this happened to me not long ago, and I could have “spit tacks,” but primarily at myself for not speaking up at the time.
Recently, I was attending a workshop where we all were talking about what we are currently doing in our business. I talked about my Prime Spark initiative for women over 55. I encourage women to stay out there, or get out there, and make a difference in the world in a personally meaningful way. I challenge older women to do this regardless of the messages they may receive from society to sit down and be quiet as they sink into the golden years of their lives. No woman has to become invisible or irrelevant to the world around them.
I had worked most of the morning one on one with a very nice man sitting next to me. And then the facilitator put us into triads, and we each had 5 minutes to talk about ourselves and our business. In my group there was me, the man I’d been working with, and another man. When it was my turn, they were polite, but not very responsive. Were they threatened? Totally uninterested? And then it was the “nice man’s” turn. He delivered his entire description to the other man. He never once looked at me. I had just been talking about how our society tries to convince us we’re invisible when we get to be older women. And there I was. Totally invisible to these two men. And what did I do?
Nothing. Later I seethed, and was so angry at myself. I vowed right there and then that that would never happen to me again. I will never again not stand up for myself.
What would have happened if I had pointed out to them what had just happened? I’ll never know. The “nice man” might have apologized and thanked me for pointing that out to him. He might have. In most situations I think it’s more likely that the man involved would have gotten slightly to significantly defensive. As has happened to me on a couple occasions, he might have strongly responded that he was so sick and tired of uppity women being so “politically correct.”
So as you more and more often stand up for yourself, you need to be prepared for push back. That’s OK. Push back will just make you stronger. No social change ever happened easily. And we are at the beginning of a major change as older women assume more and more responsibility for themselves and for making the world a better place for us to live in.
Where do you want to be in this? What’s really important to you that you could make an important contribution to? You don’t need to know how to do this; you just need to know you very much want to. With the right support, you can figure out the “how.”
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