Psychology says the happiest people after 70 all did one thing in their sixties that most people refuse to do — they grieved the life they thought they'd have so completely that it made room for the one they actually got, and that room is where the joy lives

Last week, I sat in my favorite coffee shop watching a woman about my age frantically scrolling through her phone, sighing at each swipe. When our eyes met, she offered a rueful smile and said, "Dating at 68. Not exactly how I pictured my golden years." I wanted to tell her what I've learned since turning 70 last year: that unexpected contentment she's searching for won't come from finally getting the life she planned. It comes from something much harder and much more freeing.

When I was approaching 60, I still believed I'd teach until 70, maybe longer. I saw myself as that beloved veteran teacher, wise and steady, guiding students through Shakespeare and Steinbeck until I decided I was ready to stop. Instead, at 64, my knees gave out. Years of standing on concrete classroom floors had taken their toll, and suddenly I was filing for early retirement, feeling like I'd been pushed off a cliff I wasn't ready to jump from.

The invisible grief no one talks about

We understand grief when someone dies. We have rituals for it, support groups, casseroles delivered to our door. But there's another kind of grief that creeps up on us as we age, one that nobody brings lasagna for. It's the grief for the life we thought we'd be living by now.

As one grief counselor noted, "Grief is not always about death. Sometimes it is about a life you imagined but didn't get to live." This resonated deeply when I read it, because at 60, I was carrying around a suitcase full of unlived lives. The marriage that would last forever (ended at 52). The retirement travels with my first husband (impossible after the divorce). The grandmother role I'd perfected in my imagination (my son lives across the country, my daughter chose not to have children).

Have you ever noticed how we treat these losses as somehow less legitimate than "real" grief? We tell ourselves to be grateful for what we have, to stop dwelling on what might have been. But here's what I discovered: trying to skip over this grief is like trying to plant a garden without first clearing the old growth. Nothing new can truly flourish.

Why your sixties matter more than you think

There's something peculiar about the decade between 60 and 70. You're not quite elderly, but you're definitely not middle-aged anymore. Your body starts sending you invoices for all those years you pushed it too hard. Your peers begin to thin out, some to illness, some to distance, some to different life choices.

After my second husband died when I was 68, following seven years of watching Parkinson's slowly claim him, I spent six months barely leaving the house. I wasn't just grieving him; I was grieving the retirement we'd planned, the travels we'd mapped out, the quiet mornings we'd never have. But underneath that, I was grieving something else: the version of myself who still believed life would unfold according to plan.

Psychologist Laura L. Carstensen found that older adults systematically hone their social networks so that available social partners satisfy their emotional needs. But what she doesn't mention is that before we can do this pruning and selecting, we first have to acknowledge what we're letting go of.

The paradox of letting go

Here's what surprised me: the more completely I grieved the life I thought I'd have, the more space opened up inside me. It wasn't immediate. For months, I felt like I was drowning in disappointment. Why wasn't I the grandmother baking cookies every Sunday? Why wasn't I traveling through Europe with my husband? Why did my teaching career end on my body's timeline instead of my own?

But somewhere around 69, something shifted. I stopped fighting with reality. I stopped measuring my actual life against the phantom life in my head. And in that surrender, something unexpected happened.

Research by psychologist Peter Herschbach reveals that older adults often report higher financial satisfaction than younger adults despite having lower incomes. This isn't about lowered expectations; it's about aligning with what is rather than what should be.

When I finally accepted that I would never be the grandmother I'd imagined, I became free to be the grandmother I actually am: the one who sends funny videos, who writes long letters, who shows up for the big moments even if I miss the daily ones. When I stopped trying to resurrect my teaching career, I discovered I could still work with words, just differently. That's when I started writing, at 66, after a friend said, "You have stories that need to be shared."

Where the joy actually lives

Psychology Today recently quoted an older adult who said, "I no longer believe there's always tomorrow. I have no promise of a tomorrow, so I'm going to make the best I can of today. I will let the future surprise me; it will unfold as it will."

This is the secret that the happiest people over 70 seem to know: joy doesn't live in getting the life you planned. It lives in the space between what you expected and what you received, but only after you've had the courage to fully acknowledge that gap.

Think about it this way: if you're still clutching the blueprint of the life you thought you'd have, your hands aren't free to receive what's actually being offered. The friend who invites you to try watercolor painting. The neighbor who needs help with her garden. The grandchild who wants to learn about your childhood through video calls rather than in-person visits.

Recent research found that older adults who accepted death reported greater life satisfaction, especially when perceiving health declines, suggesting that embracing mortality can enhance well-being in later life. But before we can accept the ultimate letting go, we need to practice with the smaller ones: the career that ended differently, the relationship that didn't last, the dreams that went unrealized.

Final thoughts

If you're in your sixties reading this, wondering why happiness feels so elusive despite having "made it" this far, consider that maybe you're not struggling with gratitude or perspective. Maybe you're in the middle of important grief work that nobody told you was necessary.

The happiest people I know over 70 aren't the ones who got everything they wanted. They're the ones who grieved what they didn't get so thoroughly that they created room for surprise, for unexpected delights, for forms of love and purpose they never could have imagined in their carefully planned futures.

That woman in the coffee shop? I did eventually share a shortened version of this truth with her. She looked at me for a long moment, then said, "So you're telling me I need to have a proper funeral for the life I thought I'd have?" Yes, I told her. Mourn it completely. Cry for it. Rage about it if you need to. Because on the other side of that grief is a peculiar freedom: the freedom to be delighted by the life you actually have.