Nobody talks about the specific kind of tired that hits women over 60 — not physical tired but the exhaustion of spending four decades being emotionally available to everyone and receiving almost none of it back

Last week, I sat in my car outside the grocery store for twenty minutes, engine off, just staring at nothing. Not because I was sad or anxious or even particularly tired in the physical sense.

I was experiencing that bone-deep weariness that comes from realizing you've been everyone's emotional gas station for forty years, and your own tank has been running on fumes since the Clinton administration.

If you're a woman over sixty, you probably know exactly what I mean. It's not the kind of tired that sleep fixes. It's the accumulated weight of being the family therapist, the friend who always listens, the mother who absorbs everyone's pain, the colleague who remembers birthdays and asks about sick relatives.

It's the exhaustion of pouring yourself out like water while rarely having anyone notice your cup is empty.

The invisible labor of emotional availability

We were raised to be the keepers of everyone's feelings. Remember those lessons? Be nice. Be helpful. Don't make waves. Put others first. We absorbed these messages like sponges, and for decades, we've been wringing ourselves out for everyone around us.

Think about your typical week. How many times do you listen to someone's problems while swallowing your own? How often do you offer comfort, advice, or just a patient ear while your own worries pile up unspoken?

During my teaching years, I'd spend lunch hours counseling troubled students, evenings on the phone with friends in crisis, weekends mediating family disputes. By Sunday night, I'd collapse into bed wondering why I felt so depleted when I'd "just" been talking to people.

The thing is, emotional labor isn't just listening.

It's remembering that your sister's husband had a medical test last Tuesday and calling to check. It's noticing your adult child seems stressed and gently creating space for them to open up. It's being the one who smooths over conflicts, who reads the room, who manages everyone's feelings like you're conducting an invisible orchestra.

When giving becomes a one-way street

Here's what really stings: Most of us can count on one hand the times someone has offered us that same level of emotional support. When my second husband died, I had exactly two friends who showed up consistently.

Not just for the funeral or the first week after, but for those brutal months when grief felt like drowning in slow motion. Two friends out of dozens I'd supported through divorces, illnesses, and loss.

I spent six months barely leaving my house during that time, and you know what I discovered? The phone stops ringing pretty quickly when you're not the one making the calls. All those people I'd propped up over the years seemed to vanish when I needed propping myself.

This isn't about keeping score or harboring resentment. It's about recognizing a pattern that leaves us depleted. We've been conditioned to believe that caring for others' emotional needs is our job, our purpose, maybe even our value. But who decided that our emotional needs matter less? Who taught everyone around us that we're inexhaustible?

The weight of unreciprocated care

Virginia Woolf once wrote, "I am rooted, but I flow." For years, I thought this meant being grounded while remaining flexible for others. Now I wonder if she meant something else entirely: That we can be deeply planted in our own lives while still choosing how and when we flow toward others.

The exhaustion we feel isn't just about giving too much. It's about the slow realization that we've been invisible in our own relationships.

People see us as the strong one, the capable one, the one who has it all together. They don't see the nights we lie awake worrying, the moments we need someone to ask, really ask, how we're doing and then wait for the real answer.

During my fifteen years as a single mother, I perfected the art of being simultaneously lonely and completely consumed by others' needs. I was the homework helper, the problem solver, the midnight comfort provider. But when I needed to fall apart for just five minutes, there was no one to catch me.

That kind of sustained emotional output without input changes you. It hollows you out in places you didn't know could feel empty.

Learning to close the emotional bank

Can I tell you something? At sixty-eight, I've finally started saying no. Not to everything, but to being the automatic yes for everyone's emotional needs. When someone starts downloading their problems without asking if I have the bandwidth, I've learned to say, "I care about what you're going through, but I don't have the emotional space for this right now."

The first time I said this, my hands shook. I felt like I was betraying everything I'd been taught about being a good woman, a good friend, a good person.

But you know what happened? The world didn't end. The person found someone else to talk to. And I had energy left at the end of the day to read a book that brought me joy.

This isn't about becoming cold or uncaring. It's about recognizing that emotional availability shouldn't be a one-way transaction. The friend who shows up, as I wrote about in a previous post, should sometimes be showing up for us too. Real relationships require reciprocity.

If someone only seeks you out when they need emotional support but is mysteriously busy when you need the same, that's not friendship. That's unpaid therapy.

Reclaiming our emotional energy

So what do we do with this exhaustion? How do we begin to refill our own wells after decades of depletion?

Start by noticing. Notice who asks how you are and actually listens to the answer. Notice who remembers what you told them last week about your doctor's appointment or your grandson's graduation. Notice who offers support without being asked. These people deserve your emotional energy. The others? They can learn to manage with less.

Consider this permission to disappoint people. To not be available every time someone needs to vent. To say, "I'm taking care of myself today" without explanation or apology. To recognize that your emotional well-being matters just as much as everyone else's.

After my breast cancer scare at fifty-two, I learned something crucial: Joy shouldn't be postponed, and neither should self-care. That includes emotional self-care.

We can't wait for others to suddenly realize we need support too. We have to claim it, demand it, create boundaries around our emotional energy like it's the precious resource it is.

Final thoughts

That day in the grocery store parking lot, I eventually went inside and bought myself flowers. Not for anyone else, not for a dinner party or to brighten someone's day. Just for me. It felt like a tiny revolution.

We've spent decades being emotionally available to everyone. Maybe it's time to be emotionally available to ourselves first. The exhaustion we feel is real, valid, and deserves to be acknowledged. More importantly, it deserves to end. We've given enough. It's time to receive.