Invisible No More: Rediscovering Yourself After a Lifetime of Roles
There comes a moment in midlife when a woman might look at herself and feel something unsettling — not sadness or boredom, but an absence. An internal question: Where did I go?
It feels like she is invisible to the world and to herself. This feeling of invisibility doesn’t appear overnight. It takes shape slowly, through years of expectations, caregiving, emotional strain, and the unspoken belief that to be loved, a woman must be “good.” Then, she had shaped herself to fit an image society has painted for her, without asking whether it’s her aspiration.
This disappearance is the result of a path: social conditioning, self-abnegation, and sacrifice. However, if she is willing, she can reclaim herself and be unconditionally herself, shine in her life and the world.
Social Conditioning: The “Good Girl” Who Learns to Shrink
Before we lose ourselves in work, marriage, or motherhood, we are trained by a silent cultural script: Be good. Be kind. Be agreeable. Don’t ask for too much. Don’t be difficult. Don’t disrupt the peace. We have centuries of such conditioning.
I learned it early — at home, at school, in the examples set by other women. This conditioning is still actual; it’s everywhere.
When my first son was born, I remember telling my family I planned to return to work after six months. I received both spoken and unspoken criticism. Even the doula who visited me declared, “Women don’t work when they have a child.”
Several months later, when I shared that I was working part-time so I could spend more time with my baby by choice, not by obligation, another woman said, “I don’t know what I would do with myself if I were doing nothing.”
At that time, I thought that to belong and to be accepted, I had to dim myself. So I didn’t argue, and I felt apologetic in my answer. Anyway, whatever a woman chooses to do, she will always be judged by her peers. This is in our silence that we let these judgments shape us.
The Cycle of Self-Abnegation: When Responsibility Becomes Identity
As we grow older, the world praises us for being everything to everyone: a reliable worker, a patient mother, a supportive partner. We are the organizer, the nurturer, the emotional support.
We internalize that our worth lies in how well we care for others. Years go by until we realise that it is self-abnegation. We take on responsibilities that are not ours, we fix others' problems and concerns, we adapt, protect, and supervise on top of our own responsibilities.
For me, raising children across different countries meant constantly adapting, learning new systems, navigating transitions, and carrying the mental load that no one sees. Yoga became my anchor, but even my practice bent around everyone else’s needs.
And then life intervened in a way that brutally awakened me. My mother passed away, and soon after, my oldest son left for college. The house grew quiet, and in that quiet, I no longer knew who I was without the identity of being a mother or a daughter, even though I still had a younger child at home. It felt as if pieces of me were slipping away, but I realized that those identities were never me — they were roles I had poured myself into for so long that I forgot to look beyond them.
When I finally tried to ask myself the most basic question of who I was, I couldn’t answer it.
I know many women arrive at this same observation. When the noise fades — the rushing, the tending, the constant doing — what rises to the surface is a deep disconnection, a pain that something essential has gone missing.
Becoming the Priority: Reclaiming Visibility Through Self-Expression
The path back to ourselves begins the moment we decide to become visible to ourselves again.
This is not rebellion. It is remembrance.
After decades of shaping myself around the needs of others, my emergence began with moments of self-inquiry:
What energizes me?
What drains me?
What do I want — right now, in this stage of life?
What have I silenced in order to be loved?
What emotions have lived in my body for too long?
These questions became a bridge back to myself. They guided me through grief, identity shifts, and years of unspoken feelings. They helped me see that my voice mattered — not because the world validated it, but because I finally did.
For many women, this is the turning point: Realizing we can prioritize ourselves without abandoning our families, careers, or communities. We can become our own inspiration — not by rejecting what we built, but by returning to the woman who built it.
Reclaiming visibility means:
Speaking our truth in a constructive way with collaboration from the party we seek support from.
Setting boundaries to live our lives in harmony and reducing stress.
Honoring what our body tells us. The body sends a signal when we are not aligned with what we do,
Choosing activities that nourish our hearts, and if we don’t know what it is yet, let’s try many things, from a new career to different hobbies.
Allowing desires to exist openly
Taking up space without guilt
When a woman begins expressing herself again — firmly, honestly, consistently — She reenters her own life.
Women don’t become invisible because they lack value. We become invisible because society taught us to prioritize everyone else. This cost us authenticity.
But invisibility isn’t permanent. The moment we realize we want more, we find our way back to ourselves. It is not an act of selfishness, but an act of truth.
As I came back to myself, something in me expanded — a sense of belonging not only to my family or my roles but to life itself. By reconnecting with myself, I reconnected with others in a more honest, grounded way, and I tapped into greater consciousness.
If you found yourself in this article, know that you don’t have to navigate this alone. Together, through life coaching, you can uncover the parts of you that have been waiting to reemerge and rebuild a life where you belong at the center again.