Are you experiencing empty nest syndrome and wondering what comes next? If you're a woman navigating life transitions in your 50's or 60's, you might find yourself suddenly craving deeper, more meaningful female friendships. I was pondering this exact shift recently, looking back at how my priorities changed over time.
2026-09-01
When I mapped out my decades, the pattern of women’s life stages became clear: To mid 20's: All about travel, youthful adventure, and blissfully having no responsibilities To mid 30's: All about babies, toddlers, day-care, and the endless school runs To mid 40's: The frantic juggle of work, raising teenagers, and paying down the mortgage, and for many women, becoming a single parent. To mid 50's: Empty nesting, working hard, and suddenly recalculating our retirement runway. But my 60's? My 60's are the CRITICAL STAGE. I used to think this would be the era where the endless obligations finally faded. Instead, a new wave of complex family pressures hits. Our children get married, and we find ourselves pussyfooting around their new partners, who frequently have completely different ideas about, well, literally everything. It can also be incredibly hard to manage the fragile, sometimes complicated dynamics that come with these partners entering the family fold. Even the closest families can experience fracturing when a new member of the family doesn't embrace the whole family, or has a fallout with one of us. Then to top things off, we're expected to be the emotional anchor for everyone else. And if things couldn't get any more complex, all of a sudden, we find ourselves caught between caring for aging parents, supporting sick partners, and carrying our grief quietly. All while navigating the heavy expectations from our adult children and their partners regarding our role and contribution as grandparents. And did anyone else think it would just be about the grandchildren? Now it's also about the pressure of helping them into the housing market. Looking back, I truly wish I'd prioritized building my superannuation nest egg at the beginning of my journey! "Just a couple more minefields to traverse." Now add in navigating menopause, declining energy, a shifting body shape, waning gut health, random aches, transitioning into retirement, and it's an incredibly heavy mental load. We desperately need a strong support network of women who truly understand the unique hurdles of this chapter and who will simply listen, embrace, and support. That's exactly why we started Once Were Wild Travel . While everyone else around us is planning their retirement, we're launching a business. Why? Because we want to build a sanctuary for women who need to step away from the family pol