My daughter Rachel stood at her wedding reception, stunning in her white gown, and grabbed the microphone. I beamed, expecting a sweet thank you speech. Instead, she smiled at the 200 guests and said, “I want to talk about my mom for a minute.
She’s going through what I guess you’d call a ‘late-life crisis.’” The room chuckled. “At 60, she decided she wants to build an ’empire.’” She used air quotes, and the laughter grew louder. “We keep telling her she should act her age, but she won’t listen.”
I sat there smiling, dying inside as 200 people laughed at my so-called midlife crisis.
But what none of them knew, including my own daughter, was that while they were mocking the crazy old lady trying to play entrepreneur, the most powerful person in that room was sitting quietly at table six. To understand how my daughter’s wedding turned into the most satisfying moment of vindication in my life, I need to take you back two years. I was Diana Thompson, sixty years old, recently divorced, and laid off from my 30-year career as an office manager.
For the first time in decades, I was truly on my own. Rachel was living with her fiancé, Jake, and my ex-husband had remarried someone fifteen years younger. You have two choices when you’re sixty and unemployed: accept that your best years are behind you, or decide that all those years of experience are worth something.
I chose option two. I started a consulting business, DT Enterprises, helping small companies with their operations. The problem was, no one in my family took it seriously.
“Mom, you’re 60, not 23. Maybe it’s time to act your age,” Rachel would say, rolling her eyes. Jake was even worse, constantly trying to mansplain basic business concepts to me.
Even my friends’ well-meaning comments stung. “It’s cute that you’re trying,” they’d say, “but how much can you really accomplish at your age?”
The worst part was, I was actually good at what I was doing. Really good.
My clients were thriving, and I was making more money than I ever had. But every time I tried to share a success, my family would pat me on the head like I was a toddler who’d managed to tie her shoes. Rachel was planning her wedding and made it clear she didn’t want me talking about my “little business” to Jake’s colleagues.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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