Why the World Needs Loud, ‘Too Much’, Brave Women Over 50

Jan Re-stack

This was another very popular piece and Gail K is the founder of the Old Black Old Lady Movement.

Let’s get one thing straight, if you’re still trying to be the good girl at 50+, you’re wasting your time and your life. What if you only had 10 more summers left? How would you spend them?

I spent the first half of my life bending and shifting to survive. Smile pretty. Keep the peace. Don’t talk too much. Don’t talk too loud. Be a good girl. Close your legs. Ladies don’t walk in the grass.

You have to go to college, get a good job, get married, have children, let your husband be the head of the household, take care of your family and on and on and on. We get weighted down by all of the shoulds and have to’s.

But now? I’ve gotten rid of all those rules and written my own.

The Power of Earned Experience

I’m 69 years old. I’ve been divorced, unemployed, suffered major illnesses, underestimated, invisible and every bit of it became the soil I planted my reinvention in. Today I help women over 50 transform themselves and their lives from the inside out because I know what it takes to rise from the ashes of what others expect you to be.

We talk money, voice, power, visibility, business and that individualistic kind of beauty that doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. Because let me tell you: the world doesn’t just need older women, it needs opinionated, off-script, fully embodied older women. The ones who’ve stopped shrinking and started showing up.

We’re the ones who can walk into a room and change the temperature just by deciding we belong there.

We’ve Earned Our Right to Be ‘Too Much’

We’ve earned our loud. We’ve earned our “too much”. And we damn sure earned the right to be brave.

Last week I took one of the bravest steps I’ve taken since quitting my job in 2021 to become a coach. I asked to be coached on a Zoom call with over 120 people on it because I was feeling so much shame about my business not being as financially successful as it was a couple of years ago. I even had the courage to tell the coach that I had been judging her about some rumours I had heard.

The old me never would have been brave enough to speak up and be that open. Fear would have held me back but my courage stepped up and was louder than my fear and guess what? She appreciated my honesty and helped me move past my shame.

The other awareness that came from being honest on that call was that at least 20 women reached out and told me that they had been feeling similar shame and that my honesty helped heal them.

I was being ‘too much.’ Too intense. Too direct. Too everything but in a good way. I stepped way outside of my comfort zone and inspired other people to step outside of their comfort zones too.

I didn’t always know how to take up space. Hell, I didn’t even know I was allowed to. But something shifted after 65. I realised I’m not here to fit in, I’m here to stand up and stand out and so are you.

The Revolution of Reinvention

So I built a platform around The Old Black Lady Chronicles, my Substack, not to be cute or clever, but to reclaim what society tries to bury. I write about ageing, visibility, reinvention, and the skill of getting louder, freer, and bolder as we grow. Women aren’t done. We’re just done pretending.

We are the ones who remember how things used to be, before women could open a bank account without a husband’s signature. Before we had voices in boardrooms. Before we stopped apologizing for taking up space. And we’re also the ones dreaming up what comes next.

We are walking proof that it’s never too late to raise hell, start over, or start getting paid to be exactly who you are.

What We’re Done With

We’re done with trying to be perfect. Done with self-sabotage. Done with imposter syndrome and all the lies the patriarchy brainwashed us to believe about our worth, our capabilities, and our right to take up space.

We’re done with the old rules about women and money, how much we’re allowed to make, how we should apologize for our success, how we should shrink our ambitions to make others comfortable. Those days are over.

The statistics are stark: women earn less than men throughout their careers, receive less Social Security, and are more likely to fall into poverty later in life. But here’s what the statistics don’t account for, our resilience, our creativity, and our refusal to accept “that’s just how it is” as an answer.

I’m here to help women discover their magic and create income streams that give them financial freedom to make empowered decisions. Maybe that’s building a business that becomes their retirement plan. Maybe it’s monetizing decades of expertise that companies used to get for free. Maybe it’s finally charging what they’re worth instead of what they think people will pay.

We’re done waiting for permission to prosper. We’re done playing small with our money, our dreams, and our impact.

What We Bring to the Table

The younger generation is watching, and they don’t need perfect, they need real. There’s nothing more real than a woman over 50 who knows who she is, speaks her truth, and doesn’t wait for permission to exist fully.

We bring decades of hard-won wisdom. We’ve survived recessions, raised families, buried loved ones, and rebuilt ourselves more times than we can count. We know what matters and what’s just noise.

We’ve learned that being liked is overrated, but being respected is everything.

The Blueprint for What’s Possible

So here’s to us, the loud ones, the “too much” ones, the brave ones. We are not a problem to solve or a demographic to manage. We are the blueprint for what’s possible when you stop asking permission to be yourself.

The world needs our voices, our stories, our refusal to disappear quietly. We’ve spent enough time in the shadows. Now it’s time to take up all the space we deserve.

And we’re just getting started.

Gail Keyes is the creator of the “Old Black Lady” movement and The Ageless Mind Project. The go-to space for women over 50 to reclaim their power, identity, and financial independence.

substack.com/@gailkeyesallen