Destined to Be an Old Woman With No Regrets

I own a bumper sticker that says exactly that. Haven't put it on my car yet, mostly because I don't have one and well, I want to earn it first.

This is the seventh chakra, the crown. It's about our connection to something bigger than the daily noise, which I call GUS (God, Universe, Source, Spirit, whatever word gets you there). It's the eagle-eye view, way above the internal stories and small dramas of an ordinary Tuesday. Liberation lives here. So do those rare moments when something clicks into place and you suddenly, finally know exactly what you need to do.

The shadow side of this chakra is attachment. And nothing reveals your attachments faster, or more honestly, than death.

I use death as a measuring stick. Not morbidly... practically. When I want to know whether I'm actually living the life I want, or just defending a plan I made years ago and never bothered to revisit, death is the fastest way to find out. It strips away everything that doesn't matter and leaves you looking directly at what does.

Midlife has its own particular way of doing this too, usually less gently. Somewhere around here, most of us start glancing backward more than we used to. What we could have done differently. Who we could have been if we'd chosen the other path at the proverbial fork in the road. All the versions of ourselves we quietly grieve without ever calling it grief. That backward glance isn't wrong, exactly. You do need the rearview mirror. You just weren't meant to keep your eyes on it for the whole drive.

Ask Your 85-Year-Old Self

If death clarifies what matters, it makes sense to let the wisest version of yourself weigh in, the one furthest down the road, looking back at exactly this moment you're standing in right now. She's not asking you to relive your regrets. She's asking you to stop looking behind and look ahead at her instead.

This works best if you actually let yourself see her, not just think about her in the abstract.

So...

Close your eyes. Picture yourself at 85. What does she look like? What's she wearing, how does she carry herself, what's her hair like? Notice her hands, her eyes, the particular way she smiles. Let yourself feel her presence in the room with you for a second, like she just walked in and sat down on the couch with you, cup of tea (or a vodka martini... who am I to say?!) in hand. Now ask her what she'd want you to know, right now, sitting here as you are today.

Mine tells me to be so much kinder to myself, and to keep looking for the 'glimmers', the small good things scattered through even a super hard day, instead of only cataloguing what went wrong. She reminds me to work smarter instead of harder, which mostly means not writing a second and third draft of this blog in effort to get it perfect (whatever that means). She tells me things take the time they take, that hacks and shortcuts rarely hold up over the long run, and that leaning into love serves me better than bracing for fear ever has. Oh, and that my anxiety is a lying ass bitch (yep, mine might enjoy martini's) because she reminds me, gently but firmly, that I've survived 100% of my worst days so far. Every. Single. One. That's not a small thing to know about yourself.

Your turn. Sit with her a moment, then ask:

What would your 85-year-old self want you to remember?
Is there anything that needs to change now, so you can look back and feel proud of how you spent your time here?
Where are you neglecting yourself, or overextending yourself, and what would it take to come back into alignment?

If you want a shortcut, the most common regrets people voice at the end of their lives tend to circle the same handful of things: not living the life they actually wanted, working too much, losing touch with friends, staying quiet about their feelings, and not letting themselves be happier along the way.

None of those are complicated to fix. All of them require you to actually choose differently, starting now, not someday.

Stay in Your Own Lane

Here's where this gets specific to grief, because I watch this pattern constantly with the people I work with.

Grief brings vulnerability and uncertainty, and well, those make us want to manage everyone around us, on the theory that if they're okay, we'll finally feel okay too. So we start wondering how the kids are really doing. Why he isn't crying. Whether she's going to relapse. We reach for control over things that were never ours to control in the first place.

But you can only do your own grief work. The instant you start focusing on what "should" happen for someone else, you've attached yourself to an outcome you have zero power over, and that's exactly the kind of attachment that trips you up the hardest when life doesn't cooperate.

You can absolutely support people. Be a heart with ears. Point them toward help, share what worked for you, offer insight if it's actually asked for. But whether they use any of it isn't up to you. Let it go. You did your part. This is their path, not yours, and walking it for them was never actually on offer.

Blame runs on the same broken engine as this kind of over-involvement. It doesn't change what happened. It doesn't move anything forward. It just makes people defensive, keeps you exhausted, and hands you a convenient excuse to avoid your own responsibilities. It's easier, sure. Easier isn't the same as better.

We only ever have control over how we respond. Not over the kids' timeline, not over whether she relapses, not over how anyone else chooses to grieve, or live, or heal. Hold the vision for how you'd like things to go, absolutely, and then work with what's actually true. That combination, not one or the other, is where the real power is.

The Rearview Mirror Stays Behind You

Every attachment you're white-knuckling, a plan, an outcome, someone else's healing timeline, is standing between you and the eagle-eye view this chakra is asking for. Death doesn't create that clarity out of nowhere. It just refuses to let you keep avoiding it.

Your rearview mirror is a fraction of the size of your windshield for a reason. You need it to glance back, check what's behind you, but you were never meant to drive the whole road with your eyes fixed there. Your windshield is bigger because that's where you're actually supposed to be looking. That's where you're headed.

So check the mirror if you need to. Just don't live there. Destined to be an old woman with no regrets, remember? I'm not there yet. But I know exactly which direction I need to be facing to get there.