STYLE ADVICE • 8-MINUTE READ
Things You’ll Deeply Regret Not Doing Before You Turn 70
The List Nobody Hands You at 60
Not the medical checklist. Not the financial one. These are the quiet regrets women hear most at 69 — and every single one is still fixable today.
Claire Donnelly, 68, on the walk she almost didn’t take.
I’ve spent decades as a buyer watching what women actually reach for — and, more importantly, what they leave hanging in the closet with the tags still on. But the most honest dressing room confessions I ever heard weren’t about clothes. They were about everything else the woman had been saving for later: the trip, the phone call, the forgiveness, the good lipstick.
Last month I sat with a group of women in their late 60s and asked a simple question: “What do you wish someone had told you at 50?” Nobody said money. Nobody said skincare. They all said the same kind of things — small, human, painfully fixable. So here they are: the nine regrets I hear most, and what to do about each one while there’s still time.
The Nine Regrets — At a Glance
| Regret | The Fix | Do It |
|---|---|---|
| Never saying what you felt | Say the thing — badly, tearfully, but say it | Today |
| Saving the good clothes | Wear them on a Tuesday | This week |
| Waiting to travel | Book the trip while your knees still cooperate | This month |
| Carrying old grudges | Forgive or at least call it even | This month |
| Hiding from cameras | Get in the photo, arms and all | This weekend |
| Never starting the thing | Take the class, open the laptop, begin badly | This month |
| Letting friendships fade | Make the first call | Today |
| Ignoring the body | Walk daily, lift something heavy-ish | Today |
| Leaving stories untold | Write it down for whoever comes next | This week |
1. Saying the Thing — While the Person Can Still Hear It
The conversation that should have happened years ago.
The single most repeated regret I heard: “I never told her.” A sister. A mother. An old friend who drifted. Not dramatic blowouts — just the ordinary things we assume there’s time for: I’m proud of you. I’m sorry. Thank you for everything.
Here’s what a retired nurse in my group told me, word for word: “In forty years of hospital rooms, I never heard anyone say ‘I wish I’d worked more.’ I heard ‘I wish I’d said it’ a thousand times.” Love unexpressed doesn’t store well. It goes stale in your chest.
The fix: Say it badly. Stammer through it over tea. Write it in a card if your voice shakes. The words don’t need polish — they need delivery. Call today, not “soon.” Soon is where good intentions go to be quietly buried.
2. Saving the Good Things for “Someday”
Tuesday afternoon, emerald dress, nowhere to be. Perfect.
Every buyer knows this customer: the woman with the beautiful coat she’s “waiting for the right occasion” to wear. At 68, she still hasn’t worn it, and the coat doesn’t fit quite the same anymore. Someday is a mirage — it keeps its distance no matter how fast you chase it.
This goes double for anything in your life with a tag still on it: the china, the perfume, the fancy sheets, the opinion you’ve been biting back at family dinners. Good things expire unused. Clothes stretch. Moments pass. People leave rooms and don’t come back.
The fix: This week, wear one “saved” thing for absolutely no occasion. Grocery store counts. Watching the news counts. The point isn’t the event — it’s that you finally stopped auditioning your life for an audience that isn’t coming.
3. Taking the Trip — While Your Knees Still Let You
The window seat she waited 20 years to book.
“We always said we’d go after the kids left.” Then after the grandkids started school. Then after the hip replacement. Then… well. The travel regret isn’t about far places, necessarily — it’s about the version of yourself that could have climbed, hiked, wandered, and eaten street food with abandon. Bodies are on a timer, and nobody tells you when the countdown speeds up.
You don’t need three weeks in Tuscany (though nobody’s stopping you). You need motion — the overnight train, the weekend in a town you’ve never seen, the museum you’ve driven past for years.
The fix: Book something this month. Not research. Not a Pinterest board. A confirmed reservation with your name on it. Momentum is a better motivator than planning ever was.
4. Dropping the Grudge That Weighs More Than It Proves
Forty minutes of coffee erased twelve years of silence.
Almost every woman I asked had one: the feud, the falling-out, the “we don’t talk about her anymore” sister-in-law. And almost every one of them said the same thing about it now: “I can’t even remember what it was really about.”
Here’s the buyer’s-lens truth: holding a grudge is like refusing to return a garment that doesn’t fit just to spite the store. You’re the one paying for storage. The other person moved on years ago; you’re still standing in the changing room with the door locked.
The fix: You don’t have to love them again. Just stop carrying them. A short note, a birthday text, coffee if you’re brave. Forgiveness isn’t a gift to the other person — it’s finally putting down the heavy bag you’ve been lugging for decades.
5. Getting in the Photo — Arms, Double Chin, and All
Her granddaughter has this one framed now.
So many family albums are missing the one person who mattered most — the mother was always behind the camera, “looking terrible that day,” ducking out of frame. At 70, women look back and feel a real grief: their grandchildren will wonder what they looked like laughing.
Nobody at 75 cares that your arms weren’t toned in the photo. They care that you were there — mid-laugh, flour on your cheek, being gloriously real. The photos you hate at 55 are the treasures you weep over at 70.
The fix: This weekend, hand someone your phone and let them take the photo. No ducking, no “just one more try,” no hiding behind the grandchild. Future you is begging present you to exist in the frame.
6. Starting the Thing — Even If You Start Badly
Her first painting was terrible. Her twelfth hangs in the hallway.
“I always wanted to…” is the saddest sentence starter in the English language. The pottery class. The novel. The language. The instrument gathering dust in the spare room. We tell ourselves the beginner’s window closed, as if learning had an expiration date stamped on the box.
It doesn’t. Your 65-year-old brain is perfectly capable of being terrible at something new — and being terrible is the mandatory first chapter of every good story. The women who glow at 70 aren’t the ones who preserved themselves; they’re the ones who kept adding to themselves.
The fix: Sign up for one thing this month and commit to being awful at it for six weeks. Bad watercolors. Clumsy chords. Wobbly Spanish. Awful is fine. Awful is a start.
7. Making the Call — Before the Number Stops Working
They hadn’t all been in one room in 23 years.
Friendships don’t usually end with drama. They end with busyness — with “we should get together” repeated until one of you moves, gets sick, or simply stops answering. Then one day you realize the person who knew you at 25 hasn’t heard your voice in a decade.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most drifted friendships could be revived with a single phone call. Not a text. A call. The kind where you say, “I’ve been thinking about you, and I didn’t want another year to go by.” Old friends remember versions of you that you’ve forgotten — and hearing those stories is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
The fix: Think of the name that just popped into your head while reading this. Call them today. Yes, it’ll be awkward for ninety seconds. Then it won’t be.
8. Taking Care of the Body That’s Carrying You
Strength at 65 isn’t about looking young — it’s about staying free.
This is the least poetic regret and the most physical one: “I wish I’d moved more when it was easier.” Not marathons. Not six-packs. Just the unsexy stuff — walking daily, carrying groceries without help, getting up off the floor without a plan and a prayer.
Every decade after 50, muscle quietly leaves the building unless you actively invite it to stay. And independence — the real kind, where nobody has to help you with the suitcase or the stairs — is built in your 50s and 60s, not wished for in your 70s.
The fix: Walk every day (thirty minutes, no negotiations) and lift something heavier than a handbag twice a week. Your 75-year-old self will either thank you or need you. Choose thank you.
9. Writing It Down — For Whoever Comes Next
Her granddaughter reads one every birthday.
The final regret, and the one that makes rooms go quiet: “Nobody wrote down who we were.” The recipes without measurements. The story about the war, the move, the first dance. The how we survived that dies with the generation that lived it.
Your children will Google a thousand things about you someday and find nothing. Be the woman who leaves a paper trail. Not a memoir — nobody needs chapters. Just letters: what you believed, what you got wrong, what you’d do differently, what made you laugh until you cried.
The fix: This week, write one letter. Not for publication. For one person. Tell them something true they don’t know about you. Then do it again next week. Small, honest, irreplaceable.
Do This / Not That
| Do This | Not That |
|---|---|
| Say “I love you” out loud today | Assume they know |
| Wear the good coat on a Tuesday | Wait for a “special occasion” |
| Book the trip with your name on it | Keep a Pinterest board of someday-trips |
| Get in the family photo | Volunteer to take it so you can hide |
| Start badly at something new | Wait until you can start well (you won’t) |
| Call the old friend | Text “we should get together” and mean never |
| Write one honest letter this week | Keep it all in your head |
Your Questions, Answered
Isn’t it too late to start at 60?
Too late for what, exactly? You may have less runway, but you also have more clarity than your 30-year-old self ever dreamed of. Every item on this list works at 62, 68, or 74. The only real deadline is the one none of us can see.
What if the person I need to forgive is gone?
Then the conversation is with yourself, and it still counts. Write the letter you never sent. Say it out loud somewhere quiet. Closure isn’t something other people give you — it’s something you give yourself.
I can’t afford the big trip. Does a small one count?
Completely. The regret isn’t about geography; it’s about motion and novelty. A weekend in a town you’ve never seen scratches the same itch as a continent, if you let it.
How do I start writing things down without it feeling overwhelming?
One letter, one person, one page. “Dear ___: here’s something I never told you.” That’s it. You don’t need a system. You need a pen and ten honest minutes.
What if my body won’t do what it used to?
Work with the body you have, not the one you had. Walking counts. Chair exercises count. The goal isn’t the 60-year-old you — it’s the strongest version of today’s you.
Is this really a style article?
Style was never just about clothes, darling. The best-dressed women I ever knew dressed from the inside out — and nothing ages a woman faster than a closet full of “someday” and a heart full of “if only.” Fix the inside; the outside follows.
The real secret? Every regret on this list has the same antidote: do it before you feel ready. You’ll never feel ready to make the call, book the trip, forgive, or begin badly. Readiness is a myth that comfortable people tell themselves. The women who reach 70 with the fewest regrets aren’t the luckiest — they’re just the ones who acted while the rest of us were still thinking about it. Your move, love. Today.
