Why Women Don’t Invest In Themselves

The Paradox That Stopped Me in My Tracks

Here’s a thing that happened, and I want you to sit with it for a moment before I tell you what I think it means.

I host lots of events — book groups, webinars, conversations — and whenever I do, I offer attendees the option to donate toward a scholarship fund. The fund helps make my paid coaching programs accessible to Every Body. (That’s not a typo of everybody. It’s a nod to Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body Is Not an Apology, and if you haven’t read it, add it to your list immediately.)

The donations are entirely optional: No one is obligated to give, and no one is even particularly nudged.

And women give — generously and consistently. Midlife women open their wallets for their sisters with a kind of easy, reflexive generosity that moves me deeply every single time.

I have enough in the fund to give a few generous scholarships to upcoming events.

So that’s wonderful, right?

Right. And. (Here’s the and, not the but.)

Those same women hesitate to join my paid programs.

What do you make of this?

This Is Not a Money Problem

I have spent a not-insignificant amount of time turning this paradox over in my head so much that it feels like I’ve been turning it over in my hands. Midlife women will fund a stranger’s healing journey with genuine enthusiasm and real dollars, and then decline to spend those same dollars on themselves.

They are essentially cheering their sisters into the room and waiting outside.

Why Women Don’t Invest in Themselves–Even When They Can

This is not a money problem. This is a radicalism problem.

For midlife women, spending time and money on themselves is, structurally, historically, and personally, a radical act.

I know. The word feels like it belongs somewhere else. On a protest sign, maybe, or in a political science seminar. Not in a conversation about whether you’ll sign up for a four-week wellness program.

Here’s what I’ve been sitting with, especially because I’m a language geek: the word radical comes from the Latin radix (no, not radish), which means “root.” To do something radical is to go to the root of things, to disturb what is foundational, to reorganize what has become settled and accepted.

When it comes to midlife women and self-care, what’s foundational is the belief that their needs come last.

And if there is anything that has been treated as accepted in the lives of midlife women, it is this: your needs come last.

Not because anyone said it out loud. (Or maybe they did — family systems are funny that way.) Because it has been enacted, daily, for decades. Your time goes to your work, your children, your parents, your partner, your community. You tend everyone else’s garden and nourish everyone else’s soil so that they can grow roots AND wings … and then leave you behind?

You are the infrastructure that the whole ecosystem runs on, and infrastructure, as we know, doesn’t get a lot of thank-you notes.

So when I ask a woman to spend money on herself, to spend time on herself, I recognize that I am not making a small request.

I am asking her to do something genuinely, structurally, historically radical.

The Two-Hour Test

Want to know the specific place where this shows up most clearly for me? It’s not the money, actually. It’s the schedule.

When I ask women to commit to two adjacent hours on one evening, four weeks in a row, not four nights a week, not every weekend, just one evening, four weeks, something shifts in them. The interest that was there a moment ago goes a little quiet. That feels like a lot. I’ll have to check. I’m not sure I can make that work.

Two hours. One night a week. Four times.

I’m not describing this to shame anyone; I am describing it because I think it is important information. If two hours feels impossible, that is not a scheduling problem.

That is a signal. A signal that says: I do not yet believe I am worth two hours.

What the Research Actually Tells Us

And here is what the research actually shows us: the belief that we are not worth our own time and attention is not a character flaw. It is a trained response. It is, in the language of neuroscience, a well-worn groove in the neural pathway. It’s a story told so many times it stopped feeling like a story and started feeling like the truth.

Research consistently shows that self-compassion, the practice of treating yourself with the same care you’d offer a friend, is directly linked to health-promoting behaviors like exercise, sleep, and stress management.

(The NIH has some genuinely fascinating work on self-compassion and its relationship to self-care behavior, if you want to go down that rabbit hole. Kristin Neff’s book is a good place to start.)

The groove is not your fault. Deepening it, however, is optional.

What It Actually Costs

Here is the tender irony at the center of all of this: the women who are most hesitant to spend money and time on themselves are often the ones most depleted by the spending of both on everyone else.

Burnout, chronic depletion from sustained self-neglect, is not a productivity failure: it is what happens when a person spends long enough believing that her needs are a last priority (or don’t even make the priority list) and acts accordingly. Her values, the things that matter deeply to her, are not being honored.

The body keeps the score (thank you, Bessel van der Kolk), and she is not a patient accountant.

The scholarship fund fills because generosity toward others feels safe. It feels familiar. It asks nothing that hasn’t been asked before.

Spending on yourself requires something different. It requires believing that you are worth it–even just a little bit, even just enough, that your wellness matters, that your healing has value.

That you are, in fact, Every Body, and not just a body in service to everyone else’s.

That belief, for many of us, is the most radical thing of all.

If you recognize the pattern of putting everyone else first, you might also find yourself in People-Pleasing in Midlife Women: How to Stop Fixing and Start Living.

Questions Worth Asking Yourself

The questions are worth asking, without judgment and with genuine curiosity. (That’s the only way questions are useful.)

If you’re a midlife woman wondering whether self-investment is worth it, start here.

• When did you last spend money on your own well-being without immediately justifying it to yourself or someone else?
• When did you last protect two hours, not for an appointment, not for an obligation, but for your own nourishment?
• When did you last let yourself be the recipient of care, rather than the one delivering it?

If these questions produce any discomfort, I’d invite you to get curious about that. Don’t rush to fix it immediately, run away from it, or squish it down and sit on it to make it go away. Simply notice it. Because the noticing is itself a kind of radical act.

An Invitation: Take a Seat at Your Own Table

If any of this landed, I’d love for you to sit with one question this week—just one: “What would it mean to treat my own healing as worthy of investment?” You don’t have to answer it perfectly. You don’t have to answer it at all. Just let it be there, simmering quietly.

And if you’re ready to go a little deeper, I’d be honored to be part of that: you can find current offerings, free and paid, on my events page. There’s a scholarship fund if you want to pay it forward. And there’s a seat for you, if you’re ready to be a radical and take it.

Did you enjoy this article? Become a Kuel Life Member today to support our  Community. Sign-up for our Sunday newsletter and get your content delivered straight to your inbox.

About the Author:

Liza is a certified Integrative Nutrition® Health Coach, author, and passionate advocate for women’s wellness in perimenopause and beyond. 

Her EAT | Your Way to Health™ and Stewarding Emotional Eating™ programs support women in renegotiating their relationship with food, stress, and themselves, finally coming into full alignment their intuition and entering a season of sacred harvest in place of decline.

You can learn more about Liza here at Simply Health Coaching. www.simplyhealthcoaching.com