Charlotte Gurr
If you could wish for one superpower, what would it be?
I used to want to be invisible. To choose when to appear and disappear sounded like fun and felt liberating from the demands of life.
Invisibility found me in my 30s, when I returned to work after maternity leave. My role had been changed, yet I wasn’t prepared for the change in my colleagues.
Those who once interacted with me as an integral part of the prescribing team now seemed to look straight through me, as if I were not even there. My voice, which had previously been strong and influential, began to lose its impact, and I was no longer invited to present my reports at board meetings.
Even my own reflection seemed to be fading before my eyes, a subtle sign of how I was disappearing.
The reality of being invisible was nothing like I’d imagined.
Women first start feeling invisible in their late 30s and it continues over the years. ‘Invisible woman syndrome’ describes the disappearance of women in their 40s and 50s across social situations, professional settings and media.
With women making up 63% of registered pharmacists and 85% of registered pharmacy technicians in Great Britain, this isn’t just a personal issue. It’s one that impacts the pharmacy workforce significantly.
As conversations continue around perimenopause and menopause, now is the right time to discuss invisibility and its impact on women
Accepted as part of getting older, invisibility is neither inevitable nor is it acceptable to dismiss women as they age. As conversations continue around perimenopause and menopause, now is the right time to discuss invisibility and its impact on women.
In coaching sessions, women tell me repeatedly that they don’t feel like themselves anymore and fear it is permanent. I reassure them it’s not. That recognition alone and understanding of what’s happening to them is where their journey of self-discovery begins.
I have witnessed what happens when these women are seen, supported and celebrated. They rebuild their confidence that years of invisibility had stripped away. They dare to dream again, giving themselves permission to imagine more. They start to make choices that align with their wants, needs and desires. As their belief in themselves grows, something shifts and their lives start to transform.
A woman I coached in her 50s — who had never played a sport in her life — had recently discovered tennis and a whole new social group. Another booked an exclusively female boudoir photo shoot and emerged saying she’d never felt more alive.
Others have gone on to leave unfulfilling jobs or start brand new careers. These women are exceptional, yet they must not be the exception.
Invisibility thrives when you believe you have no say in your own life. The prescription for invisibility? Control. This is the type of control where you get to make choices that actually shape your life. And, as you regain some control, something remarkable happens — you slowly reappear. Visible to others, yes — but more importantly, visible to yourself.
What’s the first step in reclaiming control? Understanding that much of what happens in your life depends on which thoughts you give your attention to. You will recognise the thoughts that keep you invisible.
“I can’t.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“It’s too late for me.”
These thoughts narrow your perspective and keep you stuck in patterns of behaviours where nothing changes. It’s easy to get stuck in this type of thinking as all the evidence you focus on suggests there is nothing you can do. Yet, if we are prepared to simply ask “what if there’s more?” and bring our focus here, we start to amplify more of this type of thinking, grounded in possibility.
“What if I chose myself, just this once?”
“What if my best years are ahead of me?”
“What if I’m more capable than I’ve allowed myself to believe?”
When these thoughts run through your mind repeatedly, hope naturally takes hold and out of the fog of confusion, clarity starts to emerge.
The more you focus on what you can control, the more hope builds within you
Your perspective widens creating more space to see what may have previously been obscured from view, such as solutions to problems that once felt permanent. It’s like changing the focus on your camera phone from zoomed in to zoomed out – the problem that filled your entire screen becomes just one small part of a much wider view.
The more you focus on what you can control, the more hope builds within you. Control and hope feed each other. That’s when you start to change the way you look at things, and as you do, the things you look at will change.
My own path back from invisibility has taken time, significant effort and sometimes uncomfortable introspection. It is how I discovered coaching and now here I am doing what I once only dreamed about.
Coaching has taught me what I do have control over and importantly what I don’t. It has given me the power to choose the direction of my career and restored my confidence to trust in my own decision making.
It all started with one question: what if there’s more?
