The Woman Who Lived for Others

Not every chapter begins with certainty.

There's a stretch of life where almost none of the decisions are really yours. You build a career because the family needs the security... maybe a flat to pay off, maybe school fees, maybe both parents to look after. You take on responsibilities because, looking around, there's no one else to take them on. You become the reliable one at work, the one who organises everything at home, the parent who remembers the enrichment classes and the PSLE timeline, the daughter who calls to check in on your parents in the next block, the wife who somehow keeps the whole household running. Purpose shows up dressed as responsibility, and there's rarely a spare moment to ask who you're actually becoming, because everyone around you needs something.

Then one day... you can't quite say when... you notice things have shifted.

The kids don't ask permission anymore. They've got their own group chats, their own plans on the weekend, and they don't come running to you after every scraped knee or heartbreak. Your career's reached the point where you're not proving yourself every single day just to stay in the running for the next promotion. Maybe the marriage isn't what it once was ... not because either of you did anything wrong, just because there wasn't much left over after work, the kids, the in-laws, and everything else that Singapore life quietly demands. Fifteen, twenty years of building all this, and suddenly there's space. And in that space sits a question you never really had time to sit with.

Now what?

I've photographed a lot of women who arrive at this exact point. From the outside, most of them look like they've got it all figured out. They run companies, or teams, or households other people admire... the kind of women other mothers might ask about. Their lives look full on paper. But very often, just sitting with them for a portrait session shows me a lot about what’s beneath the surface. And no, It's not unhappiness. It's not regret, either. It's closer to a slow kind of disappearing. As if being needed had become their whole identity, and now that the need has eased off, so has the sense of who they are.

As a photographer, giving people a bit of space and time is part of the process… and in those seemingly casual chats we have, the questions they've been too busy for seem to all catch up with them.

Most of us assume confidence comes from achievement. But some of the most accomplished women I've met... women running real businesses, sitting on boards, managing regional teams... are asking themselves the exact same thing as everyone else. Success can tell you what you built but I don’t think it can tell you who you are when nobody's asking anything of you.

Maybe that's partly why some women end up booking a portrait session at this stage. Some people might assume it's a milestone thing... a birthday, an anniversary... or just vanity. In my experience, it's rarely any of those reasons… Most of the ones I remember weren't celebrating anything in particular. They'd just realised life looked and feels different now.

And maybe they had enough… because for years, everyone else came first. Maybe this is their time to put themselves first.

The kids don't need them the same way anymore. Marriages changed shape. Their job stopped being the whole story. Whatever the reason, they realised that the woman they've spent the last one or two decades being... for the family, for the company, for everyone... isn't the one they want to keep being.

And so…those photographs I take? they aren’t really about the moment they noticed something had changed. It's about the moment they decided to do something with that.

Funnily enough, a lot of them start the session being slightly apologetic... as if taking an afternoon off, away from the office or the kids, is something they need to justify, to me, or maybe to themselves. I hear them say they wish they'd done this years ago. That work got in the way… or just procrastinate because they don't feel they look the same way, or perhaps the most common regret that they feel older.

And… that's usually exactly why they finally showed up.

Not to stop time. But maybe to not let it pass them by.

That’s gotta be one of the unfortunate ironies of adulthood, especially in a society that moves as fast as ours... we spend so long building a life that we kinda forget to actually live in it. We spend so many years taking care of everyone else that taking care of ourselves starts to feel indulgent, even irresponsible.

Anyway… sharing this article because a lot of my guests are beautiful, amazing women. But all too often, I think many of them would have also loved to live life with a little more freedom. If my portraits do anything, I hope it serves as a gentle reminder to them they were never really lost. :)

They'd just forgotten they always had their hands on their own steering wheel… that’s all…

— Ejun Low