Some thoughts on turning 30

Today I turn 30.

30 feels like the first significant age milestone I’ve had in a while and it has me thinking a lot about the last decade and the decade to come.

My 20's brought a lot of life-changing events, and to be honest, I’m kind of hoping that this decade has a few less. I associate my early twenties with bad breakups, a very poor choice for my first career, and chronic illness.  

I think I just had very little sense of self.

That made it easier to stay in relationships that weren’t right and to enter into a career that was a terrible match with who I am. From there it was just a simple formula: Toxic Relationships + Toxic Work = Toxic Body.

It took a few years to dig out of that mess, and along the way I picked up on clues here and there about what was actually a good fit for me: which people lifted me up, what kinds of work felt fulfilling, and how to maintain my energy. I’m still looking for clues, and I have a feeling I will continue to throughout this decade and hopefully into each succeeding one. I don’t really think there is an end point to this evolution—at least not any time soon. Reincarnation and the idea that we live many lives hinges on the idea that we are always a work in progress. We can choose to learn and evolve, to heal the broken parts of ourselves and come closer to alignment with our souls. But it takes more than one try to get it right.

I don’t really know what this next decade will bring or what I will write about on my 40th birthday-what I could have seen more clearly at 30 if only I had known myself better. I can only hope that I continue to look for those clues along the way, to listen to that voice inside of me that I know can be trusted. Why? Because listening to it is what brought me to Andy and Theo, it's what put me on a new career path and it's what healed my body. I spent the first 30 years of my life honing this skill. And now that I have it, I'm pretty psyched about what the next 30 will look like.

As always, thank you for reading, and if you could drop off a plate of cupcakes just like the one in the photo above, that would be much appreciated.

Mari

Staying Upright

I used to teach second grade. In our first writing unit of the year, we worked hard to get the students excited about writing and about their identities as writers. One of the exercises we did was called “What kind of a writer are you?” The students filled in the blanks to the prompt, “I’m the kind of writer who…” with things like, “…likes to write on pretty paper," "writes outside," "takes my notebook everywhere,” or “writes about my pets.” It was a pretty contrived exercise given that they didn’t really write outside of the daily 50-minute writing block (and even that time was mostly spent falling out of their chairs and chucking crayons at one another), but I enjoyed the sweet sentiment of them thinking about their identities in this new and exciting role.

I was reminded of this exercise because of the question that has been rolling around in my head for almost a year now: What kind of a mom am I? It started with basic questions about feeding the baby, types of diapers, sleeping arrangements. But the questions grow larger and seem to have more weight as time goes on: Am I a working mom? A stay-at-home mom? How do the baby and I spend our days? What do I do in my free time? Where will we raise our family?

I’m having a hard time filling in the blanks.

I went to a yoga nidra class the other day, which I like to describe as a yogic nap. We were led through a visualization where, with each full breath cycle we imagined that we were shedding one later at a time—a layer of stress, a layer of worry, a layer of patterns that no longer served us. After class I began to think about the layers that I have shed this year—the pieces of my identity from before Theo was born. The teaching life. The social life. The family of two. I gained new layers quickly: the new responsibilities, the changing family dynamic, the new career path. My sense of identity hasn't yet caught up.

I took a walk in the warm Colorado sunshine yesterday. I was trying to fill in the blanks again and then this simple message came to me—“Be gentle with yourself.” And the thinking parts of myself came to a halt and I just allowed myself to be in a space of not knowing.

As it turns out, the exercise of trying to say what kind of a mom you are—what kind of a person you are—is just as contrived now as it was for those little 8-year olds who were just trying to stay upright in their chairs.