Becoming You In Your Thirties
It’s 11:26am on a Saturday morning. I woke up at 8:17am and laid in bed for about an hour before getting up. I made myself a pumpkin spice coffee, eggs, and bacon- a special Saturday morning treat. I watched youtube videos and scrolled through pinterest while I ate my breakfast slowly and uninterrupted. The grocery delivery I set up last night arrived at 10:33am. I’m wearing my favorite sweatpants and hoodie combo, which I most likely will not change out of for the entirety of the day. As I sip my second cup of coffee, I opened up my laptop, turned on the 2005 Pride & Prejudice soundtrack, then began writing these thoughts about becoming yourself in your thirties.
I never thought I would be single, childless, and so lost at this time in my life. Women in their thirties are supposed to be mothers, wives, and have their lives figured out fully and completely. No question of who they are or what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Women in their thirties are supposed to be content and thriving. I am so incredibly wrong in those thoughts I had growing up, but I don’t think I am alone in them.
I am learning to allow myself to become me as I navigate this new decade of life. It is a process that begins at the very start of who I am and the very end of who I want to be. Becoming is the connection between the two and the journey to get from one to the other. Somehow, who I am and who I want to be were never that far apart. Even more surprising, it wasn’t effort that separated them.
Becoming is defined as “the process of coming to be something or of passing into a state”. The journey of becoming is not one that focuses on checklists or 5-year-plans. I’ve tried all of the tricks recommended by habit gurus and “live your best life” aficionados who write self-help books with strict plans for self-improvement. Each author in this realm somehow has an oddly loud voice through the words on the pages of their books. Almost as though the words they have written have no meaning without such urgency or excitement. Influencers actually have loud voices in their videos with such urgency it makes you feel behind in every aspect of your life.
When I say I’ve tried them all, this is only a slight exaggeration. I was heavily obsessed with being successful and the best version of myself in my 20s. I owned a digital marketing business, read every business and self-help book I could find, listened to habit stacking podcasts, outlined life goals, and did quarterly reviews of my life to make sure I was on track. This didn’t lead to a successful and happy life, I was just exhausted and distracted. Now, I would much rather focus on becoming myself than being told what would make me more efficient as a human, thank you very much.
If there is something you desperately want or feel called to do, by all means put in the effort to achieve it. There is a beauty in fighting for the life you desire in your heart. My issue was that I was fighting for something I never truly desired or wanted, just what I thought I should want. Thus the struggle to succeed and the sudden fear I was further from myself than I thought possible set in. My late twenties was filled with lots of healing (physical health included) and realizing I was not doing what fired up my soul. So, I shifted and began this journey of removing the layers piled on top of who I really was. I had developed this persona that I have come to dislike. Thankfully, my true self was just under all the layers. The problem was, I got so used to having these layers that I just replaced them with different ones.
It wasn’t until a few months ago that I realized I had covered myself up again, just with different layers. Thus this journey of defining becoming. I even wrote a poem about it. Not to get too focused on definitions of words, but I realized I was trying to find myself. Finding something implies you must look outward for it, which is where my problems truly began in the first place. We talk about “finding yourself” quite often in the world of self-discovery (another external word).
The problem is, I don’t need to find myself, I need to become myself. Allow the layers to fall off and not replace them with something new. Some patching or mending needs to happen along the way with those under layers that haven’t seen the light of day for years, even decades. That is the beauty of becoming; you are not putting on someone else’s identity or expectations of you. The person you were created to be gets to shine through.
Becoming can’t have deadlines or heavy expectations because then the journey becomes finding or discovering to meet your timeline. I like to think of it as just a state of being. You get to be you to the fullest extent. What a joy it is to become what you already are, just out in the open this time. No more hiding or covering up what may not please others.
The notes app on my phone has an ever growing list of things I tend to need to remember about myself. The list includes things I enjoy, places I don’t want to forget, feelings I tend to brush over. I love going back to this list and visually seeing a little snippet of my journey through becoming me. This list has helped me realize that who I am under all the layers wasn’t gone, just hidden. I wasn’t too far away from who I truly am or lost completely. Over the years, I just let other things overtake me: expectations, people-pleasing, fears, and feelings of wanting to belong. All at the expense of being me.
You may feel as though the world has placed high expectations on your shoulders to be a certain version of you in your thirties. Maybe you are like me and feel like you missed the mark on who you are supposed to be. I invite you to simply find little ways to enjoy becoming. No lofty expectations or deadlines, just soft moments of stillness to experience the world through a lens unclouded by society's expectations. We are not designed to find ourselves, but to become.
I wasn’t planning on keeping the first paragraph I wrote about my Saturday morning. I just wanted to get myself into a writing mode. Starting with the present seems to do the trick most of the time to get my brain firing. Yet, I can’t bring myself to remove it from this little string of thought because it sort of fully encapsulates where I am in my journey of becoming. The fact that I feel no shame or guilt over staying home on Saturday morning to live slowly and intently is the perfect definition of becoming myself in my thirties. That little first paragraph is me.
A Gentle Reminder
The world around us puts on pressure to be a certain way. It is okay to give yourself permission to let go of that pressure and begin again. There is no timeline you must follow in your thirties. If you desire to start becoming yourself, let it begin softly and slowly.
With Warmth,
Teresa
The Healing Homebody
