Thoughts From Turning Thirty (30).

Wow. Thirty years old. Another trip around the sun feels more like a spaceship ride into an entirely new universe. I celebrated for four days straight (which kinda turned into two weeks straight, lol), simultaneously basking in love and wallowing in grief. Crazy to think about the two co-existing, especially during such a milestone moment in life. But apart of growing the f*ck up is embracing duality. You have to hold yourself accountable not to fall too far on certain ends of the spectrum. Understand that you can be genuinely happy, and still wish your circumstances were different. Accepting the duality of emotions and in life situations is a cheat code. It’s how you put yourself ahead of others, but most importantly it’s how you excel on your journey to finding peace.

One of the best moments of my entire birthday weekend was being surrounded by so much love. I am blessed enough to have had people travel from different places to celebrate me. The amount of literal and figurative flowers and gifts that I received filled my heart with so much joy as a reminder that there are people that love me enough to go the extra mile. As someone who is known for going the extra mile for people, that means the world to me. The journey to 30 over these last couple of months has been filled with so much reflection, and one of the main things I’ve realized is that reciprocity is rare. Even the people that actually care about you will struggle to reciprocate the love you give them and the way you show up for them. The craziest part of it all is that you have to understand it literally has nothing to do with you. The choices people make and the capacity they have to show up for you (or lack thereof) are more of a reflection of where they are in their own journey than anything else. It’s a tough pill to swallow knowing that you can be there for someone when they call and even when they don’t, and they can not show up for you in your brightest and darkest hours. So what do we do with that? Do we say fuck them? Do we pretend they don’t really care about us? Maybe. Almost all of my friends are good for leaving people right where they had them fucked up at. And everyday I aspire to be more like them. It’s not that I allow people to play with me - because we don’t even play them kind of games - but I do find myself checking behavior, and then letting my understanding of said behavior isn’t personal to me allow me to still share space with someone. In some cases this makes sense and is okay, because what’s love without forgiveness? But in others you have to know to make that space permanent. I can transparently say I’m still working through figuring out when to do what, but one thing I do know is that you never quite figure anything all the way out - at least not life. Thirty is already showing me that if you want to be happy, if you want to succeed, you have to let go.

In a season of letting go, I struggle with always remaining positive about it. I have my good days where I remind myself that you have to let go in order to make room for something better, and I use that to give myself something to look forward to. But then I have days where the reality of not knowing what’s coming or when it will arrive makes me more anxious than I’m comfortable with. What grounds me and brings me back to not sweating what I can’t control is my faith. Faith in God is literally what keeps me alive. It is what keeps me going. Friendship is what makes the journey of pushing through and remaining faithful a lot easier though. My friends are literally what made my birthday probably the most special birthday I’ve ever experienced and they are what gets me through the daily turmoil of my journey. Someone treated me wrong, I’m hitting my girls, lol. I just need to get out of the house, or I just want to hear a comforting voice? I’m calling my friends. I’m eternally in debt to God for how well he blessed me with solid people around me. My mother used to always tell me, “if you get one real friend in this life, you are blessed.” I need to go ask her “what’s it called when you have more than 5?” I’m in awe thinking about how I have to use more than one hand to count my village of friends. And I’m not talking about associates, I mean real friends - people that honor my name, hold my secrets, tell me the things I need to hear, not what I want to hear. Women and men that only want from me what I want from them - to witness the best version of ourselves. To grow and flourish. I have friends that are moms (aka super-heroes), friends that own businesses, friends that have been through situations that most people would’ve called it quits on life for, but they still show up gracefully in my life and the lives of so many others. When I think about my blessings, I definitely count my friends three times! It’s because of them I have advanced on my journey to peace and happiness. It’s because of them I’m able to remember the bad ass bitch that I am when someone in this insane world tries to make me feel less than. It’s because of them I am inspired to be a better woman, every day. 

So in thinking about how to keep pushing in this crazy world and how to make space for the positive despite the negative looming, I think about the benefit of doing the hard work now. The hard work is choosing not to wallow in my grief but still acknowledge that it exists. The easy thing to do is pretend it’s not there. Keep myself so distracted that any stress I feel I can write off as effects from work or maybe I can’t (consciously) put my finger on the cause at all. Drink it away, party it away, work it away, the usual things we do to convince ourselves that we’re fine and nothing’s wrong. But the funny thing about the easy route is it’s only easy right now. In the end, it complicates every fucking thing if I’m being honest. You end up surviving through life instead of living through it. And if turning thirty has taught me nothing else, it’s taught me that I absolutely want to LIVE my best life. A life where even through the ups and downs I remain intentional about my happiness and literally feel the highs of my blessings. When I think about what my most prominent thought from turning thirty is, it’s to choose you. Not the comfortable you, not the current you - but the you you want to be. The you that God and the universe intend for you to be. Choose your highest, most healed you even though she/he/they doesn’t exist yet. That single choice will align you with endless possibilities that are meant for you and you only. And it will propel you to heights you’ve only dreamed of. This blog and sharing some of my most intimate thoughts is an example of me doing that, and I pray that you’ll stay on this journey with me. After all, hard work is never any fun alone. ❤️

Being able to share organic thoughts in safe spaces is sacred to me. Check out my thoughts on the work it takes to chase your dreams! Subscribe to my channel on YouTube - there’s more where this came from. Xoxo