30 Thoughts for My 30 Years
Well, it’s been quite the hiatus here, as so many pieces of my life have been shifting in the most beautiful and vulnerable ways. It has taken so much of my time and energy to move with them. Today I turn 30, and I can’t help but sit and reflect on the first 3 decades of my life in wonder. The last ten years of my life have seen some of the highest highs and lowest lows, and I sit here grateful and in reverence of them all. I survived and found ways to cope with a turbulent childhood, made (and lost) some close friendships in younger years, reconstructed friendships meant to last long-term, graduated college, began (and somehow managed to complete) a PhD program, began a big-girl corporate job, spent most of my 20’s in the longest relationship I’d ever been in, married that person, divorced that person, went down a rabbit hole of self-introspection, reconstructed the vision I’d previously had for my life, disturbed all the constants I had put in place for life until that point, became a life coach, met a man who leans into a similar vision for his world, fell in love with said man, and leapt into a new existence while simultaneously shedding layers and embracing the grief for the monumental change that the last decade has held. In the last month alone, I have left the state that held me in this last chapter, moved across the entire continental US to Texas to start this new chapter in a new place that will hold new adventures and possibility for my life. And in my first week here, my bleeding heart fell in love with and adopted a stray dog we found during Saturday morning errands. She’s a bright little light and a spunky addition to our family. Life is opening and unfolding in ways I never could have imagined, and I feel at all times in complete awe, scared shitless, stripped bare, and brimming with hope. As I sit here and reflect on the true closing of a chapter and the beginning of the next, I have 30 raw and unpolished thoughts I am personally reflecting on for my 30 years on this earth.
I read in my human design chart that a description of my profile outlines a triad of phases that make up my life. Thirty is quite literally the closing of the experimentation phase and the opening of the alchemy phase. My next 20 years are forecasted to bring wisdom drawn from my life to-date. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the challenges I was willing to take on and the mistakes I was willing to make. I can only hope they will alchemize something wonderful that I can offer the world.
Each experience we live through is a catalyst. Every encounter I have had and will ever have is a gift in some way. It delivers to me something crucial I need to know. My agency will determine whether and how I choose to use each one.
We all walk this earth in service to something. For some of us, we let it be our pain and suffering, others’ needs, our pasts, our vices, or simply put, things that keep us feeling safe. For some brave crusaders, they choose to be in service to things much bigger and deeper than that. All the greats we write about and honor in history books are in service to crucial life lessons we are all searching to understand. I hope to live the rest of my life to be fully in service to truth, love, and something much greater than myself.
Religion is a social construct to help humans make sense of intangible energetic laws and concepts we can’t possibly explain in human terms. We are inherently cut from the cloth of love, truth, and joy. We don’t need religion or church to teach us how to embody those things. We just need a reunion with ourselves, our intuition, and our own sovereignty. We ARE love. Our life is meant to be a continuous returning to that concept.
Marriage, as the majority of society currently defines it, asks us if push comes to shove, to choose our relationship with another person over our relationship with ourselves. If it comes down to the choice between losing ourselves or losing the relationship, we are expected to turn our backs on ourselves. Sacrifice yourself for other. Those are no longer vows I’m willing to uphold ever again. If I remarry, my own chosen vows will look quite different. Marriage can be a soul contact without paper contractual form, too. There is not one “right way” to do marriage. If you are truly married to your own soul before you marry another human, it will make it much more difficult to marry someone that requires you to divorce yourself for the sake of the relationship.
There is no such thing as too many dogs, chips, or days off. I will continue to embrace the abundance of all three.
Your healing, health, and overall well-being don’t deserve to have a price tag attached. Having income to devote to those things is definitely a privilege, and it is one I choose to honor and invest in within the coming decades.
Sovereignty is knowing that you hold the key to your own freedom. Your ability to heal and regulate comes from you, alone. Your peace comes from doing the work to go inward and heal. You can accept all truth as valid. You allow your own truth to move you along your path. You no longer require the outside world to contort to facilitate your peace. It is unconditional within you.
Stop chasing that thing that everyone else told you that you “should want” and start chasing the things that light you up. Even if that means disappointing others and going against the grain.
Be “The One” before you set out to find “The One”. You attract what you emulate. ALWAYS.
A ring won’t save your relationship. Neither will a baby or a threesome.
If your mom told you not to eat ice cream straight out of the pint, don’t listen to her. It tastes better that way, and besides, you’re your own sovereign boss. Also, ice cream pint koozies are the best money I’ve spent this side of 30. Who needs a bowl with the dietarily “correct” portion size when you’ve got a pint and a koozie to keep your hand from getting cold anyways?
Trust your damn gut at all times. If you can’t hear what it’s saying, it doesn't mean you don't have one. It just means you need to take the time to learn what it sounds like again. It has always been there, you just may not have always been listening.
Heal your mommy and daddy issues or they will get it the way of EVERY. SINGLE. THING. you try to experience in life. Intimacy in your relationship with self, intimacy in your romantic relationships, intimacy in friendship, success in your career, all of it.
Eat your damn vegetables. They will probably save your life. Also, get an air fryer. It makes them taste better.
Endings are one of our greatest teachers.
Two truths can exist at once. Neither negates the other. Learning to hold multiple truths in any given situation is part of our purpose in life. Compassion and perspective are born in the grey space in-between.
There is no such thing as a “right” or “wrong” choice. Either way, there are lessons to learn, wisdom to gain, and space to grow from every choice we make. Letting go of that notion opens up space to breathe and grace to sometimes make the “wrong” choice.
The hardest things we go through on earth are always tied to our greater purpose for being here. I have found so much comfort knowing that.
The universe is always listening to you. Be careful the shit that comes out of your mouth (or brain waves). You get what you energetically line up with.
We cannot force anyone to do the work, and any attempt we make to change, control, or coerce someone else’s thoughts or behaviors is manipulation and an avoidance of something in our own life we need to be looking at. People choose their own paths, and it is not for anyone else to control or change that. Stop hitching your wagon to other people’s horses.
You cannot change someone and fully choose them at the same time. Simple as that. You can, however, call them forward by demonstrating your own change. Gandhi said “Be the change that you wish to see in the world” for a reason. We don’t need more people marching around with angry signs. We need more people demonstrating the change they advocate so vehemently for.
We all choose the PERFECT people and situations to surround us in our life and teach us valuable lessons our soul calls out for at any given time. Nothing is right or wrong, it is simply PERFECT, or precise, if you will.
You can’t be wildly successful without being willing to be wildly vulnerable. You have to be open to failure to achieve your greatest success. Also, vulnerability never gets easier, even as you get older. You just get better acquainted with the discomfort.
Relational success is neither a function of time nor contractual commitment. True relational success is rather the ability for individuals to come together consciously, to remain connected (to self and other), and to be consistently willing to level-up in their partnership.
Setting boundaries, especially with those we are in closest relationship with, is some of the hardest and most necessary work we are here to do. Boundaries teach people how to love us the way we deeply want and deserve. They can be set in love and compassion and still be fiercely freeing. Boundaries are self-care. Your healing and well-being is of utmost importance (see number 7).
Be relentless in the pursuit of yourself. Rejoice when you find that you are not for everyone. This is the Universe’s way of sifting on your behalf. You won’t have to be anything other than exactly who you truly are for your tribe to love you. If you have to perform to feel safe and be accepted, keep looking because those aren’t your people.
Other people can only love you to the depth that you are able to love yourself. If you feel you aren’t getting enough from those around you, look at your relationship with yourself for the answers.
What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
As Glennon Doyle so astutely pointed out, it doesn’t pay to ask others for directions to places they’ve never been. Your life is yours, alone. Stop asking other people for directions. We are the blind leading the blind. Your best compass is your own intuition (see number 13).
Love y’all (switching to y’all instead of you all seems fitting now that I’m in the big TX),
E.