THIRTY IS THE NEW TWENTY...RIGHT?

On the eve of my thirtieth birthday, I find myself contemplating what this next chapter will be for me. I always imagined this being such a milestone birthday, one that might have some dread or possibly even sadness attached to it. The dread being the fear of getting older and the sadness being the yearning for a life that once was.

And while getting older can be daunting and realising that your party days are long gone, I actually have an immense amount of peace with where I am in my life right now. I don’t long for nights out, in fact I look forward to my early (usually 8pm) bedtime, snuggling up with my little mini, his fingers reaching out for me as I lay down beside him. I am excited by the early mornings, when the human world is still sleeping but nature is starting to stir. With age comes a freeing realisation that the outside world doesn’t actually matter as much as you thought it did. That you can enjoy a meal with friends without having it sprawled across social media. It weeds out the rubbish in your life, and lets you spend time nurturing the important parts. I have found this to be true, especially when it comes to friendships. When you are young, quantity is usually more important than quality. As you get older, you realise that it takes less friends to make you happy. That the ones who are truly important will be supporting you in all aspects. That, as families grow and life gets busy, it’s ok to not speak all the time. That weeks of silence can go by and it doesn’t devalue your friendship.

You also appreciate family. Parents become grandparents which in turns brings a whole new dynamic to the relationship. If you are really lucky like I am, you’ll have parents and in-laws that live close by. You’ll want to spend time with them, as you watch the bond build between your child and them. Being an immigrant, I never grew up with Grandparents in the same country, so I never really had that relationship. Knowing that my son will always have a second home at both sets of grandparents is so wonderful.

I think the mixture of becoming a mum and getting older has made me want a slower life. I feel drawn to living off the land, to growing my own food which is usually a trial and error system. I want to wake up and spend the morning in the ocean, sandy toes and the smell of sunscreen in the air. I want to feel the salt on my skin and cool water over my face. I want my son to nap by the ocean. I long for afternoons with family that turns into dinner as we sit around a fire.

What I have found, as my thirtieth birthday approaches, is that I am actually really happy and content. Do I have goals for the future? Yes. Am I wanting more from this life than what I have? Yes. Do I want to grow and evolve as a person? Of course. But if my life was frozen in this period, I would want for nothing and be content where I am.

And I think that might be the secret sauce to life. If you can’t be happy when you have nothing, you’ll never be happy when you have everything. And, even when things have been tight, we’ve always managed to find happiness.

So, as I say goodbye to my twenties and close that chapter of my life, I look forward to this next moment. I cannot wait to see what this decade brings and the seasons that come with it.