Turning 30

It's only hours until my twenties just float away.

I'm can't say that I'm really sad to say good-bye to being 'twenty-something.' I think my thirties are going to be freakin' awesome. The fact that I still say things like "freakin' awesome" goes to show that I had no idea what life would really be like at this age. Who does, I suppose? I'm not sure what I thought, but this isn't it.... First of all, why am not living on some exotic island drinking fancy mango martinis!?


Aside from this working everyday thing, which I think is just called reality, the deep, real part of my life has become so much more than I could have ever imagined a decade ago. Ten years ago, I was working 3 jobs, totally more than 40 hours a week, and a full-time college student with some kind of crazy course load including anatomy & physiology, microbiology, organic chemistry, and calculus II.

I spent my 20th birthday in the emergency room with my mom. She refused to leave the house until I after I had opened my gifts and we all had cake, cake decorated with candy corn because that was my birthday tradition.



My mother was stubborn. And mostly she hated to let our lives controlled by cancer. I don't even remember what was wrong with her that day, maybe bronchitis or some sort of cold. Cancer patients have no immunity, so anything is something. She never really recovered after that and died less than six months later.

(Boy, this is really turning out to be a cheery post)

Point being, twenty seems scarred with tragedy and pain and catapulted me into a world I didn't really want to be a part of, even if I knew it was likely to come.

I spent most of my early twenties trying to endure life financially, mentally, and physically but at the same time attempting to untangle the riddles and rhymes of what life had become for me. Life without my mother. Life as a woman. Life with obligations. Life with avoidance. Life with acceptance. Life with bad hair. Life with love. Life alone. Life with opportunity. Life with ambition. Life with sadness. What life had meant to me and where and I wanted it it to ber. In the process I walked away from a lot of people. I quietly closed a lot of doors on others.and let myself slip into a world of self-absorption. Not so much literally slamming doors and locking people out, but a definite mental shut down. It was a time of self-discovery


As my early twenties slipped into my mid-twenties, my discernment turned into acceptance and appreciation for who I am and how I want this life, my existence, to be. Those years of affliction have brought me so much peace and happiness now. And truthfully, amongst all the grief and turmoil there was a lot of happiness then too, it was just harder to recognize or maybe just hard for me to allow myself to truly enjoy it.

On the eve of turning thirty I feel content with what I have accomplished, grateful for my health, zest for what the next decade has in store, and so thankful that I have achieved such blissful happiness and fulfilment.


Rock On thirties!

me & Kim Tilly, Baldwin-Wallace College 2000

a little Halloween fun in the chem lab

(It is easy to recognize pictures of my early 20s because I have absolutely terrible, crazy hair)