category: Blog
People watching has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl I can remember watching women pass by, making plans with their friends, gleaming with self confidence and independence that I both adored and envied. I imagined what I would be like when I was their age, all grown up.
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I had pretty clear guidelines: In your early 20’s you were almost grown up, but still somewhat irresponsible and dependant on your parents. From 25 years and up, you were officially a grown up. When you are a grown up you always have exciting plans, you have a job you love to go to everyday, you own a home, and you are married and will have children whenever you feel like it.
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Obviously I became a little less delusional as I got older. I understood that most 25 year olds barely have it together, let alone are married with a job they enjoy. However I still believed that grown ups had it together in a mysterious way that I could not understand as a child. I longed to be a grown up, I tried to demand the respect they received, with little luck.
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As I got older, I honestly kept wondering when I would get that grown up feeling. When I gave birth to my daughter at 19, I figured I would be on the fast path to feeling like a grown up. You had to be a grown up to have a baby, right? Wrong!
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Then, the magic age of 25 came and went; still nothing. I started my own company, I got married, and I gave birth again; still no grown up feelings. I reached the ripe old age of 30 and more of the same. I look around at other women, both younger and older than me and I am convinced they must know a secret; they always look so much more “together” than I do.
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Then it came to me. There isn’t a magic grown up age. It’s never coming. It’s up to me to feel confident and self assured; no one is going to give that to me. Everyone has their own drama; they have their confident moments and they have their weak ones as well. There is no one out there who has it perfectly together, no matter how much they pretend to. There is no event that can make you perfectly confident either, not marriage, birth, or a job.
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The big secret that I never knew is: Your confidence is in your hands, no one else’s. Throughout my life I have looked everywhere for validation, for praise, for self worth, but I have always been disappointed in return. I know now it’s because I have to look inwards to find all of that, not out to other people.
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Ladies, young and old, I will let you in on another little secret: there is never going to be an age where everything is perfect. And really, if there was, I don’t think I would want to make it there. I love my perfectly imperfect life.
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