On Turning 30

Today I turn 30. Recently someone dear to me asked me what my younger self would have thought of what my life has become. What immediately popped into my head was "Oh thank God". My younger self—to which I mostly mean who I was from about 18-26 when I was struggling mightily to figure out who I was, what I wanted from life, and how to reconcile those two things from whatever my reality happened to be. Those years were really tough for me and I honestly wasn't sure about much.

But then I found friends, two in particular, who helped me to believe in myself. They kept asking me questions, gently forcing me to talk, to open up, to let them in. And eventually I did and everything else began to shift.

I learned to be nicer to myself, even if those lessons came after particularly intense injuries which helped me to accept myself where I was.

I learned the power of making and sharing my work and my crafts.

I figured out that I actually do have a lot of power. I moved myself to Iowa because I had a feeling it might help my life balance out in a way that suited me. I'm still amazed at how right I was.

I've learned that just because I am far away from most everyone else I love, distance doesn't have to dictate that love.

I've found out the importance of having more fun and how much better I feel when I have daily doses of laughter.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that over the past few years, I have managed to make my life look and feel exactly the way I always hoped that it would when I was a little girl and a young woman. It took a lot of time, and a ton of work, but here I am. Happy, healthy and ready to start the next decade of my life. I admit that the number has been tripping me up a bit simply because it seems so impossible, but if things keep moving in the direction that they have been, I'll gladly take the upward momentum.

I recently found this picture of myself (I was probably 6) and I just love it. I'm going to do my best to keep this version of myself in mind this year—I think that sparkly sass is a highly enviable personality trait no matter how old I am!

**the numbers at the top of this post are a special download—0-9 all created out of tiny plants and blooms—by my art director at ReadyMade. Click here to download and use it yourself!