Today, I’m 32

Reflections on 31

Every birthday makes people ask what you’ve accomplished. I think a better question is: What have you finally stopped carrying?

31 was not graceful. It wasn’t the year everything clicked into place. It wasn’t the year I became disciplined enough, healed enough, thin enough, wise enough, or emotionally evolved enough to never make another mistake. It was the year I stopped believing I had to.

I learned that your heart can break more than once in a single year and still wake up every morning convinced that love is a good idea.

I learned that motherhood is impossible to do alone and pretending otherwise doesn’t make you stronger. It just makes you tired in places sleep can’t fix.

I learned that my body is a moving target. Some mornings I stand in the mirror negotiating with it. Other mornings we put on music and remember we’ve always looked best in motion. I don’t know if self-love is a destination anymore. I think it’s a dance, and some days all I have is two left feet.

I learned that accountability isn’t a punishment. Sometimes I’m the one who doesn’t communicate. Sometimes I avoid difficult conversations. Sometimes I expect people to read feelings I’ve hidden from myself. The goal was never to become perfect. The goal is to become someone safe enough to tell herself the truth.

I learned that letting people go is strange because your hands can know something your heart hasn’t caught up to yet. You can miss someone and still know the distance is necessary. Missing them isn’t always an invitation to return.

I learned that I’m still every version of myself. The little girl collecting rocks because they looked like tiny jewels. The teenager convinced music could save her life. The twenty-something trying to outrun loneliness by becoming useful to everyone else. None of them disappeared. They all still live here.

I learned that solitude and connection are not opposites. Some days I need silence so complete I can hear my own thoughts breathing. Other days I need someone to laugh with until I forget what I was afraid of. Neither need makes me less independent.

But the biggest thing I learned at thirty-one is this: Shame is heavy because we keep mistaking it for responsibility.

I spent years carrying old mistakes, old relationships, old versions of myself as if guilt were proof that I had grown.

It isn’t.

Growth isn’t dragging every past version of yourself into every new room. Growth is thanking her for surviving and letting her leave. Maybe that’s what getting older actually is. Not becoming someone new. Just setting down everything that was never meant to be carried forever.

Today I turn 32.

For the first time in a long time, my hands are empty enough to hold whatever comes next.

XOXO,

Zee