love notes 18: saying hello to my thirties
thoughts on turning thirty, what i read this week and other recommendations
This week I’ve been obsessed with: book crawls, 90’s television series, solo dance sessions, diversifying my reading, cinnamon chai lattes, grey skies, my new glasses, chocolate cake, family time and slow mornings.
I turned thirty this week.
It was a nice, quiet celebration — an intimate dinner alone with my husband, time spent with family, lots of reading and plenty of my favourite chocolate cake. I even went on a road trip with my parents to go book shopping this weekend, and picked up so many books that I’m excited to read: What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, All’s Well by Mona Awad and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, just to name a few. But, for me, nice and quiet is the perfect way to say goodbye to my twenties.
As I look back, I spent most of my twenties entirely uncertain and insecure. I’m sure most of us felt or still feel this way about that time — like our twenties are this endless, uphill climb where the mountain top is just always out of reach; or perhaps your twenties felt like a long, winding tunnel where the light barely penetrated. It’s that strange time where you’re supposed to be an ‘adult’ but still remarkably feel like a child.
I know I spent a large part of my twenties second-guessing every single step I took, like I was stumbling around awkwardly in the dark trying to find a light switch. I constantly worried over my appearance, my weight, my intelligence, my hobbies, my employability, my likability. I wondered when I’d get a boyfriend and get engaged and then get married. I wondered if I would ever have children. I worried endlessly over if I was a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother, a good human being — listing everything I did again and again to see what I could do better. I wondered if I was ever doing enough, if I was even enough. And if I finally made a decision or chose a path for my life, I still found myself laying wide awake, staring up at my ceiling, questioning whether the direction I was going in was the right one.
But reflecting on this time has made me realise that everything that happened in my twenties, everything emotion that I felt, moulded me into who I am. I wouldn’t be the human being I am today without everything — the good, the bad, even the downright ugly — happening to me as it did.
Some examples? Let’s go.
I wrote a thesis and graduated university. I quit my boring retail job and started, unexpectedly, working as a marketing coordinator in the head office of a pet shop franchise. I then quit that too when the stress and toxicity became too much. I bought a new car after my old one was stolen. I met the love of my life, got married in the countryside and bought a house. I had a miscarriage and was treated horribly by medical staff. I gave birth to my son and daughter. I developed chronic pain in my back, hips and pelvis. I learned the difference between losing friendships and letting go of friendships, and I experienced both. I got healthy and then I got unhealthy. I started a small business from home and then started this newsletter. I stopped writing and reading, and then started up both again. I wrote a couple of books, believing them to be the stories of my heart, and ultimately decided to shelve them. I started having anxiety and struggled a lot with my mental health. I listened too much to influencers online and lost who I was completely. I then shut out the external voices and began the long, arduous process of rediscovering who I am.
Thinking about all the things I experienced in my twenties has me I’m choosing to think of them as “my rediscovery era”.
Like I said, I began that decade of my life feeling so uncertain and so insecure. And because of that I stripped myself of my old identity in search of being somebody I thought I was supposed to be. I threw away my dreams of being a writer, I became embarrassed of the books I read. I tried to become thinner, prettier, more financially stable, a boss babe, a green juice drinker, a beige home owner. I tried living a spectacularly perfect life — you know, desperately trying to emulate whatever influencer I was religiously following at the time handed down to me as gospel. But now after a decade of struggles, triumphs and being beaten to a pulp with a hell of a lot of perspective, I step across the threshold into my thirties feeling like I’ve rediscovered the person I was.
I’m claiming my thirties now as “my integration era”. Everything I learned about myself in my twenties is going to be put to good use in my thirties.
For example, I have a better sense of who I am as a daughter, a wife, a mother, a writer, a creative, a person. I have a much deeper love for my complexities and intricacies. I don’t have the desire to hide particular parts of myself anymore. I don’t feel embarrassed of the woman I am. I have fallen deeply in love with the creative part of my soul and I now feel the pull to focus on my writing, in whatever shape or form it takes — this newsletter, a book, even something as simple as scribbling notes in the margins of my books. I actually feel grounded in my mind and body, something I never thought possible. And even though I’m risking sounding like a real cliche, I’m ready to live my life in a way that feels authentic to me.
Now I don’t want to go into my thirties making these grand exclamations of what I want to achieve. I’m starting to realise how tiring that is. But I do want to make a few promises to myself:
I want to take every day as it comes;
limit the outside voices;
spend as much time with my family as possible;
to read and write as often as I take breaths;
to challenge myself only out of love for myself, not hatred;
and to honour my creative self, always.
It’s funny, as a child I considered thirty to be so old. Ancient, even.
And because of that I thought I’d be a mess when I turned thirty, to be honest. I thought I would feel a deep and foreboding sense of sadness that I was getting older, perhaps even have morbid feelings of inching closer and closer to the end. I mean I won’t lie — reflecting on my twenties has a small part of myself wondering where the past thirty years have gone. Did I blink? But, honestly, overall, I feel fine. Even more than fine. I’m actually, surprisingly, over the moon about turning thirty. I’m at a point in my life where I’m ready to fully embrace who I am more than ever. I’m ready to live my life and not some knock-off version of somebody else’s.
And I think this is going to be the best decade yet.
part i: what i read this week
This week I finished reading Beach Read by Emily Henry, and I absolutely loved it. I mean, are we even surprised? Emily Henry is the absolute queen when it comes to romance and I always fall so deeply in love with her books. January and Gus were definitely what I needed to end July with.
For my birthday, my husband bought me Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors and you bet I began reading it that morning. This was my most anticipated book for the year and so far I’m really loving it. The opening chapters are some of my favourites I’ve ever read as they intimately reveal the characters in such perfect detail that I felt like I knew them from the moment I began reading. I’m almost halfway through and I can’t wait to finish this book next week.
And finally I have a long list of article recommendations that I found particularly interesting and inspiring this week:
On Lying About Reading, or: How I Learned That Stieg Larsson Is Good, Actually
Empowering Eeriness: How Gothic Romances Helped Alisa Alering Escape the Misery of a Small Town
part ii: what i wrote this week:
The beginning of August is always so busy — not just because of my birthday celebrations, which are very quiet anyway, but because it’s spent getting ready for my daughter’s birthday too. Next week is her second birthday party, so I’ve been focusing on deep cleaning the house, finishing up making her birthday decorations and getting all the food preparations sorted.
So, unfortunately, writing has been put on the back burner this week. But I have been spending my time cleaning thinking about my book and characters, so I guess that’s almost writing, right?
part iii: what i watched this week
In what feels like the universe giving me the most incredible birthday present ever, “ER” was finally put on a streaming service I have access to. This is my all time favourite medical television show — so much better than Greys Anatomy in my opinion — and I’ve probably rewatched it a thousand times already on DVD, but what’s one more time right? It’s been good to have on in the background at nighttime when I’ve been working on Substack pieces.
Otherwise, I’ve only watched videos on Youtube this week. If you need more literary fiction and romance book recommendations you will love this video for “hot girl summer vs rot girl summer book recommendations”. I also really, really loved this video by Dakota Warren titled “all I do is read and write” — it’s very aesthetic!
And that was this week!
Next week I hope to finish Blue Sisters in-between birthday party preparations and general life busyness. I can’t believe my baby is turning two! But despite being busy, you’ll still be seeing pieces from me in your inbox. First up there will be a piece on Wednesday of all the books I got for my birthday, which I can’t wait to share.
Until next time,
- Madeline