3 important things I’ve learned in my 3 decades on earth: The birthday post!

So last week, May 11, I celebrated my 30th birthday, and it ended up being great for more reasons than just because it was on a Saturday, which is my favorite day. And while the day and weekend as a whole were wonderful, things didn’t go entirely as planned.

Before the weekend started, I had made plans to celebrate it at a hotel with my birth mom, whom I hadn’t celebrated a birthday with since I was turning 12. She had been in my life in the years following my time in foster care and adoption, but for one reason or another, it was never possible for us to celebrate my birthday together.

Because I was so excited about the plans we made, though, I forgot to realize that my adoptive mom would want to spend time with me that day, too. My adoptive mom, who had raised me through all of my pain to get me to the point I am now.

When everyone’s hurt feelings did come out just days before my birthday, I felt trapped between 2 moms, and like I wasn’t looking forward to my birthday. I didn’t have either of my dads to worry about because they aren’t in my life for different reasons, but I wanted to spend time with both of my moms together all getting along.

This story brings me to the first major thing I’ve learned in 30 years, or 3 decades…

1. Never be afraid to speak your truth and tell people what you need to tell them.

My adoptive mom got all her feelings out to me so I know how she felt, my birth mom got all her feelings out to me so I knew how she felt, and I got all my feelings out to both of them so they both knew how I felt.

Once everyone had everything they had to say out in the open, we were all able to start to work through our feelings, and the weekend was much better.

Throughout the day and even up until now, I started thinking about my life up until the age of 30. The turmoil in my starting years and for the rest of the years following, the sarcasm and angst of my teenage years, the recklessness and uncertainty of my early 20s, and how my mid to late 20s were building up so I felt more confident and sure of myself like I know what I want from life now.

This also involved me taking a look at the hopes and dreams I’ve had through my life and where I am now. While somethings are the way I planned them to be in my early years, there is so much that has happened that I didn’t plan, and I haven’t achieved some milestones that I thought I would by 30, but there are others that I hit earlier than I thought I would.

That brings me to the second lesson I’ve learned in my 30 years of life…

2. Life doesn’t always go as planned, and that’s ok.

I thought for sure that by now, I’d be a licensed clinical social worker with a spouse and at least 2 kids living in a house that my spouse and I own, I thought I’d have traveled to even more places than I have so far, and I thought I’d have the perfect body of my dreams.

Instead, I live at home with my mom and kid brother again, I haven’t been on the dating scene in over 3 years and not because I ever got married or had kids I’m not a licensed clinical social worker, but am on disability and even if I could have a job I don’t even want to do that anymore.  While I have traveled to some really cool places, there are still many more places I want to travel to, and the way I feel about my body fluctuates often.

All of that may seem bleak, but it’s all OK to me now. I feel even more comforted when I take a look at life through the eyes of gratitude and abundance. I may not have kids, but I have 4 adorable nieces and nephews, I may not have done everything I have wanted so far, but I have had some incredible experiences and have gotten to do so much more than I ever thought I could, I may not have a partner, but I am fully focused on loving and healing myself so I’ll be ready when love comes, and if it doesn’t, at least I will be a happy and healthy person overall.

I might not have any career i planned on having, but I am doing stuff that I love that’s helping people (this blog and volunteering) and I do still have issues with my body, but that is my ongoing project of self love and acceptance. Plus, I am getting so much healthier with my mental health and diabetes.

Now as I look at the years of my life that have passed, I no longer want to end things like I did for most of my teens and 20s, I have goals, visions, and dreams for the future, and a plan to keep moving forward. That brings me to the third thing I’ve learned in my time on this earth…

3. Life is precious cherish it, and if there is something wrong put in the work to fix it.

Obviously, life gets hard and can feel truly impossible to live at times. Someone may not feel they have a strong support system of people who genuinely care about them. The hardships one has to bear may seem like too much, and at a certain point, you may feel like giving up on waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel. My honest advice is don’t.

Things aren’t going to go from bad to better overnight so I don’t want to give anyone false hope, the kind of change that may be needed will take some hard work either physical or mental, and I won’t pretend otherwise. You may have limited resources and options that may not be available to you that are available to everyone.

That is all truly hard and heartbreaking, and I can’t in good conscious tell anyone what they should do to solve their problems, especially people I don’t know and have never met.

Nothing I say is meant to be taken as a substitute for personal professional diagnosis or treatment.

All I can do is say what worked for me, and what worked for me was finally putting in the work.

Most of my life has been spent living in survival mode and the rest of my life has been spent trying to have a normal life and recover from spending the earlier parts if my life in fight or flight. I was abused for so long in so many ways and by so many people and the only way my mind could cope with it was by giving me unpleasant and frightening physical and mental health symptoms which was on top of my neurodivergences. You could say I was doomed from the start. For a long time, I felt doomed. I tried all kinds of vices to distract myself from the pain and self medicate, but nothing worked. It didn’t work until I really started putting in the work.

I didn’t have a choice to put myself in therapy when I was 13, I was in foster care, so I automatically went. That’s not when I started putting in the work. When I turned 21 and went out on my own working and going to school full time, when everyone thought I had my life together because I didn’t need therapy, I wasn’t putting in the work, I was distracting myself by over working myself in both areas so I had no time to think about all the pain I was feeling from my birth parents and from my adoptive parents’ divorce.

I didn’t even start putting in the work when I had a bad mental breakdown at 22 and spent the next couple of years in and out of the psych ward, losing everything my apartment school and my job and increasing risk taking behaviors.

If I had to put a time stamp on it, I’m going to say I started putting in the work at 25. (At 23, I had moved back out on my own but was still engaged in bad risk-taking behaviors until the end of that year) by that time I knew I needed to change or I was headed for an early grave.

Everyone’s WORK will look different from the next person as everyone is unique with their own challenges and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses, as well as in their circumstances and life situations. For me putting in the work would be a 5 year process from 25 until now at 30 and with some set backs along the way.

The first thing I had to do was move closer to my mom, though not in with her right at that time. This was right around covid, so I needed the extra human companionship, that didn’t help much because it still seemed too far away for both of us to want to visit each other, and I stopped wanting to leave my apartment (again covid, so there wasn’t much to do, but I could have visited my family more)  while I moved closer to my family I had another piece of work to do, take therapy seriously.

I had been going since continuously since I was 23 but had been distracting my counselor with jokes, or not talking about what I really needed to talk about and then my counselor left the practice so I got a new one who was better at getting me to open up about the real stuff. She taught me the importance of doing my next task, which was to set up boundaries with the people in my life and with myself when needed, and to keep them up.

I was so used to being a people pleaser, but she had pointed out to me I wasn’t depleting myself to satisfy others out of love or kindness, I was doing it out of fear that I would lose them or that they would be mad at me. That was a very important lesson for me to learn, and it is one I am still trying to master. I ended up learning that most of my reactions and go-to responses are trauma responses that need to be unlearned.

The set back I had was that through all of this emotional work that was being done in therapy, I was becoming a really bad hoarder and emotionally eating myself to death, literally I almost had a diabetic coma from my eating habits. Eventhough I was able to start school again in 2021 finishing my associates degrees and even though I was at the top of my game school wise, that was the only thing I was doing well, and there were several times I called my student advisor crying that I didn’t think I could handle it (I am so glad I finished and got my bachelor’s last year). I was distracting myself from any emotional pain with stuff, food, and school, then my internship at planned parenthood.

Once again it was time for the next step of my work, I had to swallow my pride, and move back in with my mom and kid siblings (there were 4 living here now just my youngest sibling other than the kid my adoptive dad has with his new girlfriend (the one I’m not allowed to see for some reason). The funny thing is, my mom and I both thought it would be a good idea at around the same time.

Since moving in with her last year, I have lost like 20 pounds (about 40 total from 211 to 160) my diabetic blood sugar numbers and cholesterol have gone back to pre-diabetic levels, I have 3 degrees under my belt and am starting to live the life of my dreams. This now looks like volunteering and donating anywhere I can (I have my core places) getting out in the community more to do fun things and meet new people.

I have one solid friend in my life who I can always call to do stuff with, and people I talk to who are becoming friends, I have a good relationship with both of my mom’s and parts of their families even if I can’t talk to my whole family either biological or adoptive it feels good to have a strong support system. My life is also full of babies even if none of them are mine ( I’ve raised or helped raise enough kids, so I’m good).

I have also gotten the chance to love some wonderful pets even if they couldn’t all stay in my life (those of you who follow my TikTok know I was recently heartbroken when I had to give away my Frenchie Puppy, but he is in the best home ever now and is getting lots of love with 2 other Frenchie pups to play with. We still have our loving and funny German Shepard named Honey, though.

Perhaps one of the most important things I have done to change my outlook on life was to change my out look on life.

It seems like a paradox or something, or like it’s really simple, but it’s not as simple as just saying it. The way I did it was to stop following a spiritual path that didn’t bring me a sense of love, comfort or relief, and to find one that did (I won’t say which path I was on or which path I took because it’s personal and it is all about which one calls to you).

You may even find that the best spiritual path for you is no path, and that’s alright, too, in my book. It’s all about what brings you the most peace, happiness, and fulfillment. One important aspect of many, if not all, is spiritual paths that helped me the most, though, was to start seeing life through a lens of gratitude and abundance. This was not always easy to do, and when bad stuff happens, I still have my moments of struggle, but I never think about wanting out again, though not until it’s my natural time.

A final note:

I have truly been fortunate, and I can’t wait to live my next 30 years.

Over my 30 years, I have had extreme hardships, moments of extreme happiness, moments of apathy and turning off all emotion to not feel anything, and every type of emotion that could be felt as well as many different types of life experiences. I have developed a personality with varied interests and hobbies, with more I’m trying every week, and I have developed a stable sense of self all with the help of my solid and ever changing support system.

I have lost people I never thought I would lose either due to tragedy or due to us just growing different ways, but I have also gained people in my life that are the kind of people I always dreamed of having. I now have a chosen family that is a mix of people in my birth family, people in my adoptive family, close family friends, or my own friends who have become like family.

I hope anyone who has read this far has been able to learn something from the lessons I have learned in these 3 decades, I don’t want it to seem like it’s been perfect, that the changes I made weren’t difficult to do, or that I don’t understand how hard life can make it to change. Not everyone is born with the sane challenges or the same levels of opportunity, sadly, and I do know that. I used to read posts like this one and think there is no way just thinking positively could change how I feel or that it could even be done.

Now I know that change is possible, but that it does take some actual effort and genuine trying to heal along with a strong support system that can be created to include a wide mix of people in our birth families, or people we pick up along the way of life. It may take resources like therapy, which many people can’t afford if they don’t have insurance, and it could take other resources to get basic needs met that are also hard to come by. While things are being done to lessen the cost of therapy and give more people access to basic needs, I am not out of touch and know how scarce these resources are for a large number of people.

That’s why anything on my blog will always be free, and why if I can find cheap or low-cost resources, I will always try to find them and make my followers aware of them. All I can say to people trying to get the resources needed to improve your life, is never stop trying. Go to free community events and support groups, take advantage of resource fairs many government program you may qualify for if you need it.

Try sites like better help if you make too much for free insurance but not enough for other insurance to cover everything, more of these legitimate sites like better help (not sponsored) are popping up and offer pretty good deals. Try to make the most out of public nature areas, libraries, and any school clubs or resources. If you are a college student make full use of the school counselor, free college events and fun nights, and clubs, anything you can do to improve your life situation in any way, go for it. Life can be hard, but there are things that can be done right now to start making improvements.