This season of life
Five years ago, I was in a very dark place. Looking back, I feel both compassion and regret for the person I was then: compassion, because I now understand how much pain she was in; regret, because I know I wasn’t always easy to be around. And yet, some people chose to stay. They saw something in me worth holding onto, even when I couldn’t see it myself. I owe them quiet gratitude. I carry their patience with me still.
Today, I find myself living a life I once only dreamed about. There are still things I want to explore, habits I hope to strengthen, and corners of myself I’d like to soften. But at the core, I am content. That realization didn’t come from a grand event or breakthrough. It arrived quietly, one ordinary afternoon, as a calm recognition that I am happy with who I am and where I am. Life remains imperfect, full of ambitions unmet, but probably for the first time, I am at peace with that.
When I think about the woman I used to imagine becoming — confident, grounded, fulfilled — I realize I’ve become her. The version of myself I once thought existed only in some faraway future, once I had “figured everything out.” Back then, she felt unreachable; a woman more disciplined, more certain, more deserving. I remember envying her ease, thinking she was someone else entirely. And yet, here she is now, reflected in my entryway mirror: living an ordinary life built on a thousand small, steady choices. She was always me, just waiting to emerge.
To some, that realization might sound indulgent, even cringe. I still remember a version of me who would think that way too. But I’ve learned that it’s easy to mock joy when you don’t yet feel safe expressing your own. Often, the people who cringe at happiness are simply the ones who’ve forgotten what it feels like to be fully alive.
We gather easily around pain. We rally around heartbreak, burnout, loss. When someone shares their struggles, we listen, we empathize, we hold space. But when someone shares their happiness, it can make people uneasy, as if joy is something to keep private, or that expressing it somehow diminishes others.
I no longer see it that way. I want to celebrate life out loud. Not to boast, but to honor the journey: the pain, the healing, the becoming. Sharing joy, I’ve realized, is an act of defiance. It’s a refusal to shrink the parts of life that are finally working.
This isn’t a season of striving anymore. I’m in what I call my maintenance season (fortunately not because I need to take any maintenance medicine that people of my age (34) often start to take). This season is meant to tend to the life I once only imagined. I’m no longer chasing the next version of “better.” I’m caring for what I’ve built: the life I prayed for, worked for, sometimes cried for. There’s a quiet discipline in that too, protecting what’s precious instead of constantly reaching for what’s next. Stability, I’ve learned, isn’t stagnation. Sometimes it’s the most radical form of growth.
I’m deeply thankful for the people who helped me get here, and proud of the choices that were mine alone. I’ve also learned to mourn the paths I didn’t take. Every yes carries a shadow of no; every decision, a quiet trade-off. That’s adulthood: realizing we can’t be everything to everyone all at the same time, and finding peace not in having it all, but in choosing what matters most.
So if I share pieces of my life, online, in conversation, in essays like this, it’s not to perform happiness. It’s to celebrate being alive. To remind myself, and maybe someone else, that joy deserves as much space as struggle. After all, if I live until 80, I roughly only have a few thousand weeks left and I don’t want to spend the remaining time holding back (here’s an awesome online tool to calculate your Life in Weeks).
If I seem too open, too joyful, too much — that’s fine. I’d rather be someone who celebrates life than someone who apologizes for living it.
We talk so much about surviving. Maybe it’s time we start talking about savoring.
Maybe you’re in a different place. Maybe you’re building, healing, searching, resting.
What season of life are you in right now?