Did I Waste My Twenties?
February 19, 2026. I woke up on a Thursday, just like any other day, everyone in my bed, Ian and Tim and twins. Nothing different. Another birthday. 29.
I thought motherhood would make me feel behind, because almost every mother I ever knew looked behind and disheveled, but I’ve never felt more ahead because of it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do feel behind, but not because of motherhood, just because of my own can’t get out of my own way problems.
Many people do think I am productive. I am productive, but I can tell you, if I was less anxious, if I spiraled in the shower less, if I cared what people thought less, I would be MORE productive.
And happier, too. Imagine that.
And for the past 5 months as I go about my days, doing a little bit of what I can in each one to pursue what’s rooted in my mind, I’ve gotten very clear on what I need to do, even if I don’t know what’s on the other side of its completion. For me, the success will be in the completion of it, not necessarily the applause.
Because I hate unfinished things. I haven’t figured out where that comes from yet.
Tomorrow, I have thirty weeks left to my twenties.
Did I do it right? What would I have changed? Could I have changed anything?
What do I need to get done before I turn 30? What do I want my next decade to look like?
Many of the twenty somethings that I know today struggle with these illogical comparison metrics. They want to be an overnight success. A millionaire by 25 or whatever number they’ve come up with in their head. They want to be seen a successful so they pretend the part, even though they truly haven’t made it yet and probably haven’t put in the hours to get them to that level of success either.
So when do you know if it was a success or a waste? What’s the true measuring tape? Because I don’t think it’s the people that we think are overnight success. It is true. There are overnight successes, but for the most part, the people I know like and follow were not overnight successes. They put in work and hours when no one was watching, they worked at the bottom of the totem pole and even after their “success” they’re still not embarrassed to get down in the trenches of the actual work.
Because let’s face it, pretty much any project will force you to get down and dirty in the trenches in order to push past resistance and actually get it done.
I like to build in secret, mostly because I don’t know what I am doing, how I am doing it or what it will look like, until it’s done partly because I don’t want you to laugh at me.
I’m scrappy. But I’m okay with that. Are you?
So, I’m thinking of taking my thoughts public. The scrappy ones, not the polished ones. The raw ones that make me look bad, sometimes stupid and uneducated. I’m ready to tell you, Friend, of the circus in my mind.
20 year old me, was terrified. I was completely alone in this world until I found Ian.
…or maybe he found me.
I didn’t know if I was going to make it.
Not like, make it in the sense of being alive. But make it in the sense that I would find what was missing and feel successful. I never cared if I looked successful. I just wanted to feel successful.
I wrote a lot. I tried to sort through my thoughts. What was truth? What came from the cult of my upbringing? What was I taking into this next decade? Into my life?
I thought I would have sorted it all out sooner.
May I tell you? I’m still sorting it out. I didn’t know that becoming isn’t something that you can finish.
I repeat what I know to be true over and over until it just washes over me.
I also think, some things aren’t meant to be sorted out.
20 year old me would have never thought that she would fight the same battle at 29 in a different battlefield. That caught me by surprise.
The battle of fighting for the right to just be. To be in rooms of love and to leave the hate shut outside at the door.
So there I was sorting through it all over again, looking amidst the destruction and pain for what was truth. I stood there lingering in the dark of the parking lot for a moment, next to my car, all my littles and husband buckled in, looking at them all laughing and talking on a lit up porch painted white. It was a perfect evening, a replica of one just like it more than a decade before.
But this time, I wasn’t one of them perched on the railing in my trailing golden gown.
I didn’t feel like one of them then either, but I was 15 and didn’t know any better. And at 29, I still didn’t feel like one of them.
The tears trickled down my face and a realization swept over me, as I peeked into the future. They won’t stop with me. Why would they? It’s not enough. It will never be enough. The wolves hunt when they’re hungry.
Their willingness and dedication to hurt me, will undoubtedly spill over onto my children. They believed my suffering was the price of my entry into their world. I will never be able to atone for the sin of leaving them and choosing my own path and my kids are next, because I have to pay, I will always have to pay.
And then the despair that I found myself in, time and time again, I will watch as my kids experience it, too. And it would be my fault that I didn’t build a fence around sheep and let the wolves hunt whenever they were hungry. My fault because I didn’t choose to do the hard thing when I knew it was time.
And so I lingered, knowing in my being, it was the last time. Hoping with all of my might, that I would be strong enough to ensure that my children would never walk the path of loneliness thrust upon me that I did. Then I turned, got in the car with my future and we went to the beach, where I often go to press the reset button.
It was different this time, though. I wasn’t alone. I had an entire foundation of support and love that whispered,
“We’ll catch you if you fall. You won’t have to catch yourself this time. In fact, let go. We’re begging you, let go.”
So I drowned myself in my writing. Again. This time it came out with melody on the grand piano of my dreams (another story for another time). And I wrote things there that I didn’t want to admit were true.
You can’t find truth if you won’t admit it.
I’m going to pull out a voice note that I made when I was working out one morning (because that is when my thoughts come spilling out):
“I think there’s something about the damage that was done to you that you had to take a decade to heal from. The reality is you can’t just sweep that under the rug. Their abuse and the trauma you had to acknowledge and then heal from was real”
I’ve spent a lot of time doubting its realness. And I couldn’t even tell you why!
…that’s why I write. It’s a good way to see what’s real or fake.
But I’ve spent a decade healing.
Searching for the answers.
Absorbing my environment.
Choosing my environment.
Deciding what I wanted myself and my life to look like.
And I am not healed yet, I don’t think we ever will be as long as we’re down here. But we do catch glimpses of it, and when we do, it’s the most beautiful thing you can behold in a beloved.
If no one has told you recently,
You are beloved, even if only by the flower that perks up when you stop, gaze at her, linger your fingertip on her softness and thank her for her unyielding beauty.
So how do you know if your twenties were a waste? Are we supposed to have a story that becomes the masterpiece of our accomplishment? Are they a mere apprenticeship of the who we are supposed to become? How do we ensure that we are the on right journey of becoming?
I’ve been hated for my willingness to ask honest questions and have hard conversations. But I choose to live by them anyways and haven’t regretted them yet. But honesty isn’t for everyone, it’s gritty and doesn’t go down easy but if there’s one thing my twenties taught me, it’s that the truth hurts far less than living a lie.
Next Week — Week 02 of 30
The self-help books that taught me the common sense my foundation wasn’t built on and why my husband doesn’t need to read them.