Tonight is my 20 year high school reunion so I can’t help but be a bit reflective about the last two decades – what they’ve brought me, where I am today, and why in the world did I wear brown lip liner?
20 years ago, 20 years seemed like a lifetime. When I thought of being almost 40 then, I had one foot in the grave. But here I am, in the middle of living my best life, feeling like this is only the beginning. No feet in the grave. I am working on a book proposal to bring Drinking the Whole Bottle to real pages. Something I have said to only a handful of people til just this very moment that you’re reading it here. I love my blog and all its given me in terms of becoming a better writer and sharing my soul. It’s also given me some of the best friends I have. And I love that while the writing was helping me, it was resonating and helping others. I love my side hustle skin care business that was the scariest thing I’ve ever started and has taught me more about myself than almost any job or career I’ve ever had. It forces me to push myself and love myself and supplements our income and I love working with partners who want to build their own empire (— so let a sista know if you’re interested in working together. 😉)
20 years have passed and I realize how quickly it’s gone… and goes. It fills my heart and guts it at the same time. Rapid moving memories of college nights and best friend laughter and wedding kisses and holding babies in my arms and island sunsets flip through my mind. It’s been 20 years and also an instant.
I feel incredibly lucky, but I know that luck had little to do with it. I do the work. I’ve made choices that were hard, that were scary, that sounded bonkers. I fight my ego every single day. I get out of my own way on the regular. I’ve said yes when Fear wanted me to say no and have said no when yes would have been the quicker route. I remind myself of the people I’ve helped and the mountains I’ve climbed and the sunsets I’ve witnessed. I’ve kept hope. I was hopeful of what the future would hold when I graduated high school. I still am. My choice of lipstick shades and choker accessories may have changed but hope has remained in tact. I doubt myself on loud volume and then – and then– I make a choice to keep going, to embrace myself and all I’ve done and how far I’ve come and all that I’m capable of.
I don’t remember what I thought my life would look like when I was 18 and dreaming or if I even had a picture of how it would all turn out. But I know that the life I’m living exceeds any expectation I might have had. The life I would have planned would have been way less interesting than the one I have for no other reason than because I just didn’t know then that I could ask for more… or that I should. We feel selfish wanting more, thinking we should just be grateful for what we have.
But I’ll ask you to consider — I asked for more and got Husband from the ashes of subpar relationships. I asked for more and became a writer, published on the Huffington Post. I asked for more and fell in love with a beautiful island where I gave birth to my two children. Asking for more has taught me that we can ask for more and be enormously grateful. It isn’t an either/or. We can have both. Asking for more has served me well… and I bet it’d serve you well too.
P.S. One tip for a happy marriage and the day that had me emotional AF
