This week, I turned 27.
I am officially in my late 20s. People jokingly ask if I feel any differently, and actually I do. I don’t feel settled in my career, I don’t feel old by any means, I don’t have it altogether, but for the first time, I feel like I know what “having it together” means for me. That is, I know who I am.
Knowing who I am doesn’t mean that I am finished growing and changing. This is a jumping off point. I have a desire to better myself, but I also have no desire to change vital things about my character. That insecurity is gone.
It’s true that college is the most carefree time in your life, but I wouldn’t label it as the best. I am not totally satisfied, but I do feel that I am the best me that I have been so far.
This year has been a big one full of changes, uncertainties, heartbreak, fear. Moving to New York, starting over; huge. I had lofty expectations of my career, new friendships, excitement, happy hours and exotic dinners.
Here I am, it’s 7 months later and I am still looking for the right job. I have made a few friends, but no super close bonds like I had envisioned. I am struggling financially. And I couldn’t be more me.
It’s the struggle that forces me to find happiness in little things. I walk through Central Park or on the East River when I need to think. I am the girl with her nose always in a book again. I cook. I drink wine on the balcony.
Feeling alone has its advantages. You find exactly who you are when no one else is there to tell you who you should be.
Author: Room to Regulate
Room to Regulate started as an emotional release – I was tired of giving space to all the heaviness that comes with being your family epicenter – when I'm not regulated, no one is regulated. I wrote it all down. Every overwhelming, anxious thought. I sat with it. Then I built around it – because my story isn't unique.
I have ADHD – late diagnosed, of course, the Millennial Mom special. Our anxiety manifested in different ways. We were unlabeled, mislabeled, re-labeled. We held it together through our 20s. Many of us excelled in our careers, and then came motherhood.
For a long time I thought the exhaustion, the mental load, the constant recalibrating was just what motherhood felt like for everyone. Don't get me wrong. Whether you are neurodivergent, raising a neurodivergent child, a house full of neurotypicals (do those exist?!), married, unmarried, working, or not – parenthood knocks the wind out of you. And when you're an information seeker, the "why" rabbit hole is endless. It took a while to understand that a lot of what I was carrying wasn't a personal failing — it was a structural one. The systems around us — schools, workplaces, insurance, policy — were never built as an ecosystem. They were built as individual systems. The byproduct of that puts families with the most structural need at the highest risk for falling through the cracks. The hardest parts of my days were the predictable result of that gap, not evidence that I was doing it wrong.
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