#thisis30

I stopped writing for a while, and by a while… it seems I mean three years. I guess I’ve been “too busy” or thought that I was being an angsty 20-something by emoting so much. Lately though, writing and reading is all I think about. I’ve come a really long way in the past three years. I’ve accomplished almost everything I wanted to accomplish by 30. In those angsty 20-something terms, I guess you could say I’ve “found myself”. Yup, checked all the boxes- career, raises, promotions, wonderful fiance, beautiful apartment, great friends.

You start to realize at a certain point that the boxes are never all checked. Life is constantly changing, we’re constantly changing- and the second we accomplish one life milestone, the next is looming in the near distance. I’m about to be married, and all I can think about is babies. The next career milestone is always on the horizon- and at 30- the balance between work and family begins to come into question. HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO IT ALL?! But we do. I’ve learned that no matter how quickly you advance your career, money is never not a problem. The problems just change form and urgency. All of our problems just change form, and continue to ebb and flow through our entire lives. For instance- my 91 year old grandparents STILL have the same stupid, petty fights that we do. That’s just the way life is.

I look back on the posts I wrote 3 years ago, and inherently, I’m still that girl… somewhere… but I’m also not. In some ways, I miss that girl. She had big hopes and dreams. She was lonely and wallowed a bit, but there was insight in that wallowing. Now I feel I just do- mechanically. What I don’t miss about that girl is the same thing. She wallowed- Now I know the what and how of changing my circumstance. It’s become second nature to not only survive, but thrive under pressure. I’m proud of that. I sometimes wish I could reach out to the people I met and have lost touch with from the first year I was here and show them the person I’ve become, but at the end of the day, I don’t need it. And that’s where I am. I’m contently a 30-year-old, media professional with all of her pieces falling into place who will always require a little bit of immediate change.

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. View all posts by Room to Regulate