I’m turning 31 in just a couple of days. I don’t remember thinking much about what it would be to be ‘in my 30’s’. I was always ‘in the moment’ of my age. Except for when I had a freak out about turning 20. Yes, 20. I was scared to change decades when most of my friends were a year younger than I as I started college a little later. I don’t know what scared me but I do know it must have been a premonition!

I always say that the 20’s are the hardest yet. Get a job. Suffer at job. Work too much. Make more money than in college. Incur more debt than in college. Fall in love. Suffer for love because you haven’t sorted yourself out enough. End love. Feel afraid to fall in love again. Cut ties with the over burdening family. Slowly reconnect with intact boundaries. Pay rent. Pay insurance. Pay car note. Pay utilities. Travel a bit. Gain friends. Lose friends. Cut out the bad apple friends.

Yeesh! No one warned me of the pain. Sure, it’s GROWING pain, but it hurts nonetheless. I feel like year 29 and 30 were the years I finally applied all the learning and put them into action. It is now that I feel like my foundation as me has finally been laid properly and can support all the rest that life has to offer. This is when I met my life partner who treats me the way I should- the man that has become my family. Allistair and I muse often that had we met even a week early than we did, it might not have worked. We had both ripened to the perfect point for the maturation of our relationship.

I told my mother that I was training for my second half marathon and she said, ‘I’m glad you are keeping yourself young.’ I think that is my goal, my plan. I want to stay and feel young enough for as long as possible to really enjoy all that I’ve learned. I know that who I was at 20 was the base for who I am now but I have grown and changed so much. I used to not know how to talk to strangers- sweat, stuttering, avoiding social situations. All of it. Now, it is a rare, rare thing to feel this part of me sneak back in. I’ve changed my physical health tenfold and went from never, ever exercising to turning down social engagements to run 8 miles. It’s amazing who you can become if you let yourself really grow.

What will these next years bring? I know some of it: chiropractic college and graduating; starting a practice with my man; getting married; traveling with my husband; improving my Spanish (always); practicing yoga; running more half marathons and eventually a full marathon. But what else? What more will I learn? I look forward to the next years and the years beyond that.

My physical practices of yoga, running, and meditation have all had so much to do with who I have become. Training for my body has transformed my spirit. I look forward to continuing my path as a woman in training.