Letter to 30 year old me

Reflecting on my last decade the day I turn 40.

Dear 30 year old Audrey,

Hi, it’s 40 year old me. Thirty sounds daunting to you right now - a whole new decade! - and you have very little capacity to even consider what life would look like at 40. I’m here to tell you that there will be so much to absorb but nothing to fear.

40 sounds impossibly grown-up. Like we should have a 10-step skincare routine and know how to invest in stocks. One out of two isn’t bad. ^^

I used to think turning 40 meant crossing some invisible threshold into complete adulthood—where I’d wake up with a sharp haircut, padded shoulders, all the wisdom and self-assurance of a woman who had life completely figured out, and an ability to execute every task with no mistakes. Basically what I remembered my own mother as at 40.

Spoiler alert: I still lose my phone in the fridge and forget why I walked into a room. Life still befuddles me sometimes: I’ve forgotten to pick my kids up from school more times than is acceptable, I still leave my drawers hanging open when I leave the room, and I rely heavily on my Thermomix, air fryer and helper to make meals for the family.

You don’t know it yet but the next ten years will be the most challenging and interesting of your life. On the day you turn 30, you are massively pregnant with your second baby, a little girl you’ll name Penelope. Your first baby is only 16 months old and your worry is that he hasn’t started walking by himself yet so when Penny is born you’ll be stuck carrying one child in each arm wtf.

A week before your 30th birthday you will take baby Fighter to an indoor playground with a ball pit where he’ll contract the world’s sweatiest stomach flu. He will keep you up at all hours with his vomiting and crying and then as he recovers, you will catch the ‘stomach foo’ yourself, rendering you a helpless leaky bag of poop who has to be hospitalized so that you and the baby in you won’t dehydrate.

Your husband has planned an elaborate 30th birthday party for you and thankfully you recover in time for it. Unfortunately an hour before you’re due to leave for the party, Fatty is struck down with this same dastardly bug and you end up celebrating your birthday without him.

That’s how your third decade starts. With the privilege of hindsight, it’s also a good indicator of how your next ten years will pan out - filled with chaos, new challenges from left field, weird, hilarious situations, some losses and setbacks, and yet surrounded by love.

You’ll start off your thirties with two children under two. You’ll forget what a full night of sleep feels like, your eyebags seem tattooed on while your stretch marks and love handles applied for permanent residence. You will start losing hair. Yes, your greatest fear - you start balding.

But there is hope! The kids eventually learn to sleep through the night. You try all kinds of treatments and regimes and succesfully reverse the balding phew. 32 is the age you start *gasp* working out and for the first time in your life, you’re not just skinny or flabby; you actually build some muscle! Your boobs are goners from the pregnancies and breast feeding and for a time you seriously consider a boob job. You end up not doing it because it would mean not carrying your babies for weeks and you decide nice boobs aren’t worth that sacrifice.

That’s you as a parent, in a nut shell. Like every other mother before you and after, you unlock a well of unconditional love within and it is so easy to give up things for them. Kids used to be one of life’s banes but unexpectedly you turn out to be an enthusiastic parent. Who knew? Maybe because you had great parents yourself (something you realize more and more), maybe your innate childishness keeps you relatable to the kids; whatever the reason, parenting gives you unexpected joy and you realize, you’re a good mom.

Your marriage will enter some rocky terrain. There will be big fights and a bunch of resentment. You will consider divorce more seriously than that boob job. Your husband will be diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Then he’ll be sued but he wins both the case and the appeal. You will live through a pandemic.

Life is full of strange twists and ironically, the pandemic lockdown will be some of the fondest years of your 30s. Trapped at home, you try out new recipes, plan activities for the kids, and hang out as a family. In close proximity and a renewed sense of empathy towards each other, you and Fatty learn to enjoy each other again, essentially saving your marriage. The latter half of this decade, your relationship improves to the best its ever been.

In the middle of it all, you start a coworking space business together. It’s Fatty’s brainchild but he asks you to join him because at that point you’re going through a sort of identity crisis - motherhood has taken over the entirety of your being and you don’t like it. You come on board thinking it’s a favour to him but he knew you better than you did yourself - it becomes a part of you. For a while your imposter syndrome kicks in and you don’t even see it as your company but thankfully that nonsense passes when you’re 39. Colony’s growth gets derailed by Covid for a bit but goes on to grow from strength to strength.

At 38 you’re at yet another cross roads. Something nags you that there’s gotta be more to life but you don’t know what. You embark on a personal growth journey, signing up for a leadership course that upends what you thought you knew about yourself entirely. It sounds cheesy but you push yourself to face your fears and launch a parenting coaching program. Your income hits an all time high. You buy your first car - a pink Tesla that you love but later wish didn’t come from Elon Musk.

At 39 you get diagnosed with ADHD and burnout. You understand the burnout but ADHD confounds you and casts your identity into further doubt. It takes you six months to come to terms with it and see that most of what you thought were character flaws could be ADHD traits. For a while you are mired in a tizzy, wondering which is the ADHD and which is the real you. Eventually you accept that you can’t separate the two and it doesn’t matter. You start therapy.

You lose friends. Relationship problems, not kids, are the true bane of your existence; losing people is a part of life but every loss alters you. Last year another friendship ends but because you have a best friend who’s tough and sharp and calls you out on your nonsense, you start to see there’s a pattern in your relationships. A lot of learning ensues and accountability is taken.

That’s where we are today. These ten years will teach you so much and the most important lessons for you will revolve around self worth and the way you treat yourself.

You didn’t burn out just because you had too much on your plate; you burned out because you were abusive to yourself. When people walked away, you took it to mean you weren’t good enough, not that friends sometimes drift apart. You burned out because you forgave everyone but yourself.

It’s been a long road but today you don’t have to have people around you to feel whole. You finally understand you can lose people and still be fine. That it does not mean you’re a bad person. You’re still an extrovert but before you needed people around you to prove to yourself that you were worthy. Now you WANT the people around you because they bring you joy, not because of what they may represent. That’s a feeling you never had until now because you needed people around you to like you because then maybe you could like yourself.

30 year old Aud thinks you have lucky girl syndrome because opportunities seem to fall in your lap, things click easily into place. At 40 you recognize that while lucky is lucky, you have also fought for most of the things you have going for you. People are there for you because you invest your time and love into relationships. Your marriage is healthy because you fought to death for it and didn’t give up. Your influencer career is 20 years old, not because you’re cute *cough* but because you kept going and adapting and learning new platforms and skills.

I write this today because even at 40, these are things you may forget. You may fall back into old habits so I’m putting this here to remind you. Your thirties are full of hustle and milestones and self discovery. I don’t know what the next decade will bring but let’s make it a time of contentment, happiness and contribution.

Happy birthday, Aud.