For a long time, I believed I was behind in life.

I looked at where I was, compared it to where I thought I should be, and felt like somehow I needed to catch up. I had already had a career. I had worked. I had responsibilities. At one point, I felt like I had so much more of my shit together than I do now.

Then life happened.

My mental health declined. There were inpatient hospital stays. There were day programs. There were periods when getting through life became more important than building the life I thought I was supposed to have. Somewhere in all of that, the career I once had wasn't there anymore.

And now, at 43, I'm trying to figure out what comes next.

On paper, I suppose you could look at that and say I went backward.

Sometimes I look at it that way too.

But I'm beginning to wonder if I've been using the wrong definition of forward.

I Used to Think I Only Had to Make It So Far

There's a part of my story that is difficult to say out loud, but it's important because it explains just how much my idea of the future has changed.

For years, I didn't really imagine myself growing old.

My goal was to make it until my daughters were adults and could take care of themselves. In my mind, once they didn't need me anymore, I could be done.

That was the plan.

It wasn't some beautiful vision for my future. It wasn't retirement plans, traveling, figuring out what I wanted at 50, or wondering what kind of grandmother I might become someday.

It was survival.

Just make it long enough.

Just get them raised.

Just make sure they're okay.

Then I went through treatment, and somewhere along the way, someone challenged something I had believed for years: my daughters becoming adults didn't mean they would stop needing their mom.

They would need me differently.

That sounds so simple now, but it changed something enormous for me.

Motherhood wasn't ending.

My purpose wasn't expiring.

And maybe my life didn't have to end there either.

For the first time, adulthood stopped looking like a finish line and started looking more like a blank piece of paper.

The Blank Page Scared Me

You'd think realizing you have an entire future ahead of you would immediately feel exciting.

It doesn't always.

Sometimes it's terrifying.

Because when you've spent years surviving, suddenly being asked what you actually want from life is a pretty big fucking question.

I knew how to survive.

I knew how to be needed.

I knew how to take care of what was directly in front of me.

Dreaming about myself was different.

And I still don't have all the answers.

I don't have some perfectly organized five-year plan sitting in a cute planner with color-coded tabs. Shocking, I know.

I'm figuring it out while I'm living it.

But there is one major difference now:

I want to be here for it.

I'm Not Catching Up Anymore

This is where my thinking about "catching up" has started changing.

What exactly am I catching up to?

A version of myself that existed twenty years ago?

Someone else's career?

Someone else's timeline?

Some imaginary checklist of what a 43-year-old woman's life is supposed to look like?

I spent years thinking forward movement had to look a certain way. A stable career. Everything figured out. The right milestones accomplished at the right ages.

But my forward doesn't look like that right now.

I'm working, but I'm working in ways that work for me. I'm still figuring out what I want my next career to be. I don't know whether I'll eventually work for a large company again or whether my future will look completely different.

For once, I don't need to know yet.

That's new for me.

I'm starting to realize I don't have to rebuild my old life just to prove I'm moving forward.

Maybe I'm supposed to build something different.

I'm Doing Things I Never Thought I'd Do

In October, I'm going to Costa Rica.

My first trip outside the country.

And I'm nervous as hell.

There is part of me that's excited and another part probably wondering who approved this decision. Apparently, me. 😂

But that's exactly why it means so much.

Costa Rica isn't just a vacation to me.

It's evidence.

Evidence that I'm making plans beyond tomorrow.

I'm going somewhere I've never been. I'm doing something that scares me. I'm allowing myself to experience a piece of the world I haven't seen before.

That might sound ordinary to someone who travels all the time.

For me, it represents something much bigger.

I'm planning a life I actually intend to live.

And I want more of that.

More places I've never seen.

More experiences that make me nervous.

More moments where I catch myself thinking, I can't believe I'm actually doing this.

I spent enough years trying to survive life.

I want to experience some of it now.

I Want to Know What Happens Next

Maybe the biggest change isn't my career or travel or any particular goal.

It's that I think about the future differently.

I look at my daughters now and don't think about them growing up as the point where my job is finished.

I think about everything that could still come.

Their adult lives. Watching them become whoever they're going to become. The relationships we'll have as they get older.

And someday, if that's what they choose for their lives, I hope I get to watch them become mothers.

I hope I get grandchildren.

I want those future Christmas mornings and birthdays and random Tuesdays. I want the phone calls. I want the stories I haven't heard yet. I want to see who all of us become.

I want memories that don't exist yet.

That sentence alone represents a complete 180 from the way I once saw my life.

There was a time when the future felt like something I had to endure long enough to fulfill my responsibilities.

Now I'm curious about it.

I want to meet it.

Forward Doesn't Always Look Like Progress From the Outside

This is something I wish we talked about more.

Sometimes moving forward looks suspiciously like starting over.

You can have a career and lose it.

You can be independent and need help again.

You can think you have yourself figured out and end up sitting there years later wondering who the hell you are now.

Mental health can change the trajectory of a life.

So can grief. Parenthood. Relationships. Money. Trauma. Illness. Loss. A thousand things we never included in the original blueprint.

That doesn't mean your life stopped moving forward.

It means the road changed.

I spent a long time looking backward at the woman who had a career and thinking she was somehow ahead of me.

But she hadn't lived what I've lived yet.

She didn't know what I know.

She hadn't survived what came next.

I don't want to become her again.

I want to find out who this version of me can become.

Maybe I'm Not Behind After All

I'm 43.

I'm looking for a new career.

I'm figuring out what independence looks like for me.

I'm going on my first international trip.

I'm watching my daughters build adult lives.

I'm writing.

I'm trying things.

I'm scared of some of them.

I'm excited about others.

And I have absolutely no idea what the next ten years are going to look like.

Oddly enough, I think that's becoming exciting instead of terrifying.

Maybe I never needed to catch up.

Maybe there was never anywhere to catch up to.

Life isn't a straight line where everyone reaches the same checkpoints at the same age. Sometimes you move forward. Sometimes you get knocked sideways. Sometimes survival takes everything you've got and the goals have to wait.

And sometimes, after years of thinking you're behind, you realize you're standing at the beginning of something you never expected to want.

A future.

Not the future I pictured when I was younger.

Not a perfectly planned one.

Not one where I suddenly have all my shit together and dramatically walk into the sunset while inspirational music plays.

A real one.

Messy. Uncertain. Mine.

For years, I thought my daughters growing up would mean my story was finished.

Now I see it differently.

They are beginning their adult lives.

And in a strange way, I'm beginning another part of mine too.

I don't need to catch up to the woman I thought I would be.

I get to meet the woman I'm becoming.

And for the first time in a very long time, I can't wait to see what she does next.

For the Person Who Feels Behind

If your life doesn't look anything like you thought it would by now, maybe you're not behind. Maybe life happened. Maybe you survived something that changed your timeline. Maybe your priorities changed. Maybe you changed.

Ask yourself a different question instead of, "How do I catch up?"

Ask:

"If I stopped trying to become who I thought I'd be, what kind of life would I actually want from here?"

You don't have to have the entire answer today.

A blank page isn't proof that you failed to write the story correctly.

It means there's still something left to write.

~Tj🩷