A field guide to growing up without growing apart
Hi blog friends! It’s been awhile. I just got back from a fantastic trip home to Seattle, and I’m settling back into real life here, but I wanted to tell you about an interesting conversation I had the other day. My hubby and I attended […]
If I ever have a daughter, I know this dilemma will be many years away yet, but it’s something that’s been on my mind several times recently as I watch the fledgling lives of some of my friends and relatives’ children. As kids reach school-age, […]
With my 27th birthday (and therefore my “late 20s”) only a few months away, I’ve been thinking more and more about starting a family. Baby fever has started, I’d say, with so many cute littles popping up on my facebook newsfeed, and some of my real-life friends starting to take the plunge into parenthood. One of my friends here gave birth 3 weeks ago, another is expecting her second child in October, and a good friend from work is due with her first in August. I don’t feel pressured, per se, but I’ve started to think that I’m ready (as I’ll ever be) for this next step.
However, this is such a momentous decision that it’s been plaguing me with doubt and conflicting emotions. I love my life, and part of the reason I love it so much is because it’s relatively easy at the moment. A great job, plenty of vacation time to travel, no shortage of money, and no major responsibilities. A child would obviously, irreparably, alter all that. A lot of my qualms have to do with my career. I’ve been blessed with a job that is a great fit for me, and if I take time off—even just a year—to have a baby, I worry that I might never go back, at least not for many years. I don’t think I would really mind being a stay-at-home mom for a time, but so much can change in 5 or 10 years. Would I still be hireable, or even know what I’m doing, after all that time away from the classroom? When it comes down to it, my resume is still pretty sparse. I can’t help thinking having 4 or 5 years of experience under my belt before I quit would set me up much better than only 3 years.
Another factor is, of course, my husband’s feelings about the issue. Last summer we had a conversation in which we both said we thought Spring/Summer 2016 would be a great time to welcome our first child. Since then I’ve kind of been operating under that assumption (on the days when I’m not freaking out about the whole career/life change aspect and wanting to put it off!). In that scenario, I’d need to get pregnant within the next few months, which would mean going off birth control, like, pretty much now. With that time frame looming closer and closer, I tried several times in the last few months to talk to my husband about it and see if he was still on board with that plan. But every time he seemed to brush it off, changing the subject, or at least not wanting to give me a hard and fast answer. I started to get concerned…it seemed like he didn’t want to start trying soon after all, and the last thing I want to do is force him into something he isn’t ready for.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I brought it up again and we were finally able to talk it all out. Essentially, though he still sees the logic of our original plan, he’s scared of actually having a baby and all the changes that will bring to our lives. I could see from talking to him that, while I know he’d be excited and happy to hear that I was pregnant, he could also live quite happily for several more years sans kids. After our conversation, I felt like things were still somewhat up in the air. He agrees that trying either this year or next year is a good idea, but he’s not ready to actually “start trying.”
I’m not sure where this leaves us. In my heart, I think I’m leaning towards sooner rather than later. Life is short, and this is one of the most important things I want to “do with my life.” I also know my parents won’t be around forever, and I’d love to give them grandchildren soon, so they can enjoy those relationships for as many years as possible. But, simultaneously, I desperately want this to be a mutual decision that we’re both at peace with, not me nagging him into it or taking matters into my own hands.
I’m the kind of person who likes plans and schedules and rational decisions, so I can totally see the logic behind the idea of waiting one more year as well. We’d have more money, have had more fun travel adventures together, and my resume would be one year stronger. Those are all undeniable truths.
But none of them stop me from lying in bed at night, dreaming about the little boy or girl who will call me mom.
Depression and mental health are topics that we’re warned about during our teens, you know, those sensitive and formative years when everyone’s a bit angsty. But it seems to me that I’ve personally known more people struggling with these mental issues in my twenties than […]
As with most of my news these days, I found out on Facebook. I had just gotten home from work and was checking my newsfeed, and I saw a post from a high school classmate: a link to a breaking news story about a school […]
As twenty-somethings, we’re in our prime–physically. So why is it that sometimes we still have just as many body image issues as when we were awkward teens? This month we’re discussing how our insecurities about our bodies have evolved in our twenties.
Somehow I think everyone has at least some insecurities about their body. For me, the big one is my posture. Instead of standing straight, I my shoulders tend to slope and my head goes forward. I can try to stand straight, but I feel like the moment I am not thinking about it, I go back into bad posture. I guess I have had bad posture for a long time, but it started to bother me more maybe three or four years ago. I remember at the time a couple different people commenting negatively on it. It made me feel bad, but- what’s worse- I realized they were right. My posture sucked. Sometimes I feel pretty self conscious about it. I feel like how you carry yourself is so important in your interactions with other people- and I don’t want to come across as some sort of weak, slumped over person. I know posture isn’t anything- but if could change one thing about my physical appearance that would be it. I sometimes wonder if a chiropractor would be able to help me to change my posture over time. I think it is possibility- someday I want to find out. However, probably if I get my posture fixed I will find something else to worry about. Somehow humans are never totally happy with how things are…
My insecurities are definitely different than they were a few years ago. In the later half of college I was a little bit overweight and constantly struggled with that. I was never really happy with the size I was, and preferred not to think about it. Honestly I kind of lied to myself about what size I really was. But I still had fun and was confident. I’m definitely of the mindset that you can’t let your insecurities own you, and I didn’t. But it got to a point where I realized how unhealthy of a lifestyle I had and I decided I wanted to change because my body would feel better.
Like everyone else, I have had my fair share of body image insecurities over the years, and, like my body, they have changed over time. In high school I was mortified by my acne (though it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been) and I wished my boobs were bigger. In college, my acne cleared up for the most part (although I still get an occasional zit at 26?!?!) and I was generally pretty pleased with how I looked, but I still couldn’t stop comparing myself to others. Whether it was my roommates, the cheerleaders at sporting events, or just other girls in my classes, I felt like I was surrounded by beautiful people and I just didn’t quite measure up.
These days I’m starting to feel some insecurity about something I’ve never much worried about: my weight. I’ve always been thin, pretty much effortlessly so, and I have relied on that to bolster my confidence when it comes to body image. But in the past few months I’ve had a very hard time exercising regularly due to working full time, traveling, getting sick, injuries, etc. And hence, I’ve started to notice my clothes fitting tighter, fat where there didn’t used to be, even the beginnings of cellulite and a few stretch marks. In reality, it’s only a few pounds that I’ve gained, and I’m sure if I commit to working out more and lay off the desserts, they’ll melt away. Perhaps a lot of people would still consider me thin, or at least nowhere near overweight, but since my body feels different to me, I still worry about it.
Even if I do lose those few pounds, I still feel like I’ve grown into a new body in my twenties. My boobs ARE bigger, and I don’t think that will change. Mother Nature (or maybe my birth control pills?) has made sure that whatever fat I do hold on to lands on my hips, resulting in curves I never had before. These aren’t bad changes, but for someone who has had a lanky, slender figure for as long as I can remember, it’s still a change that takes getting used to. But hey, as Snow says, once I have kids I will definitely long for the days when I looked like this. I guess it’s all about perspective.
–Cindy
It is really difficult not to be insecure. All of us get attacked daily from all angles – friends, parents, crushes, media, and strangers all have an opinion on what we should look like. Only a few days ago my perfectly normal sized friend told me her doctor called her overweight, saying not that there was any health issue to worry about now, but that if she gained more her health would be at risk. I was appalled when I found out a medical professional was making a statement like that, it’s one thing to say – you are unhealthy, lose weight or you’ll get heart disease, but she wasn’t saying that to my friend, she was giving an opinion. Shouldn’t the label for the place 20lbs before the health risk be the same as the place 60lbs away? Does it really help to call a person overweight when there is nothing wrong?
Its things like this that have made me work really hard to be confident about my body. I do my best not to talk about weight with friends, put myself down, or really bring up the subject in general. If I have to talk about it I focus on health, saying I want to have better lungs or hike more, and if my overall attractiveness is being questioned I straight up say I’m happy with what I look like. That being said as confident as I remind myself to be I still have plenty of insecurities, and as much as I project that they don’t matter, the one critic that is the hardest to silence is your internal one.
I used to hate being tall, hate the stretch marks on my legs that came with it, my large feet and flat chest. I have acne scars that I could do without and less than perfect teeth that I never seem to get around to whitening. And lately I’ve gone into this spiral of hating my hooded eyelids. I couldn’t sleep a few weeks back and found a youtube video explaining how to put makeup on hooded eyelids, realizing finally why winged eyeliner had always been so difficult for me to pull off. After that all I saw when I looked in the mirror were my puffy/droopy eyelids, even going so far as to look up the costs and recovery time of surgery to remove some of the skin. It was absurd how in one day I could go from looking at my face and seeing me, to looking in the mirror and only seeing something awful. The obsession has waned in the last few weeks, but now that fear will always be with me, would I be prettier if you could see more of my eyelid?
But the thing is, if those negative, tiny things were all that people saw about me, it would be an inaccurate picture. I’m also beautiful and kind, smart and strong, proud and grateful. Those insecurities are the little things, the rest of me is what matters.
–Aurora
I am very content with my life. Other than the fact that I live far away from friends and family, I couldn’t imagine a better life than the one I have. Yay me, right? I sound well-adjusted, happy, and grateful for my blessings, right? Well, […]
You might think job-hunting is hard, and it certainly is, but once someone actually offers you a job you are faced with problems of a different kind. You have to decide to accept the offer the company is giving you. On the surface this might […]
I never, EVER imagined myself living outside the United States. But, life is full of surprises. I have now been living in the Middle East for going on 3 years, and I have come to love, love, love the expat life. And, since the primary drawback to this lifestyle is not having your friends and family nearby, I have consistently tried to recruit my loved ones to join us here in the Sandbox. So far, we’ve been unsuccessful in luring anyone other than a socially awkward college acquaintance, though (fail). But I feel so strongly about how moving abroad has benefited us that I just can’t keep from sharing. Here are some reasons why you should say, “Adios, America,” ASAP.
The Perks of Being an Expat:
I have seen families of all different ages, shapes, and sizes move here, whether it is empty-nesters, newlyweds, people with young kids, or people with school-aged kids. I’ve seen that expat life can work for many types of people. Could you be one of them? If I live here for two more years, or five, or twenty, I’ll always treasure what I’ve gained from this experience. It started with the material benefits, but it has become so much more than that.
As an American living abroad, I have found myself in many situations in which views that I have held since birth are very much in the minority. Not only that, but the country I currently live in is known for having an absolutely heinous record […]
Ah, adulthood. Aren’t our 20s just chock-full of coming-of-age experiences? After all, that’s what this blog is about. Well, this December I reached another milestone of adulthood: I hosted Christmas for the first time. My in-laws were making their first (and hopefully not last) big […]
When something seems too good to be true, it usually is, right?
I’ve posted in the past about how things happen to be going very well in my life right now. Great husband, great job, done with my education, getting to see the world, not having to worry about money, etc. In pretty much every way, I look around at my life and I know I am blessed beyond belief.
When I think about it more deeply, I also realize that my entire life has been pretty charmed. Raised in an upper-middle class, intact family, most things came easily to me, and I didn’t have any traumatizing experiences like a close relative or friend dying. In college, my parents paid my tuition, I made awesome friends like the Naughty Princesses, and I met the love of my life. What else can a girl ask for?
But the inner pessimist in me tends to get a bit uneasy when I look too closely at how lucky I have been. After all, the laws of probability would say that this kind of good fortune can’t last forever. Eventually, the other shoe is going to drop. My luck will run out. And there are times I am absolutely terrified of what that will look like.
There are just so many terrible things that can happen to a person in this world, and I’ve seen many of them at work in the lives of those around me. Loved ones killed in car accidents, miscarriages, losing a spouse or a child to cancer, becoming permanently disabled…All these things have happened to people I love, but not to me. I feel guilt and fear just writing those words. Who am I to be living a life of relative bliss, when so many others have suffered and are suffering?
If I got in a car and drove north for a couple of days, I would find myself in the midst of a war-zone, where people are being murdered for their faith, or for no reason at all. Young girls and women are being bought and sold as sex slaves. But here I am, safe, healthy, loved, and very much in a bubble.
When I allow myself to think about all this, I am very grateful. But I am also fearful, because I can imagine so many scenarios in which my “luck” runs out: my wayward brother commits suicide, one of my parents suffers a heart attack, my husband or I are diagnosed with a terrible disease. And the longer I live, the closer, it seems, I am to one of these scary possibilities becoming reality.
But, what can I do about this? Most of the things I fear the most are beyond my control. I don’t want to let paranoia rob me of what really has been one of the happiest seasons of my life. I have to trust that when trials come, I’ll be able to face them with strength. And I hope I can also be a good friend to those I know and love who are already dealing with the kind of pain and loss I can’t truly understand.