Balancing Motherhood, Yoga and Writing

Reading my lifelong friend and fellow writer Rin’s new blog about her last year before turning 30, has got me thinking about how I feel about the end of my twenties. I turn 29 on the 22nd of Feb, and I must admit I feel sad about saying goodbye to being officially ‘young’.

It’s not as if I feel I need to have achieved certain things, before being satisfied with my life before 30. I’ve travelled (though not as much as I still intend to do!), worked interesting jobs (though am still working on becoming successfully self-employed), formed wonderful nurturing friendships, met my partner, and of course have a beautiful baby boy who is rapidly becoming less of a baby. But somehow it still feels like a loss, to let go of being ‘young’ and start to climb towards the second half of life, to let go of feeling I have all the time in the world to explore new horizons.

It’s a new phase, and I’m not sure what it will contain. I was inspired by Rin’s resolutions, to think about my own goals for this year. My sister’s arrival yesterday has re-connected me with a sense of continuity over time, an awareness that the person I was as a child is the person I am today, and that so many of my original ideals, dreams and ways of thinking about things, are still with me now, although in changed forms. This can be easy to forget, as the day-to-day life I’ve created for myself in Brighton has such a momentum of its own.

So, here are some of my intentions for the year I am 29:

To be gentle with myself.

To prioritise time for meditation each day.

To work on my communication so that is more loving, compassionate and honest. 

To keep developing as a parent, remaining open to transforming everything that prevents me from being the parent I want to be. This one, I think I couldn’t stop from happening!

To continue developing my writing skills and extending my ‘writing platform’ online and elsewhere.

To be open to opportunities and experiences that I may not have foreseen, remaining flexible and not getting stuck on particular outcomes. Being gentle with myself in all of these processes.