Today, I’m sharing something I wrote 14 months ago, the day before I turned 35. This piece is part of the book I’ve been working on, capturing my journey into 35 and beyond. As I read back I am reminded that so much can change in a year. The things I was longing for a little over a year ago are things that are now my reality. Don’t give up. Perhaps you can find a piece of yourself amongst my words.

Tomorrow, I turn 35. In some ways, it has happened so quickly, but in others, it has taken its time. Who am I at 35? I am definitely not where I thought I would be in terms of my career, family, and a home. However, in other ways, I am far beyond my wildest dreams when it comes to self-awareness, self-regulation, and growth. I have been left wondering today if I traded the conventional norms of society in order to have this inner perspective. I don’t know. What I sadly do know is that today I feel frustrated with my life. Despite being able to connect with my personal growth, I still can’t help but feel frustrated when I compare myself to other people my age. Homes, cars, families, careers, directions. I feel like I’ve been left behind.

A few days ago, I was speaking with my brother, who is six years younger than me. He was showing me around his newly built house that he and his wife have just moved into. I was watching him feed his son, who is 8 months old, when I remembered it was their wedding anniversary. I wished him and his wife a happy anniversary, followed by a comment that it must have been their second wedding anniversary. He let out a laugh and informed me it was their fifth wedding anniversary. Five fucking years. Nothing slaps you harder in the face than realising your younger brother has been married for five fucking years, had a baby, and built a new home – all while you feel your greatest external achievement is growing your hair to a length you are finally happy with. I was so taken aback that I literally said to him, ‘Holy fuck, you guys have all grown up while I’ve been over here regressing. When did this happen?’

I have spent the past seven years working deeply on how I feel about myself internally, how I understand and operate within the world, and how I can continually strive to know myself better, to be better. However, all this internal work often leaves little to be desired externally. I can’t help but feel like I blinked and arrived here. Ironically, I feel frustrated with myself for feeling frustrated, as I know this journey is unique to me, but I cannot help it. I want to scream. Did I consciously choose to get left behind, or was I unable to keep up?

I know now, more than ever, that I do want a home. Oh, I want a home so badly. Somewhere to hang things and nest. I have spent most of the past few months finding items in France, Morocco, and Italy to decorate the home Ben and I refer to as ‘The home we don’t have yet’. I lovingly laugh every time those words leave my lips, yet they are masking the deep internal pain I feel about not having a home. It was fun not having a home in my 20s, and even in my early 30s, it was OK – I accepted it. But now, as I enter my mid-30s, I want a home, and I want a family.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been left to my own devices today. We are in a small town outside of Venice called Vittorio Veneto, as Ben is rehearsing for a performance in Venice. We arrived yesterday, and there is very little to do here except walk, but even I don’t want to be walking in 40-degree heat. Today was my first day alone, and after 11 weeks of constantly being around people, you’d think I would relish it – spend the day filling my cup with goodness. I, however, have chosen to do the opposite. I have spent the day in a deep, dark scroll hole that has left me clutching at the depths of my own despair.

Not only have I been shamelessly scrolling through the lives of people I don’t know, comparing myself to them, but I have also been scrolling through the lives of people I used to go to school with – benchmarks for where I ‘should’ be at this stage of life. I don’t know why I have been torturing myself, but I can’t seem to stop. With every click onto a new profile, I am greeted with the same scenes: pictures of gender reveals, baby showers, and first days of school. Images of houses purchased, houses being renovated, and interiors being decorated. Bios that say ‘7+ figure business owner’, ‘property developer’, and ‘proud mama of 3’. I deleted my bio about three months ago because I didn’t know what to write, and the pressure to write the perfect bio was too much, so I just deleted it all. I hoped my fear of not knowing how to define myself would go away. It hasn’t. One hundred and fifty characters that bring me to my knees time and time again. One hundred and fifty characters to define who I am as a person and what I have to offer anyone who ends up on my profile. How do you define someone who hasn’t owned their own gifts yet? It all just feels so fraudulent. Fake it till you make it.

I cannot tell you the number of times I have changed my Instagram bio in the past few years. I have gone from the Instagram handle @mindful_millee to @milleejane. My bios have ranged from ‘plant-based chef and entrepreneur’ to ‘women’s empowerment coach’. I have toyed with words like advocate, humanitarian, business owner, founder, writer, and everything in between. I have tried to use engaging call-to-action phrases like ‘book your coaching call’, ‘work with me (insert finger pointing downwards)’, and ‘unlock your potential’, and none of it has landed with me. The more I have tried to conform to what others are doing, the more I have squirmed and resisted. I have filled the search section of my Instagram with ‘Instagram coaches’ who all use similar methods to get engagement, larger audiences, and successfully convert them to sales, and yet it still doesn’t align with me. I used to blame being a millennial, but in reality, I think it is just me getting in my own way – overthinking, self-sabotaging, and outsourcing my own responsibilities.

Coaches show up online. They share their topics, they provide value, they give free masterclasses, and they are consistent. I have been dipping my toes in and out of the arena for almost three years, never fully putting two feet in. It sounds similar to how I have shown up in careers, environments, and relationships. A pattern that is plaguing me because deep down inside, I long for more. I long for an audience, a community that I can provide value to. I want to share my gifts, my experiences, my struggles, and my learnings with the world. I just need to get out of my own way.

I think this is something a lot of women struggle with. Potentially men too. As a woman about to turn 35, I can honestly reflect that most of my life, I have been in my own way. Not out of choice but out of survival to protect myself. Whenever I was too much of anything, I would be shamed. And whenever I see other women being too much of anything, I see them being shamed. Shamed for being too pretty, too flirty, too smart, too athletic, too masculine, too dominating, too powerful, too wealthy, too happy, too visible. Like many women, I have walked the fine line between not being enough and being too much my entire life. Scared to be ignored, and equally scared to be noticed. I have learnt how to contort and manipulate myself to suit my environment and come out unharmed. Yet I have come out harmed. In the process of being a good girl and now an agreeable woman, I have left parts of me behind, parts that are dying to be seen. I have ignored the girl with big ideas and huge ambition in favour of being accepted. It has taken me 34 years and 364 days to realise this in its entirety.

I want to take up space.
I want to take up space.
I want to take up space.

The words feel like poison coming out, but the more I repeat them, the easier they will be. I want to take up space. I am bored of being agreeable, of not saying what I think, of walking on eggshells around others. I have worked damn hard to learn how to self-regulate and not project onto others, yet I let people do it to me constantly. Enough. I want to take up space. It feels empowering and frightening to say these words and allow them to vibrate through my body. All day, I have felt lethargic, scrolling myself into a hole of self-pity. Yet with this understanding and these words, I can feel my energy increasing. I have been denying myself the very thing I know to be true. I dipped my toes in and just as quickly pulled them back out. When momentum has been happening, I have put the brakes on under the guise of some excuses. No more. This is my commitment the day before my 35th birthday – to take up space and to stop being afraid of what other people think of me.

In the past two years, three of my closest friendships have ended. Despite trying so hard to be loved, agreeable, and liked, three of the people closest to me decided I wasn’t someone they wanted in their life. One of them still feels like a huge loss as it is related to that person’s struggle with their mental health, but I hold onto the hope that one day we will find our way back to each other. The other two, when I reflected upon them both, had met their end. The friendships had run their course yet I was holding on. Why? Because I had been taught to be agreeable and liked. I hadn’t been taught that when someone repeatedly crosses your boundaries or emotionally dumps onto you, it’s OK to walk away from them. I didn’t know that I could still be a good person and also let someone know that I was no longer available for them or their friendship. I guess this has been a common theme for me this year: being OK with people not liking me. When I liquidated my company, I let down a lot of people who had believed in the vision, and a few of them were not happy with me. In a way, being disliked in business is easier as it doesn’t feel as personal. When friendships end, it feels like an attack on your being, when in reality, it can be as simple as outgrowing each other or no longer being of value to one another.

A friend, ironically one of the friendships that has ended, once told me that certain people come into your life for a season. It doesn’t make their value any less; it just means that you learn what you need to from each other before your paths take different journeys. So if I can find acceptance with friendships ending, and those friends no longer seeing me as an agreeable person, I guess I can find acceptance if strangers think the same. As long as I can look myself in the mirror at the end of each day, knowing that I am doing my best, that I have good intentions, have owned my mistakes, apologised when necessary, and committed to learning, being better, and accepting that as a human being I will not always get it right – then I am OK with that.

I am OK with that.

I don’t always need to be liked, especially if being liked by others means abandoning myself. I can take up space, as long as it aligns with the fire inside me. I deserve to share my truth and implement healthy boundaries. I am a woman redefining what it means to be a woman, and that is OK. It is OK for me to have already been engaged twice, married, and divorced by 35. It is OK for me not to have children at this stage of my life. It is OK for me to still be figuring out what my direction is and where my passions lie. It is OK to change my Instagram bio every other day until I find one that doesn’t make me cringe. It is OK that my life looks different from those around me. It is OK that I don’t yet own a home; it doesn’t mean I won’t forever. It is OK to feel sadness around not having children yet, and to remain optimistic that my biological clock is not running out. It is OK to have many different career paths and not know which one makes me the happiest. It is OK that I can feel equally sad about where I am in life, and excited about what’s to come. I can be many things all at once. After all, I am a multipotentialite, and in the morning, this multipotentialite is going to be 35, with a permission slip to take up space.