glimmers from a tired girl

When I turned thirty one I had a panic attack.

It showed up so unexpectedly that I, a lifelong panic attacker, was even caught off guard.

I had expected one at thirty. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to freak out? I was so conscious, so aware that I might panic and spiral as my thirtieth birthday neared that I was able to focus on the celebration and keep the rising panic at bay. I had a wonderful birthday and a sense of true adult accomplishment that I had not let the pressures get to me.

Thirty-one would be no sweat after that. I thought, and boy, was I wrong.

See I think it was different because when you turn thirty you’re entering your thirties and saying goodbye to your twenties. It feels like a graduation of sorts, an exciting step into true adulthood. A new beginning, if you will. My twenties were a wonderful, terrible, wild, and confusing time, and I was content with moving on. I’d done all I needed to do, and I was ready for the peace and stability in my thirties.

And then I turned thirty-one, and I was just a woman getting another year older and obsessively staring at the beginnings of jowls forming on my face.

I sobbed to my husband, in a reflectively embarrassing moment of weakness and overwhelm.

I’m already in my thirties and I don’t even know who I am.

Not my best moment, but what grew from the experience was worth the moment of unraveling.

My twenties were a wild decade. And while I have no regrets, (okay, very few regrets) about how I spent those years, they weren’t spent getting to know or taking care of myself. I tried on a million different hats of who I thought I was supposed to be and changed personalities and lifestyles like outfits. I had fun, and I learned a hell of a lot, but at the time, it didn’t feel like enough.

I looked in the mirror that birthday, and without the layers of youthful grim and concert glitter I didn’t know who it was that was looking back at me. I was scared, scared I’d never meet her, or worse, what if I didn’t like her? What if, I gulped, she wasn’t any fun?

I heard my grandmother’s voice in my head. You can cry for two minutes, really wallow in it, and then it’s time to buck up and fix this mess.

And I did.

I thought about my birthday again this morning as I read in the early, quiet stillness.

In her book Women Who Run With The Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés tells the story of La Loba, a mythical bone collector who “collects and preserves especially that which is in danger of being lost in the world.” Once she is able to collect all of the bones of a creature, most notably a wolf, she then sings over the bones and they are magically brought back to life.

This story of the wild woman bone collector is one I return to often, as I did this morning. At the end of the story, Estés reflects and poses what I consider a call to action.

“This is our meditation as women, calling back the dead and dismembered aspects of ourselves, calling back the dismembered aspects of life itself...the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die. Our work is to apprehend the timing of both; to allow what must die to die, and what must live to live.”

This passage has always acted as a lighthouse to me when I feel like a ship lost at sea. It pulled me back in January during the panic of my birthday, and again while feeling lost this week. I know who I am, I always have, I just needed to call myself back. A process that is still in the works more than half a year after I first panicked about not knowing who I am. A process, not unlike this series itself, where I must scrub through the layers of overwhelm and noise and break through to the nitty-gritty to find the parts of myself that need to be nurtured in order to grow.

I heard someone say once that being in your thirties is just remembering what you liked at thirteen and finding those things, and that person, again. I think there is quite a bit of merit to this. When I thought about the thirteen-year-old girl I was, I realized she was still here, waiting to be called back. Her hope, her self-confidence, her joy, her playfulness, and her energy are all things I can call back to and shed light on once again.

I think about her often now, and I hope (even though I definitely killed her Tamagotchi) that I can make her proud.

I am so grateful for those of you who are following along on this journey, the support of this community makes me feel wrapped in the warmest of hugs.

I hope that when you think about your thirteen-year-old self you do so with grace. I hope that you do something today that would bring that child joy. I hope that you feel confident in who you are, no matter who you may be.

And most of all, I hope you vote, so today’s thirteen-year-olds have the chance to be their free, unbridled selves.

Lastly, if you haven’t read it, I would love for you to read Women Who Run With The Wolves, and I hope you love it as much as I do.

xo-Alys