Still becoming

Lately I’ve had two, slightly conflicting, emotions present within:

1) Feeling like a grown up. I have a husband, two kids, a job and most likely soon a mortgage. Young people would probably identify me as an adult and maybe even call me old. Looking back at life I do feel that I’ve lived. People have come, people have gone. I’ve learned a lot - about myself and the world around me.

Yet, at the same time.

2) I still feel incredibly young. New. As if I’m still just a beginner. I find myself doing things - like putting a bottle of water in my bag without properly closing the lid - only a child would do. Often I ask myself: shouldn’t I be done making these kind of mistakes by now?

It’s like I’m physically aging. I can see the seasons passing by. And partly I’m one with the leaves changing colour, falling, becoming one with the soil. I don’t look like a twenty year old anymore. Inside, however - mentally and emotionally - I’m still that girl. Perhaps a bit more at ease within my skin, okay being who I am, in some ways matured, but also just who I’ve always been.

Will I ever step fully into the role of an adult? Does anyone? Or is it just a silly idea I’m holding on to?

I really don’t have the answers.

But maybe that’s the point.

Maybe growing up was never about arriving somewhere solid and certain. Maybe it isn’t about becoming a finished version of yourself who no longer forgets, spills, questions, or doubts. Maybe it’s about learning how to hold it all — the responsibility and the softness, the knowing and the not knowing.

Because the truth is, I am an adult. Not because I have everything figured out, but because I stay. I show up. I take care of what’s mine to take care of, even on the days I feel like I’m still just pretending.

And I am also still young. Still curious. Still learning how to move through this life with a little more awareness, a little more grace. Still making mistakes that remind me I’m human, not complete.

Perhaps the two aren’t in conflict at all.

Perhaps this is what it actually feels like to be alive — to be rooted and growing at the same time. To carry both the weight of experience and the lightness of beginning again.

And maybe, just maybe, the moment we think we’ve finally “become” an adult is the moment we’ve stopped allowing ourselves to evolve.

So for now, I’ll keep both.

The woman who knows.
And the girl who is still learning.

I’ll do my best to let them walk side by side.