3 benefits to blooming later in life
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” — Zora Neale Hurston
When I was a kid, a week felt like a month and a month felt like a year. Childhood stretched out before me like a long highway leading to the other side of the world. Adulthood was a faraway, mythical place.
I grew up and did what my parents expected — graduated from college and got a good job. While I was checking off the boxes to make my parents proud, I was drinking and smoking every night and making reckless decisions about men and money. Responsibility is a weight that I picked up to survive, but I carried it with disdain. I didn’t think about the long-term consequences of my actions back then. I wanted to feel good in the moment.
Adulthood was like being a kid at the grown-up table — many of the conversations went over my head, but I wanted to belong there. Appearances were easier to control than reality, so that’s where I put my energy. I had no idea what I was doing, after all, so I aligned myself with people I admired and did what I saw them doing. With that strategy, I walked on shaky ground and worried constantly that someone would notice how out-of-place and confused I was.
Around the age of 30, I found myself in therapy for the first time. That is when I began to discover repressed creative urges, unaddressed trauma and a treasure trove of secret desires. Exploring this inner labyrinth with curiosity instead of shame opened the door to new ways of living.
I’d spend the next 10 years finding the value in my sensitive free spirit and developing a creative vision that inspired me to grow up. In the process, I discovered three benefits to blooming later in life and what it means to me to bloom.
Photo by panitan punpuang on Unsplash