ANGIE

"In my second year of grad school...I felt like they were a lot of things that were in place for me. For one, I was getting ready to finish grad school. First of all, I was miserable. I had a miserable time trying to finish my master's thesis and then figure out where I was working, but I felt like I was at that age where anything was possible and to make anything possible. They say that after you’re 25, life hits you... you come into a realization. I had to be about 24 or 25 years of age. I was young, I was traveling and there were no immediate worries. No immediate fears. I felt like I could do anything, and I could go to any place… The world isn't as scary. It hasn’t necessarily hit you all the way. At that moment in time, I felt like I was the happiest because I felt like I had limitless possibilities and could do anything, and I could change the world if I wanted to – without no regard or regret. I felt like that was the greatest time in my life. And I was doing so many things: I was hanging out, kicking it, being broke, just living life – and things were much more valuable in terms of experiences.

Now, I’m still happy. I feel like I’ve taken those critical steps. After you turn 25, you go through a multitude of things where you have to solidify some things. You have to solidify how you’re going to eat, where you’re going to live, your job and then also looking at things, depending your position in life, you’re trying to figure out career objectives and modes, what are you going to do in terms of you who’ll be, like the person you’ll be. And you’re kind of figuring that out in your twenties. I can’t get up and go and travel the world like I use to and feel like the world is at my feet, because I have a son now. I have a husband now. I have a family now. The decisions in which I make are different – what my life looks like is much different. Not that it’s closed, or those doors are not open, or that freedom is not obtained – no. Life just looks different – and it’s a beautiful different with much more responsibility. Your decision is not only up to you or of yourself. It affects your whole entirety. Your entire existence.

Now, I’m at the mode of which how do I step into my womanhood, my personhood as 30-year-old Angie. How does it look? And how does it present itself? How do I want to show up in rooms when I step into rooms as this new person having all this previous experience? And then also coming into this new juncture of life. How does that smile look now? Not that I’m faking it, or constructing it. It presents itself as is it is, as my being, as the way in which I show up. I feel like all of those critical steps that I took, all of that experience that I had, now I’m really living. I’m living out those predispositions, I’m living out those pre-steps that I made from prior choices. And that looks different for every woman, and there’s not always a ladder. Sometimes it’s a mountain. Sometimes it’s an up and down situation. But for me personally, I’m in a whole ‘nother spectrum. My eyes are open to a whole new world. A whole new existence. A whole new experience. It’s a beautiful thing. It presents its own pathway now, a different pathway that I could have never guessed.”