Why am I telling you these things?
I'm on a mission to help reduce anxiety about navigating young adulthood
Welcome to Things Your Mom Should Have Told You. My mission is to help prepare you for “What to Expect While Navigating Young Adulthood.” By speaking candidly about the ordinary struggles of adulthood, offering common-sense wisdom, and throwing in a few laughs, I hope to help reduce anxiety about becoming a grown-up.
When I see this picture of myself in a cap and gown, it reminds me about the mixed emotions I felt on graduation day. On the one hand, I’d finally reached the top of the mountain. All the studying and tests were over. But on the other hand, now there was a whole other, in some ways steeper, mountain to climb—actually assembling all of the pieces of that wonderful grown-up life I’d been dreaming about all along.
It didn’t take long to discover that in the real world I couldn’t count on things working mostly like I expected them to and being rewarded as long as I put in the effort. In fact, I found that during my 20s very few life experiences unfolded like I had imagined they would.
Adulthood was littered with all kinds of tricky things that I wasn’t sure how to handle at first, like dislikable bosses, rainy wedding days, and in-laws. It also featured troublesome situations like hating my first job and having to fire a bridesmaid.
Plus other larger how-the-hell-is-this-going-to-work dilemmas were looming in the background, like how was I going to find my way to a dream job when I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I grew up? And was it really going to be possible to juggle a career and parenthood someday like conventional wisdom had been telling me all along?
It sure would have been nice if someone had spoken to me honestly about the things I was likely to encounter as a young adult. And yet it seemed like once you graduated, you were expected to fend for yourself without much guidance. Nobody acknowledged the dilemmas and struggles I was routinely encountering. For the most part, my elders and society in general gave the impression that adulthood should be mostly smooth sailing if you were doing it right.
By the time I hit my mid-30s, I managed to figure most things out. And then I got so busy with the life I had assembled for myself (complete with marriage, a house, a career, and three kids who arrived within 5 years) that I forgot about the struggles of young adulthood for a while.
But eventually my daughters grew up, and as they prepared to leave home, I started to become part of the “everything’s fine” conspiracy. Most of the time when we discussed their futures, I talked about limitless opportunities and focused on the upside. I suppose I avoided talking about the struggles ahead because I didn’t want them to be discouraged. Or I guess I hoped that somehow they’d magically avoid all the pitfalls.
Then I read about a golden rule that marathon runners follow—if a runner asks you about the terrain on the trail ahead, you should let them know about tough hills and how far they still have to go. In other words, instead of resorting to happy talk and telling them it won’t be that hard, you should be honest.
So I decided to be more open about the challenges and dilemmas that come along with being a grown-up. I started sharing the non-airbrushed version of my experiences as a young adult with my daughters and telling them all of the things I wished my mom or somebody had told me. I'm happy to do the same for you.
I feel badly that young people today face more pressure than ever to “have it all”—even though nobody has ever explained how to pull that off. I hope to help you be better prepared to navigate adulthood than I was.
I recognize that 20-somethings aren’t the only ones looking for practical wisdom about everything that comes along with adulthood. In fact, I’ve come to realize that for most people, figuring out how to navigate life is a lifelong quest. So no matter what age you are, I’m happy if you find useful knowledge and wisdom in this “instruction manual for life” delivered a week at a time.
My hope is that reading Things Your Mom Should Have Told You weekly will help reduce anxiety about adulting. If you subscribe, I’ll see you in your inbox every Tuesday.