It's my birthday!
On crawling out of my flop era + 30 lessons I learned before 30
There’s this myth that your twenties are supposed to be the best years of your life — effortless, glowy, sexy, wild, full of mystery and intrigue. But in my experience, they’re more like an episode of Fleabag: messy, transformative, chaotic, occasionally devastating, and full of moments that crack you open in ways you’ll thank yourself for later.
In honor of turning 30 today, Here are 30 things I learned over the last decade — some the hard way, some with grace, and some with tears running down my face on the Q train at a questionable hour. Maybe you’ll see yourself in here. Maybe you’ll disagree with a few. But either way, I hope you feel less alone and a little more seen…
…and stay tuned after the list to read what this year’s birthday means to me, how I crawled out of the flop era of my 20s, and how I survived my Saturn Return!
30 lessons I learned before 30:
Most people are way too focused on themselves to be judging you. Wear the bold lipstick. Dance like a weirdo. Be daring, unapologetically.
If someone drains your energy every time you see them, you’re allowed to see them less. Even if you’ve known them forever.
Don’t hoard silver, china, or stationery for special occasions. Life is short — throw dinner parties and eat vanilla ice cream out of chalices! Write letters to penpals using that weird Montblanc pen someone got you for college graduation!
You won’t always get closure. Sometimes healing means deciding you are the closure.
Group chats are sacred. Start one where all you do is send each other memes and spiral. It’s cheaper than therapy (if you can’t afford therapy).
Worrying will never, ever change the outcome.
Changing your hair might not fix your life, but it does buy you 3-5 business days of delusional confidence. And hair always grows back!
It doesn’t matter how many people love you — if you don’t love yourself completely and entirely, misery will find you. Self-love isn’t optional; it’s essential.
The more you follow your curiosity, the more your life will expand. Take art classes. Learn to read tarot cards. Read weird books. Learn a new language. Follow all of the rabbit holes life offers you!
You will not be for everyone. And that’s actually a sign you’re doing something right.
You can do things scared. Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the choice to keep going with shaky hands and a pit in your stomach. Keep going!
Health is wealth, in every sense. Never cancel on your therapist or your personal trainer. Wear sunscreen. Get your annual check-up. Eat more vegetables.
Setting boundaries with friends and family who violate your core values is one of the most important things you’ll ever do.
Quality over quantity, always. In friendships, in work, in love, in time. Let go of what doesn’t serve you so you can make space for what truly matters. Life feels richer when it’s intentional. Less noise, more meaning.
Happiness is a choice, and you’re the only person getting in the way of your own happiness.
If you need to turn the day around, a good walk in the sunshine works absolute wonders. If you wake up feeling like shit, get outside and walk, immediately.
Becoming a stepparent is the hardest and most rewarding thing you can possibly do. It’s thankless, it’s tiring, and it’s an adjustment, but it also brings so much joy and wonder.
Always bring a snack and a book with you.
Do what you can to keep long-distance friendships alive. Send voice notes and care packages and snail mail. Visit when you can!
Your intuition is rarely wrong — but it takes practice to hear it clearly over the noise of fear, ego, and other people’s opinions.
Parents are just people, doing the best they can with what they were given. That truth is heartbreaking, liberating, and sometimes both at once.
Success isn’t always loud. Sometimes it looks like stability, quiet joy, or waking up not dreading your day.
Jealousy is just information. Ask yourself what it’s pointing you toward — then go build it for yourself.
Be as kind to yourself as you are to your best friend when they’re spiraling. You deserve your own compassion!
There’s no prize for suffering. You don’t have to prove your worth through burnout. Joy is productive, too.
Loneliness doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. Sometimes it just means you’re in a season of transition. Let it be tender.
Falling apart isn’t the opposite of growth — it’s often the prerequisite. Rupture comes before the rebuild.
People can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves. Stop expecting depth from shallow waters.
There is no timeline. You are not behind. Life is not linear — it loops, swerves, pauses, and surprises. Trust the detours, and embrace them.
Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is rest. Not hustle. Not fix. Just rest.
On turning 30
Today is my 30th birthday — I’ve been waiting for this day for what feels like a lifetime.
They say your Saturn return — the astrological phenomenon that happens when Saturn completes its first orbit around the sun since you were born — hits hard. It usually happens in your late 20s, and it’s known for bringing upheaval, forcing you to shed past versions of yourself and step fully into adulthood. Some call it a karma teacher, representing responsibility, transition, and structure… think of it as a period of forced self reflection, breaking down old patterns, and rebuilding from the ground up. And let me tell you, I don’t really believe in astrology, but my Saturn Return did not hold back. It was unequivocally the biggest flop era I’ve suffered to date.
Growing up, I adored my birthday. I’d beg my mom to take me to Publix, where I’d sprint to the bakery, flip through the sticky laminated binder of cake designs with my greasy fingers, and pick the one that spoke to me the most — it was the cheeseburger cake, ten years in a row, in fact. I loved being celebrated, being the center of attention, counting down the days to another year older. I saw aging as something exciting, something to run toward. Aging meant more responsibility, more freedom. More of everything!!
That birthday glow stuck with me well into my early twenties. One of the memories I still carry with so much warmth is my 24th in New York. We were packed around the big round table at Lil Frankie’s — me and a group of friends I’d worked hard to find and hold onto after moving north. Overflowing with lemony pasta and bottles of wine, we all got drunk on the kind of conversation that melts hours away. It wasn’t just a night, it felt like a moment. A marker. Like I’d crossed into a new season of life where I was no longer finding my footing in New York, but actually starting to belong. And I remember thinking, this is just the beginning — that there would be so many more birthdays like this, surrounded by laughter, carbs, and the comfort of chosen people.
And then next year came 25, my first pandemic birthday. Suddenly, aging no longer felt celebratory. Aging felt like something I was barely surviving. My life felt split in two. One foot still in my early twenties, in late nights out with my friends, in fucking around and figuring it out, in the illusion of endless freedom. The other foot planted firmly in the responsibilities I had suddenly stepped into.
I’d just pandemic moved upstate with Mark (my boyfriend at the time, now my husband), his ex, their four-year-old son Quinn, and his ex’s new boyfriend. Mark and his ex also invited one of Quinn’s school friends and her mom to join. We all thought we were leaving the city for just two weeks — a little breather from the chaos, a quick escape from the sirens and uncertainty that had swallowed New York overnight. We had hastily packed bags like we were going on a weirdo two week camping trip, but then two weeks turned into five months. The day we left was also the first day I officially met Quinn, and from that moment on, we’ve lived together every single day since.
My 25th birthday fell during those early days and became the unofficial kickoff to what felt like a fucked up experimental reality show: five adults, two kids, two cats, and one dog stuck in the woods, all trying to stay as sane as possible and raise children together. All living in the same 1,500 square foot house, where all of the bedrooms were on the same floor and shared walls. I honestly wish there had been more interpersonal drama between the adults so I could write a TV show pilot and sell it to Netflix and get rich, but everyone coexisted rather peacefully given the situation. No one died or fought, but the anxiety of the entire situation was crippling for us all.
Mark and I mostly kept our sanity by quitting drinking after a month-long caipirinha addiction, getting a medical marijuana card, and binge watching The West Wing while getting insatiable munchies and eating popcorn dinners nightly in bed. No matter what day of the week it was, I’d wake up covered in butter soaked kernels with the worst Sunday Scaries of my life, nursing a Benadryl hangover from drugging myself to sleep.
On top of the seemingly scripted living situation and surviving a global pandemic, I had just lost my mom to a rather merciless and fast case of ALS. Celebrating another year of life felt impossible, especially after my mother’s life ended so abruptly, and while so many people in the world were losing loved ones to a scary and unknown virus. The world was falling apart; the sky was truly falling!
The pandemic triggered what I can only describe as age dysmorphia. While some of my friends were quarantining together — drinking wine at noon, sleeping in, some coasting on COVID unemployment like it was a government-sponsored sabbatical (as they absolutely fucking should have, good for them), I’d chosen a very different path. I was quarantined in the middle of nowhere, working a full-time job, waking up early, sharing co-parenting and homeschooling duties, and doing my best impression of a tradwife by beginning my foray into a long list of failed sourdough bread experiments. I was mourning the loss of my mother at the exact moment I was becoming one.
I kept wondering — if I were older, would this all feel less impossible? If I’d had more years, more screwups, more hard-earned wisdom under my belt, would I know what the fuck I was doing? If I still had a mother to call, would I magically know how to be one myself? But I quickly learned that there’s no fast track to that kind of knowing. There’s no shortcut through the grief, the fear, the total overwhelm of life. I had to sit in it — all of it. I had to let it break me open, stay in the mess, and slowly, painfully, learn my way through.
And eventually, things started to feel much better. Time passed. I learned. We moved back to Brooklyn, and settled into a post-pandemic routine. Mark, Quinn, and I built a beautiful life and home together in Brooklyn. But coming back to the city was much harder than I had expected. Life had moved on in those five months we were away, but my friends hadn’t really aged in the way I felt I had. They were still going out late, chasing after whatever came next, trying on new versions of themselves like outfits.
I had become someone else entirely — not in a bad way, but things were radically different, and part of me was in denial. I loved the family I had built and wouldn’t trade it for the world, but I missed my friends, our old antics, and my youth. At times, I was intensely jealous.
I began suffering from anxiety, depression, and crippling insomnia — at my worst point, I was sleeping maybe five hours a week, if I was lucky. I joked that this was the universe paying me back for being a mother but skipping over the hardest months — childbirth, waking every three hours to nurse, sleep training, being constantly lethargic. Birth mothers have to deal with this stuff, so certainly I must too, in order to call myself a real mom! Otherwise, without all of the suffering, I’d be a complete fraud!
A year later, Quinn finally went back to real school, we got vaccinated could hang out with people in a semi-normal way, Mark and I got engaged, and then married, surrounded by our friends and close family, in paradise. I had everything I ever wanted, and more. Things felt mostly right again, but I still felt like I was missing core pieces of myself — I was still figuring out who I was and how I fit into my new world.
And then came 29 — somehow, the hardest year yet. For years, I convinced myself that my circumstances were normal. That everything I had been through — the loss, the instability, the constant need to adapt, the instant leap to motherhood — was just life, nothing out of the ordinary. I told my friends and everyone I loved that I was fine. But the truth was, it had been anything but easy, and eventually, the denial of it all caught up to me. The weight of the past five years bubbled up to the surface in ways I didn’t expect, shaking the foundation I had built my identity on. Dealing with these truths was brutal.
On top of all of this, I suffered a health scare and ended up in the ER three times. Losing my mom to ALS had already planted a deep fear of death in me, and this did nothing but stoke the fire of that fear. Ultimately, the health scare was a really good wakeup call, because it made me realize that I was anxious all the time over things I couldn’t control. It forced me to fire my old therapist and find a new one that pushed me to dig deeper and get to the bottom of why I was so unhappy, of why I was unable to truly own my life and circumstances and the pain I had gone through.
My Saturn return and my twenties were rough and long and winding, but I’m strangely extremely grateful for this period of my life. It forced me to let go of the version of myself I thought I had to be and step into a life that actually fits. It gave me clarity: about who I am, what my values are, what truly matters, and what’s worth holding onto (the people and things I love) versus what I needed to let go of (the fear of losing it all).
The pandemic definitely accelerated my relationship with Mark and Quinn — I don’t know if Mark and I would have moved in together or gotten married, or if I’d be a stepmother if it weren’t for those five months of closeness, of intensity, of shared suffering and shared tender moments. Motherhood is one of the best gifts I’ve ever received — on top of the unbelievably beautiful relationship Quinn and I have, it’s also given me a deeper understanding of why my mom made the choices she did, and it’s brought me closer to her in her absence. I still have so many questions that I wish she could have answered, but I’ve filled in some of the gaps through my own experience.
When Mark and I first started dating, we joked that we had a shared age of 30 — a necessary middle ground, since he is eight years older than me, and because neither of us have ever felt our actual age. Somewhere along the way, I started using 30 as my marker, the age when I thought I’d finally feel normal again. Like if I could just make it to 30, I’d finally feel like I had caught up to myself, and all of the pieces would miraculously fall into place.
And now, standing at the threshold of 30, all of the pieces fit. I feel like the best version of myself for the first time in a long time, and I want to celebrate that. It took a lot of therapy sessions and lived experience. It took a lot of vulnerability, and a lot of leaning on friends and family and asking for help. It took a lot of highs and lows, of extremely joyous moments and terrifying times, but I have arrived. I am coming into this next year of my life feeling so strong and happy, with a newfound sense of clarity and gratitude, knowing fully what is important to me.
So if I cry today on my birthday, know that my tears are happy. They are full of love and appreciation for the life I’ve built and the chosen family I’ve surrounded myself with. They are full with knowing that I have many years left of graceful aging, of learning, of loving, of being the best partner, mother, friend, and daughter I can be.
We live in a world where social media makes it seem like everyone’s goal is to stay forever 21, frozen in time, wrinkle and consequence free. But that couldn’t be me. Losing my mom so early taught me just how fragile and fleeting this all is. Aging is no longer something I fear — it’s something I chase. I want to squeeze the juice out of every single year I get, and savor every birthday like it’s an absolute miracle — because it is. I want gray hairs, frown lines, sagging skin, signs of life. Every year I’m still here is a gift. A chance to become more myself. A chance to love harder, laugh louder, live deeper. A chance to squeeze the people I love tightly, to blow out my birthday candles and wish that my son will grow up feeling happy, loved, confident, and safe. So yes, this year I will have my birthday cake, and I’ll eat it too.
xx,
Bella
P.S. — If you stuck around for this long, I have a treat for you! In addition to today being my 30th birthday, today is also Mindholiday’s first birthday! To celebrate, all Mindholiday paid subscriptions are 20% off through the weekend. Paid subscribers get access to special itineraries and maps, travel tips, and more. Enjoy!
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Beautifully written!!!! 🎂 HBD
such a beautiful piece! hoping you had the most amazing time, happy birthday!