Baby Ruby is now 3.5 months old. I have 8 more weeks of my official maternity leave. (However, I give myself total permission to ease back into my new version of work because I don’t believe you can come back after birth the same, and therefore the old ways of doing things will likely not work, either.)

Last night Mike showed me a picture of the two of us taken when we’d first fallen in love.

“We look like children!” I said.

I hadn’t realized how 7 years had made its mark on my face until I saw the evidence in a photo. We’ve been together 7 years now, married for 4, and have 2 beautiful girls. Our life together was just a dream when that photo was taken.

A friend who I haven’t seen since our wedding messaged me the other day and said that motherhood looked good on me. I responded with a thank-you and threw in that it had come with a lot more wrinkles, 15 extra pounds, and a lot more grey hair, but a way bigger heart.

She responded, “I’d take those. That’s living.”

On our anniversary a couple of weeks ago, Mike and I looked at each other and agreed that we both still feel like kids. But with kids of our own and a mortgage and payroll. We do very adult things every day while being very young at heart.

May we all live life with the innocence and hope of a twenty-something but with the wisdom that only comes from accumulating wrinkles and grey hair. 

And with that, I’m sharing a note I wrote to myself sometime in 2011, the year Mike and I fell in love and took the picture above in which we look like children.

I found it and got my editing pencil ready, prepared to need to make lots of changes to the “wisdom” of my 27-year-old self. But I only changed two sentences slightly and added three more. (They’re asterisked in case you’re curious which ones.)

Here’s to knowing what you know and living accordingly, no matter how old or young you are.

Here’s what I know:

• Doing something for the money never ends up being worth it.
• If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.
• You are valuable because you exist. Period. (Or, full stop if you’re British.)
• You are enough. You always have been. You always will be.
• Your place of greatest ease and joy will also be your place of greatest service.
• It’s okay to sleep for ten hours or more a night every night or as often as you want to/can. Sleep can be a spiritual practice. (It’s mine!)*
• No accomplishment or moment of recognition will ever replace feeling loved, by yourself or anyone else.
• It’s not going to turn out the way you thought. It will be better.
• You know. You always know.
• A system that doesn’t work for everyone doesn’t work for anyone, in the end.*
• Organizing your life around what feels good is the single wisest choice you can make.
• There is always going to be a small part of you that wants to please your mother, even if you’re not conscious of it, and that’s okay.
• Saying yes to someone simply because you don’t want to disappoint them is not only unfair to you, it’s unfair to them.
• Sleep, water, movement, greens, and a good cry make nearly everything better (at least a little bit).*
• Anything worth taking seriously is worth making fun of.
• Paying attention to your money is a profound act of self-love.
• It turns out that life is happening right now. Don’t postpone your joy.
• Loving yourself more is the best place to start to solve any problem.
• Staying silent about the things you see that are wrong about the world is complicity.*
• You can’t judge and have an open heart at the same time.
• Nothing is random. Everything happens for a reason.
• Your body is wise beyond what you could possibly imagine. Listen to her. She will lead you home every time.
• Home is not a place.
• What you do and who you are matters.*

OVER TO YOU:

What do you know for sure? Which one of the things I know resonates with you the most? Tell me in the comments!

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