My 35th Birthday Was This Week

For my 35th birthday, my partner, Lauren took me to make my own perfume, and it was honestly one of the best days I've had in a really long time. We sat at this little counter with rows of tiny glass bottles, smelling everything and arguing over which notes were too much, and we laughed so hard I had to put the blotter strips down more than once. Then we walked out and galavanted around town like we had nowhere to be, and for once we really didn't.

Somewhere in the middle of that day it hit me that I'd just spent an afternoon choosing exactly what I wanted to carry with me, and nobody was telling me I'd gotten it wrong. A good scent walks into a room before anyone says a word, and people feel it before they can even name it. That's how I want to live now. Like perfume, I want my energy to be what is felt when I walk into a room.

There were years I didn't think I'd even make it to 30, let alone 35. At 25, I was right in the middle of the years I ended up writing a whole book about, and that book is out in the world now, which still feels a little strange to say out loud. The subtitle of Addicted to Trauma is The Patterns That Almost Killed Me, and I didn't choose the word "almost" lightly. So this birthday felt different, like it was something I'd actually earned.

I've been thinking all week about what I'd say to my 25-year-old self if I could sit across from her for an hour, and this is what I've learned:

1. The storm was never my fault.

When I was a kid, storms didn't scare me the way they scared other kids, and for a long time I thought that meant I was brave. What it really meant was that I'd already learned how to live inside bad weather, and I'd gotten so used to watching for the next thing that a thunderstorm didn't even register as a big deal. I built my alarm system early, and it worked really well for a long time. It made me a good nurse on a cardiac step-down floor, where I could read a monitor and a room at the same time and catch the patient who was about to go south before anyone else noticed. It also kept me on guard for about twenty years, in relationships and at home and pretty much everywhere else. At 25, I honestly thought that was just who I was, like it was a personality trait. What I've learned is that it was something I picked up to survive, and anything I learned I can slowly unlearn, and none of it was ever my fault to begin with.

2. I couldn't outrun my body.

I spent a lot of my life chasing things outside of myself, whether it was the next substance or the next person or the next crisis or the next shift, and I never felt content with any of it, so I just kept moving. I called it ambition, and I think a lot of people would have called it that too, because from the outside it looked like I was always busy and always doing something. The body keeps a tab, though, and eventually it comes due whether we're ready or not. For me it showed up as exhaustion I couldn't sleep off, a fog I couldn't think my way through, and a tightness in my chest that I kept brushing off as stress. I was the nurse who could spot every warning sign in a patient and ignore every single one in myself, until I became my own patient. I really wish I'd known sooner that my body wasn't betraying me. It was trying to tell me the truth, and I just wasn't ready to listen yet.

3. Tears aren't evidence against us.

"Here come the waterworks." Someone I cared about used to say that every time I cried, and I learned pretty quickly to swallow it and hold it in, because crying started to feel like I was proving something bad about myself. I got really, really good at not crying, and it cost me a lot more than I realized at the time, because all of that feeling had to go somewhere and a lot of it went into my body. Now I cry at weddings and podcasts and sometimes in the middle of the grocery store, and I just let it be what it is. I don't apologize for it anymore, and I don't see it as weakness. The way I think about it now is that crying is just my nervous system finishing a sentence it was never allowed to finish before.

4. Recovery isn't a finish line.

At 25 I thought healing was something I'd eventually complete, kind of like a certification, where I'd do the program and get the paper and then be done and move on with my life. Recovery has turned out to be so much more like a practice, something I keep coming back to over and over, in the good seasons and the really hard ones. There were years I felt steady and proud of where I was, and there were years I had to start all over again and felt so much shame about it. What I've learned is that every single time I came back counted, and starting again never erased the progress that came before it. I wasn't back at zero. I was just back, and that's a completely different thing.

We are not broken. We are patterned. And patterns can change.

I believe that with my whole chest, because I've watched it happen in my own life, and I get to watch it happen every week in the people I work with.

5. Rest and help are part of the work.

Nursing taught me to push through twelve-hour shifts without sitting down, and trauma taught me that being still meant something bad was about to happen, so when I put those two together I ended up as someone who couldn't take a nap without feeling guilty about it. Asking for help felt the same way. For years my support was kind of a patchwork, a therapist here and a group there and a few meetings and a friend who'd pick up the phone at the right moment, and I used to feel embarrassed that it wasn't some clean, impressive plan I could point to. Looking back now, that patchwork is what held me together. I've learned that rest isn't something I have to earn, and asking for help isn't me failing at doing it on my own. Both of those are just part of being a person, and I'm still practicing them.

6. I let my actions do the talking.

In my younger years, I talked a lot. I explained myself constantly, defended myself even when nobody was really attacking me, and announced what I was going to do long before I ever did it, almost like I needed everyone to believe in it before I could believe in it myself. Over the last ten years, I've become quieter, allowing my actions to speak for me instead of my words. I don't feel like I need to convince anyone of who I am anymore, and honestly there's so much peace in that. I'd rather just show up as myself, day after day, and let the way I live be what people notice. That's the energy I want people to feel when I walk in, the same way they'd notice a scent before I ever open my mouth.

7. Dreams don't come true without daily habits.

I spent a lot of my 20s "dreaming" of the life I wanted for myself without really taking much action to make it happen. I had big plans and vision boards and a whole lot of someday, and I think part of me believed that if I wanted something badly enough it would just eventually show up. What I've learned is that dreams are great to have, but they don't come true unless we work towards them every day with our daily habits. My book didn't get written in one inspired weekend. It got written in small, unglamorous sessions, a little at a time, over and over, on days I felt like it and a lot of days I really didn't, until one day it just existed. Everything I've built since then has worked the same way.

8. Our thoughts shape our habits, and we have more power than we think.

The habits we engage in every day are what our whole life becomes, and the beautiful thing (or scary thing) is that our habits are directly correlated to our thoughts. When I remember that, I realize I have more power than I once thought. I can't necessarily control all my thoughts, and I've stopped expecting myself to, but I can sit with them now, look at them without attachment, and redirect them if they aren't serving my highest good. My 25-year-old self believed pretty much every thought that came into her head, especially the mean ones. It took me a long time to learn that not all of my thoughts are true. Sometimes they're just a story I've been telling myself for years, and I actually get to write a new one.

9. Love DOES overcome trauma.

A few weeks ago I stood next to my sister as her maid of honor, and it was one of the most beautiful nights I've ever been part of. There were friends from every stage of her life and every generation out on the dance floor together, and for one night the past just wasn't the point. Everyone was there to celebrate two people who fell in love, and that was the focus. This year I also moved in with Lauren, after living alone my entire adult life, and letting someone see the ordinary, unfiltered version of me every day has been its own kind of recovery. At 25, I would've told you love was the thing that hurt me most. Now I've watched it heal people, and I've felt it heal me.

10. Joy counts as healing too.

For a long time I thought healing only happened in therapy rooms and journals and really hard conversations, and those places are a big part of it, but some of it happens at a perfume counter, laughing with the person I love and wandering around town with nowhere to be. Joy used to feel unsafe to me, like if I enjoyed something too much it would get taken away, so I kept it at a distance just in case. Now I let it in on purpose, and I'm slowly teaching my nervous system that good days are allowed to stay.

Whether we're 25 or 45 or any age at all, some of us are in a year right now where we aren't sure we'll make it to the next one. I know that year, and I lived a few of them. We get to still be here, and we get to write the next chapter slowly and messily and in our own words, one small habit at a time.

I've been wearing my new scent all week. It's a little bit of everything I chose on purpose, and to me it smells like 35. I hope that's what people feel when I walk into a room: calm, warm, and fully here. I'm so glad I made it to this point in my life and I'm grateful for the journey.

With love,

Carrie