10 Things I’ve Learned Since Turning 30

On friendships, womanhood, and finally reclaiming my life for myself

A few days ago, I reached the privileged age of 33 years old, and I mean this with my whole chest: so far my thirties have been my favourite years of my life.

I know that’s not what we’re supposed to say. As young people, we’re handed a baton in the shape of quiet cultural dread about leaving our twenties; as if something expires, as if the best is somehow behind us. But thats just not true. Since turning 30, I have traveled more boldly, loved more freely, shed beliefs that were never mine to begin with, and slowly, steadily, grown into a woman I actually know and most importantly, love.

The twenties were for figuring out who I was. The thirties? The thirties are for being her. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way.

1. The friendships that survive your growth are the ones worth celebrating.

Something beautiful happens to your friendships in your thirties. The superficial ones quietly (okay, sometimes loudly) fall away, and what you’re left with is gold. I have a smaller circle now than I did at 25, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. These are the people who have seen me change, cheered me on anyway, and loved me through every version of myself. Thirties friendships have a depth to them that I didn’t know was possible. Less performance, more presence. Less catching up, more showing up. Sisterhoods and chosen family vibes.

2. Grief over lost friendships is real, and so is the joy of what replaces it.

Growing apart from people you once loved isn’t easy, but I’ve come to see it as part of a larger, generous process. Every friendship that ran its course made space for something truer. The connections I have now feel chosen in a way that my younger friendships didn’t — and there’s something quietly powerful about that. You realize the right people have a way of finding you, especially once you’re more fully yourself.

3. Traveling alone changed my life.

I took my first solo trip in my early thirties and I will spend the rest of my life chasing that feeling. There is something that happens when you navigate a new city entirely on your own terms; when you linger over lunch because you want to, when you change your plans on a whim, when you realise that your own company is genuinely, surprisingly good. Solo travel didn’t just give me stamps in my passport. It gave me a quiet, unshakeable confidence I carry everywhere now.

4. Living abroad expanded my whole world. It was expansion of every part of me.

Living in another country rearranged something fundamental in me. It showed me that so much of what I thought was simply life was actually just one version of it; one culture, one set of rhythms, one way of moving through the world. That revelation was a joyful reckoning, not disorienting. It opened the door of my castle into a vast garden filled with life and endless beauty. It made me more curious, more adaptable, more open. It made the world feel bigger and, somehow, more like home. It was a welcoming back to humanity. I am a different and better person because of it.

5. Womanhood is mine to define, and I’ve started to enjoy that.

In my twenties, I spent a lot of energy trying to fit a version of womanhood that didn’t quite fit me. In my thirties, I stopped. I started asking what I actually wanted. How do I want to dress, speak, take up space, spend my time; and it turns out that when you remove the noise, your own instincts are pretty good. I feel more like a woman now than I ever did when I was trying so hard to be one. There’s something delicious about that.

6. My body and I finally called a truce and started becoming friends.

I wasted so much energy in my twenties being at odds with my body. These days, I’m just grateful. Grateful for what it carries me through, what it lets me feel, where it takes me. That shift from criticism to appreciation, didn’t come from a wellness trend or a revelation. It came slowly, through living. Through realizing that the body I kept waiting to “fix” was the one doing all the living in the meantime.

7. Inherited beliefs are not destiny.

One of the great gifts of my thirties has been realizing that not everything I believe was consciously chosen. Some of it was handed to me by my parents or grandparents, ideas about what success looks like, marriage, motherhood, what women should want, religion, how much I’m allowed to ask for. Gently questioning those inherited beliefs hasn’t shaken my identity; it’s clarified it. Letting go of what was never really mine made room for what actually is. A new way of living that triggers the unconscious around me at times.

8. Rest is something I’ve learned to love without guilt.

I used to treat rest as something to earn. Now I treat it as something to protect. There’s a version of my younger self who would have filled every free hour with productivity, who would have felt guilty for an afternoon doing nothing. I genuinely feel sorry for her. Rest has made me more creative, more present, more joyful. It turns out doing less is sometimes the most generous thing you can do for yourself.

9. Joy is not frivolous, it’s absolutely essential, and I’ve gone looking for it.

Somewhere in my thirties I gave myself permission to care about joy again. Not happiness as a destination, but delight as a daily practice. Dancing in my kitchen. Spontaneous day trips. Long dinners that stretch into the evening. Books read purely for pleasure. None of it is productive in the typical sense but all of it is necessary. Reclaiming joy has been one of the most quietly radical things I’ve done. I follow my joy closely every day and I guides me faithfully.

10. I finally, genuinely love who I am and who I am becoming.

This is the one I’m most proud of. Not in an arrived, finished way; I’m still growing, still curious, still surprising myself. But there is a settledness now that I spent my entire twenties searching for. I feel like myself in a way I couldn’t have articulated before I got here. Less performance, less apology, less waiting to become. I am already her and she keeps getting better.

If you’re dreading turning 30, I want you to hear this: the version of you that’s coming is someone worth meeting.