Maybe Nobody Actually “Arrives” (And Maybe Growing Up Is a Second Adulthood)
I scrolled LinkedIn this week and saw an engineering job I could easily apply for.
My chest got heavy.
Not anxious — heavy.
Because I could feel what that path would cost.
It would take me off the school pick-up line. It would place me inside fluorescent lighting in someone else’s building. A 9–5 that looks logical on paper, but would flatten my actual life. I can still do that work — I just no longer feel like that version of me fits the shape of my life now.
I’ve spent my whole adulthood inside roles that revolved around a family system — engineer, wife, stay-at-home mom — and those years were very meaningful. I wouldn’t trade those years at home with my children for anything in the world. But in the mix, my own voice sometimes faded into the background to the point of wondering who I was when it was just me.
The Strange Suspended Middle
Divorce didn’t just end a marriage — it ended an identity era.
I became a woman who suddenly had to define herself without the role that once validated her.
And now I’m 48 and asking a question I thought only 25-year-olds asked:
Who am I when I’m not defined in relation to anyone else?
No one prepares you for the way “adulthood” happens twice in a lifetime.
Tiny Compromises
I noticed the old pattern again recently.
I wrote a text to someone I dated for awhile after divorce — and I deleted it.
In the past, I would have sent it.
Not because it was what I wanted to say — but because I was still bending myself one degree at a time to stay accommodating.
This time I felt the flinch.
And I didn’t override it.
Maybe authenticity is what happens every time we stop abandoning the smallest signals.
Choosing the Path That Costs Less of Me
I became a certified integrative health coach because I care deeply about real wellness — managing stress, nourishing my body with real food, honoring sleep, supporting longevity and health span, and building nurturing connections. These are the things that make me feel truly alive, and I want to help others experience that same sense of health and wholeness.
Starting a business feels uncertain.
Engineering would be safer on paper.
But this is the math I can’t ignore anymore:
a high salary + a hollow life is not success.
The “secure choice” is only secure if it doesn’t require self-betrayal.
What If “Figuring It Out” Was Never the Point
Maybe nobody actually arrives.
Maybe mature adulthood isn’t clarity — it’s self-honesty.
Maybe the point isn’t to finally have all the answers.
Maybe the point is to keep listening — and to stop compromising the moment you feel yourself disappearing.
Maybe adulthood isn’t a single reinvention…maybe it’s the ongoing willingness to update who we are as we become her.
What if this — this messy becoming — is what alignment looks like?
Find this article and others I’ve written on Medium: https://medium.com/@januarydayton/maybe-nobody-actually-arrives-and-maybe-growing-up-is-a-second-adulthood-6d18a7ad9fc8
