Journey to Well

Reflections on 31 | Birthday Solo Pod

• Hannah • Season 2 • Episode 18

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Turning 31 marks a profound homecoming to myself that I never expected. Last August, I recorded my 30th birthday episode while processing grief over unrealized expectations. Now, just one year later, everything has shifted internally, though outwardly my life might look similar.

What remains beautifully constant are my people—the friends and family who have been my true home when physical spaces felt unstable. They've shown me what unconditional love looks like, celebrating me in my highest moments and supporting me through my darkest times. Their acceptance has taught me to accept myself. As I've grown more comfortable in my own skin, I've stopped collecting opinions from people who don't matter and stopped shape-shifting for rooms that were too small anyway.

My birthday wish for you is simple yet profound: may you find people who love you so deeply that it teaches you to love yourself just as powerfully. And if you're currently feeling untethered, remember that not everything lasts forever. You'll find your way home too. The beauty of this journey is watching everything shift, including ourselves, until one day we realize we're exactly where we need to be.

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be well, my friend
xx Hannah

Speaker 1:

31. Not a milestone by numbers, but damn if it doesn't feel like one, because this time last year I was still stitching myself back together again with a thread made of maybe buttons, of not yet a hemline, that didn't quite fit the shape of who I was becoming. But now, now I wear my skin like it was made for me, because it was. I'm 31 today and I am finally home, not just the roof kind, not just four walls and the color I chose for the living room. I mean the deep cellular bones, sigh and relief kind of home, the kind where my breath doesn't apologize and my laugh takes up the space it wants. The kind where my breath doesn't apologize and my laugh takes up the space it wants. Where silence is sacred, not scary, where I don't second guess my reflection or the way I show up in a room when I walk in and my soul says we belong here. This is the year I stopped shape-shifting for rooms that were too small for me anyway, stopped shrinking so others could feel tall. I care, but only where it counts, only for the ones who know my heart, in full color, not just the highlight reel. I stopped collecting opinions like souvenirs from people who don't even send postcards back. I used to carry the weight of being misunderstood like it was my fault. Now I let it slide off like rain, blessing the earth but not soaking me anymore. Let them misunderstand, let them wonder. I've got better things to tend to like joy, like quiet mornings with coffee and no chaos, like conversations that feel like soul mirrors, like finally knowing what enough feels like 31. And I feel soft again, not fragile, but gentle in my power. I feel rooted, like the soil knows my name, and I'm no longer searching for somewhere to land. Today I don't need balloons or a banner, I don't need the loud to prove I'm alive because peace. Peace is loud in its own way. It hums in the background like a song I forgot, I loved, and I'm dancing to it now, barefoot and unbothered. So here's to this year to me that bloomed in private, that healed without applause, that chose herself over and over again until choosing became second nature. 31 and I am home in every sense of the word, and I'm not going anywhere. All right, welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well.

Speaker 1:

That was written by chat gbt and I didn't actually read it before I hit record. So, uh, your girl got a little caught off guard a little emotional halfway through. I gave it specific prompts and, um, I asked wild to have these milestones to reflect on my life, where I've come from and what happened witness versions of Hannah. And last year I didn't go back and listen to the podcast I really should, because I did record a 30th birthday podcast episode and I remember exactly where I was sitting. I remember recording the episode. I do remember what I talked about. I just didn't. I didn't listen to it, so I don't recall every single thing that I talked about. But I was in New Jersey.

Speaker 1:

August was a wild month for me last year. I was working in New Jersey and then New York and then I drove home and I think, like three days later, my best friends came and we drove to my family's lake house and celebrated with them. And I mean, if you know me, you know that I'm a Leo and I celebrate all month long regardless. But last year, I mean, it was a big milestone too, so I tried to make it as big and celebratory as I could and it was perfect. I loved my birthday.

Speaker 1:

But I do remember the podcast episode that I recorded was mostly sharing about all of the grief that I was moving through 30 is a huge milestone. Grief that I was moving through 30 is a huge milestone, and I was really working through releasing all of these expectations that I had and all of the plans that I thought were going to come to fruition by the time I was 30. It's not a surprise, it's not a secret. I think I've probably shared this with everyone in my life but I want to be a mom, I want to have a family. When I was little, my people, people would ask me like what do you want to be? When you grew up, hannah? And I would always say I want to be a mom. And I did, I do, I still do, and really grieving oh my God, I'm 30. I still do. And really grieving oh my God, I'm 30. Now I'm 31.

Speaker 1:

But it's so wild to feel viscerally the difference in my body, in my mindset, in my life outlook. Somewhere over this past year I released all expectations. I know that I'm going to get married. I know that I'm going to find my person. I know that I'm going to have a kid I don't need to know when and I'm okay with not knowing when and truly I have not felt more at home, more at peace, more rooted, more grounded than I do right now in this season of my life, and I think I said this in the last solo podcast episode. But maybe outwardly, my summer doesn't look that different. Maybe outwardly my life doesn't look that different, but so much has changed inwardly and it's a really, really, really beautiful place to be.

Speaker 1:

I assume this just keeps getting better and better the older you get. I mean every person that I've met. They're like just wait till your 40s. You care, you give even less bucks, just wait till your 50s, wait till your 60s. And part of that, part of that spoken word that I really wanted to touch on was not caring what other people think, and even I mean even just my birthday, even reflecting, like I, when you're little, when you're young, you want to hop on Facebook and hop on your phone and how many people said happy birthday to me and how many people are wishing me well, and you want all of that external validation. You crave it and not that it's not nice, right, like we all love a compliment and I love giving compliments. I love getting compliments all of I don't crave it anymore and what I really crave is love and affirmation from the people that I love, from the people that I affirm, from my people. I care about the opinions of my mom and my sister and my best friends and I really don't care about the opinions of people that don't even know me anyway. And that is a really wild. I mean, I don't even know that I have the correct verbiage to convey, because I feel like these are all very cliche things to say but to actually experience it viscerally in your body, other level, so 31, I do.

Speaker 1:

I finally feel home. I was sharing with my family this past week, week and a half we went to my family's lake house, like I did for my birthday last year, and I was packing and getting ready and I just felt myself kind of like dragging, like found what I eventually figured out was like I don't really know that, like I want to go and I do want to go. I mean I did want to go and I and I had such a fun time. My, my stepsisters came, my family was all together and like that's really important. Family is the most important thing to me.

Speaker 1:

So I did want to go, but what I figured out was for years, for the past, like four or five years I have wanted to be anywhere, but where my head was laying at night I did not feel like I was at home. I didn't feel that I was at home with people that I was with, with partners that I was with. I didn't feel that I was home just with the house that I was in, like for whatever reason. There was just misalignment and it was probably very much where I was just at in my life too. It's not blaming like locations or people or or whatever, or circumstances, it's just that amalgam, amalgamation is that a word? Amalgamation, culmination, either way, either way. So I had this moment, this realization, where I was like, oh my gosh, actually I love my life right now. I want to be exactly where I am, and I haven't felt this way in a long time.

Speaker 1:

And if you are listening to this and you feel this of not feeling fully at home, whether it's fully at home in your body, maybe you just had a baby and you feel like your body is foreign to you. Maybe you just moved and so you don't feel at home yet in your town. Maybe you just got in or out of a relationship and you feel kind of unstable and unsteady Let this be your reminder that not everything lasts forever, and let this be your reminder that not everything lasts forever and it will shift. Everything shifts. We were supposed to go up to Maine for my birthday again with my best friends and I decided you know what, let's just stay. Let's just stay home. My hometown is bomb.

Speaker 1:

I never thought I would say that I moved away in college for college because I didn't like the cold and I was like I don't want to stay in New Hampshire. And here I am back and feeling more comfortable and more in love with it than I ever have before. But we're going to stay and we're going to do little day celebrations, truly what matters the most to me, and, as I was thinking about recording this podcast, this is really what I want to nail home For me. Maybe this isn't the same for every person, although I would argue that it could be or it is, but I digress it's the people you choose to surround yourself with you choose to surround yourself with. So much has changed in my life in the past year, and the one thing that looks exactly the same with my 30th birthday and my 31st birthday celebration is I'm celebrating with the people that are my home and I made the best new friend this year, so there's new faces to actually. But I've made more relationships and I've deepened my relationships with the OG, best friends and family members, but it's your friends, it's your relationships that make all of the difference. People have always been my home, especially over the past few years where my physical locations haven't felt safe or stable or like home to me. It's been my people, my tribe, that have been my home and that's what hasn't shifted at all. It's actually grown and expanded, but it hasn't changed. My people are my home.

Speaker 1:

I read this. I actually I was listening to this reel on Instagram the other day and it was like this big poem about how important it is to keep your friends, even after you get married. It was like this poem that someone read to their like the maid of honor read to the bride on her wedding day or something like that, and she was saying your partner is great, your husband is great and now that you're a wife, you have all of these new responsibilities and all of this excitement. But keep your friends. Make sure that you keep your friends, because your friends are going to be the ones that show up in the darkest of times. Your friends are going to be the one that show up when your baby is crying and it won't stop and you feel like you're falling apart. Your friends are going to be the ones that show up when you switch jobs or when you lose your job and you feel like your world is ending. Your friends are going to be the ones that show up when they're here to celebrate when something good happens. Your friends are going to be the ones that celebrate you the hardest and the loudest and cheer you on on every single step of your life the hardest and the loudest, and cheer you on on every single step of your life, and without getting too emotional, although you know that I love, I love crying, but my people, my friends, that's that's the most humbling experience of a lifetime is to be loved by them and to be celebrated by them and to be accepted by them, and I hope that you find people like that.

Speaker 1:

That's my I don't know birthday wish. My birthday wish is that I hope that you find people that love you so deeply that they accept you so powerfully that it invites you to love yourself even as deeply, that it invites you to accept yourself as deeply and as powerfully, and that's really what my best friends have taught me. That's really what they have shown me. I have this tattoo. It says on my forearm and it says the beauty of grace is and that's part of that message the beauty of grace is the people show up for you. That people show up for you exactly when you need them, and it's the most humbling thing to go through situations in your life where you feel like you can't reciprocate.

Speaker 1:

I'm a very reciprocal person, so if somebody does something for me, I want to do something for them. If somebody compliments me, I'm going to compliment them. If somebody buys me something, I want to buy them something right, like maybe not right back, but that's. That's kind of this. I guess the life that we live in too like the world that we live in, and it's the most humbling thing to just accept, just accept their love. Yeah, I hope you find that someday.

Speaker 1:

That is my birthday wish to all of you Hold your friends close, hold your family members if your family members are your friends. I know not everyone's life situation is exactly like mine, but my family members are my best friends as well, so hold them close. This is such a celebratory 31st birthday and it's not a huge milestone like the poem at the beginning, it's just 31, but in a lot of ways it feels like the beginning of something big. So I love you all. Thank you so much for being on this journey with me. You humble me, you light me up, you make me smile. When I get DMs, when I get messages, when I hear responses of this really shifted something in me, or I loved this guest that you had on. I truly, truly love and am humbled by this community that we are building together, this tribe that we are building together. So much love to you all. Happy Leo season, be well.