Hello and welcome to or welcome back to Trinity Care.
If you're listening to this episode in real time, when it drops, my birthday is this upcoming weekend.
It's April 4th.
I'm an Aries baby and it's actually my last year in my 20s.
I'm turning 29.
And as exciting as that is, birthdays for me have always been hard, or at least hard for me when I got into like high school college, because there's a lot of loneliness that comes with your birthday.
Expectations that aren't met, wanting to celebrate by having someone to celebrate with.
And then, of course, the fear of getting older.
Like a lot of people, I had quite the crash out when I turned 25.
I had the great 25-year crash out, my quarter-life crisis, because a lot of my value or how i valued myself was linked to my beauty, but specifically my youth.
So when i realized i only had five more years until i turned 30, i felt this sense of impending doom.
Society puts so much pressure on aging, specifically on women, and makes us feel as if once you hit 30, you're chopped.
And you think it's just men saying these things or these are just expectations that we grew up with, but no one actually thinks that now.
But then you see these comments on social media where it's like you have a disagreement with someone and they use you're pushing 30 as an insult, as if 30 is ancient or 30 is bad.
And I really got sucked into that discourse and spent the majority of my 20s being afraid of inching closer to 30.
I remember on my 25th birthday, I was getting ready to post a photo for my birthday photo shoot.
And I had so much anxiety doing it because I was like, oh my God, people are going to know, people are going to know I'm 25 and they're going to look at me like I'm spoiled milk.
I was genuinely so scared and ashamed that I was 25, which is so ridiculous to look back on now, but that's truly how I felt.
But then when I turned 26, Something inside my brain flipped.
25 is such a big milestone to hit.
There's a lot of fear and anxiety building up to it.
But then once it happens, once you turn 25, it's like, okay, it happened.
I'm fine.
I'm not getting any younger.
So why fixate on the age that I once was when I'm not that anymore?
My mindset around aging has changed so much since my early 20s, and that's what I want to talk about today, because I know that this is an anxiety or a fear that so many women struggle with.
I know I'm not the only 20-something who has felt like an expiration date is approaching due to society's pressures and expectations of what beauty is or what is deemed valuable.
We're going to talk about the pressure to stay young and sexy, society's pressure to make people, especially women, feel bad about aging.
The difference in mindset from my early 20s to later 20s romanticizing your youth and then confidence with age.
I really want you to leave this episode feeling relieved or even excited to get older.
You might not even be in your 20s, but I think that this episode can be so helpful, especially if you're in your teens or if you're in middle school.
I wish this was a conversation I had earlier on.
I wish I had someone telling me that there's so much to look forward to and life doesn't end in your 20s.
I wish I had someone telling me that a number doesn't define you.
Even if you're older than 30, I hope that this episode helps you.
I hope that you're still able to take something away from this 29-year-old and just feel more confident in yourself at any age.
So with all that being said, let's get into today's episode.
Being a woman in general is so demanding.
We have so many expectations put on us.
And even when we are performing at the highest degree, it's still not good enough.
We do the most and we get the least appreciation.
On top of being expected to be excellent, we also have these extremely unrealistic and unattainable societal norms to appear perfect and to appear attractive.
But the scale of attractiveness depends on what stage of life you're in.
When we're younger, we're being told that older is more attractive.
Being mature is more attractive.
So when you're in middle school and you're in high school, you're doing everything that you can to appear older, because you want people to like you.
You want people to think you're attractive.
So you're wearing push-up bras.
You're stuffing your bra.
You're wearing loads of makeup.
You're dyeing your hair.
You're wearing clothing that makes you look older because older is sexier.
Mature is sexier.
But then when you get to the age that you're trying to portray yourself as, you're being told that younger is sexier.
Now you're being told that aging is bad.
You're finally at the age that you've always wanted to be 30, flirty and thriving.
And you're being told that your life ends after your 20s.
You see people commenting on a woman's TikTok who's 30.
Oh my God, you look so good for 30.
As if you're supposed to look bad at 30.
As if you're attractive in your 30s.
You're an anomaly, especially now with social media.
It just amplifies this idea that beauty equals youthfulness, which means no wrinkles, no fine lines, no dark spots, no signs of imperfection.
I think people literally forget what a natural face looks like.
And I don't even mean that in a shady way.
I'm not against people getting work done.
I think, if cosmetic procedures make you feel more confident, it is absolutely your body, your choice.
But I do think it'd be ignorant to ignore the reason so many women feel the need to get work done is due to the pressures from society to look younger.
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And now if you don't have filler or Botox, you know, you decide to age naturally, people are looking at you like there's something wrong with you and like you're 29 going on 89.
It's almost as if the standard for people has become a flawless, youthful face.
It's like if you have any signs of aging, people are pointing it out and are recommending you get treatments done.
They're giving you advice.
They're asking you why you don't want to get Botox.
And they're acting as if you should be hiding signs of life, like you should be ashamed of having smile lines or forehead wrinkles.
All things that develop naturally from living life.
I am a very expressive person.
I'm always laughing.
I'm always talking.
I move my face a lot.
Been doing it for 29 years.
So yeah, duh.
There's going to be signs of that.
But...
What I find infuriating is how society perceives men aging.
Women in their 30s are looked at like it's time to be put into a retirement home because we're just old and washed up, whereas men get one gray hair and everyone's gushing over them, calling them a silver fox.
Society wants to make it seem like women's value with age decreases and men's just increase.
Men just get more fine with age.
And I'm not arguing that men don't get fine with age.
I know Josh is going to be a fine silver fox, but women...
Women get fine with age.
Women are beautiful.
And it's criminal to think that we've been conditioned to believe that our best ends in our 20s.
Like we've only lived 20, 30 years.
10 of those years, we were literal babies.
And you want me to believe the best has come?
I've done all that I can do.
I'm as beautiful as I'll ever be.
That is insane propaganda to just put women down more than society already has.
I mean, obviously, I haven't always felt this way.
It wasn't until the last few years where I felt more comfortable with my age or the idea of aging, and have become more confident.
When I was younger, when I was in my teens, in my early 20s, I was so obsessed with my appearance.
So much of my value was determined by external validation, specifically male validation.
I really, really gave in to the male gaze.
I was super focused on how my body looked, how clothing looked on me, rather than wearing clothing that I thought was cute.
I was wearing clothing that complimented and emphasized the shape of my body.
I never wanted to leave the house without wearing makeup.
I would never consider chopping off my long hair, especially in high school.
And I was just so fixated on looking sexy and wanting to be wanted by men.
So much of my attention was going towards what are things I can do to make myself more attractive?
I'd look to models and celebrities and try to replicate their looks and their sex appeal.
Or I just, you know, use them as inspo.
My whole Instagram feed was filled with thinspo and hot models.
And not only would I take inspo from them, but I'd also compare myself to them and where I fell short, what I was lacking and what I had to work on.
When I was in high school, I had no plan of going to college.
Going into my junior year, my senior year, I wasn't like okay, I'm going to work really hard because I want to get into this school.
I had no intention of going to college because one, that wasn't something my parents cared about.
They never drilled that into me.
But two, my attention was on boys, being hot, being skinny, and having fun.
And then in my early 20s, obviously Josh and I started dating, so my focus was no longer on boys, but it was still on
Being the most attractive I can be.
How can I be skinnier?
How can I look prettier?
How can I have that it factor?
Where your attention is, your energy goes.
If all you care about is your image or what people think about you physically, that's where your priorities will lie and your insecurities will develop.
If all you care about is looking traditionally sexy, which means looking young, of course, as you get older, you're going to feel less valuable because you're not going to look the way you did when you were 18.
You're not going to look the way you did at 23, which is normal.
You're not supposed to look that age forever.
But because you don't, you think there's something wrong with you.
You think you're not beautiful anymore.
You think you're good for nothing.
If I kept that same mindset that I did when I was in my early 20s, I would be extremely miserable and extremely insecure now.
And that's not something I'm interested in being or entertaining.
My mindset around beauty, around aging, around life in general has changed so much.
Of course I still want to look hot.
I'm not saying that I just threw in the towel and I said f-serving face, f-serving looks.
I still eat let's be real now but It's not at the top of my priorities anymore.
What really matters to me now is growing as an individual, experiencing life to the fullest, working on my goals, paying attention to my interests, taking care of my body, taking care of my mental health, building genuine and real connections.
That's where my focus is now.
So when I do look to others, I'm not looking at their body.
I'm not studying their face.
I'm not trying to create a plan on how to look like them or be as desirable as them.
When I look at others now, I'm more interested in their creativity, their drive, their kindness, their intelligence.
My Instagram and TikTok feed isn't filled with just people who look hot or people who are skinny.
It's things that I actually care about.
It's music.
It's food.
It's art.
It's uplifting or important conversations.
It's what's going on in the world right now.
Because that is where my attention is now.
Being young and hot is the least interesting thing you can be.
And that's the major switch that I've had.
If all you can say is I'm attractive, that's my only asset, I'm doing something wrong.
I used to look at older women and I was so afraid of growing older, because all I could see when I looked at them was their more developed skin, their gray hair, the fact that their body looked like a 60-year-old instead of a 20-year-old's body, and the realization of, oh my god, that's gonna be me one day, that's what I'm going to look like one day, scared the heck out of me.
I was so focused on.
I don't want to look like that that I was missing everything else that comes with aging.
Now when I look to older women, I see how wise they are.
I see how intelligent they are.
I see how much life they've lived.
I see hope.
I see privilege.
It is a privilege to be able to get older.
I used to fear getting older because I thought it meant losing parts of you, but the reality is you get to find more parts of you and also you get to nurture past versions of you.
You get to live more.
You get to spend more time doing all the things that you already enjoy doing, like reading and dancing and experimenting with your style and hanging out with your friends and having a fun little drink.
And then you get to spend time discovering a million other things, a million new things that you love.
Getting older just means getting to do all the things that you already love doing, but doing it while knowing yourself a little bit more.
And that isn't scary.
That is something to look forward to.
I think one thing that made things click into place for me and made me stop spiraling over getting older was coming to terms with the fact that time is going to pass regardless.
So either I get on board and enjoy the journey of aging or fight it and miss out on so many years of joy and love and amazing opportunities.
When I turned 25, like I said, I was so scared of people knowing that I turned 25 because I thought I was so old.
But now, being 29, when I hear celebrities turning 25 or my mutuals on social media turning 25, turning 26, i'm like, oh my god, they're babies.
And i don't mean that in a diminishing way, i mean it as in oh my god, i was so young, i was a baby, but i thought i was so old, even just the years between 25 and 29.
I've grown so much.
I've learned so much.
I'm an entirely different person.
And now I feel so much older because 25 year old me just seems so young and immature compared to me now.
But I know in five years, I'm going to look back and think 29 year old me was so young.
The same thing happens with how we view past versions of ourself.
In the moment, we are so hard on ourselves.
We're constantly critiquing ourselves.
We're constantly pointing out our insecurities and our flaws.
We're constantly thinking that we're not pretty enough, we're not skinny enough.
And then you look back at old photos of yourself and old videos of yourself and you're like, Oh my God, like I was so skinny.
I was so hot.
What was I thinking?
It's like we're constantly reviewing past versions of ourselves and wishing that we saw than what we saw now, and we wish we knew then what we know now.
I wish i knew how young i was, i wish i knew how beautiful i was.
And that is not going to stop happening.
You're constantly going to be romanticizing old versions of you, especially as you get to a much older age.
30 year old, you is going to think 20 year old, you is a baby.
And 40 year old, you is going to look at 30 year old you and think they're so young.
When you're in your 50s, you're going to be reminiscing over your 40s, and when you're in your 60s, you're going to be kicking yourself, being like oh, I wish I realized how much time I had in my 50s, and so on.
It's going to continue to happen.
So there's no point in hating yourself now, and there's no point in trying to run from who you will become, because it's going to happen, no matter what.
You can't outrun aging.
So, instead of worrying about getting older, just enjoy where you're at now, because when you do get older, you're going to wish you were more present and more appreciative of the time you did have.
We're all fed this narrative that your 20s are the best years of your life.
So we all have these really high expectations for our 20s because everyone's saying it's the best time ever.
This is your time to go out and date and to travel, and to go out every weekend and to build your career.
But the reality is your 20s is kind of doing all of that but also failing at all of that, while also being broke and lost and confused and scared of your 30s approaching, because reaching 30 means looking back at your 20s and realizing that you didn't do everything that everyone's telling you that you should be doing in your 20s.
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Your 20s are kind of a mess, but you feel this pressure to stay in them and stay young, because you get told that everything goes to crap once it ends.
Like, imagine things being terrible and then everyone around you is like well, if you're not enjoying it right now, just wait, it's going to get so much worse.
I'm not even in my 30s yet.
And I already know that is a bunch of BS.
And you know how I know that?
People tell you that high school is the highlight of your life.
The most incredible four years.
And personally, high school was four long and horrendous years.
Four years I would never go back to.
I'm grateful for the journey that I've had throughout my 20s.
There are a lot of very good moments, and I wouldn't be where I am without those or without the hardships.
But I am so grateful to be so close to entering my 30s.
I am so ready for a new chapter of my life.
There was a time in my 20s where I definitely mourned the loss of my early 20s.
I think particularly because COVID happened when I was 22 turning 23.
So I felt like I lost that part of your 20s where you're meant to be going out and partying and being crazy.
But now being 29...
I am much happier in my later 20s than I ever was in my early 20s.
I struggled a lot in my early 20s with friendships, with my mental health, with school, with finances.
Like you're basically still a teenager just with a million more expectations of you.
And that's really, really hard.
Throughout my 20s, I've gone through a lot.
But I've also learned a lot, especially about myself.
And that's going to continue with age.
The older you get, the more secure and confident you become.
You become so much more sure of yourself.
And to me, That's sexy.
There is so much more to being sexy than your looks.
I mean, think about the most attractive person you know, drop dead gorgeous.
They check off every beauty standard.
If they're mean, if they're jealous, if they are a negative person.
That greatly affects how people view them and are attracted to them.
It is really hard to be sexy, to be attractive, if you have an ugly heart.
What I think is sexy is I think intelligence is sexy.
I think being hardworking and ambitious is sexy.
I think being kind-hearted is sexy.
I think having empathy for others is sexy.
I think having wisdom is sexy.
I think...
Being able to have a good time is sexy.
I think loving yourself and respecting yourself is sexy.
And I think knowing yourself and not allowing anyone's opinions of you to sway how you feel about yourself is so goddamn sexy.
But you know how you become all of those things?
With experience.
With time.
With age.
So many of us want to have everything figured out right now, have everything we want right now, but it's almost impossible to know what you want or how you want your life to be for sure, without giving yourself time.
If you asked me 10 years ago what I wanted, it would be some very surface level thing, something that I don't want at all for myself now.
If you asked me 10 years ago for advice regarding friendships or my thoughts on I don't know the state of the world, I would give you the worst advice and I would have no idea what's going on and I would have absolutely no stance.
If being young and sexy means being young and uneducated, or young and unexperienced, or young and unhappy, i don't want to be young and sexy.
I want to be constantly growing and learning and reinventing myself.
I want to be discovering what makes me happy, what makes me feel alive, what makes me feel fulfilled.
I want to spend more time with myself and i want to spend more time with my loved ones.
I just want more time.
It is a privilege to have more time.
When you're young and something bad happens, you think it's the end of the world.
You think it's never going to get better.
I've had so many experiences where I thought I was never going to come out of it breakups, friendships ending rumors, online drama, losing someone, life.
You know just like things happen, but time heals almost anything.
Maybe not fully, but things do get better with time and with aging.
As time goes on and you experience more, you meet new people, good things happen.
You realize there's more to life than that one bad incident.
And that gives me hope and makes me want to get older.
I might not be where I want to be right now.
I might not be who I want to be right now.
I might not love things that I've said or that I've done.
But knowing that I have more opportunities as I get older excites me.
It gives me so much hope.
I was so scared of aging because society was telling me it was a bad thing.
And you'd hear women talk about how they hate how they look.
They wish they were young again.
They're trying to reverse signs of aging.
Although there is that noise, there's also women who embrace getting older.
And I'm not even talking about women in their 60s, 80s, 90s.
Women in their 30s, their 40s, sharing their experiences and reminding us that life doesn't end at 30.
It actually gets better.
I love to look to my idols like Taylor Swift, who...
I have followed for years, who I've seen through different stages of life, who are now in their 30s and are thriving and look happier than they've ever been.
That gives me hope for myself.
That excites me to get older.
I love seeing people who start over in their 30s, their 40s, their 50s, people who feel like they've missed out on an opportunity or they just didn't get to do what they wanted to because, you know, life gets in the way.
And instead of just allowing it to slip away and not revisiting it, they're like no, I want to do this now, no matter the age.
That is so powerful.
That is so incredible.
And it's just a reminder that no matter your age, you can always choose yourself.
You can always choose better for yourself.
I saw this TikTok where this person was saying that they always talk about how, when they have kids, they're going to put their kids into ballet or into theater things that they wish that they did when they were younger and they have this realization like, oh my god, like i still have the same equal opportunity to do these things, like i am talking about myself, as if i'm dead and i can't just go and pursue ballet or theater and i have to wait until my child is here for them to take on this thing that I want to do.
I've caught myself so many times saying this exact same thing, especially to Josh.
I'll be like, when we have kids, I want them to do XYZ because I never got to.
And it's like what's holding me back from doing that now.
If it's still important to me enough for me to be like I want my kid to do it, why can't I just try now?
You can do ballet in your 30s.
Who says you can't?
You always have the ability to start over.
Aging in life is going to happen regardless.
Time is going to pass.
So you might as well embrace it and not be ashamed of who you are or hold yourself back from who you want to be, because there's a very high chance that you're going to look back in a couple years, or in 20 years or in 40 years and wish you lived the life that you actually wanted to.
I understand wanting to look hot and caring about your appearance, but the reality is you're not always going to look 20, so don't let that be your one defining characteristic and don't let people who are fear-mongering about getting older make you believe that your life ends at 30.
And listen, I have my own insecurities.
I'm not perfect.
I still get anxiety about the future.
I do still get nostalgic about the past.
But I feel like I spent so many years of my life being scared of something that I have no control over.
I have no control over getting older.
All I have control over is what I decide to do with my time.
And I just wish that I had someone giving me this advice even a couple years ago.
So I hope today's episode helped you.
I hope it relieved some stress if you've been worrying about getting older.
I hope you feel a little more confident and secure, knowing that there's so much more to you and to your life than your looks.
And I hope that this episode excites you to get a little older.
Like I said, I'm turning 29 this weekend, but I hope that you stick around for next year when I turn 30, because that's really crazy to me that I started this podcast when I was.
24 and I'm going into a whole new chapter of my life now with all of you.
It's so surreal.
I am eternally grateful and indebted to you guys for life.
So I hope you stick around to see me grow.
But if you like today's episode, make sure to share it with someone who wants to or needs to hear it.
Wants to hear it, needs to hear it.
Make sure to rate trying to care on spotify and apple, if you haven't already, and i hope that i see you here next.
Actually no, no episode next week.
I'm taking the week off for my birthday, so i'll see you in two weeks, hopefully.
I hope you come back around for another episode of trying to care And, as always, thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you next time.
Bye!
