Becoming no one new at 30

By Sanam Goodman.

On October 29, 2025, I woke up as a thirty year old woman and felt absolutely nothing.

Sure, I was excited about an impending debaucherous trip to Bali to celebrate with my nearest and dearest. And sure, every time a gorgeous message popped up on my phone, or flowers got delivered right to my door, I felt loved and cherished and all those wonderfully good things that fill you up and make your tummy go warm. But there was something missing.

I’ve spent a lot of time mulling over thirty year old Sanam. She wasn’t drastically different to me, just better in all the ways I’m told are crucial. She was self assured, decisive. She had firm boundaries, yet was still enigmatic enough for people to gravitate towards her like street drinkers to the warm glow of a backyard party. She was the sort of woman who could quite easily say, “that doesn’t work for me”, “I don’t like that”, and “my steak isn’t medium rare”. She consistently lifted weights four times a week, had no scuffs on her leather boots, ordered more than just the yummiest chilled red! from the wine list. Most importantly, she did not care what you thought about her, thank you very much.

And on the morning of my thirtieth birthday, despite the force at which I clawed and clamoured looking for her, she was nowhere to be found.

I knew (of course) that nothing biologically transformative happened at midnight on your thirtieth birthday. I wasn’t expecting a fairy godmother to appear and bippity boppity boo me into a woman with a robust sense of self and a fringe that didn’t flick up. I guess I thought peeling my twenties off me and flicking them away would make me feel something, anything, about the woman I’ve become and the girl I no longer am.

The old way we used to speak about our thirties has, much to my delight, mostly disappeared. The one with the husband and the mortgage and the respectable career and maybe a child hanging off a supposedly fertile hip. We seem to have accepted that a woman’s life doesn’t self destruct if she reaches thirty without a neat little list of milestones ticked off. In fact, in the circles I travel in, thirty feels much too young to have a child, to have a flourishing career, to afford a home, a ring on your finger. There’s a futile energy surrounding many of the conversations I have. Kids! In this economy? These arbitrary markers of life togetherness no longer mean anything to many people I surround myself with, and for that, I am eternally grateful with my arms outstretched.

While nobody is telling me I need to have my life figured out by thirty anymore, there seems to be an expectation that I should, by now, at least have figured out myself. Many women I know, deep in their thirties, speak about this decade with the evangelical fervour of someone who has recently taken a liking to matcha. Just you wait, they tell me. You’ll feel something shift.

I loved the idea of this. That I would reach this notorious age and just work it all out in one fell swoop. I’d have this aha! moment and start telling people how I really felt, what I really thought. I’d bound down the street with this infectious confidence, like that scene from that movie. You know the one.

How very wrong I was.

Yes, I no longer need a husband by thirty, but I should be completely sure of my stance on marriage (and be completely okay with being alone, should that happen). And no, I don’t need to have reached the pinnacle of my career, but I should know what it is that lights me up, gets me going (and zero in on it like my life depended on it, because it does). No, I don’t need to have children, but I should have seriously interrogated whether I wanted them and what kind of mother I’d be. I don’t need the house or the ring or the baby on my hip. But I should, at the very least, have emerged from the wreckage of my twenties as an emboldened woman.

I should know my worth without someone telling me exactly what it is. I should protect my peace without becoming precious about it. I should have healed my inner child, fixed my attachment style, weaned myself off the ever hovering teat of external validation. I should know what I want and what I won’t tolerate. I should be soft but still boundaried, sexy but never seeking, ambitious but absolutely not desperate. I should have clear skin and strong arms. I should know exactly when to leave a party (and when I do, I shouldn’t worry about missing out on anything).

Instead, I find myself mourning this woman I’m yet to become. A woman I may not ever be, with this goop of madness and messiness inside me. I really did think age would close the distance between us. But all I’ve ended up with is the creeping realisation that, ding ding ding, there’s no one coming to relieve me of myself. Wherever you go, there you are!

If this lives on the internet forever, I fear I might look back on it when I turn 35, or 38, or on the eve of my fortieth (gasp!) birthday, and chuckle at my almost comical naivety. The same way I think about me on the precipice of my twenties, white knuckled and so afraid of what the decade would serve me.

I think about so many headstrong, sure as anything, women who have come before me, tapped me on the hand and told me to wait for the best years of my life that are just about to happen. I think about my mother, the way she carries herself with an almost brash sense of entitlement, and I admit, I admire her for it.

Were they always like that? When did they become that? And will it ever happen to me?

This piece was written for Fluff in collaboration with The Ritual by KIC, currently discussing the theme: “Method in the Madness.”

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