In the fullness of time

On looking back and leading with self-compassion

There was a time when I lived through a global pandemic on my own in a one-bed flat.

There was a time when I lost myself trying to be everyone else and saying yes when I should have been saying no.

There was a time when I felt convinced that I would never find friendship that didn’t feel complicated and difficult and draining.

There was a time when I reimagined my whole identity into something I didn’t recognise for my relationship, and then felt utterly lost when he left.

There was a time when I was not really living, but merely being dragged along by life.

There was a time, there was a time, there was a time.

I sometimes think about what my 13-year-old self, my 20-year-old self, my 26-year-old self would make of my life at 31. Maybe that’s a deeply self-absorbed thing to admit, but I do.

I think me at 13 would be ecstatic that I’ve found true friends and a sense of belonging, but mildly disappointed that I’m not living in a bright and airy penthouse in London, covered in floor to ceiling bookshelves, working for a fashion magazine surrounded by moodboards like Jenna in Thirteen Going on Thirty.

Me at 20 would be wondering why I’m no longer pursuing arts marketing, why I’m no longer in Lincoln where I went to university, and why I’m living in the middle of nowhere with a man who is not my boyfriend (oh, the things she must learn). Maybe she’ll approve of my wardrobe, though.

And 26-year-old Lauren? Well, I reckon she would be cheering me on from the french windows of her COVID lockdown courtyard flat, Gilmore Girls on in the background, aghast that I had made it in all the ways that were meaningful for me then and remain so now.

It’s funny how our perspective changes as we get older. In the fullness of time, we replace self-critique with compassion; we give ourselves more space to fail and try to lead with kindness when we inevitably do, knowing that it is only by failing that we can learn and succeed in whatever way feels important to us.

In the fullness of time, I can recognise that I was deeply unhappy and disconnected from myself in my last relationship, and he did me a pretty big favour by ending it on a Friday night in August 2019 - just as I was shoving a piece of Terry’s Chocolate Orange in my gob and chattering away about needing to take the rubbish out. The timing of this particular moment still haunts me and makes me chuckle in equal measure.

I can look back at my twenties and admit that I spent much of it not really knowing who I was or what I wanted. Every corporate job where I felt totally out of place, every bad decision I made out of fear or panic, every toxic teenage friendship where my happiness was predicated on their happiness - all of it galvanised this urge inside me to, like Troy and Gabriella, break free.

NB: It was not on my 2025 bingo card to find a use for a High School Musical reference, but here we are.

Anyway, my point is: I couldn’t be who I am at 31, if I hadn’t been 13 and 18 and 22 and 27. It is only with time that I can begin to distill all the phases of my life into something that makes sense right now.

31 feels really, really good. It feels peaceful and calm and full-hearted. It feels less like fear and more like contentedness.

Sometimes I feel a little sad for my younger self, who spent so much time feeling lost and unsure and saying yes to stuff she didn’t really want to say yes to; but then I’m reminded that to err is human, to fail is to (eventually) succeed, and anyway, who really knows what they’re doing in their twenties? Who can honestly say that they made excellent life decisions in that infernal decade? Not me.

To live fully and happily, to show up for myself in all the ways my younger self never could, is to honour her in the very best way.