Dear Clementine: Turning Thirty

In the first of Untethered's Dear Clementine advice line, a listener on the cusp of turning 30 asks what advice I would give to my 30 year old self. This episode is a heartfelt reassurance that your 30s are a time of growth, self-discovery, and the chance to explore life's possibilities with a fresh perspective.

I also champion the cause of self-love and personal growth, challenging societal norms and embracing the journey towards the fullest version of ourselves. Let go of the fear of judgment and immerse yourself in life's simple joys, finding beauty in experiences over superficial achievements. Remember, the most enduring relationship you have is with yourself, and nurturing it is key to a fulfilling life. 

Tune in to explore these themes and learn how you can continue to support and stay engaged with the podcast. Whether you're on the brink of 30 or reflecting on past decades, this conversation promises inspiration and a renewed sense of hope for the future.

New episodes of Dear Clementine are out every Monday! And don't forget my Friday Five, bringing you a guide to the top news stories of the week every Friday. 

Email your questions to: untetheredpod@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Turning 30
• 14:51 Embracing Self-Love and Personal Growth
• 24:09 Supporting the Podcast

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, beautiful people, and welcome to this episode of the Untethered Dear Clementine Hotline. Yes, this is where I bring you all of the advice that you might not want to hear but that you definitely need to have. I'm the mother you always wanted, the sister you never had and the auntie who always listened. I'm recording this episode on the lands of the Wurundjeri people Remember, wherever you are, know whose land you're on. The Dear Clementine Hotline and the Friday Five are special side episodes of Untethered, which is a weekly podcast out every Wednesday, with me having conversations with gloriously untethered people who live lives according to their own set of rules and who defy social conventions. You can tune into that every Wednesday. Don't forget to subscribe to the show so that you never miss an episode. You can rate it and review it as well, so that it helps other people to listen. But for now, let's get to today's question.

Speaker 1: 1:03

Dear Clementine, I'm turning 30 soon. What would you go back and tell yourself on your 30th birthday? Well, firstly, what I'll say is congratulations for making it through your 20s. That is an unforgiving decade in so many ways. When you're in your 20s, you think that you've got everything figured out, except for the times, of course, when you know you've got nothing figured out. But it's so exciting and so potent and it really, I suppose, represents the deliverance of, you know, all those dreams that you have when you're an adolescent. You think and you imagine what your adult life will be like, and that might involve, you know, intellectual conversations around coffee houses or dinner tables or whatever romanticized idea you had of what it was like to be in your 20s when you were a teenager. For me it was very much. I will become an adult and everything will fall into place. I will have everything that I want and desire, and that wasn't, you know, obviously, like a family with 2.3 children and a marriage and all that kind of stuff. I've never wanted that, but it was this sense of a sophisticated kind of distinction between me and my awkward, insecure adolescent self. And so, of course, when I made it to my 20s, I was quite rudely shocked to realize that actually I felt just as insecure as I always had. I felt just as unprepared for what life was really like, and I also had a real confronting of the fact that things just get harder and harder, and plus now you have to pay bills, just get harder and harder, and plus, now you have to pay bills. So my 20s were exciting in so many ways and they were filled with incredible lessons.

Speaker 1: 2:51

I fell deeply in love for the first time and then I fell deeply and seriously in love for the second time, which was a much more realistic kind of relationship really. Obviously, I also had some huge heartbreaks. My mother died when I was 26. And that was something that at the time I mean.

Speaker 1: 3:15

When I reflect on it now as a 43 year old, I feel like how I, the maturity that I felt I had at that age, was not commensurate with what I reflect on now. So for a while I used to think that, yes, she was really young when she died and, yes, I was young, but I didn't feel the actual depth of that youth. And of course, now, at 43, I look back and I think, wow, you were so young to have to go through that and to do it really with no preparation at all and no kind of, I guess, mutual experiences amongst many of my friends. It's interesting because now, at this age that seems to be catching up. A few more of my friends are very sadly losing their parents and it's weird to kind of go oh, that was something that, for me, was what 17 years ago. Now, 17 years, it'll be 18 next April Sorry, next May and that's a whole adult person. My grief will be able to vote, technically speaking, well.

Speaker 1: 4:34

So when I think back in my 20s, I think about all of the lessons that I learned, all of the challenges that I experienced, and that was something that I was so happy to leave behind when I turned 30. And I say all of that to give you the kind of confidence I suppose that 30 is the beginning of a decade in which you will begin to put into practice the lessons that you learned in your 20s and where you also begin to realize that the intensity that you felt accompanied that decade the pressure to have everything figured out, the pressure to lock down a relationship, to lock down a job, to lock down your career that all of that begins to shift and dissipate slightly. I remember turning 30 and feeling like I was the most confident I had ever been in my life, and it wasn't just about physicality, it was a sense of it being the beginning of arriving into my own skin. I had gotten physically a lot more in touch with my body because I'd spent the last couple of years, before then playing roller derby, creating incredible friendships with women, and feeling like I was leaving behind all of that doubt and insecurity. Now, of course, I realized that you know, as my thirties progressed, that those things are not so easily left in the past, that it is always an ongoing experience and an ongoing set of lessons. But I went into my 30s feeling like this is just a continuation of the exciting time that I get to spend on earth. I'm giving you all of this as context for what you know, for the advice I'll kind of circle around to. But now, at 43, I look back on the decade that I spent exploring my thirties, you know, one in which so much actually happened to me in terms of, you know, measures and markers of success by my own standards and also probably by the world's, but that also packed so much into such a short amount of time. I wrote my first book when I was 35. I'd had a few years of you know, really amazing career trajectory before that, but it's strange to think that when I moved to Melbourne when I was 30, I waitressed still, I was a breakfast chef in, you know, a breakfast cafe, and I did that for a few years.

Speaker 1: 7:06

I think that sometimes people can look at someone with a public platform now especially, and believe that somehow it was always that way or that there wasn't an extraordinary amount of hard work that went into it. And I guess I would just reassure you, listening the person who asked this question, and also anyone who is approaching this age, or maybe even in those early 30s years, and certainly if you're still in your 20s, that you can never know when the moment will happen where the flame catches. You will never know when that will happen for you, and it could be for some. People know when that will happen for you, and it could be for some people. They hit their career stride in their forties or fifties, whatever it is that their creativity is calling them to do. The flame might catch a little bit later. Just because it hasn't caught for you now doesn't mean it never will. It doesn't mean that you are destined to never do the things that you love.

Speaker 1: 8:03

You know again, when I moved to Melbourne at 30, I had some public writing experience, but I still had to really hustle and I still had to prove myself, and it wasn't until I was 33, I think, where I really felt like I could transition to more full-time writing. And then it wasn't until I was 34 that I made enough of a splash in the Australian scene, if you want to call it that, that I was able to parlay that into a book deal. And then, from the age of 35, so many things happened in rapid succession. I got pregnant, I had a baby within seven weeks of releasing my first book. I then, over the next eight years, wrote three more books and I hit my forties Still a little bit confused, I think, about what it all means and what I'm being called to do and what.

Speaker 1: 9:00

You know where my destiny lies. You know where my destiny lies, and I say that again, I guess, to just reassure you that life is a really long, exciting, unpredictable and sometimes, yes, scary path, and we think we want to have it all figured out early on because we feel like if we figure it out then we'll be able to avoid the worst of it. But even if you've got everything set in a you've got a 10 year plan, a 15 year plan, whatever it might be you can never account for the unpredictability of things. You never know which people you might be saying goodbye to. You never know what might happen in terms of your own relationships, in terms of your own career and certainly in terms of your own desire.

Speaker 1: 9:50

I'm feeling now, especially as I move through my forties and the quote unquote adventure of perimenopause and then menopause is coming for me and I'm seeing so many women who are my own contemporaries and maybe a little bit older, who are a little bit further down that path, being able to lead these conversations in a way that we really haven't been able to have before in the past, and certainly we just have never benefited from that. It's really profoundly reinforced to me that every decade will bring with it its own unique challenges and its own incredibly special highlights and joys. So, that said, the very first thing I would say to my 30-year-old self and that I say to you on the eve of your 30th birthday is do not race to have the storyline figured out before you even get to enjoy going through it. Do not believe that the story you want for yourself now can never change or that if it changes, that somehow you failed yourself or you've stepped off the path in a way that what you should want for yourself is to feel, first and foremost, a profound delight and pleasure and privilege in the gift of being alive and the gift of being able to explore this life in all of its different facets and to understand as well that grief is a part of that, that without grief we can't know what love really feels like. Because we have no, I guess, barometer for what it means to not have it, or even to learn to love differently. And so that every experience that we have can be a tool for learning and growth. And that's not me saying that every experience we have we have to be grateful for or we have to see the silver lining and or be positive about, but that we should be able to expect the unexpected and find some thrill in expecting the unexpected.

Speaker 1: 12:10

What you want now may not be what you always want, and that's okay. It's okay to change your mind about your life. It's okay to wake up one day and think you know what I don't actually think I'm happy in this relationship or in this job or on this path or with these friends. That ultimately, what I would hope you would realize as you get older and you become wiser is that this and this sounds cliched, but it's true. But this is your life, this is no one else's life. You don't have to live it for anyone else. Of course, obviously, you have to be kind and respectful and loving and do things ethically and with integrity, but you do not owe anyone else your happiness simply because once upon a time you promised them you would be their friend, or you would be their lover, or you would be their employee or even their boss, whatever it might be. You don't owe anyone else the one life that you have been given the incredible gift of living and there are too many variables in this world and too many horrific moments of trauma and grief where people don't get to have control over their lives that to be able to exert at least some control is an enormous privilege and it's not one that you should take lightly.

Speaker 1: 13:35

I would also say, as you, on this decade of your life and you turn 30, that the things you've been taught to not like about yourself by a society that is invested in maintaining capitalism and everyone's self-doubt and self-hatred, so that we just keep buying things basically hatred, so that we just keep buying things basically that the things that you've been taught to like about your, to not like about yourself, aren't real, as hard as that might be to get over, and I'm certainly not suggesting it's easy, but they aren't real. They aren't real. They're just someone else's fabricated idea of what you should be or how you should feel about yourself in order to keep you in a state of fear. But I promise you that the older you get, even if you can't rid yourself completely of those demons no-transcript whether or not your genes have to be a size bigger, or whether or not someone you like didn't like you back, or whether or not you look in the mirror and you see something in yourself that literally no one else pays attention to or focuses on that you end up getting to a point where you're just like.

Speaker 1: 14:51

I'm so bored of hating all of these things about myself and I'm so bored of denying myself pleasure and experiences that I'm allowed to have by virtue of being a human in this world that I've denied myself on the basis of incredibly arbitrary rules imposed upon me by other people that I have absorbed as being true, even though they are ridiculous. I'm so sick of denying myself all of those things. What would happen if I just stopped denying myself? What would happen if I just allowed myself to enjoy things? What would happen if I just told the person who's making me feel bad about myself to fuck off. What would happen if I just asserted myself? What would happen and this is a really big one for women, and I definitely, definitely would love to see more women learn this lesson, and way before 30. And I have every bit of hope that they are what would happen if I let men not like me? What would happen if I let women feel uncomfortable around me because I'm too bolshie, I'm too forthright, I'm too outspoken uncomfortable around me because I'm too bolshie, I'm too forthright, I'm too outspoken? What would happen if I stopped being worried about being too intimidating or being too much or being too hard to handle? What would happen if I just let myself be exactly as big and loud and sprawling as I feel called to be? What's the worst that could happen?

Speaker 1: 16:18

I would say to my 30 year old self you are going to have an incredible life. You are going to have the most amazing experiences and not all of them will be happy making. Not all of them will make you feel like you've made the right decision. Even some of them will be incredibly instructive in terms of things you should have done differently. But every experience you have will be yours, and it will be yours to either learn from, to grow from or to benefit from, and it will teach you how to be a better human in this world you how to be a better human in this world. There is nothing about this life that is dependent upon you being a particular size, having a particular partner, having a particular set of achievements locked in place by a certain time.

Speaker 1: 17:10

All of that is just nonsense. The only thing that you should be focusing on as you turn 30 is firstly, like I said, feeling incredibly proud of yourself for making it that far and also knowing that, with any luck, this is just the beginning, baby, that you will make it to 40 with a whole new set of lessons that you'd like to learn. And then you'll make it to 50 and think, gosh, wasn't I just such a beautiful, naive, wonderful little sprite when I was turning 40, and then 60 and 70 and so on, and that, if we can make it all the way to the end of however long our life is meant to be, and at the end of it we can sit there and we can look back and say, fuck man, I had some great times, didn't I? I did everything that I wanted to do, and I never let my fear of being judged or of being rejected or of being held in someone else's insecurity stop me from really sucking the marrow out, then that is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Speaker 1: 18:22

We live in this world with a completely made up set of rules about what a good life looks like, but to me, I think a good life would actually be I've said this before, you know it's not about career achievement. It's not about success in that measure Although of course we have to we have to operate within a capitalist system that is suffocating us all but it's about the moments in between those pressures. It's about the time that we take to walk in the woods, to sit by a river, to eat a beautiful sandwich, to gaze at flowers and marvel at the way the bees just do their thing, without knowing any of the insecure nonsense that runs through our heads. It's looking at a baby, seeing a dog for the first time, it's tasting something delicious on a hot day, and I know all of that again sounds really cliched, but these are the moments that make up a beautiful life. It's not the superficial metrics of achievement, it's the things that make us feel like we're alive. And to prove that and this is for everyone listening.

Speaker 1: 19:42

I want you to think back on some of your most profound memories, some of the moments that you really that you would, you know wouldn't be difficult for you to go. Okay, well, this was one of the happiest times, this is some of the best times I spent with a friend. This is the best meal that I had, and think back on it, and you're not going to remember what you were wearing. You're not going to remember what you looked like. You're not going to remember how much money was in your wallet. All you will remember is the experience of it, the experience of what it felt like. And most of those things, most of those memories, are not material in nature. They're not going on some fancy holiday. They're just doing things with other people or with yourself. That allows you to marvel at the gift of human experience.

Speaker 1: 20:31

You are about to turn 30. You are about to embark on a decade of discovery and magic and more fulsome knowing of yourself, and that in and of itself, is incredibly exciting and how wonderful for you. And I hope you have the most amazing birthday and I hope you take at least one moment on that day and every day afterwards to look in the mirror and say to yourself I love you, I'm proud of you and I am so happy to be walking through this life with you because you are the longest relationship you will ever. Have. It's with yourself. You're born with yourself and you will die with yourself. Have it's with yourself. You're born with yourself and you will die with yourself.

Speaker 1: 21:22

And if you don't love yourself or commit to caring for yourself, then who else will? I know that some people have a problem when you say things like you have to love yourself before anyone else can. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that that's true. I'm saying if you can love yourself, if you can love yourself fully and commit to yourself and commit to liking yourself, then that is an incredibly powerful relationship you have been able to form. That will be the most profound relationship of your life.

Speaker 1: 21:51

And I'll just finish by saying that one bit of advice that I share at the end of my show, love Sermon, which a lot of it is about this kind of forming a relationship with yourself and figuring all these things out and the very different kinds of love that we experience in our life is to never allow other people's expectations of you or desire to limit you, to never allow that from actually going after what you want. That if you hear your dreams calling to you from beyond the horizon, swim as fast as you can towards them, because someone has to make it, so why not you? And that's what I would say to you on your 30th birthday, and and again to everyone listening, that if you can go through life with one mantra, let it be. Why not you? Why not you? Why not you for all of these amazing things? Because certainly, why not you for all the bad things? Certainly, why not you for all the trauma and the grief? Why not you? For why not me for my mother dying at 26? Why am I so good that it shouldn't have happened to me? Of course, that's not true, I'm just a person. But why not me for good things too, if we allow ourself to believe at least in our right to go after our dreams? Whether or not we achieve those dreams is a different thing entirely, but we are allowed to pursue them and we are allowed to have dreams and we are allowed, above and all, we are allowed to love ourselves. Happy birthday, I hope you have the most wonderful time and I really hope you have the most wonderful life. You've been listening to the Untethered Dear Clementine Hotline with me, clementine Ford, it has been a pleasure to bring my little brand of advice to you.

Speaker 1: 23:44

I do another episode on Wednesdays. Obviously, as I said before, it's the Conversation Hour. This week it will be featuring the incredible Marie Cardi, and then on Fridays I produce and record the Friday Five, which is my rundown of the five top news stories of the week. So it's your little cheat sheet to go into the weekend. Please tune in, please listen. You can rate the show and review it. That's very helpful.

Speaker 1: 24:09

Please remember to subscribe as well, so you never miss an episode. And if you like my work and you would like to support it, then please look at the liner notes of this episode, because there's a whole lot of different ways you can do that. You can become a Substack subscriber. You can become a Patreon supporter for as little as $2 a month and $2 a month is small change to people, but with enough subscribers supporting me to do that, then I will be able to make this podcast for long into the future and you can also become a direct subscriber to the show. In the meantime, I hope this podcast has found you well, yours sincerely, clementine, thank you.