You Don't Need to Know Everything by 25

We fear aging.

We hesitate around change.

We think we need to be somewhere

but no two journeys are the same.

I wish that I felt secure enough in my own roots, that "I am exactly where I'm meant to be," at an earlier age.

My senior year, as it was the year before adulthood and before I would enter the world all bright eyed and bushy-tailed, I started to really explore health. And while it started out maybe with a little vanity, I came to question the world within me a little more holistically. I started yoga, meditation, eating a plant based diet, and really beginning my workout regimen through a year of free personal training I won through a writing contest where I had to tell what brought me to wanting to workout and where I wanted to be when I was older.

I felt amazing, confident, healthy and like the world was at my fingertips-literally! It was the first time that I really took pride in myself and my being.

From High School, I went up north to study Esthetics, having a dream to become a makeup artist and esthetician who practiced in ethically sourced and packaged products where I could provide services to women and girls that would leave them feeling beautiful. I was pleasantly enamored by the fact that the course would be coupled with a massage program. So I studied, falling more and more in love with the innate human potential, while working hard and trying to maintain a social life.....

There's a time in every young girls life, I believe, that feels like a Hallmark Movie. Where life has this beautiful way of bringing you back home, having experienced things you never have before, to settle you back in and allow for the "meet cute" scene where everything falls together perfectly to set up the projection of your life.

So while enrolling back into school, living at home with my parents, I thought my movie moment was met when these two brown eyes caught mine and a big, toothy smile covered his face.

A true prince charming.

And a love affair arose. I left sweet notes and baked goods at his seat while he made me laugh as I caught his eyes through the hallway window while my teacher was in the middle of class.

But as quickly as it started, it ended that much sooner in tears and a deep reluctance to get out of bed.

"I can imagine you being my first wife," I remembered him say to me when we first expressed interest, that dashingly good looking smile on his face. And I remember my heart skipping a beat to what I heard, 'he wants to marry me.'

I dated one person after meeting my future fiance. A kid I grew up next to, who I had a crush on since I first saw him, and who could make me laugh hard. Another Hallmark Movie ready to be enacted, every page already written and rehearsed.

But three years of immense young love, heart ache and sorrow, we closed the chapter on what could have been.

So when I put time into myself, my dreams, my wants, my behaviors and what I could do to improve myself, I met my one.

My senior love shifted himself back into my life, and I admitted to myself that as nervous as I was to commit to him back when he proposed 9 years ago, that in the back of my mind, he always stayed. And while our relationship has not been perfect- and no relationship is outside from you and God- we made a commitment to hold and guard each others hearts. To always support and uplift each other, even if we decided it wasn't meant to be. We made it official with him proposing to me in front of our families on his birthday.

I remember years ago, when I came back from beauty school, I saw all these girls who I graduated with posting on social media that they are married or pregnant or both. I remember thinking for the first time these words: "Should I be there?"

So my dear, whoever your sweet soul may be, my answer is sweet and true:

You are exactly where you are meant to be.

Life has a funny way to keep on keeping on. And so must you,

Do it with strength, with vigor, with passion and with gratitude. Let the deep and bright and pastel colors splatter on your canvas and string together your own creation. THIS IS YOUR ONE AND MAGNIFICENTLY BEAUTIFUL LIFE.

There is always a new lesson you haven't quite learned, new people you haven't quite met, places you have only dreamed about that await the gift of your presence and love that awaits every scent of an unpicked flower.

Do not rush it and have faith and grace that

you do not need to know

everything at 25...