I turned 38 on 3.8, an age that holds both my birthday and my late mother’s (August 3rd and March 8th) mirrored within it.
That serendipitous realisation, which struck me three years ago, is the reason I am anchored in the conviction that 38 is destined to be the most monumental age of my life (so far). The second most monumental age should be 83… if I am fortunate enough to see it 😅
As of today, I have only 38 days left of being 38, and I feel like I could just dissolve into a puddle of tears because I am NOT ready to stop being 38 😭😭😭
So instead of crying… I am writing about it.
In 2021, I put up a blog post, 33 Facts About Me, with – you guessed it – 33 facts about me at 33 years old. I thought it would be fun to update it for 38, but not with facts this time. Instead, today’s post is a reflection on how I have grown since then, with a strong focus on my mum, because this is OUR age.
- What would your warning label say?
Please ask responsibly. Even simple questions may trigger a TED Talk and a Taylor Swift lyric.
2. Which fictional world would you love to live in?
I finished Gilmore Girls last month, so perhaps this is recency bias, but I gotta say that living in Stars Hollow sounds downright perfect ☕🍂
3. What is something my mum would immediately recognise about me no matter how old I got?
My nose. Lol. Jk. Kinda.
I would say my tendency to keep things to myself too much, which is one of the last things she told me before she died. Also, my Defender personality, which means I instinctively go to bat for the people I love.
4. What is your love language?
I have two. Receiving Gifts and Words of Affirmation. I have always known that the former is my love language because we are living in a material world and I am a material girl, but a therapist helped me realise that the latter is probably my true love language. Which tracks, I suppose, because I am a logophile. But Lawd knows I love me a good gift 😅
5. What is something I know now that would have changed my life if I’d learned it ten years earlier?
You cannot bully yourself out of self-sabotage. You need to nurture your way through it, because self-sabotage is not a character flaw. It is a protective mechanism rooted in the subconscious mind. The brain is wired for survival, not success, which is why it favours predictable discomfort over unknown joy.
6. What is your favourite place you’ve visited?
I have not travelled much out of Kenya and have only been to Moshi, Kampala, Dubai, Cape Town, Amsterdam and France (Lyon and Paris). In that order. But my favourite place was easily Amsterdam as it was the number one city/country on my bucket list, for obvious reasons #IYKYK 😎
The other two in my top three are Italy and New York, and I hope to visit them sooner rather than later, though I have no interest in Trump’s America 🙅♀️
7. What is something you hope never changes about you?
My resilience. I thought I lost it last year, but it was still in me, just buried under a shitload of shit.
8. What is something 38-year-old me knows that 28-year-old me didn’t?
You can become everything you criticise.
9. What is a moment from this past year I wish I could bottle forever?
The triumph of crossing the finish line at Nairobi City Marathon 1 hour, 57 minutes and 15 seconds after the start. It was my NCM debut, so going into it only 3% of me believed I could run a sub-2. I 100% hoped I could, but it was a dream I held verrrrryyy loosely because there was not a single stage in my training that showed me I could actually do it, so only a sliver of me believed in me. And that sliver was on a good day. On the days running was kicking my ass I had sub-zero belief because what do you mean to run a sub-2 I need to run at 5:41 min/km when my average pace is 6:30 for any run longer than 10km. But I did it! I ran 21km with an average pace of 5:32 min/km! Do not ask me how I did it though, as I am still trying to understand that myself 😅 Just know I did. #POWERFUL 😙💪
10. What is something I think I am genuinely excellent at?
Writing that gives language to experiences that are often felt more easily than they are articulated.
11. What is a song that feels like a chapter of my life?
Fortnight – Taylor Swift (feat. Post Malone)
12. What is something beautiful that came out of something painful?
Last year I moved from being the emergency contact to being the emergency. My sister and I have always had a rather superficial relationship because it is common for children from dysfunctional homes not to have a close bond. Our dynamic shifted somewhat after our mum died, but we have always been more comfortable talking about pop culture than our feelings. But having to pull me from the depths of hell when I was too broken to do it for myself finally broke open our relationship.
13. What is the most “daughter of my mother” thing about me?
My bargain hunting and ability to find great deals. My mum knew where to find ALL the best deals. I like to joke that if my mum used to smoke weed she would have the best plug for quality-meets-affordability.
That, and using things to the very end. Soap, lotion, toothpaste… absofuckinglutely nothing goes to waste. I will probably be cutting the containers of my personal care products in half until I die, and even then you will have to pry the scissors from my cold, dead hands.
14. What is the dumbest injury I’ve ever sustained?
I have a scar at the top of my right calf that I got in high school from accidentally stepping on barbed wire during a hockey tournament at Lenana School.
Oh, there is also the time a friend got so drunk that she stepped on my big toe with her heel and sliced it open. I bled all over the Changez bathroom, soaked an entire roll of tissue trying to stop the bleeding, and had to get stitches and a tetanus shot the next day.
And now that I think about it, I gotta start avoiding anything (nick)named Changez 😂😭
15. What lesson took me far too long to learn?
That my need to help is often more about me than the person I am trying to help. There is a difference between helping (being present, listening, staying available, accepting where the person is, and offering support when asked) and controlling (convincing, persuading, repeatedly giving advice, trying to force insight, making their healing my responsibility). One is about them. The other is about my need to regulate my distress as much as theirs.
Of course, there are exceptions. If someone is in immediate danger, waiting passively is not appropriate. This lesson is about ordinary situations, not emergencies.
16. What is one lesson I cannot seem to stop learning?
That discipline must carry you when motivation will not, because my capacity for procrastination is seemingly endless.
17. What is something I understand about my mother now that I never understood when she was alive?
How easy it is for fear to drive your choices.
18. What is something younger me would think is unbelievably cool about my life?
Probably the physical, emotional, and financial safety I have created – and am continuing to create – for myself. That, and all the books I own 🤓
19. What is something you wish you worried less about?
The future. Yes I know it is good to plan ahead and take consistent steps toward what matters to you. But there is something about my future-thinking that often prevents me from being fully present in the present. Yet I have no control whatsoever over my future. I could die tomorrow for all I know. At 38, I have gotten better at focusing on what I can do today rather than trying to control distant outcomes, but I still have a lot of work to do when it comes to preparing for, but not living in, the future.
20. What is a compliment that always works on me?
You look like your mum. You remind me of her is dope too, but I am so vain I probably think this song is about me, so “you look like her” is much preferred.
21. What chapter title would I give this year of my life?
I Am Becoming.
22. What is a memory that can still make me smile no matter how bad my day is?
“LYON, BIENVENUE DANS LE ERAS TOUR!”
On June 3, 2024, I fulfilled a decade-long dream to see the incomparable Taylor Swift live in concert. A dream made even more enchanting because the concert was The Eras Tour – an epic, career-retrospective tour recounting all her artistic eras.
23. What is one thing I am still figuring out?
How to fix my broken friendships, strengthen existing ones, and make new connections. I have come a long way in fixing my broken friendships, but I still have a long way to go in strengthening existing ones. And do not get me started on making new connections, because the only new people I have met this year are fellow runners at We Run Nairobi. Sijui I just start going up to people and saying “I want to be your friend” like children in playgrounds do 😅
24. What is something I am embarrassingly bad at?
Technology. I am a tech idiot. I got it from my mama. You will always find me asking for the “boomer menu” in restaurants.
25. What is a battle I finally stopped fighting?
The need to be understood. It used to bother me so damn much that I even have a tattoo on my right foot that says “missunderstood”. But now my philosophy is simple: if you get me, great. If you do not, that is fine too. I will always do my part to make myself understood, but if you are unwilling or unable to meet me there, that has nothing to do with me.
26. What am I currently incapable of shutting up about?
Running. Just ask my Instagram algorithm.
27. What is one way I am different today than I was a year ago?
I have not had a drink for 253 days, and counting. A cousin of mine reminded me how I used to say the only time I would take an extended break from booze is the nine months of pregnancy and six months of exclusive breastfeeding. Look at me now. Not pregnant. Not drinking.
28. What is an idea that shows up repeatedly in my writing?
Meaning-making. That is, the active, continuous process by which individuals interpret, understand, and make sense of their life experiences, relationships, and the world around them. I am a wizard at connecting new information to prior knowledge and emotions, constantly assigning purpose and significance to what happens to me. The result is an ability to turn emotional truth into narrative clarity without diluting its weight.
29. What is my current personality outside of my actual personality?
I am a MASSIVE KaFan. The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs is on such high repeat I feel like the Apple Music Man is about to come out of my phone and ask me if I want to talk about it. Before last month I had never played a single Noah Kahan song. Now it is only June and he is already my most streamed artist of the year, and American Cars… or maybe Doors, will definitely maybe be my most streamed song.
There is something about his unfiltered, painfully self-deprecating songwriting, about the way he writes so openly about therapy, medication, and depression, that speaks to me like no other artist has before. I do not usually cry to music, but I have cried to three of his songs already, which feels like an alarming conversion rate. I have only just started making my way through Stick Season and whew! I fear this obsession has only just begun.
30. What is one thing my mother was right about?
The importance of a good education and the importance of being empowered as a woman.
31. What is one thing my mother was completely wrong about?
Staying in an abusive relationship just because you are financially tethered to your abuser.
32. What is the best thing age has given me?
Literally that. Ageing. Because the alternative is dying.
33. What is something grief taught me that happiness never could?
Life is short. I had been saying that with an offhand air for years, until my mum did not live to see 60. Now it is no longer an abstract saying but a reminder that none of us are guaranteed tomorrow, and so we owe it to ourselves to live life as fully and as passionately as we can.
34. What is a fear I have outgrown?
That I will only be enough once I am fully healed.
35. What is a fear I still carry with me?
That I will die before living up to my potential.
36. What is something I have stopped apologising for?
My “difficultness”. One example is if I am unhappy with a product or service I will say so, though I always strive to be kind about it. Unless you come at me with some crazy energy, then we will go bar for bar. It is annoying AF how men are allowed to vocalise these things and no one has a problem, but when women do all of a sudden we are “difficult” or “too emotional”. As Taylor Swift once said, “A man is allowed to react. A woman can only overreact.”
37. If my 38th year had a soundtrack, what song would be playing over the end credits?
no tears left to cry by Ariana Grande. I cried all the tears at 36 and 37, and so far I have only cried once this year. Well… with the exception of crying to Noah Kahan’s music 😅
38. What is one thing I hope follows me into 39?
The complete and utter lack of chaos 38 gifted me.
Lwile the Leo 