Taking My Place in the Community: Love For 30 Project

This week’s Love For 30 Project is from a contributor that is getting ready to enter the wonderful world of being 30. Michelle talks about what she is expecting and what she is looking forward to. 

If you are interested in Joining the Love or 30 Project, please email me and I will give you all of the details to guest post. Mythirtyspot[at]gmail.com.

Taking My Place in the Community

Okay, so I have a confession to make: I’m not yet 30. As someone who will be turning
30 this July though, I have given a great deal of thought recently to this new decade
of my life that I will soon be entering.

I’m not really one for astrology, however I heard about the astrological concept of
“Saturn Return” a while back, and it intrigued me so much that it has been on my
mind ever since. Apparently, the planet Saturn takes 29.4 years to make one orbit
around the sun, meaning that just before someone hits the age of 30, Saturn returns
to the same place in the sky that it was on the day of that person’s birth. Astrologists
believe that this is truly the time when one leaves youth and becomes an adult for
real. The period of a person’s life between the ages of 28-30 is therefore said to be
an incredibly tumultuous time, where Saturn forces you to come face-to-face with
your shortcomings, and make amends. It can force one to take responsibility for
areas of their life including health, relationships and finances.

I share with you this background because it illustrates very well what the last couple
of years of my life have been like. Two years ago, my best friend exited my life to
marry his girlfriend, and start a new future with her. I was devastated: this man had
been like a rock to me, someone solid, affectionate and reliable who helped me
through several tough years in my life, plagued by depression and suicidal feelings.
My best friend said to me as he left that I was like a baby eagle and it was time for
me to find my own wings and fly, and that is exactly what happened. I continued
therapy with an amazing female therapist, I found new friends and social networks,
and I re-enrolled in counselling study, and somewhere along the way I found myself.

Then this year on New Year’s Day, a new challenge to face: I found out that I have
Hashimoto’s Disease, a condition where the cells in your body attack your thyroid
gland, causing a variety of symptoms including weight gain, extreme fatigue, and
vomiting amongst other things. I was advised to adopt a completely wheat-free,
dairy-free and egg-free diet immediately if I wanted to reverse these symptoms I had
been suffering from for the past 10 years. Some might say this was Saturn’s sneaky
way of getting me to pay attention to my disordered eating. But again what started
out as a horrible thing – “Oh my gosh I have an autoimmune disease” – was really a
gentle nudge from God to self-actualize.

So as I approach my 30s with a certain amount of healthy trepidation, I am also
rejoicing. I am looking forward to reaping the benefits of some of the painful
preparation work I have been doing, enabling me to live life more whole-heartily

and help others along their own journeys. Most of all, I look forward to taking my
place amongst this amazing community of empowered 30s women, for I think that
a lot of the blessings of this age and stage of life are to be found amidst the company
of like-minded females.

Michelle Bunt is a 29-year old counselling student living in Dunedin, New Zealand, with her cat Jaxx. She enjoys tramping, baking, reading and of course writing. She writes a monthly column for ISSUE Magazine, and archives of her past work can be found here: http://issuemagazine.wordpress.com/category/author/michelle-bunt/

Michelle also hangs out on Twitter @MichelleBunt1 and on her new blog: http://
michelle-bunt.blogspot.co.nz/