Growth

This month, as I celebrate another trip around the sun, I’ve been reflecting on Maya Angelou’s words:

“Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult! What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth. The Earth. It means to take responsibility for the time you take up and the space you occupy.”

The older I get, the more I understand that maturity isn’t about milestones like jobs, marriages, and homes. It is about the responsibility that comes with simply being alive. 

I certainly wouldn’t say that I’ve fully “grown up,” but I am growing in the quieter ways that matter to me. Like pausing instead of reacting, communicating my emotions more honestly, and trying to see another person’s perspective instead of jumping to judgment.

So much of my life has been about unlearning: unlearning the conditioning of my upbringing, unlearning the belief that happiness is always in the next best thing, unlearning old patterns that kept me stuck. These shifts feel small, but they’re also everything.

And maybe that’s part of what it costs: letting go of who we thought we had to be, or who others told us we were, in order to step into responsibility for our own presence. To take ownership of how we show up. Understanding that every choice has weight, every action has an impact.

Growing up asks us to let go of blame and entitlement, to open our minds, to face the consequences of our choices, and to accept that our presence matters. It can feel heavy. It can feel unfair. Sometimes it feels easier to look away. But the gift hidden in that cost is belonging. 

To grow up is to acknowledge that our lives are interwoven with the lives around us. That our happiness is not disconnected from justice. That our healing is bound up in collective healing.

I don’t have a neat conclusion to offer here, just this: I am trying to grow up, and I think it’s going well. I feel grateful for my home, my work, and the people in my life. To simply be content in my life, I think that’s also a form of responsibility. Because when I choose peace over consumption, compassion over judgment, presence over distraction, those choices ripple outward.

So maybe growing up is less about arriving at some finished version of ourselves and more about continuing to practice ownership of our lives. And if “growing up costs the earth,” then maybe that cost is worth it. Because the way we take responsibility for “the time we take up and space we occupy” shapes not only our lives, but the world around us.