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Saying I love my mother is truly an understatement. Through life’s toils and tribulations, our connection is merely a shadow of what it once was. Nobody talks about when your mother is your best friend, but she ages out of your sphere. I am approaching middle age. I’m encountering an awakening that is so brand new to me. It’s a threshold every woman reaches, where she ceases to be a good girl and, in turn, becomes her own woman. This growth can feel like betrayal while you shed your skin and detangle from the past versions of yourself that your circle learned to love. Leaving the past behind and leaning into your future is one of the most breathtaking moments of a woman’s coming-of-age.

This is the era where you decenter everyone to make space for yourself. There really is no shade. This is a predictable milestone for every young woman. As a youth, girls follow the rules and expectations spoken and unspoken. They play by the rules in ways that are acceptable and likable. It’s not that they’re playing small, it’s that they are small. People start as small humans and incrementally grow milestone by milestone. As a child, you’re not playing small; you are small. So, what happens when you finally age into a space where you encounter more space to unfurl, unwind, and expand in your newly developed form?

“Where do I stand in a world of my own creation?”

Each decade reveals and requires a new stage of development. Your awareness expands as you live more of your life. That brings me back to my mother. No matter how much I grow, she’s already grown past that era. Our current relationship cannot sustain the patterns of our past connection. Each era requires a new version of our relationship. As my awareness grows, I find myself battling with the past, grappling with the present, and holding on to hope for the future. Where do I stand in a world of my own creation? Consciously creating my reality is such a new awareness for me, and I’m devouring every second of it, as if it were a river of fresh water. Sipping from the stream of life like a parched mermaid.

On The Responsibility of an Expanded Awareness

This era of my awakening is requiring me to stand on my own two feet emotionally. As my awareness expands, it separates me from the things that make me feel like shit. Mentally, I’m there, but physically, I haven’t been anywhere else. Or maybe I’ve been pulled back to places I had already outgrown. In my favorite movies of the 1980’s, middle-aged women experience divorce, move back home, listen to motivational audios, and pick up the pieces of their lives. They reconnect with friends after giving their husbands the best years of their lives. They watch their children grow up and live their own lives. They become single empty nesters.

“Something in my psyche has always admired the single middle-aged woman.”

Secretly, that is my favorite part of the movie. I have always watched in awe as fierce women escape loveless marriages and regain their independence. I’m a millennial, and I come from the era of romanticizing one-sided relationships. The last era to endure incompetent men willingly to keep up appearances. Something in my psyche has always admired the single middle-aged woman. I always knew women were “supposed” to get married, but I always looked at the independent women with heart eyes. This may have something to do with my queer awakening, but that is a musing for another essay.

To me, I’ve never seen marriage as a life sentence. Mostly because I believe in growth and don’t see anything as a life sentence. As a millennial woman, I do believe in change. While I’ve witnessed the normalization of stagnant marriages where stability and children were prioritized over love and affection, I never saw myself as one to suffer forever in loyalty to the vow of till death do us part. I’m divorced, and I’ve never been happier. I’m happy to have experienced the milestones of marriage and divorce. Cosplaying as heterosexual all my life, I do not believe in love. I don’t have any examples of true love. I have examples of marriage, but none of true love.

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On the Journey of Cycle Breaking

Veering from your family’s norm is a heartbreaking journey. One that you may have to endure all alone. While unlearning the acceptance of the things that make me feel like shit, how do I let go? I am lost in this limbo and feeling tormented because of it. I believe that this specific torment is temporary. Not all torment, but this specific version of torment. I’m in the part of the movie where I’m yelling and crying over my wedding-day footage while deleting all our photos together. A true breakup, as cliché as that is. They say that women are always blamed for the divorce. Even when the husband files first. As much as I want to be an exceptional woman, I am not an exception to the rule. I am just a normal girl. What a relief to be in good company.

In this tumultuous era of my life, I find myself becoming a downer to my mom. As a woman experiencing the best therapy of her life, yes, I can be quite down and find myself reminiscing on upsetting stories. My mom doesn’t deserve that energy in this era of HER life. She’s journeyed past the hump of middle age, so burdening her with my middle age bullshit is upsetting to her and her homegirls. I love my mom. That is an understatement. I love her so much that I’m willing to withhold myself from her so she can continue to live a happy and fruitful life. She is peacefully living beyond me, and since I only wish her the best, it is my responsibility not to bleed on her.

Separating my mom from her womanhood

My mom is a woman above all else. Although she is my mother for life, there is a milestone where she is not responsible for mothering me anymore. What a strange place to be in as a daughter. My mother is still alive, thank God, but she is not in a position to mother me anymore. How do I cope with this? This is the moment of my awakening, and one of its causes. It is a healthy milestone to approach. One that is predictable and witnessed in other mother-daughter relationships that have come before me. I value my mother as a woman, yet I am used to her as my mother. She is living independently from me now; it’s my era to do the same for her. At this point, it’s obvious that decentering my mom will allow her to live a longer, happier life. What a predicament. I want more than anything for my mom to live a long life and enjoy her retirement. It is time for me to stop expecting a mother and accept her as a woman independent from her motherhood.

On Reframing the Narrative

As the queen of reframing, I am grateful that my mother has lived long enough to reach this difficult milestone. I am blessed to have this problem. As a woman who finally has the mental and emotional bandwidth to analyze my upbringing, I must let it go. I cannot, in good faith, impose that burden on my mom. There is a point at which all children must concede and grant their parents the grace of knowing they did the best they could with what they had. Separately, where does that leave me? As I unlearn patterns that keep me stuck, I don’t have the same outlet I once had when my mom was my best friend. I am unlearning this attachment for the betterment of both our lives. At what age do I learn to not burden my mom with my immaturity? It’s not that I’m immature; it’s that I will never be as mature as her. Age doesn’t allow it. I lost my best friend to our age gap and life experiences. Yet we do have some good memories to fall back on.

Here’s to celebrating my mom as an independent woman. I cherish her life!

The siren that lures sailors to their fate is slowly surfacing. Not just a girl, but a woman emerging into her wildest woman era. The Subtle Siren Era is for the baby girls and princesses who have grown up and matured in their man-eating ways. Maybe you’re decentering men completely, yet still have a thirst for seduction. A baby vamp, if you will. A siren that minds her business, and business she has a lot of.

Subtle Sirens haven’t emerged untouched by life’s chaotic ways. Instead, they are tending to the wounds inflicted by living life to its fullest. Healing is an understatement. This is for the baddie who considered withdrawing and becoming a recluse but decided against it because she’s held out hope for a community of like-minded women.

Subtle Sirens have had to confront their ideology and conditioning on marriage, divorce, children, and eldercare. This cusp of life feels like both a subtle death and a joyous awakening. The death of the girl and the solidification of the woman. Middle age is calling, and she’s answering with an open-armed embrace. The subtle Siren Era is one of mature wonderment and fulfilling amazement.

If this journey is one that you’re currently on, have been on, or are curious about, consider tuning into this Substack for musings from The Subtle Siren Era. There will be essays about life, childhood, trauma, and self-love. All from the lens of a woman maturing out loud.

• Free Subscribers can expect this publication to be updated weekly with general musings on growth, healing, and maturity.

• Paid Subscribers can expect a monthly deep dive into my story. The transparency of sharing it within the safety of community. I’ll dive into trauma and how I’ve gotten to where I stand today. A deeper look into my personal life via journal chapters exploring my life story.

I can’t pretend that I have this thing called life all figured out, but I can navigate through it using a little optimism and wonder. Join me :)