I'd like to introduce Lisa Miller! If I could sum up fabulous in a half-Asian, half-white woman, it would be Lisa! This is the person who taught me how to get over myself and grow up! Although she has a very tender side that is caring and nurturing, most of what has been so valuable about our friendship is her no-nonsense approach to life (and she makes a mean vodka lemonade, lest we forget her mac & cheese).
Lisa is a wife to my long-time friend, Louis (there are so many witty, sarcastic things I could put in these parentheses about Louis but we'd be here all day) and mother to the cutest 1/4 Asian baby of the century, Layla Belle. She works full-time in a job she doesn't really care enough to talk about, but her passion is her night job, a food writer, which has landed her in writing gigs such as the Rachel Ray Show. She also has her own blog that you should check out at iworkimomicook.com.
Most importantly, Lisa is at the end of her 30s, spent most of it single and has actually lived to tell us about it (I know it's totally unbelievable). Here are some sacred words of wisdom!
Women fear turning 30 like men fear a prostate exam: it's a pain in the ass to get through and things will never feel the same afterwards.
Like all women, I dreaded turning 30. I was living alone in an overpriced studio in New York
And then it happened.
Overnight (or so it seemed), I did a radical assessment of my life without being conscious of what I was doing. All of a sudden, I was 30 and I woke up to a new perspective on a few things:
1. This is my body.
I realized I had spent 20 years of my life obsessing about what I hate about my body, what I wish I could change about myself and for what? I'm never going to look the way I want to look, it's completely unattainable! This is it. I'm short, I've got stumpy legs and a belly. Depriving myself of the joy of eating isn't going to make me grow 5 inches and get longer legs (although it might do something about the belly but whatever). I'm so over beating up on myself and feeling self-conscious about myself in that way. And I'm 30 now, so who gives a fuck? I'm 30!
2. Mom doesn't always know best.
My mother and I have a great relationship… that oftentimes disintegrates into all-out screaming matches. Her opinion is and always will be very important to me but at 30, I realized that she doesn't know me as well as I thought she did. There are things about me that she knows, things about me she still assumes are true and other things she will never know. For this reason, I am able to take what she says about me or my actions in the heat of an argument with a large grain of salt. Whatever you think, mom… but I know me best.
3. Love me as is or be out.
When I turned 30, I had been on my own for a while and was really enjoying it. I had my own place, I did my own thing and was happy on my own. Later that year when I started dating the man who would later become my husband, I didn't give an inch. I made it pretty clear from the start that there were things he would just have to accept about me if he was to have any place in my life; that I was comfortable with my choices and he would have to be too. I was 30, I had an established life on my own, and he could either get on board or be out.
4. Just do it.
After getting laid off from my crap-tastic job, an opportunity arose to spend 4 months in Paris
Ladies, embrace turning 30. It's when you become the real you. Not the you your mom sees or the really thin you or the you the man of your dreams wants you to be. 30 might turn out to be the best year of your life. It was for me!
This guest blogger sounds hott.
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