39 and Done Waiting

I spent the last five years pushing my own life aside. Waiting. Holding back. Telling myself “not yet,” “not until I’m ready,” “not until I’m perfect.” Looking back now, that’s five years I simply gave away, and I’m done doing that.

I’ve hit the point where I have enough pain to finally do something with it. Not someday. Not when things line up. Now. So this year, my 39th year, is the year I take my control back.

It starts with my body. I’m getting fit again, the way I was six years ago, not to impress anyone, not for a mirror or a man or a moment, but because I’ve spent too long feeling like a stranger in my own skin, and I’m ready to come home to it. That’s mine to reclaim, and I’m reclaiming it.

It moves into how I let people close to me. I’m done rushing into things I don’t actually want, done settling for what’s easy instead of what’s real. Going forward, if someone wants my body, he earns my trust first. He becomes my best friend before he becomes anything else. Not because I’m cautious, but because I finally know what I’m worth, and I’m not handing over my most precious possession to just anyone who shows up.

And underneath all of it is time. No more waiting for the right moment, or the perfect version of myself, before I actually start living. That moment was never coming. It doesn’t exist. You don’t wait for it, you just start, messy and unfinished and exactly as you are right now.

The fear that’s lived in my body longer than almost anything else is the fear of committing to something 100%. But underneath that is an older fear: the fear of losing everything again. Myself, my money, my home. That fear goes back to a night in 2010 when I had nothing left in me but suffering, when I had to run and start over with absolutely nothing.

That fear never fully left. And for years, I didn’t face it, I built a business out of it instead. I kept moving, kept achieving, kept proving something, all while the real fear stayed hidden, in the dark, in my own mirror, fighting my own demons where no one could see.

Now, at 39, the choice is different. It’s to rebuild my self-worth from the inside instead of chasing it from the outside. Because I learned very young that love was something you had to fight for, something that could be given one moment and pulled away the next, and I spent decades trying to earn a certainty that was never mine to earn in the first place.

Today, this isn’t just for me. It’s for the little girl still inside me, and it’s for every woman who’s spent years, sometimes decades, living inside pain no one else could see. The pain of people-pleasing. Of faking it until you make it. Of demons that only show themselves behind closed doors. The invisible pain that shows up in broken promises to ourselves, in small lies, in choices we make and hide because we’re ashamed of them.

Turning 39 was never going to be a countdown to something ending. It’s the year I stopped shrinking, stopped waiting, and started actively building the life, the body, and the standards I actually want. Not the ones I inherited, not the ones I settled into out of exhaustion, the ones I actually choose.

If you’ve spent years putting yourself last too, or living inside pain no one else could see, let this be your sign. You don’t have to wait 38 years to say it out loud. You don’t need to wait until you’re ready. Readiness is a myth we tell ourselves to stay safe a little longer. You just need to decide, and then take the first messy step.

Live. Love. Conquer.
Tanja Andersen