How do you know when you’re ‘grown-up’?

At first, i thought it was when my first boyfriend suddenly dumped me after five years and i decided to move to England, alone, at 19… wasn’t grown up then… just experiencing grown-up emotions…

then i thought it may have been the first time i was proposed to when was 21. nope.

When i walked down the aisle to marry my first husband, pregnant with my first child… well that was a definite contender… however, 8 years later and with a second child, i am not convinced that was very grown-up either.

Receiving my government signed and stamped Divorce papers in the mail was quite grown up i thought at the time, “yep, this is it… i am finally a grown-up!” – but still didn’t really feel it until this morning when one of my oldest and dearest friends said to me, “i realised without even know it, I turned into one of those people who is procrastinating about pretty much everything…” and then my Physio who i have known even longer said, “i just don’t like having to maintain my body…” – i agree with both of them. I feel the same as both of them. Perhaps we DON’T “grow-up” so to speak.

Perhaps we just grow older, less patient, less motivated and more frustrated.

Growing-up, when i was a kid… was drinking alcohol and driving cars. I suppose i didn’t think much about the responsibility of a ‘grown-up’, because as a child, i was blissfully ignorant.

Does knowledge make you a grown-up? I look at my Grandfather who arguably knows more than the lot of us, because he has been around almost 90 years, however he acts more childishly than my six-year-old son!! So i would say no to that one too.

Maybe i need to stop worrying about what behaviours i think are grown-up or not and start enjoying life in general… stop putting time limits on myself, stop thinking “what if?” and “when this….” or “when that…” – and just BE.

What do you think?