Photo by Sarah Warden Photography

I’ve written and rewritten this blog post a few times. How do you summarize a decade? Especially one that started when you were fifteen and ended when you were twenty five. Those years are massively transformative. It seems like everything possible has been fit into the last ten years, from learning to drive to buying a house and getting married. The past decade has taken me from a child to a woman. It’s seen hard times and joyous times. It’s been remarkable in every sense of the word.

Maybe it’s strange for us as humans to take time and break it down into chunks like we do. It seems so logical to celebrate the new year, to be able to hit refresh, and to re-calibrate. But too look back over longer periods of time and try to make them a season of our lives just doesn’t work as well. So much happens in ten years time. So much changes. We are in every sense of the word, different.

So I’m going to do something a little different. I’m gong to focus on the parts of me that have stayed the same, because I feel like that says more about me than anything else. The people around me have changed. My place in the world has changed. My daily activites have changed. But there are also quite a few things that have stayed the same.

• I still want to have a family. When I was 15 I wanted to grow up and get married and have kids, now that I’m older and married I still want to have kids and I was right when I thought that marriage would be one of the most influential things in my life. To marry is to gain a life partner and I’ve managed to find that in the last ten years, and though it didn’t happen at all like I planned, I started down the road that I only dreamed of at 15.
• I still have a lot of the same morals, though God and society has slowly been fine tuning them. I’ve grown a lot and I’ve become better in a lot of ways, but my want to be better has not ceased. I have not drifted from my moral compass even as it has matured and changed. This is actually something I’m pretty proud of, because though I’ve made mistakes like every other person I’ve stayed true to myself through most of it. I haven’t faltered in major life altering way.
• My hobbies have endured. I have gained some new ones over the last ten years, but I have also more thoroughly explored the ones I’ve had since I was young. This is amazing because not only does it mean that I’ve been able to approve, but those hobbies I started with when I was fifteen have led me into learning programs that help me in my job. They have helped me through some hard times when I had little else to do and lean on. And, as someone who has creative hobbies, they have helped me express myself and process my emotions. And there have been a lot of emotions to work through in the last ten years.

• I still have D’Artagnan. Technically riding is a hobby and could be included in the last bullet point, but my horse was born when I was 14 and since then he has dramatically been making my life better. We’ve also been getting better, from gaining bad habit to learning to get rid of them, this horse has taught me a lot. He’s also been there through the thick and the thin. The farm has been my haven, and it still is. I was so lucky to get him ten years ago and I’m so happy that I’ve been able to share the last decade with him.
• My dream of the farm house with horses and children has endured, and I’ve found someone to share it with. To combine D’Artagnan and my first bullet point on wanting a family, I’ve always had this image of where I wanted to be when I was older, it’s still the same. Sure it’s been edited a little, there is still even more room for improvement, but the idea, the goal, is still there and still loved. Not only have I been dreaming of it for ten years but I’ve been working towards it, and in my husband, I found someone to share it with and help me reach it.

Sure this decade has been one of massive change. I don’t think I could list all the unexpected turns and twists if I tried. Ten years is a long time and so much is different, but me? I’m still the same wide eyed girl I was, and I’m still intact. I find that a big relief.