08/18/2026
When I was a child, grown-ups seemed to know how the world worked.
Adults knew where we were going. They drove the cars. They earned the money. They made the rules. They seemed to know what was dangerous, what was allowed, and what came next.
And then I became one.
We are prepared for adulthood in so many practical ways: school, work, money, responsibility, independence, or simply how to make our way in the world.
But one question within me kept hitting the brakes:
Wait a minute. When exactly did I become the grown-up?
Was it turning 18?
Leaving home at 16?
Signing my first rental lease?
Having a child?
Paying my own bills?
Taking responsibility for another human being?
Knowing when to admit, I was wrong?
Learning to live with the consequences of my own choices?
There doesn’t seem to be one moment when someone hands us a certificate and says, There. Now you’re a grown-up.
And nobody can completely prepare us for being human inside adulthood.
Heartbreak. Changing friendships. Failure. Loneliness. Uncertainty. Discovering that something we wanted for years isn’t what we want anymore. Realizing our parents are human. Asking for help when we’re supposedly supposed to be independent.
Over the next several weeks, I want to take some of the ordinary things we’ve been taught about adulthood and look at them again.
Grown-ups have it figured out.
Being independent means needing nobody.
By a certain age, you should know who you are.
Are they true?
Maybe some are.
Maybe some are only partly true.
I’m not looking to replace one set of answers with another. I’m simply curious about what we might see when we look at some of these familiar beliefs from another perspective.
So for the next few weeks, I’ll carry one question with me:
What actually makes me a grown-up?
