I woke up to a fresh blanket of snow here in Litchfield on New Year’s Day, the kind that quiets everything. After Freddie finished shoveling us out of the driveway, we took off for a walk along the brook. There’s something about fresh snowfall near moving water that feels cinematic in the most understated way. The landscape is hushed, almost reverent, yet the river keeps moving, unbothered by the cold, uninterested in freezing simply because the world around it has slowed.
Watching it carve its way forward, I felt something settle inside me. Not a revelation, exactly, more like recognition. A reminder that the goal for this new year, for this next decade I am approaching, isn’t to brace against what surrounds us, but to move through it. To stay responsive rather than rigid and that felt like a quiet lesson and a beautiful reminder from nature herself.
It also made me think about how differently so many New Year’s Days once began. Hungover mornings. Indulgent brunches. Long naps that blurred the day away. There was a time when that felt celebratory, even necessary. And then children enter your life and recalibrate everything, quickly and without apology. I don’t resent that shift. I’m deeply grateful for it. The late-night party version of me had her moment. She was fun, and I love her. But she feels far away, like someone I once lived beside but no longer share space with.
These days, I care more about clarity than recovery. One of my daily affirmations for 2026 reads, I nourish myself in ways that create clarity and calm. Alcohol simply doesn’t serve me the way it once did. I still love a glass of wine by the fire, slowly and intentionally, but that’s different from the way we moved through our twenties and early thirties. I don’t judge that version of myself, or anyone who still chooses that pace. In some ways, I miss her. But I also know she isn’t meant to come with me into this next decade.
As I approach 40, I find myself looking back on my 30s with both tenderness and discernment. I see the version of myself I deeply respect. I see the version I had to outgrow. And I am creating space for myself to understand and acknowledge what I’m carrying forward and what I’m intentionally leaving behind.
My 30s were a decade of exponential growth. I entered them as a girl and I’m leaving them as a mother, as a woman who knows herself more honestly and deeply than ever before. When I think about the difference between 20 to 30 and 30 to 40, there’s no comparison. The growth wasn’t louder, it was deeper. It was earned. If there’s one word of advice I could give her, it would be; “Fulfillment comes from internal alignment, not external approval.”
A decade of creating taught me confidence, but not the kind I expected. Not bravado. Not certainty. Not the loud kind that announces itself. Confidence arrived quietly, through repetition. Through showing up when something didn’t land. Through trusting my instincts before they were validated. Through learning that consistency builds conviction, and that clarity often comes long after the work begins. Creating year after year, through businesses that failed and others that endured, taught me that confidence isn’t fearlessness. It’s familiarity. Knowing yourself well enough to try without letting fear or ego stand in the way.
I also learned the difference between growing and performing growth. In a world that rewards visible transformation, it’s easy to mistake motion for evolution. Real growth is private. It doesn’t photograph well. Sometimes it looks like restraint or “falling off”. In the industry I work in, I began to notice two paths unfolding around me. One was loud, accelerated, and highly visible, built on constant reinvention. Following trends, not setting them. The other was quieter, less celebrated, harder to name. It took me years to recognize it, and longer still to trust it. Performing growth demanded approval and constant output. It was exhausting, and it was not serving me. Acknowledging and accepting that is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. I finally felt like I was in the flow, instead of swimming upstream.
Growing quietly asked for patience. For boundaries. For a willingness to move at a pace the algorithm doesn’t reward. It didn’t offer immediate validation, but it sustained me. It aligned with the life I was actually building, not just the image I was projecting. In my 30s, I learned which path allows me to keep going. And this is where an important distinction feels worth making.
I can almost hear the familiar commentary, from people who don’t know me and from people who do. But your life looks so curated on Instagram. And they’re not wrong, at least not entirely. Instagram has always been my highlight reel, a place where I share beauty, creativity, and inspiration, because that is my natural output. That is my authentic code. I am, at my core, a generator of beauty. Creating it brings me joy, and it’s often why people are drawn to my work in the first place. What Instagram doesn’t always hold is the full picture. Me as a whole person. The quieter truths. The experiences that have shaped me.
Interestingly, the people who meet me first and then discover my Instagram often say the same thing, that I’m deeper, more layered, more present than they expected, and that I should share more of that. And that makes sense to me, because the most meaningful parts of who I am are reserved for my friendships, my family, my real life. I’ve always valued that privacy. Not everyone gets full access, and that boundary matters to me. But I also recognize that protecting those parts so closely can do me a disservice. Without that context, my life can appear overly polished, overly produced, when in reality it’s simply edited for beauty.
This space feels like the middle ground I’ve been seeking. A bridge between what I share visually and what I carry internally. A place for reflection and conversation that could never live inside an Instagram caption.
Somewhere along the way, building Cucina Cipoletti grounded me in a way I didn’t anticipate. After a year and a half, I feel more rooted than I ever did in the fashion industry. Food is one size fits all. It meets people where they are. It gathers rather than compares. Competition has never been my foundation. I instinctively recoil from it, especially the performative kind. What I’ve found instead is something quieter and far more sustaining. Community. Connection. Shared experience. Building something centered on gathering rather than competing helped me find myself again.
Motherhood has deepened all of this. No one prepares you for how much of yourself you will meet through your children. The patience you don’t yet have. The tenderness you didn’t know you were capable of. The parts of yourself that still need care. It has softened me and sharpened me at the same time, stripping away any illusion of control while clarifying what matters most.
As I step into this next decade, I don’t feel pressure to arrive anywhere. I feel permission to continue becoming. To choose clarity over chaos. Depth over noise. Presence over performance.
If you’re also standing at the edge of 40, unsure of what you’re supposed to feel, let this be your reminder. You don’t have to reinvent yourself. You only have to listen more closely. There is nothing wrong with evolving quietly. This is your path and no one else’s.
