Life Is the Transition

Text and photo by: Aleksandra Erak, MSc

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Aleksandra Erak, MSc, a recent graduate of the BESST Lab. In this reflection, Aleksandra explores the emotional and societal weight of approaching a new decade, unpacking the tension between personal ambition, biological timelines, and inherited expectations. Her piece offers an honest look at what it means to navigate uncertainty, identity, and autonomy in a world that often pressures women to follow predefined paths.

Somewhere between planning out my year and realizing I turn 30 this September, something shifted.

Time stopped feeling abstract and it started feeling… real.

Not in a dramatic, “my life-is-ending” kind of way but in a quieter, more unsettling way. It’s always been there but now, it felt as if it was getting harder to ignore. Because turning 30, for some reason, feels like a checkpoint. Not one that anyone explicitly hands to you but one that you feel. One that asks, gently yet harshly: Where are you in life? Is this where you thought you’d be? 

That’s when the comparisons start to creep in.

The milestones. The invisible list.

Have you moved out? Built a stable career? Found your person? Have you started a family or even thought about it?

There’s an unspoken timeline most, if not all, of us carry. I do not think it’s because we actively chose it but because we passively absorbed it. Through conversations, through culture, and through the other quiet ways we measure ourselves against the lives of others in society.

Then suddenly, it’s not JUST about turning 30.

It’s about what 30 is supposed to represent.

A sense of having figured it out and arriving at a predetermined destination. 

If I’m being honest, I feel so much tension from this idea because I don’t feel like I’ve “arrived.” I feel like I’m still very much in the middle of my journey…and on some days, I feel like I haven’t even left my departure location. 

Then there’s another layer; one that feels harder to ignore because it’s not just social timelines anymore, it’s biological ones too.

The conversations with friends, relatives and coworkers shift. The awareness deepens more and more as time goes on. The question of whether I might want children one day becomes less abstract and more… logistical. More real. More something that may require planning, decisions, timelines of its own; something that feels so much nearer than I thought it was. 

The questions often come in a rush and all at once.

Do I need to think about freezing my eggs?

How does that fit into everything else I want to build?

Where does that sit alongside a career that I know will take YEARS of studying, training, adjusting and becoming?

What will that mean for the partner that I have yet to meet?

What will that all mean for ME?

It’s a strange place to stand in. To hold both ambition and biology in the same breath. To want a full, balanced, expansive life…and yet, to realize that some parts of it may not wait indefinitely.

And then there’s the path I’ve chosen: Medicine.

A path that, in many ways, asks you to commit your time and energy before you fully arrive in your life.

Years of studying. Years of training. Years of putting some life-points “on hold.” Years of being “on the way.”

With that, I’ve found myself wondering:

What does that mean for who I am right now?

Who am I, if I’m always becoming something else?

Am I building a life or am I constantly preparing for one?

Then slowly, almost without noticing, it all starts stacking.

Thirty.

Time.

Expectations.

Biology.

Career.

Identity.

The quiet pressure to have figured it out by now.

It gets louder.

Heavier.

More urgent.

And for a moment, I can feel it.

That tightening in my chest.

That creeping thought:

Am I behind?

Is there a version of my life I’m supposed to be catching up to?

Is there a right sequence? A right timeline? A right set of choices that I’m somehow at risk of missing?

And it builds…

And builds…

And builds…

Until it almost feels like it’s about to break into something so much bigger.

But then, 

I stop. I breathe. I come back down.

Because if I really think about it, when has there ever been a “right time” for anything?

Not for the big decisions.

Not for the life-changing ones.

Not for the ones that actually matter.

There’s only ever been choosing and then living with that choice.

It’s been becoming someone new because of it and suddenly, it all feels quieter.

It’s not because these questions and worries disappear but because they’re no longer something I have to outrun.

It’s also because, if I’m REALLY honest, there’s something else underneath all of this for me. I’ve spend so much of my life advocating for women to live freely and it’s become a huge part of my identity. I wholeheartedly believe that women should unapologetically be allowed to take up space. To not ask for permission. To not shrink themselves into timelines or expectations or roles that were never built for them.

I believe that so, so deeply.

I say it. I write it. I encourage it.

That we don’t have to fit traditional norms.

That we don’t have to please everyone.

That we are allowed to be messy.

That we are allowed to take longer.

That we are allowed to choose differently.

And yet, somewhere along the way, I stopped fully living that consistently for myself. Somewhere, I started holding myself to the very standards I tell other women they don’t need to meet.

And I can see it now.

The pressure.

The comparisons.

The quiet fear of being “behind.”

And I don’t want to carry that into my 30s…or my 40s…or any part of my life moving forward.

I don’t want to spend my life preaching freedom and then quietly living within constraints.

So maybe this moment isn’t about panic but rather, maybe it’s about remembering. Remembering the kind of life I actually want to live. One that isn’t dictated by timelines, expectations, and fear. Rather one that is dictated by my own wanted choices, by curiosity, and by courage.

I know I’ll have to keep on reminding myself of this. Reminding myself that I don’t need to have it all figured out at 30.

I don’t need to perfectly time my life.

I don’t need to “solve” the future before I get there.

I just need to live it.

Fully. Intentionally. On my own terms. 

Because the real truth of it all is that there is no perfect timeline and there is no perfect decision. There never was and there never will be. There is only this amazing, messy, nonlinear, unpredictable life and the choice to actually be in it. The choice to build something that feels like mine and to trust that I will figure it out, not all at once, but as I go through it.  To be a woman who doesn’t wait for permission or perfect timing to start living. To enjoy and push for the freedom that generations of women before fought for. To not be dependent on the patriarchy and influenced by it. 

Maybe that’s the point of all of this.

It’s not to get it “right,” but to experience it fully.

To feel it, to move through it, to let it shape me and to remember that I’m never truly behind. I am always where I need to be, on the way to whatever is meant to be.

Just like the seasons of the year, there are seasons of life. Each day, each season, each transition has a role of its own and maybe experiencing it, exactly as it is, is the only thing that is ever truly right.

Aleksandra Erak, MSc, completed her master’s research in the BESST Lab examining pregnancy and postpartum experiences. Her interests focus on women’s health research, perinatal mental health, reproductive health, and health equity.