12 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Turned 43

Nobody asked. Here we go anyway.

I came out of the womb performing. Interviewing friends, putting on shows, finding any stage I could. By the time I landed an agent at Docherty Talent in my early twenties, the dream was already there. I just didn’t know who I was yet, or how to get where I wanted to go.

I was outgrowing some friends and making others. I deeply wanted to be in love, but I was single. Caught between desperately wanting it and being afraid of being pinned down, much like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. My twenties, followed by my thirties, were rollercoaster rides. Amazing highlights. Deep depressions. A lot of living. But I’ll save all of that for the book I’ll write one day.

What I’ll say here is this: through the rain and the rainbows, I’ve learned a hell of a lot in 43 years. I found purpose from my pain. It wasn’t until 39 that I started to really learn myself, find my voice, and learn acceptance and grace for myself and for others.

Here’s some of what I picked up along the way.

People show you who they are. Believe them the first time.

Here’s the thing about being an empath: I already know. I walk into a room and feel the shift in someone’s energy before they’ve said a word. I pick up on the mood, the vibe, the thing underneath the thing. I have always been able to do that.

The problem was never the knowing. It was the overriding. I was raised to see the good in people, which sounds lovely until it becomes a reason to ignore every red flag waving in your face. Blood is thicker than water, so you give passes to family members who don’t deserve them. They’re friends with our friends, so you smile and put up with people who drain you dry.

I got conditioned out of my own instincts. And then one day I was standing somewhere I never wanted to be, wondering how I got there. I knew. I just wasn’t allowed to trust it yet.

Now I trust it.

Stand for something, or fall for anything.

I heard this as a kid and filed it under “things adults say.” Then I watched it play out everywhere. In politics. In religion. In relationships, friendships, and my own career. Over and over again. The people who don’t know what they stand for are the easiest to manipulate. The easiest to gaslight. The easiest to move.

Growing up I watched people get swept along by whoever was loudest in the room, in the pew, or on the ballot. No anchor. No filter. Just whatever felt safe or familiar in the moment.

Turns out the quote wasn’t advice. It was a warning.

You don’t have to earn rest.

I was taught early that if you’re resting, you’re lazy. That stillness had to be earned and productivity was the price of admission for just existing. That stuck with me for decades in ways I didn’t even fully recognize until I started unpacking it.

Rest is not a reward for working hard enough. Rest is maintenance. It’s what keeps the whole machine from blowing up. I’m still unlearning this one honestly. Some days I have to remind myself that doing nothing is not the same as being nothing.

I’m done justifying basic human needs to anyone, including myself. Most days.

Not every relationship deserves a closure conversation.

Some of them deserve a quiet exit and a locked door. I used to think I needed everyone to understand my decision before I could make it. That I owed explanations. That leaving without a full debrief was somehow unkind.

What I’ve learned is that peace is the closure. You don’t need their understanding to move on. You just need to go.

Your gut was right. You just talked yourself out of it.

I spent a long time being gaslit. By people in my family, by exes, by bosses, by coworkers. Enough times that I stopped trusting my own read on things. When you’re told often enough that you’re too sensitive, too dramatic, or imagining it, you start to believe them. I learned to second-guess the very thing that was trying to protect me.

What I know now is that being an empath and an HSP means my gut isn’t just a feeling. It’s data. I am literally wired to pick up on things other people miss. All those years I spent dismissing my instincts as overreaction? I was ignoring the most accurate information I had.

I wasn’t too sensitive. I was too nice. And those are very different things.

The gut doesn’t forget. It just waits until you’re finally ready to listen.

Asking for what you need isn’t needy. It’s just communication.

When you grow up being told to put up with things, to keep the peace, to be the bigger person, you learn to make yourself very small. I stopped asking. I stopped expecting. I told myself I was being easygoing when really I was just exhausted from years of my needs not mattering enough to mention.

Shrinking myself wasn’t kindness. It was conditioning. And the people who called my needs “too much” were simply people who didn’t want to meet them. That’s useful information. It tells you exactly who they are.

Thankfully I’m in my fuck-that-40s now. I ask. I say it clearly. And if that’s too much for someone, then I know exactly what I need to know.

Don’t let anyone dim your light.

I did. For years. Insecure people and narcissists are threatened by someone who shines. They can’t dim their own darkness so they come for yours instead. A comment here. A subtle put-down there. “Who do you think you are?” energy wrapped in a smile.

And honestly? It probably did make them feel better to make me feel worse. That’s a hard thing to sit with. But what I know now that I didn’t know then is that there are enough crowns to go around. Someone else’s light doesn’t dim yours. And someone threatened by yours was never in your corner to begin with.

Protect your light like it’s the most important thing you have. Because it is.

Apologizing when you’re not wrong is a habit worth breaking.

I was a serial over-apologizer for most of my life. I once apologized to a corner of a table I bumped into. That’s how deep it ran. Sorry I took up space. Sorry I had a feeling. Sorry you didn’t like what I said. All of it was trained, years of keeping the peace by making myself the problem.

Over-apologizing feels like politeness. It isn’t. It’s a slow erasure of yourself. And it teaches people exactly how much they can get away with.

It’s a hard habit to unlearn. Start anyway.

You can love someone and still walk away. Both things are true.

When you grow up a romantic, you believe love conquers all. When you’re raised in faith, you take vows that tell you good times and bad means you see it through no matter what. Nobody tells you that “bad” can mean misery. Lack of safety. Soul crushing. That staying can cost you everything.

Sometimes loving yourself is the best gift you can give yourself. And if you’ve fallen out of love, letting go is its own act of love. For both of you.

I have loved people deeply and still had to make the hard call. Both things were real. Both things were true.

The friends who show up when things are ugly are the only ones that count.

The brunch friends are fun. But the ones who sit with you in the parking lot of the hospital, or answer at 11pm, or show up with wine when you don’t even know how to explain what happened, those are the ones. As an empath I feel everything deeply, including the absence of people who should have shown up and didn’t.

Know the difference between who you can trust with your dark times and who is just there for the gossip, or worse, who feels better about themselves when you’re down. Those people exist. Pay attention.

Protect the ones who show up with good intentions.

Have grace. For yourself and for others.

Grace for others doesn’t mean tolerating what isn’t working. It doesn’t mean giving passes to people who keep hurting you. It means accepting that most people are doing the best they can with what they have, even when their best isn’t good enough for your life. You can wish someone well from a very safe distance.

Grace for myself is harder. It means forgiving the version of me who stayed too long, who apologized too much, who ignored her gut because she was taught to. She was doing her best too. She was navigating a world that kept telling her she was too much and not enough at the same time.

She got me here. That counts for something.

Forty isn’t an ending.

Society sells forty like it’s the beginning of the end. Like the best years are behind you and it’s all downhill from here.

But forty is the first time I actually trusted myself. Not performed confidence, actual trust. The opinions of people who don’t matter started falling off like dead weight. The need to shrink, to explain myself, to make everyone comfortable, started to loosen its grip.

Nobody hands you that. You earn it. Through all of it. The rain and the rainbows, the losses and the lessons, the versions of yourself you had to leave behind to get here.

Forty isn’t a closing door. It’s the first time I kicked one open.

Some of these lessons showed up early and took decades to stick. Some I had to learn twice, or three times, before they finally landed. That’s okay. Some lessons don’t land until you’ve lived enough to need them.

Here’s the thing about 43: I’m not done. Not even close. But I’m finally paying attention in the right direction, toward the life I’m building, not the one I was supposed to have.

xoxo,
Leah

Leah Haslage