At What Age are we Actually an Adult?

Is it different for each of us?

Was there one age where I mentally became an adult? It seems like there should have been, but for me, it flip-flopped a few times. Sometimes I had a choice, other times I didn't and I had to be the adult, even when I didn’t feel like it.

Case in point: When my first husband was killed in Vietnam, I was an adult, but I needed to be my parents’ child again. I wanted desperately to feel safe and secure in what I felt was an unsafe insecure world. I needed the reassurance only their love could give that life could still be worth living and I would still be me, without him.

At the birth of my children, I was an adult. I would be making decisions that would affect me and my children. The responsibility came easily and, when I look back, it's THE one part of my life I'm most proud of.

I can’t say I always acted like an adult. There was nothing I loved more than letting my inner child play with my three daughters. I loved teaching them to climb trees, make mud pies and Playdough snakes, blanket forts, homemade kites, and how to ride a pillow pony down the stairs without getting hurt.

When I wrote my first children’s book, I was an adult, but I wrote from a child’s point of view. I drew from things my children and grandchildren said or asked about concerning the ways of grownups and their puzzling world.

When my parents both passed, I missed them terribly —I still do. With that loss, came the realization that a sacred baton had been passed. I was now the matriarch, the oldest and adult-est adult in my entire family.

If there was ever one age where adulthood finally stuck, I think it was then. I had finally come full circle. My grown daughters, my grandchildren, and my family could now come to me for reassurances and questions about life.

I am now 74 and this is an awesome place to be. Age really isn’t important any more. For the rest of my life, I can and will be whatever age I feel in the moment.

Today, the only age I really care about is … the next one.

Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
Quora Top Writer 2018.
CJ’s World is reader supported.
If you believe in my work, please,
be a paid subscriber so I can continue. 
Thank you!