She said it to me as we walked out of the water.
"You're a really good mom."
I smiled. I'm not. But I know why she said it.
It was April in Rosemary Beach and the water was freezing. The kind of cold that made my sister stay on the shore, holding towels, giving warnings, keeping things safe and dry and most importantly warm. And there I was, fully in it. Jumping waves, diving for sea shells, waving to the fish. Laughing a lot.
But the truth is, I'm not her mom. I'm her aunt.
What that kind woman on the beach was seeing wasn't motherhood. It was delight and the willingness to get in the water and not rush past the moment.
I used to miss moments like this, believing that my life would start someday…just not today. Spoiler alert- that's not how life works.
I've spent enough time in a therapist's chair on both sides of it to know that we don't always get to choose the role in life we were sure we'd play. I was so very sure I'd be a mother by now; instead, I'm an aunt. And for too many years, I treated the role like a placeholder.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's fertility data, 28.9% of American women ages 30 to 34 were childless in 2014. By 2024, that number had climbed to 40.3%. That's not a fringe experience anymore- it's nearly half of women in their early thirties, all of us navigating some version of a life that didn't arrive on the timeline we were handed as girls.
When other friends chose marriage, I chose to travel. When my friends were having babies; I was going back to grad school. While friends were getting promotions and having second babies, I was opening my private practice. We all started in roughly the same place, same college dorms, same first apartments, same conversations about who we wanted to become. And then life handed us a million tiny moments and choices, and the gift was realizing we were never meant to arrive at the same destination.
I have the great honor of working with women in my office as they navigate these years. What I see across all the different paths is that meaning, purpose, and connection don't have to wait.
Researchers who study attachment have long understood that what children need is at least one stable, responsive, emotionally available person who is irrationally crazy about them (I added the irrationally crazy about them part, but I truly think research would support it), someone they can count on to show up. Sometimes that's a mom. Sometimes it's an aunt. Sometimes it's a grandmother, a godmother, the neighbor who never misses a single soccer game. The love doesn't require the title. The showing up is the thing.
There's a quiet message that joy has to be earned. That you get to relax into your life once it looks finished: once you're married, once you have kids, once the house is paid off, once you're there. But presence doesn't wait for arrival.
What changed wasn't my circumstances. It was deciding that delight didn't need a permission slip.
I'm not her mom. I never will be, and that's not a wound, it's just a fact, sitting next to a hundred other true things about my life.
But I am someone who got in the water. Someone who let a freezing April ocean be the whole point of the afternoon.
And just maybe, that's the real invitation of this decade. Not catching up to each other, but learning to genuinely root for the woman next to you who is living a completely different version of a full life. My friends with toddlers and I aren't on the same path anymore. We don't have to be. We just have to keep making it so clear to one another that we’re for each other.
If you've been waiting for life to feel easier, warmer, more "together" before you let yourself enjoy it… let this be your reminder: you're allowed in the water now. Whatever title you think you're missing you don't need it to start showing up fully for the people right in front of you.
The delight is available. Right now. In whatever freezing water is in front of you today.
Stephanie Cashin is a clinical social worker and the founder of Huntsville Integrative Therapy, where she offers high-achieving women a place to stop performing and start healing. She fully believes mental health isn’t all in your head. When she’s not with clients, you’ll find her outdoors , with her goldendoodle Putter or sending 12-minute voice memos to her friends.