It’s been four years since I last updated this blog/website/repository/whatever this space is, and I intend to go back to it in the near future! Suffice it to say that a lot has happened in the last four years, all of which requires a much more extensive debrief than I currently have the capacity to provide.
For one thing, I’m thirty-years-old now, which feels like an incredible milestone considering I started this blog when I was fifteen years old. More on that in a sec, because woof.
For a second and third thing, I’ve graduated law school—I will talk more about this later—and passed the bar—I will also talk more about this later, because woof—which means your humble blog-keeper is now a D.C.-based (oh yeah, that’s new too!) attorney specializing in international law. In other words, you can call me Neiha Lasharie, Esq., a new style that makes me giggle hysterically every time I think about it.
For a fourth thing, and perhaps the biggest update of them all: I’m a mother!! (Way to bury the lede, I know, but one thing that hasn’t changed about me is my penchant for the dramatic; incidentally, a trait my son has inherited.) I had my baby in my final year of law school—more on pregnancy at a future date because, well, woof.
Now that I’ve set up at least three different future blog posts (or maybe one just very long blog post) and very little by way of detail, I can at least leave you with a preliminary, longue durée reflection that is pertinent to the history of this blog:
I’ve been waiting to be a grown up in earnest since I was little. Certainly, in a lot of ways, this blog is a testament to that wait. You can feel the yearning in a lot of past blog posts, a fervent hope for some distant self-actualization. I could never properly articulate what it was, but there was something wabi-sabi about it: I’d know it when I saw it, or at least when I became it.
And I think—I know—I can safely say that I am absolutely a grown up now. And, honestly? It feels really good. I think what I always meant by wanting to be a grown up was that I wanted independence; I wanted to make decisions for myself, have my own money, have a career of my own, have an education of my choosing, a list of accomplishments that I could point to as proof that independence suited me. By that metric, I’ve been a grown up for a while, but there was always a little more independence to be had. Whatever that ephemeral, deeply unhelpful line in the sand was, I think I’ve stepped over it—and I think it had to do with having a family. Obviously, that formula is specific to me and my hopes and dreams. The experience of pregnancy and childbirth has only reinforced my belief that no one should be forced to have children unless they absolutely want to have children. But for me, the fact of my family—my husband, my baby, and my other, more feline baby—have all contributed to my sense of independence. And it feels incredibly fitting for my journey that this faraway independence I’ve been chasing my whole life was actually tied up in other people.
That is certainly not to say I’m self-actualized. There are a lot more wabi-sabi moments in my life I wish to meet. I may be a grown up, but I have a lot of growing to do still. For just one example: remember that PhD dream? Still a thing. But the biggest difference is a simple one—
I’m satisfied. Alhamdulillah.
So, you could charitably call that an update. I owe the folks who still remember that this blog exists a much more robust update. But for now, as a final takeaway: woof.
Or, as my feline-baby would insist, meow.
Neiha Lasharie 