Sometimes it takes standing between generations to truly recognise where we are in our own journey.

I have often found myself thinking of life in chapters of ten years.

There is something about a decade that seems to give the passing of time a shape. Ten years can sound like such a long stretch when we are young, almost impossible to imagine, and yet, as the years pass, those same ten years begin to feel astonishingly brief.

The first decade belongs to childhood, to the years when the world is still new and we are absorbing far more than we realise. We are being shaped by voices, places, experiences and relationships long before we have the words to explain what they mean to us.

Then come the teenage years, with all their questions and discoveries. The twenties follow, often filled with choices that seem enormous because, in many ways, they are. We begin building a life, finding our place, discovering what we believe, what we hope for and what kind of person we want to become.

And then the decades continue.

Some seem to rush past almost unnoticed, swallowed by the busyness of living. Others leave their mark so deeply that we can scarcely recognise the person we were when they began. Each carries its own experiences, its own joys and disappointments, its own unexpected turns.

But over the years, I have noticed something else.

It is often not the milestone birthday itself that makes me stop and reflect. It is the year leading up to it.

Twenty-nine. Thirty-nine. Forty-nine. Fifty-nine.

Those curious in-between years when one chapter is drawing to a close, but the next has not quite begun.

I wonder whether others feel it too.

There is something about approaching a new decade that makes the years behind us feel closer, almost as though they are gathering quietly around us, asking to be acknowledged before we move on.

We begin remembering things we haven’t thought about for years. We notice how much has changed, sometimes without our realising it. We think of dreams that came true, others that took unexpected shapes, and some that quietly slipped away as life unfolded.

And perhaps we begin asking questions that have little to do with the number of candles on a birthday cake.

I find myself living one of those years now.

And I have felt its weight.

Not because I am particularly troubled by the thought of growing older, but because I am increasingly conscious of where I stand in the unfolding story of my family.

There is a generation ahead of me, and I am watching them grow old.

That is not an easy thing to witness.

The people who once seemed so strong, so capable, so certain in their place in the world are now facing the frailties and limitations that come with advancing years. Things that were once effortless require help. Familiar abilities begin to fade. The independence they carried for a lifetime becomes something they can no longer take for granted.

And for those of us who love them, there is a tenderness in witnessing these changes that is difficult to put into words.

We remember them as they were.

We see them as they are.

And we love them through the distance between the two.

Sometimes I look at them and catch a glimpse of the years waiting further along my own road. Not with despair, but with a growing awareness of how vulnerable we all are to the passing of time.

Then I turn and look at the generations coming after me.

There is so much life unfolding there.

My children are living through the years of adulthood, carrying the responsibilities, decisions, joys and pressures that once filled my own days. Careers to pursue, homes to make, relationships to nurture, children to raise, or lives unfolding along entirely different paths, each with its own meaning and possibilities.

I watch them making choices, facing challenges, celebrating achievements and sometimes learning things that no amount of advice could ever have taught them.

And I remember.

I remember those years when life seemed to stretch endlessly ahead of me. When the days were so full of things that needed doing that there was scarcely time to wonder where all those days were going.

The years when I was busy living the very life I now find myself looking back upon.

And somewhere in the middle of these two generations, I stand.

Looking towards those who have travelled further along life’s road than I have, while watching those behind me make their own way forward.

It is a strange and deeply moving place to find oneself.

I can see the years that have shaped my parents, and I can see the years that are shaping my children. And somewhere between them, I am becoming more aware of the years that have shaped me.

I find myself looking back at the younger versions of myself with a different kind of tenderness.

The child who could not possibly have imagined the life waiting for her.

The young woman who had such clear ideas about how everything would unfold.

The mother who was so busy caring for everyone else that she barely noticed how quickly the years were passing.

And the woman I am now, carrying the memories of them all.

I recognise things in myself that have changed. Convictions that have softened. Priorities that have shifted. Dreams that have become less important, and others that have grown more precious with time.

There are things I wish I had understood earlier, and others I am grateful I did not know, because perhaps I would have been too afraid to begin.

And there are losses I still feel, questions I still carry, and parts of myself I am still trying to understand.

I think that is what makes these years before a milestone birthday so meaningful to me.

They seem to invite a different kind of reflection.

Not simply a counting of years, achievements or disappointments, but an honest look at the life that has been lived within them.

What has mattered most?

What have I given too much of myself to?

What have I neglected?

What has brought me the deepest joy?

What am I still holding on to that no longer belongs in the life I am living now?

And perhaps most importantly, how do I want to live the years that remain ahead of me?

I do not have neat answers to all those questions.

Perhaps I never will.

But I am beginning to appreciate the value of asking them.

There is something about reaching this stage of life that makes me less interested in simply moving from one year to the next without noticing what is happening within me.

I want to understand the life I have lived, not only in terms of what happened, but in terms of what those experiences have made of me.

And I want to approach the years ahead with that understanding, knowing that I cannot predict their shape or their length.

Perhaps that is why I have come to think of the year before a milestone birthday as a quiet threshold.

Not quite the chapter behind me.

Not yet the chapter ahead.

Just a place in between, where I can look in both directions and recognise how much life has already passed through my hands.

There is gratitude in that.

And sorrow too.

Gratitude for the years I have been given, for the people who have filled them, for the love that has carried me through so much.

Sorrow for what has been lost along the way, for the things that cannot be revisited, and for the growing awareness that time does not wait for any of us.

But I do not want to hurry past either feeling.

I want to give this year the attention it seems to be asking of me.

To remember without becoming trapped in remembering. To look ahead without needing to know what lies there. To be honest about where I am, and gentle with the person who has travelled all these years to arrive here.

And perhaps, when that next milestone birthday finally comes, I will understand that the most meaningful part of crossing into a new decade was not the birthday itself.

It was the year before.

The year I allowed myself to look back with tenderness, look forward with hope, and stand for a while in the extraordinary place between the generations.

Because I am beginning to realise that I am no longer simply watching the years pass.

I am watching the generations move through them, and becoming more conscious than ever of my own place in their story.