What Do We Do With the Additional Years of a Migrant Child?
By Anushka Phal
I was talking to a client recently.
She’s in her late 20s—brilliant, self-aware, doing “all the right things.”
Therapy, movement, rest, boundaries, self-reflection.
All the things we’re supposed to do to feel grounded.
But she said something that made me pause.
“I don’t know what I’m working towards anymore.”
Not in a hopeless way.
But in that quiet, questioning way that creeps in once you’ve ticked the boxes that were never really yours to begin with.
And I saw myself in that pause.
I saw so many of us there.
The children of urgency.
The ones raised by parents who never had the luxury of not knowing what came next.
Our grandparents were married with kids by 20.
Our parents migrated across oceans by 23, 24, 26—
building lives while grieving old ones in silence.
By 30, they had mortgages and toddlers,
sometimes with partners they barely knew before saying yes.
There was no time to reflect.
No time to unravel.
No “What’s next?”—only “What’s necessary?”
But us?
We are suspended in a peculiar space.
A space no one in our lineage has lived before.
Between 26 and 35, we are suddenly allowed to pause.
To ask questions without immediate answers.
To hold space instead of ticking milestones.
And it is both a gift and a grief.
So what do we do with the additional years of a migrant child?
The years that were bought with someone else’s sacrifices.
The years that no one can guide us through—because they never had them.
What do we do with the quiet stretch between finishing university and starting a family?
Between our first real job and our first big dream?
When there's no wedding to plan.
No child to raise.
No migration to navigate.
Just space.
Here’s what I think:
We unbecome.
We rewrite our timelines.
We learn to rest—truly rest—for perhaps the first time in our family line.
We are the first in our lineage to pause without starving.
To wander without shame.
To dream without needing permission.
We fall in love—and out of it—without needing to marry.
We create art that won’t pay rent but feeds our soul.
We go to therapy.
We feel our feelings without rushing to hide them.
We question traditions.
We peel back rituals and beliefs to ask, “Does this still hold meaning for me?”
We pick our mothers’ stories apart gently—
and our own with more mercy.
We start again.
And again.
And again.
Because now, we can.
We also learn to live with the guilt of rest.
Of slowness.
Of not knowing.
Because even though we’re free to choose our path,
we carry the echoes of those who didn’t have that luxury.
We’ve inherited ambition and anxiety in the same breath.
We know our parents worked tirelessly so we could have choices,
and sometimes those choices feel so wide,
so vast,
we freeze.
There’s no manual for this part.
Our parents can’t guide us.
Our grandparents can’t advise us.
They did not live this life.
They were living on fast-forward,
while we are buffering,
loading a life we were never shown.
They don’t know how to counsel us through these in-between years.
And how could they?
We are the first to live them.
So what do we do with the freedom they gave us?
We don’t rush to fill it with checklists.
We let it hold us.
We treat our 30s not as a deadline,
but as a canvas.
We build slow.
Soft.
True.
We solidify our character,
not for the approval of a future partner or employer,
but because we are finally learning who we are
when we’re not constantly performing usefulness.
We let character development be the main plot.
Not just the filler between big life events.
We make peace with not having “one-off” achievements.
We embrace the long-haul becoming.
We grieve the life paths we’re not choosing.
We celebrate the ones we are.
And maybe that’s the real milestone:
To not be in a rush.
To take our time.
To feel joy without needing it to be productive.
To find depth in ordinary moments.
To be the first in our family tree to say—
“I don’t know what’s next, but I’m okay in this moment.”
Because here’s the truth:
We are the children of urgency,
but we are not defined by it.
We are the ones who get to turn survival into joy.
Obligation into meaning.
Sacrifice into softness.
We are the first to pause.
To breathe.
To ask, “What do I want?”
And mean it.
So, if you’re in that strange space between 26 and 35…
If you’re feeling lost, guilty, behind, unsure…
Know this:
You’re not late.
You’re not broken.
You’re just living in a stretch of time no one before you got to.
You’re the first.
And that’s sacred.
So go slowly.
Ask deep questions.
Sit in the discomfort.
Live with intention.
There is no rush.
You’re already becoming.
Prompt for you my dear readers:
What are you choosing to do with your space?
What old stories are you ready to let go of?
What does your character development look like right now?