By the end of my twenties, I had held five positions, lived in two countries, and said yes to an engagement ring in a restaurant interrupted four times by the waiter.

It was not a plan. It was a life moving forward.

And every decision I made, even the ones that felt risky at the time, taught me something I could not have learned any other way.

Decision 1 - Leave what no longer vibrates

After three years in my husband's family business, everything was stable. Comfortable, even. But something had closed inside me.

I left without a precise plan. Just one certainty : staying still inside a life that no longer felt like mine was not an option.

What this decision taught me : inner discomfort is a signal. Not a weakness — a compass.

Decision 2 - Dare to move without certainty

I changed jobs several times in my twenties. Tour operator in London. Club Med. American pharmaceutical company. Every time, the new position taught me something the previous one could not.

I did not wait until I was ready. I left.

What this decision taught me : your twenties are not the decade of grand plans. They are the decade of small, courageous yeses.

Decision 3 - Build a love between two cultures

Marrying my first husband, him English, me French, meant navigating between two languages, two families, two ways of seeing the world. Our wedding in Niort on 25 August 1989 brought two cultures together around the same table.

We learned to negotiate between security and mystery, between rootedness and momentum.

What this decision taught me : conscious love is built and chosen, every day, it is not found.

What my twenties really taught me

Your twenties are the decade of growth without certainty; of the right question without great answers.

I found my place by accepting to move forward without waiting to be ready.

That is the lesson I write about in Volume 3 of The Strawberry Wisdom.

This week's question

Which decision of your twenties taught you the most, and what would you understand differently today?

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Elisabeth Court, known as Babette
Author of The Strawberry Wisdom