Celeste Khumalo | The gift of dreams coming true

In the year of my Jupiter return, I turned 30. If you know a bit about astrology, you’ll recognise it as a most challenging cycle, intended to produce growth, apparently. But not to worry, this isn’t about star signs. It is about how my stars aligned and how the gift of dreams coming true is one that should always be celebrated.

I grew up goal-orientated, but, my daydreaming teenage self had only planned to the age of 25. And while by then I had achieved a few things, I fell way short of being a self-made millionaire, driving an Aston Martin, taking private jets, and living in LA. Reaching all of that by the age of 25 had not been written in the stars for me. Thirty, to me, was an age that lent itself to arbitrary contemplation over the years, and then it happened, last month.

A supermoon in Scorpio (stay with me, this is still not about star signs) portends a potent time for change and immense psychological breakthroughs, and there have been six such major, lifealtering moments in the past year. The prepared-for near-loss of a loved one and the blindsided loss of another, living in Paris and Florence, graduating with another MBA, getting my dream job, and turning 30. Some say life gets more colourful and clearer, others say their body clocks start ticking — for all genders, by the way — and some become sure about their commitments, but the rest of us take it a day at a time.

I waited until the last week of my twenties to decide on having a celebration. Looking back on the decade and even this year, I had experienced so many “arrival fallacies” that I just wasn’t prepared to celebrate another one. It was only after a lot of encouragement — and the promise of a Cartier watch from a kind someone, but only if I had a small party — that I agreed. A selection of friends that had made the odyssey of my twenties worth the journey, my family, and a couple of shots later, it became evident that the biggest gifts of the night were the people who came to celebrate with me.

Against my explicit wishes, one friend, who has been the most constant in a world where friends drift apart and find each other again, made a speech. I’d never heard about my life from anyone else the way he spoke about me. He touched on moments that were big, small, and somewhere in-between. He mentioned the bond I have with my mother and sister — we are truly like three sisters — and listed my accomplishments as though they were some of the greatest ever. I felt infinite. Each of the friends I’ve had over the years, 12 true ones to be exact, hold their own space in my life, and each get a different aspect of me.

No one at the table was friends with more than two others and had only heard of the rest. Even my astrologer had pointed this out in my chart. Yet each one had played a significant role in my life, orbiting near or far at different times and speeds. What gifts they’ve been to me. I am a self-proclaimed material girl in a material world, but that depends on the matter of the material. People matter to me; how they show up in my life and how I show up in theirs matter to me.

I always dreamed of having a life in which I felt supported and seen, and that I would in turn do that for those around me. On my 30th birthday, at the hour I’d been born, I felt that dream come true.

• Celeste Khumalo is Wanted’s Luxury Brand Partnerships Manager