44 and counting

This year I turned 44, and wow, what an entrance into the double digits in the upward 40s group. I have been quite enthralled in “life,” and for me, that looks like chasing my purpose (God teaching me), loving my wife (learning how to be in partnership), and raising secure kids (nurturing my inner child), all simultaneously. While getting older is fantastic for many reasons, it is also sobering; yet we are born knowing that life is precious and should be treated as such. The problem is that by the time we genuinely understand that sentiment, life has lovingly grabbed us in a choke hold, smashed all our unfortunate realities in our faces, and we are grasping for pieces of ourselves that we have gathered through just living ‘life”.  

As I sauntered into 44, I realized that most of my childhood was celebrated. I vividly recall my mother throwing tons of parties to celebrate the day I was born. The irony is that my mom often tells me that she didn’t want children and that my dad was the sole reason for my arrival. However, my mother consistently would carve out time to celebrate my birthday as a child. I was not too fond of it.  I grew up to be a woman that resented the day my birthday arrived until this year. 2022 something was different. Maybe it was that I was turning 44, or I had recognized for the first time that I had missed my birthday. I missed being seen in a way that wasn’t attached to a story I had not reframed. I was a conflicted child. Caught between the life my mom didn’t have but desperately wanted and just being seen for me. So, this year, I cried for the child that had celebrated so many birthdays but never felt celebrated for her uniqueness. This year I observed myself.

This picture is on the actual day of my birthday. My wife took our younger kids and me to dinner. It was special. Not because it was my birthday or she remembered (she’s sentimental), nor was it that it was my favorite food at a nice restaurant (I’m relatively simple). It was the mere fact that I committed to celebrating myself every year from that day forward. It was an intentional effort to rewrite my “birth story” so that I felt seen to me. As I get older, I realize that when we see ourselves with self-compassion, we learn how to love even the darkest parts of our past. For the record, today, my mom is one of my biggest supporters, and highly grateful for the woman I have become. She understands that my freedom is her freedom. Although it may look different, it serves the same purpose: to heal the little girls; we never got to be as we become the women we need.